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

Take Control of Your RMD Taxes Before It's Too Late

7 Sept 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:07

In this concise advisory monologue, Craig Wear, CFP®, uses a dam-and-floodgate metaphor to illustrate how an IRA’s balance determines future Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs). He explains that as the IRA “water level” rises over decades, the government‑controlled “floodgate” (the RMD) will open wider each year after the RMD age, potentially creating a large taxable burden. Wear advises proactive retirees—especially those in their 60s—to lower the IRA balance before the RMD age by converting portions of the IRA to a Roth IRA. Each Roth conversion acts as a “release valve” that moves money out of the taxable IRA, incurs tax now at a chosen rate, and permanently removes those assets from the government’s RMD reach. By strategically using Roth conversions, investors can reduce future RMD amounts, control tax exposure, and keep more wealth in a tax‑free Roth reservoir.

Chapters

So picture your IRA as water held back behind a dam. Now, that water has been rising a little more every year for the last 40 years. Your RMDs are the floodgate. One day the government comes along, opens the gate, and every year after that, they open it a little wider and a little wider. Most folks just brace for the flood and assume that's just the way it's going to be, but smart ones have been lowering the water long before those gates ever open. The water level in your IRA is the one thing deciding your RMDs, and that level is being set right now in your 60s. So here's what smart IRA millionaires do. They know that floodgate up top belongs to the government and they know they'll never touch it. But lower down on that dam sits a release valve that the government doesn't control. One you still have full say over, especially in the years before your RMD age. That valve is a Roth conversion. Every time you open it, money moves out of the IRA deliberately into a Roth reservoir of your own. You pay the tax now and at a rate you choose, and everything that moves is out of the government's hands for good. No required distribution ever touches it. Catches it again. That's how you take control back.