Somehow Money detects incorrectly that I'm working offline,which I'm not. I
checked the help file and the help indicates to make sure the work offline
check box on teh sign-in page is not checked. The problem is the check box is
missing.

Thanls

CORRECTION - SEE BELOW IN CAPS

"MikeyFrat" wrote:

- quote -

Dick, I don't see a quantity field on the renew cd screen , just value,
interest, commission and total fields. the value amount does carry over into
the quantity field on the account summary though. So I'll assume value =
quantity for cd's.
So using ur example I had originally entered:

Redemption amt = $1075
reinvest interest = 75 (I have two reinvest transactions in the
register of $37.50
each - why would you enter just $37.50?)
Value = 1000 original buy amount

If you enter as I listed above, the transactions work but the account total
is overstared by 37.50 and the account summary shows the matured cd with
market value of $37.50 and the newly renewed cd with MV $1075.00, Your option
or my other option where Reinvest interest = 0 and value = 1075 work fine.
I think the difference between your option and my second option is that I
have entered the second interest amount into the register as a reinvest and
so should leave the interest field as zero in the renew cd transaction while
you have it as interest not posted/accrued (reinvest) at time of maturity and
use the interest field in the renew cd screen for that amount.

I think I understand it now, so don't waste time replying unless I'm screwed
up. It's amazing how one can screw it up just enough to come up with the
right answer. Or so I think. Anyway writing helps me think and your replies
helped get me to the answer. Thanks for the help.

Mike


"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

What I was doing was one accrual via Reinvest Interest and one embedded in
the Renew CD. I'm not sure which is better. I was just playing around to see
what worked how. All I do know is that the Redeem CD has to have a quantity
equal to the Buy+any Reinvest values and the Total has to be the redemption
amount and any difference has to go in the Interest element of the Redeem
CD.

Your point about reusing CD Investment names is probably valid. I've never
messed with CDs, so I haven't worked out what works best for me. But my
initial reaction is to treat them the way I treat Savings Bonds. If I buy 10
$100 12-2004 bonds, I call them 10 units at $50 per. I'm wondering as I type
if I could treat the CDs the same way and buy qty 1 at a value of 1000?
Can't test here, though. Maybe tonight?

"MikeyFrat" <MikeyFrat[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:EBB85E8C-43D1-462F-9169-C4F17A64BD8F[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Thanks. I'll keep this in mind

"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

Thanks Dick. I duplicated your test case in my file and it works though I
can't see why you would enter the interest as 37.50 rather than 75.00 in the
renew cd screen. i guess I could think of the last interest increment as
never accrueing to the original cd, but rather acrrueing and rolling over
simultaneouly to the new cd. Though that doesn't seem intuitive to me. I'll
think some more and maybe see the logic.

If I understand you correctly, I'm not sure why, with respect to doing a
renew cd transaction manually, you'd want to name and track a new cd AND a
rollover as the SAME investment name since that would seem to not line up
with your bank statement. But maybe thats just a personal preference thing
where you're grouping like investments together? Or was it to illustrate
adding additional investment to an existing CD at maturity? Your test does
illustrate a point however and points well taken. Thanks again...
Mike

"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

BTW, I should note that I was a little surprised that entering interest in
the Redeem CD transaction forced Money to demand a cash account to account
for the interest. (As it did in Renew CD. I thought maybe this was peculiar
to Renew CD and not an underlying limitation. Wrong again.)

I'm still not entirely clear why this must be so. It's willing to map the
Reinvest Interest to the Tools|Options|Investments|Investment Categories
(M04 path) specified category (Investment Income:Interest, by default)
without a cash account. For some reason, it refuses to do the same thing on
Redeem CD with interest. It refuses EVEN IF THERE IS $0 interest specified.
I guess that's Just Another Money Quirk that we must live with.

Glad to hear you are sorting this out. Thanks for the feedback.

Several comments inlined below.

"MikeyFrat" <MikeyFrat[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:03DD95C1-B83D-45CE-B2DD-AFD5429813AF[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Here was my test case:

I bought 1000 of "6 mo CD" for $1,000.

I did a Reinvest Interest of 37.5 for $37.50

I did a Renew CD for $1,075 with $37.5 of interest specified. You have to do
this backward or Money will start solving the equation. Enter the last
Interest increment, enter the total renewal amount and Money will set the
"amount" at the amount already accrued via the reinvest interest
transactions. Once I saw how it wanted to do this, I knew that would be how
to get this to sort out--but that's probably because I know how Money does
this in other investment transactions.

- quote -

Were I doing this, I don't know if I'd use the Renew CD activity. This
really doesn't add much value on the cycle of redeem with interest, create
new investment, buy new investment. In fact, that's all it does. It does
save steps (mostly typing out the date, the name of a new investment--which
you have to do anyway unless you accept their naming convention-- "buy" and
the quantity invested), but the end result is exactly the same. There is
nothing about the new investment that Renew CD creates that you can't create
yourself and it does LIMIT you to HAVING to create a new investment.

