Comments below.

"harrelsonesq" <sharrelson1[at]cox.net> wrote in message
news:qbeRd.32062$xt.17439[at]fed1read07...
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My only point was the someone trying to deplete their retirement funds is
going to get precious little help from Money--for all its features to get
the money there, it has none for the issues associated with taking it back
out.

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So, despite your having created two separate Investment Accounts, "Roth
IRA," & "Rollover IRA," when you go into the Account List now there's only
one there? Got me. It should be easy enough to undo.

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Indeed. I don't mind the tone so much as some of the goofball things it
whines about. I see complaints all of the time that our 401k cash accounts
may be withdrawn soon. It sees the scheduled buys. It refuses to see the
exactly offsetting scheduled transfers of contributions.

IRA glitch #1: (Beneficiary IRA)

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Ah, but are working stiffs more, or less, likely to die before their
retirement funds are depleted, & leave them to the younger generations?

IRA glitch #2: (Roth IRA & a rollover regular IRA)

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I don't either, from this FI. I'm pretty sure I made a mistake in the setup.
I have the brokerage set up as two separate FI's: "Brokerage X," and
"Brokerage X Retirement." "BX" has one account, containing 3 different
investments. In "BXR," I set up two accounts: "Roth IRA," & "Rollover IRA."
Each contains only one investment, and the two are different. I was as
surprised as anybody to see the two IRA's combined, since I thought I
understood the definitions of "FI's," "accounts," and "investments," well
enough. Apparently not. Since it's me & not downloading, any ideas?

401(k) glitch:

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It was awhile ago, but I had one proprietary fund & one name-brand fund in
there, and I think I tried to track performance on the one for which I could
get updates. Of course, I ended up with $240 billion & had to revert to
having 7000 $1 shares. Wholly my own fault.

Then, when Money told me I wasn't saving enough because I only had $7,000 in
retirement accounts, and, IIRC, scolded me for losing $239.9999999999
billion of my net worth in one month, I got mad. Then the contributions
piled up & skewed up some other stuff -- I forget what.

That reminded me that I hate the nagging tone of "Advisor FYI." It's like my
mother inhabiting my computer. I have to turn it off, which is too bad,
because it could be really useful, done right. But again, that's a global
gripe, not a version-based gripe.

Thanks for the ideas,

Susan

That's how I do it. Didn't mean to suggest otherwise.

"Cal Learner-- MVP" <via_newsgroup[at]please.tnx> wrote in message
news:tp7a1156fj1jhjrjeeh5fv3h1e0nsgnvdt[at]4ax.com...
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In microsoft.public.money, Mark Horn wrote:

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To update holdings due to gains or losses, you can alternatively go
to the register. AccountSummary(left)-> AccountUpdate(bottom). That
way you don't have to calculate how many shares to add or remove.

On 2005-02-17, Dick Watson <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote:
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Thanks for the detailed description!

It's the notion of using $1 shares to represent mythic mutual funds (those
not publicly quoted) in a 401k. Generally, it's most usable for people whose
401k's don't report anything more than $ balances or $ transaction amounts.

My plan lists units (shares in things that don't have them) for some
activities on some data products. Because they don't give EVERYTHING in
units, I'm forced to either guess occasionally at unit value or do something
else like the $1 shares. My plan offers some private funds ("Our Blended
Fund") and some derivatives of public funds ("almost like VWNDX but the plan
buffers the market with some small cash positions and skims some fees off
the top"). Many (maybe most) plans do similar things.

Basically, you create an investment ("401k Anemic Growth Fund") and always
do all of the accounting in $1 shares. Contribute $500? Buy 500 $1 shares.
Reallocate $200? Sell 200 $1 shares. Suddenly get a statement after all of
that listing a $320.21 balance in Anemic Growth? Put in a 20.21 share Add
Shares. Next statement says $319? Put in a 1.21 Remove Shares. There will
never be any price history besides $1.

The alternative that Money help recommended at one time was the 1 share
method, where the 401k would hold one share of an investment and the value
of that single share would modulate over time to match the reported
position. This makes it impossible to reflect buys/sells as share
transactions since they all just change the share value. It also leaves all
of the contribution activity just looking like an increasing share value. I
tried it once a long time ago and found it very unsatisfactory. Somebody
(Kim Smith nee Renna nee Renna-Griego?) put me onto the $1 share trick. This
probably goes back to the days of the CIS MSOFT Applications Money section.
That's a LONG time ago.

I've started work on a tutorial page for the FAQ that deals with this and a
host of other 401k related issues. It's still on the Some Day I Really Ought
To Finish This list.

"Mark Horn" <mark[at]hornclan.com> wrote in message
news:slrnd19upt.o5c.mark[at]home.hornclan.com...
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On 2005-02-17, Dick Watson <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote:
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What is the $1 shares thing? I looked it up on umpmfaq.info and
couldn't find anything.

