Anyone who even tries is either:
- Fooling themselves
- Full of it
- Trolling
or some combination of the above.
I'll take 'What is 66.66 (repeating of course) percent?' for 1000, Alex!
I am trying to figure out when to pull the trigger on doing some ROTH conversions. When I think about the math, my head starts to hurt. Let's say that I have $50K that I am going to convert. It is sitting in a tIRA, in a total market type fund. I will convert it in-kind, and pay for the taxes out of after-tax funds (actually by witholding 100% from the RMD of an inherited IRA).
If I wait, and the market continues to drop, then I pay less taxes. If the market recovers, then Uncle Sam loses.
If I convert now, and the market continues to drop, then I paid too much in taxes. And Uncle Sam wins. But if it recovers, then I can still win, and I think Sam loses?
Timing of any type is a fool's errand, but I have to pick a time to make this conversion. So any time that I pick is wrong, but doing nothing is wrong, so I am right to do this?
I am going to wait for a dead cat bounce, and then wait for a couple days of green before I pull the trigger on the first ROTH conversion. Tentatively about 50% of my plan for the year. If Mr. Market continues to go down, then I will convert more at an improved position. If it goes up, then irrational exuberance! If it continues to flop down, maybe I go to 150% of my planned ROTH conversions.