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

Unlocking retirement riches with Roth Conversions

25 Mar 2025 · 1 min

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0:48

YouTube video by Craig Wear, CFP® explaining how Roth conversions can reduce tax burdens in retirement. Uses a case study of a married couple (husband age 65, wife 63) who held $1.75M in an IRA projected to grow ~6–7% annually; Wear contrasts doing no conversions (resulting in large required minimum distributions, substantial taxable income, and an estimated $875,000 future tax liability for heirs) versus performing Roth conversions to reduce future taxes.

Questions this video answers

Husband 65, wife 63.

$1.75 million.

Approximately 6%–7% per year (the presenter used the couple's stated growth expectation).

Approximately $875,000.

Chapters

For 40 years, almost, I've watched people not do the things in retirement that they could have done and that they plan to do, all because they had taxes that were due on those IRAs. So I'll give you a real quick case study that'll make my point. This is a couple. He was 65. She's 63 years old. They came in, they had some other assets in brokerage accounts that were pretty significant. They had 1.75 million in an IRA, unless I think we assumed it was going to grow at 6 or 7% a year or something like that. Whatever they said that they thought it would grow at is the number that we used. On one hand, they could do no conversions, receive that 2 to 3 million dollars in requirement of distributions of taxable income, and leave their heirs a tax liability of another 875,000 or.