Ready For Retirement

STOP! Why You Shouldn't Do a Roth Conversion

James Conole, CFP® Episode 246

Roth conversions are almost a buzzword today, with many people jumping into them like they’re a guaranteed fix for tax worries—much like rushing into surgery hoping it will solve all your problems. But just like surgery, Roth conversions require careful consideration, and they’re not always the right solution. Before deciding to convert, it’s essential to understand why not to do it.

Here are some key reasons to skip—or at least pause—on Roth conversions:

- Lower Future Tax Bracket: If you anticipate being in a lower tax bracket during retirement, it might not make sense to pay taxes upfront. For example, retiring and moving to a no-income-tax state like Texas can naturally reduce your tax obligations.

- No Significant RMD Issue: If your required minimum distributions (RMDs) won’t be large enough to push you into a higher tax bracket, the urgency to convert may not exist.

- Charitable Giving Plans: Those planning to donate through qualified charitable distributions (QCDs) after 70½ can leave funds in tax-deferred accounts, making those donations tax-free without needing to convert.

- Social Security Tax Torpedo: Conversions can increase your provisional income, causing more of your Social Security benefits to be taxed, effectively raising your tax rate.

- Medicare Premium Surcharges (IRMAA): Conversions can push your income above IRMAA thresholds, leading to higher Medicare premiums.

- Spending More or Retiring Earlier: Sometimes, simply increasing your spending or retiring sooner can reduce the need for conversions by naturally lowering tax-deferred account balances.

While Roth conversions can be a valuable tool, they’re not a one-size-fits-all solution. Thoughtful planning and understanding your unique financial situation are key to making the right choice.

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Timestamps:
0:00 - Roth conversions are like surgery
3:07 - Questions that prompted this episode
5:28 - Why not to do a Roth conversion
8:38 - RMDs prompt Roth conversions
10:50 - Spend more money, and retire earlier
13:27 - Rethinking what Roth conversions mean
15:12 - A financial example
18:06 - IRMA considerations
22:31 - Knowing enough to be dangerous
24:04 - More reasons to be cautious 

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Speaker 1:

This is another episode of Ready for Retirement. I'm your host, james Canole, and I'm here to teach you how to get the most out of life with your money. And now on to the episode what's up.

Speaker 2:

James, how are you doing? I'm doing well. Have you ever been happy to get a surgery? No, I don't think most people are happy, but I have a weird situation where I was really happy about the thought of getting surgery because I thought it would fix all of my problems. I went to physical therapy. I got an MRI that set up this diagnosis. I went to so many doctors. No one told me what to do. So at one point I was like look, just open me up and just fix me. I'm in that much agony because of my hip, because I play soccer too much and I love it. And that's another episode of my hip, because I play soccer too much and I love it, and that's another episode. But I'll see people come to me and I'm sure you've seen it as well where they go.

Speaker 2:

James, just tell me what Roth conversion do I do? Is it the 22% bracket? Well, it's going to become 25. So I don't know what bracket do I do. They're conversion happy and they just want to do a conversion because they think it's going to fix all of their problems. In the same way, I thought surgery would fix all of my problems. But before you do surgery, there are things we should look at, and so I want to talk to you today about when it does and does not make sense to do these Roth conversions.

Speaker 1:

I like that analogy because it is like surgery, because people don't realize this Roth conversions are painful up front. In the same way, surgery can be painful up front. And I mean that because what you're doing, the Roth conversion, is you're saying I'm going to pay more taxes today so that I don't have to pay as much in the future. I'm going to pay taxes today at a lower rate so I don't have to pay them in the future at a higher rate, kind of like surgery. I'm going to go through the pain today so I can continue playing soccer and have this quality of life in the future. But perfect analogy. Where should we start with this? Because, to your point, people just say open me up, do surgery, do the conversions Not always the right approach?

Speaker 2:

Let's start with the two people that deserve to get credit. And, as I bring this up on my screen, can you share with everyone who have not seen the last few episodes? Who the heck we are, we're doing?

