Craig Wear, CFP® advises that when planning conversions (likely Roth conversions), listeners should choose a shorter time frame and target higher tax brackets than they expect to achieve greater tax-avoidance benefits. He emphasizes that achieving larger tax savings requires converting enough in a compressed period to reach higher marginal tax rates.
You need to figure out what is the optimal time period over which to do conversions and what tax rate you want to do conversions at. And and my guess, in fact, I'll bet you a donut today that you should your optimal tax rate is going to be higher than what you think it is, and the time frame over which you should do your conversions is probably much shorter than what you think. In order to get to the gold, in order to get to the real tax avoidance that's available, you simply have to get to higher tax brackets, which means you convert over a shorter period of time than what you think that you probably should be doing.