(I can imagine some scenarios where this is not what I'd want. Say I am
buying the same maturity and rate in two separate CDs this month, one as a
new CD, one as a rollover. I create the new CD for the new buy. I'd want to
use the same investment for the rollover. Renew CD won't let me do this.
Doing what Renew CD does by hand will. It's yet another case where a Wizard
in Money precludes you from entering perfectly permissible and sensible
transactions that you can enter by hand.)

I agree (and noted so earlier in the thread) that a new investment for every
CD cycle is probably a good thing. I guess my point is that there are other
ways to get there besides Renew CD (which is really just doing this other
stuff for you anyway).

Well you said the magic words: "Reinvest interest." So I guess it was mostly
me and not the software. I was entering interest with the straight interest
transaction instead. The reinvest interest does what I want which is to show
the total value of the principal and interest combined on the account list
and the investment reports. I didn't check the net worth but I would assume
the combined amount flows through there also.

Also when in the investment register, if I click on account summary I can
see the individual totals for each CD or investment which I can verify to my
bank statement.

I used the Renew CD option also, but I didn't see any interest entries (as
you said below)to my cash register - just the sell/buy in and out amount for
the total of the principal and interest to that point. However I couldn't
get the renew cd transaction to work according to the help instructions which
said to enter the CD value without interest in the value field and the
interest separately in the interest field. So, I combined the amounts and
entered it just into the value field and that seemed to work. Maybe I'm
misinterpreting the help screen. I'll play some more.

One should definitely use the renew cd option because I think you'd want the
new investment defined separately as you stated below so you can see
performance and balances on the most recent renewed CD separately from the
older iterations which have matured. And you must have a cash register to
use the renew option. Thanks for the tip on the Reinvest interest. I should
have seen that, so sorry for torturing you with the long emails.

Thanks,
Mike

"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

I did just play around with the Renew CD activity (in M04). Indeed, as I
suspected, this is really just cover for three transactions:

1) It pays some interest to the cash account, if the value of the redemption
exceeds the principle value accounted for
2) It defines a new investment
3) It enters a buy transaction of that investment

"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote in
message news:uR09xds5EHA.532[at]TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
....
- quote -

Wow. Let me try to answer these inline.

"MikeyFrat" <MikeyFrat[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:FF501E27-7DB9-447F-A4B1-D75731DAF3FE[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

CDs are Investments. Investments are held in Investment Accounts. You create
three things. 1) An Investment Accounts. 2) An Investment--which is just a
definition of a type of investment which you may or may not even hold. 3) A
position in an Investment held in an Investment Account--the intersection of
the above.

- quote -

Yes, insofar as that goes. Money does not add a lot of value when tracking
CDs as an investment.

- quote -

So far so good.

- quote -

Maybe. See below.

- quote -

Maybe, see below.

- quote -

See below.

- quote -

It does? I haven't messed with it. I'm not surprised since it has to do
something like a Sell, put the proceeds somewhere, then do another Buy of a
potentially new investment from the proceeds.

- quote -

I'm thinking the secret is defining a new Investment when you roll it over.

- quote -

An Investment Account has a register. An Investment does not. Principal for
a CD gets recurded as a Buy transaction for a given Investment in an
Investmetn Account. I'd record interest as a Reinvest Interest transaction
in the same Investment Account register. If you have ten different CDs in
account, that's ten different transactions, each specifying the specific CD
in question.

- quote -

If you have done what I'd do, then, yes, all these Investments are held in
the same Investment Account, hence all Reinvest Interest transactions go in
the same register. This will make it difficult to reconcile each CD, but you
can go to the Account Summary page for the investment account and it should
list the current value for each CD.

- quote -

I'd think not directly as you wrote it. The Investment Account Summary page
will get you part way there in that it will list the current value per
investment inclusive of, say, Reinvest Interest activities for each CD.
Investment Accounts and their Investment holdings are much better reported
by the investment reports. I suspect there is some combination there that
will get you what you want. Net Worth, as you've noted, aggregate the
Investment Accounts. The Investment reports do not. Since the CDs are all
you have in the file, the Investment reports will show all that matters.

- quote -

I guess I can believe that you might have to have a cash register for a
Renew CD activity. (I can't do a testcase here to verify and I've never had
CDs as Investments in Money.) It won't be a big drag to have one. I'd
probably try to use the Renew CD activity since that's what it's there for
and if this implied an associated cash account, so be it. I'm not sure what
you mean about the reporting interest in the account list part. The Account
List should reflect the current value of the Investment Account as reported
in its Account Summary page.

- quote -

How are you entering the monthly interest amounts? As Reinvest Interest
transactions, one for each CD, in the Investment Account register?

- quote -

Probably some of all three. Bear with it and hopefully we will get you
there.

Since you are discussing setting up a Cd as an Investment account, I'd like
to chime in here on some additional issues/questions i have:

I believe I understood that you can have several CD's, i.e., as separate
"investments", listed under one investment account and that using an
investment account to track cd's allows you to take advantage of the
investment/portfolio analysis capabilities of Money 2004.

