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Physician Retirement Planning

The Best Way To Do A Roth IRA Conversion? Try “Reverse Dollar Cost Averaging”

Dollar cost averaging is an investment strategy where a fixed amount of money is invested on a regular basis, for example, monthly. There are several advantages to the investor to utilize dollar cost averaging. These same advantages apply to converting money in a traditional IRA into a Roth IRA. However, the conversion advantages of this strategy is to minimize income tax incurred from the conversion and thus maximize long-term investment returns.

Summary Points:

  • In dollar cost averaging, an investor purchases a set amount of an investment monthly.
  • In “reverse dollar cost averaging”, an investor regularly sells shares of a traditional IRA to convert money into a Roth IRA.
  • By using this strategy, an investor can maximize long-term investment returns

 

What is a Roth IRA conversion?

There are essentially two types of IRAs: traditional IRAs and Roth IRAs. The rules about who can contribute to them and how they are taxed are a bit complicated. Both types of IRAs are subject to federal and state income tax but the differences are in when you pay those taxes: when you put the money in (during your working years) or when you take the money out (during retirement years).

  • Traditional IRAs. In 2023, you can contribute $6,500 into a traditional IRA ($7,500 if you are over age 50). For tax purposes, the IRS divides money in your IRA into two categories: the amount you initially contributed (the IRA contribution amount) and the amount that you made in profit from that initial contribution (the IRA profit amount). Everyone pays regular federal and state income tax on the traditional IRA profit amount when that money is taken out of the traditional IRA in retirement. But when it comes to the contribution amount, things get complicated and taxation depends on your annual income for the year of that contribution and your IRS filing status for that year.
    • Filing single. If you are covered by an employer retirement plan and your 2023 income is less than $73,000, then your traditional IRA contributions are all pre-tax, meaning that you do not pay income tax on those contributions until you withdraw the money in retirement. If your 2023 income is greater than $83,000, then your traditional IRA contributions are all post-tax, meaning that you pay income tax on those contributions this year, when you earned the money for those contributions. Then, in retirement, you do not have to pay any income tax on the withdrawals for the amount that you initially contributed. If your income is between $73,000 and $83,000, there is a phase-out, meaning that some amount of your contributions are pre-tax and some amount are post-tax.
    • Married filing jointly. If you are married and the spouse making the IRA contribution is covered by a workplace retirement plan, the income limit for pre-tax contributions is $116,000. All contributions are post-tax if the annual income is greater than $136,000. There is a phase-out if the income is between $116,000 and $136,000. However, if you are an IRA contributor who is not covered by a workplace retirement plan and is married to someone who is covered, the phase-out range increases to between $218,000 and $228,000
  • Roth IRAs (direct contributions). There are two ways you can contribute to a Roth IRA, either directly or by doing a traditional IRA to Roth IRA conversion. All contributions to Roth IRAs (regardless of annual income) are post-tax meaning that you pay federal and state income tax this year on any contributions you make this year. When money is withdrawn in retirement, all withdrawals are tax-free. The amount that the IRS allows you to contribute directly to a Roth IRA depends on your annual income for the year that you make the contributions.
    • Filing single. If your 2023 income is less than $138,000, then you can make direct contributions to a Roth IRA of up to $6,500 (or $7,500 if you are over age 50). If your annual income is greater than $153,000, then you cannot contribute any amount directly into a Roth IRA. If your income is between $138,000 and $153,000, then there is a phase-out, meaning that you can contribute directly to a Roth IRA but less than the usual maximum amount of $6,500 ($7,500 if over age 50).
    • Married filing jointly. The income limit for direct contributions to a Roth IRA is $218,000. If the annual income is less than that, then both spouses can directly contribute up to $6,500 each ($7,500 if over age 50) into a Roth IRA. If the household income is greater than $228,000, then neither spouse can make direct contributions to a Roth IRA. There is a phase-out if the income is between $218,000 and $228,000 resulting in a maximum direct contribution to a Roth IRA of less than $6,500 ($7,500 if over age 50).
  • Roth IRAs (conversion contributions). The second way of contributing to a Roth IRA is by doing a traditional IRA to Roth IRA conversion. This is sometimes called a “backdoor Roth” since the IRS code allows a person to first contribute money into a traditional IRA and then promptly convert that money into a Roth IRA. This strategy is used by people whose income is too high to directly contribute to a Roth IRA but it is also used by anyone who already has money in a traditional IRA and wants to move some of that money into a Roth IRA. There is no limit to the amount that you convert in any given year – you can convert as much as you want. However, the conversion is considered taxable income for that year, so the more you convert, the higher your annual income and therefore the higher your marginal tax rate becomes. Also, you must leave the amount that you convert in the Roth IRA for at least 5 years before you can withdraw that money without incurring an IRS penalty. You can make as many conversions as you want in any given year. The amount of income tax you pay when doing a Roth IRA conversion depends on whether your previous contributions to your traditional IRA were post-tax contributions, pre-tax contributions, or a mixture of the two.
    • Pre-tax traditional IRA contributions. If all of your previous contributions to your traditional IRA were made with pre-tax money, then you will pay regular federal and state income tax on the full amount that you convert to a Roth IRA.
    • Post-tax traditional IRA contributions. If all of your previous contributions to your traditional IRA were made with post-tax money, then you will pay regular federal and state income tax on the profit amount of the traditional IRA but you will not pay income tax on the contribution amount that you made to that IRA. This require you to keep a record of the amount of post-tax contributions that you make to your traditional IRA every year. When you convert a portion of your traditional IRA into a Roth IRA, the IRS requires you to calculate the percentage of the conversion that is from the profit amount and the percentage that is from the contribution amount in order to determine your income tax.
    • Mixed traditional IRA contributions. Here is where things get difficult. You must keep a record of the amount of pre-tax and post-tax contributions to your traditional IRA that you make every year. When doing a conversion to a Roth IRA, you must first determine the percentage of the conversion that is from the contribution amounts and the percentage that is from the profit amounts. Next you determine what percentage of the contribution amounts is from post-tax contributions. You do not pay regular income tax on that percentage of post-tax contributions but you do pay regular income tax on all of the rest of the conversion.

When is the best time to do a Roth IRA conversion?

There are two situations when it is advantageous to do a traditional to Roth IRA conversion. The first is when your current income tax rate is lower than your anticipated income tax rate in retirement. For most people, this is early in their career, when their annual income is lower than it will be later in their career. However, if a person is out of work for a period of time, then their annual income can fall that year, making a Roth IRA conversion worthwhile. Another situation when your income tax is lower is when Congress lowers income tax rates. It is impossible to predict what future income tax rates will be in 5, 10, or 25 years. However, the tax cuts passed in 2017 have given us some of the lowest federal income taxes in memory and it is doubtful that they can go much lower in the future without severe cuts in government programs.

The second situation when it is advantageous to do a traditional to Roth IRA conversion is when there is a significant fall in the stock market.  When the value of a traditional IRA falls, then you will pay less income tax on the conversion. Ideally, you would wait for the market to drop and then convert investments in your traditional IRA into similar investments in your Roth IRA. When the market eventually recovers, you will have paid less in taxes than if you had waited and taken the money out of the traditional IRA in retirement. Ideally, you would wait until the market is at its lowest, then do the conversion. The problem with this is that no-one has a crystal ball to see into the future to know when the market has bottomed out. However, it is clear that 2022 was a terrible year for both U.S. stocks (down 19% over the past 12 months) and U.S. bonds (down 13% over the past 12 months).

Reverse dollar cost averaging in 2023

Eventually, the stock and bond markets will recover and the prices for stock and bond mutual funds will increase. It is possible that the markets have already reached a bottom and the only way that they will go is back up. But it is also possible that stocks and bonds will continue to fall in value in 2023. That is the thing about predicting future stock and bond values – you just don’t know until you know and you don’t know until it has already happened. In other words, no one can predict future market values in the short-term. However, we can predict that future markets will be higher in the long-term.

So, 2023 would seem to be a good year to do a traditional IRA to Roth IRA conversion. The stock and bond market has lost a lot of value and we are currently living in a time of historically low income taxes (the 2017 income tax cuts will expire in 2025). But exactly when in 2023 should you do the conversion? This is where the concept of “reverse dollar cost averaging” comes into play.

In dollar cost averaging, a person invests a set amount at regular intervals throughout the year, typically monthly. By doing so, the person buys a lot of shares of of a mutual fund when they are cheap and buys fewer shares when they are expensive. This is a great strategy to ensure that you stick to a retirement savings plan. It also keeps you from trying to “time the market” (no one can accurately predict the future market so trying to time the market is generally unsuccessful). The “average” in dollar cost averaging refers to the result that by buying a few shares each month, then after 12 months, you will have a lot of shares with an average purchase price over the entire year. If you put a certain an amount of your paycheck into your 401k, 403b, or 457 each month, then you are already doing dollar cost averaging.

To see how dollar cost averaging works, let’s take the example of an investor who had $12,000 to invest on January 1, 2022. In the first scenario, the investor thought that the stock market was only going to go up in 2022 and invested the entire amount on January 1st. In the second scenario, the investor invested $1,000 every month for the full year. As it turned out, 2022 was a terrible year for stocks, dropping 19% for the year. The graph below shows the 2022 performance of the Russell 3000 Index, which is a benchmark for the total U.S. stock market.

 

In the first scenario, the investor who tried to time the market and put the entire $12,000 into a Russell 3000 index fund would have $9,669 at the end of the year. In the second scenario, the investor who used a dollar cost averaging strategy and put $1,000 into a Russell 3000 index fund every month would have $11,050 at the end of the year. Both investors will have lost money but the investor who used a dollar cost averaging strategy would have lost considerably less than the investor who tried to time the market.

You get the same benefit by spreading out your Roth conversions over the entire year. If an investor converted $12,000 of a traditional IRA invested in a Russell 3000 index fund into a Roth IRA that is also invested in a Russell 3000 index fund in January 2022, that investor would have 4.38 shares of the index fund at the end of the year. On the other hand, if an investor converted $1,000 of that traditional IRA into a Roth IRA every month in 2022, then at the end of the year, the investor would have 5.01 shares of the index fund. Now let’s assume that over the next 10 years, the Russell 3000 Index increases by an average of 8% per year. In 10 years, the investor who did one single $12,000 conversion would have $20,876 in the Roth IRA. But the investor who did twelve $1,000 conversions would have $23,857 in the Roth IRA. In other words, the reverse dollar cost averaging approach resulted in the investor having $2,981 more after 10 years.

“Sell high but convert low”

When it comes to maximizing investment returns, the old adage is “buy low and sell high”. But just the reverse is true for Roth conversions when long-term returns can be maximized by converting when the price is low. In essence, in a Roth conversion, you are selling an investment to yourself so that you are selling your traditional IRA low but also buying your Roth IRA low. When you eventually sell your Roth IRA tax-free in retirement, you will come out ahead.

In summary, it is looking like 2023 will be a good year for many people to do a traditional IRA to Roth IRA conversion. But resist the temptation to do one big conversion all at once. Instead, do 12 smaller conversions every month or 6 conversions every two months. When you are retired, you will be happy that you did.

January 7, 2023

Categories
Physician Finances Physician Retirement Planning

End Of The Year 11-Point Financial Health Checklist

The end of the calendar year is the time to do a check-up of your personal finances and investments. As we enter December, there are a few important things to do in order to ensure that you are taking advantage of tax breaks, performing needed investment portfolio maintenance, and adapting your personal finances for inflation. Here is a short list of eleven tasks for your financial health to do before the end of the year.

Eleven point financial checklist

1. Do a “backdoor” Roth IRA.

I believe that everyone should have a Roth IRA as part of a diversified retirement portfolio. Unlike a traditional IRA, 401k, or 403b, once you put money into a Roth IRA, you never have to pay any taxes when you withdraw money from it. This allows you to withdraw money in retirement from different types of investments in order to take maximal advantage of your income tax situation in any given year of retirement. If your income is less than $129,000 (or $204,000 if filing a joint income tax return), then you can directly contribute to a Roth IRA using post-tax income. If your income exceeds these amounts, then you cannot directly contribute to a Roth IRA but you can do a “backdoor” Roth by first contributing post-tax income into a traditional IRA and then promptly doing an IRA conversion by transferring that money from the traditional IRA into a Roth IRA. For 2022, you can contribute $6,000 to an IRA if you are under age 50 and $7,000 if you are older than age 50.

The best time to do a backdoor Roth is when the stock market has fallen. Stocks inevitably go up and down – your goal is to buy stocks when the market falls so that you can make the most money when you sell those stocks in the future. Stocks have taken a real beating this year… and that is good for the long-term investor since this creates a buying opportunity. For example, the S&P 500 index has fallen 17% since January 1, 2022. By contributing to a backdoor Roth today, when the stock market eventually recovers to its January 2022 value, you will have made a 17% return!

In 2021, Congress proposed eliminating the backdoor Roth in the Build Back Better Act but the legislation died in the Senate leaving backdoor Roths alone for now. With the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate now controlled by different political parties, the resultant gridlock makes backdoor Roth elimination in the next 2 years unlikely. However, predicting Congressional legislation is difficult so anything is possible. Nevertheless, now is the best time to do a backdoor Roth – when they are still legal and when the stock market is down.

2. Do a Roth IRA conversion.

If you already have money in a traditional IRA, then you can convert some (or all) of that money into a Roth IRA without doing a backdoor Roth conversion. There are 2 ways that you can contribute to a traditional IRA, with pre-tax income or with post-tax income. If your current annual income is less than $129,000 (or $204,000 if filing a joint income tax return), then you can contribute pre-tax income into the traditional IRA and then when you withdraw money from that traditional IRA in retirement, you pay regular income tax on the entire amount. If your current annual income is higher than these values, then you cannot contribute pre-tax income into the traditional IRA but you can contribute post-tax income into a traditional IRA. In this latter situation, your tax on withdrawals in retirement gets complicated – you do not pay income tax on the amount of money that you originally invested but you do pay income tax on the accrued value of the investment. This requires you to keep careful record of the amount of your contributions over the years and then do some mathematical gymnastics to calculate the percentage of any given year’s withdrawals that are taxed and not taxed.

