What to do? Employer stopped 401(k) match

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Yes, it's complicated to figure out how much 401k I can accumulate without having RMD requirements push me into a higher tax bracket. If I had $100 million in my 401k/IRA my RMD would be terrible almost no matter what I did. If I had $100,000 in there my RMD are probably not a problem no matter how I deal with it. But somewhere in the middle I risk being pushed into a higher bracket I could have avoided if I saved money as taxable and gave up on some of the deferral. Oh well. It's impossible to calculate without knowing future investment gains and future tax rates, so I just approximate and take a good guess.

My safety valve is ER, because if I have enough retired years before I need to take RMDs, I can siphon some of that tIRA into a Roth while I'm not working (and have a lower tax rate) and by the time I need to RMD my account will be smaller. At least that's my current plan.

That's my plan too. I have a spreadsheet that I use to calculate my account balances given a spending amount and withdrawals from various accounts. My goal is to keep my taxable income after deductions and allowances at the 15% tax bracket limit. I'll probably do TIRA to ROTH rollovers to fill up that bracket and live on after tax money until I have to actually spend some money from the retirement accounts. I figure paying around 14% total income tax is a good deal.

My general goal is to keep RMDs themselves to about half the 15% tax bracket and assume SS and other income will fill up the rest bracket. So given that I'm male I'll live to age 78 that means (using today's numbers) keeping the balance of my retirement accounts at $400k. Obviously this number will increase with the years and with increasing tax brackets etc, but this is my rule of thumb.

 

[Animorph]

In my retirement calculations I still end up with some excess RMD's in my fully optimized (for max spending) plan, even after Roth conversions and top-of-the-lower-tax-bracket withdrawals. It's still more tax efficient for me than doing extra Roth conversions or earlier IRA withdrawals. Run the numbers. Sometimes you just have to take the RMD pill.