re: Cashing out retirement pension - Options

I have no tax training but don't you have to pay income tax and likely 10% penalty on early retirement cash out unless it's a rollover?

Seems like a better option might be direct rollover to a traditional IRA. You could do conversions into Roth afterwards by paying the taxes due using non retirement money. Thus getting the entire balance into Roth IRA and preserving your Roth IRA annual contribution limit.

You didn't mention the student loan interest rate. Thats more important than the balance unless you are committing to the snowball method.