5 Withdrawal Strategies For Retirement Savings

For most people, it’s not enough to scrimp and save for the golden years. Once you’ve entered retirement, you have to figure out how to crack open your savings nest egg. The manner and order in which you withdraw funds from various accounts can make a big difference in your retirement lifestyle.

Let’s assume you’ve covered all the bases. During your work career, you participated in a 401(k) plan or another employer-based plan, enabling you to accumulate funds on a tax-deferred basis. In addition, you established one or more IRAs, and perhaps even a Roth IRA and annuities, to provide more retirement savings. And you’ve invested in stocks, mutual funds and bonds in brokerage and other taxable accounts. Having done all of that, you have several options for where to get the income you need in retirement.

The conventional wisdom is pretty simple. Start by withdrawing funds from your taxable accounts, and then later tap your tax-sheltered savings. The reason is that this will let you continue to benefit from tax deferral for a longer period and thereby preserve more of your nest egg.

But that oversimplified approach fails to take into account all of the relevant factors—including rates of return, projected inflation, your tax brackets both prior to retirement and when you’re retired as well as your personal objectives. These five strategies could help you fine-tune your game plan:

1. Fill up the two lowest tax brackets. Under the current federal income tax rate structure, the two lowest brackets for ordinary income have tax rates of 10% and 15%, while the top rate is now 39.6%. A common goal is to generate income in retirement that will be taxed at the 10% or 15% rate, but no higher. (The next tax bracket is 25%.) Thus, you might figure on taking short-term gains on stocks or mutual funds in taxable accounts that would be taxed as ordinary income or generating other taxable income only up to the top threshold for the 15% rate.

2. Consider a Roth IRA conversion. When you make withdrawals from a traditional IRA in retirement, the distributions are taxed on a pro-rata basis. Only the portion representing deductible contributions and earnings is taxed at ordinary income rates. But for qualifying distributions from a Roth in existence at least five years and made after age 59½, the payouts are 100% tax-free. Accordingly, you might convert traditional IRA funds to a Roth, keeping in mind that the amounts you convert will be treated as taxable distributions. Building on the prior strategy, stagger conversions over a few years to maximize your use of the two lowest tax brackets.

3. Spend from taxable accounts first. Suppose you’ve taken all of the income you can that’s taxed at 10% or 15% but you still need more funds. What’s next? All things being equal, taking money from your taxable brokerage accounts may be preferable to raiding a 401(k) plan or IRA. You may generate mostly long-term capital gains, and they’re taxed at lower rates than ordinary income.

4. Keep your bond holdings in IRAs. Although income from bonds is taxed at ordinary income rates, stock sales may qualify for preferential capital gain treatment. Currently, the maximum tax rate on gains from stock owned more than one year is 15%, and 20% for investors in the top 39.6% tax bracket. But you lose the benefit of these favorable tax rates for stocks held inside an IRA, because when you withdraw from an IRA much of the distribution may be taxed as ordinary income. As a result, it’s generally better to keep bonds inside an IRA, to defer taxes on interest payments, and stocks on the outside.

5. Don’t forget about life insurance. So far, at least, Congress hasn’t reduced the tax benefits of life insurance. The death proceeds are free of federal income tax and you can easily arrange to avoid dire estate tax consequences. Thus, you can consider life insurance to be a supplement to 401(k) and IRA funds on the “back end” of retirement, particularly as a source of income for a surviving spouse.

Note that other factors may come into play that could affect how, when, and where you go for retirement income. For instance, upper-income individuals also may have to account for a 3.8% Medicare surtax on “net investment income” received during retirement. The best idea is to develop a comprehensive plan for building your retirement paycheck that considers the potential tax consequences of various approaches.


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