Category: Money

An in-plan Roth conversion lets you move pre-tax money in your workplace retirement account into the Roth side of that same account, without rolling it out to an IRA. You’ll also see it called a “Roth in-plan conversion” or, in IRS language, an in-plan Roth rollover. Whatever the name, the idea is the same: take traditional 401(k), 403(b), governmental 457(b), or TSP dollars, pay the tax now, and let them grow tax-free from here.

For years, the big worry about 529 college-savings plans was “what if my kid doesn’t use all of it?” Pull the money out for anything but education and you’d owe tax plus a 10% penalty on the earnings. SECURE 2.0 changed that. Starting in 2024, you can convert a 529 to a Roth IRA for the same beneficiary — turning leftover college money into a tax-free head start on retirement. It’s a genuinely great feature, but the fine print is strict, so let’s walk through exactly how it works.

For years, federal employees who searched for a TSP Roth conversion hit the same wall: you couldn’t actually do one inside the Thrift Savings Plan. Your only path was to roll traditional TSP money out to a traditional IRA and convert it there. That changed on January 28, 2026. The TSP now lets you convert traditional balances to Roth right inside your account, and for a lot of feds chasing early retirement, it’s a big deal.