The Roth Illusion: Why Most Software Gets It Wrong
Hosted by: Craig Wear Guest: Daniel Jandro, CFP®, Rothologist at Q3 Advisors 🔍 Episode Summary: In this episode, Craig Wear sits down with Daniel Jandro—aka “The Professor”—to unpack one of the biggest myths in Roth conversion planning: the belief that common financial software gets it right. If you’re using tools like eMoney, RightCapital, or even DIY spreadsheets to manage your Roth conversions, this episode is a wake-up call. Craig and Daniel walk through the limitations of major platforms...
Hosted by: Craig Wear
Guest: Daniel Jandro, CFP®, Rothologist at Q3 Advisors
🔍 Episode Summary:
In this episode, Craig Wear sits down with Daniel Jandro—aka “The Professor”—to unpack one of the biggest myths in Roth conversion planning: the belief that common financial software gets it right.
If you’re using tools like eMoney, RightCapital, or even DIY spreadsheets to manage your Roth conversions, this episode is a wake-up call. Craig and Daniel walk through the limitations of major platforms, why one-size-fits-all strategies fall short for IRA millionaires, and how Q3’s proprietary methodology is helping clients avoid billions in unnecessary taxes.
They also reveal why most advisors and tools fail to optimize—and why specialized planning is essential when your pre-tax retirement accounts top seven figures.
Try the calculator featured in this episode:
👉 https://q3.link/rmd-calculator-podcast
⏱️ Chapter Markers:
• 00:00 – Introduction & Overview
• 01:20 – Who Really Needs Roth Conversions?
• 03:45 – Introducing the RMD Calculator
• 06:00 – Sample Case Walkthrough
• 09:00 – Lifetime Tax Exposure & Heir Consequences
• 10:45 – What Makes This Calculator Different
• 12:00 – Paradigms That Get in the Way
• 14:00 – The Experience Gap for DIYers
• 16:45 – The Problem with Excel and Traditional Tools
• 19:45 – Review of Major Planning Software
• 24:30 – Hidden Risks in Off-the-Shelf Optimizers
• 26:40 – Why Specialization Matters
• 28:45 – What Mastery Looks Like
• 31:00 – Q3’s Real-World Experience
• 33:00 – Closing Thoughts & Invitation
📌 Key Takeaways:
• Why standard financial software often miscalculates Roth conversion outcomes
• The million-dollar threshold: Why IRA millionaires need a totally different strategy
• How Q3’s RMD Calculator can open your eyes to tax consequences for both you and your heirs
• The #1 reason smart people still get Roth conversions wrong—and how to fix it
• Real-world case studies and tax savings data from 1,200+ client scenarios
• The problem with software like eMoney, RightCapital, MaxiFi, and NewRetirement when it comes to advanced tax optimization
• The importance of working with a Roth conversion specialist instead of a generalist
💬 Quotes:
“If you’re not doing accelerated conversions and you’re an IRA millionaire, you’re leaving money on the table.” – Craig Wear
“When one variable is wrong, the compounding tax impact can last generations.” – Daniel Jandro
👥 Work with Q3:
Learn more about Q3’s planning services, their money-back refund offer, and how to work directly with a CFP® from their team:
WEBVTT
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Hey there you guys, this is Craig Rear, welcome back.
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Today's topic is gonna be, I think it's gonna be great.
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I think it's gonna give you a lot of, a ton of information, especially those of you out there that maybe have an advisor that's maybe trying to tell you to not do Roth conversions, or if you do it yourself and you got, you know, layers and layers of spreadsheets, you think you got it all worked out, then maybe this would be helpful to you too, but.
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I guess we've titled today's episode, the Roth illusion, why most software gets it wrong and what is there out there that actually works.
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If you think you got a Roth conversion plan that's solid because you've kind of plugged the numbers into one of the big software like e-money or write capital or something like that, well, I'll just say, think again.
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um Today we're uh joined with one of the...
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one of the, we call him on the team, we call him the professor.
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I don't know whether you know that, but behind your back, you're the professor anyway.
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So, Daniel Dandereau is one of our CFPs.
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He's been around for quite a while, helping out a lot of folks on the Q3 team.
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So, Daniel, thanks for joining me today and for all the research that you did getting ready for today, I think it's gonna be great.
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So, here's the deal.
