Personal Investments • What post-retirement land mines should I look out for?

I'm likely on the cusp of retirement and working on plans. As a reasonably financially literate person I think I'm in pretty good shape and have a model worked out, but what worries me a little bit are the unknown unknowns that have never before crossed my experience, which I think are all healthcare-related.

I'm not worried about hyperoptimizations here and I understand normal tax deferment strategies and marginal tax rates and zero-rated LTCG and SORR during the changeover from accumulation to decumulation and all that good stuff, what I'm worried about are things I've never seen before that have the potential to significantly disrupt my model.

Stuff I know about:

• NIIT over $250k MAGI, not exactly a cliff and not unique to retirement but in switching from wage income to retirement income it's potentially much more relevant. (Only healthcare-related in that it was instituted to help pay for the ACA.)
• IRMAA. Fixed-sum Medicare premium increases at various MAGI cliffs.
• PTC reimbursement due over 4xFPL if one is buying subsidized health insurance. Currently phased but I believe will be another cliff starting in 2026 unless the law changes.
• Medicaid Estate Recovery: if one ends up on Medicaid at end-of-life one can expect the state to come after one's estate for one's home afterwards. (I'm in Massachusetts that has a quite aggressive state version of this as well.)

Any other potentially nasty surprises I'm missing? I'm probably eventually going to talk to a fee-only advisor for a reality check but it will be a much more useful conversation if I go into it with understanding and a plan.

Thank you for any insights!

Statistics: Posted by glitchy — Sat Mar 30, 2024 8:30 am — Replies 9 — Views 729

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