handling old 401ks when doing a backdoor roth

[ETBen]

I have 2 old 401ks with Fidelity. I'm going to roll them into my new Fidelity 401k.  However, I have a newly discovered old 401k with TRowe.  My understanding is that I can't roll over to a tIRA the same year I do a backdoor Roth.  So my options are to leave it alone or roll it over but not do the Roth?

[terran]

I'm not too familiar with the mechanics, but if you have any existing traditional IRA then any conversion during a backdoor roth is considered to come proportionally from the after tax traditional IRA contribution (the first step of the backdoor roth) and the normal pretax contributions, so you'll end up paying some taxes on the conversion. Can you roll the TRowe 401k into the new fidelity 401k too? I would think Fidelity would be able to help you out with that.

[seattlecyclone]

You can roll the old 401(k) into your new 401(k) and all should be well. Doesn't matter that the old one is held outside of Fidelity, they should accept rollovers from that plan just the same as from other Fidelity 401(k) plans. It just might take a little bit more time because you're dealing with two separate organizations.

[Catbert]

^^Yep, what Seattlecyclone said.

[MDM]

My understanding is that I can't roll over to a tIRA the same year I do a backdoor Roth. 

Saying "I can't..." is too strong.  Perhaps "it might or might not be a good idea to..." is closer.

See https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Backdoor_Roth_IRA for details.

[ETBen]

Thanks all!  I didn't realize that I could roll over to another 401k with another company.

Thanks for the tIRA/Backdoor info. I've read it before but didn't spend much time on it since it wasn't applicable to me at the time. I should revisit it to understand it.