Middle class wage slave here. Currently I’m maxing out tax-advantaged account available.
For 401k I’m maxing out contribution. By 2067 (age 72, RMD age reached) I will start taking distribution from my 401k which is projected to have 10.35 million pretax (7.89 million post tax). This is estimated with $500 increase on contribution each year, employer March and 6% growth rate. I won’t be able to spend it all.
For my IRA and spousal IRA will each have 1 million by 2054 (age 59). By that time I plan to take all money out (tax free) and put it somewhere. I assume $250 increase in contribution limit each year on average.
For HSA I will have 1.35 million by 2060 (age 65). By that time I’ll stop contributing to HSA and start Medicare if it still exists. I’m not sure what I can do with the HSA money. I’m treating it as medical emergency fund. I assume $100 increase in contribution limit each year.
Taxable brokerage account is project to have 4.65 million. It’s hard to estimate the balance after tax because I factored in my kids expense and mortgage expense and don’t know how to estimate the basis after miscellaneous withdrawals.
All estimates above are calculated with 6% compounding rate.
Currently have 350k net worth, no mortgage no debt. I’m ahead of my goals and I’m trying to beat it every year as my job highly exposed to the AI threat.
Retirement life
I plan to take $150k a year after age 65 and each year increase the spending by 4% to account for inflation. Yes I do plan to retire by 65 which failed the definition of Fire. But I enjoy my work so I’ll keep working until I’m medically unable to. I’m not into collecting jewelry or luxury. We plan to travel once every quarter and spend the rest of our time with family, books, hobbies, dogs.
If I get to live to age 90, my retirement balance will grow a lot faster than I can spend so I stopped trying to plan or optimize. It’s exciting to think about that but what can I do with the money at age 90? We are still debating how much money to leave to our children.
I want to sanity check if I’m missing any important caveats. Is it reasonable to expect 6% annual growth by passive investment? I’m all-in VOO. It’s been true in the past but nobody can say it for the future. In the past 3 year and 1 quarter years I contributed 84k in 401k and gained a whopping 5.8% which annualized to 1.8% only.
If I keep my current job and salary (300k), I’ll never need to tap into 401k or IRA for retirement expense. Post tax savings are enough. Should I still put money into those accounts? I have friends in similar salary and jobs as me but never care about these retirement accounts. Their reasoning doesn’t convince me. But to me it looks like a call option whose upside only begins after I live long enough to retire.
Am I missing any other retirement strategies? I not buying whole life insurance.

Hey everyone, first time long time. I absolutely love this forum and it has helped me tremendously in my own career and finances. I am writing not on my behalf but my elderly and retired mother. She is about to turn 72 and is trying to figure out her finances. Through my parents divorce she has a Traditional IRA of about 930k, which according to my calculators state an RMD of ~39k starting next year (she already gets like 30k annually in Social Security).
My question is, why not withdraw more if it suits her? I am trying to understand the tax implications of her choices so I can better understand her post-tax income/budget. I think I am reading RMDs are taxed just like normal income, so why not kick-up her RMD to the 12% threshold of $44,725 annually? Just trying to understand the pros/cons of all her options. I am by no means an accountant and am just trying to be a helpful son to a fairly helpless mother. Thanks in advance!

Hi there! I am in my mid-twenties, and about to start a dual MD/PhD program which will provide a $40,000 per year stipend (~$32,648 after tax), and will cover my tuition, medical, dental, and vision insurance. Low COL area and I will be sharing rent and expenses with my partner.
I've been working for quite a few years before this, so I have a fair bit of money saved up. That said, it is spread across a bunch of different accounts, having bounced between different providers and tried various robo-advisors through the years, and I am looking to both simplify my finances, and ensure I am not missing out on compound interest along the way (or paying advisory fees I just don't need). I've come to be a bit of a BOGLE-mindset person, and just want to put money into accounts and let it ride.
Here is my current financial picture:
Debts * Credit Cards: None revolving, paid in full each month * Federal Subsidized Direct Undergraduate Loans: $9,000 (hopefully will be forgiven this summer pending SC opinion)
Liquid Assets * Checking and savings, I'm fine managing these and am slowly building a liquid emergency fund to cover 6 months of expenses. Am considering a high-yield savings account but I'm really not worried about that at this point.
Investments * TIAA 403(b): $29,000 (from current full-time job, no employer match) * TIAA HSA (RHA?): $1,600 (also current employer) * Wealthfront Individual Investment Account: $24,000 (has moved from Vanguard to Betterment to now Wealthfront) - currently 8/10 risk, 45% VTI, 16% VTEB, 15% VEA, 15% VWO, and 9% VIG * 529 Fund: $28,000 * Dogecoin (listen): $2,000 (bought in for $50 many years ago, KICKING myself for not selling in the 2021 craziness...was worth over $20,000 for a minute there) * Fidelity Individual Stocks: $2,800 (mostly just for fun, but I honestly don't really trade, so I'm considering selling these and moving these funds into one of my above index funds) * Betterment Individual Investment Account: $40 - still open, should just close it * Betterment Roth IRA: $0 - again, should just close it * Vanguard Individual Investment Account: $0 * Vanguard Roth IRA: $0
All in all, I've got about $80K net, but definitely not distributed in the most ideal way, and I don’t know if should be maxing out my Roth or focusing on the 403b.
As I will be in school the next six to eight years, I want to spend down the 529 while I can. I've calculated a burn rate of ~$300/month, which I'm thinking I'll put towards rent.
That said, I also am estimating that with my budget, I'll have about $300 to $400 each month I could contribute to some kind of investment.
In short: if you smart people were in my position, which of these accounts would you keep, and where would you put that ~$350/mo to have the best returns? I do want to have a certain amount of the funds available if I for some reason needed to break-glass.
Thanks so much!!

Hi all -
In 2022 I transferred my work Rollover IRA to Fidelity for better management.
Now I am trying to figure out RMD calculations. Fidelity calculates it for you, but since I transferred mid 2022 into Fidelity, it calculates my RMD for 2022 as $0.
Do I just need to calculate it myself? Or did I somehow avoid the need for RMD due to transferring?
​
Thank you for any help!

Hi there! I am in my mid-twenties, and about to start a dual degree (MD/PhD) program which will provide a $40,000 per year stipend (~$29,500 after tax), and will cover my health, dental, and vision insurance.
I've been working for quite a few years before this, so I have a fair bit of money saved up. That said, it is spread across a bunch of different accounts, having bounced between different providers and tried various robo-advisors through the years, and I am looking to both simplify my finances, and ensure I am not missing out on compound interest along the way (or paying advisory fees I just don't need). I've come to be a bit of a BOGLE-mindset person, and just want to put money into accounts and let it ride.
Here is my current financial picture:
Debts * Credit Cards: None revolving, paid in full each month * Federal Subsidized Direct Loans: $9,000 (PRAYING the Supreme Court doesn't dick us all over on debt relief...)
Liquid Assets * Checking and savings, I'm fine managing these and am slowly building a liquid emergency fund to cover 6 months of expenses. Am considering a high-yield savings account but I'm really not worried about that at this point.
Investments * TIAA 403(b): $29,000 (from current full-time job, no employer match) * TIAA HSA (RHA?): $1,600 (also current employer) * Wealthfront Individual Investment Account: $24,000 (has moved from Vanguard to Betterment to now Wealthfront) - currently 8/10 risk, 45% VTI, 16% VTEB, 15% VEA, 15% VWO, and 9% VIG * 529 Fund: $28,000 * Dogecoin (listen): $2,000 (bought in for $50 many years ago, KICKING myself for not selling in the 2021 craziness...was worth over $20,000 for a minute there) * Fidelity Individual Stocks: $2,800 (mostly just for fun, but I honestly don't really day trade, so I'm considering selling these and moving these funds into one of my above index funds) * Betterment Individual Investment Account: $40 - still open, should just close it * Betterment Roth IRA: $0 - again, should just close it * Vanguard Individual Investment Account: $0 * Vanguard Roth IRA: $0
All in all, I've got about $80K net, but definitely not distributed in the most ideal way.
As I will be in school the next six to eight years, I want to spend down the 529 while I can. I've calculated a burn rate of ~$300/month, which I'm thinking I'll put towards rent.
That said, I also am estimating that with my budget, I'll have about $300 to 400 each month I could contribute to some kind of investment.
In short: if you smart people were in my position, which of these accounts would you keep, and where would you put that ~$350/mo to have the best returns? I do want to have a certain amount of the funds available if I for some reason needed to break-glass.
Thanks so much!!

This is absolutely maddening, but I simply cannot find an online RMD calculator for an inherited traditional IRA under the new 10-year Rule. My wife inherited a small IRA from her mom who was 89 when she passed last year. Wife is 55. Ten year rule applies and requires RMDs commence this year. But every online calculator is projecting her RMD using her normal single-life actuarial life expectancy of 30-some years from today- not ten years. I've set Google on fire with this task and went down many rabbit holes that keep leading to basically the same, wrong calculator. Thanks gang!

