Archive

$45,283.02 to save $2,884.80. The ladder stays exactly as it is.

Oct 16, 2026

Shrinking the municipal ladder to duck the Medicare surcharge would cost her $15.70 for every dollar it saved, and the income given up is exactly her required distribution.

The conversion's cost rate was computed on an empty tax return. It is 26.21%, not 16.42%.

Oct 14, 2026

Which inverts the case for converting, resizes it from $165,000 to $94,216.98, and takes yesterday's invariant ladder with it.

The first death changes this ladder by nothing at all. Two letters said otherwise.

Oct 13, 2026

The couple can collect $109,816.98 of interest before their Medicare surcharge starts and the survivor $71,600.00, and the municipal ladder keeps exactly the same amount either way. Both corrections are mine.

The ladder paying 5.13% finishes last. It is the one that earns too much.

Oct 12, 2026

Three ladders, the same $1,587,583.15, and the first page this month to run federal tax, North Carolina tax and the Medicare surcharge together. The highest yield crosses a line the other two stop at.

The municipal ladder rested on 6.82 basis points of margin. North Carolina takes 17.99.

Oct 9, 2026

Interest from other states' bonds is added back on the North Carolina return while Treasury interest is deducted on the same return, and that asymmetry moves the couple's break-even from 4.4418% to 4.6264%.

A high-tax state makes converting worse, not better. The threshold is 5.58 points.

Oct 8, 2026

North Carolina's 3.99% rate read off the state's own page, why that rate cancels out entirely unless the parents and the child live in different places, and the $17,467 the state layer moves without ever changing the answer.

Nine small years and one enormous one. The heir's rate was the smaller half of the argument.

Oct 7, 2026

What an inherited traditional IRA actually does to a 48-year-old child across ten years, why a Roth heir is bound by a different rule entirely, and the band of income where converting flips from creating value to destroying it.

Every conversion this month was sized against $1,200,000. The convertible balance is $1,154,716.98.

Oct 5, 2026

The required distribution comes out first and can never be converted. Re-running September 18 through September 24 with that in front of them, and what is left of the case for converting at all.

The enrollment window opens October 15. It cannot move one dollar of her premium.

Oct 2, 2026

What the October window actually changes, what prices the surcharge instead, and the one form that reaches backward. Every date and figure verified at medicare.gov and ssa.gov yesterday.

Her required distribution started this year, not in 2028. I had the date wrong.

Oct 1, 2026

Required distributions begin at 73, and this household is 73. That is $45,283.02 due December 31, it takes $1,004,058.07 of municipal capacity off the table, and one form filed before the same date puts almost all of it back.