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uh If you are kind of the average guy and you've saved your whole life and you got an IRA and let's say it's a nice six figure IRA 401k, um you're to have RMDs that hit at some point down the road and you're going to have taxes that are owed because of those.
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we've found that most people that are not above a million dollars in IRAs uh don't have really a huge problem that necessitates an urgency toward getting the Roth conversions done.
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Now Daniel, you've done a lot of cases.
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Would you agree that that's pretty much the case for us mere mortals that don't have millions and millions in IRAs?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I think over 15 years you've discovered that that's kind of a magic number.
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Now there's some wiggle room each side depending on circumstances, but the one millionth of benchmark that I've seen over hundreds of calls that really fits.
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Yeah, and it, you know, I came through it through, like you said, years and years of just kind of, nope, that doesn't work.
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Oh, that works.
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And then just kind of figuring that part out.
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But you know, if you are that IRA millionaire, you are in the top 10 % of savers in America.
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And the same, the same strategies that work for your brother-in-law that's got six or$700,000 out there.
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are not gonna work for you in avoiding taxes over the rest of your lifetime.
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You have to do things a lot differently.
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And it requires a different starting point, it requires a different methodology, and the outcomes can be just really huge.
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So, Daniel, uh if people get, if they get Roth conversion right, let's say that, There's the IRA millionaire and they're listening in today and they're wondering what's the big deal about all this?
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I make a lot of money.
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I don't know whether I should convert.
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uh I probably need to just wait till afterwards.
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But you and I know because we've done hundreds and hundreds of cases, we know what's at stake.
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I don't know whether you have the ability to do a screen share to show people any of uh the calculator we have or?
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Yeah, let me pull that up.
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So folks, while he's pulling that up, what we've done is we've developed our version of an RMD, a requirement of distribution calculator.
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And it's not meant to be an exact science for you.
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It's meant to show you what's possible in your own life based on 1200 at this point, successful Roth conversion stories that we've had with clients of ours.
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So it's really just a...
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It's really just one of those tools that we developed to get you to go, my goodness, aha, I see the problem now.
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So uh we'll put a link in the show notes to this calculator so that you guys can go try this out yourself, but uh maybe walk them through what's in here just real quickly and then we can move on to some of the other stuff for them.
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Yeah, I think what we found across the internet is there wasn't a good RMD calculator that really was accurate, first of all, but gave you some of the nuance on the impact.
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So what Craig and the team designed was this, and it's a great starting ground to understand where you're heading and some possible ramifications you got to be aware of.
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pretty simple.
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Anyone can fill this out.
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It's your date of birth.
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Expected rate of return you put your is your spouse a primary beneficiary and you put their age in there too Total account balance and pre-retact tax retirement accounts for 1k IRA and then what you anticipate your annual taxable income is gonna be throughout your lives and That one's an important one because it will help with the tax calculations and then of course you'll want to put your file in status.
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Then you click Calculate.
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and you'll see all the calculations processing.
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And what it'll do is right away it's gonna give you your projected first year RMD based on that account balance, based on that growth rate, and then what your estimated taxes and projected balance at RMDH.
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So what IRA balance did you put in on this case, Daniel?
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million dollars a start.
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Okay, and that's fairly typical of a lot of people that we talk to.
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So what this report is saying is that um this person's, this hypothetical person's first year RMD is gonna be almost $60,000.
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And a lot of people don't realize, know, kind of where it goes from there.
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That means that your first year estimated tax just on that and whatever other estimated incomes would be like 65 grand.
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So where do you go from here?
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in terms of what you like to show people on the calculator.
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Yeah, I think what I'm doing 100 % of the time is diving into the comprehensive RMD report.
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You know, that's where the meat and potatoes are gonna be.
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So when we're looking at that, all you do is enter your name, your email, and generate my report.
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And what it'll do is generate a report for you so that you can see the ramifications throughout your life, what could happen to your beneficiaries.
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what kind of savings our analysis shows that you might be able to achieve and You can scroll down here and start to see some of the data and it'll give you a chart of how your account balance is going to grow and then there's the RMDs and estimated taxes and that continues but what I really like is the PDF report and This is something that I will send to most the clients I talked to And what we're trying to do here is show you the ramifications of your current IRA and what happens if you stick to the IRS's plan rather than coming up with a dynamic proactive plan on your own or with an advisor.
