All the finance bros love to say, just do a backdoor Roth IRA, but none of them wanna tell you how to actually do it. I'm talking step by step, click by click. So I'm gonna walk you through exactly how to do a backdoor Roth IRA on Fidelity.
Gonna need two things before we start. You have to have a Fidelity account, and you have to have a bank account already connected to your Fidelity account. That's literally it. Okay, let's dive in.
1. Open the Fidelity app.
2. At the bottom, click on Transact.
3. Then right above that, click on Open an Account.
4. From there, click on Retirement.
5. Click Next.
6. Now you're gonna select Traditional IRA. This is the back door. This is where your after-tax money is temporarily going before it gets moved into your Roth IRA.
7. Click on Next and you'll see some disclaimers and account information. A little bit of a quick read if you want to.
8. Then click on Open My Account.
Boom. Your Traditional IRA has been created. This hasn't affected anything. Don't even worry about it. You just created a new account. We're gonna leave it for a second.
1. Head back into the homepage and we're going to create the second account that you need — a Roth IRA.
2. Click on Transact.
3. Click Open an Account.
4. Click on Retirement, then Next.
5. But this time, instead of clicking on Traditional IRA, click on Roth IRA.
6. Click on Next, read the little info page, and click on Open My Account.
Perfect. Now you have a Traditional IRA and a Roth IRA. These are the only two accounts that you need to have to do a backdoor Roth.
Now let's move the money.
1. Go back to the homepage and click on Transact.
2. Click on Transfer.
3. In the From dropdown, select your bank account.
4. In the To dropdown, select Traditional IRA. Again, this is the back door step.
5. Choose the amount you wanna pull from that account into your Traditional IRA.
6. Click on Review.
7. Hit Submit.
Congratulations, you have officially put in after-tax money inside of your Traditional IRA.
Sometimes for banks to actually move the money inside of your Traditional IRA — if it's a new Traditional IRA account, it may take one to three days. If you're unsure if that money is in there or not, feel free to just call Fidelity.
Let's say you called them and the money has settled.
1. Go back inside of the app and click on Transact.
2. Click on Transfer.
3. In the From dropdown, select Traditional IRA.
4. In the To dropdown, click on Roth IRA. This is the actual conversion part.
5. At the bottom you will see options for Partial Amount or Full Amount. If you don't have a reason to not put the money you have inside of that Traditional IRA into the Roth IRA, just click on Full Amount. Full amount means every single dollar that you put inside of that Traditional IRA gets moved into your Roth IRA.
6. Underneath Account Status it gives you two different options. Basically Fidelity is saying — if you're moving the full amount of money from your Traditional IRA to your Roth IRA, you still want us to keep this Traditional IRA account open? Cause we can also just close it out for you. If you keep it open, it doesn't matter. If you close it out, it doesn't matter.
7. Click on Review, check everything, make sure it looks good, and click Submit.
You officially just did a backdoor Roth entirely from your phone. Probably laying in bed.
Honestly, once you do it once, it is so much less intimidating. The next step after this is actually investing the money you have inside of a Roth IRA. Lucky for you, I already have a video on that — it's underneath my Not a Fidelity Bro playlist.
And remember that when women understand their money, finances, AI, technology, crypto — we don't just change our lives, we change our options.