My husband and I plan to retire in 4-5 years. We’ve always been strong savers, and it’s easy to find info in books/internet on how to build wealth during the working years.
However, I have found it very difficult to get much info on how to best spend down that wealth. There are so many “moving parts”: pension, Social Security, Medicare, deferred accounts, taxable accounts, Roth IRAs, taxes, etc. It’s hard to get a handle on how everything fits together between mandatory distributions and complex tax codes.
I am an analytical person, but have found it to be mind-boggling!
The Tax Hacking Master Class videos and worksheets have helped me understand the impact taxes will have on our 401k money. I knew our RMDs would be large, but was shocked to see the impact they will have on not only our income taxes, but on extra taxes for Social Security and Medicare benefits. The customizable Excel spreadsheet is great because I can model different scenarios myself and see the changes to our future taxes. It allows me to tweak things like how much to convert to Roth IRAs and when to start taking Social Security.
I really appreciate Dan Casey’s live webcast coaching. He holds it once a week and works through examples submitted from members of the Tax Hacking class. I recently submitted our numbers, and Dan talked me through various potential scenarios for converting money into our Roth IRAs over the next several years. I will take his input and run the models to see what works best for us and what we’re most comfortable with. (I realize I still need to work with our tax guy on any final numbers, but this gives me a chance to know all the angles.)
Thank you for your program, Dan. I read financial books and listen to financial podcasts to glean information, but they either don’t go deep enough or they speak mumbo-jumbo that I can’t follow. You have taken the mystery out it. Your classes are taught in plain English, and you make the concepts easy to understand. It has been money well spent!
“Jane W”