yes i max 401ks & max our IRAs
i'm interested in knowing more about what Seattle said. is that all true?
If you want to do a Backdoor Roth IRA down the road, having existing traditional IRA complicates that. If you have a 401K plan available though, before you do your backdoor roth, you could Rollover your traditional IRA balances into the 401K, then make the traditional IRA contribution, and finally convert to Roth (this is how you do a backdoor roth IRA).
You could also just convert the whole T.IRA if it isn't so large that that would be cost prohibitive.
When you convert to Roth, and you have both tax-deductible contributions and non-deductible contributions in that IRA, the conversion amount is pro-rated. So if you had an existing tIRA 100K balance, and wanted to put 2K into a Roth via the back door method (because your income is high enough that you're not allowed to make regular contributions), you'd find that nearly all of your 2K conversion is taxable.
All of this is not to be confused with the Mega Backdoor Roth IRA which is another thing entirely.