A 68-year-old single woman is enjoying retirement. Monthly, she gets $3,100 from Social Security, $5,400 from a $1.6 million portfolio at a 4% withdrawal rate, and a $4,000 pension. Add it up and she has $12,500 a month, or $150,000 a year.
But how much does she really get each month? And is she at a disadvantage compared to married couples?
Why Single Filers Get Squeezed
Every meaningful threshold in the retirement tax code arrives at roughly half the married-filing-jointly number. Two spouses splitting $150,000 land in comfortable territory. One person with the same $150,000 is treated differently.
Look at the 2026 single brackets: 12% starts at $12,400, 22% starts at $50,400, and 24% starts at $105,700. Her taxable income, after the $16,100 standard deduction and the additional senior deduction added by the One Big Beautiful Bill for taxpayers 65 and older, runs deep into the 22% band and clips the 24% band. A married couple with identical gross income would top out in the 12% band.
Medicare punishes single filers the same way. The standard 2026 Part B premium is $202.90 a month, with no IRMAA surcharge at or below $109,000 of modified adjusted gross income. The first surcharge tier runs from $109,000 to $137,000, and the second tier runs from $137,000 to $171,000. At $150,000 she sits squarely in tier two, which pushes her total Medicare cost to roughly $4,300 a year before any Medigap or drug plan. A married couple would need $274,000 to hit that same surcharge.
What $9,400 a Month Actually Buys
After federal tax, state tax, and health premiums, she nets roughly $9,400 a month in real spending money. With the mortgage gone, that covers groceries, utilities, property tax, and insurance. She funds about $15,000 a year of travel, writes generous birthday and holiday checks to nieces and nephews, and still adds to a taxable brokerage account most months. Inflation is a real headwind, and the 2027 Social Security COLA is tracking near 3%, which helps but does not fully offset healthcare and property-tax creep.
One Move That Could Help
Her required minimum distributions begin at age 73, not 75, because SECURE 2.0’s age-75 start applies only to people born in 1960 or later. That gives her a narrow window to reshape the tax profile of the $1.6 million portfolio, the same low-tax gap between the last paycheck and the first RMD that we sized up in a free Roth conversion guide here. Two levers to consider:
- Roth Conversions in the Pre-RMD Window: Filling the top of the 22% bracket with conversions now, before mandatory withdrawals stack on top of pension and Social Security income, prevents a permanent slide into the 24% band later. It also shrinks future IRMAA exposure, since Roth withdrawals do not count toward MAGI. The catch: each conversion raises this year’s MAGI and can trigger the very IRMAA tier she is trying to escape. The right size is usually the amount that fills the 22% bracket without crossing a Medicare threshold.
- Qualified Charitable Distributions at 70½: Once eligible, she can send IRA dollars directly to charity, satisfying part of the eventual RMD without adding a dime to taxable income or MAGI. For someone who already gives, this makes a lot of sense.
What to Evaluate First
Map every dollar of projected income against the 24% bracket line at $105,700 and the IRMAA tier-two line at $137,000, then decide how much Roth conversion room exists between now and age 73.
Every year of pre-RMD flexibility skipped is a year of Roth conversion capacity gone for good. A fee-only advisor earns their keep here because the IRMAA cliff, the 22-to-24% jump, and the taxation of Social Security all sit within a few thousand dollars of one another. Single retirees need a written tax plan more than couples do, because every guardrail arrives at half the income.
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