Make that: "The price of X also incorporates fund expenses, etc....Putting Y
as the symbol for download will result in erroneous information."

"Chris Cowles" <NoSpam[at]For.me> wrote in message
news:uLM$AZ1eEHA.140[at]TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Some retirement funds that invest in a single mutual fund don't match the
share price exactly. So, even if 401k fund X invests solely in mutual fund
Y, the share price of X may not equal Y. The price of Y also incorporates
fund expenses, etc. The only place to get the price of Y is from account
statements or the fund manager's web site. Putting X as the symbol for
download will result in erroneous information.

That is the case of a fund I held not long ago. My current fund price is
expressed as price of the underlying fund, which I can download.

"David Harrison-Rand" <nospam[at]s0n1c.net.com> wrote in message
news:41113aee$0$200$45beb828[at]newscene.com...
- quote -

Glad we could help. Thanks for the feedback.

"Kenneth" <Kenneth[at]parNOSPAMONMEdue.com> wrote in message
news:10h3cnocnnv72f9[at]corp.supernews.com...
- quote -

David Harrison-Rand wrote:
- quote -

I just wanted to reply to Dick and David about their advice. Thank you
VERY much. It was very informative reading, certainly going to go in my
"for future reference" file. Beyond this though, it helped to build my
confidence that I am more or less heading in the right direction.

I also wanted to note why my numbers were never reaching that of the
statement. I found a detailed transaction summary, and it seems that
her employer makes a payment to the investment company once a month.
After playing with several different combinations (for two and a half
hours), I was finally able to match up all of her transactions and
discovered two mistakes: during one month, they paid (and contributed)
twice out of one paycheck, and during the next month, they omitted one
payment (and contribution) out of a paycheck. In the end, it turned out
to our advantage because we gained $6 off of the mistake, but the
problem definitely merits further analytical attention as long as she's
working for this company! I feel like I've definitely gained from
looking at these statements and managing it in Money.

Many, many, many thanks to you.

Best,
Kenneth

- quote -

They are probably mutual funds. You should get your wife to talk to the
plan administrator at her company to find out which financial insitution
handles the plan and use their website or www.morningstar.com get the ticker
symbols (usually 5 letters for a mutual fund) and lots of other data. Money
can then keep track of the current value. Some funds don't have tickers
because they aren't meant for trading so don't worry if you cant find
symbols for all of them.

- quote -

This is a rouning effect that hapens because Money is using more decimal
places than your 401(k) provider in the number of shares field (if you check
your statement with a calculator you will see that the math will be slightly
off). I let Money work out the price for me as it is the least important
number. That way the cash portion is correct, and the number of shares I
own are the same as on my statements.

- quote -

My employer doesn't pu the match on my pay stub, but when I see it on my
401(k) statement I just create a deposit into the contributions account, and
then add the share purchases.

- quote -

My paper statements usually take a few weeks from the "as of" date to get to
my door in addition it seems to take our payroll dept between 2-4 weeks to
actually send the contributions in to the 401(k) firm. This causes my
account in money to appear that it has a large cash ballance, which will
never show on the statements.

- quote -

I used the "Add Shares" function recently when my wife (who never used Money
in the past) wanted to begin to keep track of her investments. I really
didn't want to add her paychecks for the past 5 years, so I just wen through
her statements to get the dates and ammount of shares for her previous
transaction without having to use Money to journal cash from one place to
another.

- quote -

It took

You pose a lot of questions. I will attempt some answers inline below.

"Kenneth" <Kenneth[at]parNOSPAMONMEdue.com> wrote in message
news:10gu5s3jpe1tu5f[at]corp.supernews.com...
- quote -

So far, so good.

- quote -

I think you've identified the differences. They are just different ways to
get there.

- quote -

The things you list ("SA12Gov'tCpBd") Money considers Investments. For
purposes of a 401k, they are probably all best created as Mutual
Funds--that's really what they are. The style of investment ("Aggressive
Growth") just gives you some point of reference for considering the risk
level and nature of your investments.

Ideally, you can get to the point where all of the contributions get to the
contributions cash account and then you can schedule/enter investment
purchases so that the statements just confirm the transactions you've
already entered.

- quote -

Well, probably not. Your method of using the $1 share is probably easiest
over time. You can also just let Money figure the price itself--leave that
blank and enter the total transaction amount and the units and let Money
figure the price. Depending on the plan and its investments, the $1 shares
may be easier to deal with over time.

- quote -

The best bet is outlined at http://umpmfaq.info/faqdb.php?q=14.

