This year I am in the cut-off zone for a Roth IRA contribution where I am partially limited in what I can contribute. My annual income is hard to predict beyond a ballpark figure but luckily I stopped contributing to the Roth early enough that I don't think I'm going to have to deal with an over-contribution. I plan on just doing the backdoor IRA contribution for the rest of the $5500 sometime next month.
However, since I don't want to deal with stress of this next year--I over-contributed once a few years ago and it was a pain in the butt involving an amended tax return--I plan on just putting down $6000 straight into a non-deductible IRA as soon as I have the cash and then rolling over the entire thing at the end.
Is there any substantive difference, i.e. difference in financial results, between making a $6000 contribution on Jan. 1 to a Roth IRA, making a $3000 contribution on Jan. 1 to a Roth and a $3000 back-door in December or making the whole $6000 backdoor in December? For example, will the rollover be in-kind or will I have to sell the shares and then buy again? This is at Fidelity, and I don't have any traditional IRA's, only Roth.