Life Situation:
Married filing jointly, I'm 31 and my partner is 32. Unique situation - we quit our jobs in Aug/Sept 2016 to travel for ~1 year. No current residence in US.
Gross Salary/Wages:
Currently $0 in income. Thus no pre-tax deductions. (Before quitting, we were making ~$8,200/month in income - ~$7,000 of that from my partner. He very much does not want to return to that work, but it's always an option).
Current monthly expenses:
<$3100/month. Planning to get closer to $2,100/month in the next few months by slowing down travel.
+$48/month for storage unit that we should get rid of whenever we return to the States.
Obtained an ACA exemption for 2016. We anticipate doing the same for 2017, though haven't reviewed other options.
Assets:
Partner's 401k - $55,000 (still w former employer)
My Trad IRA - $10,000 (Betterment)
Partner Pension - $23,000
My Pension - $4,000
Roth IRA - $2,100
(Investments are lower than I'd like - considering former income - as we paid for my 4-year graduate degree in cash - during which time I wasn't working)
EF: $15,000 Checking/Savings
Remaining travel fund: ~$19,000 Checking/Savings
No debt.
Specific Question(s):
New to the forums, so thanks in advance for your help and patience! I've been reading the Taxes section, as well as MadFIentist and Investopedia, but haven't quite found the answer I'm looking for. Partner and I quit our jobs in August and Sept 2016 and now we're vagabonding. We don't have any income yet in 2017, and while we will eventually need to side hustle/get jobs again, it's unlikely that we'll have much, if any, income in 2017.
Is there a way for us to leverage the unemployment when/if moving investments? If we rollover partner's 401k to Trad IRA, could we then rollover <$18,000 to a Roth IRA and avoid paying taxes on it since it would be our only income this year? I feel like there's an obvious piece of this puzzle I'm missing.
At a minimum, I'd like to move the $55k 401k to a Trad IRA that I can invest in low-cost index funds. We already have an (empty) brokerage account with Schwab. Would Schwab have a decent selection of broad market low-cost index funds (I know they try to compete w Vanguard) or should I just open a Vanguard acct? Also, what can we do with our pensions? We irresponsibly know very little about them, and it's been difficult to request the information from our former employers, but we're working on it.
Thank you!