What order should I withdraw from my retirement accounts?

The commonly recommended default is taxable accounts first, then traditional (pre-tax) accounts, then Roth accounts last. This lets tax-advantaged accounts (traditional and Roth) keep compounding the longest before any withdrawal — and since Roth withdrawals are never taxed regardless of timing, preserving Roth balances longest maximizes tax-free growth.

Why does withdrawal order affect total lifetime taxes if the tax rate per account type doesn't change?

Because the order affects how long money stays invested before being withdrawn. Draining taxable first lets traditional and Roth balances keep growing untouched; a smaller total principal then needs to be extracted from those accounts over time to fund the same spending, which can reduce the total taxable amount withdrawn over a multi-decade retirement compared to drawing all three down in parallel.

Does the conventional withdrawal order always minimize taxes?

Not always. Required minimum distributions force traditional withdrawals starting at 73 regardless of strategy, and in low-income years (like early retirement before Social Security starts) intentionally drawing more from traditional to fill up a low tax bracket can sometimes beat strict taxable-first sequencing. It's a strong default, not an absolute rule.

Should I use the same withdrawal order if I plan to leave an inheritance?

Preserving Roth balances longest usually helps here too — Roth accounts pass to heirs without lifetime RMDs for the original owner and are generally more tax-efficient for beneficiaries under the 10-year distribution rule, so the same conventional order that minimizes your lifetime taxes also tends to favor heirs.

Drawing Taxable, Then Traditional, Then Roth Last Beats a Proportional Withdrawal Strategy

We ran a common three-bucket retirement scenario through the calculator: $200,000 in a taxable brokerage account, $600,000 in a traditional 401(k)/IRA, and $150,000 in a Roth IRA, funding a $60,000/year after-tax spending need over 25 years. Drawing taxable first, then traditional, then Roth last — the “conventional” order — beat a proportional draw-from-everything-every-year approach on total lifetime taxes paid.

Two strategies, compared

Strategy	Order	Why it matters
Conventional	Taxable → Traditional → Roth	Tax-advantaged accounts compound untouched the longest
Proportional	All three, weighted by balance share, every year	No bucket gets preserved or prioritized

The reason conventional order tends to win isn’t that any individual withdrawal gets taxed differently based on when it happens — a dollar pulled from traditional is taxed at the same rate whether it’s year 1 or year 20 in this simplified model. The advantage comes from compounding: leaving traditional and Roth balances untouched while taxable funds early spending lets those balances grow larger before any of that growth is ever withdrawn (and, for Roth, taxed — which for Roth means never). A larger balance growing tax-advantaged for longer means a smaller total principal needs to be extracted from it to cover the same spending over the full horizon.

Why this isn’t a universal rule

Required minimum distributions break the clean “save traditional for last” logic starting at age 73 — the IRS forces withdrawals from traditional accounts on its own schedule regardless of what order you’d otherwise prefer. A complete retirement withdrawal plan blends conventional sequencing in the early, RMD-free years with RMD-driven traditional withdrawals once they kick in.

There’s also a bracket-filling refinement conventional order doesn’t capture on its own: in a low-income year — early retirement before Social Security starts, or a year with unusually low expenses — it’s sometimes better to intentionally draw more from traditional than strictly necessary, filling up to the top of a low tax bracket while you’re in it, rather than minimizing that year’s traditional withdrawal and pushing a larger balance into future years where you might be in a higher bracket.

Where this framework doesn’t apply

You’ll hit RMDs before your taxable account is drained. If your traditional balance is large relative to your spending need, RMDs may force withdrawals well before “conventional” order would otherwise touch that bucket — plan around the RMD schedule, not just the preferred order.
Your taxable account has a high cost basis (little unrealized gain). This tool’s effective-rate assumption blends basis and gains; if most of your taxable balance is already-taxed principal, its real effective withdrawal rate is much lower than a rough capital-gains estimate, changing the relative advantage of draining it first.
You expect a much higher tax bracket in the future. If you expect future tax rates (yours or the country’s) to rise substantially, front-loading traditional withdrawals at today’s lower rates — even ahead of RMDs — can beat waiting, the opposite of the simple conventional default.
Leaving an inheritance changes the priority. Preserving Roth balances longest still tends to help heirs, but the optimal order for a legacy-focused plan can diverge from the order that strictly minimizes your own lifetime taxes.

What to actually do

Run the calculator with your actual account balances and a realistic blended tax rate for your taxable account.
Use conventional order as a strong default for the years before RMDs begin.
Plan explicitly for RMDs starting at 73 rather than assuming you can defer traditional withdrawals indefinitely — see the RMD Calculator for that schedule.
In low-income early-retirement years, consider intentionally drawing more from traditional to fill a low bracket, rather than mechanically minimizing that year’s withdrawal.
If an inheritance is a priority, weight preserving Roth balances even more heavily than pure tax-minimization math suggests.

For the mandatory traditional-account withdrawals that eventually override any preferred order, see what an $800K IRA’s first required withdrawal actually looks like, and for the contribution-side decision that determines how big each of these buckets gets in the first place, see the 5-point rule for Roth vs traditional.

Open the Withdrawal Sequencing Calculator → and run your own account balances and spending need.