A lot of you have saved and invested really well, and you are still going to get killed by taxes. So if you don't know my dopey joke already, I'm all about being patriotic, just not to the point that you pay more in taxes than you need to. In today's video, I'm going to talk certainly about Roth conversions and why they can be so amazing, but also the five situations when you should not implement Roth conversions. That's right.

I find a lot of advisors will talk about all the amazing things about tax planning or withdrawal

strategies or investing, but not say, hey, this is something that you do not have to worry about

if this doesn't apply to you. So as I see a job of an advisor or a good postcaster, should be to say, hey, here's a bunch of things that apply to you and you certainly might want to consider them. And here are things you might have been thinking about that I do not want you to worry about. That's what we call head trash. So in today's podcast, I'm really excited because I get to talk about Roth conversions a lot. If you don't know my cauliflower example, you're going to get to hear it again today. And I'm going to tell you the five situations when you do not want to implement Roth conversions because I always try to keep it fun and lighthearted and a joke. And sometimes I'll keep it serious if I need to. But I'm going to start with this joke where, and it's a lighthearted one, but a client came to me and they said, hey, Ari, you know, I already did

Roth conversions. They said it with a little bit of attitude, and I'm cool with that if they're nice people, and I said, I wish you did nothing. They go, what do you mean? I did Roth conversions. I go, yeah you did but you did too much where now i wish you did nothing at all now we have to fix the

mistake of you over converting and they go yeah, yeah, I saw on a YouTube video, it looked really cool. And I go, on YouTube, it can look really cool. On podcast, it can sound really good. Doesn't mean you should do it. It depends on your situation. And more often than not, people don't screw it up when I see people implement these tax strategies, but they either

overdo it a little bit and pay more than they need to in taxes, or they don't do enough

and they do it, but they left a lot of room on the table that they should have either converted

more or just considered an additional strategy.

So I'm going to start with my real life example, and then we're

going to hop into the fun. So one client came to me and said, already, you know what, I think I've got this big RMD issue, required minimum distributions. They're going to kill me. I know when I'm 73 or 75 or just something like that, when I hit some point later, I'm going to get crushed. Isn't that right?

I go, that's right.

Then they go, you know what?

Well, brackets are changing.

So I know some point later, I'm going to get crushed. Isn't that right? I go, that's right.

Then they go, you know what? Well, brackets are changing. So I know some brackets that we have right now. I think they're going away. Aren't they reverting to the old brackets? Like, even before, you know, Trump, Biden, like before any of those changes, like, what's going to happen. I said, yeah, you're right. They are going to revert, meaning the previous tax law that was

higher, that's coming back into play. So for those of you that don't know right now, the brackets are 10%, then 12%, then 22, then 24, that's going away. So it's going to become 10 and then 15 and then 25. You might not think it's a big deal, but if you're debating an early retirement, the next one to three years are really important because it changes a lot of planning. And they said, yep, totally get that. So I'm going to have RMDs and tax brackets are changing. We should do a lot of these conversions. I said, that's true. We should. And they said, hey, make it really easy for me. Tell me how much I should do.

I said, okay.

So I made them this whole analysis.

I said, hey, flip to the last page.

What does it say you should do?

They said, all right, it says zero. I go, that's right. I want you to do zero. They go, but you said big RMD issue. I go, oh, it's going to be huge.

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