In this Episode of the Secure Your Retirement Podcast, Radon and Murs discuss some of the most effective ways to lower taxes in retirement before the end of taxes 2026. Drawing from more than 150 client tax strategy meetings conducted by Peace of Mind Wealth Management, they break down the Retirement tax planning strategies that delivered the greatest benefits to retirees. From charitable giving opportunities to Roth conversion strategy analysis, this episode provides actionable insights designed to help retirees make smarter decisions about their future tax liability.

Listen in to learn about proven tax strategies including Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs), Donor Advised Funds, Tax Efficient Investing, Tax Loss Harvesting, and RMD planning. Whether you’re focused on reducing retirement income tax, preparing for future Required Minimum Distributions, creating a comprehensive retirement checklist, or looking for ways to secure your retirement, this episode offers valuable guidance to help you maximize your wealth and keep more of what you’ve worked so hard to save.

In this episode, find out:

• How a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) can help charitably inclined retirees reduce taxes in retirement while supporting causes they care about.
• Why a Donor Advised Fund may allow you to maximize charitable deductions and improve your overall tax planning strategy.
• How Tax Efficient Investing and Tax Loss Harvesting can potentially reduce taxes and improve after-tax portfolio returns.
• Why Roth conversion analysis can help lower future retirement income tax and reduce the impact of future Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs).
• How proactive Retirement Planning and annual tax strategy reviews can help you plan for retirement, optimize your finances, and retire more confidently.

Tweetable Quotes:

“A Qualified Charitable Distribution is one of the few opportunities where you can put money into an IRA, receive the tax deduction, experience growth, and then ultimately distribute those dollars completely tax-free to charity.” — Murs Tariq

“Everyone should not do a Roth conversion, but everyone should do a Roth conversion analysis because the impact on lifetime tax savings can be substantial.” — Radon Stancil

Resources:

If you are in or nearing retirement and you want to gain clarity on what questions you should be asking, learn what the biggest retirement myths are, and identify what you can do to achieve peace of mind for your retirement, get started today by requesting our complimentary video course, Four Steps to Secure Your Retirement!

To access the course, simply visit POMWealth.net/podcast.

Here’s the full transcript:

So, we’re having to get ready for all the tax strategy meetings that we got coming up. 

And last year we did over 150 tax strategy meetings. 

And one of the things that I got out of it was that we really kind of came down to four really big 

components that we were talking to a lot of our clients about. We talked about qualified charitable 

distributions. We talked about donor advised funds. We talked about tax efficient portfolio 

management. And then we also talked about Roth conversions. And I think when you first start 

talking about that with people, sometimes you say the words QCD or DAF or donor advised fund and 

people just don’t even know what we’re talking about. I’m curious from your perspective, how do 

you, first of all, let’s just take the first one. How do you describe to a client what a… 

is like how do you describe that? Yeah. So QCD being a qualified charitable distribution, 

the first thing I do before I even explain it, I say you got to be charitably inclined, right? If 

you’re not charitably inclined, then there’s no scenario where, you know, 

it makes sense to just give money. You’re still giving money away, right? So, it doesn’t make sense 

to just give money away if you don’t have a purpose behind it. Now, if you are charitably inclined, 

and then also you’re of the age of 70 and a half, which is to qualify for this strategy. 

a qualified charitable distribution can make a lot of sense for you. And how it works, basically, 

and I think it gets kind of forgotten that this is even something that you can do. People don’t 

talk about it enough. But how it works is you take money from your IRA. Now, normally, 

when you take money from your IRA, you’re going to be taxed on those dollars. When you make a 

withdrawal from your IRA, it’s fully taxable. People don’t like doing that. 

you could almost call it a loophole, a charitable loophole, where if I do it correctly, and there’s 

a process to it that we have to do right, but if I do it correctly, I can pull that money out of 

the IRA, send it directly to the charity, and normally what distribution is taxable, 

in this case, it’s completely tax-free. So just think about that for a second. If I’m talking to 

the client, they need to understand the power of this, right? Because they put money… into the 

IRA tax deferred. So, they got a tax benefit by putting it in there. So, they never paid a dime of 

taxes on it. And then they got growth along the way. And then they got it out completely tax free. 

It’s about as good as it gets. I mean, I love it. And I think people love it when they do 

that. I think another one that I, you know, for me, when I talk to people, I get excited about the 

donor advised fund. And I know, you know, again, this does come back to that whole idea of being 

charitably inclined. Right. 

Donor advised funds are very powerful. And the reason why I like that one so much is I think a lot 

of our clients do give money away every year. But what they know is that today it’s very hard to 

get tax benefit from giving money to a charity. And the reason why is because most people today 

don’t itemize anymore. And the reason why they don’t itemize is because the standard deduction on 

our tax year is so good. And big, it doesn’t get us into the point of being able to itemize. 

