The IRS deposit hit Warren Jeffries’ bank account on a Tuesday in early March 2026 — $4,214, the result of over-withholding throughout the 2025 tax year. For most people, that would feel like a quiet win. For Warren, 62, an IT project manager from Raleigh, North Carolina, the deposit landed at the same moment his phone showed a notification: a missed call from his 32-year-old son.
When I sat down with Warren at a coffee shop near his home in North Raleigh, he pulled out a yellow legal pad covered in handwritten projections. He’d been doing this kind of math for three years. He said the refund and the phone call arriving on the same day felt almost cinematic. “The universe has a sense of humor,” he told me, not smiling.
The Refund He’d Already Spent — On Paper
Warren files jointly with his wife, Patricia, 59. He’d adjusted his W-4 withholding midway through 2024 but hadn’t recalibrated it by 2025, which is why $4,214 came back from the IRS this spring. He knew it was coming. He’d tracked it using the IRS Where’s My Refund tool from the day he e-filed in mid-February.
Before the deposit arrived, he’d already mentally allocated every dollar. Roughly $2,000 was earmarked to top off their emergency fund, depleted last fall after their HVAC system failed. The remaining $2,200 was going into a high-yield savings account he and Patricia use as a bridge fund — money that would cover expenses during what he calls “the gap years,” the three years between his planned retirement at 65 and Patricia’s Medicare eligibility at the same age.
Then his son called.
The Son, the Business, and the Monthly Call
Warren’s son, Daniel, launched a custom furniture business in 2023. It failed by mid-2024. Warren told me the business wasn’t poorly conceived — the market timing was just punishing. “He worked hard at it. I’ve never doubted that,” Warren said. “But the calls haven’t stopped.”
Daniel calls roughly once a month, Warren said, not always to ask directly for money, but the conversation tends to end there. Over the past 18 months, Warren and Patricia have given Daniel approximately $14,000 — a figure Warren recited from memory without hesitation. That money came from savings, not from retirement accounts, a boundary Warren said he’s held firmly.
This time, Daniel asked for $2,000 — enough, he told his father, to cover three months of health insurance premiums while he looks for stable work. Warren said he sat with that request for four days before responding. He ultimately sent $1,000, half what Daniel asked, from the tax refund. The bridge fund received the other $1,200, after he pulled $2,000 for the emergency reserve rebuild as planned.
“I didn’t feel good about either decision,” Warren told me. “I felt like I was managing a slow leak in two different directions.”
The Healthcare Gap That Keeps Him Up at Night
Of all the variables Warren tracks — sequence-of-returns risk, Social Security timing, inflation — the one he returns to most is healthcare. Warren plans to retire at 65, which aligns with his Medicare eligibility date. But Patricia is three years younger. That means if Warren retires on schedule, Patricia will need private coverage for approximately 36 months before she qualifies for Medicare at 65, per Medicare.gov’s eligibility guidelines.
Warren has run estimates on ACA marketplace premiums for their income bracket and geographic area. The numbers, he said, range from $1,400 to $1,700 per month for Patricia alone, depending on the plan year and subsidy eligibility. That pencils out to between $16,800 and $20,400 per year for roughly three years — a total exposure of approximately $54,000 before Patricia ages into federal coverage.
“That $54,000 number is what I see when I wake up at 3 a.m.,” Warren said. “It’s not speculative. It’s arithmetic. And every dollar I give Daniel is a dollar I’m not earning interest on to cover that window.”
What $680,000 Actually Looks Like Over 30 Years
On paper, $680,000 is a number that sounds sturdy. Warren knows better than to be comforted by it. He told me he’d run projections using multiple withdrawal rate scenarios — 3.5%, 4%, and 4.5% annually — and the spread in outcomes over a 30-year retirement is significant.
Warren also noted that he and Patricia haven’t claimed Social Security yet and don’t plan to until he reaches 67, his full retirement age under current SSA schedules. Delaying from 62 to 67 increases his monthly benefit substantially — according to SSA.gov’s benefit reduction charts, claiming at 62 would reduce his benefit by up to 30% compared to waiting until full retirement age.
“The math on waiting is clear,” Warren told me. “The math on everything else is murkier.”
Where Things Actually Stand
When I asked Warren if he regrets sending Daniel $1,000, he paused longer than I expected. “No,” he said finally. “But I resent that I had to choose.” That distinction — between regret and resentment — seemed important to him. He loves his son. He told me that plainly. He also told me that Daniel’s situation has clarified something for him about the next three years.
Warren told me he plans to adjust his W-4 withholding for 2026 so he’s not handing the IRS an interest-free loan each year. He’s done the calculation: his $4,214 refund represents roughly $351 per month in over-withholding. Redirected monthly into a high-yield account at current rates, that’s real money over the next 36 months before retirement.
The legal pad on the table between us had columns for market scenarios — a 2008-style drawdown in year one of retirement, a flat market over five years, a moderate growth scenario. None of them ended with him destitute. Most of them ended with him uncomfortable. “Comfortable and uncomfortable are a long distance apart when you’re 62 and you can see the finish line,” he said.
Leaving the coffee shop, I thought about the specific cruelty of Warren’s position: he is, by most measures, a success story. Paid-off home, six figures in savings, a spouse and a plan. And yet the variables he can’t control — a son’s misfortune, a healthcare system’s pricing, a market’s timing — sit outside every spreadsheet he’s ever made. The refund came. The call came. He split the difference and lost sleep about both halves. That’s not a failure of planning. That’s just what it looks like to be three years out, eyes open, legal pad in hand.
Leave a Reply