Comments inline.

"harrelsonesq" <sharrelson1[at]cox.net> wrote in message
news:W6WQd.31917$xt.23156[at]fed1read07...
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I've been thinking through this for several hours trying to find a better
way. The bottom line is that all versions of Money ignore the draw-down
phase on tax advantaged accounts. Money: Designed by working stiffs for
working stiffs. As you note, this is not an M05-unique issue. M05 just makes
it transparent that it is an issue that will never be addressed by the Money
team: It's not Essential and Most Users Prefer(tm) the most dumbed down and
simplistic one-way approach.

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I'm not sure this is a Money issue, per se: there is nothing in Money that
forces these together. I have four different IRA accounts, two Roth, two
traditional. But I don't download transaction data. Now, FIs can format data
poorly and M05's all or none design makes this much worse. We never had M04
users complain that they just wanted their accounts and now they are getting
their spouse's and their parent's and their kid's and their dog's accounts
as well.

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You don't say what your issues were with $1 shares, but I do the $1 shares
thing and it works--save less than ideal performance reporting--reasonably
well. My secret was to identify the underlying investment mechanics and
model them. For my plan, contributions get in there every week from: my BT,
my AT, 401k loan repayment, and employer matching. And every week I enter a
multi-split bill that has a bunch of Buy Investment/CD transactions
according to my investment allocations and the investment allocation for the
match. Thus, the contributions account oscillates around $0 every week.
These balances are completely open loop until every quarter (or so) when I
do the Account Update on the portfolio summary screen to adjust the total
for each investment in $1 shares to the total they are reporting. In good
times, these adjustments are all add shares transactions. In bad times, some
remove shares transactions get scattered in there. At any given
time--particularly when it's been a long time since I did an update--the
401ks contribution to the Net Worth, et al., can be errant. I just have to
accept this when looking at the numbers. But there are other sources of
error at least as large: no asset accounting for automobiles and virtually
everything else except the house and its value is just a SWAG, no real
accounting except in LP for pensions, etc., no accounting for 401k vesting
issues, and so forth. Even if the contributions just sit in the cash
account, they shouldn't have a huge deliterious impact on retirement
planning: it's still money in a retirement designated account. It's just not
seen as "money at work."

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I think we are in agreement here, the things that are MISSING from M05 have
been missing since Mv1. The truly sad thing about M05 was that it was a
major rewrite and NOT ONE of these things got addressed. What got addressed
was ad delivery and klutzing up the UI and Most Users Prefer(tm) stuff like
Essential *. From this standpoint, the ads in M05 are a symptom, not a
disease. The disease is that Microsoft sees no business model for a piece of
consumer software that just helps the consumer do personal financial
management--or they see a far better one that is primarily driven my
advertisers and cooperative marketing, not the needs of the poor slobs
actually using the service/tool/software.

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M02.

IRA glitch #1: I have a beneficiary IRA, from which I'm required to take
distributions in the same amount as the person who left it to me did. The
distributions are taxable income to me, but the interest is still
tax-deferred. I have always wished I could use "transfer" so the monthly
distribution would add to my checking account & reduce the IRA balance, AND
at the same time categorize the money as taxable income. I have tried
setting up an intermediate dummy account, but it was unwieldy & didn't
really work all that well, so I gave up & just do the transfer. Since all
the other numbers that export are usually wrong, I always enter my taxes,
anyway, but it's still annoying. This has always been there.

IRA glitch #2: I have a Roth IRA & a rollover regular IRA at the same
brokerage. They are in different investments. I don't know if maybe I did
something wrong in the setup, but Money has combined them into one account.
Obviously, this is wrong, because the tax implications will be different. It
is also hard to balance the account(s), because the two are listed
separately on my statements. This is new, but that's because I didn't use to
have both in the previous versions, & it might be my own fault anyway.

401(k) glitch: Unless you work for a company like Miscrosoft, the vendors
available to your employer do not itemize transactions, so there is no good
way to get the money from the "contributions" side into the "investments"
part. They just sit there in "contributions," & completely mess up any
retirement planning you might try to do. (For all you privileged types out
there, normal people's 401(k) vendors send them a quarterly statement with a
new balance on it. Period.) I tried the "$1 per share" method, but found
that unsatisfactory, so I don't get to count the 401(k) in any planning
tools or reports, such as net worth, at all, which kind of defeats the
purpose.

I guess that the gist of the complaints I do have is that the planning tools
really don't work at all for me. Everything else works just fine for the way
I do things, & the planning shortfalls may be a result of my particular
financial setup. I am mostly happy with Money, I don't have any problems
with downloads, or Yodlee, or passport, I have a transparent broadband
connection so I don't care if Money connects when it starts, & I don't
notice ads at all. I have to go look for them when you say you find them so
annoying, because I don't recall them being there. I guess I'm just so used
to tuning out intrusive advertising on websites that it just doesn't
register with me.

