Retiring early to Greece, need IRA advice
Retired at 54, wife is 60. Plan is to move to Greece on FIP VISA as residents (Financially Independent Person). We have about ~1m in traditional IRAs, ~500k in CMA and 2 houses in the US worth ~1.5m that we will sell before we go. We'll be worth a bit less than 3m after expenses, and expect to spend a lot less on an apartment in Greece. I expect to have ~1m in the CMA after all is said and done, so we have a lot of flexibility in how we disburse investments and when we collect SS.
If we were staying in the US, I would be converting our IRA to Roth steadily and we would collect at 62.
Going to Greece however changes things quite a bit. We get a 7% flat tax rate for 15 years. After that of course the regular Greek taxes kick in and we would be in the highest bracket for sure, which is a whopping 44%. The EU in general does not recognize tax-privileged accounts so we would get taxed again on our Roths when we drawdown on them.
I am thinking the correct strategy is to empty our IRA over the 15 years and keep everything in the 12% US tax bracket, and we would effectively not pay anything in Greece as there is a tax treaty even if it is from 1950. As I don't think we are going to spend 100k/yr to live, half that money will probably get re-invested in the CMA. We would delay collecting SS until age 70 and can live off of that indefinitely.
The CMA would cover any emergencies or large purchases, and honestly even if we blew it all, we would still be able to live decently on the combined SS.
We plan on staying in Greece and becoming dual citizens, but I feel we're kinda screwed if we decide we want to go back to the US.
Anyway, I am wondering if anyone else has done this and how it has worked, if I have missed anything, or if I am just completely out of my mind and it is a shit plan. TIA, and if you made it here, thanks for reading!