First year of FIRE, trying to calculate income for ACA

[Happybara]

You'd think this would be relatively straightforward, but I've had a heck of a time trying to figure it out, and I'm hoping somebody here can point us in the right direction.

So here's the situation: At the very end of 2015, my husband and I got a financial windfall from selling some old company stock. This pushed us over the line into early retirement for 2016. Neither of us have had full-time jobs this year, and we've lived off of the invested money.

Now that it's come time to sign up for an ACA healthcare plan though, I'm kind of at a loss as to how to estimate our income. Based on some parts of the Vanguard site, it looks like the taxable income could be less than 10k, while other "investment income calculator" tools put it at closer to 80k. Vanguard also pointed me to a capital gains estimator, but unfortunately most of our funds weren't on it. Looking at previous tax year documents from Vanguard isn't terribly helpful either, since we're dealing with a much bigger amount of money in different types of funds this year.

Anyway, if anybody with more FIRE experience knows roughly how to calculate your income from investments, I'd appreciate any pointers! (Also, if this has been addressed before, feel free to boot me over to a relevant thread!)

Thanks in advance.

[jim555]

Open ended funds make capital gain distributions you can't predict.  Maybe look at ETFs which tend to have lower cap gain distributions?

[MDM]

Vanguard also pointed me to a capital gains estimator, but unfortunately most of our funds weren't on it.

If it was Preliminary capital gains estimates, note that "Funds not listed do not expect, as of October 31, 2016, to distribute capital gains in December."

[Spork]

This is not perfect, but I just estimate this from the previous year's dividends.  I don't know how complicated your investment stash is, but if it is only a few stocks/funds, can you look back and see what $X invested would have generated in 2015?