403(b) vs 401(k): What's the Difference?

403(b) vs 401(k) is the retirement-plan comparison that trips up millions of teachers, nurses, and nonprofit workers, because the two accounts look almost identical yet the one you are offered depends entirely on who signs your paycheck. Both let you save for retirement straight from your salary, both grow without the yearly tax drag of a regular brokerage account, and both hold investments you choose from a menu. The fork is not really a choice you make, it is a consequence of your employer’s tax status: a for-profit company sponsors a 401(k), while a nonprofit, public school, college, hospital, or church typically sponsors a 403(b). Understanding how they differ helps you use whichever one you have well, and helps you compare fairly if you ever move between the two worlds.

This explainer lays out 403(b) vs 401(k) in plain terms: what each plan is and who has one, the real differences that matter (investment options, fees, ERISA coverage, and catch-up rules), how contribution limits compare, which is better in practice, whether you can have both, and how rollovers work between them. Every dollar figure, percentage, and limit here is illustrative, chosen to show the shape of the decision rather than to state a current rule, and the tax code and IRS limits change over time, so confirm the current IRS limits before you act. If your plan is a 401(k), our walkthrough on how much to contribute to a 401(k) covers the contribution side, and our worksheet on rolling over a 401(k) covers moving the money when you leave. Model the growth behind either plan with the calculator as you read. For the full menu of account types beyond these two workplace plans, our types of retirement accounts explainer maps where each fits.

What a 403(b) is and who has one

A 403(b) is a workplace retirement plan offered by tax-exempt and public-sector employers: public school districts, colleges and universities, hospitals and health systems, charities and other 501(c)(3) nonprofits, and certain religious organizations. If you are a teacher, a professor, a nurse, a social worker, or a nonprofit staffer, the plan your employer offers is almost certainly a 403(b) rather than a 401(k). The name, like 401(k), simply refers to the section of the tax code that authorizes it. Functionally it is a salary-deferral plan: you elect a percentage or dollar amount of each paycheck to divert into the account before tax, and that money is invested for retirement.

The 403(b) carries a bit of history that still shapes it today. It began decades ago as the tax-sheltered annuity, a plan built around annuity contracts sold by insurance companies, which is why older 403(b) menus were dominated by annuity products rather than mutual funds. Modern 403(b) plans increasingly offer mutual funds and low-cost index funds alongside or instead of annuities, but the legacy still shows up in some plans as higher costs and more complex products. That inheritance is the single most important thing to understand about a 403(b), because it is the root of the fee and investment-menu differences that separate it from a typical 401(k), which the sections below unpack.

What a 401(k) is and who has one

A 401(k) is the workplace retirement plan offered by for-profit companies, from small businesses to large corporations. If you work in the private sector, whether at a startup, a factory, a retailer, or a bank, the retirement plan your employer sponsors is very likely a 401(k). Like the 403(b), it lets you defer a portion of each paycheck into the account before tax, invest it in a menu of options the plan chooses, and let it grow without annual tax on the dividends and gains. Many employers add a matching contribution, which is the closest thing to free money most workers will ever be offered, and capturing at least the full match is the near-universal first rule of using one.

Because 401(k) plans grew up inside the for-profit world and are almost always governed by ERISA, they tend to come with more standardized fiduciary oversight and, in recent years, a strong drift toward low-cost index funds and target-date funds as default investments. That is a generalization, not a guarantee: plenty of 401(k) plans still carry mediocre menus and high fees, especially at smaller employers. But as a category, the 401(k) is what most people picture when they think of a workplace retirement account, and it is the benchmark against which the 403(b) is usually measured. Our walkthrough on the best 401(k) contribution percentage covers how much of your salary to route into one.

403(b) vs 401(k): the core difference

If you strip everything else away, the core difference between a 403(b) and a 401(k) is not how they work but who offers them. Both are salary-deferral plans authorized by the tax code, both let you contribute pre-tax or Roth dollars, both grow tax-deferred, both cap your annual contributions, and both generally penalize withdrawals before retirement age. Day to day, a saver in a 403(b) and a saver in a 401(k) are doing the same thing: setting a contribution rate, choosing investments, and letting compounding work. The account label tells you about your employer’s tax status, not about a fundamentally different retirement strategy.