I’m 23, and my job offers a 403(b) managed through Principal, with limited options available. The screenshot shows the default portfolio it created, and for the sake of simplicity and given the expense ratios, I’m inclined to change the allocation.
Aiming to mirror VTWAX with a 60/40 split between US and international, and using the 83% FXAIX to 17% FSMAX ratio recommended to replicate a total U.S. market fund (since FSKAX isn’t an option), I was thinking 50% FXAIX, 10% FSMAX, and 40% FTIHX. Is that a decent plan?
https://preview.redd.it/lwf9zmm05dpa1.jpg?width=1354&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1528086b94c5d6f44688a5097e5f2d59720211b0

My dad requested to withdraw 55k from his retirement to pay for a downpayment on my sisters house. TIAA Cref sold stock and took out the amount twice by mistake in two seperate transactions, looks like the mistake will cost him upwards of 3-5K in unnecessary Capital gains tax. TIAA Cref says they're sorry and will reimburse him the amount the accountants charge to determine the exact amount the mistake cost him, but won't offer him any other compensation or reimbursement of that amount. Is there some recourse he has here? I feel like they made a clear mistake and should be responsible for the taxes he is having to pay as a result. My dad is too nice, and I think they are taking advantage of that, but I don't know enough about this to know if he has any actual leverage here or if they just screwed him and he's just out of luck. Pretty disappointed in their customer service, maybe threatening to file a complaint will get us somewhere? Hope I've given enough detail to explain the issue, thanks in advance.

(I’ve been a frequent reader and infrequent commenter on this sub for years, but am using the throwaway for obvious reasons)
For brevity’s sake I’m going to skip the very long and epic story that has led me to this point, but anyways. For a whole host of reasons, I’ve been entrusted with my dear and lovely and moderately demented mother-in-law Laura’s estate to manage while she slowly and steadily declines with Alzheimer’s in a memory care facility. My husband Ben (her son) and I leanFIRED back in 2016 at age 50 on 1.2 million and have thrived since then. I intend to have FIRE-minded approach to managing this HUGE chunk of money, and to do it only in Laura’s best interest. I’ve come here to ask y’all to look over my simple plan for this and let me know if I’m making any major mistakes or missing something obvious . . .
Here’s the details:
Laura is incapable of all financial decisions, and Ben has durable POA, letters of incapacity, healthcare proxy, etc. and has been managing all of her life details for about a year now. He is also the sole executor of her estate. He has a sibling who is a bit player in this, but will split the estate with Ben when Laura passes. Ben and I have our own big ol’ nest egg and live a frugal life which will not measurably change regardless — our goal is keeping Laura safe and comfortable, and preserving her bankroll.
She’s got $1 million sitting in TIAA-CREF (I do know how bad this is), 50% in equities, 50% fixed income. That’s 700k in an IRA, and 300k in a brokerage account. (Ben and sibling are direct beneficiaries)
We’re closing on the sale of her mortgage-free home next month, a cash sale of $2 million.
She’s got another 100K or so in various bank accounts. We’ve consolidated these, and also opened up an as-yet-unfunded brokerage account at Vanguard.
Her care at the memory facility costs $14,000 per month. After the sale of her house is complete, this will be her only(!) expense.
While part of me is Freaking! Out! about handling so much money in someone else’s name, the other part of me — the one that retired us at age 50 — thinks it’s as simple as managing my own money? So my plan is:
Oh my! Close TIAA-CREF and roll that into an IRA and the existing brokerage at Vanguard.
The remaining money from the house sale — perhaps $1.7mm after closing fees, real estate commissions and taxes — goes into the brokerage account.
BOTH accounts are in a simple lazy portfolio, VTSAX 45%, VTIAX 15%, VTBLX 40%.
We draw down from the IRA to the RMD amount (around $54K/year), her remaining expenditures come from the brokerage account.
I know nothing about taxes, but we have an accountant and he’ll take on Laura as a client.
Am I more or less doing the right thing here? Is this solid, conservative asset allocation? Is my draw-down plan correct? Are there MASSIVE tax implications I’m unaware of?
We are ALL now Vanguard Flagship members . . . should we go with one of their Financial Advisors?
Am I missing anything, or making any big mistakes?
Thank you all so much, in advance.
EDITED TO ADD: Laura is 85 and in frighteningly good health, and she does receive 22k in social security.

Hello everyone. My father is set to retire at age 75. The issue is he has a TIAA retirement account which is like a 401k but not quit. It's a retirement account from a university. It seems to be something that attempts to push him in an annuity.
Anyways after going through the details of the plan his best bet is to bypass the annuity and just invest what they call the gauranteed portion into the market. The gauranteed portion pays only about 4%. He doesn't need it to live on because he waited until 70 to file for social security and it covers all his cost. He also has other savings outside this account. One more very important thing about this account..We cannot roll over the account into an IRA...I mean we could but we would lose the state medical benefits..Per state rules he must take a distribution from the account to maintain his secondary state provided health insurance plan which covers whatever the portion of Medicare doesn't cover. It can be as little as $10 per month. That point is moot though because the IRS RMD requirements dictates he must take over $2000 per month from the account. What I understand is a rollover into a roth IRA doesn't satisfy RMD. You must take a distribution.
All that background leads me to my question. My mom is still working and she files jointly with my father. Since she can still show W2 work income on her taxes would it be possible for my father to contribute some of the money he must take out his TIAA account into a spousal Roth IRA based off my mom's income? We were going to put all in a brockerage account but if we can get some of it into a Roth IRA that would be great.

My last job was with TIAA CREF, which is obviosuly a huge, reputable organization. At my new job, we use a company called July Services. It seems super small and sort of janky lol. Someone tell me it's ok and I'm not going to lose my money? 🤣

I recently set up an inherited IRA with Fidelity (transferring an IRA that was held by my mother in a separate brokerage). My mother died at age 80 in October 2022, but her estate wasn’t settled until 2023. She had received her RMD for ‘22 before she died.
In the “Guide to Required Minimum Distributions” page it shows that the total estimated 2023 RMD for my inherited IRA is $0.00.
Furthermore, when I click on “How is your RMD calculated?” and then “Learn more” under “IRS Factor” (clicking through as a non-eligible beneficiary), I end up with a pop-up table that provides the following info:
“I am an eligible or non-eligible designated beneficiary of the original IRA owner”
“Non-spouse Beneficiary / Post Required Beginning Date”
“Transfer to an Inherited IRA and take required minimum distributions based on the longer of the decedent’s life expectancy or the beneficiary’s life expectancy.”
This last piece of information runs counter to everything else I have read about non-eligible, non-spouse beneficiary RMDs. There is nothing here about the 10-year-rule.
How can I make sure that Fidelity is accurately calculating my RMD? What info do I need to provide and where should I provide it?
Thanks.

With today's 101st consecutive landing success Falcon boosters have a longer uninterrupted streak of good landings than any other rocket had good launches. The longest success streak of a non-Falcon rocket belongs to Delta II which had a chain of exactly 100 launches from May 1997 to September 2018 (when it launched for the last time before its retirement). There are claims that Souyz U had a longer streak, but they are reportedly incorrect: Its upper stage failed during Cosmos 2243 launch in April 1993, triggering auto-destruct of its secret payload source1 source2
So how does that translate into reliability? One could naïvely just take the number of launch or landing successes and divide it by a total number of attempts (both good and failed). But this would yield a way too pessimistic result as it penalizes vehicles which had an initial learning curve, because, for example, they were new (and more modern) developments vs being based on legacy tech. Just answer the question: which hypothetical rocket would you rather fly if both had 100 launches and 4 failures but the first of them had all the failures in the first 25 flights (say flights 1, 5, 17, 25) while the other has failures more or less evenly distributed (say flights 18, 41, 62, 79)? The former is expected to be safer. But the naïve model (incorrectly) says they are equivalent.
Actually, a better model is to take all the launches since the start of the longest streak of successes, as this accommodates for the initial learning curve. The former rocket would be counted from flight 26 with 0 subsequent failures (75 long chain of successes), while the latter would be counted from flight 19 but would have 3 failures (79:3 success:failure ratio or 3 failures out of 82).
Now, how to estimate reliability (i.e. the probability of success) with some set confidence? Let's use the handy handout by late prof. Richard M. Dudley here (it's one of the top Google results). The method described is "secure", i.e. it is strictly mathematically proven that in no circumstances the confidence is overestimated (some other less conservative methods sometimes overestimate confidence, for example the confidence ends up not 95% as stated but say 91%; but it's not the case with this one). The algorithm is in the appendix on page 18.
The calculation for the former hypothetical example rocket is trivial, with 95% confidence its reliability would be within 94.88% and 100%. For the latter one, it'd be a bit more complex, the 95% confidence interval of its reliability is 91.84% to 99.47%.
Going back to Falcon, the calculation is simple: With 95% confidence its demonstrated landing reliability is 96.20% to 100%. It's slightly better than Delta II historical (after its last flight) launch reliability 95% confidence range of 96.16% to 100%. Of course as the chain of successful landings goes on, the demonstrated reliability will improve. But this is what we could conservatively say now.
NB. Falcon 9 demonstrated launch reliability is 97.85% to 100%, again with 95% confidence.
NB2. For Falcon Heavy we have way too little data for a useful result: 95% confidence interval is extremely wide at 47.82% to 100%. To narrow it down it would take much deeper analysis using a lot of non-public info.