So, what a lot of people do, and I always use the example, is let’s say a client’s giving away 

annually $15,000 a year. And they’re doing that to multiple charities maybe. Maybe they’re doing 

it to one charity. That part doesn’t matter. But anyway, they’re giving away $15,000. Well, if I 

give away $15,000 in a year, I don’t get to itemize. And the reason why is because I’m still below 

my standard deduction. So, a donor advice fund is a really nice tool because if I know I’m going to 

give away that $15,000 every single year, I could stack those donations. And we typically talk 

about stacking three years. So, if I took $15,000 times three, $45,000 I’m going to give away this 

year. That is going to throw me into itemization. So now I’m going to get to itemize and I’m going 

to now be able to deduct some of my contribution or my donation. I’m going to be able to deduct 

some of that this year and I get the benefit. So now what I get to do, I’ve got the $45,000 in my 

donor advised fund. I still give away $15,000 a year. I can always change my mind. 

I don’t have to give away $15,000 if that year, I’m not really liking the charity or I want to give 

it to a different charity. I’m not committing it. to the charity but I have the ability to still 

give that money away but I got all the tax benefit in year one then in three years I just redo it 

and the other nice thing is people sometimes ask what if I pass away and I got 45 000 and i never 

gave it away nice thing is my beneficiaries can give away the money for me and they can 

continue to do that that mission if you want to say it so I think it just gives us so many 

options but I think that leads us to another topic. I mean, that’s all-around charity. 

But when we think about another thing that we talk a lot about, which is tax efficient portfolio 

management. And I’m curious because it is a little bit when you say that people go, 

well, what does that even mean to be tax efficient in their portfolio? So, we’re really talking 

about non-IRA money here. How would you describe to somebody like what does it actually mean to 

have a tax efficient portfolio? Yeah. So, I think the concept, 

and I think a lot of people understand the concept of harvesting losses from your investments. 

And what most people do is they wait till the end of the year to say, hey, what’s that a loss that 

I can sell in my non-qualified or my taxable account? Why that account? Because it’s subject to 

capital gains, interest, dividends, and it can make a mess of your tax return if you don’t stay on 

top of it. So, what a lot of people do is at the end of the year, they’re going to sell what’s at a 

loss and then also sell what’s at a gain to kind of offset. 

And what the progression of that strategy is what we call direct indexing with tax loss harvesting. 

So, in a lot of scenarios, you end up in this place where you don’t have any losses to sell. And so 

the strategy is just kind of done. This tax loss strategy is very limited. But if we have a system 

where instead of managing funds through a handful of different ETFs or mutual funds, 

which they have their place. But if we want to be tax efficient, what we try to do, step one is 

index. So, what is indexing? Indexing is, think about the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ or the Dow. 

Those are major indexes. Now today, you could go buy one ticker that represents all of the stocks 

within those indexes, which is easy, but it’s not always the most efficient. 

If we want to be tax efficient, it can make a lot more sense. to go buy enough stocks that 

represent that index. So, the S&P 500, 500 stocks. Do we need to buy all 500 to represent the 

index? In fact, the way the indexes move is you really only need to buy about a third of those, if 

that, to get the true movement of the index itself. So that’s step number one is replicating the 

index and the performance of the index. If the index is up 10%, you’re going to be up somewhere 

around there. If it’s down 10%, you’re going to be down somewhere around there. But now what we’ve 

done is created a bucket. or almost a playground for tax loss harvesting so when you have that one 

ETF or that one mutual fund and it goes up well now it’s in a gain position. And, 

and we’re in a place where we can’t really optimize or do any harvesting. But if we have 70 to 90 

different stocks, well, we all know that they don’t all go up at the same time. And so, some are 

going down, some are going up in this crisis ability to do that other thing, which is actively tax 

loss harvesting, not at the end of the year, but throughout the year. So, something happens in the 

markets, stocks go down, we immediately sell some of those for a loss, replace some of those stocks 

with equivalent types of industry stocks. So, we’re maintaining our index exposure, 

but now we’ve just harvested a loss. Now what do we do with that loss? Well, we can use it to 

offset some gains so that we keep our index in line. Or best-case scenario, 

we don’t need to use that loss, and it applies to our tax return next year and gives us a major tax 

benefit. You know, in this strategy, we talk a lot about how it works for tax efficiency. 

But, I mean, you’ve come across so many scenarios where you’ve got somebody that has a tremendous 

amount of IBM stock or GSK stock or they feel overexposed. So how do you handle that conversation? 

Yeah. So, the nice thing there is a lot of times people come in. Let’s say they got a stock. 

I always use NVIDIA. People got that NVIDIA stock. And it did really good. And they’re excited. But 

now they find themselves in a very big dilemma. And the dilemma is that they go, wait a minute, 

I’ve got this portfolio now and NVIDIA is now 75% of everything I own in this account. 

And they go, I need to divest of this. But then they got that big tax problem that they’re worried 

about. So, what’s nice about the strategy that we use with the tax loss harvesting is that we can 

now introduce other stocks that, again, go back to what we talked about. It mimics that index. 

Let’s call it the S&P 500. And I can now start creating losses. I don’t give up any of my gain, 

by the way, but I can create losses and sell some of my high valued stock. 