Speaker 1:

this together. We have separate shows and have not seen the last few episodes. Who the heck we are? We're doing this together. We have separate shows and I'll pull this up. Yes, I'm James. This is Ari. We uh, we work together with a lot of people did not know.

Speaker 1:

Uh, ari has a podcast channel and a YouTube channel. I have a podcast channel and a YouTube channel. You're watching. If you're on YouTube, you're watching this on my channel. If you're listening, you might be listening on Ari's early retirement podcast, or you might be listening to my ready for retirement podcast, because we're going to take the audio content and push it to both those places. But we said, hey, we've been doing this for several years together now, separate channels. People are surprised sometimes when they say, oh, you're actually working together. We say, yes, so let's actually do a podcast episode where we get to banter back and forth about different things, not just about things that we want to banter about, but about comments. We're getting on our YouTube videos feedback. We're getting from people listening so that we can answer a lot of the questions that many of you have.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. I'm going to steal one line that I believe it was your dad told you, and he said your job as an advisor is not just to advise, but teach people how to think, how to organize their brain. And so my hope is for some of you, as you take away from this episode today wow, I should never do a Roth conversion. And anytime I see someone bring it up online or a neighbor, a coworker use this fancy conversion word, I'll get to go, I don't have to worry about it. And others of you are going to be like, wow, this is going to really change how much I can spend in retirement and legacy goals and yada yada. So here are the two people that get credit for today's episode. Once again, if you have a comment that you want to leave, you want a question for us to address, please drop it in the comments and we will look to answer that in a future episode. So this comes from Linda Pipkins 4592.

Speaker 2:

When is the best time to perform Roth conversions for a couple who is 64 and 60 with a pre-tax retirement value of two and a half million? Also, how much per year? Well, james, this is an easy answer. Um, always February 10th. Like, how does this person not know? It's always. No, it's not February 10th. So, guys, that is the first question. The second question for this is coming from thundersnow, and I just picked this, cause that's a cool username, thundersnow, you like that username.

Speaker 2:

I'm following thundersnow, you like that username.

Speaker 1:

I'm following Thundersnow, whatever they're doing. Yeah, that's great.

Speaker 2:

Thundersnow that's the new name of our show. Do you have to be working to do a Roth conversion, or can it be done after retirement? I can see how the biggest hesitation in doing a conversion is that you're guaranteeing that you'll pay taxes up front, since you don't know what brackets will be in the future. What do we think of these questions?

Speaker 1:

Good questions and I think that these questions with Roth conversions in general, there's this thought that okay, there's a, there's a pretty quick answer to this, whereas the reality is it depends on so many things. The question is why? Why are we doing Roth conversions, which for a lot of people may sound ridiculous? There's only one reason why, but it's not. Hey, some people do Roth conversions for themselves of how can I keep my lifetime tax bracket as low as possible. Some people do tax brackets for potentially a surviving spouse. They know, hey, my health is not bad, I've got a younger spouse and I'm just speaking hypothetically my health's fine, but I've got a younger spouse and if I pass away, they're going to have single tax brackets as opposed to married. Finally, jointly, they're going to require distributions going to push them way up to the top of that. I need to avoid that.

Speaker 1:

Others do it for their kids. We actually don't need these assets, but we don't want our kids to have to inherit them and then be forced to distribute all their pre-tax account balances at a time that probably corresponds with their own peak earning years. We want this to be part of our estate plan or our transition plan. Even so, understanding why you're doing. It is key because then you can look at.

Speaker 1:

I guess I should say it this way my first thing already is when someone says how much should I do a Roth conversion, before answering I first want to start with why should you not do a Roth conversion? I want to see is there any way we can prevent you from paying taxes upfront, from eating your cauliflower upfront, like you talk about, and if there is great? But sometimes we do the analysis, we do everything, we say no. As much as it is going to hurt to write that check now, it's going to hurt a whole heck of a lot more than it will be to wait and do nothing and write a check for two times, three times the amount in the future.

