The five years before · Retirement Transition Trap™
The Roth conversion window
A window that opens when the salary stops and closes when the required distributions start, or sooner.
In short
The Roth conversion window is the stretch between your last full salary and the start of required distributions, or sooner, often the lowest-taxable-income years of an entire financial life, and the period in which converting tax-deferred money is cheapest.
How it works
A Roth conversion moves money from a tax-deferred account to a tax-free one and triggers tax on the amount converted in the year you do it. Whether that is worthwhile depends almost entirely on the rate you pay now against the rate you would have paid later.
For many people the years just after they stop working are the lowest-income years they will have: prior to claiming Social Security, and required distributions have not begun. That gap is the window.
Why it closes
Once required distributions begin, taxable income rises whether you want it or not. The room that made conversions cheap gets filled by income you did not choose, and the opportunity narrows.
The window is also finite in a way most planning decisions are not. An unconverted year cannot be revisited.
It is a rate comparison, not a rule
Conversions are not universally good. They cost tax now for a benefit later, and they raise income in the year they happen, which can affect other income-linked calculations in that same year.
The honest version of the question is narrow: is the rate you would pay converting this year lower than the rate you expect to pay on that money later, including what it does to a surviving spouse’s brackets? Answering it needs your actual numbers.
This page explains a mechanism. It is not investment, tax or legal advice, and it deliberately quotes no thresholds, ages or rates. Those are set annually, and a page that named them would be out of date within a year.
Check where you stand
Ten questions, about two minutes
The readiness checklist covers this and nine other checkpoints, and tells you which you have already handled. No contact details required.
Where does this sit in your plan?
Fifteen minutes on the phone about your own situation, which is the part this page can’t tell you.