5 year Roth "seasoning" living expenses, part of 25x living expenses?

[giddyup05]

Are your 5 year living expenses while waiting for your Roth conversion ladder to kick in part of or separate from your ~25x living expenses? For instance, if I am aiming for 800k/32k year in FIRE, and I need 160k sitting around for the 5 year period, is that 160k part of the 800k, or is it separate, leaving me to save a full 960k before quitting work? I expect I would move that 160k into a safer vehicle than 100% stocks as I'll need it relatively quickly, so at the end of the 5 years I'd end up with 640k instead of 800k with no growth, but it will be 5 years down the road with potentially 5 years of gains depending on what it's in. ?

I feel like this is a dumb question but I'm unsure of the answer.

[MDM]

It's difficult to condense everything into a one line equation.

Expenses includes everything, including taxes.  One may pay more for the first five years, then less after that.  Take a rough average total expense, multiply by 25, and that's as good as you'll do for this simplified approach.

For more details, consider Best and/or Recommended Retirement Calculators - Bogleheads.org.

[John123]

Are your 5 year living expenses while waiting for your Roth conversion ladder to kick in part of or separate from your ~25x living expenses? For instance, if I am aiming for 800k/32k year in FIRE, and I need 160k sitting around for the 5 year period, is that 160k part of the 800k, or is it separate, leaving me to save a full 960k before quitting work? I expect I would move that 160k into a safer vehicle than 100% stocks as I'll need it relatively quickly, so at the end of the 5 years I'd end up with 640k instead of 800k with no growth, but it will be 5 years down the road with potentially 5 years of gains depending on what it's in. ?

I feel like this is a dumb question but I'm unsure of the answer.

The 160k is part of the 800k. The 160K portion just needs to be in a non-retirement account.  Here is a really good blog post about the ladder: http://rootofgood.com/roth-ira-conversion-ladder-early-retirement/

[MrMoogle]

The 160k is included in the 25x number, but you want to keep it invested, not pulled out and stuck not gaining returns.  If it's not gaining returns, then it probably shouldn't be included in the 25x number.

Your 160k can be in taxable accounts, Roth contributions, or Roth (from tIRA) conversions.  If you don't have any Roth contributions, you'll want to save it in your taxable account (and a little extra in case the market drops) so you can start your conversion ladder after retiring.  So if you're close to retiring, and everything is saved in tIRA/401k, then you might want to stop contributing to those and put it in Roth or taxable.  Sadly that will increase your tax rate for those years.