Financial advisor Laurie Siebert cringed when an acquaintance said her husband, age 57, had just withdrawn $55,000 from his individual retirement account. He had previously set up the IRA with funds from a 401(k).

“He’s going to hear from the [Internal Revenue Service],” said Siebert, a certified financial planner and senior vice president at Valley National Group. “If he had left the money in his 401(k) instead of rolling it into an IRA, he could have taken the distribution without paying a 10 percent penalty.”