Financial advisors often get so caught up in trying to ‘add value’ to their clients that they sometimes overlook something that could cause financial catastrophe. Amidst the discussion about diversification, superior investment returns, and other neat-sounding things, what really counts to a client is peace of mind.

At the time of this writing, we’re talking about the stock market decline due to the coronavirus pandemic. But truthfully, this approach worked for many portfolios during the Great Recession of 2008-2009, the ‘lost decade’ of the early 2000s, and countless other periods when stocks didn’t perform as well as investors would have liked.

If you’ve received an IRMAA (Income-Related Medical Adjustment Amount) letter in the mail, warning you of higher premiums for Medicare Part B and Part D because of your income level, you might be wondering whether you can reduce, or even eliminate your IRMAA. One of the most common scenarios in which you could do this is if you’ve had a life-changing event.

When stocks started tumbling because of unprecedented, worldwide concerns over COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus, our firm started reaching out to our clients for two reasons. First, many of our clients had never been with us during a market downturn, and we wanted to give them assurance. Second, we wanted to see what questions people have about their portfolios.

One of the most common services that we perform for our clients is Roth conversions, particularly for our recently retired clients. If you don’t mind how much you pay in income tax, it can be quite simple to do Roth conversions. However, if you’ve accumulated significant wealth in your retirement accounts, you might have a hefty tax bill if you decide to do this all in one year. If you want to keep your overall lifetime tax liability as low as possible, you’ll probably want to do your Roth conversions over time, and make annual adjustments depending on significant tax events that occur each year. In other words, you probably need to establish a Roth conversion plan.

One of the most common things that our recently retired clients ask us to do is to help them convert as much of their traditional IRAs into Roth IRAs as quickly as possible. Our job is to help them build a strategy that allows them to pay as little in taxes over the course of their lifetime. Each year, as part of our tax planning appointment, we review that year’s tax projection to make sure that our Roth conversion amount is in line with expectations.