I see no reason why anyone should put post-tax income into a traditional IRA and leave it there since you would have to pay income tax on the accrued value when you take withdrawals in retirement. If you had instead converted that post-tax money in the traditional IRA into a Roth shortly after making the original contributions to that traditional IRA (i.e., a backdoor Roth), you would never have to pay taxes on the withdrawals in retirement. So, if your traditional IRA is composed fully (or mostly) of post-tax contributions, convert that traditional IRA into a Roth now in order to minimize your taxes.

Traditional IRAs composed of pre-tax income are different and the decision of whether or not to convert these traditional IRAs into a Roth IRA requires some strategic financial analysis. Your overall goal is to pay the least amount in income taxes. When your traditional IRA is funded by pre-tax income, then when you convert money from that traditional IRA into a Roth IRA, you have to pay income tax the year that you do the conversion. In other words, that conversion to a Roth IRA counts as a withdrawal from the traditional IRA for income tax purposes. There are 2 situations when it is advantageous to do convert money from a pre-tax traditional IRA into a Roth IRA:

  1. When your income tax rate today is lower than your income tax rate in retirement. This is difficult to know with certainty since no one can predict what the income tax rates will be 30 years from now – tax rates go up and go down, depending on how much money the federal and state governments need to keep running. As a general rule, your income tax rate is likely to be lower when you are early in your career and higher after you have been working for 20-30 years. Therefore, doing a Roth conversion in your early working years is generally preferable to doing a Roth conversion later in your career.
  2. When the stock market is down. Since you pay regular income tax on any withdrawals from a traditional IRA that was originally funded with pre-tax income, you will pay less tax if you do a Roth conversion when the stock market has fallen and the overall value of the traditional IRA is lower. Then, when the stock market recovers, all of the accrued value will be in your Roth IRA and you will not have to pay income tax on it when you take withdrawals in retirement. Conventional wisdom is that when it comes to stocks, you should sell when the value of a stock is high. In order to minimize taxes when doing a Roth conversion it is just the opposite: sell (convert) when the value of the traditional IRA is low. Since the stock market is currently down 17% compared to January 1, 2022, now is a great time to do a traditional IRA to Roth IRA conversion in order to minimize the total amount of income tax that you will pay over the course of your lifetime. However, don’t forget that the amount of the conversion will add to your adjusted gross income for the year of the conversion and will result in an increase in your income tax rate that year. You will need to weigh the cost of the increased income tax rate against the benefit of the IRA conversion.

3. Contribute to a 529 plan.

The 529 college savings plans allow you to invest money today and then never have to pay any taxes when you withdraw money for college expenses in the future. Think of 529 plans as Roth IRAs for college savings. That tax-free feature of 529 plans make them an unbeatable tool to save for college and you can use the money to pay for college for yourself, your spouse, your children, or your grandchildren. There are several reasons to consider contributing to a 529 plan in December.

  1. Get a tax deduction. Each state has its own 529 plan and they all vary considerably with respect to their state income tax advantages. For example, here in Ohio, residents of the state can deduct the first $4,000 of annual contributions to an Ohio 529 plan. That tax deduction applies to each child’s account you hold so if you have 3 children, you can deduct $4,000 of annual contributions from each child’s account for a total of $12,000 state tax income deduction!
  2. The best time to contribute is when the market is down. The 529 plans are designed to be long-term investments. When you open an account at the birth of a child, that money will not be withdrawn for at least 18 years. The U.S. bond market is down 13% this year and the U.S. stock market is down 17%. This means that stocks and bonds are the cheapest that they have been in 2 years. Now is a time when you can “buy low”.
  3. They make great Christmas presents. I have a granddaughter who lives in a different state. Last year, I opened an Ohio 529 plan in her name when she was born. This year, we’ll contribute to her 529 plan for her Christmas present. Older children usually expect tangible stuff for Christmas but for toddler grandchildren, a 529 plan contribution is perfect. A Lego set will hold a kid’s attention for a couple of weeks but an education lasts a lifetime.

4. Maximize your deferred income retirement contributions.

In 2022, the maximum amount that you are permitted to contribute to a 401k, 403b, or 457 plan is $20,500 if you are younger than 50 years old and $27,000 if you are over 50. Some people (such as employees of state universities) can contribute to both a 403b and a 457. This can bring your annual contribution up to $41,000 ($54,000 if you are over age 50). If you have not yet contributed the maximum allowed amount this year, you still have time to do a one-time contribution in December to bring you up to the annual contribution limit.

In addition, this is also the time to change your monthly 401k, 403b, or 457 plan contributions. In 2023, the contribution limit to these plans will increase to $22,500 for people younger than 50 and $30,000 for people older than age 50. Be sure to get the contribution forms submitted to your human resources department now so that your monthly contributions increase in January.

5. Consider tax loss harvesting.

Tax loss harvesting is when you sell an investment that has lost value (capital loss) on in order to offset a profit that you make selling another investment that increased in value (capital gain). The amount of capital gains tax that you pay is the total of all of your capital gains minus all of your capital losses for that year. If you have more losses than gains, then you can take up to $3,000 of the excess losses and apply them as a tax deduction to your regular income tax. December is normally the best time to decide if selling an investment for tax loss harvesting makes sense and to determine how much of that investment should be sold to optimize your taxes. Because the stock market has fallen so low this year, many people have lost money on investments making tax loss harvesting a viable financial option for more people than in previous years.

There are a couple of important caveats to tax loss harvesting. First, the losses only apply when the selling price is lower than the purchase price. For example, the S&P 500 has fallen in value by 17% in 2022 but it increased in value by 27% in 2021. Therefore, if you bought an average stock on January 1, 2022, you would have a capital loss. But if you bought that same stock on January 1, 2021, you would have a capital gain if you sold the stock today, even though that stock lost value in 2022.

Second, tax loss harvesting is more of a capital gains tax-deferral strategy than a capital gains tax-reduction strategy. If you sell a losing stock today to take advantage of tax loss harvesting and then turn around and invest the proceeds of that stock sale into a second similar stock that has also lost value recently, then when that second stock eventually increases in value in the future, you’ll pay more capital gains taxes on the sale of the second stock because your capital gains will be higher. For example, say Ford and GM shares are always the same price. You buy shares of Ford in 2021 at $100 per share and then today, Ford has fallen to $80 per share. You then sell your shares of Ford for tax-loss harvesting purposes and turn around and buy shares of GM at $80 per share. In 2024, you sell your shares of GM at $120 per share. If you had held onto Ford until 2024, then you would have $20 per share in capital gains when you sold it in 2024. Instead, you would have $40 in capital gains when you sell the GM stock in 2024. In other words, tax-loss harvesting just postpones when you pay capital gains tax if you re-invest the proceeds of your investment sale.

Tax-loss harvesting can be to your benefit if you take the capital losses as an income tax deduction since most people’s federal income tax rate is higher than their capital gains tax rate. However, this can be tricky since you have to be able to estimate what your 2022 income tax rate will be in order to ensure that it is less than your capital gains tax rate. Also, many people forget that their mutual funds will usually have capital gains each year since the fund managers are constantly buying and selling the component stocks within that fund so even if you do not sell any of your shares of that mutual fund this year, you may still have capital gains from that mutual fund. You have to calculate what all of those mutual fund capital gains will be this year in order to be sure that your capital losses from tax-loss harvesting exceed those mutual fund capital gains so that you can apply those capital losses as an income tax deduction. And remember, the maximum income tax reduction from tax-loss harvesting is $3,000.

6. Optimize schedule A deductions.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 increased the standard income tax deduction from $12,700 in 2017 to $24,000 in 2018 (married filing jointly). This reduced the amount of income tax that most Americans paid but it also eliminated itemized deductions for most Americans. The standard deduction for 2022 is $25,900 (married filing jointly). Therefore, you cannot make any itemized deductions unless those itemized deductions total more than $25,900. Itemized deductions can include charitable donations, mortgage interest & points, medical & dental expenses, and taxes paid (property, state, and local). However, the maximum amount of property and other taxes that you can apply to itemization is $10,000.

December is the time to estimate the amount of your itemized deductions. If those itemized deductions are close to your standard deduction amount ($25,900 if married filing jointly), then you may be able to increase your itemized deductions now so that those itemized deductions exceed the standard deduction amount. For example, you could make extra charitable contributions now rather than in 2023. Or, you could pay your next property taxes early, before December 30th. Or, you could buy the new eye glasses now that you had planned to wait until next summer to buy.

7. Contribute to an SEP.

An SEP (simplified employee pension plan) is a deferred income retirement account for self-employed people. Even if you have a regular employer but have a side gig doing consulting, getting honoraria, or selling artwork, you can open an SEP for the income that you earn from that side gig. The SEP allows you to invest pre-tax income and then pay taxes on the the withdrawals from the SEP when you are in retirement. In that sense, the SEP is functionally similar to a 401k, 403b, 457, or traditional IRA. Although you have until April 2023 to make contributions to an SEP for your income earned in 2022, it may be better to contribute to an SEP now, since the stock market has lost so much value recently – in other words, contribute to an SEP now, while stocks are “on sale”. You can contribute up to 25% of your total self-employment income and up to a maximum contribution amount of $61,000. December is a time that you should be able to reasonably estimate your total self-employment income for the past year and then calculate the amount that you can contribute to an SEP.

8. Review your beneficiaries. 

Every investment account should have a designated primary beneficiary and secondary beneficiaries in the event of your death. If you are married, the primary beneficiary will probably be your spouse. If you have children, they will probably be your secondary beneficiaries. By specifying beneficiaries on those investment accounts, you can make it faster for your family to access those funds in event of your death. Also, your heirs can avoid costly legal fees that would be incurred if no beneficiaries were listed and the accounts need to go through probate court. For most investment companies, you can do this quickly and easily online.

9. Rebalance your portfolio.

This has been a wild year for investors. The bond market is down, the stock market is down more, and real estate is down even more. Meanwhile, inflation is reducing the value of fixed income pensions and increasing the interest rates on certificates of deposit. The net result is that the relative percentages of stocks, bonds, real estate, and cash in most people’s investment portfolios has changed significantly since January.

Now is the time to rebalance those portfolios to ensure that the percentage of each type of investment is at its desired amount. For example, since real estate investments have fallen more than stocks, you may need to sell some shares of your stock mutual fund and buy some shares of a real estate investment trust (REIT) fund to rebalance. Since stocks have fallen in value more than bonds, you may need to sell some shares of your bond mutual fund and buy some shares of a stock mutual fund. Rebalancing not only ensures that your portfolio has a healthy diversification but it also results in you “selling high and buying low” in order to maximize your overall returns.

10. Increase disability and life insurance policy amounts.

The U.S. inflation rate has risen with the result that the consumer price index has increased 13% over the past two years. In other words, you need 13% more money today to buy the same amount of stuff you bought in 2020. However, most disability insurance policies and life insurance policies have not changed their values. The $100,000 life insurance policy that you bought in 2020 would only be effectively worth $87,000 in today’s money. December is a good time to critically evaluate those policies to see if the payout amounts are still appropriate – in many cases, you may need to increase those amounts to ensure that should you become disabled, you will still have enough money to live on. Or, should you die, your family will still have enough money to live on.

11. Update next year’s budget.

Inflation does not affect everything you buy equally. For example, for the 12 months ending in October 2022, the price of food was up 10.9%, gasoline was up 17.9%, new cars were up 8.4%, and clothes were up 4.1%. This means that the amount that you budgeted for all of these items a year ago has changed. Each family’s inflation is a little different. So, although housing costs nationwide are up 11%, if you bought your house a year ago and have a fixed monthly mortgage, then your housing costs may not have gone up at all. Similarly, if you heat your house with electricity, your energy costs went up 14.1% in the past year but if you heat your house with fuel oil, your costs went up 68.5% in the past year.

To prepare next year’s budget, start with your credit card statements. Most credit card companies will divide each of your purchases into different categories, for example, groceries, transportation, housing, utilities, etc. You can often do the same with your checking account. This will give you a reasonable idea of where you spent your money over the past year. You can then use the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Report to estimate how much each of those categories will need to be increased for your next year’s budget. Keeping to that budget ensures that you will have enough cash to pay off your credit cards and loans each month without dipping into your cash emergency fund.

Your annual financial checkup should be in December

The end of the year is the best time to do your annual financial checkup. By December, you should have a good idea of your total 2022 income and know whether you are likely to get a raise next year. Retirement account contribution limits usually change in January giving you the opportunity to change your monthly contributions. Also, you should be able to estimate how much you can spend  this year on charitable contributions, 529 account contributions, IRAs, and SEPs. The best way to start the new year is to finish the old year on solid financial ground.

November 30, 2022

Categories
Academic Medicine Physician Retirement Planning

Is Your Public Pension Safe? Check The Pension’s Vital Signs!

Physicians at academic medical centers often have an option to contribute to a state teacher’s pension plan. Although a pension can be an important component of a diversified retirement portfolio, some public pensions are currently in danger. How safe is your state’s public pension and should you contribute to it? The answer is in the pension’s vital signs.

Summary Points:

  • Most physicians employed by public universities can participate in their state’s public pension
  • Each state’s public pension is managed separately
  • Some public pensions are healthier than others
  • The funded ratio and the funding period are two important vital signs that indicate the health of a public pension

 

In Ohio, the State Teachers Retirement System (STRS) is our state’s public pension for academic physicians at state-funded universities (such as the Ohio State University). STRS is similar to Social Security or an annuity in that it gives university-employed physicians an option to participate in a defined benefit plan that will pay you a fixed amount of money every month that you are alive after you retire. There is also an option for survivor benefits so that your spouse can continue to receive a monthly payment after you die. The advantage of defined benefit plans, such as STRS, is that you never run out of money in retirement. The disadvantage is that as an investment, you may be able to come out ahead by investing the money yourself rather than contributing to the pension during your working years.

