Craig Wear, CFP® gives a short tip on Roth conversions: do conversions faster and possibly larger than you expect, accept paying taxes at higher brackets in the short term, and perform the math to evaluate tax-adjusted net worth and total tax avoided to maximize lifetime tax savings.
Number one, you're probably going to need to do the conversions faster than you think. Probably you're going to need to do more than you think, and you're probably going to have to pay tax at a much higher tax bracket than what you're currently comfortable with. But if you'll do the math and you'll go through the exercise to really understand the real impact on a tax adjusted net worth basis and a total tax avoided, it will prove to you over and over and over, the things that I just said are very true. The good news is, if you get it right, you you're going to maximize the amount of tax that you avoid paying over your lifetime, which means you're going to leave less money just sitting at the doorstep of the IRS because you didn't have an optimal game plan.
