<prompt> Human: Hello PF,Vanguard representative was not able to answer my question, so I thought of trying here first before contacting paid financial adviser.My wife and I both contribute the full amount in our workplace 401K. We still have some funds left over end of the month which we want to save for our retirement. Due to our combined incomes, we are not eligible for direct contribution to Traditional or Roth IRA.My question is can we make a non-deductible contribution of 5500 to my Traditional IRA every year and then use the Backdoor Roth Conversion and roll it into Roth IRA account? Will this help us bypass the income limits or it will trigger some penalty?Any help is much appreciated.Assistant: As long as you dont currently have anything in a deductible traditional IRA, then you can do this.Human: I have a deductible IRA which was rollover from previous employers 401K. Why cant I contribute 100 a month and move that 100 to Roth IRA using backdoor?  <response>: Because you need to rollover deductible and non deductible funds at the same rate so to speak. So if you have 1k deductible and 1k non deductible and you want to rollover 1k, youll need to roll over 500 thats deductible and 500 thats non deductible. Youre not allowed to only roll over the non deductible part. 