We're at a point in our lives in which our expenses are low and we need to start saving seriously for retirement (wife and I are in our mid-50s). Gross income is somewhere between $90-95k depending on quarterly bonuses and side-gigs. No interest or dividend income to speak of. No capital gains (in fact we should be able to show capital losses thanks to some bad stock-picking). Married filing jointly.
Assume we wanted to maximize everything available to us. I've been doing some research and want to see if I've got this right.
18,000 Wife 401k (plus employer match, that doesn't count against the $18k--correct?)
6,000 Wife 401k catch-up
18,000 My 401k (not eligible until July 1 but assume for now I could pack it all into 6 months)
6,000 My 401k catch-up
6,500 Wife tIRA (we're under the threshold for phase-out)
6,500 My tIRA
3,400 Wife HSA (we are each on our employer's health plan, mine isn't HDHP)
1,000 Wife HSA catch-up
This would be a total of $65,400. Assuming for the moment that we could live on the tiny take-home pay and our savings, does this look right? Anything I'm overlooking?
With the standard deduction of $12,700 and the personal exemptions of $8100, and capital losses of $3,000, we've wiped out $86,200 of taxable income. Our federal taxes should be almost $0 at this point, can this be right?
Now I just recently learned of the savers' credit. Would we qualify under the above scenario? What would that do for us tax-wise in addition to all the above?
Sorry for the elementary nature of some of these questions but we've never done any retirement or tax planning until now. It's time to catch up.
Thanks for any comments or advice on any of the above.