I was wondering if you have any advice on how to make RMDs with maximum tax savings, and also how to reinvest them. I love the book; thanks from an old-timer.

So, okay. For those of you that don't know, we get so excited about saving for retirement, and we have a lot of accounts where the government says, 'Hey, if you save into this retirement account, we'll give you a break on your taxes.' And so we max out our 401(k)s and we put money in IRAs, and we

love seeing the tax-deferred growth happen. And that's amazing until we get into our 70s. And then, at some point, depending on your age, between age 73 and 75, the government says, 'Okay, you've ridden this ride long enough; it's time for you to start taking money out of

these accounts.' And so you begin to get hit with required minimum distributions. The government says, 'Hey, based on the value of your pre-tax accounts at the end of last year, and applying an appropriate mortality factor related to how old you are this year, we're going to make sure you pull out a

minimum amount out of your accounts in the following year.' Well, what ends up happening is maybe you're someone who's living off of Social Security and you have a pension, and you've done good saving. You're like, 'I don't need to pull money out of my 401(k); I don't want to pull money out of my IRA.' Well, you don't get a choice. And so what ends up happening is you kind of have this, I say, 'tax bomb.' You have this tax bomb that happens; all of a sudden your income

Shoot, way high up, and you lose some control over it. So the question Lou is asking is, "Hey, are there things, are there strategies that I can begin to employ, that I can begin to deploy that would help drive down the taxes of the RMDs?"

I'll speak to one that's just a great opportunity that a lot of people don't know about, and then I think, Brian, it'd be interesting to talk, too, about maybe some preemptive planning you could do. But the one that I came up with when it comes to

RMDs, one of the great things that you can do, you know, if you are someone who is charitably minded, we know that with the, um, the Tax Cut, the Trump tax cut, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act from a few years ago, the standard deduction increased and so

a lot of people aren't able to deduct charitable giving anymore because the standard deduction is so high. Well, if you're someone who is in the RMD phase, one of the things you can do is you can do a qualified charitable distribution where, instead of you receiving your RMD,

you can actually opt to give it directly to a charity of your choice. So if you have an RMD happening this year and it's going to be $220,000, but you want to choose for $5,000 of that to go to your church or go

to a charity, to an organization you support, you can give that money directly from your IRA to the charitable organization. And then on your tax return, you would only show $215,000 of income from your total RMD of $220,000. So it's an

Amazing way to remove income from your tax return and not get taxed on it—that's the one I came up with. Yeah, and the reason a lot of you are like, 'Why would you do that if you don't get a tax deduction?' is because the standard deduction is so high.  Because once you're retired, you'll quickly realize that Social Security taxability does matter.  You may be right on that threshold where 50%, or maybe none of it, is taxable, and now you're trying to keep from being 85% taxable.

And that might even be changing with the tax code coming in 2025. Also, your Medicare premiums—your income impacts what your Medicare premiums are. So a lot of people will use QCDs to help with that. And there's even a quirky thing in the tax code right now because a lot of RMD ages are now 75, but QCDs can start at 70 1/2. That's the old RMD date, so there's a little

Bo added something important because many people—maybe you've left the earned income workforce, meaning you're not earning in your peak earning years anymore—so your earned income on your tax returns is going way down.  Whereas when you were working, you were in the highest tax brackets, but now that you've retired, you're in a much lower tax bracket. Don't sleep on Roth conversions because we find all the time...

Is that like, if you retire at 60, your RMDs don't kick in until you're 75? You've got 15 years to see if there's a tax arbitrage opportunity where maybe you're in a super low tax

bracket. Should you be maximizing that 12% tax bracket, or maybe even the 22% tax bracket? You really need to forecast how big those RMDs will be. For some of you, you have multiple seven figures in these

retirement accounts, and once they fire up you're going to be like, 'Man, it's great I'm paying no taxes! It's awesome!' And then all of a sudden, 'Whoa, I have a $200,000 or $250,000 required distribution; that's going to be pretty taxable.' So,

don't sleep on that 15 years. Make sure you're taking a proactive stance on looking at tax policy, tax rates, and seeing if there's an arbitrage for you. Um, but do be aware that this is where I tell you complexity will find

you. I tell you to do this, but then what you're going to do is you're going to do this based upon tax rates only, and then you're going to do your taxes and be like, 'Oh my gosh, I just

screwed up my Social Security! Oh my gosh, I just screwed up my Medicare premiums!' This is why I think, as financial advisors, people love us: because we help you herd the cats. You know, we kind of think about all the things you

Don't realize that even though I just gave you a list of a lot of things to think about, you're still going to realize there's a lot of wrangling that goes into making sure we're planning this well.  Then you asked – and I'll close out the

loop on this – you said, "How do I grow these distributions?" You know, it's not uncommon that when you're reinvesting, you just link your taxable account to these. You have to pay taxes, and don't forget

to take into account where you live. State-wise matters; some states don't tax retirement assets that heavily. They actually give you huge exemptions. Like, I know in Georgia...

I was working on something for another state last week and I was like, "Man, they don't tax Social Security or retirement contributions, or retirement distributions." So pay attention to your state taxes as well when you're thinking about reinvesting. But then you just let it grow in that after-tax account and then just try to be

proactive. Don't let it just sit in cash. Actually think about it in conjunction with your whole plan to make sure you know the "why" for those new assets after you distribute them. That's great.

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