7 Money Moves Virginia Retirees Should Make Before Fall

The best money moves for Virginia retirees have a deadline, and it isn’t April.

Most of them close well before the leaves turn.

Wait for your accountant to call in the spring, and the window has already shut on easy wins.

These are the money moves Virginia retirees should make while summer’s still on the calendar.

Note: This is general information, not financial or tax advice. Tax rules and dollar amounts are subject to change, so confirm the current details with a professional.

Check Your Age Deduction

Virginia hands residents 65 and older a break most states skip: An age deduction worth up to $12,000 per person off your state taxable income.

There’s a caveat.

The deduction is income-tested, so higher earners keep less of it.

A single filer whose income (Virginia calls it adjusted federal adjusted gross income, or AFAGI) tops $50,000 loses a dollar of the deduction for every dollar over that line, and married couples start losing it above $75,000.

So a single retiree sitting at $60,000 of AFAGI keeps just $2,000 of the deduction instead of the full amount.

Fairfax and Loudoun retirees with pensions and investment income are the ones most likely to phase out of it.

Summer is when you can still shape that number.

Nudging an extra individual retirement account (IRA) withdrawal into a lower-income year could protect more of the deduction.

Plan Your Required Withdrawal

Retirees who’ve reached 73 owe the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) a required minimum distribution (RMD) from their traditional retirement accounts, and that deadline lands on December 31.

Miss it, and you can owe a stiff penalty on the amount you should have taken.

The IRS means it.

So line up the withdrawal now instead of scrambling the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

If your traditional IRA held $500,000 at the end of last year, your first RMD works out to roughly $18,900 under the IRS life-expectancy tables.

A qualified charitable distribution (QCD) can soften that tax hit.

Once you’re 70½, you can send money straight from your IRA to a charity, and a QCD counts toward your RMD without adding to your taxable income.

For a retiree already writing checks to a Richmond food bank, that’s the same gift with a smaller tax bill.

Time a Roth Conversion

A Roth conversion moves money from a traditional IRA into a Roth IRA, and you pay the income tax on it this year.

The payoff comes later.

That money then grows tax-free, and it never triggers a future required minimum distribution.

Many Virginia retirees hit a sweet spot in their late 60s, after the paychecks stop but before Social Security and RMDs push their income back up.

Convert some traditional IRA money during that low-income stretch, and you pay tax at a lower rate than you might face down the road.

Say you move $20,000 while you’re in a lower bracket: You settle a modest tax bill now and hand your future self a tax-free account.

Starting before fall gives you and your tax preparer room to run the numbers.

Cover Your September Payment

Most retirees don’t have an employer withholding taxes for them anymore, so paying as you go becomes your job.

Income from IRA withdrawals, a pension, or a brokerage account can leave you owing the IRS four times a year.

The third estimated payment for 2026 comes due September 15, right before fall.

Come up short, and you can face an underpayment penalty on top of the tax.

Nobody sends a reminder.

Run a projection now: If you’ve pulled an extra $30,000 from investments with nothing withheld, you may owe several thousand on that September check rather than face a spring surprise.

Set the payment up through IRS Direct Pay or mail a voucher, whichever you’ll remember.

Review Your Medicare Options

Medicare's Open Enrollment window opens October 15 and closes December 7, so the prep work belongs in summer.

That stretch is your yearly chance to switch Part D drug plans or Medicare Advantage plans for the coming year.

Insurers change their drug lists, copays, and premiums every year, and the plan that fit you last year might not fit the next.

A retiree in Roanoke on three maintenance drugs can save hundreds by moving to a plan that covers all of them.

Pull together your current prescriptions now, and jot down what you spend at the pharmacy.

When the window opens, you'll compare plans in an afternoon.

Skip the December scramble.

Harvest Your Investment Losses

Tax-loss harvesting means selling an investment that's fallen in value to lock in the loss on paper.

That loss offsets your capital gains dollar for dollar.

When your losses run past your gains, you can deduct up to $3,000 of the extra against your regular income, and you carry anything left into future years.

Say a fund you bought is down $5,000 while you've booked $2,000 in gains this year: The sale erases the $2,000 gain and trims another $3,000 off your ordinary income.

A loss isn't wasted.

Checking your taxable brokerage account before fall gives you time to act deliberately instead of dumping shares in a year-end rush.

Beat the Car Tax

Virginia is one of the states that taxes your car every year through a local personal property tax on vehicles.

Yes, every year.

In Fairfax County, that bill comes due October 5, and other Virginia localities set their own due dates.

Norfolk, Richmond, and the Northern Virginia counties each set their own rate and relief rules.

The county bases the tax on your vehicle's assessed value, so you owe more on a newer SUV than on a ten-year-old Honda Civic.