You can tackle this one of two ways. The first way is to do what Toons describes, which is to mathematically work out the after-tax value of everything in all of your accounts, so that you're looking at "true" values after all taxes are accounted for. This tackles the subject from the "assets" side of the ledger. One challenge with this in particular, for those people some years away from retirement, is a lack of certainty around tax rates in retirement, including state taxes if they foresee possibly moving to a different state.
The other way is to do what many people here do, which is to account for those taxes on the "spend" side of ledger. Rather than trying to modify your current assets' values as per the first option above, one simply accounts for those eventual taxes as part of your spending in retirement. So, along with your property taxes, food, health insurance, gasoline, and so forth... you also include income taxes. So if someone is figuring on needing, say, $150K/year in retirement, part of that $150k is income taxes on those bonds and equities you mention in your post. When accounted for this way, in the annual retirement spend, there is no need to adjust the valuations of your assets/accounts as you describe.
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The other way is to do what many people here do, which is to account for those taxes on the "spend" side of ledger. Rather than trying to modify your current assets' values as per the first option above, one simply accounts for those eventual taxes as part of your spending in retirement. So, along with your property taxes, food, health insurance, gasoline, and so forth... you also include income taxes. So if someone is figuring on needing, say, $150K/year in retirement, part of that $150k is income taxes on those bonds and equities you mention in your post. When accounted for this way, in the annual retirement spend, there is no need to adjust the valuations of your assets/accounts as you describe.
-rw
Statistics: Posted by rakish_weasel — Wed Jan 28, 2026 12:27 pm — Replies 5 — Views 310