Enter an investment description, but no symbol. Make sure, if you have
multiple accounts (eg, 403b + 401a) you create the investment only once. If
the investment exists in multiple accounts, don't create multiple instances
of the investment - just pick it from the drop-down list while adding it to
the account. By not creating multiple instances of the investment, updating
the price once will update it in all accounts.

Update the price manually from time to time using data provided by the
broker. You'll find that function under 'Common Tasks' on the left side of
the investment account register. As this is a retirement account, and I
assume you're not trading it actively, there's no particular benefit in
updating more than about once a month, anyway.

You may be able to get investment distribution information from them that
describes it in terms of large, mid, small, bond, cash, or other. You can
enter that on the details page of the investment. Click the 'Change...'
button next to 'Change Asset Allocation: on that page. (Unfortunately, Money
never has had an international category.)

If you want to use the asset allocation tool (different from asset
allocation on the investment details page), that tool allows only a single
classification per investment. For mutual funds invested in a variety of
investment types, you'll have to arbitrarily pick one.


"Tom" <tom[at]nospam.com> wrote in message
news:%23qWfSVXZFHA.3840[at]tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
- quote -

"Tom" <tom[at]nospam.com> wrote in message
news:%23qWfSVXZFHA.3840[at]tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
- quote -

My last employer had a 401k like that. Although they didn't maintain a
price history on their website, they did post the prices for the previous
business day.

Every night I would log on to the 401k website, then copy and paste the
previous day's prices into "Update Prices > manually".

Every two weeks when I got paid, I'd pull up the transaction history from
the 401k website, then manually enter the buys.

Dividends were posted quarterly. A few days after dividends were paid, I'd
pull up the transaction history, then manually enter the dividend
reinvestments.

In my case, employer matching was also posted quarterly. Sometimes I'd have
to wait a week or two for the transactions to finalize, then I was able to
input it.

As the company stock was actually a mutual fund for which no details were
available (not even online), I'd input it as a stock, let Money download the
daily price, then periodically use add/remove shares to bring the market
value in Money in line with the market value on the 401k website.

--
Scott Tyler
agent_scotty-at-hotmail-dot-com

The short answer is "it depends". Some plans that do this quote everything,
(Buys, Sells, earnings), in terms of unit values with associated unit
prices. If yours is one of these plans, track it per the statements and use
their units and total dollar values for each transaction--Money can figure
the price given this data. You can create the investments you have as
"Mutual Funds" without symbol. This is about as good as it gets.

Many plans don't provide unit/unit price information. The best of a series
of compromised answers for this case seems to be using $1 shares for
everything. Contribute $250? Buy 250 $1 shares. Reallocate $400? Sell 400
shares at $1, buy 400 shares at $1. Periodically (based on quarterly
statements or whatever works for you) do an Account Update (it's a link at
the bottom of the Investment Account Account Summary page) and let it enter
Add/Remove shares transactions as required to reflect investment performance
to get your Money data back in balance with the plan's data.

401(k)s are one of the two most complicated things to model in Money.
Someday I'm hoping to finish a 401(k) primer page. It just hasn't happened
yet. You might find some good nuggets at
http://umpmfaq.info/faqdb.php?cat=10 in the interim.

"Tom" <tom[at]nospam.com> wrote in message
news:%23qWfSVXZFHA.3840[at]tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
- quote -

My new company's 401k funds show up with the following in the
description... 'This fund is not a publicly traded fund and is not
listed in any business periodicals'... I am assuming that this means
there is no stock symbol to track nor download (at least, looking
through the overviews of each fund there was nothing anywhere
indicating what the mutual fund symbol was). Some of these funds are,
like, International Equity Fund, Agressive Portfolio, Small Cap Fund,
etc etc.

What does this mean for these kind of funds? Is there, then, no stock
symbol to track? If so, then how would be the way to enter and track
these funds in Money 2005? (Again, this is a company 401k) When should
I enter ending stock prices, then?

Tom