@DrGoogle, iirc, they won’t let you apply more than 6 months in advance. My recollection is that it took 2 months, even if they all of a sudden were dubious about my age (never questioned it while they were taking 
).
@WalkingTessie, yes, sort-of. Typically Roth is worth the most (0 tax), taxable next (CG tax when you sell and some taxation even before you sell), and then tax deferred accounts multiply by (1 minus marginal-tax-rate to get the real value). Assets with RMDs are also less valuable because you can’t fully control the timing of the withdrawals.
sigh As I suspected… 
As I mentioned in my Post #6459, paying taxes was always part of the deal with 401k and IRA money. You got the tax deduction upfront (saved those taxes during your work years when, presumably, maximizing income was a good thing) and used that money to enhance the growth in your account.
When you start withdrawing the money from the 401k and IRA accounts, the expectation is that your retirement-era tax rate should be lower. It is not the case for everyone but it may be for you before SS and RMDs kick in. Retirement (i.e., lower earned income) allows one to manage from which account funds are withdrawn. It’s a good thing that you are focusing on that aspect of pre-retirement planning now.
I put the data from my annual statements into Excel and put in a couple of parameters on what I think will be the capital gains rate and my regular income rates during retirement, and hence adjust down the money I really will have.
You’re right it isn’t as great as we all imagined 30 years ago when we just looked at it as “tax free” and didn’t consider the “deferred”. If you’ve planned what you need during retirement based on your current income, and if that is mostly earned, then you’re still OK since the withdrawals from 401(k)s and IRAs won’t incur any more taxes than your current income, plus you have the bonus of not having to pay FICA, not to mention contributions to retirement.
The one thing I’ve never figured out where it makes sense is tIRA contributions where your income is too high to get a tax deferral. So you pay full taxes when you contribute, and you don’t enjoy CG rates when you withdraw - you just avoid the taxes on the annual 1099 amounts.
Someday I will pay more attention to all the advice about taxes etc. But for now I am thankful to have significant retirement savings. Some of my friends are not so lucky and think/hope SS will be enough. When I ask what they will do about pre-65 medical, they say Hmmmm…
It does seem like a smart thing to convert whatever you can to a Roth, during the years that you are paying lower tax rates. Unless tax rates go down on higher amounts of money, I feel like we are going to pay a high rate with the RMDs added to pension. Much better to convert at a lower rate, in earlier years. That is, in particular, if you can pay the taxes outside of the converted Roth, which is unpleasant to do, but a good idea.
At what threshold should one start to worry about paying tax on RMD?
another thing I need to do more research is about this “self insured”. Someone said that you don’t need to buy insurance for long term care if you could be “self insured”.
Dad2, use Turbotax, I believe up to $74k after deduction but I’m not 100% sure to stay in bracket 15%.
Just saw this article in the WSJ about withdrawal strategies:
Google the title for a link if necessary.
Thank you @DrGoogle
found an online estimator. A $2 million balance in IRA +401K will have a RMD of about $73K at age 70.
A pension and SS will push that over $74K.
We talk a lot about the 4% rule - by age 73 the RMD is higher than 4%, and increases every year. I guess discipline will be required not to spend it all every year.
I hope our IRAs are worth $2mil by the time we start pulling it out. 
“We talk a lot about the 4% rule - by age 73 the RMD is higher than 4%, and increases every year. I guess discipline will be required not to spend it all every year.”
Oops. I feel kind of stupid. I just assumed that the RMD would be the same every year, starting at age 70 1/2. Thanks for blowing that fantasy! :((
There is a table on the IRS, I download this to my spreadsheet.
Here’s the table. Divide 100 by the divisor to the get percentage for that year:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/baldwin/2014/03/17/rmd-tables-for-iras/2/
Killjoy.
Ah well, according to my company average, we will be long dead before having to take out RMD’s anyways. It will be our kids problems.
Common Bus, you will live till 100 and so will I. Unfortunately, you and I will still be posting on CollegeConfidential, that’s the only bad thing I can see.
Ha ha, DrGoogle, and we’ll still be talking about how hot we are in our old lady clothes!
I would like to live longer. I am very healthy, get massive amounts of bloodwork every year to verify that, but people are dying around me at my age, with the average age of death being 64. We are trying to avoid work as much as possible and try to only do easy trips. Though apparently now we are flying live anthrax around (with the poison and the radioactive that we already know about), so what the heck. I guess you have to die sometime.
^ Has anyone figured out what it is about your job that is killing people so young? Is it just stress-related?
@Dadof3
I had to read this part a couple of times. 
I believe you meant “tax deduction” – i.e., you were referring to non-deductible tIRAs on which you do not get a tax deduction. But taxes are deferred on the ongoing earnings on the amount contributed ($5500/$6500 each year).
I think if one is able to do the back-door Roth conversion cleanly each year, this is the route to go: make a non-deductible tIRA contribution each year, then immediately convert to Roth (as had been discussed across this thread). However, the existence of a large pre-tax tIRA balance that far outweighs the basis in the non-deductible tIRA is a problem.