To answer your questions as best I can:

1) yes in the past I would have occasions when the Fidelity download has had
strange balance jumps. I have seen the lets drop the balance to zero. I
have ignored them when they have occurred by accepting the "I will
straighten it out later"
2) Fidelity on re-invest dividends has bounced back and forth between a
dividend followed by a buy. I have ignored the extra transactions and let
them do it their way.
3) As Cal mentioned in his reply, you want to use buys instead of Adds.
What you have forgotten is to place the contribution into the cash portion
of the account.
4) I use a very similar process that was mentioned elsewhere in the threads.
I have my paycheck place my contribution into the account. To make taxes
work I separate the paycheck into a taxable portion and a non-taxable
portion. (fortunately the pay stub lists these numbers). I have a separate
transfer from the company to the cash account of the company match.
5) I however can not discuss the best way to handle your partial vesting. My
company vests 100% from day one. I do not know the rules used by your
company. I have seen companies that vest such that 100% vested after period
of time and others that vest each match dollar for a period of time so no
matter how long in the company you will never reach 100%. This could be
complex.

Art

"Jonathan Altman" <JonathanAltman[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:BBB93A8B-2A33-419D-977E-2750C2D10359[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

For matching, I add the income under some deferred category (Wage & Salary :
Deferred Income" set to not appear on any tax forms) in the after-tax
deducts tab of my paychecks and then transfer the same amount to the
contributions cash account. I then invest it. As to vesting, I don't worry
it. Actually I'm vested--but I wouldn't worry it if I weren't. (Let the plan
provider track it. They'll surely tell you to the penny when it becomes
relevant.) Were I to lose the unvested portion at some point in the future,
I'd do a investment sell of the unvested amount to the contributions cash
account, then I'd probably just enter a negative transaction against the
same deferred income category I used in the first place. The employer
giveth/the employer taketh away.

"Jonathan Altman" <JonathanAltman[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:BBB93A8B-2A33-419D-977E-2750C2D10359[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

In microsoft.public.money, Cal Learner-- MVP wrote:

- quote -

Oops... Touchy mouse along with spell checker....

You were not accounting for the deposits of funds (contributions) to
the account.

Incidentally, it is possible to just eliminate the cash account on
the 401k account if you don't want to account for contributions. I
would be surprised if you wanted to choose that course.

In microsoft.public.money, Jonathan Altman wrote:

- quote -

You were not accounting for the dietitians of funds (contributions)
to the account.

you mention that you are a fidelity user. since i am as well i have two
questions, (one specific to fidelity, one not):

1) do you do electronic downloads? I used to years ago, but ended up with a
bunch of nonsensical transactions yielding a constant zero account balance
(every addition to the account was treated as a Buy rather than AddShares, so
i ended up with a negative cash balance exactly offsetting my actual
contributions), so currently i do manual, but would love to go back to
electronic if i could
2) how do you deal with employer matching and partial vesting? in particular
i know that i will be leaving my current employer at a time when i am less
than fully vested in their contributions. When i leave, i want to be sure to
keep the portion that vested, but get rid of the portion that didn't. I have
been meticulous in capturing all of the contributions to my account over time
(both paycheck contributions and dividend reinvestments), but i have not
split every transaction into its employer match vs. employee contribution
components (i can view this detail through Fidelity's website, but haven't
bothered tracking it that way since it would result in twice as many
transactions). do i need to go back and split each transaction into its
employer match vs. employee contribution components? and how do i deal with
the partial vesting issue?


"Art McClinton" wrote:

- quote -

Thanks for your help. I'll try out the both the ways.
On Jan 25, 6:01 pm, "Art McClinton" <art.mcclin...[at]cox.net> wrote:
- quote -

Not knowing Charles Schwab strategy for their retirement accounts verse
investment accounts I can not be 100% correct but you will
1) start out adding an account the same way. Only when it comes to type of
account it is not a bank or credit card it is an investment account.
2) I am a Fidelity investor so when I set up my 401K account I choose
Fidelity - NetBenefits as that is the Fidelity arm for 401K's. Fidelity
lists a separate location for the for profit accounts. CS either has no
401K download capability or the have merged it into the standard CS account
which shows up when you check investments. I would call your 800 number and
ask them.
3) if you can only perform this by manual entry then when it comes to asking
you who the investment banker is click "my bank or brokerage is not listed"
thus you will be given the screens to set it up manually.

