Ignoring for a moment that anything you do can be undone in the downloaded
data process, here's the drill:

Each CD should be defined by its own CD/Savings Bond INVESTMENT and bought
with a Buy transaction in an INVESTMENT ACCOUNT dedicated to holding all
Investments (i.e., these CDs) you hold in this account at this institution.
The account should have an associated Investment Cash Account. The benefit
of doing this is that it will enable investment reporting and add logic for
things like redemption and renewal. As to interest, it should either be
accounted for as Reinvest Interest transactions along the way--not
recommended as it makes the redemption more complicated--or just added as
interest paid in the ultimate Redeem CD or Renew CD (really just a cover
that actually enters the paired Redeem CD/Buy transactions with creating a
new investment for the new CD) transaction that ends the life of each CD.

To your other post, the cash to buy the CD should start out as a Transfer
from, say, your checking account to the Investment Cash Account. Each
transaction that invests or receives money in the Investment Account, like
the Buy of the CD Investment, will allow an associated Transfer account. In
this case, the Transfer Account would be the Investment Cash Account. (It
could also be the checking account directly, but Money cannot deal with this
for the Redeem CD and Renew CD cases, so I'd just be consistent.)

The distinction between rate and yield reflect the reinvestment and
compounding of the incremental dividends.

There have been a number of threads on CDs lately--do an advanced search of
newsgroup microsoft.public.money at http://groups.google.com.

You might want to create a new data file and set some samples up as
described above to play around with this and get a feel for how it goes
before entering this in your regular data file.

"smokiibear" <HHDTNZONPAKN[at]spammotel.com> wrote in message
news:Xns95D5E460CBA19smokiibear[at]207.46.248.16...
- quote -

opps...I forgot to ask this question as well:

if i use an investment account, what would be the cleanest way to record
the transfering of money out of a money market account off the same bank
into the varios CD's? Should I use the tranfer option such that they would
come up as mere cash transactions in the investment account?

Thanks again.

Smokii

I've got multiple CD's opened up at the same bank. They are all under the
same account number, but each under a separate heading. Each of the CD's
mature at a different time, and they will be rolled over into new CD's over
the next 18 years. Futhermore, my bank provides online banking services
directly within MS Money, including automated download of statements.

So...what would be the best way to set up these accounts in Money? Should
I create one account named CD and then make a cash transaction for each CD?
Should I set up each CD as an individual investment account? Or should I
set up each CD account as a savings...and simply let my automated statement
downloads add interest as it gets posted? I am not very familiar with
money's investment account functions and therefor don't see the benifit of
using the them yet.

one last question. please excuse the lameness...but, if my bank declares a
dividend rate of 4.24% and an annual yield of 4.33%, what is the
distinction? and for cash transactions, which interest rate do I use for
cupon rate, and what do i select for interest paid (monthly or yearly)?

Thanks in advance.

smokii