The Roth IRA was one of the better laws to come out of Congress in recent years, but it has some non-inflation adjusted income limits in it. For example, if your adjusted gross income was over $100,000, you weren't allowed to convert your conventional IRA to a Roth. According to this source, if your family income is over $160,000, you can't contribute to a Roth IRA at all. They did change the law to increase the donation limits (they'd been stuck at $2000/year for over 20 years) but those income limits are still there. They may not bite most people today, but if they don't adjust those numbers for inflation, they will get most people eventually.