do roth ira conversion or put it in 457b account?

[Anonymous]

This past year DH and I crossed the income ceiling for regular Roth IRAs, which we've both put $ into for awhile (HHI 210K). He'll plan to put that some $ ($5500/year or whatever it is) and do the IRA conversion back into the Roth, and he maxes out TSP 18K or whatever it is.

I have been maxing out Roth since right after college, which is 13 years of compounding. I work at a university so have the state pension retirement plan, where I put about 9% of income and then I think the $ that was going into the Roth was about 6% of my income, so that's 15% going into retirement. I also have a TIAA-CREF account from an old job that has about 95K cooking, I stuff a little extra into there in a 457b supplemental account.

We just had our first child, and are doing $300/month in a 529. If he goes in-state in MD, he can go for free or 50% tuition. Have no debt, about 300K in other savings/market and an emergency fund. PITI is $3600. (newest expense, sigh) We hope to have one more kid. So retirement is my pension + husband's 401K + the Roth IRAs + TIAA-CREF accounts.

I think we're fine, but I'd like to be able to be able to give the kid(s) the option of having us pay (or mostly pay) for either private undergrad or if he goes to a state school, help with grad school.

My question is--would it make more sense for me to put the $ that I used to put in my Roth IRA into the 457(b) plan since it's pre-tax $? (And I'm not at the 18K contribution cap) Or should I do the backdoor Roth conversion so I could continue to accumulate $ in the Roth in case we need to withdraw for educational expenses, which we could only do with the Roth. Husband will be doing the Roth conversion.

[Anonymous]

Always defer taxes first
Backdoor Roth next