u/Thin-Interest-9734

planning to retire early end of the year. everything i've read says this works, but also seems too good to be true. live in a no-income tax state. what am i missing?

i need about $60k annually for expenses. this is where it comes from:

• $25k coming as ordinary income (interest, non-qualified dividends)
• $35k coming from qualified dividends, cap gain distributions, and long term capital gains (selling ETFs, so only gains taxed, all my positions are long)

when it comes to federal income taxes:

1. MFJ standard deduction "absorbs" my $25k as the std deduction for '26 is $32k
2. no taxes on the $35k because qualified dividends fall in this bucket and all my positions are long.

since our annual expenses are low, i dont need to worry so much about the ceiling of $98k (its technically $105k because i didn't use the full std deduction?)

is that it? not sure if it matters but what i listed above is our only income. always take the standard deduction, nothing else to consider (eg: mtg interest)

i watch hulu (i have the lowest tiered plan w/ads...."free" with t mobile) via my browser thats streamed to tv via hdmi. worked great for years with brave + ublock origin. now content plays but it'll randomly exit the content back to the main hulu page. then when i resume, it doesn't remember where i left off in the program.

anyone experiencing this?