- quote -

This is a tough one--there could be a LOT of things at work here. The most
likely bet is that your paycheck entries in Money and her statements don't
synchronize as to time periods. Let's say that you have paychecks for every
week from April 1 through June 30 in Money, and the statement claims to
cover the same period of time--but there's a delay in handling her
contributions of a month. (Mine delays like clockwork one week plus any
holiday in that week, my wife's delays some random number of days according
to what her office's payroll person does.) I think your best bet here is to
speak to the plan administrator. Once you acocunt for things like the delays
mentioned above, you should be able to match these penny for penny. If I had
ANY doubt about the employer's integrity or accounting (which I always do),
I'd make reconciling your differences here a priority until you understand
what's going on. But it is entirely possible that your cash balance at any
point in time will lead the statement cash balance. Just like balancing a
cash account, the secret is to figure out what you know about that is and
isn't included in the statement.

- quote -

The Add Shares entry gets your Money account share balance to match the
statement unit balance you told Money about. In a perfect world you'd get to
the point where these are not needed because your other transactions account
for how all of the units got there. Until you get there, these account for
all of the investment units that you did not have Buy transactions to cover.
If you use/continue to use the $1 shares, then Add/Remove share transactions
are necessary to account for changes in market value. E.g., you bought 1,000
shares for $1 each but now they are only worth $950, still at the $1
each--therefore you have to have fewer shares to get the thing to work out.
A Remove Shares transaction gets there. Note that the Account Summary|Update
account tool is MUCH BETTER at dealing with this case (among others) than
the 401k Manager.

The other investment transaction activities mostly won't apply to a 401k,
but do apply to other investments/types of investment accounts. For a 401k,
you might have to use Remove Shares if, say, some expenses lop off shares.
You might have to use Sell activities to rebalance your investments or take
out a loan or rollover the plans.

- quote -

401Ks are one of the two most involved things to model in Money. I've
started work to create a page for the unofficial FAQ (http://umpmfaq.info)
just as a tutorial to 401ks and many of these exact same issues but it's
just a huge topic and I don't have that much free time. It sounds like you
are well along the way. Post back more questions as you get this sorted out.

My wife and I have been married for all of four months, and we're both
seeking to be more efficient and organized with our money from the
start. She has had a 401(k) plan for several months, but I have yet to
get it to come out balanced from within Money (2004 Deluxe). Neither of
us have any investing experience, but we're both willing to learn,
probably via a "For Dummies" type course. ;-)

We've set up a 401(k) plan properly, as far as I can tell, via Money's
401(k) Manager feature. We've also been transferring the proper amount
from her paycheck to the 401(k) Contributions account set up by Money.

That's where the trouble comes in. I'll list several questions here (if
anyone is kind enough to take the time to read them):

1. I'm afraid I'm having trouble grasping the difference and/or
separation between the "Review your 401(k) or 401(b) account" and the
account page for the 401(k) account (i.e., the page where there are
three options on the left side under View: Account Summary, Investment
Transactions, and Cash Transactions). They both show information about
our 401(k), but the former seems to show less detail and allows me to
update my account. Could someone explain to me the difference?

2. I can seem to "balance" my account through the 401(k) manager, but
when I do, I have to enter information for the share transactions. I'm
not sure how to understand the "What type of investment is it?" section.
My statement breaks these investments into sections such as Current
Income, Growth and Income, Growth, and Aggressive Growth. I'm guessing
this isn't the same thing. Otherwise, the investments' names are in the
manner of "SA12Gov'tCpBd", "SA21Balanced", "SA35FidVIPCon", etc. How
would I be able to determine what types they are, beyond guessing that
Bd could mean Bond???

3. In balancing, Money's idea of what Quantity * Price = Market value
comes up to be a penny or two off from what the statement says.
Unfortunately, Money won't let me tweak the Market Value to be what it
reflects in my statement, it gives me an error message, and the only
solution is to leave Quantity and Price blank and have Money fill in
Quantity with the same value as Market Value, and Price = 1. Is there
something I'm doing incorrect here?

4. As mentioned before, my wife's paycheck contributes money to the
Contributions account. However, I have as of yet seen no place to enter
employee matching, also. Is there a way to add this and make it
harmonize with my statement?

5. Most importantly, I can never seem to get the numbers to match up
from what she's contributed to the Contributions account from her
paycheck, and what the statement says she's contributed. The numbers
are quite different, and upon balancing the account, there's always an
"Account Adjustment" in the "Cash Transactionos section". I thought it
may have been because of her employer matching 100%, but they show a
breakdown of what she's contributed, what her employer has matched, and
a total of both... and it's nowhere near any of those numbers. Oddly
enough, balancing always reduces the value of Cash Transactions to 0.
Are my numbers that far off, or is it supposed to appear that way?

6. Finally, on the Investment Transactions section... I notice that
balancing my account always has an Activity of "Add Shares". Out of
curiousity, why is this appropriate and where would I use the other
activities?

I'm guessing the easiest thing would be to just leave 401(k) out and let
Money manage checking accounts as best it can, but I do have a desire to
be as concise as possible, and wish to do things right going in to save
any potential problems later. I appreciate the time in reading my
lengthy post, and even more so if there are folks who take the time to
respond.

Best,
Ken