However, when entering the interest earned on a monthly basis, I believe
interest for each and all CD's in that investment account get entered to the
same investment register of that account. Also I've turned off the cash
transactions register as I believe it is useless as I don't need to show
transfers from other accounts since I am only setting up existing Cd's in my
initial money file and will probably let the cd's rollover automatically at
maturity which brings me to another issue of using the "Renew Cd" transaction
which i will discuss later.

Now if interest for all cd's gets entered to the same investment register,
that makes it inconvenient to check your math since the investment register
doesn't include interest in the account total and even if it did it would be
the sum of all cd's so that I couldn't check my math/data entry against my
bank statement individually for each CD. Am I missing something here?

Also it seems that neither the account list page or any of the investment
performance reports show you the combined value of the original CD investment
(principal) and the interest for each cd. The net worth reports also exclude
the interest and include just the principal.

IF I chose instead to track my CD activity only in the cash transaction
register, then the account list page shows the combined principal and
interest of the cash account but then nothing shows up on the investment
reports which seem to be driven by the investment register. And I would still
have the same issue of not being able to check the total of each cd
separately against my bank statement.

As far as using the "renew cd" option. This feature becomes useless in my
setup of the cd's since i have the cash trans. register turned off and the
renew cd feature needs to makes entries to both the cash and investment
registers.
Now I can't update the dates and rates for each CD as a result. What am I
sacrificing by doing it this way?

To summarise my questions:

1)Do both the principal and interest get recorded in the investment register
of the investment account? Or should interest go to the cash transaction
register which contradicts the help direction in Money 2004?

2)Does that same activity for all Cd's go into the same register or is there
a way to keep each cd separate in order be able to verify totals separately
for each cd against my bank statement?

3)Is there a way to see individual totals for each cd for the combined
principal and interest on the accounts list page and the investment and net
worth reports or am I just doing something wrong above? Or will the new
principal include the interest only when the cd matures once a "renew cd"
tranaction is entered?

4)Do I ignore the "renew cd" functionality if it turns out that I leave the
cash trans. register turned off? I think I need to have the cash register
turned on for this and to report interest on the accounts list.

To test/illustrate the above i simply created two individual $10000 cd's
under the same investment account and I entered a handful of monthly interest
amounts into the same investment register along with the $10000 "buy"
transactions.

Sorry for the lenghty note, but it seems there is a shortfall in the way
Money 2004 handles cd's or else the help instructions are not adequate in
describing treatment of cd's. Or maybe it's just me.

Thanks,
Mike

"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

Were I you, I'd definitely try to NOT use a bank that's listed. All that
does is get Money started on a path to assume you will download transaction
data, potentially by going through Yodlee and mandatory storage of your data
on MSN web servers to do so.

There is nothing about what you want to do (save maybe downloading the data)
that isn't as easy or easier and completely functional without specifying a
financial institution for your CD.

If you have an Investment Account created, in the account's register, enter
a transaction as follows:

Enter a date, tab to Investment, enter a name like "12/04 6 mo CD", the
wizard will appear to define the CD. It will first ask type. Tell it "CD or
US Savings Bond". On the next panel, enter the specifics. Use Buy as the
"Activity". Tab to quantity and enter $1,000 in my case. Tab to the Transfer
field, enter the account the money came from. Done.

"Mike Wilkinson" <MikeWilkinson[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C51C4E8F-48EE-4EE9-8319-D32BD74AC5EF[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Thanks for the reply. I am very frustrated with M05 because even though I
searched the online and offline help resources, I did not find anything that
explained investment accounts and investments like you did.

Unfortunately, after much trial and error, I had more or less figured out
what you wrote. Now I believe the problem starts when I tell the program that
my bank is not listed. I get a series of dialog boxes that are different than
if I tell it the bank is listed.

I know this because just as an experiment I selected one of the banks that
are listed. Then I saw a dialog box that asked for the started date, interest
rate, when the interest is paid and the maturity date. I never saw that
dialog when I told the program that my bank was not listed.

I need to experiment some more, but my first impression is that I need to
enter a bank that is listed (even though it is not really my bank) and go
from there.

If that is true, it stinks!

Thanks again for your efforts to help.

Mike Wilkinson


"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

The CD is an "Investment" in Money parlance. First you setup an "Investment
Account" to associate the "Investments" with. Then you create
"Investments"--this just defines an investment, like a CD or a stock or a
mutual fund without regard to how much of it you hold. Then you "Buy" units
of an "Investment" in an "Investment Account." This permits you to, say,
hold different CDs with different maturities and interest rates at the same
time in the same investment account. This also permits, say, you to buy 8
$1,000 CDs at the same time.

Help?

"Mike Wilkinson" <Mike Wilkinson[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:496891A2-568F-4502-9B35-46B14FCBF0F3[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

I can usually figure out how to use new software, but I'm new to Money 2005
and I am completely baffled about how to enter a CD account.

In Portfolio Manager I do this:
Work With Accounts/Add an Account/Investment(general)/My bank isn't listed.

Then I click on "My bank... isn't listed" and I enter a name for the account.

Then I get a dialog box asking if I want to add an investment now. What does
that mean? I want to enter a start date, interest rate, maturity date of a CD!

I'd appreciate suggestions.