Everything else that differs flows from that origin. Because the 403(b) came out of the nonprofit and insurance world, it inherited annuity-heavy menus, a different fee culture, a special long-service catch-up, and frequent exemption from ERISA. Because the 401(k) came out of the for-profit world, it inherited broad ERISA coverage, a mutual-fund and index-fund menu, and standardized employer-match structures. So when people ask what separates the two, the honest framing is: the plans are cousins with the same DNA, and the practical differences are the accumulated habits of the two worlds that sponsor them. The rest of this explainer walks through those habits one at a time.

Who offers each plan: employer type

The cleanest way to know which plan applies to you is to look at your employer’s tax status. Tax-exempt and public-sector employers offer the 403(b): think K-12 school districts, state colleges and universities, public and nonprofit hospitals, charitable 501(c)(3) organizations, and certain churches and religious bodies. For-profit employers offer the 401(k): private companies of every size, whether they turn a profit in a given year or not, since it is the tax status of the entity that matters, not its bottom line. A small number of workers, such as those at organizations with mixed structures, may see something unusual, but the rule holds for the vast majority.

This employer-driven split has a practical consequence: you usually do not get to pick between a 403(b) and a 401(k). Your choice is which plan to use well, not which type to open. It also explains why comparing them in the abstract can feel academic, since almost no one is weighing the two side by side for the same job. The comparison becomes real in two situations: when you change careers between the nonprofit and for-profit worlds and want to understand what is different, and when you are deciding whether to roll an old plan of one type into a new plan of another. Both of those are covered later in this explainer.

Investment options in each plan

Here is where the two plans genuinely diverge in a way you can feel. A 401(k) menu is typically built from mutual funds, and over the last decade many have leaned heavily on low-cost index funds and target-date funds as the core, in part because ERISA fiduciary pressure pushes plan sponsors toward cost-conscious options. A 403(b) menu, by contrast, may still include a meaningful share of annuity products, a legacy of its tax-sheltered-annuity origins, alongside mutual funds. Annuities are not inherently bad, but inside a retirement account they often add layers of cost and complexity that a plain index fund does not, which can quietly reduce your long-run return.

The practical takeaway is not that 403(b) menus are always worse, because many now offer excellent low-cost index funds, and some 401(k) menus are stuffed with expensive actively managed funds. The takeaway is that in a 403(b) you should look harder at what you are being offered, because the range can be wider and the costly options more prominent. Read the fund list, find the lowest-cost broad index or target-date option, and check whether any product is an annuity with its own fee layer. In either plan, the investment you pick from the menu matters more than the plan type itself, and a low-cost broadly diversified fund is the workhorse most savers are looking for.

Fees: the difference that compounds

Of all the differences between a 403(b) and a 401(k), fees are the one most likely to change how much money you end up with, because they compound against you every single year. The historical pattern is that 403(b) plans, especially older annuity-based ones, carried higher all-in costs: administrative charges, insurance-related mortality and expense fees, and higher fund expense ratios could stack up. A well-run 401(k) with index funds might charge a small fraction of a percent, while a costly 403(b) annuity could charge several times that. Over a career, that gap does not stay small.

Consider the arithmetic without any specific plan attached. A one percentage point difference in annual fees does not cost you one percent of your balance once, it costs you roughly that much of your return every year, and the drag compounds. On a balance growing for thirty years, a plan charging an illustrative 2 percent all-in can end up with a materially smaller balance than an otherwise identical plan charging 0.5 percent, even though both invested the same dollars in similar markets. This is the single most important reason to look up your own plan’s fees rather than trust the plan type. The chart later in this explainer makes the fee drag concrete, and the calculator lets you test how a fee difference changes your own projection.

ERISA protection and oversight

ERISA, the federal law governing most private-sector retirement plans, is a difference that many savers never notice but that shapes the protections around your money. A 401(k) at a for-profit company is almost always an ERISA plan, which means the plan sponsor is a fiduciary bound to act in participants’ interest, the plan must meet reporting and disclosure standards, and your balance generally enjoys strong protection from creditors. That fiduciary duty is part of why 401(k) menus have trended toward lower-cost options: sponsors can face liability for larding a plan with expensive funds.

