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In the realm of retirement planning, life insurance often takes a backseat to more traditional investment vehicles like 401(k)s, IRAs and annuities. But that doesn’t mean it’s not an effective retirement planning tool. A life Insurance retirement plan (often referred to as LIRP), besides being fun to say, offers more than just tax advantages.

Oftentimes, as clients retire, a window of opportunity opens. If they retire before beginning RMDs, or in some cases even prior to starting Social Security, they may find themselves in the lowest tax bracket they’ve been in since they became employed. This can be a great time to complete Roth conversions, which are the movement of pretax money into a post-tax Roth IRA. The obvious cost at the time is the taxes due on the converted amount, as the money is treated as ordinary income. However, several oft-forgotten costs to Roth conversions may make them less beneficial than previously estimated. Naturally, these are client-dependent and may not affect every individual, nor are they reasons to forgo the conversion, but they are worth investigating when determining if the conversion makes sense.