This is our first year of "retirement". I put that in quotes because DH (53) isn't admitting to anyone, even himself, that he's retired even though he's been out of work since May of last year and isn't looking for a job. But I digress...
I'm not sure where to even begin with planning. For decades, he's had a solid salary, so we just took our lumps at tax time. Sure, we maximized his 401(k), but with no kids and, eventually, no mortgage, there wasn't much planning to do. Then he was laid off and here we are.
Now we have little income (about $15k in stock options exercised this year, so that's W-2 income), plus about $2k in taxable dividends and interest, and $3600 gain on a stock sale (trying to whittle away our exposure to his old company's stock).
By the end of the year, we'll have about $11-12k in medical expenses, and they're a mix of COBRA premiums (first 4 months) and ACA premiums (unsubsidized), and other expenses. DH has an almost visceral negative response to taking subsidies, although he doesn't have a problem with other ways of working within the tax code. Me, I'd be fine with taking it now as written into the tax code but I'd be fine with there being an asset test as well.
We don't need cash (have a few year's worth of expenses in non-volitile accounts so I can sleep at night).
So we could sell more stock and avoid Cap gains on that, but we don't need the cash. Maybe invest in other dividend stock? Put it in an IRA? Traditional? Roth?
We could do a Roth conversion, but how much to minimize the effect on our taxes.
Can we deduct medical expenses if we don't take the subsidies? Surely the tax forms won't "force" us to take subsidies (I use TTax, so not sure how that will work). I can't find a 1040 for 2014 online to even play with the numbers.
Every time I try to figure this stuff out my head spins (and DH's eyes glaze over).