FortunateSon

I'm a few years out from retirement, and I'm modeling my retirement spending and taxes to pass my Friday afternoon. I have much, much more in my traditional 401k than in my Roth account, so Roth conversions are interesting to me. I realized something that is not inherently obvious.

Let's say I'm projected to be in the 24% federal bracket during my 60's and 70's. Conventional wisdom says don't convert at 24% if you're going to be in the 24% bracket in the future. The problem is that my traditional 401k will cause me to take RMDs at 75. Those RMDs calculate out to be enough to push me into the 32% bracket quickly. That means that I should strongly converting more of my 401k to Roth while I'm in my 60s. Many advisors and videos seem worried about IRMAA and Medicare surcharges and will avoid converting because of them. It seems to me that high RMDs will cause far more IRMAA charges in my 70s and 80s than I'll pay in my 60s.

Tldr: Convert more to Roth than you think. Otherwise, RMDs will raise your taxes and surcharges.

The best one, bar none, is Income Lab. It is expensive, though: $50/month. It also takes some time to fully learn all the nuances. But it is extremely powerful and does a great job modeling dynamic withdrawal plans.

Boldin is about 80% as good for $144/year.

I’m glad it worked. I should have mentioned that there’s no interaction with anyone as well.

On our latest trip, we got excellent Asian food at Virago in the Gulch. We also finally made it to Pelato's for Italian food. It was great too.

The two best brunches in town are Buttermilk Ranch and Adele's.

There are a number of great steakhouses in town as well. If you don't eat well every meal in that town, you're not trying.

There's actually a brand new Chase Sapphire Lounge at DFW. It requires a Chase Sapphire card to gain entry. It only opened 2 weeks ago, so I haven't been there yet. I have been to a few other Sapphire Lounges, and they are very nice. The only problem with this lounge and the Centurion Lounge is that they are both in Terminal D, which is never where I fly into or out of. The train ride to and from other terminals can take some time.

Shreveport has been waiting on an I-49 connector since 1996. It will be interesting to see which one (if either) gets completed first. My bet is that it will be Lafayette.

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I'm considering getting it

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Sheryl Crow back in the day was not bad. She's 40 in this picture.

The drive from the West gate, along the Gallatin River, and up to Big Sky is pretty. We really loved Big Sky and ended up staying there an extra day.

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How did this happen?

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We are flying to the Caribbean. There are limited flights in and out. We were going to drive to Dallas at night and leave first thing in the morning, but then we realized we could fly there the previous night for the same price. We'd rather fly in than drive. Basically, it just worked out that way.