Skip to navigationSkip to main contentSkip to right columnADVERTISEMENTDanielle LiveranceSat, June 27, 2026 at 3:09 PM GMT+2 5 min readA caller named Robert phoned into The Clark Howard Show with a problem most savers would love to have: the IRS was forcing him to pull money out of retirement accounts, and he didn't need a dime of it to cover his bills. Clark's answer was short, blunt, and mostly right, with one giant blind spot that costs retirees thousands every year.Canva | RapidEye from Getty Images Signature and Narcisa Palici's ImagesI've been covering retirement-income planning for more than 15 years, and the RMD reinvestment question is one of the most common — and most botched — calls I hear on personal finance shows. Here is the exchange from the February 7, 2018 broadcast. After Robert explained he was past 70.5, splitting his required minimum distribution across all three accounts, and holding roughly $500,000, Clark told him:"If you don't want to give it away to family or charity or you don't want to do something fun for yourself and you don't need the money. This is going to sound weird. I would put it into an investment account and I would buy like a total stock market index fund or something like that with it. There would be ultimately a great inheritance asset for somebody to get way down the road."Clark's instinct is correct. An RMD you don't need should go back to work instead of losing ground to inflation in a checking account. The mechanic Robert and every retiree in his shoes needs to understand is the difference between a tax-deferred account and a taxable brokerage account, because the RMD is the bridge between them.When you pull money from a traditional IRA or 401(k), every dollar lands on your tax return as ordinary income. For a 2026 married couple filing jointly, that income stacks on top of Social Security and pension dollars and hits the brackets at 22%. The tax bill is owed whether you spend the cash on groceries or let it sit in a savings account earning 4%.Are you ahead, or behind on retirement?