With today's 101st consecutive landing success Falcon boosters have a longer uninterrupted streak of good landings than any other rocket had good launches. The longest success streak of a non-Falcon rocket belongs to Delta II which had a chain of exactly 100 launches from May 1997 to September 2018 (when it launched for the last time before its retirement). There are claims that Souyz U had a longer streak, but they are reportedly incorrect: Its upper stage failed during Cosmos 2243 launch in April 1993, triggering auto-destruct of its secret payload source1 source2
So how does that translate into reliability? One could naïvely just take the number of launch or landing successes and divide it by a total number of attempts (both good and failed). But this would yield a way too pessimistic result as it penalizes vehicles which had an initial learning curve, because, for example, they were new (and more modern) developments vs being based on legacy tech. Just answer the question: which hypothetical rocket would you rather fly if both had 100 launches and 4 failures but the first of them had all the failures in the first 25 flights (say flights 1, 5, 17, 25) while the other has failures more or less evenly distributed (say flights 18, 41, 62, 79)? The former is expected to be safer. But the naïve model (incorrectly) says they are equivalent.
Actually, a better model is to take all the launches since the start of the longest streak of successes, as this accommodates for the initial learning curve. The former rocket would be counted from flight 26 with 0 subsequent failures (75 long chain of successes), while the latter would be counted from flight 19 but would have 3 failures (79:3 success:failure ratio or 3 failures out of 82).
Now, how to estimate reliability (i.e. the probability of success) with some set confidence? Let's use the handy handout by late prof. Richard M. Dudley here (it's one of the top Google results). The method described is "secure", i.e. it is strictly mathematically proven that in no circumstances the confidence is overestimated (some other less conservative methods sometimes overestimate confidence, for example the confidence ends up not 95% as stated but say 91%; but it's not the case with this one). The algorithm is in the appendix on page 18.
The calculation for the former hypothetical example rocket is trivial, with 95% confidence its reliability would be within 94.88% and 100%. For the latter one, it'd be a bit more complex, the 95% confidence interval of its reliability is 91.84% to 99.47%.
Going back to Falcon, the calculation is simple: With 95% confidence its demonstrated landing reliability is 96.20% to 100%. It's slightly better than Delta II historical (after its last flight) launch reliability 95% confidence range of 96.16% to 100%. Of course as the chain of successful landings goes on, the demonstrated reliability will improve. But this is what we could conservatively say now.
NB. Falcon 9 demonstrated launch reliability is 97.85% to 100%, again with 95% confidence.
NB2. For Falcon Heavy we have way too little data for a useful result: 95% confidence interval is extremely wide at 47.82% to 100%. To narrow it down it would take much deeper analysis using a lot of non-public info.

I'm doing the 2022 tax return of a person who died in 2022. She had a substantial ($200k+ in value) 401k, and she was 74 years of age at the time of her death.
She did not receive a distribution from the 401k during 2022.
The wrinkle: She had a beneficiary at the time of her death, and the 401k was emptied and rolled over prior to December 31, 2022.
The question: Is it necessary to calculate an RMD and pay the penalty on it, since she died in 2022 and the account balance was $0 on December 31?
Or am I looking to find the value of the account on her date of death, or some other date? (I assume Vanguard might be able to retrieve that information for me; their online system has locked the account out so I can't view anything.)
ETA: I'm assuming the formula will be (value of 401k)/15.6, producing an RMD of $12,820 (on a 200k value). The 15.6 value comes from age 74 of Table 1 of the IRS life expectancy tables.

Hi,
I'm 24 years old and I'm looking to start contributing to my employer sponsored TIAA 403B plan. My retirement funds were initially put into the default TIAA-CREF Lifecycle Index 2060 Fund - Institutional Class (TVIIX). I had a meeting with a TIAA financial consultant and was advised to take on a more riskier portfolio recommended through Morningstar. During my risk assessment I told the consultant I wanted to retire early... at 50. With about $10,000/m. Might be a bit ambitious but I'd rather aim high. My next course of action is to look into each of these investments a bit more and change allocations if needed (maybe some of the annuities?) but I was wondering if anyone had any initial reactions to my current portfolio. Any feedback would greatly be appreciated! Thank you.
Current portfolio:

• Allspring Special Mid Cap Value R6 (WFPRX)... 6.02%
• CREF Global Equities R2 (QCGLPX)...2.99%
• DFA Emerging Markets Core Equity Portfolio Institutional (DFCEX)... 11.81%
• Dodge & Cox Stock Fund Class I (DODGX)... 3.00%
• MassMutual Mid Cap Growth I (MEFZX)... 4.02%
• TIAA-CREF Large-Cap Value Fund - Institutional Class (TRLIX)... 9.04%
• TIAA-CREF Quant Small-Cap Equity Institutional (TISEX)... 8.14%
• Vanguard Developed Markets Index Fund Admiral (VTMGX)... 22.96%
• Vanguard Institutional Index Fund Institutional (VINIX)... 16.01%
• Vanguard Mid-Cap Index Fund Admiral (VIMAX)... 4.03%
• Vanguard Real Estate Index Fund Admiral (VGSLX)... 3.98%
• TIAA Real Estate (QREARX)... 7.99%

All investment options:

• DFA International Small Company I[DFISX]
• American Funds Balanced Fund - R6[RLBGX]
• American Funds EuroPacific Growth Fund - R6[RERGX]
• Schwab US Large Cap Growth Index Fund[SWLGX]
• Goldman Sachs Large Cap Growth Insights Fund Class R6[GLCUX]
• Vanguard Small-Cap Index Fund Admiral[VSMAX]
• Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund Investor[VMFXX]
• Vanguard Developed Markets Index Fund Admiral[VTMGX]
• Vanguard Inst Index Fund Institutional[VINIX]
• Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund Admiral[VBTLX]
• PGIM Total Return Bond R6[PTRQX]
• CREF Money Market Account (R2)[QCMMPX]
• CREF Equity Index Account (R2)[QCEQPX]
• CREF Growth Account (R2)[QCGRPX]
• CREF Stock Account (R2) [QCSTPX]
• CREF Social Choice Account (R2)[QCSCPX]
• CREF Inflationation-Linked Bond Account (R2) [QCILPX]
• CREF Core Bond Account (R2)[QCBMPX]
• TIAA-CREF Lifecycle Index 2030 Fund
• TIAA-CREF Lifecycle Index 2060 Fund (Institutional)[TVIIX]
• TIAA-CREF Lifecycle Index 2055 Fund (Institutional)[TTIIX]
• TIAA-CREF Lifecycle Index 2050 Fund (Institutional)[TLLIX]
• TIAA-CREF Lifecycle Index 2045 Fund (Institutional)[TLXIX]
• TIAA-CREF Lifecycle Index 2040 Fund (Institutional)[TLZIX]
• TIAA-CREF Lifecycle Index 2035 Fund (Institutional)[TLYIX]
• TIAA-CREF Lifecycle Index 2025 Fund (Institutional)[TLQIX]
• TIAA-CREF Lifecycle Index 2020 Fund (Institutional)[TLWIX]
• TIAA-CREF Lifecycle Index 2015 Fund (Institutional)[TLFIX]
• TIAA-CREF Lifecycle Index 2065 Fund (Institutional)[TFITX]
• TIAA-CREF Lifecycle Index 2010 Fund (Institutional)[TLTIX]
• TIAA-CREF Lifecycle Index Retirement Income Fund (Institutional) [TRILX]
• TIAA Traditional Annuity - Group Supplemental Retirement Annuity[-]
• TIAA Traditional Annuity - Group Retirement Annuity[-]

Reading PayDBoardMan's post on The mathematical benefits of Roth accounts inspired me to write this post.
Over the course of a few low income years I converted 100% of my Pre-Tax accounts into Roth accounts, in the 0% to 22% brackets with around an 18% effective tax rate of federal only taxes moving to a income-tax-free state. My marginal contribution rate was 35%+ fed taxes and 9.3%+ CA tax brackets for a 44-50%+ marginal rate.
Edit: I'm not recommending to convert up to 22%. It made sense in my case as I'm permanently disabled and receiving SSDI. Most people are best with 12% conversions.
I made 100% pre-tax contributions to my 401k and back-door roth contributions (too high income for T-IRA contributions.)
I strongly think it's optimal for FIRE focused people to contribute 100% to pre-tax (unless in low tax bracket with higher expected tax brackets - ie Medical Doctor Residents), then try to aggressively Roth-convert as much as possible in low income years.
I converted to 100% roth for all the reasons PayDBoardMan listed, which I won't repeat here. I'll add my own unique reasons:

Roth Conversions with taxes paid from outside sources = additional Roth Contributions mathematically!

