Craig Wear, CFP®Craig Wear, CFP® | Expert in Roth Conversions & Tax-Efficient Retirement Strategies for IRA Millionaires

Stop Following Typical Roth Conversion Advice

19 Oct 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment, financial planner Craig Wear, CFP®, challenges the common Roth conversion tactic of converting just enough each year to fill the remaining space in the current tax bracket. He argues that focusing solely on the current year's tax bill is short‑sighted and can cost retirees and their families over the long term. Instead, Wear proposes a goal‑first strategy: determine the total amount of a traditional IRA that should be moved to a Roth and the number of years available before required minimum distributions begin, then work backwards to plan annual conversions. He illustrates this approach with a hypothetical couple, Walt and Evelyn, showing how starting from the desired end result leads to a more efficient conversion plan.

Chapters

The typical advice usually goes something like this. Wait until you know your total income for the year so you can see how much room is left in your current tax bracket. Then you convert just enough to fill in that gap. And if you do your own conversions, you probably have a spreadsheet that does exactly this for you. And look, I get it. That feels pretty safe. But the problem is that it's only measuring this year's tax bill. And in the long run, that can cost you and your loved ones big time. Let me show you what I mean with a couple we'll call Walt and Evelyn. So how did they get their number for this year? Well, they didn't start with how much room was left in their bracket. They started at the finish line, how much of that IRA they should move to the Roth, and how many years they have to do it before required distributions take over. From there, we just work backwards.