In the past, most American workers had access to employer-sponsored pensions but many private employers have abandoned pensions and replaced them with 401(k) plans. However, pensions are still quite common for employees of state and local governments. Everyone’s retirement portfolio should be diversified and contain several different types of investments, such as stocks, bonds, and real estate. A pension can be an important component of those investments, less risky than bonds but also having a low rate of return.

However, all types of investments have risk and a pension is no different. Social Security is generally considered to be very low-risk, as investments go. But even Social Security is in danger of running out of money in 2035, unless action is taken by the U.S. Congress in the future. Private company pensions occasionally run out of money, leaving retirees with reduced or no monthly pension payments. State public pensions are somewhere in-between Social Security and private company pensions with respect to investment risk.

In some states (such as Ohio), academic physicians have an option of either participating in the public pension (STRS) or self-directing payroll deduction retirement savings into investments of their own choice. In other states, participation in the public pension is mandatory and there is not an option to self-direct. When deciding whether or not to participate in a public pension or deciding whether or not to take a university job in a mandatory public pension state, you should look carefully at the state’s public pension. Some states’ public pensions are considerably safer than others. When researching a state’s public pension, there are two pension vital signs that are important: (1) the funded ratio and (2) the funding period. Understanding these two numbers is critical to understanding the health of a public pension.

The Funded Ratio

The funded ratio is the ratio of a pension’s assets to its current and future liabilities. In simple terms, the assets are all of the money that the pension currently has in cash and in investments. The liabilities are the total amount of money that the pension plan will pay out to retirees now and in the future plus the administrative cost of the pension. In an ideal world, the funded ratio should be 100% or higher. In other words, the pension plan should have enough money to pay for the pensions of all of its current participating members. A funded ratio below 100% can be cause for concern and a funded ratio below 80% can be a sign that the pension plan is in jeopardy. The Equitable Institute recently released its annual State of Pensions report for 2022 and there are some concerning findings. From the map below, it is apparent that some states’ public pensions have very strong funded ratios and others have very poor funded ratios.

Washington, Utah, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Tennessee, New York, the District of Columbia, and Delaware all have funded ratios greater than 90% (dark green). On the other hand, Illinois, Kentucky, South Carolina, New Jersey, Connecticut, Hawaii, and Rhode Island all have severely low funded ratios that are below 60% (dark red). In between these extremes are thirteen states that mildly low funded ratios between 80-90% (light green). Fourteen states have moderately low funded ratios between 70-80% (yellow). And nine states have moderate-severely low funded ratios between 60-70% (light red).

One of the main reasons that many states’ funded ratios have recently fallen is the downturn in the stock market in the past 7 months. Public pensions do not just keep all of their money in a checking account, they invest the money in order to keep up with inflation and to ensure that they have sufficient money to pay their retirees in the future. Most public pensions estimate that their investments will have an average 6.9% annual return. Last year, in 2021, the average pension plan’s rate of return was 25.3% – an extraordinarily high rate of return, primarily because stock markets had an exceptional year. So far in 2022, the average pension plan has had a -10.4% rate of return. In other words, instead of gaining 6.9% this year, the average pension has already lost 10.4%.

There are several reasons why a state might have a low funded ratio:

  1. Inadequate funding. Public pensions are funded by a combination of employee contributions (payroll deductions) plus employer contributions (usually as a fixed percentage of gross salary). If the contribution rates are set too low, then the public pension fund will not have sufficient funds to pay monthly retirement benefits. Currently, the average employee contribution is 8.07% of total salary, an increase from 7.06% in 2001. In addition to employee contributions to the public pension, there are also employer contributions to the pension and these currently average 29.8% of total payroll, an increase from 9.13% in 2001.
  2. Excessively high retirement benefits. Similarly, if the amount of money that retirees receive in their monthly pension payments is set too high, then the funded ratio will fall as the pension gradually runs out of money. The amount of the pension fund contributions and the amount of the pension fund distributions requires a very careful actuarial analysis and this in turn requires well-trained and highly skilled actuaries. Not every state has equally high-quality actuaries working for their public pensions. Public pensions should have periodic external audits to validate the conclusions and recommendations of the pensions internal actuaries. These audit reports should be available to pension participants and can be a valuable source of information about the pension’s health.
  3. Poor investment choices. Each state’s pension is managed differently – some by internal fund managers and some by external investment companies that employ their own fund managers. Inevitably, some fund managers will be better than others at selecting winning investments. However, as has been shown with managed mutual funds compared to index funds, most fund managers will not beat the overall stock market. This year, one of the particularly bad investment choices was in Russian investments. Prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, U.S. public pensions held approximately $5.8 billion in Russian market assets, securities, and real estate. These investments have lost enormous value since 2021. Over the past 15 years, there has been a growing trend to outsource investment decisions – currently 15% of public pension funds are managed by either a hedge fund or a private investment company.
  4. Unrealistic projected rates of return. The average annual rate of return on public pension fund investments is 6.9%. If a fund projects a higher rate of return, say 8.5%, then there is a high likelihood that their investments will not meet their projected rate of return, leading to lower than anticipated asset value. A pension fund’s rate of return on its investments will be largely determined by the ratio of stocks:bond:real estate in the fund’s investment portfolio. This ratio is in turn determined by the decisions made by the pension fund managers.
  5. The value of stocks and bonds fall. Some years, the stock and bond markets go up and some years they go down. Because public pension funds are mainly investing for the long-term, it is expected that the funded ratio will fall during short-term market downturns but then go up when the market recovers. 2021 and 2022 exemplify this perfectly with large losses in stock and bond values in 2022 but even larger gains in 2021. This resulted in a higher average funded ratio in 2021 that then fell in 2022 (graph below). It is more important to look at public pension fund investments over a several year period to determine how well the fund is doing.
  6. Inflation. If the public pension fund retiree distributions are tied to inflation, then there can be large cost of living increases in monthly pension payments during years that there is a high inflation rate. In these pensions, when inflation rises unexpectedly high (as in the previous 12 months), then the funded ratio can fall due to higher than expected monthly pension payments. Of 372 public pensions, 204 of them have automatic cost of living increase provisions with the majority of these linked to the inflation rate or the fund’s overall performance. Because of the danger of inflation eroding the funded ratio, other public pensions limit or do not give any regular cost of living increases in pension distributions.
  7. Increased life expectancy. This is often cited as a cause of a low funded ratio because if retirees live longer than expected, then the overall amount that the pension fund pays those retirees will be higher than expected. However, it turns out that annual increases in life expectancy have only a very small effect on funded ratios. It remains to be seen whether the opposite effect (shorter life expectancy) will improve funded ratios in the next few years since the majority of the more than 1 million U.S. COVID-19 deaths in 2020 and 2021 were in retirees.

The Funding Period

When a public pension’s funded ratio falls, or when actuarial analysis projects that it will fall in the future, there are a number of tactics that the pension can take to rectify the low funded ratio. For example, the pension managers can suspend cost of living increases in pension distributions. Or they can increase the contributions by increasing the percentage of employed pension members’ salaries going into the pension fund. Or they can increase the number of years a member must work before being eligible for full retirement benefits. When a public pension makes these corrective actions, it can take many years for the funded ratio to increase to 100%. The projected number of years that it will take to reach 100% is called the funding period.

Simply having a low funded ratio may not necessarily be bad as long as the public pension managers have taken corrective actions to improve the funded ratio. How effective these corrective actions are projected to be is measured by the length of the funding period. In general, the shorter the funding period, the better. In Ohio, the State Teachers Retirement System is required by state statute to have a funding period of less than 30 years. Funding periods in excess of 30 years are generally too long and can be a sign of an unhealthy public pension.

Many of the same variables that affect the funded ratio also affect the funding period. For example, the Ohio State Teachers Retirement System funding period dropped from 30 years to 8 years in 2021 due to the unusually large rate of investment return in 2021.

Public pensions with both a low funded ratio and a long funding period are in trouble. These pensions are in danger of being unable to meet future obligations. From a retirement portfolio standpoint, they are poor investments.

A Story Of 3 States

To illustrate the variability in public pension health, let’s examine three states: one that is in trouble, one that is in great shape, and one that was in trouble but has taken effective measures to improve.

Illinois. Illinois has 5 different state government public pension programs and all of them have a long history of being underfunded. At the end of 2021, these public pensions had an average funded ratio of only 46.5%, the highest ratio for the Illinois public pensions since 2008, before the great recession. Although improved, this is still among the lowest of all states’ public pension funded ratios. The state legislature has created a plan to increase the funded ratio to 90% by the year 2045. However, the state’s actuary and outside actuarial consultant have advised that a 90% funded ratio target in 23 years is insufficient and instead have advised a funding period to a 100% funded ratio of no more than 25 years. So far, no legislative action has been taken to improve the funding period. As a consequence, participation in the Illinois public pension is very risky compared to other states’ public pensions.

Wisconsin. The primary state public pension is the Wisconsin Retirement Benefit. It has a track record of being well-managed and as a consequence, it has a funded ratio that exceeds 100%. In fact, the funded ratio at the end of 2021 was 120.6%. That puts its funded ratio as the eighth highest out of 167 statewide public pensions in the country. Academic physicians can feel secure that their contributions to the Wisconsin public pension will be safe and that they can count on their monthly pension benefits in retirement.

Ohio. There are 5 statewide public pensions in Ohio. Academic physicians have the option of participating in one of them, the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio.  In 2001, STRS was in good shape with a funded ratio of 91%. The great recession severely impacted STRS and by 2012, the funded ratio had fallen to 56%. By 2017, the funding period to reach a funded ratio of 100% had risen to 60 years, putting the entire pension in jeopardy. STRS enacted three corrective measures to stabilize the pension fund: (1) suspension of annual cost of living increases in retiree pension distributions, (2) a 2.91% increase in the employer contributions to the pension fund, and (3) an increase in the number of years of service to full retirement benefits from 30 years to 35 years. By the end of 2021, the pension’s funded ratio was 80.1% and the funding period was 8 years. STRS’s willingness and ability to make hard decisions to increase contributions and limit distributions has resulted in it once again becoming a safer retirement investment for participants.

Even healthy public pensions are vulnerable to forces that can destabilize them. For example, the next pension fund manager could make poor investment choices. The state legislature could enact statues that acquiesce to lobby pressure to increase retiree benefits or decrease employee/employer contributions. The next actuaries may make faulty life expectancy projections. For these reasons, it behooves all participants to periodically check the status of their public pension. At a minimum this should entail reviewing the current funded ratio and funding period of the pension. In this sense, a pension is an investment and should be monitored similarly to how one monitors their 401(k) or 403(b) fund.

“If you’ve seen one public pension, you’ve seen one public pension”

A strong and secure retirement investment portfolio is one that is diversified. Ideally, one’s portfolio should consist of a mixture of stocks, real estate, bonds, fixed income, and cash. For each of these types of investments, the potential long-term return is directly related to the short-term risk of the investment.

For most Americans, the fixed income component is Social Security. But academic physicians and other employees of state-funded universities usually do not participate in Social Security. The public pension substitutes for for Social Security and is thus the main component of the fixed income portion of academic physicians’ retirement portfolio.

Some financial pundits have argued that it is better to not participate in a public pension and instead take the money that would have gone into the pension fund from payroll deduction and invest that money into stocks. The argument is that in the long-term, the rate of return from stock investments will be greater than the return from pension distributions in retirement. However, a more accurate view of a public pension is that it forms a crucial low-risk/low-return component of a balanced retirement portfolio. By having a public pension in the portfolio, the academic physician can devote a larger percentage of other retirement investments (403b, 457, IRA, etc.) into higher risk stocks and real estate.

In addition to functioning as a fixed income retirement investment, public pensions have other features that can increase their value to the participant. Survivor benefits for one’s spouse and dependents can replace the need to purchase separate life insurance. Disability benefits can replace the need to purchase separate disability insurance. Access to group rates for health, dental, and vision insurance can result in insurance premiums that can be thousands of dollars less per year than equivalent insurance policies purchased individually. And access to financial counselors at the public pension can provide some elements of free financial planning advice.

But each state’s public pension has different degrees of risk as evidenced by their varying funded ratios and funding periods. Before committing to participating in a public pension, it is important to carefully examine the health of that particular state’s public pension. Do a routine vital sign check of the pension by following its funded ratio and funding period.

July 22, 2022

Categories
Physician Retirement Planning

A Bear Market Means It Is Time To Rebalance Your Retirement Portfolio

A bear market is defined as a prolonged decline in the stock market and generally refers to a 20% fall in stock market value. A bear market is a great opportunity to rebalance your retirement portfolio in order to give you the highest returns when you ultimately retire.

Summary Points:

  • A bear market represents a buying opportunity for your retirement account
  • In a bear market, the value of stocks tend to fall more than the value of bonds
  • By rebalancing your retirement portfolio, you can purchase stocks when they are inexpensive and increase the overall value of your portfolio when you ultimately retire

 

Last month, I outlined why a bear market is the perfect time to convert a traditional IRA into a Roth IRA in order to reduce the total amount of investment taxes you pay over your lifetime. Although a bear market Roth IRA conversion will reduce your taxes, it will not improve your overall investment returns when you eventually take the money out in retirement. But rebalancing your investments during a bear market can improve those long-term retirement portfolio returns.

What is rebalancing?

Traditional investment wisdom calls for the wise investor to “buy low and sell high”. In the short-term, it is nearly impossible for any investor to know whether the value of an investment is going to go up or going to go down. However, in the long-term, the value of broad stock and bond indices always goes up. When a broad stock market index falls into bear market territory, then you know that you have an opportunity to ‘buy low’.

