IRA and 401K investing questions from a newb - Bogleheads

Hello!

I have been reading these forums for a long time, but this is my first post, so thank you in advance for being gentle My husband and I are both 30 and are looking to start saving for retirement. I know, we should have started earlier, but we've been using our extra cash until now paying off debt and saving into an emergency fund. I've been doing a lot of research, and to start, we both opened Roth IRA accounts using Vanguard target funds and maxed them out for 2012.

However, I have a few questions that keep coming up that I'm hoping you guys might be able to help me with (and hopefully these might be helpful for other investing newbies):

- One thing I'd like to clarify is the eligibility for a deductible tIRA. Are you subject to the income limits if you are just eligible for a 401k at work, or are you only restricted if you're actually contributing to that 401k? And what about if one spouse is eligible/contributing to a 401k but the other isn't - what restrictions are placed on the other spouse?

- Another question is about being right on the line for the Roth income limit. We might be above the income limit to contribute to a Roth in 2013, but I'm not sure yet if that will be the case, as our incomes can vary a bit. I wanted to contribute to my Roth monthly at the max amount, but I'm worried that next year I'll find out that we are above the income limit. If this happens, will I be able to change the Roth over to a tIRA? Or should we just wait and if eligible, each contribute the max in a lump sum like we did this year?

- Related to the above question - and this might be a silly one - but if you contribute to your 401k, does that contributed pretax income count towards your MAGI? I would think that it does not, but I just want to make sure - if we both start contributing 10% to our 401ks, we will very likely then be eligible for a Roth.

- Regarding 401ks and matching - is it still worth contributing with no match? I am eligible for a decent match but my husband's job currently does not offer one (but they pay all admin fees.) He has enough income to start putting 10% in a 401k and also to max out an IRA. Is there somewhere else we should be putting his money if there is no match?

- Question about backdoor Roths - can you put money into a tIRA, take the deduction, and then convert it to a Roth after tax time, or does it have to be a non-deductible contribution? I do understand the issues that can arise with the Roth conversion when you have multiple IRAs, but right now we have no tIRAs.

- And a question about Vanguard and rebalancing - does it cost anything to rebalance within your IRAs at Vanguard? Obviously this isn't much of an issue with the target funds, but I might want to explore other index fund options with upcoming contributions.

Thank you so much for reading and for any answers you may have!

Source: http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=114911&p=1671516

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