Many 403(b) plans, by contrast, are not covered by ERISA. Governmental plans, such as those at public school districts and state universities, are exempt, as are certain church plans, and some other 403(b) arrangements are structured to stay outside ERISA. The absence of ERISA does not mean your money is unsafe, but it can mean less standardized fiduciary oversight of the plan’s investment menu and different rules around creditor protection, which may instead be governed by state law. This is a subtle but real distinction: it helps explain why some 403(b) menus went unpoliced for years and accumulated high-fee options. If ERISA coverage matters to you, confirm your specific plan’s status, since 403(b) plans vary and the rules are technical.

Contribution limits for 403(b) and 401(k)

For the core building block, the two plans are largely aligned: the IRS sets an annual limit on the elective salary deferrals you can make from your paycheck, and that limit is generally the same dollar figure for a 403(b) and a 401(k). Both also permit an additional catch-up contribution once you reach age 50, letting older savers put in somewhat more. And both sit under a larger overall cap that includes employer contributions, which is why a generous match does not eat into your own deferral room. In the broad strokes, if you understand one plan’s contribution limits, you understand the other’s.

This explainer deliberately avoids printing specific dollar amounts for these limits, because the IRS adjusts them periodically and a number quoted here could be stale by the time you read it. What matters is the structure: your own deferral limit, an age-50 catch-up on top, and a combined ceiling for all sources. Two wrinkles are worth flagging. First, if you contribute to more than one plan in a year, your personal deferral limit generally applies across them combined, not to each. Second, the 403(b) has a special extra catch-up covered next. Confirm the current IRS limits for the year in question, including any catch-up amounts you qualify for, before setting your contribution. Our walkthrough on how much to contribute to a 401(k) covers how to choose a rate within whatever the limit turns out to be.

Catch-up contribution rules compared

Catch-up rules are where the 403(b) has a genuinely distinct feature. Both plans offer the standard age-50 catch-up, an extra amount you can contribute once you cross that age, and both are subject to a newer enhanced catch-up that recent legislation added for a specific older age band, which applies under its own rules and effective dates. So far the two plans match. The difference is a provision unique to the 403(b): a 15-years-of-service catch-up available to certain long-tenured employees of qualifying organizations such as school systems and hospitals.

The 15-year rule can let eligible employees contribute an additional amount above the standard limit, subject to lifetime and annual caps that make the actual usable figure specific to your service history and past contributions. It can potentially stack with the age-50 catch-up, though the interaction is governed by detailed ordering rules. A 401(k) has no equivalent to this service-based catch-up. Because the calculation depends on how long you have worked for the same qualifying employer and what you have already contributed, it is genuinely easy to miscalculate on your own. If you have long tenure at a nonprofit or school and want to use it, confirm your eligibility and the current caps with your plan administrator or a qualified professional rather than estimating.

Employer matching in each plan

Employer matching is not a legal difference between the two plan types, since both can offer a match, but it tends to look different in practice. Matching is extremely common in for-profit 401(k) plans, where it is a standard tool for attracting and retaining employees, and a typical structure might match a percentage of your contributions up to a share of your salary. In the nonprofit and public-sector world of the 403(b), matching exists but is less universal, and some employers instead offer a separate pension or a non-elective contribution rather than a match tied to your own deferrals. The specifics vary enormously by employer.

Whatever the structure, the rule is the same in both plans: contribute at least enough to capture the full match, because it is an immediate return on your money that no market can reliably promise. If your 403(b) or 401(k) matches your first few percent of pay, not contributing that much is leaving guaranteed compensation on the table. Where the plans differ is that a 403(b) saver is somewhat more likely to have a pension or a non-matching employer contribution in the mix, which changes how much of the retirement burden falls on their own deferrals. Check your specific plan’s match or contribution formula, and treat capturing it as the non-negotiable first step regardless of which plan you have.

Vesting and how it differs

Vesting refers to how much of your employer’s contributions you actually own if you leave, and it is a place where the two plans can diverge in practice even though the concept is identical. Your own contributions are always fully and immediately yours in both a 403(b) and a 401(k); vesting only ever applies to the employer’s money. A 401(k) match commonly comes with a vesting schedule, meaning you earn ownership of the employer contributions gradually over a few years of service, and you may forfeit the unvested portion if you leave early. This is a standard feature of many for-profit plans.