Many people overlook this weird math quirk - if you pay the conversion taxes from a taxable account, it's equivalent to investing that money in the Roth IRA! I've greatly expanded my tax-advantaged space by performing Roth Conversions!
Math:
$100k converted, $18k taxes owed (my case). Assumptions: Effective tax rate the same in retirement, 15% LTCG.
Pay taxes out of conversion:
$82k aggressively invested over 30 years at 7% daily compounded real rates = $669k
$100k aggressively invested over 30 years at 7% daily compounded real rates = $816k Roth or Pre-tax Value.
Pre-Tax After Tax Value is $816k * (1-.18) = $669k. $18k tax cost invested in taxable is $146.9k. After tax value = $127.5k 669k + $124.68k = $796.5k.
$816k Roth Value > $796.5k pre-tax after-tax value.
Therefore:
Paying conversion taxes outside of the Roth Conversion = equivalent to investing the taxes in the Roth account!
Note - I did not model average 0.5% tax drag for the $18k taxable investment either! If I model that then the taxable return is 6.5% per year and it's $126k before taxes, with a $109.8k after tax value! Even if we're all 0% LTCG for this example, pre-tax would be $815.9k, and $816k >>> $778.8k pre-tax-after-tax value so you're still getting a huge "invisible" investment benefit by paying the taxes with outside funds!
Given my personal finance situation it's very unlikely at retirement I'll be less than 18% effective tax rates barring huge political changes/etc.
Then if you can grow the roth even better where you'd be well 30%+ effective retirement rate were it a pre-tax account still then you've scored big by converting.

Crazy Flexibility to move to any state of my choice

Now that I'm 100% Roth I can move to any state of my choice and not worry about taxes! I could decide to move back to CA if I want to, or another state with high income taxes. I can't imagine withdrawing on pre-tax anything living in California when it's only $66k to trigger the 9.3% state tax bracket
Being 100% roth with an 18% effective rate "locked-in" is really nice for flexibility to move around in the future.

Roth accounts encourages optimal investing - no diminishing returns

As we saw in the above example living in a state like California, and federal taxes in general, makes most people not want to push for optimizing their investing strategies. If you build your account to the point where the government is taking more than 50% combined you lose a lot of incentive to keep putting in effort for diminishing returns. There is no diminishing returns to Roth accounts! If you get really lucky and make $1 billion in a Roth account it's not going to be valued only at $500 million after taxes if it was in a pre-tax account.
You're a lot more incentivized to optimize your investing strategy with a Roth account vs a pre-tax account.

Pre-tax income interacts badly with Long-Term Capital Gains Brackets and Social Security Taxation

In my case for investing for FIRE in my career I was already making substantial taxable account investments. Under the current tax laws ordinary income pushes out the 0% long-term capital gains tax brackets. However, being 100% roth I can have 0% taxed qualified dividends to $41k per year single, $83k married, and really lower my taxes.
Pull up TurboTax Tax Caster and put $40k of short-term capital gains, then compare $40k of long-term capital gains as a single person. $40k STCG is $3k in taxes. $40k LTCG is $0 in taxes. If you have both $40k STCG and $40k LTCG - $6.8k in taxes - your pre-tax withdrawals are pushing out your LTCG advantages!
If you need $80k of LTCG and pre-tax withdrawals to live off of - you only need $73.2k of roth + LTCG instead, greatly helping you minimize expenses in retirement. It's the difference between a $1.8m portfolio and a $2m portfolio @ a 4% Safe Withdrawal Rate.
Now imagine ordinary income pushing Social Security income to be taxable on top of the LTCG! Ouch! You can have as high as a 55% marginal tax rate with all 3 sources of income interacting together! This is known as "The Hump" for social security tax calculations.
Per the Boglehead's wiki:

If you can convert funds at 25% or 28% today to avoid the 46.25% or 55.5% marginal brackets in retirement your financial gains will be substantial.

I really want to revisit PayDBoardMan's burger analogy here - by being 100% roth you just got access to an exclusive restaurant that lets you buy 40 burgers for free instead of 5 burgers for free by avoiding all these bad tax bracket interactions!

There are plenty of ways to fill up your ordinary income tax brackets besides pre-tax withdrawals or Roth Conversions!

Speaking of STCG taxes - if you want to fill up ordinary income brackets instead - you can pursue more lucrative "hands on" trading or unique investment strategies that's only really available in taxable accounts!
For instance, you could:

• Sell options using margin/portfolio margined accounts to create excess returns. You can only sell cash-secured/spreads in retirement accounts! (You can sell future options with leverage in retirement accounts.)
• Invest in investments that initially generate K-1 losses, but later generate substantial ordinary income (real estate syndicates, etc.)
• Day trade with 4x intraday margin relief.
• Converting taxable assets into charitable remainder trusts which spit off ordinary income but saves you from realizing substantial LTCG.
• Annuitize by buying immediate annuities with taxable assets which the interest spits off ordinary income
• Move your bond allocation to taxable and stock allocation to your roth account so it grows the most.
• And many more ideas!

I've been profitably trading options for several years now. I'm really glad my retirement account is 100% roth now. I have so many options at my disposal to fill my lower ordinary-income brackets now instead of making pre-tax withdrawals.

Estate planning

PayDBoardMan already touched upon the issue of a widow getting a pre-tax account and being in single brackets. That is a huge downside of Pre-Tax accounts.
However there are more reasons why Roth IRAs are still the superior tool for estate planning purposes (unless you have a huge charitable bone.) The lifetime stretch is STILL possible instead of a 10 year stretch for these cases:

• A surviving spouse - that's still really nice.
• A person who is not more than 10 years younger than the IRA owner
• A minor child of the IRA owner (until turning 18/21/26 based on circumstances)
• A disabled person
• A chronically ill person (unable to perform 2 or more ADLs or has a severe cognitive impairment)

Even if it does go to a heir where they have to drain it in 10 years, it's still much nicer to inherit a Roth IRA and stretch it than deal with the heavy income taxes of a pre-tax account. What if your heir gets a lucrative job and are in really high tax brackets by year 10 stretching a pre-tax account? Ouch!
Then if you do have charitable purposes - chances are it'd be well past what your spouse needs to live off of anyways, and taxable accounts are still great to donate, along with HSA accounts! So you're less likely to be donating to charity in your inheritance plan being lower net-worth.

Everyone forgets about HSA accounts

There is no Roth version of the HSA account as it's already triple-tax advantaged for qualified medical expenses. This is another pre-tax retirement income source if you haven't been saving receipts for years or if the IRS/Congress changes the rules later on. Inheriting HSA accounts really sucks - zero stretch, all income is due in the year of death for inheritance. Ouch!
Well, guess what the other nice benefit of HSA accounts are? 100% complete investment control! Your 401k plan probably has crappy investment options. You can transfer HSA funds from your payroll HSA custodian to Fidelity at any time and then invest in leveraged ETFs. You can pursue the most risky/speculative strategies (say Hedgefundie's Excellent Adventure) in the HSA first and with $3k~ single contribution limits per year - either have a really amazing HSA that could grow to millions or worst case $0. Hell, $3k/year lost to HFEA is probably not going to change anyone's FI plans, and if it pays off it'd be freaking amazing to have a $1 million+ HSA account.
I have a HSA account, I maxed it out every year, and despite the recent brutal drawdown, it still has a great chance of hitting $400k-$900k in 20 years being invested in HFEA. I'm still on track to hit $6m - $14m by the time I'm 65 in it with HFEA.

Lower Medicare IRMAA in Retirement too

Everyone is focused on the ACA subsidies. You also get taxed extra based on your AGI when you're on Medicare as well! $97k or less you only pay $164.90/mo for part B. $183k+ its $527.50/mo, a $362.60/mo increase, or $4,351.20 a year. It's an additional 2.3% effective tax and a 5% higher marginal tax.
Roth withdrawals avoids IRMAA increases.

Emergency Fund Tax Safety

I really like PayDBoardMan's example that spending isn't consistent in retirement. I don't really think the car example hit home enough with me though, I really think that $40k could be $4k a year withdrawn as a car isn't going to die suddenly in year 10, ignoring auto accidents which insurance covers. Still - it's $4k extra withdrawals you probably weren't thinking of at first at your retirement marginal tax rate!
What does hit home with me though is emergency house repair stuff. If you're a home owner you could get hit with a ton of surprises that requires unexpected high payments - $40k for a new roof you thought you still had 10 years of life left, etc. Or maybe you got hit with a 100-year flood, weren't in a flood zone and weren't required to buy flood insurance, but it's going to be $40k of repairs regardless.
Even if it's a situation that you're likely covered under insurance - it might be better to get that $40k of work started now and contractors paid and deal with the insurance adjuster later.
Being 100% roth gives me a lot of flexibility with all of this without getting hit extra hard on taxes + agi increases + health insurance (ACA/medicare) premium increases.

Medicaid Spend Down Planning

Life fucking sucks. You might be in a position where you have to go in a nursing home that's $500-$600 a day or $200k annual spend but your FI budget is only $100k, and you didn't buy long-term-care insurance to cover it.
Maybe you only have a $2.5 million portfolio and those 5 years are going to suck $1m leaving $1.5m. After consulting with a well-qualified Elder law attorney the choice is made to pay the nursing home for 5 years, give away the rest of the assets after the Medicaid Look-Back Period has passed and you preserved the remaining assets! You're now in a upscale nursing home that can't legally kick you out or legally reduce your quality of care with Medicaid footing the bill.
Draining a substantial sized pre-tax account is really going to hurt badly tax wise. With a Roth account - not a dime of taxes are owed.
IRAs and Medicaid is a really thorny subject
Too large of a pre-tax IRA = RMD income may never be qualified for Medicaid. Medicaid can attach to the RMDs. Likewise since a Roth never has RMDs all the assets are available to Medicaid.
Most advice is clear though - generally, and I'm not a lawyer, but the best advice is to just spend it down per the above websites:

The simplest and safest way to do this is by transferring funds to others more than 5 years (60 months) before applying for Medicaid benefits. Such transfers escape Medicaid claims entirely.

