Personal Finance (Not Investing) • I'm Mulling Over an About Face to My Roth Conversion Strategy

I'm 66, wife 65
Two kids out of the house
$2.2M post tax
$5.5M pre-tax
$60k SS from age 68.5

First of all, why aren't both of you waiting to age 70 to start SS? Instead of having SS take up space in your tax brackets, you can use the space for Roth Conversions and your SS benefits will be bigger (since you will be collecting for fewer years).

For the past two years I have taken out tIRA funds up to the top of the 24% tax bracket, paid a combined $100k in Fed/State taxes, and invested the leftovers.

"Leftovers" from what? Roth conversions, dollars going to taxable? Living expenses?

And what type of account did the "leftovers" go into?

This sounds like you may missing opportunities to convert. Keep in mind that your tIRA will continue to grow as long as the annual growth is more than the annual withdrawals.

. . . If I want to pull a sustainable average of 4.5% a year from our post-tax account, we end up with close to $220k a year.

If this refers to Roth money, I think you are doing it backwards by doing withdrawals. If this is "taxable" money, don't you have assets in a Taxable account that already pay your living expenses, including federal taxes?

So my recent thought is to neglect the tIRA balance, and when RMD's show up, to give away the excess. Soon enough the QCD will not cover the RMD less personal withdrawal, but I can give large chunks to charity along the way.

If you don't do anything, the TIRAs will continue to grow and made the situation worse. After age 70.5, QCDs can be taken from tIRA assets (but pre-tax 401k money can be rolled into a tIRA for additional QCDs). You can also give it to charity when you die if listed as a beneficiary. Other than that, you or your heirs need to pay taxes on withdrawals or Roth conversions (after the RMD is satisfied).

I thought about a DAF for more flexibility but I gather a 1% AUM fee is typical and I do not find that appealing.

You can only put Taxable assets in a DAF. See above replys re fees.

Statistics: Posted by celia — Sun Nov 23, 2025 12:21 am — Replies 10 — Views 894

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