Taxes on 401k after Retirement and Roth

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once I retire won't my tax bracket be lower then it is now?

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That is completely up to to you. My tax bracket will be significantly lower when I retire and Roth doesn't make much sense for me but everyone's situation is different. I had to stop putting money in a Roth about 10 years into my career.

Ok, just making sure I am understanding this mainly for the Roth question if i should start putting some into that but again I think my tax now is going to be higher so I should not do it and get taxed at lower bracket after I retire then taxed on Roth now.

If you have an after-tax investment account, you should definitely transfer $8k per year from there to a Roth.

Whether to convert traditional IRA rollover to Roth is a more complicated question, but based on what you outlined, I wouldn’t transfer.

Under current tax law, you and your wife would be in the 12% federal tax bracket until your income exceeds about $`132,000.

Social Security changes that slightly, usually in the favorable direction.

You should estimate what you think future tax brackets will be, then figure out about how your income will fall into those brackets. I suspect the lower brackets will not change much in the future.

The Roth has many advantages in flexibility, but it probably wouldn't be worth paying 22% or 24% fed taxes now to avoid paying 12% later. It does offer flexibility that can help with RMD's or major purchases/expenses, but it doesn't mean it is automatically better.

My wife and I are in our mid 70s and have to take Required Minimum Distributions every year. The percentage increases each year. I am really, really, really happy I don't have to take RMDs on our Roths.

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For most people it makes sense to put pretax money away, not after-tax. By most people I mean middle or lower class.

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This seems backwards. A low-income person isn't going to have much, if any, income tax liability anyway, so putting money in a Roth means likely tax-free growth. Why would they put pre-tax money (where it doesn't lower their income tax liability) into a traditional IRA only to get taxed on the back end?

Wife/I (~40, with 2.5 year old kid) have been doing ROTH to our 401k and IRA (traditional to ROTH conversions recent years) because we are 24% income tax bracket which we feel is pretty low historically for the income we have, but also we expect somewhat sizable pre-tax inheritance things coming our way between (well I guess anytime now) and the next 10-15 years with our parents all between 72-76 currently and both of us only children. We also cant take any deduction for traditional IRA anyways, so just makes sense to convert that to ROTH.

In the end, just dont want the govt to dictate our entire balance of minimum distributions if we were all loaded up in pre-tax especially knowing what the inheritances could be on top of that. Also to pass down to our kid ultimately ROTH is just so much easier for them to deal with.

Even though retirement is a long ways away for us (20+ years), we do expect to spend a lot in retirement travel wise as thats what we both would like to do.

correct it changed but my understanding is you can wait and do a lump sum distribution on the 10th year. I was saying you don't have to take a minimum withdrawal each year like with the traditional IRA or 401k.