Speaker 2:

I like that. Not going straight to surgery. When should we not do this? When should someone not do this? What are those simple things to first consider before going straight to surgery?

Speaker 1:

First thing is you're going to be in a lower tax bracket in the future. So I'll bring up a recent example. I was talking to someone. Someone was working. They were 61 years old. This was a client. They were going to move to Texas when they retired. They were living in California. Today they were working and this is a little different. They were really prioritizing doing Roth contributions to their 401k, so we'll tie this to the conversion piece. Now. They were working at a high income. They said we really want to have a tax efficient retirement and they're putting all their 401k into the Roth 401k. And we looked at it and we said look, when you retire, your income is going to go way down because you're not going to be making this high six-figure job income anymore. Plus, when you retire, you're paying 9% 10% in California state taxes. Today You're moving to Texas and that state tax bracket will go away. So why are we paying into something? Why are we contributing to a Roth account which gives no tax benefits today, just so we can pull it out in the future when we're going to be in a lower tax bracket? It's the opposite of what we should be doing. We should be saving money on taxes on the contribution and then pulling it out in the future. So if you're in a position today where you're in a higher tax bracket now than you will be in the future, a Roth conversion doesn't really make sense. Now you have to think through marginal tax bracket versus effective tax bracket and there's some nuance to that. But if you're not going to be in a higher tax bracket some of this we don't really know, because who knows where tax brackets are in 10, 15, 20 years. But that would be a good reason not to. Another good reason not to and I don't want to take the whole show to talk about this, but I think this is important If you're charitably inclined, there's something called a qualified charitable distribution.

Speaker 1:

I was talking to a client one time and he said hey, I'm selling my business and I think we should take the proceeds, put it into a flip crud, nim crud, all this it is really sophisticated tax plan. Use a donor advice fund as a beneficiary of this. I said well, you really want to gift a lot of money, which is incredible. Why don't instead this big, complicated estate transaction that's going to cost you a lot of money in attorney fees and be a lot to administer. What if we just treat your 401k like your donor advice fund, like your giving account, from the standpoint of you can gift up to $100,000 per year from that directly to a charity via what's called a qualified charitable distribution, and that money is never taxable to you. You just gift it right from your IRA, as opposed to being forced to distribute it.

Speaker 1:

The bottom line is, though, the third reason I'll say is the main thing that prompts the need for Roth conversions is this thing called required minimum distributions, which is you might look at your income in the future and say, okay, well, I got social security, I've got a pension, I've got a little bit of income from investments.

Speaker 1:

I'm probably going to be in a low tax bracket, lower tax bracket, at least the name. Now, that may be true until you factor in these required distributions, where, if you've done a good job of saving and investing to pre-tax accounts, the IRS is going to say congratulations. You are now required to take minimum amounts out of that each year, and that number grows, and so, even if you're not, I guess, discretionary spending that money, there's going to be some required spending of that, which could then push you into a higher tax bracket, prompting the need for Roth conversions today, but if you're not going to have a significant RMD issue, that might be another reason not to. So before I ramble on too long, I'm going to turn it back to you to regain control over the show.

Speaker 2:

Okay, Best example on required minimum distributions. This is the first year I was working with you, James. We were in the office, little office together in Solana Beach, and if you remember the name of the client, you can say it. I don't know if we're allowed and all that, but if we're allowed to say the name, he said James, do you know how I know I'm doing well, You're like I don't know. And he said it's when I know I have required minimum distributions beyond what I'm going to need. And I remember both of us looking at each other a little bit and being like, oh, that's a cool definition. Do you remember what client that was? By chance? No, I don't.

Speaker 1:

I don't remember that.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I remember so clearly. So the client was like here we are, I'm sure, excited to begin discussing with clients, because you know in person back then and now we do a lot of our work literally all of our work virtually through Zoom. And I remember him saying hey guys, I get, we're going to talk about Roth conversions and I get that I need to do it. I'm not saying I don't want to do it, I'm saying I know I'm in a good position financially when I need to take out more than I'll ever need. So yeah, there's a problem, but there's a good problem, I remember for me you're talking about.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, think of a few things. So I had one couple.