My own investment philosophy has been to buy some shares of a stock index fund whenever the S&P 500 index drops in value by 10%. When the S&P 500 drops by 20%, I buy as much as I can. When the stock market drops that much, I consider stocks to be on sale. This strategy has served me very well over the past 30 years. There are two ways to buy stocks – either purchase them using your cash savings or purchase them by exchanging shares of bond investments for shares of stock. If buying stocks with cash savings, don’t forget to always keep enough in cash reserves to cover 3-6 months of expenses. In other words, don’t sacrifice your emergency fund to take advantage of a bear market.

If you do not have enough cash savings to buy stocks, then you can still exchange bonds for stocks and that is where rebalancing comes in. Rebalancing means maintaining a constant stock:bond ratio in your portfolio. For example, if you had previously been maintaining a retirement portfolio of 70% stocks and 30% bonds and then the value of the stock component increases during a bull market, then your portfolio could end up being 75% stocks and 25% bonds. In this case, you would want to exchange some of your shares of stocks for shares of bonds so that you can restore your desired 70/30 stock:bond ratio.

Why rebalance now?

In the past six months the value of both stocks and bonds has fallen and we have now entered a bear market. However, stocks have fallen much more than bonds and as a result, many investors are now finding that the relative percentage of bonds in their overall retirement portfolio has increased and the percentage of stocks has decreased. Let’s use the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund as a measure of overall stock market performance and the Vanguard Total Bond Fund as a measure of overall bond market performance:

Since the beginning of 2022, the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund has fallen in value from $118.25 per share to $89.48 per share, a 24.3% reduction. During that same time period, the Vanguard Total Bond Fund has dropped from $11.10 per share to $9.80 per share, an 11.7% reduction. In other words, stocks have fallen in value more than bonds.

If the stock:bond ratio in your retirement portfolio was 70/30 on January 1, 2022, it has now fallen to 66.7/33.3. In order to rebalance and restore your portfolio to the desired 70/30 ratio, you need to exchange some of your bond investments for stock investments. Once you do the math, this means that if your total retirement portfolio is worth $100,000, you should convert $3,335 of your bond investments into stocks. If your portfolio is worth $500,000, you should convert $16,675 of bonds into stocks. And if your portfolio is worth $1,000,000, you should convert $33,350 of bonds into stocks. Investors who should exchange the most from their bond funds into stock funds are those who originally had a 50/50 stock:bond mix in January as shown in the table below:

From this table, it is clear that the current bear market has left all portfolios out of balance and just about everyone’s retirement portfolio is now too heavy in bonds. So, we should all be converting some of our bond investments into stock investments right now. How much to convert depends on what your desired stock:bond ratio is.

How long do bear markets last?

One of the problems with entering a bear market is that you cannot predict how much further the price of stocks will fall before they bottom out. The price of stocks could start to increase tomorrow or maybe not until 2024. No one has a crystal ball that can see into the future and anticipate all of the thousands of variables that affect the price of stocks. However, we can look back to history to see how other bear markets have behaved. Since 1950, there have been eleven other bear markets that have lasted anywhere from 1 month to 2.6 years. The time that it takes for full recovery from a bear market has taken anywhere from 3 months to 5.75 years.

Given the uncertainty regarding the duration of our current bear market, one tactic could be to incrementally rebalance your retirement portfolio over the next several months. That way, if the value of the stock market continues to fall, you can take advantage of lower stock prices.

Know your investment time horizon

Investment pundits often talk about the investment time horizon in terms of the number of years until retirement. I believe that a better investment time horizon is the number of years until death. No one withdraws all of their retirement investments on the day that they retire – those investments have to keep earning returns for your entire remaining life. Obviously, you can choose your retirement date but you can’t choose your death date. But if you believe that there is a reasonable chance that you will live to be 95 years old, then you have a longer investment horizon than if you do not believe that you will live past age 70. It is that investment horizon that should dictate your retirement portfolio’s stock:bond ratio.

The decision about whether or not to rebalance your stock:bond ratio should not depend on your investment horizon. It is just as important to rebalance if you are 80 years old as it is if you are 30 years old. Those investors with a short time horizon should have a relatively higher percentage of their retirement portfolio in bonds than investors with a long time horizon. This insulates the short horizon investor from the worst effects of bear markets. Although short horizon investors’ portfolios have dropped in value, their portfolios have not fallen as far as portfolios of investors with a long investment horizon (who have a high percentage of their portfolios in stocks). This is illustrated in the table below, again using the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund as a measure of stock performance and the Vanguard Total Bond Fund as a measure of bond performance:

A retirement portfolio that was valued at $100,000 on January 1, 2022 would now be worth $769 if the investor had a 90/10 stock:bond ratio whereas it would be be worth $870 if the investor had a 10/90 stock:bond ratio.

What is the best stock:bond ratio?

In a previous post, I discussed the factors that should determine what the ideal stock:bond ratio should be for any given investor. The most important determinate is your investment horizon which is generally tied to your age.

However, age alone should not be the only determinant of your retirement portfolio’s stock:bond ratio. Equally important is your personal degree of investment risk. Investors who should adopt a low risk portfolio include those who get anxious about market volatility, are pessimistic about the future economy, lack a pension, anticipate a short life expectancy, and have annual living expenses that are close to their annual retirement income. On the other hand, investors who can adopt a high risk portfolio include those who do not get anxious about market volatility, are optimistic about the future economy, have a pension, expect to live to an older age, and have annual retirement income that substantially exceeds their annual living expenses.

Those investors who adopt a low risk portfolio are those who need the relative safety of bonds in the event of a protracted bear market whereas those who adopt a high risk portfolio are those who can afford to ride out a long bear market without fear of running out of money later in retirement. It is important to note that an investor’s personal degree of investment risk should not affect the decision about whether to rebalance their portfolio. Every wise investor should rebalance in a bear market. One’s willingness to take investment risk should only affect their desired stock:bond ratio.

The stock:bond ratio is an oversimplification of most retirement portfolios. A healthy portfolio should consist of U.S. stocks, U.S. bonds, foreign stocks, foreign bonds, and real estate. Some investors may also include commodities, gold, collectibles, etc. No matter what your retirement portfolio is composed of, you should always know what the ideal percentage of your portfolio should be in each type of holding, based on your age and personal investment risk. You should then periodically rebalance those holdings in order to ensure that the percentage of each component stays constant.

Bears are scary animals and bear markets are scary financial times. Although it is easy to be frightened when you look at your finances right now, the current bear market should be viewed as an opportunity to increase long-term returns from your retirement investment portfolio.

June 21, 2022

Categories
Physician Retirement Planning

Now Is The Time To Do A Roth Conversion

Whenever you hear the words ‘bear market’, you should be thinking the words ‘Roth conversion’. The U.S. stock market is currently down more than 15% compared to its all-time high on December 27, 2021. A falling stock market is the best time to do a Roth conversion. Therefore, now is the best time to do a Roth conversion.

Summary Points:

  • Convert a portion of your traditional IRA into a Roth IRA during a bear market
  • Convert those individual investments that have lost the most in their value
  • Replenish your traditional IRA by doing a rollover from your 401(a), 401(k), 403(b), or 457 plan
  • Multiple small Roth IRA conversions are smarter than doing one large conversion in an attempt to time the bottom of the bear market

 

There are two situations when it is to your advantage to convert a traditional IRA into a Roth IRA: (1) when your income tax rate is low and (2) when the value of your traditional IRA falls. We are currently in a time when both federal income taxes are low compared to the past and the value of stocks and bonds has fallen. When you convert a traditional IRA into a Roth IRA, you will pay federal and state income tax on the value of the IRA at the time of the conversion. Therefore, if the value of the traditional IRA is low, you will pay less in income taxes when you do the conversion. History teaches us that when the stock market falls, it eventually goes back up. After you do the Roth conversion, the value of that Roth investment will eventually go back up and when it does, you will not have to pay any income taxes on it!

Let’s say that on December 27, 2021, you had $50,000 invested in an S&P 500 index mutual fund in a traditional IRA and you decided to convert it into a Roth. And let’s further say that your federal income tax rate is 15%. You would have to pay $7,500 in federal income tax when you did the conversion. But if you did that conversion last week, when the S&P 500 index had fallen to 3,901, the $50,000 in your traditional IRA was now worth $40,926 and you would have paid $6,139 in federal income tax – a savings of $1,361!

But what if I don’t have a traditional IRA?

There are 3 ways to put money into a traditional IRA. First, you can contribute pre-tax income directly into a traditional IRA but only if you have an income of less than $78,000 per year ($129,000 if married, filing jointly). In this situation, the traditional IRA is very similar to a 401(k) or 403(b).

Second, you can contribute post-tax income into a traditional IRA if your income is above $78,000 per year ($129,000 if married, filing jointly). Under either of these two situations, the annual contribution limit to a traditional IRA is $6,000 per year (or $7,000 per year if you are over age 50 years old). This is a great strategy for doing an annual ‘backdoor’ Roth but it is generally not a good strategy to put post-tax dollars into a traditional IRA and then leave it there. The reason is that you will pay regular income tax on the accrued value of the traditional IRA but would have paid the lower capital gains tax on the accrued value had you put that money in a regular investment.

The third way of putting money into a traditional IRA is to do a rollover from an employer-sponsored retirement plan. These plans include the 401(a), 401(k), 403(b), and 457 retirement plans. There is not a limit to the amount that you can rollover each year. There are several important rollover rules, however:

  1. You can only do 1 rollover per year. When you do a rollover, you have to wait 12 months before you can do another rollover.
  2. You must deposit the rollover money into the traditional IRA within 60 days of withdrawing it from the employer-sponsored retirement plan. The safest way to do the rollover is to do a “trustee-to-trustee” rollover meaning that the investment company that holds your traditional IRA arranges for the money to be directly transferred from the employer-sponsored retirement plan into the traditional IRA without touching your hands. If, instead, you have the employer sponsored retirement plan send you a check, then it is up to you to ensure that you deposit that money into the traditional IRA within 60 days.
  3. You can only do a rollover if either the employer discontinues the retirement plan or you are no longer employed by that employer. The latter most commonly occurs when you change jobs to a new employer or you retire.

Traditional IRAs give you more investment choices than employer-sponsored retirement plans. Also, you can often find similar investments with lower annual expenses that you can include in your traditional IRA. When you leave your employer for a new job, you have the option of either rolling your old employer’s 401(k)/403(b)/457 into your new employer’s 401(k)/403(b)/457 or rolling the funds into your traditional IRA. I would argue that it is better to do the rollover into your traditional IRA because of the prospect of lower expenses, the wider choices of investments, AND the opportunity to do Roth IRA conversions during bear markets.

It is easiest if you have your traditional IRA with the same investment company that you have your Roth IRA. If you have your Roth IRA with Vanguard, then also have a traditional IRA with Vanguard. If your Roth IRA is with Fidelity, then have a traditional IRA with Fidelity. Using a large investment company for both makes it very simple to move money from the traditional IRA into the Roth IRA when doing a conversion. Large investment companies (like Vanguard or Fidelity) will also work with you to facilitate trustee-to-trustee rollovers from your employer-sponsored retirement plan, even if that plan is with another investment company. On-line accounts allow you to do your rollovers and conversions from your own home on your own time, without having to drive someplace to meet with an investment advisor.

Beware of the 5-year rule

When you put money into a Roth IRA, that money grows tax-free and you do not have to pay any tax on withdrawals when you take the money out in retirement. That means no income tax, no capital gains tax, no interest tax, and no dividend tax. Furthermore, unlike other deferred income accounts (such as a traditional IRA, 401(l), 403(b), or 457), there are no annual required minimum distributions from the Roth IRA after you turn age 72.

However, it is important to be aware that you cannot withdraw money that you put into a Roth IRA for 5 years. In other words, if you convert $10,000 from a traditional IRA into a Roth IRA today, you cannot withdraw that money from your Roth IRA account until 2027.

Because of the 5-year rule, you should consider any Roth conversion to be a long-term investment. In other words, don’t put the newly converted money into a low rate of return investment such as a money market account or certificate of deposit within the Roth account. Money from Roth conversions should ideally be put into a broad stock market index fund in the Roth account. In the past 30 years, there have only been 2 times that the S&P 500 index took more than 1-year to recover from a downturn: in 2000 (7 years to recover) and 2007 (6 years to recover). In both of these prolonged downturns, if you had waited to do a Roth conversion until the S&P 500 index had fallen by 15% of its peak, you would have only had 3 1/2 years to recover after the 2000 downturn and only had 2 1/2 years to recover after the 2007 downturn. In both cases, your Roth fund would have fully recovered and then increased in value by the time the 5-years was past.

How should I time my Roth conversion during a bear market?

One of the simultaneously wonderful and maddening things about the stock market is that no one can predict when it is going to go up and when it is going to go down. In a bear market, when stock prices are falling, the only way to know for sure when prices have bottomed out is in retrospect, after prices have started to rise again. Rather than trying to guess when stock prices have hit their lowest and then doing your Roth IRA conversion, it is safer to spread your conversion out and do multiple small conversions every month or two.

A bear market is usually defined as a 20% drop in the prices of stocks. But for the purposes of Roth conversions, I don’t think you need to wait for the S&P 500 index to fall by 20%. Instead, think of a ‘big bear’ market as a 20% drop in value and a ‘little bear’ market as a 15% drop in value. Begin doing small Roth conversions when the broad stock indices fall to the level of a ‘little bear’ market, you can continue regular small conversions until the indices rise back up and out of the ‘little bear’ market values for those indices.

Unlike a rollover from an employer-sponsored retirement plan into a traditional IRA that can only be done once per year, you can do many Roth conversions per year. There is no limit to the number of traditional IRA to Roth IRA conversions you do each year nor is there a limit to the amount that you can convert. However, it is important to remember that the money that you convert from a traditional IRA into a Roth IRA is taxable income by IRS definitions. Therefore, the money that you convert will not only be subject to federal income tax but it will also add to your total taxable income for that year. As your annual taxable income goes up, your effective income tax rate will also go up. At some point, the amount that you convert will result in a large enough increase in your federal income tax rate to outweigh the advantages of doing a bear market Roth conversion.

