My wife is leaving her company for another here in a few months. She has a 403b with her current employer that we intend to rollover to her new company. The new company will not allow her to enroll on their Retirement Savings Program until she's spent 12 months with the company.

My question is, how can we max out her 403b for this year? My thought was rollover to Fidelity and max it out for this year and when she's allowed to enroll in her new employer's program roll it over there, if that's even possible/legal.

Anyone have any insight or suggestions?

Max it out now while she's still employed and contributing. At Fidelity, it will just be a rollover IRA.

Yes, just roll it over to an IRA rather than the new employer 401k. This will allow you to diversify.

Also, depending on how the money in the 4013b is invested, you may not be able to withdraw the money all at once. Some of my 403b investments were in annuities that have to be distributed in a monthly basis over something like 15-20 years. My 403b was with TIAA, and they are handling all of the transfers to my new IRA, but that money just sits with TIAA and can't grow. It's not a huge chunk of my account, but it caught me very much by surprise that I couldn't pull it all out in one rollover.

Also, if you roll the 403b over to an IRA and have been making backdoor Roth contributions (through a separate IRA), you will no longer be able to do that without paying taxes on the contribution (even if it is after-tax money). The IRS treats all of your IRAs as one account. Once you have one with the 403b rollover, you can't pass through after-tax funds through an IRA and get the tax benefit. The IRA will treat anything that goes through an IRA as pre-tax contributions.

A way around this is to make mega backdoor Roth contributions to the new employer 401k after you max out your pre-tax contributions (if they allow for it - not all employers do).