wealthschema/archetypes/ri-02-dividend-income-retiree
RI-02Retirement IncomeDistributionhigh tax complexity

Dividend Income Retiree

Retiree living off dividend and interest income, minimal portfolio drawdown, taxable account heavy, qualified dividends.

RI-02 is the affluent retiree who funds living expenses primarily from qualified-dividend and interest income on a taxable-account-heavy balance sheet — minimal portfolio drawdown, full timing flexibility, and an NIIT-aware tax surface that varies materially with bracket positioning.

Age Range
60–75
Net Worth
$1M–$5M
Cohort
Retirement Income

About this archetype

RI-02 represents the affluent retiree whose lifestyle is funded by income on capital rather than depletion of capital. The defining feature is the taxable-account-heavy balance sheet — median net worth $3.09M against $1.38M of liquid net worth, the bulk of which sits in dividend-paying equities, qualified-dividend-yielding mutual funds, municipal bond ladders, and taxable corporate fixed-income. The tax surface is distinctive: qualified dividends and long-term capital gains under §1(h) receive preferential rates (0% / 15% / 20% brackets), interest income is taxed at ordinary rates, municipal-bond interest is generally federally exempt under §103 but subject to state-by-state inclusion rules, and the 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax under §1411 kicks in above $250k MAGI for MFJ. Households at this wealth tier routinely cluster around the NIIT threshold and the long-term capital-gains bracket transitions, making bracket-management software useful in ways that do not apply to lower-wealth or annuity-dominated retirees.

The structural picture is high-net-worth retiree with substantial mortgage and credit-card incidence — homeownership runs 70%, 14 of 20 carry mortgages typically by choice rather than necessity (the household holds investable assets multiple times the mortgage balance but retains the mortgage for tax and asset-allocation reasons). All 20 households file MFJ. Median age 67, with 9 of 20 carrying dependents — typically adult children or aging parents rather than minor children. The dominant goals are legacy / estate (all 20) and charitable giving (all 20), reflecting the wealth tier and the typical estate-planning posture: this is the cohort where DAF contributions of appreciated stock, QCDs from IRA accounts after age 70½, and charitable-remainder trust structures move from theoretical to relevant.

What distinguishes RI-02 from neighbouring retirement archetypes is the income source and the wealth tier in combination. RI-01 is the inflexible-income annuity-dominated retiree at a much lower wealth tier. RL-01 is the RMD-driven IRA-and-401(k) drawdown retiree. H-01 is the affluent investor still in accumulation. RI-02 specifically models the post-accumulation affluent household whose return on capital exceeds its spending — every household carries a legacy / estate goal and a charitable-giving goal precisely because the wealth is more than the lifetime spend.

Defining characteristics

  • Dividend and interest income
    Primary income source is qualified dividends, taxable bond interest, and municipal bond interest. Median household income $109,897 — meaningful but secondary to capital appreciation in the household's wealth math.
  • Qualified-dividend tax positioning
    Under §1(h) qualified dividends receive 0% / 15% / 20% brackets. Households cluster at the 15%/20% transition (around $583,750 MFJ taxable income for 2024) where bracket management has the largest after-tax payoff.
  • Taxable account heavy
    Median investable assets $2.18M with the bulk in taxable brokerage. Step-up at death matters more here than for IRA-heavy retirees; lot-level basis accounting becomes a planning surface.
  • Minimal portfolio drawdown
    Spending is funded from income, not principal. The household's withdrawal rate is effectively the yield on the portfolio — typically 2.5–4% — well below the conventional safe-withdrawal threshold.
  • Bond ladder construction
    Municipal-bond ladders and taxable corporate ladders are common. Liquidity, reinvestment, and call-feature handling are testing surfaces for fixed-income platforms.
  • NIIT exposure
    All households file MFJ and many exceed the $250k MAGI threshold, triggering 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax under §1411 on dividend, interest, and capital-gain income.

Corpus signature

n = 20 households

Aggregated across the 20 RI-02 households in the shipped v3 corpus corpus. Numbers describe the corpus, not population claims.

Median income
$110k
p25–p75 $93k–$120k
Median net worth
$3.1M
mean $3.1M
Liquid net worth
$1.4M
median
Investable assets
$2.2M
median
Income distribution
$70k–85k
3
$85k–100k
3
$100k–115k
6
$115k–130k
8
Net-worth distribution
$1.9m–2.6m
5
$2.6m–3.3m
9
$3.3m–4m
4
$4m–4.7m
2
Goals across the corpus
Legacy / estate20 / 20
Charitable giving20 / 20
Liability composition
Credit cards20 / 20
Mortgages14 / 20
Student loans9 / 20
Auto loans7 / 20
  • 14 of 20 (70%) are homeowners; the remainder rent.
  • NY, WA, MA account for 9 of 20 households — 45% of the corpus.
  • Median adult-member age is 67 (range 59–78 across primaries and spouses).
  • 9 of 20 (45%) carry one or more dependents.
  • Married filing jointly is the dominant filing status (20 of 20).

Representative household

RI-02-seed-13
John H.Married filing jointly·Buffalo-Cheektowaga, NY

John and Carol are above both the corpus income and net-worth medians ($134k income, $3.18M net worth) and carry the clean dividend-retiree balance sheet the archetype is built around: $1.91M liquid against just $2,124 in total liabilities — a residual credit-card balance and nothing else, no mortgage, no auto loan. The household runs a $2,334 monthly cash-flow surplus, so dividend and interest yield is comfortably covering spending and then some. Both shipped goals — a $3.91M legacy / estate target ($3.26M progress) and a $326k charitable-giving target — are on-track, the canonical post-accumulation posture where return on capital exceeds lifetime consumption and the planning surface shifts to QCDs, DAF appreciated-stock contributions, and step-up-basis sequencing at death.

