Roth ladder & mortgage payoff

This one is our early-retirement tax question: most of our savings sit pre-tax, the house isn't paid off, and both problems respond to the same trick. With little or no other income, each retirement year's standard deduction and the 10% and 12% brackets are essentially a coupon for moving money out of a traditional IRA - convert up to the bracket top, pay single-digit effective tax, and after each conversion's five-year seasoning the principal is yours penalty-free. We wanted to know whether those seasoned rungs, pointed at the mortgage, could kill it - and what the IRS's cut of the whole operation really is.

This calculator prices the ladder end to end. Pick a filing status, other income, and a target bracket and it sizes each year's conversion after deductions, computes the federal (and optional flat state) tax per rung, and tracks when every rung unlocks - including the age-59½ cutoff where seasoning stops mattering. Point it at a mortgage and the seasoned rungs land as annual principal lumps: payoff date versus the contractual schedule, interest saved, total conversion tax paid, and the cash you need to bridge the first five years, so you can judge the whole trade in one view.