Welcome to the forum !!
I don’t have any book recommendations but using the search button in the forum is a good place to start for reading on topics to figure out what you are comfortable with to prepare for retirement I think.
We are 63 and retired at 60. We have 3 rough spreadsheets (one can do this as easily by hand too) where we look ahead for financial and tax planning. The planning are estimates not perfect.
I keep a spending budget spreadsheet that estimates how much money we need to pull out of our investments yearly. It is rough but accounts for what we have spent historically. If we add up what has gone out of our checking account in a year we know what we spend. Sometimes only allah knows where it goes. lol. We plan for lumpy expenses such as cars or roofs too if we can predict it in years where it may happen.
We do a bucket approach where we keep 3 years or so of our needed retirement spending out of stock market in post tax mm fund and 3-5 yr treasury ladder ready now bucket so we are not forced to sell large amounts of equities in prolonged bear markets. This feeds our checking account when needed. Ideally one might have that money set aside when retiring imho. It’s been so long since we have had a prolonged bear market I still want to be ready.
There is a new wiki here in boglehead land about where to withdraw first. We are saving our roths for last to withdraw from and hope to leave some to kids and we pull out the assets we will pay least tax on first to spend. As some have said it’s good to have some tax deferred ira available end game because it may be one will have high nursing home bills and pay very little taxes those years right before we die.
I have second spreadsheet where I estimate our annual income taxes next year and then we do small Roth conversions to stay in current MFJ 22% tax bracket and now at age 63 IRMAA limits. After a reading.m A lot that is what I am comfortable with. There are very detailed conversion planners like pralana gold or such but I am not going to do 200K conversions and pay the tax bomb now on that so we do we do 50K or so conversions a year. You may have to decide what path you will take. We have pensions, dividend, interest, inherited Ira rmds, SS, few capital gains from stock sales on occasion, and then Roth conversion taxable income. You can estimate next year federal and state taxes via turbo tax or other on line planners. I find it easier to do by excel or hand / it’s only 4 or 5 lines of income from the above listed sources for us.
Third spreadsheet is really rough and tries to predict our income, investment growth, any individual year of large tax events like good amount of ibonds maturing for us in 2030, rmds starting when we are 75 and taxes we will pay yearly for the long term . I use a conservative after inflation 3 % growth and 22% federal, 4% state tax bill. We could go up to 25- 28% tax bracket in future but that’s ok. Just use long term spreadsheet to see what may be coming to plan ahead.
So thinking thru and reading up here on forum on how you will handle those topics may be of help.
Social retirement life:
I retired at age 50 for 3 years then went back to old job for 7 years. Then retired at 60. I retired before DW and that made it harder to synchronize schedule to do things especially travel. It is better when we both retired I think. It’s good to have a plan for what one is planning to do to enjoy your retirement years as it isn’t all financial. I call retirement rewirement because it is a different life and one needs to rewire themselves based upon their current wiring and habits. Who you are going to socialize with? what activities you are going to do? Sometimes it takes planning just like any goal in life. There are a few books out there on those topics too. At age 63 we are enjoying playing pickleball with friends a few times a week. We walk some. We stay near family down south in winter. We visit kids and travel a little. We have a small boat. We enjoy doing small projects around the houses and pay people to do the big projects. We spend time with friends and family. Go years as they say while our health is good. After a couple years of retiring we have found ourselves as busy as we want to be with enough money to fund our interests . We are the lucky ones. Hope you both are the same in the future.
Lots of smart people here on forum and they will help you get as detailed as you want on almost any retirement topic. I think the key is to learn enough to understand the impact of your decisions and then decide how to proceed. We do a 5 year treasury ladder for our fixed income portfolio. I don’t like bond funds especially when rate rise. Not that anyone can predict when rates will rise. We use Mainly index funds for equities. I see you mentioned tips and I have not learned enough and gotten comfortable enough to buy tips but some do - you can learn about those by searching forum too.
Good luck.
