HoneyNut
Senior Member
I really hope to retire later this year (though still swinging back and forth between "no, I need a little more saved first" and "woo-hoo I'm going to just jump").
I need to learn the nuts and bolts of how a person removes money from investments/IRAs to live off of. Like do I sell a little each month and save part toward property taxes, or do I only sell enough to make ends meet and wait until property taxes are due to sell a lump? Will the investment company (I use Fidelity) have any feature that makes the best choice of what to sell? Somehow for the inherited IRA from my mom, the RMD just gets disbursed every December without me needing to choose anything to sell, so I'm hoping there is a feature like that for everything.
Also, the little inherited IRA keeps growing even though I get the RMD each year (except 2020 that I chose the 'skip' option that Covid relief gave), and I am worried that my mom's money is invested well but maybe mine is invested poorly and will just shrink-shrink-shrink. But I don't know if it is feasible to sell out of bad stuff and buy good stuff because maybe then I'd have to pay a lot of gains taxes. I really am clueless on this.
Can anyone explain what they do and/or recommend some easy books or past threads about this? I started to look at the early retirement forums to research but got so depressed that everyone there is rich, has millions, and retires decades early. I need advice for poor barely will squeak by type retirement planning.
I need to learn the nuts and bolts of how a person removes money from investments/IRAs to live off of. Like do I sell a little each month and save part toward property taxes, or do I only sell enough to make ends meet and wait until property taxes are due to sell a lump? Will the investment company (I use Fidelity) have any feature that makes the best choice of what to sell? Somehow for the inherited IRA from my mom, the RMD just gets disbursed every December without me needing to choose anything to sell, so I'm hoping there is a feature like that for everything.
Also, the little inherited IRA keeps growing even though I get the RMD each year (except 2020 that I chose the 'skip' option that Covid relief gave), and I am worried that my mom's money is invested well but maybe mine is invested poorly and will just shrink-shrink-shrink. But I don't know if it is feasible to sell out of bad stuff and buy good stuff because maybe then I'd have to pay a lot of gains taxes. I really am clueless on this.
Can anyone explain what they do and/or recommend some easy books or past threads about this? I started to look at the early retirement forums to research but got so depressed that everyone there is rich, has millions, and retires decades early. I need advice for poor barely will squeak by type retirement planning.