10/20/2026
Before I became a financial advisor, I worked as an actuarial associate. One of the first things that work teaches you is that you can't change one variable and expect the rest of the model to hold still.
Financial lives work the same way.
A Roth conversion looks like a tax decision. It can also affect what your heirs eventually receive and the taxes involved. How an account is titled looks like paperwork, but it can determine whether the trust your attorney drafted controls that money. A beneficiary designation looks like a formality, but it can determine where an account goes, regardless of what your will says.
Each of those decisions usually sits with a different professional. Your CPA, your estate attorney, and your financial advisor are each working on their own part of the model. Each of them can be right about their part while the whole thing stops adding up.
The risk isn't always bad advice. Sometimes it's good advice that nobody checked against the rest of the plan.
That's why I want to know what the CPA is projecting before I recommend anything that changes taxable income, and why the estate documents belong on the table when we talk about which accounts to draw from first.
It gets complicated when these decisions happen in three separate rooms.
Three good answers can still add up to a bad plan.
The work is making them fit.
