“How do I avoid the pro-rata rule in retirement? Can I do X to avoid it?”

I’ve seen this question numerous times.

My general answer – don’t avoid the pro rata rule in retirement.

Don’t Avoid the Pro-Rata Rule

People generally become aware of the pro-rata rule because they want to do a backdoor Roth during their high income working years… that is, income is too high to:

make a deductible contribution to a Traditional IRA

contribute to a Roth IRA

Instead, you make a non-deductible Traditional IRA contribution and then (immediately) convert those funds to a Roth.

There is zero tax due on this particular Roth conversion because 100% of the converted amount is after-tax money.

Ta-da!!!…