Roth ladder 5-year bridge

The Roth ladder tool answers whether the conversions are worth making. This one answers the question that comes straight after it - the question that actually decides whether early retirement starts this year. A ladder pays nothing for five years: convert in 2026 and that money cannot be touched until 2031. So what do you live on in the meantime? And every year's conversion tax comes out of that same pile, because withholding it from the conversion is a distribution of unseasoned money and costs the 10% penalty. The bridge ends up carrying both the groceries and the tax bill on the ladder that is meant to replace them.

This calculator sizes that pile. Enter your spending, the accounts you can actually reach before 59½ - cash, a taxable brokerage and its cost basis, Roth contributions - and the ladder you intend to run, and it funds every year from the day you stop working to the year you turn 60, then solves for the smallest bridge that never runs dry. It also tracks what most ladder math skips: the capital gains you realize selling to live on stack on top of every dollar you convert, so a conversion that looks nearly free in the 12% bracket can move a whole year of gains from 0% to 15%. You get the bridge you need, the gap before the first rung lands, the year the bridge runs thinnest, and a year-by-year account of which bucket paid for what.