Speaker 2:

I spoke to and I said how much do you want to spend? And they go, we'd love to spend 8,000 a month in retirement. I said, okay, what if I told you had to spend 10,000 a month? They go, that sounds cool too, I go. What about 12,000 a month? They go. Yeah, we could definitely do that, I go, okay.

Speaker 2:

So this number is moving pretty quickly here. I said what about 20,000 a month? They go. I don't know if I could spend that amount, I go. What if I forced you to? And they're like well, I just I mean I guess we could do it, but I just don't think we'd really need to. Like that wouldn't add to our quality of life. And I said, yeah, but a real easy fix to decreasing the need to Roth conversions is spending more money. And you just told me you want to spend 8,000 a month and then in the span of about six seconds you are willing to spend 12,000 a month. So we need to really determine how much you'd love to spend and you can spend more and there's less of a need to do a Roth conversion. So fix number one that I see is easy is spend more money. Fix number two that I see is easy Retire earlier. I don't want someone to retire too early and run the risk of running out.

Speaker 2:

But we also, as a true fiduciary, our role is to go, got it. What is the true goal of the client? Can we act in their best interest? Sometimes, acting in their best interest is saying look, you told me that you have health conditions and that you don't know how long you're going to be in this state of mind. And I'm not saying this is you, james, or any of you listening right now. But I'll joke that I'm the meanest advisor. I'm not actually mean, okay, I'm just transparent. And the reason I say that is because some people just like this couple here. If I go back and share this screen just for this example. Here they are literally asking when is the best time to do Roth conversions. I already told them it's February 12th, but they didn't hear me. So now, when is the best time for a couple of 64 and 60 with two and a half million? How much per year? Hey, when do you want to stop working? Hey, how much per year? Hey, when do you want to stop working? Hey, how much do you really want?

Speaker 1:

to spend any thoughts. Yeah, I think that um, big picture thought that I'm going to come back to this is someone said this might have been you, this might have been someone else. Someone's saying, hey, roth conversion is kind of like a buzzword today, roth conversion is kind of bad today and it's like, yeah, I, I can see what they mean by that. Of everyone. To your point, is Roth conversion happy? And I think that that can be a problem when people think that the sign of a successful financial plan is the Roth conversion strategy that saves you the most amount of money. How do you gauge the success of your tax strategy? Well, if I can show you that this strategy saves you $2 million and this one saves you one, obviously the one with $2 million savings is better. Right, you would think that, but you then go back to well, what does that mean? That means you're decreasing your personal spending already in retirement so that you can keep your tax bracket super low, so that you can free up more space than the tax brackets we want to fill up, so that we can do more Roth conversions. So don't take that trip. Don't spend time going to those shows with your wife, don't do the things that you want to do, because I can save you $2 million in taxes instead of 1 million. Well, that's the worst advice in the world. We got to remember what the main goal here is. We got to keep the main thing. The main thing and the main thing is not tax savings, the main thing is live the life you want to live.

Speaker 1:

We talk about our mission of helping people get the most out of life with their money, not necessarily just maximizing money for the sake of maximizing money. And once you fully optimized your life, then let's maximize the tax savings that can be maximized from there. But if all you're looking at is a Roth conversion piece, the best way to optimize that is to minimize your quality of life, minimize your own spending. So I forget what your actual question was, but I just wanted to tie that in because this should never be the primary thing. This should be a secondary thing.

Speaker 1:

And even going back to our process with clients, where does it start? We'll talk about purpose what do you want to do? What's important to you? Then the next step is the income plan to maximize income, to support that. Then the next step is the investment strategy to fully support that. Then, finally, we'll talk about taxes, because that's not the first domino. It's not even the second domino to fall. It's okay Once these other things have been optimized. It's the order of operations by which you look at things. Taxes are super important, but do not ever let it become the main thing.