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And it'll give you the RMD analysis that we already showed you, but then it starts to get into some really good stuff in terms of every single year is going to project your balance.
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and your RMDs and you can start to see the ramifications.
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So this client they go from about $27,000 and then RMDs get tacked on and it's $64,000 and they continue to grow.
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As you get older the IRS makes you take out more and as your value goes up in your account you'll have to take out more with that as well.
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At the bottom you'll get your totals and I tell you the estimated tax is conservative.
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We want to under promise there.
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but it is something that can start to open some eyes on what the tax consequences will be, especially when you're dealing with $4 million of RMD.
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And it started with a $2 million IRA, but then the government forced them to take out $4 million.
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The next page is pretty impactful that I haven't seen with other RMD calculators.
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It's going to look at, okay, the tax game isn't over.
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You'll need to be aware that your beneficiaries will also have to pay taxes when the government forces them to take it out over 10 years.
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So we do a calculation on what you'd be passing on and what their total tax burden will be and what's gonna go to the heirs versus the IRS.
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And we'll give you a schedule on what that can look like.
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And that will really open some eyes of, we owe a loan to the government.
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If we don't pay it off, our kids are gonna have to pay it off in 10 years.
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And then we'll get into some specific metrics that Craig, the coding team, looked at across our whole client base.
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And what we're looking at here is if you are a portfolio size of $3 million to $4 million at RMBH, on average, what do our clients save in projected taxes?
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In this case, it's $1,640,000.
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And what we're trying to do with this report is just show you people like you in your similar circumstances, what we've identified as what the savings is if they get the Roth conversion piece done correctly, right?
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And so before we move on, was there anything else on this report that you wanted to show?
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OK.
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to anyone.
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You can have it emailed to you.
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You can have a Rathologist run it for you and email it you.
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It's just really good information to start the conversation and make you aware of potential drawbacks and benefits to looking into this strategy.
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Yeah, and I think part of what we're trying to resolve is kind what Daniel said.
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There are a lot of RMD calculators out there, but I didn't find anything out there that actually gave anybody any idea of how big a deal is this really going to be.
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And so we wanted to put together a tool that just opened your eyes and get you thinking about it.
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But to get you thinking about it is one thing.
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To get you actually to take action and to take the appropriate action is the is really the bigger problem.
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And there are a few things that really keep people from getting it right.
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And I've taken some heat on social media because I like to say, look, if you're not doing accelerated conversions and you're an IRA millionaire, I've been as bold to say then whoever's told you to do it that way is just not right.
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And people like to, they don't like to hear that they're not right.
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And I'm okay with that.
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When I say what's right, I mean, you get the optimal out.
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You pay the least amount of tax and you have the highest net worth that you possibly can.
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To me, that's right.
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Anything less than that, you're leaving money on the table and you're taking food off of the heirs table is the way that we have seen through thousands of iterations.
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But some of the things that keep people from getting it right are, I mean, I'll just kick it off and say just paradigms that you have.
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uh And it's not just that you have, but your advisors have paradigms like, you should never convert above your current tax bracket.
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Or what's another one?
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Gee, if you make a lot of money, you probably need to not convert at least until you retire.
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Can you think of anything else off top of your head, Daniel, of one of those kinds of paradigms?
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Yeah, I think when you look at the overall picture is a lot of people just don't understand that we're not talking about paying taxes just for the heck of it, but you're going to have to pay taxes.
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So understanding that someone has to pay the tax bill is a logical step in towards of understanding your tax feature and how Roth conversions can help for it.
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Yeah.
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The other thing that limits people is it's kind of the same problem with doing retirement planning sometimes.
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uh just, if it's the first time that you've retired, it's really scary.
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In fact, they say that it's the second most stressful event that a human being will go through other than the loss of a spouse.
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And so you're retiring and now you get retired and you got this big pile of money.
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And now it's now all of a sudden people like us come around and think, say, now look, the way you continue to win the tax game is you accelerate it and you're at a disadvantage to some degree because you just don't have any experience with it.
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And so you pull out the spreadsheets and you carry your suitcases of your paradigms with you and you set them down beside the computer and they sit there waiting for you, staring at you while you do your spreadsheets.
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And it keeps you from seeing all the options that are available to you.
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You've seen this with a lot of people that come, and Daniel's on the front line talking to people day in and day out, but we have a lot of people who come to us that are very smart people that are do-it-yourselfers, and they got robust spreadsheets.
