Across this series, we've talked about withdrawal order, Roth conversion timing, the Medicare premium surcharge, and the health insurance subsidy window — mostly in the abstract. This last post puts real numbers on all of it. Meet a composite household we'll call the Whitfields: retiring at 55, spending $130,000 a year, with $1.8 million saved across a traditional IRA, a brokerage account, and a Roth IRA. (Their numbers are illustrative, not a real family's finances, but they reflect the kind of situation this series has been describing all along.)

Here's what actually funding that $130,000 a year looks like, phase by phase.

Ages 55–64: The ACA window

The Whitfields have no paycheck and haven't started Social Security. This is the low-income window we described in an earlier post — the best opportunity they'll get for cheap Roth conversions, and also the window where a health insurance subsidy cliff is sitting nearby.

Each year, their $130,000 in spending comes from a blend: mostly their traditional IRA, topped up from their brokerage account. That blend is deliberately sized to stay under the income threshold that would cost them their ACA health insurance subsidy. Once spending is covered, if there's still room left before that threshold, the extra room gets used to convert additional traditional IRA money to Roth — locking in growth that will be tax-free for the rest of their lives, at a tax rate that's about as low as they'll ever see again.

The result over these ten years: a traditional IRA balance that shrinks meaningfully faster than if they'd left it alone, a Roth balance that grows, and zero years where they accidentally crossed the subsidy cliff.

Ages 65–69: Medicare, and a wider lane for conversions

At 65, Medicare replaces their ACA marketplace plan, which removes the subsidy cliff — but introduces a new one. Their income from two years earlier now determines their monthly Medicare premium. So the ceiling hasn't disappeared, it's just moved, and now has a two-year delay attached to it.

With more room to work with than the ACA years allowed, the Whitfields continue drawing $130,000 a year — traditional IRA first, brokerage account second — and keep converting to Roth up to (but not past) the income level that would trigger the next Medicare premium tier. Because the threshold has a two-year lookback, this means watching not just this year's number, but keeping next year's plans from accidentally colliding with it two years later.

Ages 70–74: Social Security joins the mix, and a math quirk kicks in

Somewhere in this stretch, Social Security benefits begin, adding a new income stream that has to be folded into the same balancing act. Here's the part that surprises people: Social Security benefits get taxed based on a formula that can make each additional dollar of other income effectively pull more Social Security into taxation too — sometimes raising the real, effective tax rate on a dollar of Roth conversion well above what the tax bracket alone would suggest.

This is exactly the kind of thing that's invisible if you're only looking at your official tax bracket. The Whitfields' plan accounts for it directly, which sometimes means pulling back on Roth conversions in a particular year, even though the bracket alone would have suggested there was room — because the true cost of that room, once Social Security taxation is factored in, was higher than it looked.

Age 75 onward: Required withdrawals, softened by everything that came before

At 75, the IRS requires minimum withdrawals from what's left of the traditional IRA. This is where the earlier decades pay off — or don't. Because the Whitfields spent the ages 55–74 window deliberately shrinking their traditional balance and building up their Roth balance, their required withdrawals are smaller than they would have been otherwise, and don't force them into an unnecessarily high bracket the way an untouched, decades-larger balance would have.

Their $130,000 a year continues to be funded by a blend of accounts — but by this point, a meaningfully larger share of it can come from the Roth account, tax-free, because two decades of conversions built that balance up on purpose.

Same $130,000. Very different-looking plan.

Notice that the number never changed — the Whitfields spent $130,000 a year the entire time. What changed, year over year, was where that money came from and how much extra got converted to Roth alongside it — decisions shaped by the ACA subsidy line, the Medicare premium tiers, the Social Security tax quirk, and the shrinking traditional balance, all considered together rather than one at a time.

That's the whole thesis of this series: the amount you've saved sets the ceiling on what's possible, but the year-by-year decisions — largely invisible ones, if your plan doesn't surface them — determine how much of that ceiling you actually get to keep.

Where to go from here

If you've read this whole series, you already understand more about the mechanics of a real retirement than most calculators will ever show you. The natural next step is seeing it applied to your own numbers — not a composite household, but your actual accounts, your actual age, your actual spending target — with the same year-by-year reasoning made visible rather than hidden.

That's what RetireLogica is built to do. If you'd like to see what your own version of the Whitfields' plan looks like, it's worth trying with your real numbers.

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This concludes The Retirement Transparency Series. If you're just joining us, the series starts with Why Your Retirement Calculator Can't Tell You What It's Assuming.