Speaker 2:

I definitely think going through a brief financial example would help people understand if they should worry about conversions. So let's take this couple, linda Pipkins. They've got two and a half million bucks and they said they're 64 and 60. Well, let's assume that RMDs for them begin at 75 and let's just assume their investments do really well and it doubles and let's just assume from two and a half million to 5 million bucks 75. So call it 11 years and 15 years later they've now got 5 million bucks and let's assume they didn't do any conversions. They never heard us do any episode. They don't want to eat any cauliflower. Well, they've now got 5 million bucks at 75 in pre-tax accounts. They also have Social Security. I have no idea if they have rental income or inheritance, but let's just assume Social Security and $5 million pre-tax. And correct me if I'm wrong here because I might not recall but is it 3.8% that RMDs it starts in?

Speaker 1:

the high threes, let's round up to four. So by like age, 76, 77, somewhere around there, your required distribution is based upon life expectancy and there's a table that the IRS uses, but call it 4% is the amount that you have to take out of your portfolio. Okay, that's $200,000.

Speaker 1:

And that's acting on top of social security. And, by the way, if you have $2.5 million in your 401k today, in your early 60s, it means you've done pretty well. You probably have some brokerage done pretty well. You probably have some brokerage assets as well. You maybe have some real estate assets. You maybe equate some other things that will generate taxable income. So it's not just this 200,000 required distribution which, by the way, will continue to go up each year in terms of how much you have to take out. It's social security plus dividends and interest, plus anything else you have, plus that.

Speaker 1:

And so what you're doing is you're saying, okay, what will our tax bracket be in the future? And no, we don't know where tax rates are going to be. No, we don't know exactly what's going to happen. But a projection that's approximately right is way better than being precisely wrong, which is doing nothing. What tax bracket are we in today? And then compare the two and if it's a much higher bracket in the future, consider a conversion today.

Speaker 1:

Now, the caveat to that is, if today you're still working, it's not just looking at today. In the future, it's also looking at the in-between years. Today, for example, if you're in the 22% bracket, and in the future you might be in the 32% bracket. You might jump to the conclusion I should do a conversion. Well, maybe, but what if the next 10 years you're in the 0% bracket because you retire and you're living on brokerage accounts or whatever? So, not to get too in depth, but look at the 30,000 foot view of what is my marginal tax bracket expected to be each and every year, assuming no conversions, so that I know what year should I fill up what tax brackets to normalize or even out where I'm paying the taxes and in doing so potentially save a whole lot of money.

Speaker 2:

And this might be a longer episode, because we just love this stuff, but I want to touch on briefly Irma, not for too long, but some people don't even know what Irma is, so I just want to allude to it, because some people make the mistake of going oh my gosh, I'm not going to do Roth conversions. That's going to increase my income. And then there's this Irma thing. But I don't know if you're talking about a hurricane or if that's something else like what am I missing here? So want to allude to that. But at the same time, I want to bring up a huge point that you just said, which is okay. We have a tax window If we retire at 65 and social security doesn't begin until 70 and then RMDs don't begin until 75. Well, to answer this, one of the questions here is do you have to be working to do a conversion? Can it be done after? You can do it at any time. It doesn't mean you should do it, but you can. What we want I want to stop real quick on that point.

Speaker 1:

That's an excellent point, because a lot of people think, oh, you have to be working to make a Roth contribution. That is true, you have to have earned income to make a contribution. You can make a conversion whenever, whether you're working, not working. It typically makes more sense when you're not working because income's lower, but you can do it whenever Good interruption, please keep doing that.

Speaker 2:

This on my screen you can see here. This is an example of someone who is in retirement and you can see this is Irma brackets. Now some of you are like I don't even know what you're talking about right now. Is that like your aunt, not my aunt, james? Do you mind breaking down what the heck Irma means, when people should or should not worry about this?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, irma is a Medicare premium or not a premium. It's a surcharge to your premium. So when you get Medicare there's just a cost for your Part B premium. So for this year it's $174.70. That's the 2024 number. Now that goes up as your income goes up. So you can see. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see this. If you're listening on podcasts mine are always check it out on YouTube. James Canole is the podcast or the YouTube channel this is on you can see the numbers already shown here.

