Craig Wear (CFP®) argues that Roth conversions are not one-size-fits-all and that generic advice—even from trusted advisors, CPAs, or AI tools—can cost IRA millionaires hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. He emphasizes the need for detailed, fiduciary-style, personalized analysis, warns against simplistic rules (e.g., convert to the top of your bracket or "you make too much to convert"), and directs viewers to a free calculator his firm provides that models required minimum distributions and potential savings from more aggressive Roth conversions based on their age and account balances.
Chapters
Hey there. Well, look, most people take Roth conversion advice at face value, but it's usually generic and it's not tailored for an IRA millionaire or your personal situation. It's certainly not a fiduciary piece of advice, even if it's offered by someone who actually is a fiduciary. And that can cost you hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. When it comes to something as big as your retirement taxes, advice that sounds simple may not be the best fit for you. What works for one person could be a huge mistake for someone else, especially if it comes from somebody that you trust in other areas that's done a great job for you or a friend that you respect and admire, but they don't know the details. They maybe have totally wrong expectations on their part and they transfer that over to you or their situation is not your situation. How crazy would it be? If you ask me, Craig, what should I invest my million dollars in? And I said, well, go put it in this ETF without ever knowing you, without ever knowing what your goals are, what your risk tolerances are, and oh, by the way, we don't manage money, so why would you want me to tell you where to go put your money today? Right? You don't want to take advice from somebody that isn't going to do the math. Go through the details to understand really what your situation is. We hear so many things from people who call to talk to our advisors, from other people's advisors. We hear things like, well, all you need to do is just convert to the top of your current tax bracket. Or, look, buy this product and it'll pay the taxes for you. Or, hey, move your money to us and we'll help you figure it out for free. Or worse than that, I'm seeing content now from some of the younger advisors out there who are trying to make a name for themselves by telling you that conversions are scare tactics. This takes some figuring out. This takes getting to know you. It takes really spending time trying to figure out should you or shouldn't you and was it in your best interest to do that. We hear CPAs telling their clients, oh, you make too much money to convert. No way you should pay that amount of tax. Just keep it deferred and growing and it'll work out okay. And then there are people now that are turning to AI tools. We recently had a couple people that actually that some of our Rothologists talked to that sent them the results of AI session that specifically told them. I mean, they asked, specifically asked questions about us. And it Did a great job of outlining what we do. But when it came down to saying, well, now would you like me to give you a recommendation? The recommendations were totally erroneous of what we actually would do with somebody. And if you go in and you ask some of these AI tools, well, gee, are you a good source for me to get this information to. They're going to, they, every one of them we've tried acknowledge that they're using very general information. They'll tell you to go talk to somebody who really is an expert in this subject matter. I just wanted to get a real quick thought out there to you guys. You know, Roth conversions aren't a one size fits all. Even if you're an IRA millionaire. If you've got serious money in your ira, it's worth working with a specialist who can help you find their strategy that's right for you. We've put together a special calculator that is below and it's free for you to use for now. And it not only helps you to understand based on your age and the amount of money you have sitting in your family and tax deferred accounts, what your required minimum distributions are going to be over your lifetime, but we take it a step further. We've analyzed 1200 of our clients and we help you to understand at your age and your asset balances, what our typical client is able to save from doing more aggressive Roth conversions using the system that we have. So I hope you'll at least go check it out and be able to use that and try to figure out whether the information you're getting from other people is consistent with what we know to be true. And by the way, remember, we don't have financial products we sell. We don't manage clients assets. We just do this and we do comprehensive and modeling modular type of financial planning. And so all we're trying to get at all that our planners are trying to do is come to the decision of what is actually best for you without a sale at the end of the day that we make a big commission or a big fee on over and over and over. So I hope this is a little bit of a help to you. Go check out the calculator. I think you'll enjoy it. Take care of.
