Sean Mullaney
speaker
1,197 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Jan 2026
last heard 23 Apr
Sean Mullaney’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.
Appearances
The problem with that trade-off is I'm giving up a tax deduction at my highest marginal rate today.
But the backdoor, whether it's the so-called backdoor Roth IRA or the mega backdoor Roth IRA, if you have that through your 401k or other plan at work, the trade-off profile is so much better because there's no sacrifice tax deduction.
The money that goes into these backdoor Roths is money that would have otherwise gone into a taxable brokerage account.
Now, that's not a terrible outcome to invest in a taxable brokerage account, particularly in a low yield world with qualified dividend income rates.
But there's still tax on the dividends, interest, future capital gains on that versus if we can take advantage of one or both of these backdoor techniques.
Well, guess what?
We've moved money that would have gone into a taxable brokerage account, would have spit out a 1099-DIV every year, and instead it's parked inside a Roth account, growing tax-free for the rest of our lives, potentially the rest of our spouse's lives, potentially 10 more years, assuming it goes to our adult child beneficiaries.
So I'm certainly not anti-Roth, but I think you have to step back when you're in your accumulation years and think about the trade-offs and are you really going to pay high taxes on most of that money in retirement if it's in a traditional retirement account?
That's exactly right, Robert.
And we live in sort of a golden age right now where you have the high standard deduction plus the senior deduction.
Now, that is temporary, to be fair, although I think the politics are likely to play out that some form of that thing is likely, but certainly not guaranteed to be extended in the future.
But you see, you know, we have examples of what we call tactical taxable Roth conversions, where we have a married couple in their mid to late 60s.
They have $101,000 of income before any Roth conversion, and that's mostly capital gains income.
It's spending them the taxable accounts first.
And then we add a $40,700 Roth conversion.
And I've done this at a conference.
So I say, oh, no, this couple's got $141,700 of adjusted gross income.
They're going to be taxed, right?
And I ask the audience, just mentally in your mind, picture what's their tax rate going to be?
How much federal income tax are they going to pay?
Showing 1101–1120 of 1,197 · page 56 of 60
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