<prompt> Human: I see lots and lots of posts here saying its important to contribute to an IRA. I asked a friend who is in financial planning and he says that youre not able to keep making contributions to an existing traditional IRA if you also have a 401k through your employer. Im assuming this also then means I cant convert some of the funds in the traditional IRA to a new Roth IRA acct and contribute 5500 annually i exceed income limits so cant open up a Roth directly. I wanted to get your thoughts because it seems like many people here do max out their 401ks while also contributing to another Traditional or Roth IRA. I tried to search for answers to this question but most resources focus around contributions pre-tax vs post-tax and advantages of each account, not whether you can contribute to all of them and how. Sorry if this is a noob question, I am a reformed slacker with money who is trying to catch up on retirement contributions and figure out how to invest excess post-tax money, and getting conflicting advice.Thank you all.  <response>: You can contribute 18K to a 401k and 5500 to an IRA. You cant contribute 5500 to both a t-IRA and Roth IRA backdoor in the same year. Total contribution between the two in a year is 18K 5500 for 23,500. 