Which investments should I convert?

If you have been a prudent investor, then you will have a diversified retirement investment portfolio. Your deferred income accounts may include your 401(k), 401(a), 403(b), 457, 415(m), and traditional IRA accounts. Within these deferred income accounts, you should have a mix of U.S. stock mutual funds, foreign stock mutual funds, U.S. bonds, foreign bonds, real estate investment trusts, and cash. The best individual investments to convert are those that have lost the most value in a bear market. Because bonds are less volatile than stocks, the value of stock mutual funds will generally fall more than the value of bond mutual funds and thus it is generally not a good idea to convert bond funds. It is almost never a good idea to convert cash (including money market accounts and certificates of deposits) since there will be no (or very little) tax advantages to convert these accounts in a bear market.

Look at your deferred income portfolio and identify those investments that have lost the most value and convert those investments from your traditional IRA into your Roth IRA. For example, if your Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund is currently down 23% and your U.S. Total Stock Index Fund is down 16%, then convert the Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund. In order to maintain your portfolio diversification balance, put the converted money into a new Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund in your Roth IRA.

It is wise to regularly replenish your traditional IRA by doing rollovers from your employer-sponsored retirement plans (assuming you are eligible to do rollovers, as discussed above). Since you can only do one rollover per year, you will want to do a sizable enough rollover to allow you to maximize any Roth IRA conversions that you might do later that year. Ideally, you should start each year with enough money in your traditional IRA to fund bear market Roth IRA conversions later in the year since no one can predict when a bear market will occur. You want to be prepared so that you can take advantage of those bear markets to do your Roth conversions. As an example, on January 3, 2022 when the NASDAQ composite index closed at 15,832, investors did not anticipate that the NASDAQ would fall by 29% to 11,264 less than five months later on May 24, 2022.

It’s all about investment strategy

 

Your retirement investment goals are to have enough money to do the things you want to do when you are retired, to ensure that you do not outlive your retirement savings, and to pay as little in taxes as legally possible. A strategy of periodic rollovers from employer-sponsored retirement plans into a traditional IRA and conversions of the traditional IRA into a Roth IRA during bear markets can help you meet all three of these retirement investment goals.

May 27, 2022

Categories
Academic Medicine Physician Retirement Planning

Retirement Planning For University Physicians

University-employed physicians (and all university faculty for that matter) have more retirement savings options than most physicians in private practice. Unfortunately, many of the decisions about these options have to be made at the time of hiring. This is a time in young physicians’ lives when they are least knowledgeable about personal finances and least equipped to make these decisions. This post will cover university faculty retirement planning with an emphasis on academic physicians at the beginning of their careers.

Summary Points:

  • Academic physicians have more retirement savings options than other physicians
  • Contribute the maximum amount into your 415(m)
  • Maximize 457 contributions before contributing to a 403(b)
  • 403(b), 457, and 415(m) plans offer hidden tax advantages
  • The decision about contributing to a state teacher’s retirement system versus an alternative 401(a) retirement plan is complex

The number of decisions that new university physicians have to make when they sign their employment contracts can be overwhelming. Will you be in the tenure track or clinical track? Who will be your mentor(s)? Which weeks do you want to block out for vacation over the next year? Where will your office be? What teaching assignments would you prefer? Fortunately, as months and years go by, you can change your mind about most of these decisions. But when it comes to retirement plan participation, some of the decisions you make initially are irrevocable and you cannot change your mind a few months later.

Understand your retirement options

Every university’s retirement plans are a little different and not all retirement savings options will be available to physicians at every institution. Here are the most common options:

  • Base retirement plans (401(a) plans). These are generally qualified retirement plans covered by section 401(a) of the Internal Revenue Code. Each state will have different specific plans – here in Ohio, university physicians can choose between the State Teacher’s Retirement System (STRS) or the Alternative Retirement Plan (ARP). In both plans, a fixed percentage of the physician’s salary is contributed pre-tax to the plan with a matching contribution from the university. When contributed to STRS, the plan can function essentially as a pension with a fixed amount of monthly income for life. When contributed to the ARP, the physician selects among a number of investment options (typically mutual funds) that are controlled by the physician with no guarantee of monthly income in retirement (very similar to a 403(b) plan). Both of these plans serve as a substitute for Social Security so physicians are ineligible for Social Security for their income earned from the university.
  • 403(b) plans. These are deferred income retirement plans for employees of non-profit organizations. Most universities are non-profit so 403(b) plans are available to most academic physicians. These are essentially the same as a 401(k) (deferred income retirement plan in a for-profit company). In 2022, you can put up to $20,500 per year into a 403(b) (up to $27,000 if over 50 years old). This is money taken out of your paycheck pre-tax and then you pay federal and state income tax on it when you take money out of the account in retirement.
  • 457 plans. These are deferred income retirement plans for government employees. Faculty at public universities are usually considered state government employees and are eligible to participate in 457 plans in addition to the university’s 403(b) plan. The contribution limits are the same: $20,500 per year if under age 50 and $27,000 per year if over age 50. By contributing to both a 457 and 403(b), physicians at state-supported universities can put away a combined amount of up to $41,000 per year ($54,000 if over age 50). Although fundamentally similar to 403(b) plans, there is one unique advantage of the 457 plan in that unlike the 403(b) plans, there is no tax penalty for early withdrawal before age 59 1/2 years old.
  • 415(m) plans. These are deferred income retirement plans for highly paid government employees earning more than $305,000/year in 2022 in salary and bonuses or with contributions more than $61,000 to the university’s base retirement 401(a) plan (STRS or ARP). Many physicians at public universities will fall into this category since physicians command relatively high salaries compared to other university faculty and compared to regular state government employees. Contributions to 415(m) plans can be made by the employee, the employer (i.e. the university), or both, depending on each university’s specific plan. In essence, the 415(m) plan allows physicians and other highly paid university employees to put away more for retirement after the annual base retirement 401(a) contribution limits have been reached.
  • Traditional and Roth IRAs. These are not sponsored by the university but anyone can contribute to a traditional IRA. Because the income limit to contribute pre-tax money into a traditional IRA is $144,000 per year if filing single in 2022 ($214,000 if filing jointly), most physicians are not eligible to contribute pre-tax dollars into a traditional IRA, nor are they able to contribute post-tax dollars directly into a Roth IRA. However, physicians can contribute post-tax money into a traditional IRA and then promptly convert it into a Roth IRA (‘backdoor’ Roth). As I have posted previously, I think that everyone should have a Roth IRA as part of a diversified retirement portfolio, even if it requires doing a backdoor Roth.

The tax advantages of deferred compensation options

A widely discussed advantage of deferred compensation retirement plans, such as the 403(b), 457, and 415(m) plans, is that you can defer paying income tax on the withdrawals until you are in retirement when you will likely have a lower income tax rate. Although that may be true, it is impossible to predict what the income tax rates will be 35 years from now when you are retired. They may be higher, lower, or the same as they currently are and therefore, depending on the amount that you are withdrawing each year, your federal income tax rate could be higher, lower, or the same as it currently is. If your income tax rate is the same, then the amount of take-home money that you have after taxes will be the same whether you pay income tax now and invest the money or contribute the money to a deferred income investment and pay income tax later. But there are two often-overlooked advantages to using a deferred income retirement plan:

  1. Reduce your income tax rate today. When you contribute to a deferred income retirement account, you effectively reduce your taxable income that year. Thus, you end up paying less tax on all of your take-home income. For example, assume you have an annual income of $250,000 and you are married, filing jointly. Your effective federal income tax rate for 2022 is 16.81%. If you contribute $20,500 to a 403(b), your taxable income drops to $229,500 and your effective federal income tax rate drops to 16.16%. The difference in effective tax rates is 0.65% and this results in you paying $1,492 less in taxes on the $229,500 than you would have at the higher tax rate. In other words, by contributing to a 403(b), 457, 401(a), or 415(m) plan, you have in essence given yourself a tax deduction!
  2. Avoid paying investment taxes twice. If you were to put the $20,500 into a regular post-tax investment (such as a mutual fund) instead of contributing to the 403(b), then not only do you pay income tax on that money this year but you will also pay capital gains tax when you eventually cash-out the post-tax investment AND you will also pay taxes on the annual dividends and interest from those investments every year that you hold those investments. You can avoid the capital gains, dividend, and interest taxes by contributing to a backdoor Roth IRA but the contribution limit is only $6,000 per year ($7,000 if over age 50). So, unless you put that retirement money in a Roth IRA, you will end up paying much more in taxes by putting retirement money in a regular post-tax investment than you will by putting that money in a deferred income plan.

Maximize 415(m) contributions

The decision about whether or not to participate in a university 415(m) plan is usually made at the time of initial employment and is irrevocable (meaning that you cannot change your mind later). At the Ohio State University, the choices are 0%, 4%, 8%, or 12%. If the 0% option is chosen, then you are electing to not participate in the 415(m) plan.

The 415(m) plan only kicks in when you have reached the annual contribution limit to your 401(a) base retirement plan ($61,000 in 2022) or retirement eligible earnings over $305,000. Therefore, you will only be contributing to the 415(m) plan for the portion of you income that exceeds the portion of your income subject to 401(a) contributions.

My advice is to take the maximum contribution to the 415(m). Even at the highest option (12% at OSU), it will still be less than your contribution to the university’s base retirement 401(a) plan (14% at OSU). Also, you can always increase or decrease contribution amounts to a 403(b) and/or 457 in order to allow you to meet annual expenses such as a new home purchase or student loan repayment. But once you commit to a percentage contribution to the 415(m) plan, you cannot increase it in the future.

Think very carefully about base retirement plan selection

A second irrevocable decision at the time of initial employment is which 401(a) base retirement plan to choose. Most universities will have something like a state teacher’s retirement system choice versus an alternative retirement plan choice. Both options have advantages and disadvantage and the choice that is best for one academic physician may not be the best choice for another academic physician.

Many financial advisors will tell you that you can get a higher rate of return by investing your retirement money yourself than you will get from a state teacher’s retirement system (STRS) pension. And they are right – you can, if you invest that money in a portfolio with a large percentage of stocks. But you should think of a pension as the non-volatile fixed income component of a balanced retirement portfolio. In this sense, it will substitute for the bond or annuity component of your portfolio had you not contributed to STRS. Therefore, by contributing to STRS, you will have the ability to safely put a higher percentage of your other retirement investments in more volatile investments with higher potential rates of return (such as stock and real estate mutual funds). Most academic physicians will contribute far more to their 403(b), 457, and 415(m) plans than they will to their base retirement 401(a) plans and these physicians can then afford to put more of their 403(b), 457, & 415(m) investments into stocks and real estate than they otherwise would have been able to.

Once retired, the predictable fixed income monthly pension income reduces the amount that you will need to keep in cash. The cash portion of your portfolio after you are retired serves to cover sudden, unexpected expenses and serves as a buffer to having to withdraw money from volatile accounts when the stock and bond markets fall. By keeping less money in cash, you can put more money into investments that over the long-term will result in greater wealth.

Every state will have different options for base retirement plans. In Ohio, it is either the State Teacher’s Retirement System of Ohio (STRS) or the Alternative Retirement Plan (ARP). Because most states have plans that are similar, I will use Ohio’s options of STRS versus ARP as examples. Some of the factors to consider when choosing between 401(a) base retirement options include:

  1. How long will you be employed by the university? In order to get the maximum annual pension, you have to contribute to STRS for 35 years. If you leave the university to go into private practice or if you take a job at a university in a different state, then you can either withdraw your STRS contributions plus a 3% annual interest rate or you can take a rather small pension when you eventually retire. Some states allow you to purchase credit for some of the years that you worked as an educator in other states making STRS contributions somewhat portable.  However, if there is a high likelihood that you will work at a university in your current state of residence for less than 35 years, then the ARP may be the wiser choice.
  2. Will you need health insurance? If you retire before you are eligible for Medicare (currently age 65), then you will need to purchase health insurance. If you purchase an individual insurance policy on the open market, it can be incredibly expensive. STRS participants have access to group health insurance with good coverage that is considerably less expensive. Once you are covered under Medicare, you will still need supplemental health insurance and once again, it will be less expensive to purchase though STRS. Dental and vision insurance for retirees is also available through STRS. The ability to purchase STRS health insurance can result in saving a considerable amount of money after retirement.
  3. How do you value other benefits? In addition to health insurance, participants in STRS have access to other benefits. If you become disabled, then you may be eligible for a monthly disability benefit. There are also options for monthly benefits for surviving beneficiaries (spouse or children). My father died when I was in college and his STRS plan helped support me while I was in medical school and 42 years after his death, my mother still receives a monthly STRS benefit.
  4. Your confidence in STRS. There is a reason that most corporations have eliminated pensions – they are expensive and have the potential to run out of money. Although most  teacher retirement systems are supported by their state governments, they are not immune to financial crisis. For example, the Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System is in danger of running out of money and not being able to pay its retirees. Each state’s system varies in terms of financial stability. My own opinion is that it is very unlikely that any state government will allow a teacher’s retirement system to default – if they do, that state will not be able to find new teachers willing to work there and the public education system would collapse. However, you should look at participation in an STRS plan as a type of investment and all investments have risk. For most states, that risk is equal or less than the risk of investing in bonds.
  5. You won’t have Social Security. At most public universities, physicians do not contribute to Social Security. The idea is that STRS substitutes for Social Security but even of you elect the alternative retirement plan (ARP) instead of STRS, you still do not contribute to Social Security. Therefore, when you are retired, you will not receive Social Security benefits. Even if you have contributions to Social Security from years that you worked for other employers or from outside consulting that you did while working at a university, your monthly Social Security payments in retirement will be considerably reduced. Therefore, if you elect the ARP instead of STRS, you will need to have a  higher percentage of your retirement savings in stable investments such as bonds, annuities, or certificates of deposit since you will not have the safety that a fixed income source brings to a diversified retirement portfolio.
  6. How old will you (and your spouse) live to be? Pension benefits are determined by actuaries who estimate how long the beneficiaries will live. If beneficiaries live a long time after retiring, then the monthly pension amounts have to be lower to be sure that the pension does not run out of money. On the other hand, if retirees die shortly after retiring, then the pension can afford to have higher monthly pension payments. Currently, a man who retires at age 65 can expect to live to age 83.2 years; a women retiring at age 65 can expect to live to age 85.8 years. If you anticipate dying younger than these ages, then the ARP may be better for you. If you anticipate living beyond these ages, then STRS becomes a better option. Factors to consider in estimating your longevity include any chronic diseases (diabetes, hypertension, etc.), personal or family history of cancer, age of death of your parents, your smoking history, whether you get regular vaccinations, your body mass index, etc.
  7. Your risk tolerance. Remember, a pension should be considered as the defined benefit component of a diversified retirement portfolio. As such, it is a low-risk component. Each person has a different risk tolerance. Those who have a higher risk tolerance will generally have a higher percentage of their retirement portfolio in higher risk stocks and real estate. Those with a lower risk tolerance will generally want to increase the percentage of their portfolio in low-risk bonds and fixed income. If you choose STRS, then the percentage of your overall retirement savings portfolio derived from your STRS pension should match your risk tolerance. If you find that contributing to STRS would make your overall portfolio diversification too conservative, then the ARP may be preferable.