Speaker 1:

Once your modified adjusted gross income exceeds these are 2024 numbers 206,000000 if you're married, half of that. If you're single, there's a premium adjustment. You're paying an extra $70 for your Part B Medicare Part B, an extra $13 for your Medicare Part D. Those are monthly amounts. So an extra $83 per month. As your income continues to go up, those surcharges go up. So it's not technically a tax in the standpoint like an income taxes of once your income goes over certain thresholds you move from the 10% bracket to 12% bracket, 12% to 22%, so on and so forth. But it should be viewed as like a tax because the more your income goes up, it's not just your federal income taxes that you're paying more on, or your state income taxes. There's also potentially Medicare premium surcharges.

Speaker 1:

I will say people sometimes get too hung up on this. They think, oh, I don't want to do a conversion because of the IRMA surcharge. One way of thinking about it is the top of the 22% federal income tax bracket somewhat corresponds with the top of the first the threshold at which IRMA kicks in. Irma kicks in if you're married. What is it? 206,000, 203,000.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, 206,000 and above is when the first IRMA surcharge kicks in. The top of the 22% bracket for married filing jointly is $201,050. Divide those numbers in half if you want, for single. So if you're just converting up to top of the 22% bracket each time, you're not crossing that threshold. The thing to be mindful of and this is where we're probably going to lose people and it gets confusing and I get that is one is measuring your taxable income. One is measuring your adjusted gross income, your modified adjusted gross income. So that's where it's a little bit more technical than is going to work out to describe on a podcast episode. But do your tax prep when you do this, because I have a good one for that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So that's the equivalent of when I went to go get a surgery that I ended up not getting, and I'll do a separate episode on that in the future. If you guys really want to know which, you guys can, let me know in the comments if you care or not. I won't be offended either way. But we were debating which part of my hip should we attack from. Is it from the back of the hip? Is it the front? What's going to create more scar tissue?

Speaker 2:

There's a level of this where when I go to my surgeon, I'm deferring to him who's seen the inside of hips and what creates most scar tissue. So the risk to this in the same example you just shared there, james, of modified adjusted gross income versus taxable income some people they know enough to be dangerous and a lot of you guys listening are trying to optimize your financial strategy. So we're not mad at you. But you'll often say, oh my gosh, I'm retired, I'm 63. I'm going to go do a Roth conversion. And then two years later, you get all mad at me and I'm like, hey, what's what's going on? And you're like you didn't tell him about this two year, look back thing and that impacts my Medicare and my, this, my. There's so many different things, james and I try to pick and choose what's going to be the most bang for your buck in these episodes, so not going through every single thing there, but I hear you, yeah, and I'm Googling as we speak.

Speaker 1:

There's a form you can actually file to say, like there is a two-year look back, which is how it's calculated. You can go tell social security look my income for this. For example, if your income two years ago was $300,000 and you're turning 65, you're going to have an ERMA surcharge on your Medicare payments this year, unless you proactively go to social security. I'm trying to look up the form as we speak to SSA-44, I believe it is where you can say look, that was two years ago and so you're exactly right. You can be proactive about it, which is a great thing to do. To say this year is actually going to be a hundred thousand, so that surcharge shouldn't apply. But yes, that's that you got to keep both in mind.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. I know we have to pick and choose our moments and we're already at 24, 25 minutes in here regarding Roth conversions. Any last things you want to leave people with regarding legacy, when can people do those QCDs you were talking?

Speaker 1:

about QCDs. You can start doing as soon as age 70 and a half. Required distribution start at age 73 or 75, depending on your birth year. It used to be 72. Before that it used to be 70 and a half. There's a lot.