In the 403(b) world, vesting practices vary, and some plans, particularly certain governmental ones, vest employer contributions immediately or on a shorter schedule, while others use a graded schedule like a 401(k). Because there is no single rule that separates the two plan types on vesting, the only reliable move is to read your own plan’s vesting schedule. It matters most when you are considering leaving a job, since walking away before you are fully vested can mean forfeiting employer money you might otherwise keep by staying a bit longer. Neither plan type is inherently more generous here; the terms are set employer by employer, so check the document rather than the label.

Roth options inside each plan

Just as a 401(k) can offer a Roth 401(k) sub-account, a 403(b) can offer a Roth 403(b). In both cases the Roth option lets you contribute after-tax dollars, forgoing the up-front deduction, in exchange for qualified withdrawals in retirement that generally come out tax-free, including all the growth. Whether your specific plan actually offers the Roth version depends on your employer, so it is worth checking your plan documents rather than assuming one way or the other. Where it is available, you can often split your contributions between the pre-tax and Roth sides of the same plan.

The tax logic is the same one that governs any Roth-versus-traditional decision, and it mirrors the choice savers face with individual retirement accounts. Contributing after-tax now tends to favor people who expect their tax rate to be higher in retirement than it is today, such as younger savers early in their careers, while the pre-tax version tends to favor people in a high bracket now who expect a lower rate later. Because no one can know their future tax rate, some savers split the difference across both sides. Our explainer on Roth IRA vs traditional IRA walks through that tax-now-versus-tax-later trade-off in depth, and the same intuition applies inside a workplace plan.

A side-by-side comparison table

The table below summarizes how a 403(b) and a 401(k) line up across the differences that matter. Read every entry as a general tendency rather than an ironclad rule, because individual plans vary widely and the specific figures change over time. The point is to see the shape of the comparison at a glance before deciding how to use whichever plan you have.

Use the table as a map, not a verdict. The two rows that most often decide how much money you actually keep are typical fees and typical investments, which is why the next two charts zoom in on the cost side. Everything else being equal, the plan with lower all-in fees and a low-cost index option is the one working hardest for you, regardless of whether it is called a 403(b) or a 401(k).

Illustrative fee drag over 30 years

Fees are abstract until you see them compound. Picture an illustrative saver contributing $12,000 a year for thirty years, with investments earning a 7 percent annual return before fees. The all-in fee, everything the plan and its funds charge, comes straight off that return, so a 0.5 percent fee leaves 6.5 percent and a 2 percent fee leaves 5 percent. The chart below shows the ending balance at several illustrative fee levels, with the lowest-fee version as the reference bar. The dollars are simplified for teaching, but the shape is the whole point.

The bars make the argument that no amount of prose can: the same contributions, the same market, and only the fee differs, yet the ending balances spread out by hundreds of thousands of illustrative dollars. This is precisely why the historical 403(b) fee disadvantage mattered so much, and why a low-cost index option inside any plan is worth hunting for. Run your own contribution, timeline, and fee assumptions through the calculator to see how sensitive your own projection is to the number in the fee column.

Where your contribution dollar goes

Another way to see fee drag is to ask how much of the balance a fee-free version would have built actually survives after a high fee. Take the same illustrative saver: $12,000 a year for thirty years at a 7 percent return. With no fee at all, the balance would grow to roughly $1,134,000. With a 2 percent all-in fee, it grows to about $797,000. The stacked bar below splits that fee-free potential into the share you keep and the share given up to costs.

Seeing it this way reframes the fee conversation honestly: a fee is not a small annual nuisance, it is a standing claim on a share of everything your money would otherwise have become. The 30 percent here is a function of one high fee assumption over a long horizon; a lower fee shrinks the light slice dramatically. This is the strongest practical reason the 403(b)-versus-401(k) question is really a fee-and-menu question in disguise. Whichever plan you have, driving the fee down is the lever most directly under your control, and the calculator lets you watch the kept share grow as you lower the assumed cost.

Which is better, a 403(b) or a 401(k)?

The honest answer to which plan is better is that you almost never get to choose, so the more useful question is how to use whichever one you have. In the abstract, the 401(k) has historically held an edge, mainly on cost and investment quality, because ERISA fiduciary pressure and a mutual-fund heritage pushed it toward low-cost index options, while many 403(b) plans carried annuity baggage. If someone genuinely could pick between two otherwise identical plans, the lower-fee, index-fund-rich one would win, and historically that was more often the 401(k).

