Recently I published an article arguing that for most retirees, RMDs are nothing to panic about. It became one of the most-read pieces I've written. And the most common request that came back, by a wide margin, was some version of the same sentence: now do it for singles.

Fair. Every example in that piece was a married couple. And if you're retiring single — whether you never married, divorced, or lost a spouse — you've probably noticed that almost everything written about retirement planning quietly assumes there are two of you.

So here's what I want you to know up front: the conclusion doesn't flip. For most single retirees, RMDs are still a smaller monster than the headlines suggest. But the math is genuinely different. Your tax brackets are roughly half as wide. The Medicare surcharge lines sit at about half the income. And the balance where RMDs actually start to bite — I call it the solo line — arrives much earlier for you than it does for a couple.

I'm Daniel Masuda Lehrman, a Certified Financial Planner® and founder of a fee-only fiduciary planning firm here in Honolulu. In this article we'll run the real numbers for two hypothetical single retirees — one at $1.5 million, and one at $3 million. By the end, you'll be able to find your own solo line in about sixty seconds.

The Couple Math, in One Minute

Quick recap for anyone who missed my article on RMD taxes at $1.5 million, because the logic carries over.

The fear around RMDs usually comes from one word: brackets. People hear "required distribution" and picture the IRS shoving their savings into the 22% or 24% bracket. And to be fair, that instinct is protecting against something real — a required withdrawal is income you can't turn off.

But when we ran the numbers for a married couple, the monster shrank. Between the standard deduction, the extra deduction for being 65 or older, and the way Social Security is only partially taxed, a couple could show well over $140,000 of income and still have a marginal rate of 12% — and an effective rate, the tax divided by everything they actually received, sitting near single digits.

Here's the thing, though. That entire picture was built on married-filing-jointly.

Filing single is like moving the same furniture into a house half the size. Nothing got cheaper. It just fits tighter. The brackets compress, the deductions shrink, and the Medicare surcharge line drops — while the property tax, the insurance, and the roof repair stay exactly the same price.

So the question isn't whether the reassuring couple math was honest. It was. The question is: what happens when we rerun it with one name on the return?

Let's find out, with real numbers.

Meet Doreen: $1.5 Million, One Name on the Account

Meet Doreen. She's 73, a retired nurse in Kaimuki, and a hypothetical — a composite of situations I see often. She has $1.5 million in a traditional IRA, a paid-off condo, and Social Security of $3,000 a month, which is $36,000 a year.

This is her first RMD year. The IRS divisor at 73 is about 26.5. So her required withdrawal is $1.5 million divided by 26.5, roughly $56,600.

Scary? Let's see what she actually pays.

Now the part most articles skip. Not all of her income counts.

Of her $36,000 in Social Security, a maximum of 85% is taxable, which comes to about $30,600. The rest never touches her return at all. Add the RMD and her adjusted gross income lands near $87,000.

Then come the deductions. Using this year's numbers — and they adjust annually — a single filer over 65 gets a standard deduction plus an age-65 addition plus, through 2028, a bonus senior deduction that phases out at higher incomes. For Doreen, call it roughly $20,000 sheltered before a dollar is taxed.

That leaves taxable income around $67,000. Her federal bill comes out near $9,500, assuming no other income.

Stop and look at what that actually means. Doreen received about $92,600 in cash this year. She paid roughly $9,500 in federal tax. That's an effective rate of about ten cents on the dollar. And she never came near a Medicare surcharge, because the first IRMAA line for a single filer sits around $109,000 of income, and she isn't close.

So Doreen, the verdict: her RMD is not a tax bomb. It's the paycheck she was going to take anyway, taxed at about 10%.

The Solo Line: Where RMDs Actually Start to Bite for a Single Retiree

So if $1.5 million is comfortable, where does it stop being comfortable? That's the solo line, and you can find yours on a napkin.

The first threshold that genuinely stings a single retiree usually isn't a tax bracket. It's IRMAA — the Medicare premium surcharge. Cross that income line by one dollar and your premiums jump for the year. For a single filer the line sits near $109,000. For a couple: about $218,000. Half the room, remember.

Here's the sixty-second version:

• Start with $109,000.
• Subtract the taxable share of your Social Security — for most people, 85% of the annual benefit.
• Multiply what's left by 26.5, the first-year RMD divisor.

That's approximately the IRA balance where your RMD alone starts pushing you across the line.

For someone like Doreen with $36,000 of Social Security: $109,000 minus $30,600 leaves $78,400. Times 26.5, and you land at roughly $2.1 million.

That's the solo line. Below roughly $2 million in the IRA, RMDs barely matter for a single retiree. The same arithmetic for a married couple doesn't cross until the IRA passes $4 million. Your line isn't a little lower than a couple's. It's about half.

So where's yours? Pause here and run it — it takes about a minute.

And one more thing, because I know some married readers are already scrolling to the next article: this is eventually your math too. In the year after a spouse passes, the survivor typically keeps most of the household income and the entire IRA — and files single. Same money, half the room, at the worst possible moment. Planners call it the widow's penalty. I call it a reason to keep reading.

