Craig Wear, CFP®Craig Wear, CFP® | Expert in Roth Conversions & Tax-Efficient Retirement Strategies for IRA Millionaires

The Biggest Retirement Income Mistake

15 Sept 2024 · 0 min

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A YouTube video by Craig Wear, CFP® titled "The Biggest Retirement Income Mistake" discussing how retirees choose between selling brokerage account assets versus taking distributions from IRAs for income. The speaker uses a numeric example: needing $80,000 of income and comparing selling stock (long-term capital gains taxed at ~20% in his example) versus taking ordinary-income taxed IRA distributions.

Questions this video answers

$80,000

About 20%

So if you sell something and you need $80,000 of income for the year, and you sell a stock at 80,000, if it's a long term capital gain, that could be a 20% tax break. I mean, tax rate that you pay on it instead of adding, just taking ordinary income, say out of your IRA and paying ordinary income tax on it, which is what a lot of people do. They, they choose to take money from the brokerage account instead of the ira.