I don’t have any book recommendations but using the search button in the forum is a good place to start for reading on topics to figure out what you are comfortable with to prepare for retirement I think.
We are 63 and retired at 60. We have 3 rough spreadsheets (one can do this as easily by hand too) where we look ahead for financial and tax planning. The planning are estimates not perfect.
I keep a spending budget spreadsheet that estimates how much money we need to pull out of our investments yearly. It is rough but accounts for what we have spent historically. If we add up what has gone out of our checking account in a year we know what we spend. Sometimes only allah knows where it goes. lol. We plan for lumpy expenses such as cars or roofs too if we can predict it in years where it may happen.
We do a bucket approach where we keep 3 years or so of our needed retirement spending out of stock market in post tax mm fund and 3-5 yr treasury ladder ready now bucket so we are not forced to sell large amounts of equities in prolonged bear markets. This feeds our checking account when needed. Ideally one might have that money set aside when retiring imho. It’s been so long since we have had a prolonged bear market I still want to be ready.
There is a new wiki here in boglehead land about where to withdraw first. We are saving our roths for last to withdraw from and hope to leave some to kids and we pull out the assets we will pay least tax on first to spend. As some have said it’s good to have some tax deferred ira available end game because it may be one will have high nursing home bills and pay very little taxes those years right before we die.
I have second spreadsheet where I estimate our annual income taxes next year and then we do small Roth conversions to stay in current MFJ 22% tax bracket and now at age 63 IRMAA limits. After a reading.m A lot that is what I am comfortable with. There are very detailed conversion planners like pralana gold or such but I am not going to do 200K conversions and pay the tax bomb now on that so we do we do 50K or so conversions a year. You may have to decide what path you will take. We have pensions, dividend, interest, inherited Ira rmds, SS, few capital gains from stock sales on occasion, and then Roth conversion taxable income. You can estimate next year federal and state taxes via turbo tax or other on line planners. I find it easier to do by excel or hand / it’s only 4 or 5 lines of income from the above listed sources for us.
Third spreadsheet is really rough and tries to predict our income, investment growth, any individual year of large tax events like good amount of ibonds maturing for us in 2030, rmds starting when we are 75 and taxes we will pay yearly for the long term . I use a conservative after inflation 3 % growth and 22% federal, 4% state tax bill. We could go up to 25- 28% tax bracket in future but that’s ok. Just use long term spreadsheet to see what may be coming to plan ahead.
So thinking thru and reading up here on forum on how you will handle those topics may be of help.
Social retirement life:
I retired at age 50 for 3 years then went back to old job for 7 years. Then retired at 60. I retired before DW and that made it harder to synchronize schedule to do things especially travel. It is better when we both retired I think. It’s good to have a plan for what one is planning to do to enjoy your retirement years as it isn’t all financial. I call retirement rewirement because it is a different life and one needs to rewire themselves based upon their current wiring and habits. Who you are going to socialize with? what activities you are going to do? Sometimes it takes planning just like any goal in life. There are a few books out there on those topics too. At age 63 we are enjoying playing pickleball with friends a few times a week. We walk some. We stay near family down south in winter. We visit kids and travel a little. We have a small boat. We enjoy doing small projects around the houses and pay people to do the big projects. We spend time with friends and family. Go years as they say while our health is good. After a couple years of retiring we have found ourselves as busy as we want to be with enough money to fund our interests . We are the lucky ones. Hope you both are the same in the future.
Lots of smart people here on forum and they will help you get as detailed as you want on almost any retirement topic. I think the key is to learn enough to understand the impact of your decisions and then decide how to proceed. We do a 5 year treasury ladder for our fixed income portfolio. I don’t like bond funds especially when rate rise. Not that anyone can predict when rates will rise. We use Mainly index funds for equities. I see you mentioned tips and I have not learned enough and gotten comfortable enough to buy tips but some do - you can learn about those by searching forum too.
Good luck.
Statistics: Posted by Parkinglotracer — Tue Jun 04, 2024 3:24 am — Replies 2 — Views 179