Craig Wear, CFP, warns that converting Roth IRAs only up to your current tax bracket is a trap for IRA millionaires. A real strategy accounts for lump-sum events like inheritances or business sales, not generic online rules.
You know, if you go in and you go to Google or ChatGPT and you ask them what's the right approach, they're going to tell you to develop a plan that only goes to the top of your current tax bracket. And I'll just tell you that that simple way of doing Roth conversions, if you're an IRA millionaire, is a really bad idea. And you're going to leave a ton of money on the doorstep of the IRS by doing it that way. You want to go take the effort and the time and perhaps the expense to develop a strategic plan that evaluates every tax bracket way above where you're currently at even and even lump sum amounts that maybe would be based on your situation because of work, or because of inheritances, or because of selling a business, or all whatever the situations can be. It needs to be a very unique, very customized, very personalized game plan.
