What income should you target after FIRE with Obamacare?

In the last couple of posts we’ve discussed how to compute ACA (Obamacare) subsidies and marginal subsidy loss rates vs income (what I’m calling a “hidden” income tax).

Now let’s look at the next question I had regarding ACA subsidies

Is it worth increasing your income via long term capital gains to take advantage of the 0% LT cap gains tax bracket (i.e., tax gain harvesting), even if it means a lower ACA subsidy?

Continue Reading »

What income should you target after FIRE with Obamacare? Read More »

How to Compute ACA (Obamacare) Subsidies

For quite a while now I’ve been interested in figuring out how subsidies are calculated for Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance (probably better known as Obamacare, but I prefer ACA because it’s shorter to say and write).

Why? Because health insurance, and all the stress of how to get it when you don’t have access to employer-provided insurance, is a big topic in the Financial Independence (FI) community. 

Continue Reading »

How to Compute ACA (Obamacare) Subsidies Read More »

Our 2022 Expenses

Finally! I’ve been wanting to do an expenses summary post for quite some time now. I’ve been discussing it in “Future Work” sections since the beginning of the year, and probably before that.

I already do a bunch of (fun spreadsheet) work to track our expenses every month and year, so I’m excited to share all that info in a more public way. I’m hoping this will be a great way to hold my wife and I accountable in our finances and lifestyle.

I’m also excited to show others what’s possible: if you’re spending more than us and are looking for ideas to cut down your expenses, hopefully this post will help.

Continue Reading »

Our 2022 Expenses Read More »

New RMD Starting Ages and Tax Brackets, Faster TPM Tool, eBook Released, Site Updates

This week I worked on a wide variety of things, instead of focusing on a single main task. Hence the long list in the title of the post.

It’s amazing how much you can get done when your wonderful spouse takes the kids out of town to visit family for the weekend!

And of course I’m sure everyone will agree that there’s nothing more fun than working on personal finance content all weekend.

Continue Reading »

New RMD Starting Ages and Tax Brackets, Faster TPM Tool, eBook Released, Site Updates Read More »

New Retirement Withdrawal Strategy Diagrams

This week I did two main things: create a couple diagrams and fix an acronym mistake.

Doesn’t sound like much, right? How long can it take to put together a couple diagrams and fix a typo? I must be slacking!

Well, turns out those diagrams were some of the most challenging I’ve ever done, and that acronym mistake was spread across lots of posts, diagrams, and plots that I had to recreate. Bleh… 

Continue Reading »

New Retirement Withdrawal Strategy Diagrams Read More »

Roth Early Withdrawal Updates and New Withdrawal Strategy Pages

It’s been tough to get stuff done this week here in Austin, as we’ve had a wicked ice storm blast through. Why is it tough to do stuff on a computer during an ice storm? Two words: no school.

But I still managed to get a couple things done: a big upgrade to the Roth withdrawal tax and penalty models, and I finally finished a total overhaul of the Traditional and Tax and Penalty Minimization (TPM) withdrawal strategy write-ups, which I previously had on the FIRE Withdrawal Strategy Algorithms page

Continue Reading »

Roth Early Withdrawal Updates and New Withdrawal Strategy Pages Read More »