For my comfort zone, I much rather be 100% roth if I'm ever facing having to deal with a Medicaid nursing home situation. I'm really glad I'm 100% roth :).

Pre-Tax Advantages I gave up

I want to conclude this post by listing some of the advantages pre-tax accounts have that I willingly gave up and alternative ways to deal with it for my situation:
Unable to withdraw earnings tax & penalty free until 59½
This is the biggest drawback for FI purposes for a Roth account is locking away your money where if you need to tap the Roth IRA it's treated as a Pre-Tax account.
How I'm dealing with it instead -
It's not as bad as people think! First of all, retirement accounts are the absolute LAST resort to touch regardless of needs. My taxable account is substantially larger than the Roth account. So any early year withdrawals will be low capital gains impact.
You first withdraw your contributions from your Roth IRA, then conversion in the order of the conversion year. Backdoor roths are ALWAYS tax and penalty free, and taxable conversions are always tax free and penalty free after 5 years. You're only taxed on earnings for pre 59 1/2 withdrawals, unless if they're qualified:

1. It is made after the 5-year period beginning with the first tax year for which a contribution was made to a Roth IRA set up for your benefit.
   
2. The payment or distribution is:
   

a. Made on or after the date you reach age 59½, b. Made because you are disabled (defined earlier) c. Made to a beneficiary or to your estate after your death, or d. One that meets the requirements listed under First home under Exceptions in chapter 1 (up to a $10,000 lifetime limit).

If you were affected by a qualified disaster, see chapter 3. (TL;DR of qualified disasters is earnings are still taxable with no 10% early penalty but you can spread the income over 3 years which greatly reduces the tax hit.)
So yes, sadly the earnings portions of SEPP withdrawals of the Roth IRA will be taxed, so you might want to do a Roth Conversion Ladder until your desired income gets you to age 59½.
Then past 59 1/2 you'll want to convert as much to a Roth as possible, perhaps going well past the $50k example the article has, before you start taking Social Security Retirement Income.
Qualified Charitable Distributions
Pre-Tax accounts can donate up to $100k directly to one or more charities to meet their RMD requirements.
How I'm dealing with it instead - I'll be donating appreciated shares from my taxable account. Donating appreciated shares is mathematically superior already. You can donate up to 30% of AGI of long-term holdings AND you avoid incurring LTCG by doing so. It's win-win.
Also my options trading gives a ton of STCG too! I plan to trade options until I become senile, so in my mind I can donate $100k of STCG anyways and get the identical tax benefit. I don't see the Qualified Charitable Distribution bonus to be compelling enough to keep a pre-tax account around in my situation.
Optimal Inheritance for Charities
No argument, Pre-Tax accounts are optimal to donate to charities. No federal taxes are due for charitable donations of pre-tax accounts at death AND no estate taxes!
How I'm dealing with this instead - I still have my HSA pre-tax account. That is marked for charities. I'm investing it the most aggressively to optimize it. At the end of the day charities get just as huge as an impact from a taxable account donation and Roth IRA donation. I'm also doing all my giving while I'm living, which I've already shown above the taxable account is the optimal donation vehicle while alive. Yeah the step-up in basis reduces the benefits of taxable donation inheritance but it still lowers any estate taxes due.
One can establish charitable remainder trusts of various kinds with taxable accounts that turns it into ordinary income and the charity gets the remainder! Likewise you can dodge incurring capital gains by gifting appreciated shares into the remainder trusts and getting a % donation impact based on actuarial values of how much the charity is expected to get in remainder.
Foreign Nations treat Roth IRA accounts as a Pre-Tax Account
This one really sucks. It's true - many foreign nations double tax Roth IRAs.
How I'm dealing with it instead - I've done some excessive digging on this and for a few nations with a really competent local tax lawyer that's both versed in USA and the foreign nation law they might be able to reach an agreement with the foreign tax authority to treat Roth accounts as taxable accounts instead. So worst case is any sales will incur capital gains instead of distribution being taxed. There is a reason why TD Ameritrade and other brokerages keeps cost basis records of Roth IRA accounts and it's for reasons exactly like this! So keep really good records, and if I plan to move to a foreign country I plan to sell and re-purchase all my investments in my Roth before establishing tax residency!
I also really don't see myself moving outside of the USA or living outside of the USA. I think with Roths becoming more and more common we might have more tax treaties in the future to fix these issues too. Be sure to write your senators if you really want to live abroad! Only The President along with 2/3rds Senators can establish and modify new treaties.
Then people overlook one huge benefit of doing Roth conversions - if you renounce your USA citizenship after 59½ the Roth IRA is tax free for exit taxes.
Having a huge pre-tax account can also REALLY limits your flexibility to move abroad if people want to renounce USA citizenship to escape being taxed on your global wide income. Worst case a pre-tax account might be treated as all taxable income in the year you renounce your citizenship if the exit tax applies to you, which it does for $2m or more of net worth. My original FIRE target years ago was $2.5m net worth.
On the other hand by now being 100% Roth I have a ton of expected tax free income - greatly lowering my tax burden. I really don't see any reasons to renounce my citizenship for tax reasons and a crap ton of disadvantages if I do! I love living in the USA, I love the travel flexibility of our passport, and we have the 7th most powerful passport in the world. If you really think about it we have 186 visa free destinations and Japan tops the most at 193. I don't really see any reason to get a Japan passport just to visit 7 more countries without paperwork! Those countries are: Venezuela, Bolivia, Belarus, Bulgaria(Americans just pay a fee on arrival, Japanese arrive no fee), Turkey(probably not a good time to visit), and a few Asian countries that Americans just pay fees/get e-visas/or visa on arrivals for. The USA also gets a few visa free countries Japan doesn't get Visa free access to.
In all respects I love visiting and vacationing in tropical islands and the USA passport is actually stronger for that! We have Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and many foreign tropical islands don't require visas for US travelers but require visas on arrival for Japan. We also have visa-free and PASSPORT-FREE Palau access even though they're now a sovereign nation with proof of US Citizenship(drivers license + birth certificate), and no tourist visa required for US citizens visiting one year or less. So despite Japan being ranked as #1, for my interests I really value keeping my USA passport a lot more than switching it out for say a Japan passport.
I love living in the USA.
Unable to rollover Roth-IRA assets to future employer 401ks/Solo 401ks
This is a huge drawback currently. Once in an Roth-IRA account you can never rollover it into a solo Roth-401k again or an employer Roth 401k plan.
If the SECURE 2.0 act becomes law this issue is fixed.
Roth Future Tax Risks
Look - I can make the same arguments against pre-tax accounts. At one time we had a 70% upper federal tax bracket too. Boy that would hurt if you had to spend down assets for Medicaid at the time being. Pre-tax accounts also get hurt just as bad for sales taxes/VAT/so on if our government is greedy and DOESN'T reduce income taxes. Look at the EU/UK - its high income tax AND high VAT taxes!
We can't predict the future. If you're worried about the tax future then 50% roth and 50% pre-tax is the only logical choice.
However being FIRE focused, we are significantly living below our means. I'm living in a small home where property taxes is $4,000 a year and capped at 3% annual increases, AND property tax is computed on the home's replacement cost and not the market value of the home! My total housing payment WITH mortgage is $24k year, and FI for that is $600k which I'm already house-FI and lean-FI. In a worst case scenario I either pay off mortgage and live off $4k year + food costs, or relax with over 25 years of runway of cutting all other discretionary spending to the bone. I'm living by myself, I have 3 unused bedrooms and can get roommates at $500/mo/room. $24k spend just became $6k spend + food costs so lean-FI on $150k or less. Health insurance easily Medicaid or ACA subsidies, especially with being 100% roth. Paid off mortgage with 3 roommates = +$14,000 rental income each year. I'm now FI just simply by owning a paid off home!
Seeking FIRE means you're adaptable and have a plan. We have tons of flexibility and privileges by being well off financially and being very financially and mathematically literate. We can handle any future tax issues that get thrown to Roth IRAs just fine.
I feel really relieved having converted 100% of my pre-tax accounts to roth accounts. Look - if future proposed tax legislation bothers you - WRITE your senators. I wrote my senators about the above Roth IRA drawback of rolling over assets to future employer 401k Roth plans + Roth 401k RMD issues, and they were shocked as they were NOT AWARE of that drawbacks! They got it in the SECURE 2.0 act and will not forget this if it doesn't become law this year. I will not forget this issue either!
I'm not afraid to give feedback about anything! I politely write people and things change - even my broker TD Ameritrade changes the % margin they take on various securities on Portfolio Margin as I ask them to review stuff as the percentage they're taking for margin isn't reflective of the actual risk! People are in the dark unless you appropriately communicate! :)
Roth 401ks are subject to RMDs
Just rollover it to a Roth IRA account. It was fixed in the secure 2.0 act should it become law where Roth 401ks will NOT be subject to RMDs.
Again, I wrote my senators about this too! They could have made Roth IRAs subject to RMDs instead but they chose to align 401k plans instead, it's also a great sign that they really do care about preserving the tax benefits of Roth at this time! It's unlikely tax policy will drastically change in the next 10-20 years. That's why I don't feel stressed out about future taxes being 100% roth.
Fine grained taxable income control
On 12/31 every year you can know exactly to the penny your tax bracket is and make withdrawals from pre-tax accounts to optimize your tax brackets to the penny.
How I'm dealing with it instead - Personally, I'm really freaking happy that I stayed in the 22% bracket and had an 18% effective tax rate doing my conversions. I'm personally happy to spend 12/31 with family instead of spreadsheets trying to squeeze every last penny of tax efficiency with "perfect" withdrawals/conversions! By finishing my Roth conversions I don't have to analyze it anymore for the rest of my life. I can't express enough how amazing it feels to have Roth converted everything! It's freed up so much analyzing for me and I'm just really happy living life instead!

