On today's episode of Ready for Retirement, we're taking a look at Gary's financial situation.

Now, Gary believes he's too old to begin implementing tax strategy in a serious way,

but we're going to help him unpack what things he can do, as well as of a couple blind spots

that Gary might not be recognizing in his plan as a whole. Let's jump into Gary's question.

This is another episode of Ready for Retirement. I'm your host, James Canol,

and I'm here to teach you how to get the most of the life with your money. And now, on to the episode.

Gary says this. He says, my question is about making a series of huge Roth conversions to help

reduce some of the error of not starting the conversions when I retired at age

57. My wife and I are 73. We have no children and we sold our house and will not be buying another.

We have saved very diligently and spent so little, which has resulted in a total of about $8 million

in savings. We have $1.3 million in CDs. The balance of our brokerage accounts is $3.2 million in the Vanguard total

stock market index. Our combined Roth IRA balance is $400,000 in a Vanguard high-yield

corporate bond fund. The combined total of our traditional IRAs is $3.3 million. My pension is $75,000 per

year, and our combined social security is $25,000. Our annual expenses do not exceed $75,000 per year, and our combined Social Security is $25,000.

Our annual expenses do not exceed $40,000.

Our first required minimum distribution this year was $120,000, leaving us in the 24% tax

bracket, with enough space remaining that tax bracket for a $125,000 Roth conversion. We have no debt and no state

income tax. I have listened extensively to various tax planners and have recently used

Glenn Reeves tax spreadsheet to look at different scenarios for advantages and disadvantages of making

three or more annual $500,000 conversions, and I'm still unclear on what action to take. I know that making three

such conversions would reduce my future required minimum distributions to approximately half,

which should keep me in a lower tax bracket through the coming years. I've been listening to

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