But that edge is a tendency, not a law, and it has narrowed. A modern 403(b) that offers a low-cost index fund and an employer match can easily outperform a mediocre, expensive 401(k). The features that actually determine your outcome are the all-in fees, the quality of the investment menu, and the size of any employer match, none of which is dictated by the plan type alone. So the better plan is the one that scores well on those three things, and the way to find out is to read your own plan’s fee disclosure and fund list rather than reason from the label. If you have moved between the nonprofit and for-profit worlds and hold one of each, compare them on fees and match, not on name.

Can you have both a 403(b) and a 401(k)?

Yes, having both is entirely possible, and it is more common than people expect. The usual paths are holding two jobs at once, one at a for-profit and one at a nonprofit, or carrying an old 401(k) from a former private-sector employer while contributing to a 403(b) at your current nonprofit. Nothing prevents you from owning both accounts, and an old plan of either type can sit invested for years while a new one grows alongside it. The two accounts do not interfere with each other in any structural way.

The rule to keep straight is the contribution limit. Your personal salary-deferral limit generally applies across both plans combined for the year, not separately to each, so contributing to two plans does not let you defer twice as much of your own money. Employer contributions and certain other ceilings are counted under their own rules, which is where the coordination gets technical, especially if both jobs offer a match. If you are actively funding two workplace plans in the same year, it is worth confirming the current combined deferral limit and, given the complexity, checking the details with a qualified professional so you do not accidentally over-contribute, which carries its own penalty until corrected.

Rolling over between a 403(b) and a 401(k)

When you leave an employer, you are rarely stuck with the old plan. A 403(b) can generally be rolled over into an IRA, and often into a new employer’s 401(k) or 403(b) if that plan accepts incoming rollovers, and the reverse is frequently possible: a 401(k) can roll into a 403(b) or an IRA. The mechanics mirror any retirement rollover, and the single most important rule is to use a direct trustee-to-trustee transfer, where the money moves straight from one custodian to the other without ever being paid to you. That avoids the mandatory withholding and the 60-day redeposit trap that can turn a rollover into a taxable distribution.

Keep the tax character intact by rolling pre-tax balances to pre-tax accounts and Roth balances to Roth accounts. One wrinkle specific to 403(b) plans is that some hold annuity contracts with surrender charges or transfer restrictions, so a balance you assumed was freely movable might carry a cost or a waiting period to move. Check for those before initiating anything. The steps for a clean transfer are the same ones our worksheet on rolling over a 401(k) lays out, and they apply just as well to a 403(b). Confirm the current rollover rules and any plan-specific restrictions, and when in doubt, have the receiving custodian pull the money so the transfer stays direct.

Early withdrawals and RMDs

Both plans are built for retirement, and both discourage early access the same way. Generally, withdrawing from a 403(b) or a 401(k) before retirement age triggers ordinary income tax plus a 10 percent early-withdrawal penalty, unless a specific exception applies, and the set of exceptions is broadly similar across the two. This is by design: the tax advantages exist to keep the money working until retirement, and reaching in early sacrifices exactly the compounding you opened the account to capture. Some plans also offer loans, which have their own rules and risks, but a loan is not the same as a withdrawal.

On the back end, both plan types are generally subject to required minimum distributions, the rules that force taxable money out of pre-tax retirement accounts once you reach a certain age. Roth sub-accounts inside these plans have been treated differently under evolving rules, and the RMD starting age itself has shifted more than once in recent legislation. Because the withdrawal penalties, their exceptions, and the RMD ages are all set by the IRS and have changed, treat any specific figure as illustrative and confirm the current rules before taking money out or planning around a required distribution. Our explainer on 401(k) withdrawal timing covers the access rules in more depth, and they largely carry over to a 403(b).

A worked example: two savers, two plans

Make it concrete with two illustrative savers. Priya is a high school teacher with a 403(b). Her plan offers both an old-style annuity option charging an illustrative 2 percent all-in and a newer low-cost index fund charging about 0.3 percent. By reading the menu and choosing the index fund, she keeps the fee drag small, and over decades her balance tracks close to the top bar in the fee chart rather than the bottom one. Her plan is a 403(b), but her outcome is driven by the option she picked inside it, not by the plan’s name.