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What have you seen with that crowd, the folks that come to us with that, regarding the experience issue?
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Yeah, I think it's the same as why you go to a retirement planner to make sure your retirement's locked up is you're retiring for the first time.
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A financial planner has retired hundreds of times with their clients.
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And it's same thing with a Roth conversion is this is your first time looking at it.
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You don't know what you don't know.
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And if one variable is wrong, that can have compounding ramifications for generations.
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And that's a huge amount of risk to take that we really caution people that you better know what you're doing.
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I know it took me about six months working with you to master this strategy, let alone someone that doesn't have the tools that you provide.
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Well, you know, I um think the hard part for us is that we've done this so much and we've done it and we've seen so amazing results.
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And we've got 1200 families that we've helped at this recording.
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Collectively, we've developed game plans.
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Daniel and the other planners on the team have developed game plans that are gonna help those people avoid as of today, over $4 billion of taxes.
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those were, none of them were done by converting at your current tax bracket for IRA millionaires, not a single one of them.
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And so we look at that and we, it's kind of like we take that for granted that we just know what we know, but you know, the people listening to this today, they're still, they still have some paradigms and they're still trying to come along.
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And our, what we're really trying to do with you guys today is just say, look, this, the amount that you can actually avoid paying in tax is enormous.
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And we produce just a guideline in the calculator.
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And then we're really trying to say the reason that you're not going to get that is because your advisor or your own spreadsheets are going to have some paradigms built in.
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And like Daniel said, one piece of information wrong, and it really messes up the calculations for a long time.
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tell me, ask me how I know that.
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I mean, 15 years ago, man, Daniel, didn't have software.
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15 years ago, there was no software that did Roth conversion work.
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So it was Excel spreadsheets.
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And I know how laborious those are.
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You want to change the rate of return.
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You got to make some changes.
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You want to change Irma assumptions.
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want to assume you convert part of it and not all of it.
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You want to build in QCDs, all these things uh in a spreadsheet.
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takes hours and hours.
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And you get one cell wrong.
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and the whole thing stinks, right?
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But we've had some pretty smart people come to us with some of their own DIY tools that have worked okay for them, haven't they?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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There is a point where we talk to people and they're extremely smart.
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Either they got someone in their camp that knows what they're doing or they have a spreadsheet that by luck or skill, they found the right answer.
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And those are the type of people I enjoy talking to the most is because how the heck did you arrive at this?
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I'd say that's way rarer than you'd think maybe once a month.
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But it's always refreshing to see someone that has it right because there's so many people that have it wrong that it really scares me.
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Yeah, and you know, when people have it right, I know you, especially, and all the team, if they have it right, I mean, if we can't add any value, there's no reason that we want to take their time or our time.
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We just pat them on the back, give them a stick of gum and say, great job, you know.
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But on the other hand, we've also got a whole lot of really smart people uh that are clients that thought they had it figured out.
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CPAs, tax attorneys, dozens of engineers.
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uh people that understand math and they do it for a living and they it's just a lack of experience thing and so we're not down on DIYers we just are trying to get the attention of the DIYers so that for your benefit you just pause for just a minute and think is it possible that I might be missing something?
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Our experience says it's possible you are not.
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But the overwhelming majority of the people come to us that do it theirself, it's their first time.
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And I know the first time I did Roth conversion for my very first client, we left some money on the table.
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And I did that probably for a year until I really figured out how to start dialing it in.
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But the biggest challenge comes down to Excel's not a terrible tool.
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just a tool that you really got to be precise with.
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There are a lot of tools that are offered out there on the internet for you guys to partake in and uh that's really the subject that we wanted to come to today after you know 15-18 minutes or so.
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And Daniel really did a deep dive into the little offerings and the big offerings, the great big commercial financial planning software, the and the Maxi-Fis and all those kinds of things.
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And I just, you I wanted to bring him on to just say, you know, Daniel, you know, what did you find?
00:19:39.500 --> 00:19:44.458
What advice can you tell people about the different tools that are out there?
00:19:46.316 --> 00:19:48.226
Yeah, absolutely.
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So I'll start with what I started with and how I learned how to do financial planning.
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And it's a software called BuddyGad Pro.
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I know a lot of financial advisors use it.
