At my current job, I am fortunate enough to have a mega backdoor Roth opportunity that I am taking advantage of. However, I'd say there is a 70-80% chance that I will leave this job sometime during 2018. My question is about whether to prioritize the mega backdoor Roth or 401K given that.
The recommended investment order in this forum is 401K first, but I'm thinking that I should actually prioritize the mega backdoor Roth first while I know I've got it, since the next job, whatever it is, will almost certainly have a 401K program and is unlikely to have a mega backdoor Roth opportunity. To add to that, my current 401K program is not great, since the company match only vests after 3 years and if my prediction is correct, I'm not going to make it that long.
The two bad scenarios I can think of if I prioritize the backdoor are:
1) I'll stay at the company the whole year and will have made the mistake of contributing to the backdoor first when I could have put that money in a tax-sheltered account. This doesn't seem that bad, since I'll still be able to switch to the 401K later in the year and max it out anyway
2) I'll leave, but leave for a company without a 401K program at all, so then I'll have invested in an after-tax program instead of a pre-tax one. This just seems so unlikely though - I work in tech in Chicago, and every company I've ever looked at has some kind of 401K contribution benefit
Given the unlikeliness/not-that-bad-ness of these scenarios, I'm inclined to start my contributions with the backdoor. Is there anything I'm missing here? Do you agree with my assessment?