Marcus works at a private company with a 401(k) that matches his first few percent of pay and defaults him into a low-cost target-date fund. He captures the full match, leaves the default in place, and contributes steadily. His plan is a 401(k), and it happens to score well on the three things that matter: low fees, a decent menu, and a match. If Priya and Marcus compared plans, they would find their real difference is not 403(b) versus 401(k) but the fees and match inside each, and both did the right thing by finding the low-cost option and grabbing the match. The figures are illustrative and the rules change, so both should confirm the current limits and their own plan’s costs.

Common mistakes comparing the two

A handful of errors recur when people weigh a 403(b) against a 401(k). The first is assuming one plan type is automatically better and choosing a job or a rollover on that basis, when the features that matter, fees, menu, and match, are set plan by plan, not by the label. The second is ignoring fees entirely, defaulting into whatever option is presented, and unknowingly parking money in a high-cost annuity when a low-cost index fund sits one line down the menu. Over decades, that single oversight can cost a large share of the balance, as the fee chart shows.

Two more are worth naming. People often treat the contribution limit as per-plan when they hold both a 403(b) and a 401(k), and accidentally over-defer across the two, creating an excess contribution that must be corrected. And many overlook the 403(b)’s special 15-year service catch-up, leaving contribution room on the table if they qualify, or conversely assume it applies when it does not. Avoiding these mistakes takes attention rather than expertise: read your fee disclosure, find the low-cost option, capture the match, coordinate your limit across plans, and confirm the current IRS rules. For a decision this consequential, a qualified professional can sanity-check the details.

Using a 403(b) vs 401(k) calculator

A 403(b)-versus-401(k) calculator is really a fee-and-contribution calculator in disguise, because the two plans grow identically once you strip the labels away. What it does well is let you enter a contribution, a timeline, an assumed return, and an all-in fee for each plan, then project the ending balance so you can see how the fee difference alone reshapes the outcome. Because the underlying math is the same compound-growth engine for both plan types, the comparison lives entirely in the fee and match assumptions you feed it. The calculator on this page runs that compound-growth math, so you can watch how a sustainable contribution grows over one, two, or three decades.

What no calculator can do is tell you which plan you will be offered, since that depends on your employer, or predict your future return, which markets decide. Treat any figure it produces as illustrative, vary the fee assumption to see how sensitive your balance is to cost, and remember that a match, if you have one, changes the picture in your favor before fees even enter. The value is in understanding the levers, the fee and the match, rather than trusting a single projected number. Confirm the current IRS limits and your own plan’s actual fees before relying on any specific result.

The bottom line

403(b) vs 401(k) comes down to one honest fact: the plans are near-twins, and which one you have is decided by your employer’s tax status, not by a difference in how retirement saving works. A 403(b) serves nonprofits, schools, colleges, hospitals, and churches; a 401(k) serves for-profit companies. The differences that actually change your balance are fees and investment options, where the 403(b) historically carried annuity baggage and the 401(k) leaned toward low-cost index funds, though that gap has narrowed. ERISA coverage, the 403(b)’s special 15-year catch-up, and varied vesting and match practices round out the distinctions, but none of them overrides the core lesson: the better plan is the one with lower fees, a solid match, and a low-cost menu, whatever its name. Every dollar figure, percentage, and limit here is a teaching illustration rather than a current rule, and the IRS limits change, so confirm the present figures and, for a choice this personal, bring your specifics to a qualified professional. Put your own numbers into the calculator and see the fee difference for yourself.

This explainer is educational only and is not financial, tax, investment, or legal advice. The rules that separate a 403(b) from a 401(k), including elective deferral and catch-up limits, the 15-years-of-service catch-up, ERISA coverage, vesting schedules, employer-match structures, required minimum distribution ages, early-withdrawal penalties and their exceptions, and rollover treatment, are set by the IRS and other authorities and change over time, so read every dollar figure, percentage, and fee here as an illustration meant to show the structure of the decision, never as a current figure or a forecast. The $12,000 contribution, 7 percent return, thirty-year horizon, and the 0.25 to 2 percent fees used in the charts and examples are simplified for teaching and assume steady contributions and returns that real markets, real plans, and real tax law will not deliver exactly. Annuity products, surrender charges, and plan-specific fee structures vary widely and can change the math considerably. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Before choosing investments within a plan, coordinating contributions across two plans, rolling money between accounts, or making any withdrawal, confirm the current IRS limits and consult a qualified professional, such as a fee-only fiduciary planner and a tax advisor, for guidance built around your own circumstances.