A little timing. A different tax picture.

Roth Conversion Guide

Cover your life first. Then see how much of your 401(k) or traditional IRA could move to Roth within the 12% federal income-tax bracket, starting when either spouse retires.

A guesstimation tool. Federal income tax only.

Your starting point

An example for a couple approaching retirement, not a claim about average balances. Start with your rough numbers.

How do you file?

What will you live on?

Household totals for both of you. Spending starts when the first spouse retires.

Annual living expenses, after tax

Include housing, food, travel, health insurance, and other living costs. Exclude income taxes and rental-property costs counted below.

Brokerage investments available today

Taxable investments outside retirement accounts. Sales cover the spending gap and federal income taxes, including conversion taxes.

Brokerage gain assumption

Unrealized gain in today's balance (%)

50% means a $10,000 sale initially includes $5,000 of gain and $5,000 of original investment. Illustrative, not a measured average. All sales are assumed long-term.

We use wages, Social Security, rental cash flow, and retirement withdrawals first. We sell brokerage investments only for the remaining gap. Conversions stay invested in Roth.

Your timeline

Age at the end of 2026

Retirement age

Gross annual pay while working

Pretax retirement savings today

Already retired? Enter the age you stopped working. Savings means traditional IRA, 401(k), and similar pretax accounts.

Withdrawals & Social Security

Optional pretax withdrawals (before tax)

Optional 401(k)/IRA cash for spending, apart from brokerage sales or conversions. RMDs count toward this amount.

Start withdrawals at age

Only withdraw the required minimum (RMD)

Claim Social Security at age

Monthly Social Security benefit

Estimate at your chosen claiming age, before Medicare deductions. Enter 0 for none.

Your spouse

Age at the end of 2026

Retirement age

Gross annual pay while working

Pretax retirement savings today

Already retired? Enter the age you stopped working. Savings means traditional IRA, 401(k), and similar pretax accounts.

Withdrawals & Social Security

Optional pretax withdrawals (before tax)

Optional 401(k)/IRA cash for spending, apart from brokerage sales or conversions. RMDs count toward this amount.

Start withdrawals at age

Only withdraw the required minimum (RMD)

Claim Social Security at age

Monthly Social Security benefit

Estimate at your chosen claiming age, before Medicare deductions. Enter 0 for none.

Rental & other income

For both of you combined. Do not include pay, Social Security, withdrawals, or conversions again.

Annual gross long-term rent

Rent received before property expenses. Use your ownership share.

Annual gross short-term rent

Booking revenue before platform fees, management, cleaning, and other property expenses.

Cash flow pays bills; taxable profit uses tax-bracket room. Depreciation can reduce taxable profit without using cash. Rental income is not automatically tax-free.

Adjust the rental assumptions

Illustrative presets, not generally accepted averages or IRS deductions. Long-term: 50% cash expenses + 20% depreciation allowance. Short-term: 60% cash expenses + 20% depreciation allowance. Replace these with your own estimates; neither margin nor tax treatment is guaranteed by rental type.

Long-term cash expenses (%)

Include deductible expenses and mortgage interest, not principal.

Long-term depreciation allowance (%)

As a share of gross rent; a planning shortcut, not a depreciation calculation.

Short-term cash expenses (%)

Include deductible operating costs, fees, and mortgage interest.

Short-term depreciation allowance (%)

As a share of gross bookings. Adjust to reflect your tax records.

Annual rental mortgage principal / reserves

Across both rental types. Reduces spendable cash, not taxable profit. Do not also include it in household spending.

We floor each rental type's taxable profit at zero. Rental-loss offsets, QBI, property sales/recapture, and hotel-like services subject to self-employment tax are outside this estimate.

Annual pension / other retirement income

Taxable ordinary income. Starts at your retirement age and continues. Rent continues throughout.

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Your possible conversion window

Finding the opening...

Find room in the 12% bracket

An illustration, not a recommendation

Explore room up to the

Annual conversion

Conversion years

Start at your age

End at your age

Defaults to the first spouse's retirement through the year before your RMDs. Change the years to explore another stretch. Joint conversions are split in proportion to each person's remaining pretax savings.

The shape of your tax years

Watch the window open.

Compare no conversions with your conversion strategy through age 74. The income view shows ordinary taxable income, which sets the conversion bracket; the tax view also includes brokerage capital-gains tax. Later years remain in the selector and table.

No conversionsYour strategyRoom within your selected years

Explore a year

What changes over time?

