"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote in
message news:%23abi0d4IGHA.1180[at]TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
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If the units are shown as discrete purchases with specific prices, you can
show IRR by updating the prices. But if they're the only reasonable choice
in your 401k, it doesn't matter anyway, does it? Who's going to not
contribute to a 401k? It's hard to beat the 50% or 100% return created by
the match from most employers.

I think life will be easier if you use $1 shares in various investments that
you setup as mutual funds without any symbol. You gain no great benefit, and
add hassle, trying to track to the unit values. Since you can't download a
market quote for the units, what's the gain?

"Lance" <Lance[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news92C94A6-E7CD-4007-9B3B-7B747ED43E63[at]microsoft.com...
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As you indicated I can't get a daily price, well not without a lot of effort.
I pretty much just enter the contributions and get quarterly updates on
shares, price, and market value. So as you suggest I could enter the
investments in $1 shares or I could back into the share pricing by backing
into because I do know the number of shares added from quarter to quarter. Do
you think one method is better than the other? My primary goal is to show
stock as stock and equity units as equity units, etc.

Thanks in advance.

"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

No, you can't edit posts. Because the underlying mechanism is Usenet news,
as soon as you click post, the posting is on its way to news servers from
Adelaide to Zurich. There's no way to get all of the copies back...

Well, you could track the stock and equity as some kind of stock and as some
kind of generic mutual fund--with no symbol since who really knows what this
stuff is and it likely doesn't get quoted on any market. The common assets
sure sound like cash/money market to me. The $1 shares are a giveaway.

There is no one right answer. But unless you can learn more about the
underlying investments, it may not matter. Even if you can, it may not
matter as the investments are probably not market-valued. I.e., you can't
look up a daily price for them from public markets. Money doesn't provide
any way to tell it what this stuff is if it isn't something it can learn
about from the data feed from the web.

As to recording the buys, you can just do the whole thing as $1 shares and
add/subtract shares to get the investment balances to match statement
balances. Or, if you know the periodic dollar contribution amount and the
before and after shares, you can back into an average share price using
dollars contributed / (end shares - begin shares).

Boy, 401(k) questions are popular lately. Almost as popular as "my
downloaded transaction data is broken" questions.

"Lance" <Lance[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:ADC0EB29-BCB0-4DA8-9FEB-E5C2087B3339[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Can I not edit a post? I was going to clean up the table. It should be as
follows.

Type Shares Price Market Value
Company Owned Stock 1000 65 65000
Equity Units 150 300 45000
Common Assets 250 1 250



"Lance" wrote:

- quote -

My 401k does not give me an itemized listing of investments. Instead it lists
them by investment type as follows.

Type Shares Price
Market Value
Company Owned Stock 1000 65
65000
Equity Units 150 300
45000
Common Assets 250 1
250

I do know what the company owned stock is given it is who I work for. With
each quarterly statement it updates the information above. For instance the
total number of shares, the price, and market value is updated each quarter.
It doesn't tell me what price was paid for each new share. Just the totals as
indicated above.

What is the best way to track this type of account? Right now I am just
tracking with the contributions account, but this sucks because when
analyzing the portfolio everthing is listed as cash instead of stocks, etc.
What class when equity units and common assets fall into?