I left my last company and have some funds in a pretax 403b and some in a posttax 403b. I started working there before I knew about ERE. Since I would like to have access to the funds before traditional retirement age, I'd like to get as much as possible into a Roth IRA, because I would be able to withdraw contributions (but not earnings) without penalty 5 years after the conversion.
I know it is possible to convert a Roth 403b to a Roth IRA after leaving a company. Can I convert the pretax 403b portion into a Roth IRA and pay taxes on it? How does it work, do I first have to convert the pretax portion into a traditional IRA and then into a Roth, or can I do it directly? And does this have any impact on my ability to do backdoor Roth IRAs in the future?