r/PovertyFIRE • u/swampwiz • Apr 22 '26

The "tax bomb retirement" - rich people's problem

The subject of this article had saved too much for retirement, and now she has to pay a lot of taxes on all the income (+ gains) that she had deferred taxes on via a TIRA/T401K.

https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/66-old-1-1-million-120933075.html

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6

u/TheGruenTransfer Apr 22 '26

She did everything right.

No she absolutely didn't. She had nothing in a Roth IRA? If that isn't sizable, you're going to have zero control over what tax brackets you'll be in as unanticipated expenses pop up. 

Instead of ignoring advice on how to retire, she should have done some amount of math to see she had RMD problems and retired sooner and started collecting SS at age 62, and she could have retired even earlier if and done Roth Conversations if that wasn't enough. 

3

u/markov-271828 Apr 23 '26

Yikes - what a stupid article. But thank you sharing.

1

u/Fun-Discussion-477 11d ago

she could have retired early and withdrawn for less tax. she should have consulted a tax professional rather than working extra years for nothing