I’ve been putting off writing this for a while because I wasn’t sure what this series should be.

So, let’s start at the beginning.

I started my IRA journey at Wells Fargo Advisors in 2015. When I joined the IRA product team, I didn’t know what I was getting into. I knew IRAs had rules, but I did not know that an entire team existed just to keep advisors out of trouble on this stuff. I was hired by none other than the IRA Oracle, Cathleen Davis-Whitmore!

Fast forward to December 20, 2019. I’m the only one on the desk that day, because it’s basically the last working day before everyone disappears for the holidays. And that is the exact day the SECURE Act passed.

Nobody thought it was actually going to happen. It had been kicked around but most people figured it’d get picked back up in the new year, if at all. Instead, Congress decided to give us the gift that keeps on giving, the SECURE Act, effective just twelve days later on January 1, 2020.

The phones started ringing. Advisors calling in asking some version of: my client is a non-spouse beneficiary, how do they still get the stretch instead of this new 10-year rule everyone’s suddenly talking about?

My answer, “Well, just have the IRA owner die this year and your client gets grandfathered in.”

Some laughed, others didn’t.

Cathleen and I ended up writing an internal page on the SECURE Act and it became the third most viewed page in the entire company that year, right behind the homepage and the commission schedule page.

It’s 2026 and people are still trying to figure out what it all means.

That’s the IRA world I came from. Now I sit on the other side of it, talking IRAs with advisors every week about a lot of the same kinds of situations – Inherited IRAs, Roth Conversions, and strategies to pay less tax on Traditional IRA distributions.

That’s what this series is going to be. Real conversations, real mix ups, real ideas advisors bring to me that I think are worth sharing.

Hope you enjoy, more coming soon!

About the Author: Patrick “Murph” Murphy is Director of Sales and Marketing at Financial Cloud Works. Prior to joining FinCW, he was a marketing manager for the ultra-high-net-worth segment at Bank of America and an IRA Product Manager at Wells Fargo Advisors. He holds the RICP (Retirement Income Certified Professional) designation and an MBA.

Outside of work he’s a die-hard sports fan (Go Birds), a former washed up college lacrosse player, a husband, and father to two cats.

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