Thank you for sharing your expertise Larry. My wife and I have a few modest traditional IRAs with aprox $200k combined. We also have a 401K and a rollover IRA from my pension cash-out. Each of these has a little over $1m. I am 68 years old and plan to take my SS at 70. My SS earnings will be near the maximum. My concern is the tax implications of large RMD withdrawals after age 73. My countermeasure is to begin converting the IRA money to ROTH IRAs. I will keep the annual conversions at a modest level to manage the tax hit. My question for you; are there SS advantages/disadvantages with converting any one of our three Ira/401k buckets? I subscribe to your Maximize software and cannot find a way to model this question. Any info will be very much appreciated. Thank you!

Hi. I answer general Social Security questions submitted to this forum, but I don't have access to the data that our software customers submit. Software subscribers are encouraged to submit questions using an online contact form in the help menu so that their questions can be answered by one of our experts with access to their information.

I can tell you that nothing that you do with regard to converting your IRAs or 401Ks will affect your Social Security benefit rate, unless your 401Ks are based on contributions from your earnings that were exempt from Social Security taxes. As long as you always paid Social Security taxes on your wages, your Social Security benefits won't be subject to reduction based on the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) (https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10045.pdf).

However, what you decide to do with your IRAs and 401Ks might affect the potential taxation of your Social Security benefits, and your Medicare Part B premium rates. It sounds like you may want to consider subscribing to our Maxifi Planner software, which is a full feature financial software program. For more information about Maxifi, click on the following link: https://maxifiplanner.com/.

Best, Jerry