What about the 403(b), 457, and Roth IRA?

The base retirement 401(a) plan will not be enough to fund your entire retirement portfolio. For most academic physicians, the largest component of their portfolio will be in their 403(b, 457, and 415(m) plans. As mentioned above, the 403(b) and 457 plans are very similar but the 457 plan’s lack of early withdrawal penalties gives it a slight advantage over the 403(b). For that reason, it is preferable to maximize annual contributions to a 457 plan before starting to contribute to a 403(b) plan. If you can afford it, ideally, you should be contributing to both.

Most universities will have options of directing contributions to different investment brokerages and to different mutual funds within each brokerage. It is within the 403(b) and 457 accounts that most people can create the proper risk diversification for their overall retirement portfolio by selecting funds that compliment fixed income sources such as STRS.

A Roth IRA is an essential component of a balanced and diversified retirement portfolio and everyone should have one. Ideally, one should contribute to all three options: a 403(b), a 457, and a Roth IRA. Maximizing annual contributions to all of these would add up to $47,000 per year and if you did that every year with an average annual rate of return of 8%, then after 35 years, you would have $8.7 million in retirement savings. However, $47,000 per year is beyond the reach of most people so I recommend doing an annual partial contribution to both a Roth IRA and a 457 initially. Once you reach the contribution limit of the 457, then increase your Roth IRA contribution to the IRS limit. Next, steadily increase your 403(b) contributions until you reach the IRS limit.

Academic physicians can save more

Physicians in private practice usually have access to a 401(k) or 403(b) plan… and that is about it. Physicians employed by public universities usually have access to a 401(a), 403(b), 457, and 415(m) plan. Moreover, most of the 401(a) plans include sizable employer matching contributions. Physicians in private practice will generally have a higher annual income than academic physicians. However, academic physicians can generally save more for retirement in deferred income plans with the tax advantages that come with those plans. For many academic physicians, these increased retirement savings can offset the lower annual income with the result that the decision between private practice versus academics can be based more on workplace preference and lifestyle rather than on economics.

May 12, 2022

Categories
Physician Retirement Planning

403(b) Or Roth 403(b) – Which Is Better?

Recently, a physician asked me whether it is better to put retirement savings in a regular 403(b) or a Roth 403(b). My answer was… do both. The strongest retirement portfolios are diversified portfolios that allow you to strategically withdraw from different retirement “buckets” in different years in order to keep taxes as low as possible. This means having both Roth and non-Roth deferred income accounts.

What is a Roth 403(b)?

A regular 403(b) is a deferred income retirement account that you pay local income tax, Medicare tax, and Social Security tax the year that you earn the money but you do not pay federal income tax or state income tax until the year that you take the money out in retirement. With a Roth 403(b), you pay federal and state income tax the year you earn the money and then you pay no income taxes the year that you take the money out in retirement. In other words, with a Roth 403(b), you pay income taxes now and with a regular 403(b), you pay income taxes later, when you are retired.

The 403(b) is a deferred income savings program used by non-profit organizations. Similar deferred income retirement savings programs include the 401(k) which is used by for-profit companies, the 457 which is used by government institutions, and the IRA which is used by anyone with a taxable income. Each of these deferred income programs can be offered as either a regular 401(k)/403(b)/457 or as a Roth 401(k)/403(b)/457. Some employers will offer both a Roth and regular option and other employers will only offer a regular 401(k)/403(b)/457.

This post will address what you should do if your employer offers both a regular 401(k)/403(b)/457 and a Roth 401(k)/403(b)/457 as well as the factors that affect your choice of one versus the other. Although I will be discussing the Roth 403(b), the information is also applicable to the Roth 401(k) and Roth 457.

What is the difference between a Roth IRA and a Roth 403(b)?

Most people are familiar with the Roth IRA and as I’ve posted before, I think everyone should have a Roth IRA as part of a diversified retirement portfolio. If your income is too high to contribute directly to a Roth IRA, then you can do a “backdoor Roth IRA” by first contributing post-tax dollars into a traditional IRA and then promptly converting that traditional IRA into a Roth IRA.  The Roth IRA and the Roth 403(b) are similar in that with both, you pay income taxes now and then the distributions are tax-are in retirement. However, there are some important differences between them:

  • Contribution limits. In 2022, the contribution limit for a Roth IRA is $6,000 ($7,000 if over age 50). The contribution limit for a Roth 403(b) is $20,500 ($27,000 if over age 50).
  • Investment options. With a Roth 403(b) account, you can only put money in specific investment options chosen by your employer. These are typically mutual funds or annuities offered by 403(b) administrators such as TIAA or Fidelity. With a Roth IRA, you can put the money in a much wider variety of investments, chosen by you.
  • Employer matching. Some employers will match a portion of your contributions to a 403(b). This is more common with 401(k)s than 403(b)s and rarely if ever found with 457s. These matching contributions are free money that you should never turn down. There is no matching contribution options to a Roth IRA.
  • Early retirement. If you retire before age 59 1/2, you cannot take money out of your Roth IRA without incurring a large tax penalty. However, you can withdraw money from a Roth 403(b) before age 59 1/2 without a penalty if you separated from your employer before age 55.
  • Required minimum distributions. The IRS requires you to take a minimum amount out of Roth 403(b) accounts starting at age 72 years old.  Roth 401(k) and Roth 457 accounts are also subject to these required minimum distributions. Unlike Roth 403(b)s, Roth IRAs are not subject to required minimum distributions.

It’s all about tax rates

The main determinate of whether to contribute to a regular 403(b) or a Roth 403(b) is whether your income tax rate will be higher or lower when you are retired than your income tax rate today.

If your taxes are higher today than they will be in retirement, then you should contribute to a regular 403(b). If your taxes are lower today than they will be in retirement, then you should contribute to a Roth 403(b). If your taxes are the same today as they will be in retirement, then there is no difference between contributing to a regular 403(b) or a Roth 403(b). The problem is knowing if your taxes today will be higher or lower than your taxes in retirement. There are three factors that will influence this.

  1. Tax brackets. In a previous post, I showed how everyone pays an effective federal income tax rate that is less than the income tax bracket that they are in. However, the federal income tax brackets do determine your effective income tax rates. Congress changes the tax brackets and therefore the effective tax rates every few years and it is impossible to predict what those tax brackets will be in your retirement years. Currently, Americans have been enjoying relatively low federal income taxes since the 2017 tax cuts making this a good time to contribute to Roth accounts. However, these tax cuts are set to expire in 2025 and then federal income tax rates will rise back up to 2016 levels (unless congress passes new legislation otherwise) at which time it will be more advantageous to contribute to a regular 403(b). Tax rates will also fluctuate during your retirement years so that there will be some years in retirement that your tax rates will be higher (favoring taking distributions from a Roth 403(b) and some years that your tax rates will be lower (favoring taking distributions from a regular 403(b).
  2. Income level. Most people start off their career with lower incomes and their income gradually increases as they get promotions and greater experience on the job. As income goes up, tax rates also go ups. Therefore, it is generally favorable to contribute to a Roth 403(b) early in your career, when your tax rates are lower. It is generally favorable to contribute to a regular 403(b) later in your career, when your tax rates are higher. In addition, there will be some years during your career that your income will be lower for a variety of reasons: going part-time, being laid off, not getting an annual bonus, etc. In these years, it is more favorable to contribute to a Roth 403(b).
  3. Retirement spending. The amount of money that you withdraw from your retirement savings will vary from year to year, depending on your spending. On retirement years that you do a lot of traveling, buy a vacation home, or buy a new car, you will need to take larger distributions from your retirement accounts. These larger distributions mean a higher income in those years and with higher income comes a higher income tax rate. Therefore, in those retirement years that you have a lot of expenses, it is better to take distributions from a Roth 403(b) and in retirement years that you have fewer expenses, it is better to take distributions from a regular 403(b).

Summarizing these factors, we can see that there are times during your career that contributing to a Roth 403(b) is more favorable than contributing to a regular 403(b). Similarly, there are years in your retirement when withdrawing distributions from a Roth 403(b) is more favorable than withdrawing distributions from a regular 403(b):

You should have BOTH a regular 403(b) and a Roth 403(b)

If you have access to a Roth 403(b) (or a Roth 401(k) or a Roth 457), then you should contribute to it in years when congressionally-determined tax rates are low and in years when you have a lower income (such as early in your career). You should contribute to a regular 403(b) in years that income tax rates are high and in years when you have a high income (such as late in your career). This will result in you having both a regular 403(b) and a Roth 403(b) so that when you are retired, you can withdraw distributions from one or the other, depending on whichever is more favorable from a tax standpoint on any given year.

The result of paying less in taxes is that you have more in disposable income. In order to maximize that disposable income in both your working years and your retirement years you need a diversified retirement portfolio. This allows for a tax-advantaged withdrawal strategy of withdrawing from regular deferred income accounts some years and Roth deferred income accounts other years. Thoughtful retirement saving today will pay off in a healthy finances when you use those savings once retired.

March 31, 2022

 

Categories
Physician Retirement Planning

Calculate The Amount Of Money You Need To Retire

There are a lot of suggested ways to calculate the amount of money you need to have in retirement savings in order to comfortably retire. The problem with most of them is that they are overly simplistic and do not take into account the nuances that each of our individual circumstances bring. Rules such as you need “10 times your annual salary” or “25 times your annual spending” can result in either underfunding your retirement portfolio or overfunding your retirement portfolio. The result of the former is that you will outlive your retirement savings, the result of the latter is that you will be funding a million dollar funeral. I have created an Excel spreadsheet that allows you to calculate the amount you need to save for retirement each year in order to maintain your current disposable income. You can download the spreadsheet with it pre-filled with an example using the average income for a general internist by clicking here:

Retirement Savings Calculator Example 1

Instructions on how to enter data into the spreadsheet can be downloaded by clicking here to download the Word document:

Retirement Savings Calculator Instructions

This blog post will explain the background for this calculator. Because life is complex, calculating your retirement needs are complex, so reading this post may seem overwhelming. However, this calculator takes most of the complexity into consideration to allow you to arrive at a reasonably accurate number with relatively little effort. I encourage you to download the Excel spreadsheet and play around with the numbers based on your own particular financial circumstances.

Building your retirement portfolio

There are two ways you can increase the amount of money in your retirement portfolio: (1) save more money each year or (2) work more years. Followers of the FIRE movement (Financial Independence Retire Early) will tell you to put more money away early in your career so that you can retire as soon as possible. There are two problems with this approach. First, excessively increasing your retirement savings in your youth reduces your disposable income and forces you to live austerely when you are young thus sacrificing quality of life. Second, the FIRE approach assumes that working is unpleasant and something to stop doing as soon as possible. My own opinion is that if that is the case, then you made a wrong career decision and have an unrewarding job that you are not passionate about.

The second way to increase your retirement portfolio is to work past the age that you planned on retiring. This may be totally acceptable if you are continuing to work because your job is fulfilling and you would rather be engaged in your career than be retired. On the other hand, working past your planned retirement age simply because you cannot afford to retire can result in you working in a career that you are not passionate about and missing out on doing the things you dreamed of doing in retirement when you are still healthy enough to do those things.

Thus, the goal of retirement saving is not to be rich monetarily, but to ensure that you can have a rich life, both while you are working and in retirement. In this post, you will learn how to calculate the amount you will need to save each year while you are working in order to meet your financial needs in retirement and ensure that you do not run out of money as you get older.

First, determine your current disposable income

Your disposable income is your annual income after you have paid all of your taxes and after you have paid expenses that you will have in your working years but not in your retirement years. Your taxes will include federal income tax, state income tax, local income tax, and FICA tax (composed of Medicare plus Social Security tax). The easiest way to get these values is from last year’s W-2 forms and IRS 1040 forms. You can also calculate these by using an online calculator such as the SmartAsset calculator and entering your total salary, filing status, number of dependents, geographic location, and deferred income contributions to calculate all of your various taxes.

Expenses that you will have during working years include retirement savings, mortgage payments, children’s college savings, and life insurance. Hopefully, once you are retired, your house will be paid off and your children out of college. As I have written in previous posts, I am not in favor of buying whole life insurance and instead, prefer buying term life insurance but only during the term of years that others depend on your income – once you are retired and drawing from your retirement accounts, you no longer need to purchase life insurance.

The amount of money left over after subtracting taxes and working year expenses is your annual disposable income. This is the money that you use to pay for food, housing upkeep, travel, clothes, entertainment, utilities, property taxes, healthcare, etc. These are purchases and expenses that you will have in both your working years as well as your retirement years. A major goal of retirement savings is to ensure that you have sufficient money to cover at least this same amount of disposable income once retired.

