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Guides › Retirement Withdrawals Updated July 30, 2026. Quick answer (2026): Taxable-first is a sound default, not a rule. With a 95% embedded gain and a 20% capital gain rate, selling costs 19% per dollar – more than a 12% ordinary bracket. The default inverts. Knowing your real embedded gain is the input that decides […]

Guides › Retirement Withdrawals Updated July 30, 2026. Quick answer (2026): A Roth conversion and a tax-deferred withdrawal are the same kind of income and consume the same bracket space. If a conversion is planned, spending from taxable preserves the low-bracket room the conversion needs. Conversion sizing is an annual decision with lifetime consequences. Getting

Guides › Retirement Withdrawals Updated July 30, 2026. Quick answer (2026): The gap between retiring and claiming Social Security is usually the lowest-income stretch of a lifetime. Tax-deferred withdrawals and Roth conversions are cheaper in that window than they will ever be again, and the window does not reopen. This window is worth planning properly,

Guides › Retirement Withdrawals Updated July 30, 2026. Quick answer (2026): Once RMDs begin they are not part of the decision. The distribution happens, taxed as ordinary income, whether or not it is the cheapest dollar available. Ordering only applies to spending above the RMD. Once RMDs start, the planning moved upstream. The size of

Updated July 30, 2026. Quick answer (2026): Enter balances by account type, this year’s spending need, and your own rates. The tool ranks taxable against tax-deferred by real marginal cost, takes any RMD first because it is mandatory, and places Roth last on purpose. One year, deterministic, no forecast. Withdrawal order for this year Spending

Guides › Social Security Timing Updated July 30, 2026. Quick answer (2026): Every breakeven argument assumes you reach the breakeven age. Undiscounted, 62-versus-70 breaks even around 80.3. With a materially shorter horizon the arithmetic inverts and claiming early is simply the larger number. A shortened horizon changes more than the claiming date. The matching service

Guides › Social Security Timing Updated July 30, 2026. Quick answer (2026): A surviving spouse steps up to the higher earner’s benefit, including any delayed retirement credits it earned. That makes the higher earner’s claiming age a joint-life decision measured over two lifetimes, not one. This is a joint-life decision, and worth treating as one.

Guides › Social Security Timing Updated July 30, 2026. Quick answer (2026): A COLA is applied to whatever base you have, so a larger delayed benefit compounds from a higher starting point. At a 2.5% assumption the 62-versus-70 breakeven moves EARLIER, from about 80.3 to about 78.4, strengthening the case for waiting. Inflation assumptions belong

Guides › Social Security Timing Updated July 30, 2026. Quick answer (2026): Standard breakeven math assumes early cheques earn nothing. Charge a 5% opportunity cost on a 62-versus-70 comparison and the breakeven moves from about 80.3 to about 89.8 – past most people’s planning horizon, and a genuinely different decision. The right discount rate is

Guides › Social Security Timing Updated July 30, 2026. Quick answer (2026): A spousal benefit reduces at 25/36 of 1% per month for the first 36 months, not 5/9, and earns no delayed retirement credits at all. Delaying past full retirement age raises a worker’s own benefit and does nothing for the spousal one. Two