WealthHabits. Calculator

Roth Conversion Calculator

The best Roth conversions usually happen in the window between your last paycheck and the start of Social Security and required distributions, sized to fill a target bracket each year. Set up your household below; the planner builds a year-by-year schedule, projects both paths to age 95, and shows when converting pulls ahead. No email required.

About you

Married filing separately? Pick Single; results will be approximate.

Income, now and later

Grows with your inflation setting. When income falls short, the planner withdraws: brokerage first, then pre-tax (with the tax that triggers), then Roth.

Assumptions applied to everything below

Our computed value:

Retirement Assets

Advanced: after-tax basis

The Conversion Plan

10 years

The year-by-year schedule

The planned conversion follows your chosen strategy and is ADDED ON TOP of the income shown: its taxable portion raises that year's AGI for federal and state tax, Social Security taxability, and Medicare IRMAA. Type an amount in "Your override" to replace any year; leave it blank to keep the plan. Required distributions come out first and can never be converted; conversions are capped by what remains in the IRA after RMDs and spending withdrawals.
YrAgeIncome before conversionRMDPlanned conversionYour overrideTax costTo Roth

Where the two paths land

What the plan changes in retirement

Before you decide

What else should you weigh before converting?

The math above is one input. These are the questions that decide real conversions. The marks show what your own numbers say: ✓ favors converting, ! cuts against it or needs care, ? only you can answer.

Will your tax rate be higher later than it is now?

The whole trade rests on this one. Rates rise for reasons people don't expect: required minimum distributions stacking on top of Social Security, a surviving spouse filing single on nearly the same income, or tax law simply changing. If your honest answer is higher than the effective rate the plan pays (shown in the plan tiles above), converting wins.

Are you going to outlive your assets?

If you might spend this account down in your own lifetime, converting is less compelling: you'd be prepaying tax on dollars you'll likely withdraw at low rates anyway. If you'll probably never touch it, the calculus flips. A Roth has no required distributions while you're alive, and your heirs inherit it tax free (they must empty it within 10 years, but without a tax bill). A traditional IRA hands them taxable income, often in their own peak earning years.

Can you pay the tax without touching the IRA?

Paying the conversion tax from outside savings lets every converted dollar keep compounding tax free, so the plan can win even when the rate later merely matches the rate paid now. If the tax must come out of the IRA itself, especially before 59½, the case gets much weaker. The payment toggle above shows you exactly how much.

Do you have low-income years coming?

The years between your last paycheck and the start of Social Security or required distributions are prime conversion windows: same account, same future, much lower brackets. A sabbatical, a business sale year structured well, or an early retirement can open the same window.

What will required distributions do to your brackets?

Required distributions start at 73 or 75 depending on your birth year, computed on your pre-tax balance whether you need the income or not. Converting now shrinks that balance, which shrinks every future forced withdrawal and the taxes riding on it.

Will the extra income today cost you somewhere else?

Conversion income can raise Medicare premiums two years later, pull more of your Social Security into taxable income, and trim health-insurance subsidies if you retire before 65. None of these kill a good conversion, but they should be sized before you sign, not discovered after.

Are you moving to a lower-tax state?

Convert while in a high-tax state and you pay that state's rate on the whole conversion. Wait until after the move and the state's share may drop to zero. The retirement-state selector above moves every post-retirement year's state tax to your destination's rules, so the planner shows the size of that gap.

Save this scenario

The plan above is a model. Your real plan has more moving parts.

A real conversion schedule flexes with equity compensation, RSU vesting, Medicare timing, charitable giving, and everything else in your tax picture, and it gets revisited every year as the actual numbers come in. That's what we build with clients. Want your plan pressure-tested?

Book a 15-minute call with Gabriel

No pitch. If a conversion doesn't make sense for you, you'll hear that.