The amount of your current disposable income will need to be adjusted for inflation in order to calculate the amount of disposable income you will need when retired. Although it is impossible to predict exactly what the future inflation rates will be each year between now and your retirement, historically, inflation runs about 3.5% every year on average. In other words, what costs you $100.00 today will cost you $103.50 a year from now. By adjusting for inflation, you can maintain a constant purchasing power with your disposable income.

Many retirees will have new expenditures in retirement years that they do not have during working years, such as travel, a second home, a boat, etc. If you plan on doing any of these things, then add an annual amount to your retirement year disposable income – for example, if you plan on spending $30,000 per year in retirement traveling, then add $30,000 to your retirement disposable income. This amount will also need to be adjusted for the effects of inflation between now and when you retire.

Second, calculate your fixed income in retirement

The most common retirement fixed income is Social Security. The average American’s Social Security benefit is $20,000 per year and the maximum is about $40,000 per year. However, to get the higher amount, a person would need to have a very high income, contribute to Social Security for 35 years, and wait until after age 70 to begin taking Social Security benefits. The second form of fixed income is the pension. In the past, many Americans relied on pensions but these are increasingly uncommon for non-government employers. However, physicians employed by state supported universities and federal government agencies may have access to pensions through their State Teacher’s Retirement System or through the Federal Employees Retirement System. The third type of fixed income is the annuity which is essentially a self-funded pension sold by an insurance company.

In order to calculate the amount of money you will receive from fixed income sources, you can check your annual Social Security statement or pension statement. Social Security benefits have increased an average of 2.6% per year for the past 36 years so adjust your actual Social Security benefit for these anticipated cost of living increases in the years before you retire.

Third, determine the amount you will have in your investment portfolio when you retire

To calculate the value of your retirement portfolio in the year that you will retire, you will need to estimate the number of years until your retirement. Next, determine the amount of money in all of your retirement accounts at the end of the last calendar year. Finally, determine the total amount you are contributing to retirement this year – this should include all deferred income accounts (401k, 403b, 457, 415m, SEP, and IRAs), all employer matching retirement contributions, and all regular investments used for retirement saving. Because a person’s income will usually increase as inflation increases, it is expected that the amount contributed to retirement savings will also increase, proportionate to the increase in income each year. As such, the IRS periodically increases the annual maximum contribution limits for deferred income accounts and historically, this increase has averaged 3.0% per year over the past 36 years. Therefore, you can assume increasing your retirement contributions by 3% each year.

Because your retirement savings will be invested, you will need to estimate the annual rate of return that you expect during your working years. Historically, over the past 94 years, the average annual rate of return of bonds has been 5.33% and the average return of stocks has been 10.29%. Portfolios containing a mix of stocks plus bonds over this period of time have average annual returns falling in-between as shown in this table.

Historically, a common retirement investment portfolio of 70% stocks and 30% bonds has an average 9.2% annual return on investment. In reality, most investors will have a higher percentage of stocks in their retirement portfolio early in their careers and a lower percentage of stocks in their late careers. However, a 70%/30% mix is convenient to represent the average mix over the course of one’s entire working years. Not all stock investments have equal rates of return, however. Because of their higher expense, managed mutual funds will have lower net returns than low-cost index funds. Also, if you hire a wealth adviser to manage your portfolio, their fees will reduce your returns. In these situations, you should reduce your expected annual return by 1-2%.

The reason for the change in the stock:bond ratio with age is because stocks are far more volatile than bonds and are more likely to lose money in the short run, even though they are more likely to make money in the long run. As a person gets closer to retirement age, the risk that a retirement portfolio comprised of stocks will fall in the next few years because greater volatility increases and this could result in you having to withdraw money from your portfolio when the value of the portfolio is lower, thus depleting your retirement savings faster. From the graph below, if a person held stocks in 2000, the subsequent fall in the stock market resulted in the value of those stocks not recovering to the break-even value until 2007. Thus, a person retiring in 2000 with a retirement portfolio consisting primarily of stocks suffered a catastrophic loss of their retirement savings.

Not only will the ratio of stocks:bonds in your retirement portfolio change as you get older, but the ratio is also affected by your individual ability to accept investment risk. This risk assessment is affected by many factors including:

  1. Anxiety created by market volatility. If you lose sleep when stock prices fluctuate or if falling stock prices make you want to sell your shares, then you should adopt a low-risk portfolio.
  2. Optimist or pessimist? If you believe that the United States’ best years are behind us, if you are pessimistic about the economy or geopolitics, then you should adopt a low-risk portfolio.
  3. Pensions. If you have a pension, then a sizable portion of your retirement portfolio will be a non-volatile, dependable amount of income. This gives you the luxury of having a higher percentage of more volatile stocks in your other investments since the stability of the pension will substitute for the stability of bonds allowing you to have a higher-risk portfolio. Notably, state government institutions (including public universities) usually do not participate in Social Security and if their employees elect to self-direct their retirement contributions (rather than participate in the state teachers retirement system or public employees retirement system), then those employees will have no Social Security and no fixed income in retirement – these employees should choose a lower-risk portfolio because of the lack of a fixed income buffer to their retirement income.
  4. Anticipated life expectancy. If you anticipate living many years in retirement, then your investment horizon is longer and you can afford to have a higher-risk portfolio. If your life expectancy after retirement is shorter, then it is safer to favor the stability of a lower-risk portfolio.
  5. Annual living expenses. If your projected disposable income in retirement is very close to your projected living expenses, then you cannot afford the volatility of a portfolio comprised mostly of stocks and instead should favor the predictability of a lower-risk portfolio.

Here is an example of how to structure a retirement portfolio based on both age and risk assessment:

Fourth, determine the annual withdrawals from your retirement portfolio to achieve your desired disposable income

In your retirement years, your deferred income distributions, fixed income, and annuity income will all be subject to federal and state income tax (except for Roth accounts). Inevitably, income tax rates will go up and go down on different years when you are retired so it is not possible to accurately predict what your income tax rates will be in any given retirement year. The most conservative estimate is to use your current federal and state income tax rates. Once you calculate your desired disposable income in the first year of retirement, you can then calculate the amount of income tax that you will have to pay on fixed income sources and deferred income accounts in order to fund that desired disposable income.

In each year of retirement, inflation will result in an increase in the amount of money that you will need in order to maintain a constant purchasing power from your disposable income. Inflation rates will inevitably be higher in some of your retirement years and lower in other years but for convenience, use the historical average annual inflation rate of 3.5% per year. In addition, your retirement portfolio will increase each year based on your annual rate of return on the investments. Once again, it is impossible to know with certainty what your rate of return will be but if you assume a 50% stock and 50% bond mix in your retirement portfolio in the years after you retire, then based on historical rates of return, you can assume an 8.3% average increase in the value of your portfolio. The goal is to ensure that your investment rate of return exceeds the inflation rate, otherwise, your portfolio will lose purchasing power every year.

By estimating the value of your retirement portfolio at the time of your retirement, estimating how much you will need to withdraw from that portfolio each year to achieve your disposable income needs, estimating the inflation rate during your retirement years, and estimating the rate of return on your retirement portfolio investments, you can calculate how many years your retirement portfolio will last. In order to determine if it will last long enough, you will need to estimate your life expectancy (and your spouse’s).

According to the CDC, the life expectancy from birth is 77.0 years. However, this is not an accurate number to use in calculating how long your retirement portfolio needs to last. The problem is that a lot of people die between birth and age 65 and this brings the average life expectancy from birth number down. What you are interested in is how long you will live after age 65 since you are assuming you will not die before retirement. The average life expectancy for 65-year-old Americans in 2019 was 83.2 years for men and 85.8 years for women. In 2020, those life expectancy numbers dropped by an average of 1 year due to excessive deaths from COVID. Assuming COVID is now largely behind us, the 2019 life expectancy numbers are probably more valid than the 2020 numbers. But remember, these life expectancy numbers are an average and therefore, half of 65-year-olds will live longer than the average. To be conservative (and optimistic!), I recommend using a life expectancy of 95-years-old for financial planning purposes and then adjust that number up if you have a family history of longevity and you have no major medical problems. Adjust the number down if you have chronic medical conditions, if you are a smoker, or if you are unvaccinated. As an example, if you plan to retire at age 65, you should plan on funding 30 years in retirement (to age 95).

Fifth, determine the effect of changing your annual retirement contributions

If you calculate that your retirement portfolio will run out of money before your estimated age of death, then increase the amount you will contribute to your retirement portfolio this year and re-run the numbers until you estimate that you have enough to last for your entire estimated life. On the other hand, if you find that your retirement portfolio will still be large on your estimated death age, then scale back your annual retirement contributions or increase your desired annual disposable income in retirement and re-run the numbers.

Knowledge is freedom

To calculate the amount of money you need takes time and is complicated. The downloadable retirement calculator attached to this post can help and will probably take about 20 minutes once you assemble your current financial documents. However, doing the calculations can bring you the security to ensure that you do not run out of money in your retirement years and the security of knowing that you will be able to do all of the things that you dream of doing once retired. But most importantly, it gives you freedom – freedom to work in your 60’s or 70’s because you want to work and not because you have to work.

March 26, 2022

Categories
Physician Finances Physician Retirement Planning

‘Tis The Season… For Tax Loss Harvesting

Who doesn’t like free money? “Tax loss harvesting” is an investment tactic that does just that – gives you free money. And December is just the time to do it. Careful use of tax loss harvesting can take off up to $3,000 from your taxable income this year, just in time for the Christmas holidays.

What is tax loss harvesting?

In brief, tax loss harvesting allows you to off-set capital gains or regular income with capital losses from investments. Here is how it works. When you have an investment such as a stock or mutual fund that increases in value, the difference between the price that you paid to buy it and the price when you sold it is capital gains. If that difference is a positive value, you pay taxes on those capital gains based on your capital gains tax rate which in turn depends on your income level. There are two types of capital gains: short-term and long-term. Short-term capital gains are those on investments that you have held for less than 1 year and are taxed at your regular income tax rate. Long-term capital gains are on investments you have held for more than 1 year and are taxed at your capital gains tax rate. Most people fall into the 15% capital gains tax rate bracket.

IMPORTANT: capital gains taxes only apply to regular investments and not retirement accounts such as a 401(k), 403(b), 457, or IRA. You will pay regular income tax on all withdrawals from retirement accounts.

One the other hand, if that investment lost value from the time you bought it to the time you sold it, you have a capital loss and this is where tax loss harvesting comes into play. There are two types of tax loss harvesting:

  1. Use a capital loss to offset a capital gain. You get taxed on your net capital gains when you add up all of the investments you sold that you made money on and lost money on. So, if you made $5,000 in long=term capital gains from the sale of one investment but had $5,000 in long-term capital losses from the sale of another investment, the gains and the losses balance out so you do not owe any money in capital gains taxes that year. You have to track and report short-term and long-term capital gains/losses individually and the IRS requires you to first apply short-term losses against short-term gains and apply long-term losses against long-term gains before you can apply short-term losses against long-term gains and vice versa so the IRS reporting on your tax forms can get a bit complicated.
  2. Use a capital loss to offset regular income. What happens if you either do not sell any investments for a capital gain this year or if you sold more investments for a loss than you sold for a gain? You can apply net capital losses up to $3,000 against your regular income. In other words, you can reduce your taxable regular income by $3,000. If your effective income tax rate is 18.00%, that means that you can avoid paying $540 in income tax on that $3,000. In addition, that reduction of $3,000 from your taxable income will drop your effective income tax rate to 17.93% which in turn will drop your income tax by an additional $180 for a total reduction of $720 in income tax.  The net effect: you get $720 in free money!

What are the rules?

First, you have to be able to calculate your cost basis (what you actually paid when you originally purchased an investment). To do that, you have to know the date that you bought an investment and the date that you sold an investment. You also need to know the amount of money that you originally paid for that investment when you bought it and the amount of money you sold it for. This can get a little tricky if you purchased shares of a stock (or mutual fund) on different dates. It can also get tricky if you are automatically re-investing dividends from a stock (or mutual fund) to purchase additional shares of that stock (or mutual fund). Fortunately, most of the large investment companies will track your mutual fund investments for you and will be able to tell you what your short-term and long-term capital gains are at any given time with just a click of your mouse. This allows you to calculate how many shares of a mutual fund you need to sell in order to have a $3,000 capital loss.

Second, you have to avoid a wash sale. The IRS does not allow you to sell an investment to take a loss and then turn around and immediately buy back that investment right away – this is called a wash sale. To avoid wash sale penalties, you have to wait at least 30 days before you purchase shares of the stock (or mutual fund) that you just sold. You can, however, sell a losing stock (or mutual fund) and use the proceeds to buy a different, dissimilar stock (or mutual fund).

Third, you have to fill out IRS form 8949 when you fill out your annual income tax forms. This form summarizes all of the investments that you sold during that tax year. The total amount from form 8949 then has to be reported on schedule D of your 1040 form. Schedule D is where you can deduct up to $3,000 from your taxable income.

What should I sell?

We are living in the longest bull market in U.S. history. Except for the 6 months between February and August 2020 (onset of COVID), the overall stock market has been steadily going up for the past 11 years. As a consequence, most broad market mutual funds and most individual stock have increased in value rather than decreased in value so you may not have any investments to qualify for tax loss harvesting. However, certain specific types of investments have lost money over the past few years. For example, many U.S. and foreign bond mutual funds have lost value over the year and energy sector mutual funds have lost value over the past 10 years. Check all of the specific stocks and mutual funds in your investment portfolio – those that have lost value since you purchased them are eligible for tax loss harvesting.