Lower future RMDs can follow from moving money out of pretax savings. Brokerage balances reflect the sales needed to pay tax and the assumed growth on what remains. This comparison does not calculate Roth growth, total after-tax wealth, or lifetime tax savings.

See the year-by-year estimates

Annual estimates under this strategy
Year / age	Withdrawals	RMD included	Brokerage sales	Conversion	Unfunded cash need	Tax: none	Tax: strategy	Pretax balance	Brokerage balance

Simple on purpose

A direction, not a prescription.

When one paycheck ends, the household still needs to pay its bills. This guide first fills that spending gap, then estimates conversion room. A brokerage sale returns some original investment and realizes some taxable gain. A conversion creates taxable income but provides no spending cash.

A conversion in the 12% ordinary-income bracket can still cost more than 12% overall if it raises tax on investment gains or Social Security. We show that added cost. If brokerage savings cannot cover spending and taxes, the guide limits conversions rather than assuming unlimited money.

The assumptions doing the work

2026 federal brackets and standard deductions. Held flat in future years; no inflation adjustment or prediction of future law.
8% annual growth. A fixed illustration, not a forecast or a historical-average claim. Applies to pretax and brokerage balances after withdrawals/sales. No dividends or new contributions; spending and income stay flat.
Brokerage funds the gap. Starts when either spouse retires. Only the gain portion is taxable; its share changes as investments grow and shares are sold.
Separate rental cash flow and profit. Adjustable expense/depreciation presets are illustrative, not IRS or industry averages.
Age-based deductions and Social Security taxation. Estimated automatically. The temporary senior deduction ends after 2028 in this model.

Full assumptions & IRS sources

Annual steps start in 2026. Ages mean age at year-end. Today's balances stand in for opening-year balances. Work income stops in the retirement year; benefits and withdrawals start as full annual amounts in their chosen years. If already retired, historical working-year income is not reconstructed.

RMDs use the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table and the prior modeled year-end balance. Start age is 75 for birth years 1960 onward, 73 for 1951-1959 (1959 uses age 73 as a modeling assumption), and earlier rules for older cohorts. We do not delay a first RMD or model working-employer exceptions, inherited accounts, or the younger-spouse beneficiary table.

Annual withdrawals are the larger of planned withdrawals and the RMD, limited by available savings. Conversions use what remains; RMDs cannot be converted. Withdrawals and conversions occur before that year's growth. Living expenses and modeled federal income taxes are funded from cash income and brokerage sales. Conversion taxes are included in that cash need. Before either spouse retires, the entered retirement budget does not apply; ordinary income still pays its modeled taxes. Income surpluses are not reinvested. All retirement savings are assumed pretax and eligible for conversion.

Taxable gains are included in combined income for Social Security and in income for the senior deduction. Only ordinary taxable income is compared with the selected conversion bracket. We use standard deductions plus age-65 additions. For 2026-2028, eligible seniors receive up to $6,000 each, reduced by income. Married separate filers do not get that temporary deduction. If a spouse itemizes, no standard deduction is used. Brokerage gains use the published 2026 0%/15%/20% long-term capital-gains bands, stacked above ordinary taxable income. Deductions, taxable Social Security, and the senior deduction are recalculated when gains or conversions change. No other itemized deductions, credits, pretax payroll contributions, tax-exempt interest, QBI, AMT, NIIT, capital losses, dividends, or foreign-income adjustments are modeled.

Employee Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes reduce working cash income, using 2026 limits held flat. No state taxes, health-insurance subsidy/premium calculations, early-withdrawal penalties, Roth access rules, survivor scenarios, or plan-specific restrictions are calculated. Filing status stays fixed. Social Security amounts are user estimates, not benefit calculations.

IRS: 2026 brackets and standard deductions
IRS: taxable Social Security
IRS: retirement distributions and RMD tables
IRS: enhanced senior deduction
IRS: actual rental-income rules
IRS: capital gains and tax calculation
IRS: employee payroll taxes

Another angle to explore later

What about a market decline?

A lower account value may let you convert the same investments for a smaller taxable dollar amount. That can matter even when your bracket stays high. A fixed $25,000 conversion, however, still adds $25,000 of income; it may simply move more shares. A recovery is not guaranteed.

Market-decline scenario: planned for a future version

A rough educational guesstimation for entertainment purposes only. Not personalized financial, investment, or tax advice. Results depend on simplified assumptions and are not a tax return, forecast, or recommendation to convert. Federal income tax only; state taxes are excluded.