Combined income
$134,470
Net worth
$3,177,333
Liquid NW
$1,912,945
Ages
70 / 71
Top goals on this household
Legacy / estate
$3,908,800
Charitable giving
$325,733

Schema fields covered

Every RI-02 household ships with — at minimum — these JSON fields populated. The full schema is documented in the data set you purchase.

members[].age
income.combined_gross
net_worth.total
filing_status
accounts.taxable.lots[].acquisition_date
accounts.taxable.lots[].cost_basis
accounts.taxable.lots[].unrealized_pnl
taxes.wash_sale_flags

Who builds against this archetype

Three buyer profiles draw on RI-02 most heavily. Tax-software vendors building affluent-retiree return preparation flows use it for qualified-dividend bracket-management, NIIT computation under §1411, municipal-bond state-by-state inclusion rules, and the interaction between Social Security taxability and dividend-driven MAGI. Wealth-platform engineering teams supporting retiree advisory practices use it for tax-aware withdrawal sequencing (taxable vs IRA vs Roth), lot-level basis accounting for capital-gain harvesting, and step-up-at-death planning UI. Charitable-giving platforms use it for QCD generation from IRA accounts after age 70½, DAF contributions of appreciated stock, and CRT modeling for households where the wealth materially exceeds lifetime spend.

Testing scenarios this corpus is calibrated for

  • 01Qualified-dividend bracket-management across the 0% / 15% / 20% LTCG / QDI rate transitions.
  • 02NIIT (§1411) computation on portfolios where MAGI exceeds the $250k MFJ threshold.
  • 03Municipal-bond ladder construction and reinvestment with state-by-state interest-inclusion logic.
  • 04Tax-aware withdrawal sequencing across taxable, IRA, and Roth accounts to manage bracket positioning.
  • 05QCD (Qualified Charitable Distribution) generation from IRA accounts after age 70½ under §408(d)(8).
  • 06DAF appreciated-stock contribution workflows with cost-basis lot-selection optimisation.
  • 07Step-up-at-death basis planning UI for taxable-account-heavy balance sheets transferring under §1014.

Edge cases and what's not in this corpus

RI-02 specifically models retirees whose income comes from capital rather than from contractual annuity payments (RI-01) or pension distributions (RE-03). UHNW retirees at $10M+ where private foundation, dynasty trust, and intentionally defective grantor trust planning replace DAF and CRT structures belong in H-03. RMD-stage retirees whose primary asset base is qualified-plan rather than taxable-account belong in RL-01. Recently widowed retirees navigating beneficiary transitions and step-up basis recalculation are RL-02 or H-04. Affluent investors still in accumulation rather than retired are H-01. The corpus excludes households with material business-interest income — concentrated operator-owners in retirement transition belong in P-02 or E-02 territory.

Calibration notes

Income and net-worth bands during v3 synthesis were anchored to upper percentile bands of the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances for the 60–75 age cohort, with the taxable-account-heavy allocation shape informed by Cerulli retiree-segment industry data. The decision to make all 20 households MFJ is a deliberate scoping choice that simplifies the testing surface; single affluent retirees with similar balance-sheet shape fit RL-02 or H-tier with overlay. State distribution (NY, WA, MA) reflects affluent-retiree population concentration but is not a probabilistic prior on residency. Per CLAUDE.md §9 the v3 corpus is frozen and not regenerable from current code, so calibration claims are descriptive rather than reproducible.

How this differs from related archetypes

Frequently asked questions

What does the RI-02 archetype represent?+

RI-02 — Dividend Income Retiree represents an affluent retiree (median net worth $3.09M) whose post-retirement spending is funded primarily from qualified dividends and interest on a taxable-account-heavy balance sheet. Median age 67, all 20 corpus households file MFJ, and minimal portfolio drawdown is the defining cash-flow pattern.

How is RI-02 different from RI-01?+

RI-01 is the annuity-dependent retiree at a much lower wealth tier with contractually fixed and inflexible income. RI-02 lives off capital — full liquidity, full timing flexibility, step-up basis available at death. They sit at opposite ends of the income-flexibility axis.

What product features does RI-02 typically exercise?+

Qualified-dividend bracket-management, NIIT computation under §1411, municipal-bond ladder construction, tax-aware withdrawal sequencing, QCD generation from IRA accounts post-70½, DAF appreciated-stock contributions, and step-up-at-death planning UI.

Why do all RI-02 households carry charitable-giving goals?+

At median net worth $3.09M with a yield-funded spending profile, the household's return on capital exceeds its lifetime consumption. Charitable giving and legacy planning become structural rather than optional — every household carries both goals, which makes this the right test population for DAF, QCD, and CRT product flows.

How were RI-02 households generated?+

Deterministically from a seeded sampler (Mulberry32 PRNG) in src/lib/generation/, with taxable-account-heavy allocation shape and post-accumulation cash-flow flags applied as overlay attributes. Per-domain version constants are surfaced in each household's _meta block.

Is the RI-02 corpus regenerable?+

No. The shipped 1,451-household v3 corpus is frozen and not regenerable from current code (drift confirmed 2026-05-09). Sampler improvements land in a future v4 release with per-archetype golden fixtures in CI to prevent silent drift.

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