TL;DR

I have zero regrets converting 100% of my pre-tax accounts to Roth accounts!

Why I converted 100% of my pre-tax accounts to Roth for FIRE

Reading PayDBoardMan's post on The mathematical benefits of Roth accounts inspired me to write this post.
Over the course of a few low income years I converted 100% of my Pre-Tax accounts into Roth accounts, in the 0% to 22% brackets with around an 18% effective tax rate of federal only taxes moving to a income-tax-free state. My marginal contribution rate was 35%+ fed taxes and 9.3%+ CA tax brackets for a 44-50%+ marginal rate.
I made 100% pre-tax contributions to my 401k and back-door roth contributions (too high income for T-IRA contributions.)
I strongly think it's optimal for FIRE focused people to contribute 100% to pre-tax (unless in low tax bracket with higher expected tax brackets - ie Medical Doctor Residents), then try to aggressively Roth-convert as much as possible in low income years.
I converted to 100% roth for all the reasons PayDBoardMan listed, which I won't repeat here. I'll add my own unique reasons:

Roth Conversions with taxes paid from outside sources = additional Roth Contributions mathematically!

Many people overlook this weird math quirk - if you pay the conversion taxes from a taxable account, it's equivalent to investing that money in the Roth IRA! I've greatly expanded my tax-advantaged space by performing Roth Conversions!
Math:
$100k converted, $18k taxes owed (my case). Assumptions: Effective tax rate the same in retirement, 15% LTCG.
Pay taxes out of conversion:
$82k aggressively invested over 30 years at 7% daily compounded real rates = $669k
$100k aggressively invested over 30 years at 7% daily compounded real rates = $816k Roth or Pre-tax Value.
Pre-Tax After Tax Value is $816k * (1-.18) = $669k. $18k tax cost invested in taxable is $146.9k. After tax value = $127.5k 669k + $124.68k = $796.5k.
$816k Roth Value > $796.5k pre-tax after-tax value.
Therefore:
Paying conversion taxes outside of the Roth Conversion = equivalent to investing the taxes in the Roth account!
Note - I did not model average 0.5% tax drag for the $18k taxable investment either! If I model that then the taxable return is 6.5% per year and it's $126k before taxes, with a $109.8k after tax value! Even if we're all 0% LTCG for this example, pre-tax would be $815.9k, and $816k >>> $778.8k pre-tax-after-tax value so you're still getting a huge "invisible" investment benefit by paying the taxes with outside funds!
Given my personal finance situation it's very unlikely at retirement I'll be less than 18% effective tax rates barring huge political changes/etc.
Then if you can grow the roth even better where you'd be well 30%+ effective retirement rate were it a pre-tax account still then you've scored big by converting.

Crazy Flexibility to move to any state of my choice

Now that I'm 100% Roth I can move to any state of my choice and not worry about taxes! I could decide to move back to CA if I want to, or another state with high income taxes. I can't imagine withdrawing on pre-tax anything living in California when it's only $66k to trigger the 9.3% state tax bracket
Being 100% roth with an 18% effective rate "locked-in" is really nice for flexibility to move around in the future.

Roth accounts encourages optimal investing - no diminishing returns

As we saw in the above example living in a state like California, and federal taxes in general, makes most people not want to push for optimizing their investing strategies. If you build your account to the point where the government is taking more than 50% combined you lose a lot of incentive to keep putting in effort for diminishing returns. There is no diminishing returns to Roth accounts! If you get really lucky and make $1 billion in a Roth account it's not going to be valued only at $500 million after taxes if it was in a pre-tax account.
You're a lot more incentivized to optimize your investing strategy with a Roth account vs a pre-tax account.

Pre-tax income interacts badly with Long-Term Capital Gains Brackets and Social Security Taxation

In my case for investing for FIRE in my career I was already making substantial taxable account investments. Under the current tax laws ordinary income pushes out the 0% long-term capital gains tax brackets. However, being 100% roth I can have 0% taxed qualified dividends to $41k per year single, $83k married, and really lower my taxes.
Pull up TurboTax Tax Caster and put $40k of short-term capital gains, then compare $40k of long-term capital gains as a single person. $40k STCG is $3k in taxes. $40k LTCG is $0 in taxes. If you have both $40k STCG and $40k LTCG - $6.8k in taxes - your pre-tax withdrawals are pushing out your LTCG advantages!
If you need $80k of LTCG and pre-tax withdrawals to live off of - you only need $73.2k of roth + LTCG instead, greatly helping you minimize expenses in retirement. It's the difference between a $1.8m portfolio and a $2m portfolio @ a 4% Safe Withdrawal Rate.
Now imagine ordinary income pushing Social Security income to be taxable on top of the LTCG! Ouch! You can have as high as a 55% marginal tax rate with all 3 sources of income interacting together! This is known as "The Hump" for social security tax calculations.
Per the Boglehead's wiki:

If you can convert funds at 25% or 28% today to avoid the 46.25% or 55.5% marginal brackets in retirement your financial gains will be substantial.

I really want to revisit PayDBoardMan's burger analogy here - by being 100% roth you just got access to an exclusive restaurant that lets you buy 40 burgers for free instead of 5 burgers for free by avoiding all these bad tax bracket interactions!

There are plenty of ways to fill up your ordinary income tax brackets besides pre-tax withdrawals or Roth Conversions!

Speaking of STCG taxes - if you want to fill up ordinary income brackets instead - you can pursue more lucrative "hands on" trading or unique investment strategies that's only really available in taxable accounts!
For instance, you could:

• Sell options using margin/portfolio margined accounts to create excess returns. You can only sell cash-secured/spreads in retirement accounts! (You can sell future options with leverage in retirement accounts.)
• Invest in investments that initially generate K-1 losses, but later generate substantial ordinary income (real estate syndicates, etc.)
• Day trade with 4x intraday margin relief.
• Converting taxable assets into charitable remainder trusts which spit off ordinary income but saves you from realizing substantial LTCG.
• Annuitize by buying immediate annuities with taxable assets which the interest spits off ordinary income
• Move your bond allocation to taxable and stock allocation to your roth account so it grows the most.
• And many more ideas!

I've been profitably trading options for several years now. I'm really glad my retirement account is 100% roth now. I have so many options at my disposal to fill my lower ordinary-income brackets now instead of making pre-tax withdrawals.

Estate planning

PayDBoardMan already touched upon the issue of a widow getting a pre-tax account and being in single brackets. That is a huge downside of Pre-Tax accounts.
However there are more reasons why Roth IRAs are still the superior tool for estate planning purposes (unless you have a huge charitable bone.) The lifetime stretch is STILL possible instead of a 10 year stretch for these cases:

• A surviving spouse - that's still really nice.
• A person who is not more than 10 years younger than the IRA owner
• A minor child of the IRA owner (until turning 18/21/26 based on circumstances)
• A disabled person
• A chronically ill person (unable to perform 2 or more ADLs or has a severe cognitive impairment)

Even if it does go to a heir where they have to drain it in 10 years, it's still much nicer to inherit a Roth IRA and stretch it than deal with the heavy income taxes of a pre-tax account. What if your heir gets a lucrative job and are in really high tax brackets by year 10 stretching a pre-tax account? Ouch!
Then if you do have charitable purposes - chances are it'd be well past what your spouse needs to live off of anyways, and taxable accounts are still great to donate, along with HSA accounts! So you're less likely to be donating to charity in your inheritance plan being lower net-worth.

Everyone forgets about HSA accounts

There is no Roth version of the HSA account as it's already triple-tax advantaged for qualified medical expenses. This is another pre-tax retirement income source if you haven't been saving receipts for years or if the IRS/Congress changes the rules later on. Inheriting HSA accounts really sucks - zero stretch, all income is due in the year of death for inheritance. Ouch!
Well, guess what the other nice benefit of HSA accounts are? 100% complete investment control! Your 401k plan probably has crappy investment options. You can transfer HSA funds from your payroll HSA custodian to Fidelity at any time and then invest in leveraged ETFs. You can pursue the most risky/speculative strategies (say Hedgefundie's Excellent Adventure) in the HSA first and with $3k~ single contribution limits per year - either have a really amazing HSA that could grow to millions or worst case $0. Hell, $3k/year lost to HFEA is probably not going to change anyone's FI plans, and if it pays off it'd be freaking amazing to have a $1 million+ HSA account.
I have a HSA account, I maxed it out every year, and despite the recent brutal drawdown, it still has a great chance of hitting $400k-$900k in 20 years being invested in HFEA. I'm still on track to hit $6m - $14m by the time I'm 65 in it with HFEA.

