I've just had an epiphany: even though I wasn't eligible for my employer's SIMPLE IRA in 2012, my wife was self-employed and therefore eligible for a SEP IRA or Individual 401k (or something like that). Maybe instead of making the rest of my IRA contributions as traditional, I should open one of those accounts, make traditional contributions to it, and increase the Roth part of the IRA contributions by the same amount?
E.g., I was planning to put $9,000 in my and my wife's traditional IRAs and $1000 in our Roth IRAs, but maybe I should put $2,000* in an SEP IRA for my wife, $7000 in me and my wife's traditional IRAs, and $3000 in our Roth IRAs?
Would I be allowed to open an SEP IRA or individual 401(k) for tax year 2012 even though it's January 2013 already?
Edit: better yet, if I chose the Individual 401k, does that mean I could contribute a full $10,000 to it (because the "employee" portion contribution limit seems to be a straight $17000, without being limited to a percentage of income)? That would mean I could contribute enough traditional to get the whole Saver's Credit while also maxing our Roth IRAs! Well, if I can save enough money to get all the contributions in before April 15th, anyway...
(*$2000 would be the max because we can only contribute 20% of her $10,000 earnings.)