Money Evolution

Why Roth Conversions Can Still Make Sense at the 15% Capital Gains Rate

Sometimes the best retirement tax strategy means willingly paying some capital gains tax today. In this video, I explain a real planning scenario where a client had large traditional retirement account balances along with significant embedded capital gains in a non retirement account. To reduce future IRA balances and avoid bigger tax problems later, the better strategy was to get more aggressive with Roth conversions, even though that meant selling appreciated assets, paying the 15% long term capital gains tax rate, and in some cases triggering the net investment income tax. The goal isn’t always to avoid every tax today, but it’s to put the full plan together in a way that may lead to better long term results.

The Order That You Withdraw From Retirement Accounts Matters More Than You Realize

A good retirement plan starts with making sure your retirement actually supports the life you want to live so you can do all of the stuff that you want to do in retirement. In this video, I explain why the first priority is figuring out how much you need to withdraw from your portfolio. From there, the next step is often to building an efficient withdrawal strategy by deciding which accounts to draw from first, in what order, and how to position those withdrawals within the tax rules.