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Do you have a system for estimating what your future RMDs will be? Should you keep a mortgage or pay off the balance of your house in retirement? What should you do with the money that you withdraw to fill up your tax bracket? These are just a few of the questions that will be answered on this episode of Retirement Answer Man. Press play to check it out! My word of the year The end of the year is always a good time to think about beginning anew in the next year. I’m not big on celebrating New Year, but I enjoy the renewal process that comes with the start of the new year. If you have listened to the show in the past, you have heard me discuss my word of the year. I choose a word each year as part of my own process of renewal. I try to use my word of the year as my guiding light to help me stay focused on my goals for the year ahead. Have you ever chosen a word of the year to help you focus on your goals? Listen to this episode to hear what my word is this year. How do you calculate what your future RMDs will be? You know RMDs are coming at age 72, but how can you estimate what they will be? To calculate your RMDs you can create your own spreadsheet to get an estimation. Once you have a feasible retirement plan in place and you know how you will fund your retirement you can use this fantastic exercise to help you optimize your retirement plan. To estimate future RMDs, I set up a simple spreadsheet with these columns: your age, the year, the RMD ratio, the end of the year account value for the prior year, estimated withdrawals, and the year-end value. Once you have these values in place you can take the total and divide it by the value provided by the IRS uniform lifetime table to estimate your future RMD. How estimating your RMDs could benefit your retirement plan One way that this exercise can benefit you is by allowing you to project the risks that you might encounter in retirement. You may realize that you won’t need this much money to live on and decide that it is a good idea to fill up your tax bracket by withdrawing from your IRA sooner so that you can lower your RMD in the future. What to do with the money that you withdraw from your IRA to fill up your tax bracket If you do decide to withdraw from your IRA or 401K to fill up your tax bracket you will have the benefit that you know what your tax rate will be, but what should you do with the money? The way I see it you have 5 options. You can spend it, save it, give it away, invest it in after-tax vehicles, or convert it to a Roth IRA. The most important thing to do when making these arrangements is to think through your process in an organized way. What would you do if you decided to fill up your tax bracket? OUTLINE OF THIS EPISODE OF THE RETIREMENT ANSWER MAN WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? [1:30] My word of the year LISTENER QUESTIONS [6:55] How do you calculate what your future RMDs will be? [15:33] Is it a good idea to keep a mortgage in retirement? [21:34] What do you do with the money that you withdraw from your 401K? [26:20] A suggestion from Mike [28:21] The efficacy of using balanced funds TODAY’S SMART SPRINT SEGMENT [36:18] What will be your word of the year next year? Resources Mentioned In This Episode LTCI Partners Rock Retirement Club Roger’s YouTube Channel - Roger That BOOK - Rock Retirement by Roger Whitney Work with Roger Roger’s Retirement Learning Center