00:20:00.369 --> 00:20:03.750
It's really good at goals-based planning.
00:20:03.750 --> 00:20:05.050
Can I retire?
00:20:05.050 --> 00:20:07.672
Can I pay for my kid's college?
00:20:07.672 --> 00:20:12.313
It does Monte Carlo analysis, four scenarios side by side.
00:20:12.613 --> 00:20:15.554
I tried to run Roth conversion scenarios in it.
00:20:17.099 --> 00:20:19.751
It got about a quarter of the way there.
00:20:19.751 --> 00:20:24.546
And then I had to go to Excel and start to see what the ramifications are.
00:20:24.546 --> 00:20:27.689
And I could never get a point where I could optimize across it.
00:20:27.689 --> 00:20:32.442
So what it fails to do is optimize around Roth conversions.
00:20:32.742 --> 00:20:38.288
The next planning software that I've explored is eMoney.
00:20:38.288 --> 00:20:43.573
And eMoney is kind of the, one of the crown jewels of financial planning software.
00:20:43.573 --> 00:20:45.536
A lot of advisors use it.
00:20:45.536 --> 00:20:47.196
It's a great piece of software.
00:20:47.196 --> 00:20:55.030
has all the bells and whistles, all the nuance you could possibly want for high net worth, ultra high net worth clients.
00:20:55.491 --> 00:20:59.894
But the Roth conversion software, seems like something they just threw in.
00:21:00.034 --> 00:21:01.784
It's extremely manual.
00:21:01.784 --> 00:21:06.037
So you would need a technician that knows exactly what they're doing.
00:21:06.037 --> 00:21:15.261
It doesn't automatically include Irma and that can be hundreds of thousands of dollars and it doesn't have any optimization.
00:21:15.773 --> 00:21:21.858
The third piece of software we see out there that's near and dear to my heart is RightCapital.
00:21:21.900 --> 00:21:27.784
And RightCapital has great user interface, great client interface.
00:21:28.125 --> 00:21:34.650
does almost everything eMoney does without some of the very intricate nuance.
00:21:34.750 --> 00:21:37.953
And it does have a Roth conversion page.
00:21:37.953 --> 00:21:40.095
And they put some work into that.
00:21:40.215 --> 00:21:47.602
Where it fails to do is it doesn't do a good job at comparing across the spectrum of strategies.
00:21:47.602 --> 00:21:57.489
It doesn't know how to find the nuance of when you've converted enough and it doesn't do a good job of making sure you're doing it right.
00:21:57.829 --> 00:22:03.555
But RightCapital is a very powerful software just like eMoney and Money Guy Pro.
00:22:03.555 --> 00:22:07.698
They all have their place but it just seems like Roth conversion is throwing in.
00:22:08.018 --> 00:22:43.351
In terms of consumer facing we've explored MaxiFi and Bolden in terms of off the shelf both have a lot of qualities I like Maxify you know it is like you're going into an extremely advanced spreadsheet something one of our smartest engineers would build it's really good at determining how much you can spend what your cushion is how you maximize the spending throughout your life for our clients Craig they know what they're gonna spend they've been budgeting for years They're not looking to maximize spending.
00:22:43.351 --> 00:22:48.753
They're trying to maximize flexibility and reduce what the IRS gives them.
00:22:48.753 --> 00:22:57.176
That's where they fail is the Roth conversion isn't geared towards minimizing risk, maximizing net worth.
00:22:57.176 --> 00:23:06.601
It's geared towards how do I maximize spending without any of those other qualifications and it's extremely manual, just like any money.
00:23:06.761 --> 00:23:13.237
Bolden I would say that is probably the consumer version of Right Capital.
00:23:13.396 --> 00:23:14.958
Very pretty to look at.
00:23:14.958 --> 00:23:18.819
Great user interface, great onboarding.
00:23:18.940 --> 00:23:31.426
When it got to the Roth conversions though, I analyzed the bracket approach, I analyzed the optimizer, and what the optimizer did is it scared me a little bit.
00:23:31.647 --> 00:23:35.589
It went with a five-year conversion strategy.
00:23:35.662 --> 00:23:38.402
extremely aggressive for two years.
00:23:38.402 --> 00:23:44.382
We're talking about these people had $2 million is having them convert 75 % in two years.
00:23:44.382 --> 00:23:49.662
And then the final three years, it was having them convert $8,000 each year.