The mountain doesn't change when you retire single. It's the same descent from saving to spending. You're just making it without a rope partner — so knowing exactly where the drop-offs are matters more, not less.

Meet Bill: $3 Million and $40,000 of Social Security

A reader on the last piece asked me to run a single retiree with $3 million at RMD age and about $40,000 of Social Security. So meet Bill — hypothetical, 73, and exactly that.

His first RMD: $3 million divided by 26.5 comes to about $113,000. Taxable Social Security: 85% of $40,000, so $34,000. Adjusted gross income: roughly $147,000.

Bill is over the solo line, and you can see it everywhere. His taxable income, after a smaller deduction stack — his bonus senior deduction has mostly phased out — runs near $129,000, which puts his last dollars into the 24% bracket. And his income crosses not just the first IRMAA tier but the second, adding several thousand dollars a year to his Medicare premiums. Those tiers reset every year based on the tax return you filed two years earlier.

Now, I want to be fair here, because there's a legitimate version of the RMD fear, and Bill is it. Compressed brackets are real. IRMAA cliffs are real cliffs — one dollar over, full surcharge. For a single filer with a large IRA, the worry is not paranoia.

But should Bill panic? Look at the whole picture first. He received about $153,000 in cash. Federal tax plus the surcharge takes roughly $27,000. His effective rate is about 17%, on an income most working households would trade for. This is not a catastrophe. It's a calibration. What Bill needs is a plan, and it has three familiar parts.

1. Roth Conversions — But Only With a Rate He Can Name

Converting at 22% today to avoid 24% plus IRMAA later, and to spare whoever inherits this IRA, is a real reason. "Roth is always good" is not. His compressed single brackets mean smaller conversions over more years, started as early as possible. I walked through who actually benefits in this article on Roth conversions in retirement.

2. Qualified Charitable Distributions From Age 70½

Money sent directly from the IRA to charity counts toward the RMD and never appears in his income. If Bill already gives, this is the cheapest tax planning available to him.

3. Respecting the Two-Year IRMAA Lookback

IRMAA looks at the return from two years ago — so the planning for his Medicare premium at 75 happens now.

One more number for Bill. The Employee Benefit Research Institute tracked retirees' balances over time and found about a third still had 100% or more of their original savings in their mid-80s. Not a portion. All of it. Bill's biggest risk isn't the IRS. It's spending fifteen years guarding money he was supposed to be living on.

What Nobody Prices: One Person, a Full Household

Before we close the numbers, there's an objection that deserves a straight answer, because it's the truest thing anyone raised about the last article.

A reader put it this way: nearly half of retirees are single, and almost none of our major expenses are half. Is she wrong?

She's not. Your house doesn't know you're single. The property tax bill isn't discounted because there's one name on it, the insurance premiums don't fall in half, and the roof costs exactly what the roof costs whether one person or two people live under it. A single retiree runs a full household on brackets built for half of one, and I won't pretend the arithmetic of that is fair, because it isn't.

But here's what that unfairness means in practice, and it's not what the fear-sellers conclude.

It means your plan has to do the second-guessing a spouse would normally do. When a couple faces a big conversion decision or a spending change, there's a built-in skeptic across the table asking whether it's really a good idea. Retiring solo, you don't get that voice unless you build it — a written plan, a set of guardrails that tells you in advance what a bad market changes, or a planner whose actual job is to be the second chair.

And it means precision buys you more than it buys a couple. Every dollar of deduction, every year of conversion room, every threshold you stay under is working against tighter walls, which is exactly why knowing your solo line matters and vague reassurance doesn't.

What it does not mean is that you should be more afraid. Doreen's math didn't stop working because her expenses are lopsided. It worked anyway.

Same Savings, Half the Room — and What to Do About It

Let's put the pieces side by side.

Doreen, at $1.5 million: under the solo line. Effective rate near 10%, no surcharge, nothing to fix. Her only assignment is to stop bracing.

Bill, at $3 million: over the line. Real brackets, real IRMAA — and three ordinary tools that turn a scary trajectory into a managed one.

And if you're married and made it this far: the solo line is very likely in your future, because one of you will file single someday. Conversions you do together, at joint brackets, are one of the quietest gifts you can leave a surviving spouse.

Here's the shift I want you to take from all of this. The retirement industry sells RMD fear in one size, and it sells reassurance in one size too — and both of them assume there are two of you. Retiring single doesn't mean you need half the plan. It means you need twice the precision, because your thresholds arrive sooner and nobody's example was built for you.

You now know your number. Take $109,000, subtract your taxable Social Security, multiply by 26.5. That's your solo line.

Same savings, half the room — but plenty of room, once you know where the walls are.

If you'd like a set of eyes on your whole picture, single or not, you can schedule a free consultation. I work with clients in Honolulu and virtually across the country. And if you'd rather start on your own, the free Retirement Readiness Assessment is a good first pass at where you stand.

— Daniel Masuda Lehrman, CFP®, Founder of Masuda Lehrman Wealth. Mahalo for reading.

This article is for educational purposes only and is not personalized financial, tax, or legal advice. Doreen and Bill are hypothetical composites; figures are approximate and adjust annually.