It is important that you keep sight of your overall investment strategy which should involve maintaining a diversified portfolio of individual investments. Beware of selling off too much of any one type of investment if it puts your overall portfolio out of balance. For example, don’t sell all of your bond funds in order to harvest a tax loss or you will end up with a portfolio comprised exclusively of stocks and thus making you vulnerable to your portfolio losing too much money if/when the stock market falls in the future. If you sell shares of an energy sector stock mutual fund for tax loss harvesting purposes and you feel compelled to have energy stocks for long term investment purposes, just remember that you have to wait more than 30 days before you can buy new shares of that energy fund.

My investment philosophy has always been to “buy and hold”since investment should be for the long term. Stocks and bonds will go up and down in value and the wise investor will ride out the downs in order to take advantage of the inevitable ups. Tax loss harvesting is one exception to this strategy that can reduce your taxes and put more money in your pocket.

December 3, 2021

Categories
Physician Retirement Planning

The Closing Window Of Opportunity For Roth IRA Conversions

The best time to do a Roth conversion is in the next 4 years. There are two situations when contributing to a Roth IRA is particularly advantageous: when the stock market plummets and when income tax rates are low. In 2016, Congress voted to reduce income taxes, beginning in tax year 2017. Without additional legislation, those tax reductions will expire in 2025. Given historical precedent and the amount of Federal spending that has occurred in the past 2 years in combating COVID and in infrastructure spending, it seems likely that income tax rates will return to the 2016 levels in 2025. That means that we have 4 years  left to take advantage of some of the lowest income tax rates in recent memory. It also means that we have 4 years left to take advantage of lower-cost Roth IRA conversions.

To understand why Roth conversions are going to be less expensive now than in 2025, you first have to understand how income taxes work. In a previous post, I discussed the differences between income tax brackets and effective marginal income tax rates. The bottom line is that we place way too much emphasis on the tax brackets. What we actually pay in income tax depends on the effective tax rate and not the bracket. The effective tax rate goes slowly and steadily up for every additional dollar we earn. The income tax brackets simply determine the slope and position of the curve of the effective tax rates. In the graph to the right, you can see last year’s income tax brackets in the dotted line but the actual income tax rate a person pays is always less than the bracket that they are in, as shown in the solid line.

When congress voted to reduce the tax brackets beginning in 2017, the effect was to shift the curve of the graph downward so that everyone at all income levels paid lower effective income tax rates. Depending on one’s taxable income, the effective tax rate dropped by 3.5 to 6.0 percentage points. The graph on the right illustrates the difference in the effective tax rate for annual taxable incomes between $40,000 and $700,000 for 2016 (before the tax cuts) and 2020 (after the tax cuts). For example, a family with a taxable income of $250,000 per year had an effective income tax rate of 21.5% in 2016 but that dropped by 4.6 percentage points to an effective income tax rate of 16.9% in 2020. Looked at in a different way, that family paid $53,750 in federal income tax in 2016 but only paid $42,250 in 2020.

So, what do lower income taxes mean for Roth conversions?

Roth IRAs have two important advantages over other retirement savings accounts: (1) you do not have to pay taxes when you take money out of the Roth account and (2) you do not have to take required minimum distributions at age 72 like you do with a 401k or other deferred income accounts. There are two ways that you can contribute to a Roth IRA: direct contribution and conversion contribution. If you are married filing jointly, then you can annually contribute up to $6,000 ($7,000 if over age 50) directly to a Roth IRA if you make less than $198,000 (you can do a partial contribution if you make between $198,000 and $208,000). If your income is over $208,000, then you cannot contribute directly to a Roth. However, you can do a Roth conversion by first contributing to a traditional IRA and then converting those funds into a Roth IRA within 60 days. This sometimes called a backdoor Roth approach.

It is easiest to do a Roth IRA conversion from a traditional IRA, especially if both the traditional and Roth IRAs are in the same investment company. It is also possible to convert funds from a 401(k), 403(b), or 457 plan into a Roth IRA but it can be more complicated. You generally must be over age 59 1/2 and also no longer employed by the employer that sponsored the 401(k), 403(b), or 457 plan. Also, the administrator of the 401(k), 403(b), or 457 plan may not permit you to convert funds directly into a Roth IRA and so you may have to first rollover funds from the 401(k), 403(b), or 457 plan into a traditional IRA and then convert the traditional IRA into the Roth IRA within 60 days. Of critical importance is that when you convert funds from a tax-deferred account (such as a 401(k), 403(b), or 457 plan) into a Roth IRA, that money is subject to regular income tax the year that you do the conversion. This means that not only do you have to pay income tax on the value of the conversion, but the amount converted adds to your total taxable income so it will push you up to a higher income tax rate the year that you do the conversion. The extra steps involved in doing this type of conversion can be a headache; however, as we will see, it can be worth it from a tax savings standpoint.

Although I personally think that everyone should have a Roth IRA as component of a diversified retirement portfolio, there are 2 situations when it is especially advantageous to do a Roth conversion: (1) when there is a significant drop in the stock market and (2) when your income tax rate is lower now than it will be when you are retired.

  • When the stock market falls. If you already have money in a traditional IRA, then the best time to convert that money into a Roth is when the value of the IRA is at the lowest (and therefore you pay the least amount in income taxes). The best example of this in recent years was in March 2020 when the S&P 500 index fell by 32% as a consequence of the COVID pandemic. If you had $1,000 in a stock index mutual fund traditional IRA on February 10, 2020, then it was only worth $680 on March 16, 2020. However, by August 2020, the stock market had completely recovered back to its January 2020 value. If your effective tax rate was 16.8%, then you would have paid $168 in taxes to do a Roth conversion of the total amount of the traditional IRA in February but only $114 in taxes to do the conversion in March. If you are older than 59 1/2 and retired, then you could also have done a Roth IRA conversion from a 401(k), 403(b), or 457 account. The stock market inevitably goes up, goes down, and then goes back up again. Take advantage of the drops in the stock market to do the Roth conversions – that way, when the stock market rises in the future, the recovery in value of your investment will all be tax-free. How much does the stock market need to drop to trigger a Roth conversion? That is a matter of opinion but a 20% drop is a reasonable trigger.
  • When your income tax rate is lower. For most people, income tax rates will be lowest when they first start out in the work force and their taxable income is relatively low. Their income tax rates will be highest in the years just before retirement when they are in their peak earning years. In retirement, their income tax rate will usually fall to a rate somewhere in-between their lowest and highest income earning years while working. Therefore, for most people, the best time to do a Roth conversion is early in their careers, when their taxable income (and thus their income tax rate) is still relatively low. However, the other time that a Roth conversion is advantageous is when everyone’s income tax rates are low but will go up in the near future.

History tells us that tax rates, like the stock market, periodically go up and periodically go down, as illustrated in the graph to the right. The problem is that no one can predict with certainty exactly when tax rates will go up or down. Federal income tax rates are low now so it is highly likely that they will go up in the future. The current lower tax rates are set to expire in 2025 at which time they will revert to the higher 2016 rates (unless congress votes to extend them). Which political party is in charge of congress and the White House will have a big impact on whether taxes will go back up in 2025 (as planned) or stay low (requiring additional legislation). However, unless there is a significant reduction in federal spending in the next 4 years, then it is likely that there will be no alternative to letting the tax rates go back up in 2025.

Therefore, if your income remains relatively constant, it will cost you less to do a Roth conversion now than it will cost beginning in 2025. As an example, in 2021, a person making $200,000 has a federal income tax rate of 15% but in 2025, a person making $200,000 will have a 20% income tax rate. So, by doing a $50,000 Roth IRA conversion in 2021 (and thus increasing their taxable income to a total of $250,000), this person would pay a total of $42,250 in income tax but if they wait to do the Roth IRA conversion in 2025, this person would pay a total of $53,750 in income tax. In other words, as shown in the calculation below, this person will pay $11,500 more in income tax to do a Roth conversion in 2025 than in 2021:

In fact, a person would need to make $380,000 per year in 2021 to be taxed at the same rate that an income of $200,000 will likely be taxed in 2025. Therefore, a person making an annual income of $200,000 in 2021 can convert an additional $180,000 into a Roth IRA this year and still pay the same income tax rate that they will pay on an income of $200,000 (with no Roth conversion) in 2025.

Know the rules about Roth Conversions

The tax laws regarding Roth IRA withdrawals are complicated and depend on your age, how long ago you opened the Roth IRA, whether you are withdrawing the contribution (amount you originally put in) versus earnings (amount you made off of the contributions), and whether the contribution was a direct contribution or a conversion contribution. For direct contributions (eligible for couples filing jointly with an income of < $198,000), you can take money out of the Roth contributions anytime but you cannot take money out of the Roth earnings until you have had the Roth account open for at least 5 years and you are at least 59 1/2 years old. For conversion contributions, the conversion must have occurred at least 5 years previously, regardless of your age, before you can withdraw the contributions from the Roth account. The IRS uses a “first in, first out” rule when tracking the conversions so that every conversion amount that you make to a Roth IRA has its own 5-year requirement before you can withdraw it. In other words, consider the amount of each Roth IRA conversion to be locked up for 5 years.

Roth IRAs are not subject to required minimum distributions, unlike other deferred compensation accounts (such as traditional IRAs, 401(k)s, 403(b)s, and 457s). Required minimum distributions are a certain percentage of the deferred compensation accounts that the IRS requires you to withdraw each year after age 72. If a person has a lot of money in these deferred compensation accounts at age 72, this can result in taxable income high enough to push the person’s effective income tax rate up. Therefore most retirees will start to preferentially draw down their traditional IRAs, 401(k)s, 403(b)s, and 457s before age 72 and hold off on taking withdrawals from their Roth IRAs until after age 72 in order to maintain the lowest income tax rates during their retirement years. In general, you cannot convert required minimum distributions into a Roth IRA.

Now is the time to do a Roth conversion

If the 2016 tax cuts are left to expire in 2025, then there will be 4 more years of lower income taxes before income tax rates go back up. Therefore, it will cost you less to do a Roth IRA conversion in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 than it will to do a Roth conversion in 2025 and later. The best Roth strategy depends on a person’s age:

If you are younger than 59 1/2: Do a direct Roth IRA contribution if your income is less than $198,000 (married filling jointly). If your income is higher, then you can make a contribution to a traditional IRA (up to $6,000 per person under age 50 and $7,000 per person over age 50) and then promptly convert the traditional IRA contribution into a Roth IRA (backdoor Roth). A common question that comes up is whether it is better to contribute to a deferred income account such as a 401(k)/403(b)/457 (pre-tax dollars) or better to contribute to a traditional IRA and do a backdoor Roth conversion (post-tax dollars). If your employer offers a matching contribution to your 401(k)/403(b)/457, then it is always better to contribute to the 401(k)/403(b)/457. There are two situations when doing a backdoor Roth is advantageous:

    • You have already contributed the maximum to your 401(k)/403(b)/457 and you have some additional post-tax money that you want to invest for retirement. In this situation, if you put the money into a regular investment, you will eventually pay capital gains tax on the earnings but if you put the money into a backdoor Roth, you pay no taxes on the earnings.
    • You believe that you will have a higher income tax rate in your retirement years than your current tax rate. Remember, however, that by contributing to a 401(k)/403(b)/457, you are lowering your taxable income for the contribution year and thus lowering your tax rate that year. Conversely, your income tax rate will be higher if you do not contribute to your 401(k)/403(b)/457 and do the backdoor Roth instead. Nevertheless, for the next 4 years, if you do not have a lot of extra cash on hand in your checking account, you may be better off to reduce your 401(k)/403(b)/457 contributions by enough to give you $6,000 after-tax ($7,000 if over age 50) and then put that $6,000 into a traditional IRA followed by a backdoor Roth conversion.

If you are between 59 1/2 and 67: You can do a direct contribution (if your income is low enough) or a backdoor Roth. But you should also consider converting a portion of your traditional IRA, 401(k), 403(b), or 457 into a Roth IRA. The optimal amount to convert will depend on how much higher you project your taxable income will be in 2025 than it is in 2021. If your taxable income is going to be about the same, then you may be able to convert up to $100,000 – $150,000 and still come out ahead from a tax standpoint. If you project that your income will be higher in 2025 than it is now (and thus have an even higher income tax rate), then you can convert more than $100,000 – $150,000. If you project that your income will be lower in 2025 than it is now, then it still may be advantageous to do a conversion now but the conversion amount should be less. If you are still working, you can do a Roth conversion from your traditional IRA but you probably will have to wait until retirement to do a Roth conversion from an employer-sponsored 401(k), 403(b), or 457 (withdrawals from these accounts while still working are usually not permitted). Importantly, remember that you will pay income tax on the amount of the conversion so you should only do the conversion if you have sufficient cash on hand to pay that extra tax.

If you are between 67 and 72: Things get a bit more complicated. Remember, each conversion contribution needs to be in your Roth account for at least 5 years in order to avoid an early withdrawal penalty. So, if you plan to start taking money out of your Roth at age 72, then the year you turn 72, you should only take an amount equal to the conversions that you did before age 67 to avoid paying the IRS penalty. This means that you have to track your Roth conversions and have a record of how much you converted each year. It may still be advantageous for you to do Roth IRA conversions between ages 67 and 72 but you should be sure that you do not plan on withdrawing those annual conversions from your Roth IRA for at least 5 years.

If you are older than 72: Doing a Roth conversion after age 72 is usually unwise. Because required minimum distributions from deferred compensation accounts are necessary starting at age 72, taking additional money out of these accounts to do Roth conversions will result in more taxable income and thus push the income tax rate up higher. Some people who are still working and contributing to a 401(k)/403(b)/457 after age 72 may be exempt from required minimum distributions and thus be in a position where a Roth conversion is still advantageous but they should check with a tax advisor because this is a very complicated area.

It’s all about the math

If the current tax rates expire in 2025 and revert to the 2016 rates as anticipated, then there is a 4-year window of opportunity for Roth conversions in order to take advantage of the lower tax rates. A carefully timed Roth conversion can save you money by reducing the total amount of income tax you pay over your lifetime. But you have to be strategic with your timing or you could end up paying more in income taxes. If you are not sure, then get help from a tax expert.

September 7, 2021