Hello, My wife and I are both 62 and retired at 59. We both have Traditional and Roth IRAs. How do we go about determining if we should draw out a large sum from one or the other in order to minimize future taxes? Is it worth paying a large lump sum of taxes now, in order to minimize future taxes when we start drawing SS at 70?
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At age 62, you are both in an excellent spot to consider conversions from your traditional IRAs to your Roth IRAs. Doing this will reduce your future Required Minimum Distributions and possibly the amount of social security benefits that are taxable in your future.
I suggest that you figure out what tax bracket you will likely be in for tax year 2025, and then convert enough from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA to use up that entire bracket, if it's a low bracket like 10 or 12%. If it's higher than that, you need to consider what tax bracket you might be in at age 70 and at age 73. If your tax bracket at age 70 or age 73 will already be low even with RMDs and social security, then it may not be worth it to do a conversion now. You can use this tax calculator to estimate your taxable income. Compare that income with the tax brackets shown here.
Let's say that you fill out the tax calculator and it returns a result of $50k of taxable income for 2025. Based on the married filing jointly 2025 tax bracket table, you'd land in the 12% tax bracket. Since the 12% bracket for married filing jointly goes up to $96,950, you could consider converting $46,950, and your tax on that would be relatively low at 12%.
You're asking the right questions now to have a better tax outcome for the future. Well done!
At age 62, you are both in an excellent spot to consider conversions from your traditional IRAs to your Roth IRAs. Doing this will reduce your future Required Minimum Distributions and possibly the amount of social security benefits that are taxable in your future.
I suggest that you figure out what tax bracket you will likely be in for tax year 2025, and then convert enough from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA to use up that entire bracket, if it's a low bracket like 10 or 12%. If it's higher than that, you need to consider what tax bracket you might be in at age 70 and at age 73. If your tax bracket at age 70 or age 73 will already be low even with RMDs and social security, then it may not be worth it to do a conversion now. You can use this tax calculator to estimate your taxable income. Compare that income with the tax brackets shown here.
Let's say that you fill out the tax calculator and it returns a result of $50k of taxable income for 2025. Based on the married filing jointly 2025 tax bracket table, you'd land in the 12% tax bracket. Since the 12% bracket for married filing jointly goes up to $96,950, you could consider converting $46,950, and your tax on that would be relatively low at 12%.
You're asking the right questions now to have a better tax outcome for the future. Well done!
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