Your Roth conversion window
Between the day you stop working and the day RMDs start, your taxable income dips — often into the cheapest brackets you'll ever see. That gap is a window, it has a closing date, and most people find out about it after it shut.
First, what a Roth conversion actually is
A conversion means moving money out of your traditional IRA or 401(k) into a Roth — and paying the income tax on that amount this year, on purpose. Why would you volunteer to pay tax early? Because a traditional IRA is a tax bill waiting to happen: you'll owe ordinary income tax on every dollar you (or your heirs) ever pull out, and at 73 or 75 the IRS starts forcing those withdrawals whether you want them or not. A Roth, once converted, never gets taxed again — no tax on the growth, no forced withdrawals, nothing left for your heirs to pay. The move only makes sense if you can pay the tax now at a lower rate than you'd pay later — which is exactly what the years in this window let you do.