00:23:50.061 --> 00:23:52.501
I didn't understand the rhyme or reason.
00:23:52.622 --> 00:23:54.862
I didn't understand where the math came from.
00:23:54.862 --> 00:24:00.842
I ran it through Rothology, your software, Craig, and it was not a good strategy.
00:24:00.981 --> 00:24:04.417
Stream downside took all your life to break even.
00:24:04.417 --> 00:24:07.778
So that concerned me as well, but I do like Boltons user interface.
00:24:07.778 --> 00:24:09.040
I like their planning.
00:24:09.040 --> 00:24:15.836
I think the Roth conversion optimizer can use some work and you can really get into trouble with that type of software.
00:24:15.836 --> 00:24:20.368
So those are really the five that I focused on and really enjoyed diving into.
00:24:20.368 --> 00:24:21.509
a lot of good things.
00:24:21.509 --> 00:24:27.913
um Roth conversions just seemed like a throw in in some cases and there's a lot of work to be done there.
00:24:28.430 --> 00:24:43.202
Yeah, and I think the problem that exists today is the same problem that existed 15 years ago, is that our industry, unfortunately, is kind of new to embracing Roth conversion.
00:24:43.202 --> 00:25:01.515
And unfortunately, just to say it like I see it on social media, most of the people out there marketing Roth conversion are really marketing a product to fill a gap that you maybe don't even have.
00:25:01.515 --> 00:25:10.667
And so they're trying to, it's almost like a shell game where, look at this fancy annuity program that will, it'll pay all your taxes for you.
00:25:10.667 --> 00:25:16.200
Nevermind the question, well, okay, fine, that may be good for me, but what was the answer to the question?
00:25:16.200 --> 00:25:21.692
And the question was, what's the optimal Roth conversion strategy for me?
00:25:21.692 --> 00:25:28.855
And so, That's where this journey has taken us and guys like you have come along and helped me refine it and make it better and better and better.
00:25:28.855 --> 00:25:31.826
And we've done hundreds and hundreds of clients.
00:25:31.926 --> 00:25:35.048
And folks, we're not selling software today.
00:25:35.048 --> 00:25:36.508
So that's not what this is about.
00:25:36.508 --> 00:25:40.250
What we're really trying to point out is a big lack that's out there.
00:25:40.250 --> 00:25:55.644
And if you trust in those other processes or you have an advisor that's using those other tools, and every one of them are using one of those tools because they don't have access to what we had to go build, you're going to be leaving a lot of money on the table.
00:25:55.644 --> 00:26:03.631
And so I like to say that you have some really great, well-meaning advisors that just are not specialists in this.
00:26:03.631 --> 00:26:14.198
And doesn't it make sense that, you know, we, like to draw the analogy a lot of time that clients come to us not to replace their financial advisor.
00:26:14.377 --> 00:26:21.204
They come to us, um, Well, if you're listening to this, you can probably get this analogy.
00:26:21.204 --> 00:26:37.167
If you got a primary care physician and they've taken care of you and your family for your whole life and you trust them, you like them, they were there when the kids were around, they were there when the kids got married and maybe they're taking care of the grandbabies.
00:26:37.449 --> 00:26:47.232
But when you have a cardiac problem, that primary care physician is not gonna go do heart surgery on you.
00:26:48.272 --> 00:26:55.035
Not because they're not smart enough, not because they don't care about you, but it's not what they do day in and day out.
00:26:55.035 --> 00:26:58.336
a lot of people, their financial advisors keep managing their money.
00:26:58.336 --> 00:27:00.997
They keep doing some of the planning work for them.
00:27:00.997 --> 00:27:03.597
They come to us because we are that specialist.
00:27:03.597 --> 00:27:12.039
Daniel is among one of, I don't know, a dozen guys that we, and ladies that we have, that this is what they do.
00:27:12.708 --> 00:27:17.489
They end dozens of times every single month that they go through that.
00:27:18.049 --> 00:27:25.491
And, know, Daniel, you even commented that it took you a few months to get your head around what we really were doing.
00:27:25.491 --> 00:27:36.036
And so you could probably kind of speak to how that specialization really changes the way that you view a lot of the areas of our clients' lives financially.
00:27:36.036 --> 00:27:37.215
It doesn't it?
