A Net Worth Tracker for Recent Retirees: What to Track

The first month of retirement is the moment a net worth tracker quietly changes jobs. Up to age 65 it answered "are we on track"; from now on it has to answer "where does this month's withdrawal come from." The Federal Reserve's 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances puts median household net worth for ages 65–74 at $409,900, with the same cohort holding the largest median retirement-account balance of any age group at $200,000 — a balance sheet that is, on paper, ready to support a withdrawal but rarely arranged on a single page in a way that makes the decision obvious.^[][]

The pre-retirement version of this tool was built around contributions, glide-path drift, and catch-up usage — the language of accumulation. The recent-retiree version has to be built around three different lines: which account each next dollar should come from, how much Roth-conversion room is left this year, and how close MAGI is to the IRMAA tier that defines next year's Medicare premium. None of those are visible on a Personal-Capital-style aggregate dashboard. They are visible on a balance sheet that has been redesigned for decumulation.

What a recent-retiree balance sheet should actually display

A useful post-retirement net worth tracker still shows the four account types — pre-tax, Roth, taxable, HSA — but the new value comes from three lines layered on top of them.

The first is withdrawal-order accounting: a per-account "next $X to spend comes from here" tag. The classic ordering for most recent retirees is taxable first while the gap years are open, traditional second through Roth conversions, and Roth last. That sequence is also the largest discretionary item in Vanguard's Advisor's Alpha framework, which estimates tax-efficient withdrawal sequencing alone is worth up to 120 basis points per year of after-tax return.^[]

The second is Roth-conversion-headroom-to-date: a year-to-date number against an annual target. The gap years between retirement and Social Security at 70 are the window where ordinary income drops to nearly zero, opening bracket space that won't reappear once SS, RMDs, and any part-time income stack up at 73. The calculation rendered below sizes that bracket headroom for a typical 65-year-old MFJ couple at $63,750 per year — almost half a million dollars of Roth-conversion capacity across a 7-year gap window.

The third is IRMAA-tier headroom: a gauge that shows how much MAGI room is left before the next Medicare premium tier triggers. The 2026 IRMAA tier-1 MFJ threshold is $218,000, and a single dollar over the line costs the couple $2,297 in extra Part B and Part D premiums for the entire year, with the highest tier reaching $6,936 per spouse per year.^[] The two-year lookback means today's number drives the premium two years out, so a tracker that shows current-year MAGI without the threshold marker is hiding the decision that matters most.

Withdrawal order is a balance-sheet decision, not a tax decision

Pulling $80,000/year from the taxable account first preserves the traditional IRA's tax-deferred growth, opens 12% bracket headroom for systematic Roth conversions, and slowly drains the account whose unrealized gains receive a basis step-up at death anyway under IRC §1014.^[] Pulling proportionally from every account does the opposite: it leaves a large traditional balance that compounds into a forced RMD problem at age 73 (or 75 for anyone born 1960 or later under SECURE 2.0), at which point Social Security stacks on top of the RMD and pushes the household into the 22% bracket and across IRMAA tiers.^[]

There is one specific monthly tracker line that captures all of this: the running ratio of "ordinary-income recognized year-to-date" to "12% bracket ceiling minus standard deduction." When that ratio is below 1.0, the next conversion is at 12%; when it crosses 1.0, the next dollar is at 22%. For the same household that already used the pre-retirement balance sheet to track catch-up contributions, this is the inverse view of the same information: the bracket-fill-rate, not the bucket-fill-rate.

The basis step-up and the conversion window are the two biggest decumulation moves

Two specific decisions disproportionately shape post-retirement net worth, and neither is captured on a generic tracker.

The first is the basis step-up at death. IRS Publication 551 confirms that taxable property receives a basis adjustment to fair market value when the holder dies, while traditional IRAs, 401(k)s, and annuities do not.^[] A retiree who draws from taxable first and lets the IRA ride is doing the opposite of what a step-up-aware estate plan would suggest. The dashboard line that fixes this is "unrealized gain in taxable account" tracked next to age, so the household sees the trade between spending the gain now and preserving it for heirs.

The second is the gap-year Roth-conversion ladder. Each year's conversion plan should be sized off two ceilings — top of the 12% bracket and bottom of the next IRMAA tier. A small three-column table — planned annual conversion, year-to-date converted, bracket-headroom remaining — keeps the household from arriving at year-end with unused 12% bracket space that gets traded for a 22% bracket year once RMDs begin.

A small caveat: this framework is least useful for retirees with substantial defined-benefit pensions, where the income gap before Social Security is small or zero. The pension itself eats most of the 12% bracket headroom and the IRMAA exposure is structural rather than discretionary. The withdrawal-order question still applies; the dollar figures shrink.

What I'd actually display on page one in retirement

If I had just retired, the page-one view would be five lines, not fifteen:

1. Net worth by tax-treatment bucket (pre-tax, Roth, taxable, HSA), with month-over-month delta.
2. Rolling-12-month withdrawal rate against the portfolio.
3. Year-to-date Roth conversions, with a thin progress bar against both the 12% bracket and the IRMAA-tier ceilings.
4. Months of expenses held in cash and short-duration bonds.
5. Present value of expected Social Security benefits — claimed at 70 and discounted at a 3%–4% real rate — shown as a balance-sheet asset.

The last line usually surprises people. A couple expecting $4,800/month combined at 70, with a 25-year payout and a 3.5% real discount rate, is sitting on roughly $900,000 of present value that doesn't show up on a Personal Capital aggregate. Putting it on the page changes the perceived risk of every other line.

The point of a net worth tracker for recent retirees is not to make the household feel wealthier or poorer than they are. It is to make every withdrawal decision visible in advance — which account, how much, and how close to the next bracket. That is a different document than the one that got them to retirement, and it deserves a different dashboard.