Since Devs change jobs every few years now: 401k or Roth?

Re:Since Devs change jobs every few years now: 401k or Roth? by scarface74 on Thursday February 23, 2017 @05:04PM (#13718250)

They can also (often? always?) be rolled over to another 401k when you change jobs

I can think of no good reason to ever roll a 401K to another employer instead of rolling it over to a usually much lower cost IRA.

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Re:Since Devs change jobs every few years now: 401k or Roth? by SaberTail on Thursday February 23, 2017 @06:21PM (#13718883)

I can think of one common situation for typical HN readers. If you make too much money to contribute to a Roth IRA, and your workplace offers a 401k (which means traditional IRA contributions will not be deductible), then you can still put money into a Roth IRA by contributing after-tax dollars to a traditional IRA and doing a backdoor Roth conversion[1].

The problem is that when you do one, you pay taxes pro rata on any pre-tax funds in your IRA. If your 401k is pre-tax dollars (most are), then if you convert a 401k to an IRA, you will start having to pay taxes every time you try to do a backdoor Roth.

[1]http://www.rothira.com/what-is-a-backdoor-roth-ira

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