There are many places on the internet that talk about how to get access to the funds in a 401k during early retirement without penalty. Conventional wisdom seems to be that you do a conversion as follows.
Retire from job -> Roll from entire 401k to conventional IRA (no taxes or penalties) -> Convert expected annual expenses to Roth IRA every year (you pay taxes when you do the conversion)-> Wait 5 years -> Withdraw the funds you converted 5 years ago tax and penalty free.
This makes a lot of sense and minimizes taxes and penalties. However, you must have 5 years of expenses somewhere else for this to work. My question is, can you roll a Roth 401k into a Roth IRA and start withdrawing immediately without penalty? In looking online, it sounds like you can but nobody talks about using that route to fund the 1st five years of retirement. The Roth 401k's are newer so maybe that is why there is limited experience with this method. (or maybe I'm reading the limitations wrong)
If this works, my thought is I would want enough money in Roth IRA (contributions only because the growth can't be withdrawn) and Roth 401k's (I think everything rolled can be withdrawn) to fund the 1st five years of early retirement. After that, traditional 401k using the roth IRA conversion ladder would be the most tax efficient due to the lower income I expect during retirement.