And I’m not really kind of creating a taxable scenario. Now, if I’ve got a really big position and 

I’m really wanting to get diversified, you know, we’re going to talk to the client about saying, 

hey, do we want to have a capital gain budget? So, let’s say the person says, I’m willing to accept. 

$25,000 a year of capital gain exposure, then yeah, but we can put that, but we’re taking a lot 

more than that off the table because of the fact that we’ve got the stocks there that are going to 

create those losses. So, it just gives us a nice opportunity to help a client to divest this large 

holding. Is it going to take time? 100% it’s going to take time. And we need to talk that through. 

Anyway, I think another thing that that segues into when we think about those different elements of 

the area around tax planning is Roth conversion. 

And that’s gotten a lot of, I don’t know, news and media where people say, 

man, the Roth conversion always makes sense. And one of the things I always say to people is I say, 

everyone should not do a Roth conversion, but everyone should do a Roth. 

conversion analysis. So how do you explain to a client, what are we trying to do when we do a Roth 

conversion? What is it we’re trying to make sure that we manage? Right. 

Yeah. With the Roth conversion, we want to be managing our, 

not just this year’s tax, but our lifetime tax liability. And just take a second and think about 

all the dollars that while it was nice when we were working and putting into these tax 

-deferred accounts like IRAs and 401ks, getting that upfront tax benefit, oftentimes in meetings 

people say they didn’t tell us about this thing called a required minimum distribution that I’m 

going to be forced to start taking at the age of 73 or 75. They didn’t tell us this and I saved 

into this and now I’ve grown and I’ve got a million dollars in an IRA or 401k and I don’t really 

need this required minimum distribution, but… I’m now forced to pay the tax on it. And that 

distribution can send someone into a place of higher tax brackets or Medicare IRMA surcharges. 

And so, the only way to get away from those types of issues that could come about is reducing our 

IRA balances. Well, one of the most effective ways to do that is that Roth conversion. Luckily for 

us, we have Taylor Wolverton on the team, who is our director of financial planning and tax 

strategy. So, she’s that CFP brain, but also, she’s an EA. So, she knows everything about taxes and 

she loves strategizing around Roth conversions. And so, you know, we’re about to jump into a ton of 

tax planning meetings and we know how those, you know, those meetings go. But. 

from your perspective kind of take us through and in that meeting, what is Taylor doing and walking 

through to help someone understand the power of Roth conversion, and does it make sense yeah, I think 

that what we have to have in order to do this the right way is we’ve got to have some technology 

and most people understand our tax code that there’s different levels or tiers and Sometimes people 

think if you get into the next tier that all the dollars from that back are taxed at that rate. So 

if they’re at a 10, then they go to a 12 or a 22, they think, oh man, now I’m going to get taxed 22 

% on everything. But that’s not how it works. It’s only the portion of money that’s in that 

category that gets taxed at that. So, one of the things that Taylor’s doing and what we’re trying to 

analyze is if I have a client who comes in, and We say we want to fill up the 22% tax bracket 

because I know I’m willing to spend 22% to convert this amount of money. 

Will it make sense? And when we talk to people, we use examples. And one of the examples that we 

use is Frank and Lily. Frank and Lily, you know, they are real clients. They basically said, 

hey, we want to convert. We want to stay in the 22% tax bracket. And so, when we did the analysis, 

basically, we were able to take $66,000 a year. fill up that 22% tax bracket, 

pay only 22% on it. Our effective rate on that was actually much lower than that because we 

weighted it across all the money. So, they got a very good conversion rate, but here’s the power of 

it. We’re going to do $66,000 a year, and we’re going to do that over a number of years. And what 

that translates to them over the lifetime of their plan. 

is $320,000 of tax savings. That’s huge when you look at it. $320,000 over their lifetime of pure 

tax savings. And what we did not have to do there is, in order to make the numbers make sense, we 

didn’t have to use high rates return. We did not have to say that tax rates are going to go up in 

the future. We just used their situation, and it made a huge impact on how that all played out. 

So super powerful. Right. And the idea of tax rates going up in the future, 

I think if you’re in a room of 100 people and you ask how many believe that tax rates are going to 

go down from here and you ask them to raise their hands, no one’s going to raise their hand, I 

think. Most people are of that mindset that it could go up in the future. So, the idea of a Roth 

conversion, I tell clients that it’s really, I think, twofold. It could be summed up to two major 

reasons as to why to consider it, not do it, but just consider it. One could be protecting yourself 

against future tax rate increases. And then the other is going to be tremendously, and this is the 

more popular one, is for legacy planning, right? A lot of the families today that know they’re 

going to be leaving money behind, they don’t want to leave a tremendous tax burden behind to their legacy. At the end of the day, it’s the money that they earned, they saved. you know, the taxes are 

going to be paid by their dollars. So, if we can transition that more efficiently into a tax-free 

place for their future benefit, as well as their future heirs, it makes perfect sense. Yeah. I know 

we’ve talked about a lot today.