Speaker 1:

I think that the main thing like we talked about arias before just jumping into them, because it seems like there's almost this weirdly dopamine hit If I'm doing something proactive, I'm doing, I'm getting the surgery and thinking it's going to be okay, make sure it's the right thing to do. There's a lot of cases where it's not. You know someone that has, I don't know when required. Required minimum distributions aren't going to be an issue. I just see too many people convert too much upfront. It's like you probably would have been fine with either no conversions or just at least a lesser amount.

Speaker 1:

There's another thing called a social security tax torpedo where the way social security is taxed is it's based upon what's called your provisional income, and as your taxable income increases, or as your provisional income increases, more and more of your social security benefit gets pulled into your taxable income calculation, and so what happens is you could be in a 12% bracket.

Speaker 1:

But there's a social security tax torpedo zone where I've got a video, I'll try to link the show notes here. I walk through this, probably with way more clarity than I'm describing it here. Not only are you converting, doing a Roth conversion at the 12% bracket, which seems like a no brainer, but you're also pulling more of your social security into your taxable income and then paying taxes on that too, and you're effectively paying a 22.2% tax, I believe it is, as opposed to just 12% federally. So the main thing is really make sure it's the right thing. For many people it's absolutely the right thing. It's a no brainer. You should 100% do it. I just see too many people where it's not and they waste money when it wasn't required.

Speaker 2:

Love it. I'll leave you all with, unless, james, you have anything you want to chime in after this with the cauliflower example, which I share a lot. I don't have the shirt on me, but it's one of my favorite gifts I've received, where I'll explain a conversion. Like eating cauliflower, I want you to eat a little bit of vegetables today to avoid having to eat a ton of cauliflower in the future, and I don't want any of you guys to be going oh my gosh, my whole retirement I'm going to eat so much vegetables, which is paying a lot in taxes. Now some of you are like I like cauliflower. It's a terrible example. Tell me which vegetable you'd prefer and next time maybe next episode, james I'll whip out the shirt so everyone gets to see it. But that's all I've got on conversions.

Speaker 1:

That's it. Yeah, you may have shared this, but when you proposed to Alice, we sent Alice a big bouquet of roses and Ari a big bouquet of roses and Ari a big bouquet of cauliflower, and I don't know if you ever ate it, but you got it, but yeah eat your cauliflower when it makes sense, avoid it when it doesn't.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's my best man at the wedding. It's going to be the cauliflower.

Speaker 1:

Love it Well, cool, all right, that's all I got, anything else from you.

Speaker 2:

No, that's it. See you next time.

Speaker 1:

The last thing I'll say is this is being posted on my YouTube channel, just so people aren't confused. Ari has a podcast Early Retirement Podcast. We'll have a link out to that. Make sure you listen there. I have the podcast, the Ready for Retirement Podcast. We'll link out there. We both have been working together for a very long time. Different shows People had no idea we worked together. So we're now doing this together and wanting to make sure that people that know me also know Ari and vice versa. So we are good. We'll have links to that and we'll see you all next time. Love you guys. The information presented is for educational purposes only and is not intended as an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and are not guaranteed. Any mention of rates of return are historical and illustrative in nature and are not a guarantee of future returns.

Speaker 2:

Past performance does not guarantee future performance Viewers are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal or investment advisor professional to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation.

Speaker 1:

Once again. I'm James Canole, founder of Root Financial, and if you're interested in seeing how we help our clients at Root Financial get the most out of life with their money, be sure to visit us at wwwrootfinancialpartnerscom. Hey everyone, it's me again for the disclaimer. Please be smart about this. Before doing anything, please be sure to consult with your tax planner or financial planner.

Speaker 1:

Nothing in this podcast should be construed as investment, tax, legal or other financial advice. It is for informational purposes only. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Ready for Retirement podcast. If you want to see how Root Financial can help you implement the techniques I discussed in this podcast, then go to rootfinancialpartnerscom and click start here, where you can schedule a call with one of our advisors. We work with clients all over the country and we love the opportunity to speak with you about your goals and how we might be able to help. And please remember, nothing we discuss in this podcast is intended to serve as advice. You should always consult a financial, legal or tax professional who's familiar with your unique circumstances before making any financial decisions.

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