Example plan · Withdrawal order
Draw your accounts in the right order
Carol and James, 63 and 61, are pre-tax heavy — most of their nest egg sits in a traditional 401(k), with smaller taxable and Roth accounts on the side. No Roth conversions here: just three different orders to draw the same accounts down, and a very different result for taxes and what’s left to leave behind.
What these mean
- Taxable-first (what NestVida uses) — spend taxable/brokerage savings first, then pre-tax accounts (401(k)/IRA), and leave Roth for last.
- Pro-rata (proportional) — draw a little from every account each year, in proportion to its balance.
- Roth-first — spend the tax-free Roth account first.
Withdrawal order matters — avoid the costly mistakes
$2,287,394 less legacy from one mistake: spending Roth first
After-tax net worth over time, same starting balances and spending — only the order the three accounts get drawn down in changes. Illustrative figures from the NestVida engine.
Same plan, same three orders — lifetime tax and what's left to heirs. Illustrative figures from the NestVida engine.
About this plan
- Who
- Carol & James
- Filing status
- Married filing jointly
- Current ages
- 63 & 61
- Retire at
- 64
- Plan through age
- 95
- Taxable / brokerage
- $250,000
- Traditional (pre-tax)
- $2,600,000
- Roth
- $900,000
- Monthly spending goal
- $8,000/mo
- Social Security (monthly)
- $2,600 + $1,700
At a glance
Every version of this plan starts with the exact same balances and spending — no Roth conversions, no other changes. Only the order the three accounts get drawn down in is different.
Spending Roth first is the clear mistake here — it gives up years of tax-free growth and leaves a much bigger pre-tax balance to force through required withdrawals later. Smart and Pro-rata are both reasonable choices — which edges out the other depends on assumptions specific to the household.
Success = share of 1,000 Monte Carlo market paths the plan survives.
The same plan, three withdrawal orders
Same balances, same spending, same market — the only thing that changes below is which account gets drawn down first, second, and last.
| Metric | Smart | Roth-first | Pro-rata |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lifetime taxes | $731,552 | $920,267 | $689,792 |
| After-tax legacy | $5,197,323 | $2,909,929 | $5,491,845 |
| Probability of success | 94% | 90% | 94% |
How each order compares
- •Roth-first is the clear, reliable mistake. Spending the one truly tax-free account before you have to lets the (much larger) pre-tax account keep compounding, untouched, in the background — so the required-withdrawal tax bill in your 70s lands bigger, and there's no Roth left to soften it or pass to heirs. In this plan that's about $188,715 more lifetime tax and $2,287,394 less legacy than drawing taxable first.
- •Taxable-first (what NestVida uses) and pro-rata are both strong, and close. For pre-tax-heavy households like this one, pro-rata can edge out taxable-first on lifetime tax and legacy — a real but small, assumption-dependent gap that depends on return sequence and future tax brackets. Taxable-first is simpler to follow and keeps Roth untouched longest: it's tax-free growth, flexible for spending, and the best asset to leave heirs.
Why NestVida uses one withdrawal order
The truly optimal order depends on things no tool can pin down in advance — your exact return sequence, future tax law, other income, and how your situation changes over 30+ years. Modeling a personalized "optimal" order honestly, for every household, is genuinely hard to get right, and the gap between the strong choices above is small enough that overselling precision here would be misleading. So rather than promise an optimization it can't fully back up, NestVida draws one transparent, widely-recommended order — taxable first, then pre-tax, Roth last — that avoids the clearly costly mistake (Roth-first) without pretending to a precision that isn't real.
In this example, taxable-first and pro-rata land within about 6% of each other on lifetime tax and legacy — a small, assumption-dependent difference either way. The reliable win isn't picking one of those two over the other; it's simply not spending Roth first.
Make it yours
These are starting numbers. Load this plan into the live app and swap in your own balances, spending, and Social Security — everything recalculates instantly, and nothing leaves your browser.