Timothy Sumer

In this video I go over my plan to access retirement accounts early in FIRE. The plan to access these accounts tax free and also pay no penalty. The trick is to have a low ordinary income (earned) income. If you're single, you want to keep your ordinary income below $12,400. Ideally you would want to allow for as much conversion as you can without going over the standard deduction. If you're married, then it's double that at $24,800. You convert this amount and pop it into a brokerage retirement account at Vanguard, Schwab, Fidelity.  Invest the capital in the account in your favorite investment and let it sit there for 5 years. Do this each year building up a chunk converted. Each chunk converted will need to meet the 5 year holding period before it can be pulled out tax free, penalty free before 59 1/2. In most cases, you would want to draw down the traditional retirement accounts to ZERO if you can before the RMD (Required minimum distributions