My wife and I are getting within a few years of hitting our FI number so we're starting to plan what life looks like in Post-FI existence. The bulk of our assets are and will be in tax-deferred vehicles and the plan is to execute a Roth conversion ladder once we quit our jobs. My thought was to establish residency in a tax-free state to reduce state taxes (We currently live in Massachusetts, so we'd pay 5.1% on everything in excess of $8,800), but I started to consider the impact that would have on the cost of health care. MA subsidizes the cost of health plans for lower-income residents; I pay $126/month as long as we keep our income under 300% of the FPL (easy to do with a Mustachian spending level). I did a little looking at average insurance costs on the Kaiser Foundation website and was surprised to see that a health plan would cost us nearly $400/month in the states I spot checked. Is that in line with what others are actually seeing in other parts of the country? If so, seems like it makes more sense to maintain MA residency as the additional health insurance costs would far outweigh the state tax on the Roth conversions.
