Putting a 'floor' on tax deferred balances for Roth conversions

This article will walk through how to put a "floor" on tax-deferred balances when modeling Roth conversions.

Last published on: August 28, 2025

This article will walk through how to put a "floor" on tax-deferred balances when modeling Roth conversions or "tax-ordered" withdrawals. 
 

Video: Putting a 'floor' on tax-deferred balances for Roth conversions

Video Transcript

hello everyone just wanted to go over a

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new feature we have um it's in advanced

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settings in the taxes tab you can now

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set a floor on the tax deferred balance

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for a plan so that Roth conversions and

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tax ordered withdrawals won't reduce

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your tax deferred balance all the way to

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zero um so rmds can still reduce uh

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below this this amount um but Roth

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conversions and just kind of standard

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withdrawals won't if you turn this on

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and set a uh a floor so where do we see

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the effects of that uh one place you can

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see it is in life Hub um here we're

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doing Roth conversions and you can see

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um we have an IRA it started out at $2

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million and eventually I'm getting down

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in 20134 to about um the $500,000 level

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and you can see in this month or in this

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year rather uh we took the

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2,150 out um which is going to leave us

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with uh with 500 and that's kind of how

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it continues when I get out to the later

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years where rmds are really high I do

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see the IRA balance going down below

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that

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500 um another good place to see it is

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in tax

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lab so here um if I go to

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explore I'll see that even though I have

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Roth conversions in this plan I do get

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some some rmds later in the plan so if

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you didn't have that floor you would

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have totally exhausted your IRA moved it

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completely into a Roth um and that can

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be a little less than ideal because you

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can see you know in this year even we we

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have a fair amount of space still within

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the 0% bracket um because of this the

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standard deduction in later years it can

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it can get a little higher um maybe even

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into the 10%

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bracket um in this plan and we can even

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see that adding that floor does add a

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little bit of of tax efficiency to the

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plan so for example this one is set at

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the uh Roth conversion to the 24%

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bracket is the is the optimal so I'll

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just compare it to the exact same plan

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but without that

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floor 24% bracket

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and here we see you know a slight over

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the life of the plan a slight

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Advantage um over over the one um that

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doesn't have the tax deferred floor you

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will also notice that actually um the

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the quote unquote optimal uh plan is

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different depending on whether or not

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you have a floor um so I hope everybody

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uh enjoys this new feature thanks a lot

 

 
 



 


Instructions

  1.  Navigate to the advanced settings of the plan by clicking the 3-dot icon or the gear icon on the top right-hand side of the screen.

 

  1. Select the Taxes tab.

 

  1. Check the box for “Do not let Roth conversions or 'tax-ordered' withdrawals take (inflation-adjusted) tax-deferred balance below $X,” then add the amount you'd like left in the tax-deferred accounts.

 

  1. Click Save to finish and return to the plan.