Required Minimum Distribution - RMD

You put money into your IRA for 38 years. It grew and grew (and grew) as it was invested in an index fund. Today, it stands at $2 million even. You're 75 and a few years into your required minimum distribution that you must endure annually. That is, you must sell a pre-set percentage of your saved IRA money according to a published schedule delivered to you by your kindly friends at the IRS. When you put money into your IRA, you didn't pay tax on it. But now, as you take it out of that special island-like fund, so that you can spend it, you pay ordinary income tax.

Check out the standard-form IRS RMD. Note that, at age 73, there's a 24.7 there. WDTM? Well, you take the $2 million that you have in your IRA and divide it by 24.7, which is about 81 grand. And you have to write a check from your IRA to your personal bank or brokerage account, and then declare that amount of dough as ordinary income, for which you will be taxed. Painfully. (No nitrous given.) Over time, that 24.7 number goes down, so that by the time you're in your mid-110s, it's just 2. Like...if you then had $300,000 left in your IRA, you'd have to distribute $150,000 to yourself in dividing by 2 to then comply with the RMD.

Painful, but you can take comfort that The End is nigh, if that gives you comfort.