Roth, RMDs & Medicare
Conversion timing, required withdrawals, the IRMAA lookback, and what changes for a surviving spouse.
You have an advisor. Do you have a retirement tax plan?
The full walk, in order: Roth timing, rising RMDs, the Medicare cliff, the survivor’s trap, the 10-year rule, and the five questions to ask before saying yes to anything.
Read the guide →Potentially one of the best retirement tax strategies out there: just move.
Nine states take nothing from your retirement income. Move before the conversions and RMDs start — and establish residency properly — and the state’s share can go to zero. The sequencing, and the audit traps.
You converted this year. The bill lands in 2028.
The IRMAA two-year lookback, what counts as MAGI, and when Form SSA-44 can — and can’t — help.
Read →Same income. Half the brackets.
The widow’s penalty: what the survivor keeps, the three lines that cut in half, and why the joint-filing years are the window.
Read →Ten years to empty it — and a bill every year inside.
The 10-year rule, the 2024 annual-withdrawal surprise, who’s exempt, and why an inherited Roth plays by gentler rules.
Read →Born in 1959? Congress gave you two RMD ages.
The SECURE 2.0 drafting glitch, the IRS fix, what the two-year gap is worth, and the April 1 trap inside the first year.
Read →There are two Roth 5-year rules. Almost everyone conflates them.
One clock guards earnings from tax, another guards conversions from penalty — and after 59½, only one usually matters.
Read →One withdrawal. Forty cents on the dollar.
The 2026 thresholds, the combined-income formula, and the phase-in math planners call the tax torpedo.
Read →$6,000 off your taxes at 65 — until income takes it back.
The new senior deduction, the 6-cents-per-dollar phaseout, and the two big numbers it doesn’t touch.
Read →Same conversion. Two states. Six figures apart.
A federal law from 1996 decides which state can tax your conversion — and it turns on where you live the day you convert.
Read →Same ten years. Two different inheritances.
Whose bracket pays the tax on your IRA — yours in the window, or your heir’s at peak salary?
Read →Where the conversion tax comes from changes the result.
Pay it from inside the account and $76,000 of a $100,000 conversion reaches the Roth. Pay it from outside cash and all $100,000 does — same tax bill.
Read →Retiring at 55: the window, not the finish line.
Most nurses cannot fully stop work at 55 — the average recently retired nurse has about $370,000. What 55 can do is make the tax on your own savings cheaper than it will ever be again, if the money is in the right account on the day you leave.
Read it →Then see your own numbers.
Your brackets, your IRMAA headroom, your RMD clock — free, in about 3 minutes.
Open the free calculator →