00:27:38.476 --> 00:27:40.027
Yeah, absolutely.
00:27:40.027 --> 00:27:49.153
I like to think you hired me because I'm a great financial planner and I certainly thought I was a great financial planner before I joined and I was.
00:27:49.513 --> 00:27:54.116
But what I was missing is understanding the big picture.
00:27:54.116 --> 00:28:02.663
And the way you understand the big picture is understanding all the ramifications and practicing over and over and over.
00:28:02.663 --> 00:28:07.019
This isn't something where you want to do it once or twice a year.
00:28:07.019 --> 00:28:17.917
This is something where just like heart surgery, you want a surgeon that knows what they're doing with the scalpel and they're working on it every single day to be the best in the business.
00:28:17.919 --> 00:28:23.032
And what I learned is that's the only way to become a master.
00:28:23.032 --> 00:28:24.443
You don't do it by reading.
00:28:24.443 --> 00:28:27.336
You don't do it by someone telling you what to do.
00:28:27.336 --> 00:28:36.557
Some YouTube video, you have to get in the trenches and do the planning, answer the tough questions, run the stress tests, have the engineer.
00:28:36.557 --> 00:28:48.122
have the CPA client come to you with questions that you're gonna have to research and through that process you truly become an expert master and that's what took me six months, no lie.
00:28:48.122 --> 00:28:57.846
And I'm still learning every single day but I believe through doing it every day that we've reached a level that is very hard to pass.
00:28:58.692 --> 00:29:24.722
Yeah, well, and I agree and it's because of your hard work and because of the number of people that you've worked with and you've learned from, know, and, you know, I think, I think one of the, one of the biggest takeaways that I wanted to give listeners today was that if you're an IRA millionaire and you are not doing Roth conversions very aggressively, uh you're leaving a lot of money on the table.
00:29:24.722 --> 00:29:44.208
If you're doing Roth conversions and You haven't tested those across a variety of scenarios, including tax rates that would scare you to think about and dollar amounts that would give you the sweats to think about unless you've actually ran those numbers and tested those.
00:29:45.088 --> 00:29:48.069
You're probably leaving a lot of money on the table.
00:29:48.069 --> 00:29:54.711
Our calculator will give you some idea of what is possible, what we've done with our other clients, but those numbers are for the math geeks in here.
00:29:54.711 --> 00:29:59.666
Those are the median numbers of different subsets of clients of ours.
00:29:59.666 --> 00:30:10.923
And so that 1.6 million that he showed you on the report earlier could have been 3.7 million because somebody else was maybe at 800,000 or something.
00:30:11.263 --> 00:30:22.351
The other takeaway is that if you choose to go get to use software, just understand that um there are some very severe limitations in what's out there.
00:30:22.351 --> 00:30:32.721
um Our software is built off of the skeleton of data sets that we get from Right Capital.
00:30:33.521 --> 00:30:59.194
And then what I found though is that we have to take that data and we have to not change it, but we have to reorganize it in a way that it's easier to look at a variety of scenarios all at one time and include elements that Right Capital doesn't innately provide to you, but it's in the data, they just don't give it to you from the user interface side of it.
00:30:59.194 --> 00:31:07.723
um I don't know, can you add anything to that, the right capital relationship thing?
00:31:08.625 --> 00:31:20.554
Yeah, I think right catheter like I said is extremely powerful planning tool but it comes down to it doesn't know what to do in the middle of surgery.
00:31:20.615 --> 00:31:22.977
It's going to take a machete.
00:31:22.977 --> 00:31:27.480
It's going to take a sledgehammer approach in a lot of different instances.
00:31:27.480 --> 00:31:30.662
You go to a surgeon to know how to cut.
00:31:30.678 --> 00:31:32.897
and when to stop cutting as well.
00:31:32.897 --> 00:31:45.791
And it's a bit morbid, but it is heart surgery and we really need to zone in on, you just need to be precise and you can't just throw anything against the wall and hope for the best.
00:31:45.791 --> 00:31:53.198
You really should be being the best steward with your money and making sure you're being precise and optimized.
00:31:53.602 --> 00:31:56.076
And so, I mean, the obvious, the obvious...
00:31:56.076 --> 00:32:10.441
um The obvious point also in all this is not that you can only get it right if you come to us.
00:32:10.441 --> 00:32:13.314
That's not what this is about.