The main thing is that 05 is just as good for the way I do things as
previous versions, and the things I think are broken have always been
broken. The problems, IMO, are Money problems, not 05 problems. I know you
feel differently, because I read your posts religiously cruising for usage
tips. YMMV is the one thing I left out of my answer.

(If you have a fix for any of the above, I would love to hear it.)

One of the first things I noticed was that they DID at some point use my --
and lots of others' -- suggestion about "edit series/edit this instance."
That was cool.

Susan


"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote in
message news:esnAkXDFFHA.628[at]TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
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Thanks to all that responded.

I think I'll stick with 04 which works well.
I'll use 05 as a coaster.
Thanks again.

Kevin

I agree. I would seriously consider going back to the previous version
I used if I wasn't so lazy.

Mark Horn wrote:
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What about them doesn't work?

"harrelsonesq" <sharrelson1[at]cox.net> wrote in message
news:EvAQd.31747$xt.20705[at]fed1read07...
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I dutifully upgraded every year until 02 came out. It had a similarly
negative reception, & I never installed it. I'd been happily using 01
since -- well -- 01.

At long last, I bought a new computer in December 04. It came with 04, and I
upgraded immediately to 05. It works fine, with the following caveats:

1. I don't use Bill Pay from within Money. I use my bank's website. This is
left over from whichever version started using internet services, except
they wouldn't actually connect to your bank (mine, anyway).

2. I don't use automatic downloads for my main bank account. I download
into Money from the bank's website, for the same reason as above. I DO use
automatic downloads for those of my accounts that a) offer it, & b) I was
able to set up successfully. Unfortunately, that wasn't very many, probably
because I had already set up access through the websites, & that seems to
mess things up. I have a couple of bills that I had at one time set up to
pay on their websites, & I can't set up e-bills through my bank -- now that
it offers them -- either.

3. The stuff that has never really worked -- I'm thinking mainly of The
Budget, but also export to tax programs, the DRP, & pretty much all those
kinds of features -- STILL DOESN'T. Probably never will, so I use them only
to the exxtent that I can, which isn't a Lifetime Plan by a long, long shot.

4. IRA's & 401(k)'s just don't work. But they never did, either.

5. Asset allocation is incredibly lame, & I am disappointed. Oh well. A
couple of my brokerage websites have modeling tools that I can use instead.

6. Associating a passport broke My MSN so now I have to sign in every time.
Don't even get me started on how much better the customization on THAT site
used to be.

To summarize, 05 seems to me to be virtually identical to all the other
versions. The same things still work, & the same things still don't work, &
they still don't work in the same ways they always didn't.

One more major caveat: I did NOT try to convert my 01 Money file.

HTH.

Susan


"Kevin" <nospam[at]nospam.com> wrote in message
news:ORJ3bl7EFHA.2824[at]tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
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On 2005-02-16, Kevin <nospam[at]nospam.com> wrote:
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I haven't tried M05 since the month (or so) that I tried it in
late 2004. IMHO, M05 is fundamentally broken and it doesn't matter
what minor bugs they fix.

That's my $.02 - feel free to ignore.

The worst problems in the sense of defects may have been solved--but at a
high cost since a new file format was created mid-version. Yodlee downloads
still seem to be problematic depending on the FI involved. The number of
people complaining here at any one point doesn't prove much besides the
number of people adopting M05 is surely lower now than when it first came
out and then again between Christmas and shortly after the new year. It will
pick up again soon until the end of April. This cycle repeats annually.

But what's wrong with M05 is a whole lot bigger than a few bugs, some fixed
and some not. The whole concept of Money as an advertising delivery engine
that maybe does some things remotely related to personal financial
management is not a defect. The ways it tries to increase dependence on the
net are not bugs. The goofing up of the UI and the tremendous wastes of
screen real estate on useless and unnecessary stuff are not bug.

But, as another poster noted, you can always check for yourself.

"Kevin" <nospam[at]nospam.com> wrote in message
news:ORJ3bl7EFHA.2824[at]tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
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J. A. Z.,

Thanks but that goes without saying.
I was interested in hearing from those who could elaborate a little on some
of the pros and cons with 05 now that things have settled down a bit.
Thanks again.
Kevin

"Joseph A. Zupko" <jaz2[at]sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:eP2fe%237EFHA.464[at]TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
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Make a backup copy of your 2004 and just install the 2005 and try it out. If
you don't like then you already have a backup of 2004.

"Kevin" <nospam[at]nospam.com> wrote in message
news:ORJ3bl7EFHA.2824[at]tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
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Dear NG:

The horror stories of Money 05 seem to have subsided.

Money updates are apparently solving the more important issues.

My question is...is it safe/worth it, to upgrade to 05 if I follow the
letter of the law as far as upgrading goes?

I own a copy of 05 but I am continuing to use 04.

Opinions?

Kevin