[Rebecca]

My husband and I have retired early. He is 59 and I am 56. The majority of our investments are in traditional IRAs and 401Ks.

We need to determine if doing Roth conversions make sense.

Is there a DIY calculator or software that we can put in various scenarios such as tax rates, rate of return on investments, withdrawals, etc to test how doing Roth convert could impact?

[Bryon]

I developed a spreadsheet to answer the same question for myself including the tax rate, rate of return and a couple of senecios.

Leaving the $’s in the 401k until age 75 and at that point doing the RMD. The other senerio was transferring dollars over each year to have $0 in my 401k by age 75 and having it all contained within a Roth IRA.

There are some assumptions you need to make given that we do not know what the tax rates will be in the future however we can speculate that it will likely be higher.

For me, t is a no brainer with the assumptions I made and a 7.2% estimated conservative return to transition over to a Roth IRA and pay taxes now.

There may be some calculators out there, not sure but it took me about 1/2 hr.

to model this in excel.

[John]

There is really only one factor to consider. I’ve seen the math. If your tax rate will be higher in the future convert now. If it going to be the same or lower don’t.

The current tax brackets are set to expire and will if the election goes one way.

I’m not sure if I’m going to take that into consideration in my own case but I’m converting up to the top of my current tax bracket

[Chris]

I haven’t seen a good one that truly factors in all the nuances and also let’s you play with all your assumptions about the future.

Don’t forget, If ACA is a factor for you, the you must also consider that ACA tax credits reduce (i.e. costs rise) as you trigger more income with a roth conversion.

This, for me, is the limiting factor.

I’m optimizing to keep ACA tax credits as high as possible for as long as I can (I’m 57 and FIREd).

[Author]

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