There is a limit to yearly contributions. You may have created a worse problem by having it sent to your bank account rather than doing the transfer to the various accounts. Get any documentation that was sent to you and look at it. You will probably find that taxes and the penalty for early withdrawal were taken out of the money in the original account. What you do then is up to you.

No, maifleur, you're on the wrong track

angel, there's a procedure called a "tax free rollover" which is what's used to move an IRA balance from one financial institution to another. As the name says, it's tax free. There is no dollar limit on how much can be moved but it may be doable only one time per year (that's unclear but it's the IRS's position) and I think a rollover has to go to just one destination, and not three, but on that I'm not sure. It is a procedure, it needs to be done a certain way, but this is vanilla and a daily event to any institution holding IRA and other retirement plan balances.

Your local bank should NEVER let you do what you did, they should have cautioned you.

My suggestion at this point is you may need to get a CPA to help you, and expect in advance than many will have no experience with this. I would also go to the bank, tell them you relied on them and they let you down. Next, try to completely unwind what you did by closing the accounts you opened and getting the money back into the local bank IRA in its entirety. The local bank needs to cooperate with you to allow you to do this.

Then, start all over again. When you do a tax free rollover, the check for the full balance is usually made payable to the institution the new account is located, not to you. Send the check to one place - Vanguard is a good choice.

If you're not able to unwind and start again, you won't be happy with the outcome. What you've done is called an "early withdrawal of the IRA" since you're not yet 59 1/2. In addition to the gross amount being subject to income tax for you this year (which is always the case when an IRA account is distributed), the early withdrawal causes you to be subejct to an added 10% penalty. That's why you want to unwind what was done and start again. I hope it's possible but maybe not

Good luck, report back how you fare.

If I am on the wrong track why did you reword and repeat what I said? Is it because I asked him to look at what was sent to him to verify what he had done? The yearly contribution amount is an explanation of why he received the message. At one time you could roll over from one account to as many accounts as you wanted to just not receive the money then split it.

I am more than disappointed in our bank. They didn't tell me anything. I signed the papers to close the account, she handed me a deposit slip and told me to have a nice weekend.

Several years ago I tried to talk a friend out of doing the same thing. They were afraid they would loose every thing during one of the market downturns.

Yes, one can lose value when markets drop, as well as gain value when markets rise.

The point of putting money into shares is that over time, money in stocks almost always provides a greater return than simple cash investments in the form of bank accounts or debt/bonds. The key is "over time". Choose a few funds of different types, those with high Morningstar ratings, and them leave them alone, don't even check quotes periodically. The experts suggest that younger investors should typically go for more risk and favor stock balances over debt while older investors approaching retirement age should have shifted their portfolios to emphasize debt investments (less return but more stability of principal). Not exclusively one or the other, in either case.