Up until now, I've been using Roth IRAs exclusively. I just followed the extremely typical advice for young people to use a Roth, because it's better to pay taxes when one is younger, making less income, and thus in a lower tax bracket.
I also thought that the math worked out better, at least if one assumes a constant tax bracket. In a Roth, you pay your taxes up front, but everything after that grows and is withdrawn tax-free. It's a very simple FV calculation. In a traditional IRA, the same contribution amount goes in and grows tax-free, so you wind up with the same FV as the Roth, but the withdrawal is taxed.
This seems like a bad deal until you remember that you get to keep the taxes that you would've lost with the Roth. If you also invested the amount that you would've paid in taxes, and let that grow over time, it essentially makes up for the withdrawal taxes on the IRA itself, at least if the tax rate is the same. However, that investment with the saved taxes is outside of the IRA, so it is not tax-advantaged, so you actually wind up with less FV than if you'd just gone Roth to begin with.
So I managed to think through all of that, but for some reason, I never questioned the implicit assumption that my tax bracket in retirement would be the same as now (or higher). I guess I wanted to make sure that I "could" withdraw as much as I wanted in retirement, so I didn't see the harm in accepting that I'd have a high income in retirement.
Now that I'm properly thinking through my current income and expenses, it has become abundantly clear that this assumption is false. My savings rate is in excess of 50%, so I am spending nowhere near my current level of income, and my expenses are expected to drop even further once the mortgage is paid off. There is ZERO need for me to replace my current income, so I will be in a LOWER tax bracket in retirement -- and that's a good thing, because it makes FIRE that much easier to achieve.
So it seems like Roth has been the wrong way to go all along. I should've been using a traditional IRA and taking the tax break right now. Oh well.
I've gone and made myself a traditional IRA in Vanguard, and I'm swapping over to it. I may even inquire about recharacterizing this year's contributions. This just goes to show that always assuming a worst-case scenario can cost ya.
(I also have another reason why I'm interested in switching to traditional, and that has to do with the Roth Conversion Ladder, which I'm learning about right now. Maybe I'll write it about it later, after I've got it worked out in my head.)
Switching to a traditional IRA
October 2nd, 2014 at 01:12 pm
October 3rd, 2014 at 02:14 am 1412298876
October 3rd, 2014 at 04:24 am 1412306651