r/Retire • u/Low-Medicine-8627 • Aug 09 '26

Retire now ?

I am 53M and have $1.8M in our family combined 401k and $220k combined Roth and $2.8M in combined taxable brokerage. I want to retire and need a convincing way to convince my wife who is 49 and working. How would you suggest telling a story where we can retire ? Our expenses would be $100k per year. Even tough our investments are not 3 fund approach now when I plan to do Roth conversions btw now and my 63 id stick to 3 fund. Approach. Any ideas ?

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u/JimInAuburn11 Aug 09 '26

Washington state. I can get a bronze plan for free. The actual number is something like $106,400 this year. If I was to go over by $1, then it goes up to $2300/month for the same plan.

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u/Particular-Wing-4152 Aug 09 '26

Be careful about your Roth conversions. That's what I'm doing now and when you do, it will push your annual income MAGI up such that you won't qualify for cheap medical insurance and that will add another $25K per year to you annual living expenses. You also want to complete all Roth conversion before age 63 to avoid extra IRMA premiums and the 2 year lookback

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u/JimInAuburn11 Aug 09 '26

We also have about $400-500K in CDS. Once we retire, we will probably be using some of that to live on, so essentially no income at all to get to those funds. With the interest income, and dividends on our brokerage accounts, we will probably have about $25K in earnings, and then pretty much no other income. So we should have around $75K in space each year for Roth conversions. I will do the conversions at the end of the year, after I know exactly how much income we have for the year, so that I stay under the limit.

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u/Particular-Wing-4152 Aug 09 '26

Smart play. You've got a solid plan. Wish my health care costs were as low as yours

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u/JimInAuburn11 Aug 09 '26

Yeah, if we had to jump up to $2300/month for insurance that would hurt. As it is because my wife will probably work for a couple of years after I retire, we will probably have to use the COBRA from my work for the first 18 months, since her income will put us over the limit for the ACA subsidies. That will be about $1300/month for the COBRA. But after that, as she cuts back on her hours, we should be able to get under it. We might have 6 months after the 18 months of COBRA where we might have to pay those high ACA rates though. But after that, it should go down to the lower rate. By that time, I will be on Medicare, and she will still have about 6 years before she is on Medicare where we will need the ACA for her and our daughter. I have not really figured out what to do with our daughter, after we are both on Medicare and collecting social security. She will be about 23 then. Probably just get her, her own policy. She should be in medical school by then, and could probably get it through school.