00:32:14.195 --> 00:32:18.961
We're being as straightforward and honest as we know how to say, here's what's out there.
00:32:18.961 --> 00:32:21.903
And it's not only...
00:32:21.988 --> 00:32:40.637
to get you to come to us, it's mainly so that you understand the limitations of some of the other tools that you're working with and potentially the experience that maybe you don't have that somebody like Daniel and the other guys on the team, they just, like he said, it's over and over and over.
00:32:40.678 --> 00:32:43.098
And, you know, it makes common sense.
00:32:43.098 --> 00:32:51.693
Any skill that you acquire, you're a whole lot better at it after you've done it hundreds of times than the first time or two that you did it.
00:32:51.844 --> 00:32:58.175
And that's kind of what you've reiterated too, is that's what it did with you, is you just kept doing it and doing it and finding the better and better pieces.
00:32:58.175 --> 00:33:03.866
And I'll tell you, Daniel is, he is highly revered by everybody on the, on the CFP staff.
00:33:03.866 --> 00:33:07.468
uh They look to him to answer questions about how to solve problems.
00:33:07.468 --> 00:33:09.509
And he's always there willing to help.
00:33:09.509 --> 00:33:20.857
ah You know, if I had 40 of him on staff, we would uh probably, I'd probably have even less hair than I have today with all the, all the amount of clients coming through, right.
00:33:20.857 --> 00:33:21.806
And the issue.
00:33:21.806 --> 00:33:36.771
Yeah, but you make it a lot easier for me and uh you you've just been a great uh asset to our team and you're always such a giver and helping other people and you you always are consistently get five star reviews from everybody that you work for.
00:33:36.771 --> 00:33:41.044
So uh yes, we would love to have you as a client.
00:33:41.044 --> 00:33:43.664
Yes, we believe we can find an optimal solution for you.
00:33:43.664 --> 00:33:55.704
uh Yes, we'd love to welcome you to our family of clients and you know, our agreements have a uh have a statement in writing that I haven't seen from any other financial firm ever in my lifetime.
00:33:55.704 --> 00:33:57.244
And I'm 40 years in the industry.
00:33:57.244 --> 00:34:03.959
And that is if we can't save you a half a million dollars of taxes, then we stroke a check and give you all your money back.
00:34:03.959 --> 00:34:07.320
You can go to our website at Q3ADV and check out our services.
00:34:07.320 --> 00:34:15.485
uh There probably will be something in show notes where you can go try the calculator and just see what's out there for you.
00:34:15.485 --> 00:34:25.222
And once you get the report, there'll be a way that you can connect with us and set up a time that you can talk to Daniel or one of the other guys and everybody is great at what they do.
00:34:25.222 --> 00:34:26.793
They're very knowledgeable.
00:34:26.793 --> 00:34:29.255
We work as a team.
00:34:29.476 --> 00:34:35.510
All the CFPs work together on solving cases and presenting different ideas and that sort of thing.
00:34:35.510 --> 00:34:39.264
And so you're not gonna find a slouch in the crowd.
00:34:39.264 --> 00:34:41.545
uh We've got some good stuff for you.
00:34:41.686 --> 00:34:48.380
Any other last comments maybe from you about anything that's come to your mind that maybe people need to know before we sign off?
00:34:49.829 --> 00:34:53.172
I think we've covered it all, but have to thank you, Craig.
00:34:53.172 --> 00:35:14.021
I think like I can speak with the whole CFP staff is we joined to be mentored by what we see as a maverick in the industry, someone that's on the cutting edge, that's willing to go above and beyond and not sit back on old financial products, old software, but is gonna work his hardest to get people answers that they deserve.
00:35:14.021 --> 00:35:16.431
So it's been one of the biggest blessings in my life.
00:35:16.431 --> 00:35:17.360
So thank you.
00:35:17.360 --> 00:35:19.639
Wow, well thank you, I appreciate it too.
00:35:19.639 --> 00:35:31.820
So there you have it, another episode in the can and hopefully it'd be great content for those of you that consume it and if we can help in any way we want to and hope you just have a great rest of your day.
00:35:31.820 --> 00:35:34.380
God bless, thank you Daniel, appreciate you being here.
00:35:34.478 --> 00:35:34.983
Thank you, Craig.
00:35:34.983 --> 00:35:36.190
Thanks, everyone.