Lower Medicare IRMAA in Retirement too

Everyone is focused on the ACA subsidies. You also get taxed extra based on your AGI when you're on Medicare as well! $97k or less you only pay $164.90/mo for part B. $183k+ its $527.50/mo, a $362.60/mo increase, or $4,351.20 a year. It's an additional 2.3% effective tax and a 5% higher marginal tax.
Roth withdrawals avoids IRMAA increases.

Emergency Fund Tax Safety

I really like PayDBoardMan's example that spending isn't consistent in retirement. I don't really think the car example hit home enough with me though, I really think that $40k could be $4k a year withdrawn as a car isn't going to die suddenly in year 10, ignoring auto accidents which insurance covers. Still - it's $4k extra withdrawals you probably weren't thinking of at first at your retirement marginal tax rate!
What does hit home with me though is emergency house repair stuff. If you're a home owner you could get hit with a ton of surprises that requires unexpected high payments - $40k for a new roof you thought you still had 10 years of life left, etc. Or maybe you got hit with a 100-year flood, weren't in a flood zone and weren't required to buy flood insurance, but it's going to be $40k of repairs regardless.
Even if it's a situation that you're likely covered under insurance - it might be better to get that $40k of work started now and contractors paid and deal with the insurance adjuster later.
Being 100% roth gives me a lot of flexibility with all of this without getting hit extra hard on taxes + agi increases + health insurance (ACA/medicare) premium increases.

Medicaid Spend Down Planning

Life fucking sucks. You might be in a position where you have to go in a nursing home that's $500-$600 a day or $200k annual spend but your FI budget is only $100k, and you didn't buy long-term-care insurance to cover it.
Maybe you only have a $2.5 million portfolio and those 5 years are going to suck $1m leaving $1.5m. After consulting with a well-qualified Elder law attorney the choice is made to pay the nursing home for 5 years, give away the rest of the assets after the Medicaid Look-Back Period has passed and you preserved the remaining assets! You're now in a upscale nursing home that can't legally kick you out or legally reduce your quality of care with Medicaid footing the bill.
Draining a substantial sized pre-tax account is really going to hurt badly tax wise. With a Roth account - not a dime of taxes are owed.
IRAs and Medicaid is a really thorny subject
Too large of a pre-tax IRA = RMD income may never be qualified for Medicaid. Medicaid can attach to the RMDs. Likewise since a Roth never has RMDs all the assets are available to Medicaid.
Most advice is clear though - generally, and I'm not a lawyer, but the best advice is to just spend it down per the above websites:

The simplest and safest way to do this is by transferring funds to others more than 5 years (60 months) before applying for Medicaid benefits. Such transfers escape Medicaid claims entirely.

For my comfort zone, I much rather be 100% roth if I'm ever facing having to deal with a Medicaid nursing home situation. I'm really glad I'm 100% roth :).

Pre-Tax Advantages I gave up

I want to conclude this post by listing some of the advantages pre-tax accounts have that I willingly gave up and alternative ways to deal with it for my situation:
Unable to withdraw earnings tax & penalty free until 59½
This is the biggest drawback for FI purposes for a Roth account is locking away your money where if you need to tap the Roth IRA it's treated as a Pre-Tax account.
How I'm dealing with it instead -
It's not as bad as people think! First of all, retirement accounts are the absolute LAST resort to touch regardless of needs. My taxable account is substantially larger than the Roth account. So any early year withdrawals will be low capital gains impact.
You first withdraw your contributions from your Roth IRA, then conversion in the order of the conversion year. Backdoor roths are ALWAYS tax and penalty free, and taxable conversions are always tax free and penalty free after 5 years. You're only taxed on earnings for pre 59 1/2 withdrawals, unless if they're qualified:

1. It is made after the 5-year period beginning with the first tax year for which a contribution was made to a Roth IRA set up for your benefit.
   
2. The payment or distribution is:
   

a. Made on or after the date you reach age 59½, b. Made because you are disabled (defined earlier) c. Made to a beneficiary or to your estate after your death, or d. One that meets the requirements listed under First home under Exceptions in chapter 1 (up to a $10,000 lifetime limit).

If you were affected by a qualified disaster, see chapter 3. (TL;DR of qualified disasters is earnings are still taxable with no 10% early penalty but you can spread the income over 3 years which greatly reduces the tax hit.)
So yes, sadly the earnings portions of SEPP withdrawals of the Roth IRA will be taxed, so you might want to do a Roth Conversion Ladder until your desired income gets you to age 59½.
Then past 59 1/2 you'll want to convert as much to a Roth as possible, perhaps going well past the $50k example the article has, before you start taking Social Security Retirement Income.
Qualified Charitable Distributions
Pre-Tax accounts can donate up to $100k directly to one or more charities to meet their RMD requirements.
How I'm dealing with it instead - I'll be donating appreciated shares from my taxable account. Donating appreciated shares is mathematically superior already. You can donate up to 30% of AGI of long-term holdings AND you avoid incurring LTCG by doing so. It's win-win.
Also my options trading gives a ton of STCG too! I plan to trade options until I become senile, so in my mind I can donate $100k of STCG anyways and get the identical tax benefit. I don't see the Qualified Charitable Distribution bonus to be compelling enough to keep a pre-tax account around in my situation.
Optimal Inheritance for Charities
No argument, Pre-Tax accounts are optimal to donate to charities. No federal taxes are due for charitable donations of pre-tax accounts at death AND no estate taxes!
How I'm dealing with this instead - I still have my HSA pre-tax account. That is marked for charities. I'm investing it the most aggressively to optimize it. At the end of the day charities get just as huge as an impact from a taxable account donation and Roth IRA donation. I'm also doing all my giving while I'm living, which I've already shown above the taxable account is the optimal donation vehicle while alive. Yeah the step-up in basis reduces the benefits of taxable donation inheritance but it still lowers any estate taxes due.
One can establish charitable remainder trusts of various kinds with taxable accounts that turns it into ordinary income and the charity gets the remainder! Likewise you can dodge incurring capital gains by gifting appreciated shares into the remainder trusts and getting a % donation impact based on actuarial values of how much the charity is expected to get in remainder.
Foreign Nations treat Roth IRA accounts as a Pre-Tax Account
This one really sucks. It's true - many foreign nations double tax Roth IRAs.
How I'm dealing with it instead - I've done some excessive digging on this and for a few nations with a really competent local tax lawyer that's both versed in USA and the foreign nation law they might be able to reach an agreement with the foreign tax authority to treat Roth accounts as taxable accounts instead. So worst case is any sales will incur capital gains instead of distribution being taxed. There is a reason why TD Ameritrade and other brokerages keeps cost basis records of Roth IRA accounts and it's for reasons exactly like this! So keep really good records, and if I plan to move to a foreign country I plan to sell and re-purchase all my investments in my Roth before establishing tax residency!
I also really don't see myself moving outside of the USA or living outside of the USA. I think with Roths becoming more and more common we might have more tax treaties in the future to fix these issues too. Be sure to write your senators if you really want to live abroad! Only The President along with 2/3rds Senators can establish and modify new treaties.
Then people overlook one huge benefit of doing Roth conversions - if you renounce your USA citizenship after 59½ the Roth IRA is tax free for exit taxes.
Having a huge pre-tax account can also REALLY limits your flexibility to move abroad if people want to renounce USA citizenship to escape being taxed on your global wide income. Worst case a pre-tax account might be treated as all taxable income in the year you renounce your citizenship if the exit tax applies to you, which it does for $2m or more of net worth. My original FIRE target years ago was $2.5m net worth.
On the other hand by now being 100% Roth I have a ton of expected tax free income - greatly lowering my tax burden. I really don't see any reasons to renounce my citizenship for tax reasons and a crap ton of disadvantages if I do! I love living in the USA, I love the travel flexibility of our passport, and we have the 7th most powerful passport in the world. If you really think about it we have 186 visa free destinations and Japan tops the most at 193. I don't really see any reason to get a Japan passport just to visit 7 more countries without paperwork! Those countries are: Venezuela, Bolivia, Belarus, Bulgaria(Americans just pay a fee on arrival, Japanese arrive no fee), Turkey(probably not a good time to visit), and a few Asian countries that Americans just pay fees/get e-visas/or visa on arrivals for. The USA also gets a few visa free countries Japan doesn't get Visa free access to.
In all respects I love visiting and vacationing in tropical islands and the USA passport is actually stronger for that! We have Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and many foreign tropical islands don't require visas for US travelers but require visas on arrival for Japan. We also have visa-free and PASSPORT-FREE Palau access even though they're now a sovereign nation with proof of US Citizenship(drivers license + birth certificate), and no tourist visa required for US citizens visiting one year or less. So despite Japan being ranked as #1, for my interests I really value keeping my USA passport a lot more than switching it out for say a Japan passport.
I love living in the USA.
Unable to rollover Roth-IRA assets to future employer 401ks/Solo 401ks
This is a huge drawback currently. Once in an Roth-IRA account you can never rollover it into a solo Roth-401k again or an employer Roth 401k plan.
If the SECURE 2.0 act becomes law this issue is fixed.
Roth Future Tax Risks
Look - I can make the same arguments against pre-tax accounts. At one time we had a 70% upper federal tax bracket too. Boy that would hurt if you had to spend down assets for Medicaid at the time being. Pre-tax accounts also get hurt just as bad for sales taxes/VAT/so on if our government is greedy and DOESN'T reduce income taxes. Look at the EU/UK - its high income tax AND high VAT taxes!
We can't predict the future. If you're worried about the tax future then 50% roth and 50% pre-tax is the only logical choice.
However being FIRE focused, we are significantly living below our means. I'm living in a small home where property taxes is $4,000 a year and capped at 3% annual increases, AND property tax is computed on the home's replacement cost and not the market value of the home! My total housing payment WITH mortgage is $24k year, and FI for that is $600k which I'm already house-FI and lean-FI. In a worst case scenario I either pay off mortgage and live off $4k year + food costs, or relax with over 25 years of runway of cutting all other discretionary spending to the bone. I'm living by myself, I have 3 unused bedrooms and can get roommates at $500/mo/room. $24k spend just became $6k spend + food costs so lean-FI on $150k or less. Health insurance easily Medicaid or ACA subsidies, especially with being 100% roth. Paid off mortgage with 3 roommates = +$14,000 rental income each year. I'm now FI just simply by owning a paid off home!
Seeking FIRE means you're adaptable and have a plan. We have tons of flexibility and privileges by being well off financially and being very financially and mathematically literate. We can handle any future tax issues that get thrown to Roth IRAs just fine.
I feel really relieved having converted 100% of my pre-tax accounts to roth accounts. Look - if future proposed tax legislation bothers you - WRITE your senators. I wrote my senators about the above Roth IRA drawback of rolling over assets to future employer 401k Roth plans + Roth 401k RMD issues, and they were shocked as they were NOT AWARE of that drawbacks! They got it in the SECURE 2.0 act and will not forget this if it doesn't become law this year. I will not forget this issue either!
I'm not afraid to give feedback about anything! I politely write people and things change - even my broker TD Ameritrade changes the % margin they take on various securities on Portfolio Margin as I ask them to review stuff as the percentage they're taking for margin isn't reflective of the actual risk! People are in the dark unless you appropriately communicate! :)
Roth 401ks are subject to RMDs
Just rollover it to a Roth IRA account. It was fixed in the secure 2.0 act should it become law where Roth 401ks will NOT be subject to RMDs.
Again, I wrote my senators about this too! They could have made Roth IRAs subject to RMDs instead but they chose to align 401k plans instead, it's also a great sign that they really do care about preserving the tax benefits of Roth at this time! It's unlikely tax policy will drastically change in the next 10-20 years. That's why I don't feel stressed out about future taxes being 100% roth.
Fine grained taxable income control
On 12/31 every year you can know exactly to the penny your tax bracket is and make withdrawals from pre-tax accounts to optimize your tax brackets to the penny.
How I'm dealing with it instead - Personally, I'm really freaking happy that I stayed in the 22% bracket and had an 18% effective tax rate doing my conversions. I'm personally happy to spend 12/31 with family instead of spreadsheets trying to squeeze every last penny of tax efficiency with "perfect" withdrawals/conversions! By finishing my Roth conversions I don't have to analyze it anymore for the rest of my life. I can't express enough how amazing it feels to have Roth converted everything! It's freed up so much analyzing for me and I'm just really happy living life instead!

