CDs in IRA or Personal Brokerage Account?

I’ve been buying CDs over the past few months in my personal brokerage account. Now wondering if they should go in the IRA when they mature. Background: Retired, High tax bracket; taking IRA distributions early before the mandatory age, as I’d like to work down the amount in the IRA. IRMAA higher than I’d like it to be (due to above).

My second-guessing goes like this: CDs in my personal brokerage account yielding 4-5% is a higher yield than my dividend yield from the mutual funds in my brokerage account, so I’m producing more taxable interest/dividends by adding these CDs there. I don’t need more equities/mutual funds in my brokerage account, but for TAX reasons, maybe I should have bought mutual funds instead of CDs in the brokerage, since mutual funds have a smaller yield, even with the capital gain. Thanks in advance for any input—pro’s AND con’s!



  • For you to be eligible to make an IRA contribution, you (or your spouse if filing jointly) must have compensation from employment and IRA contributions must be in cash.  Without supporting compensation, your only choice to have more money in CDs in your IRAs would be to change the investment of some of your existing IRA funds.
  • It’s not clear why you would want to take distributions from your IRAs just to invest that money in CDs.    If you want more funds in your IRAs, reduce your IRA distributions and spend the CD money instead.
  • Although it would not reduce current taxable income, you could reduce future taxable income by doing some amount of Roth conversion.  This would move deferred income into effectively tax-free investments in the Roth IRA.  You would generally consider Roth conversions to bring your AGI just below the threshold for the next IRMAA tier, the next tax bracket or the threshold where Net Investment Income tax begins, whichever threshold you reach next.


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