Assumptions & methodology
  • Tax year federal and New York brackets, applied by filling brackets on top of your entered taxable income (not a flat rate).
  • Pro-rata basis math treats all pre-tax money as one pool. The IRS aggregates all traditional, SEP, and SIMPLE IRAs by year-end value; 401(k)s are not part of that aggregation. Converting from a 401(k) with no IRA basis? Enter basis of $0.
  • When tax is paid from savings, the foregone side account grows at your return reduced by the tax-drag setting, and its ending value is treated as fully spendable. That slightly favors staying traditional, which makes this tool conservative about recommending conversion.
  • When tax is paid from the IRA before age 59½, the 10% penalty is approximated as 10% of the tax paid.
  • Roth withdrawals are assumed qualified (5-year rule met, age 59½+ at withdrawal). A notice appears when your inputs don't support that.
  • The retirement-rate guess assumes your spending is funded by pre-tax withdrawals: spending minus the standard deduction is probed against the brackets. Social Security, pensions, and withdrawals from Roth or taxable accounts would change that mix and are not modeled. The rate field is always yours to override.
  • Today's dollars use your inflation setting.
  • State and local tax uses per-state 2026 rules for all 50 states, DC, and New York City: each state's own brackets, standard deductions, exemptions, surtaxes, and New York's benefit recapture (approximated). Your current taxable income is treated as state gross income before that state's own deductions; the deduction largely cancels when computing the extra tax a conversion adds.
  • The "share of yearly gains lost to tax" is computed from your retirement rates with these assumptions: 85% of realized returns are long-term gains and qualified dividends (federal capital-gains rates), 15% are short-term (ordinary rates), consistent with roughly 15% annual portfolio turnover; your state rate applies to both. Edit the field to override.
  • Not modeled: net investment income tax, credits and phase-outs, Social Security interactions, ACA subsidies, and local taxes outside New York City. New York excludes the first $20,000 per year of IRA withdrawals for residents 59½ and older, one reason a NY rate in retirement may be lower than the prefill.
  • Conversions are irreversible (recharacterization ended in 2018) and count in the calendar year executed. A December 31 conversion is taxed in that year.
  • Multi-year planner: each year's conversion tax is incremental (tax with minus tax without, never the whole bill); salaries stop at each person's retirement age and Social Security starts at each claim age; taxable Social Security uses the provisional-income formula; RMDs start at your birth cohort's SECURE 2.0 age (73 if born 1959 or earlier, 75 if born 1960 or later) using the IRS Uniform Lifetime divisors applied to the combined pre-tax pool at the older person's age (a simplification when spouses hold separate IRAs); after-tax basis is applied pro-rata to every traditional distribution, RMDs included; all account flows use a start-of-year convention so conversions never gain or lose a year of return by bookkeeping; Medicare IRMAA uses the actual 2-year lookback and is charged per person 65 or older; federal brackets, the standard deduction, and IRMAA tiers index at your inflation setting (default 3%) while state rules stay at 2026 values; household spending (today's dollars, grown at the indexing rate) is funded each year from after-tax income first, then brokerage, then pre-tax withdrawals grossed up for the tax they trigger, then Roth — with conversions filling only the bracket room left above those withdrawals; surpluses in working years are saved into the brokerage; early-withdrawal penalties on spending withdrawals before 59½ and embedded-gains tax on brokerage liquidations are not modeled; pre-tax balances are valued after tax at the effective rate on an RMD-sized withdrawal in each year's income situation. The planner is not an optimizer: it executes the strategy you choose.

This calculator is educational and illustrative only. It is not tax, legal, or investment advice, and it simplifies rules that have exceptions. Your actual results will differ. Talk to a qualified professional before converting. Derastone LLC dba Wealth Habits is an investment adviser; advisory services are offered only under a written agreement.

This website is not intended to provide legal advice, tax advice, accounting advice or financial advice. Articles, opinions, and tools are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. The retirement calculator is meant to demonstrate different potential scenarios to consider, and is not intended to provide definitive answers to anyone's financial situation. We always suggest that you consult your accountant, tax, legal or financial advisor concerning your individual situation.

This is not an offer to buy or sell any security or interest. All investing involves risk, including loss of principal. Working with an adviser may come with potential downsides such as payment of fees (which will reduce returns). Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. There are no guarantees that working with an adviser will yield positive returns. The existence of a fiduciary duty does not prevent the rise of potential conflicts of interest.