TL;DR

I have zero regrets converting 100% of my pre-tax accounts to Roth accounts!

Hi, I am a new user of TradingView. I am just trying to track my investments. I have retirement funds in "TIAA-CREF Lifecycle 2040 Fund Institutional Class" (which has terrible performance) and I wanted to see if I can track this through TradingView. I could not find it through a search of its symbol TCOIX: NASDAQ. Does this mean i have to add each of the equities in the fund individually in TradingView?
Thanks, appreciate the advice.

My employer just switched 401k providers and rolled over my previous funds into matching funds with our new provider. Currently, I am 26 years old and last year was my first year with a 401k, which I was fortunate enough to have the ability to max and will continue to do so. I'd love some insight on if I'm matching VTSAX well enough with my current picks (which I'm striving for) or if I should reconsider and play with my current funds by adjusting current percentages, add any other funds, etc.
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With that, I'd love some comments on my other allocations as well considering I am VERY heavy in the US Total Stock Market. I tend to consider my investing strategy is aggressive. Thanks!
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Other Investments Outside 401k:
Roth IRA: 85% VTSAX, 15% VTIAX
HSA: 100% FSKAX
Brokerage: 85% VTSAX, 15% VTIAX
​
Current 401k Allocation:
Vanguard Small Cap Index Fund - Admiral Class 10%
Vanguard Mid-Cap Index Fund - Admiral Class 20%
State Street Equity 500 Index Fund - Class K 70%
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Current 401k Provider Options:
Growth & Income
FUIPX Fidelity Freedom Index 2060 Fund - Premier Class
FRLPX Fidelity Freedom Index 2050 Fund - Premier Class
FKIPX Fidelity Freedom Index 2020 Fund - Premier Class
FFYPX Fidelity Freedom Index 2015 Fund - Premier Class
FVIPX Fidelity Freedom Index 2065 Fund - Premier Class
FMKPX Fidelity Freedom Index 2030 Fund - Premier Class
FBLPX Fidelity Freedom Index 2005 Fund - Premier Class
FTYPX Fidelity Freedom Index 2055 Fund - Premier Class
FNIPX Fidelity Freedom Index 2035 Fund - Premier Class
FCYPX Fidelity Freedom Index 2010 Fund - Premier Class
MSFKX MFS Total Return Fund - Class R6
FAPIX Fidelity Freedom Index Income Fund - Premier Class
FPIPX Fidelity Freedom Index 2040 Fund - Premier Class
FLIPX Fidelity Freedom Index 2025 Fund - Premier Class
FQIPX Fidelity Freedom Index 2045 Fund - Premier Class
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Aggressive Growth
VSIAX Vanguard Small Cap Value Index Fund - Admiral Class
AEDMX American Century Emerging Markets Fund - Class R6
TROIX T. Rowe Price Overseas Stock Fund - Class I
DFA Commodity Strategy Portfolio - Institutional Class
JGMNX Janus Henderson Triton Fund - Class N
PFRSX Principal Real Estate Securities Fund - Class R6
BTMKX iShares MSCI EAFE International Index Fund - Class K
VSMAX Vanguard Small Cap Index Fund - Admiral Class
TISBX TIAA-CREF Small Cap Blend Index Fund - Institutional Class
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Growth
RGAGX American Funds The Growth Fund of America - Class R6
OIEJX JPMorgan Equity Income Fund - Class R6
PDGIX T. Rowe Price Dividend Growth Fund - Class I
VIMAX Vanguard Mid-Cap Index Fund - Admiral Class
SSSYX State Street Equity 500 Index Fund - Class K
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Income
LHYVX Lord Abbett High Yield Fund - Class R6
VBILX Vanguard Intermediate Term Bond Index Fund - Admiral Class
N/A Invesco Stable Asset Fund - ADPZ Class
MPHQX BlackRock Total Return Fund - Class K
GSRUX Goldman Sachs Inflation Protected Securities Fund - Class R6

I am looking at my Roth IRA and wondering if I need to switch things up. I am currently maxing out and 100% vested in TIAA CREF Equity index fund (TIQRX). My options are limited, but there is also the TIAA large cap index fund (TRIRX) and TIAA S&P 500 index fund (TRSPX), which have performed similarly and have the same expense ratio of 0.3%. I saw the TIAA real estate (QREARX) and was wondering if anyone else makes use of this in their Roth IRA as a means of diversification. My 403b is maxed in a target date fund and my HSA and brokerage are VOO.

I have checking and savings through BofA, a 403(b) through TIAA-CREF from my old employer, a 401(k) through Mercer / Empower, and a brokerage account through Schwab. None will have more than $100k for at least a decade. I somehow missed the advice about IRAs so I'll soon be opening one of those. My big question is, how should I consolidate these under fewer roofs?
My first thought is to rollover the 403(b) to Mercer / Empower (and continue rolling over if I switch jobs) and move the brokerage account to Merrill Edge. I know Merrill Edge is not half the product that Schwab's self-directed offerings are but I like the convenience of BofA and my investments outside retirement will probably be limited to a 3-fund portfolio plus some I-bonds or CDs.
My smaller questions are: 1. How much return am I leaving on the table by sticking with BofA for savings/CDs? 2. What higher-yield options can near the convenience of BofA ATM coverage / app usability / other random banking services such as foreign currency orders? 3. Will moving my brokerage account be a taxable event? 4. Are there similar, but better tie-ins between retail and low-/no-fee investment banks that I should consider?