Roth IRA question

[ApatheticNoMore]

Ok currently I have a one Roth IRA in mutual funds at an investment company. My confusion is: say I wanted to start diversifying Roth IRA investments over not just that fund but say for instance a bank account or a fund at another brokerage etc.. Is it possible to put money into different Roth IRAs in the same year, like $1000 here and $1000 there or whatever? How does that work? How does the government keep track of when you have exceeded your maximum IRA investments for the year? No, I'm not going to cheat on my taxes this way, that would be silly, I know all this stuff is ultimately reported, but I'm just not clear in understanding how it all works if you have multiple Roth IRAs.

My real question is: is diversifying Roth IRA investments like this, even within the same year, something you are even allowed to do?

[catccc]

Usually there are choices that will allow you to diversify within one bank/investment company/brokerage/organization, so you might not need to fund elsewhere. A Roth is just a label to indicate the rules under which your investment is taxed, how much you can contribute, what and when you can take it out... If you invest with Vanguard, Vanguard has multiple types of investments you can split your Roth into, with different mixes of stocks and bonds, etc. American Funds also has an array of choices. If you put 1K into a bond fund in your Roth with Vanguard, and 1K into a bond fund with American Funds, that isn't diversifying, really. You can put 1K in a bond fund and 1K in a stock fund, all in Vanguard, and you are diversifying. Sorry if you already understood this, it didn't seem apparent from your post if this was clear.

But if you choose to fund with a different brokerage or bank, where it goes doesn't affect the limits. Each organization to which you contribute is responsible for submitting a form 5498 that states your contributions for the year to you and the IRS. So just make sure you stay within the limits, and you'll be fine.