<roopphagura[at]hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1169769607.388855.282440[at]s48g2000cws.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

Someday I promise I'm going to get around to finishing my web tutorial on
the subject.

Here's the draft as it has sat for about a year now (I'll fill in some of
the blanks after I post the draft) :
------
401(k) accounts in Money

Setting up and maintaining records for a 401(k) retirement savings plan is
one of the most complicated tasks many Money users ever attempt. This
tutorial provides additional information and context to Money users
interested in tracking their 401(k) accounts in Money. In many cases, these
topics are treated in the FAQ already. In these cases, links to the
appropriate FAQ entries are provided.

Contents:

Introduction
Setup Accounts
Setup Investments
What are the investment choices for your plan?
$1 shares or 1 share?
Manage Your Contributions
Manage Your Employer's Contributions
Buy Investments
Update Investment Balances
Other Topics
Vesting
Loans
Expenses

Introduction
One of the prime reasons many of us use Money is to track our 401(k)
retirement savings accounts. 401(k) tracking also is one of the more complex
things many of us do with Money. This tutorial addresses the basic
activities involved in using Money to track your 401(k). Note that every
401(k) plan differs in many details, in the investments offered, and in the
plan mechanics. This tutorial tries to treat generalized cases. It is no
substitute for knowing exactly how your plan works. For that information,
read your plan documents or contact your plan administrator. This tutorial
assumes you want to go to the effort to track all aspects of contributions
and investments. Money provides simpler ways to do these things with less
effort at the expense of less granular detail. The tutorial will attempt to
highlight these opportunities. The tutorial does not treat issues associated
with downloaded transaction data. Finally, this tutorial emphasizes areas
that are not well covered in the existing product documentation or for which
the documentation is silent or misleading. The existing product
documentation should be your first source of information--this tutorial
should help provide additional insight.

Setup Accounts
The first step to tracking your 401(k) in Money is to setup an Investment
Account to hold your 401(k) cash and investments.

Setup Investments

What are the investment choices for your plan?

$1 shares or 1 share?

Three choices on pricing a "derivative" fund (or stock for that matter) from
a 401k:

"$1 shares" All buys and sells use a $1 share price and the dollar value of
the transaction. (Money will calculate the shares--which, with $1 share
price, will always equal the dollar value of the transaction.) There is
never any reference to the reported NAVs. When the investment gains or
looses value, then the difference between investment value and the shares/$
value in Money is added or removed using Add Shares/Remove Shares
transactions for the dollar value of the difference using the same $1 share
price. This is just like how money market funds are handled, but you have to
enter the $1 price yourself.
Use the reported units and unit prices. This is just like any real
market-traded investment except you can't download the NAVs. For this to
work your plan has to be better than mine is in terms of always giving you
the units/unit value for transactions. You also have to be willing to go
find and enter this for every transaction.

"1 share" Use a single share and just keep changing the "quote" for that
single share. Beyond the first 1 share you buy, you never add Buy or Sell
transactions (or any other), until you dispose of the entire investment and
sell the 1 share. You just keep updating the per share price to match the
value of the 1 share investment you hold.

Many 401(k) plans offer funds that are **not quite** the real funds. They
buy/sell the underlying funds in bulk based on the aggregate of plan member
activities. In many cases, they keep some amount of the aggregate holdings
of the plan fund in cash to preserve some liquid hedge against big movements
in plan fund holdings or the underlying security in a given day. In some
cases, they also scrape some of this off to pay fund expenses.

This is all why you cannot use the symbol/NAV of the underlying fund for
your Money investment and why, if you do, they won't track over time.

Because all of these plan mechanics are not completely transparent and
exposed to you--and life would be too short to actually try to duplicate
their accounting anyway--there is no good way to accurately track them
exactly--you will ultimately have to resort to accepting the statement
balances as they reflect fund value gain/loss.

What I do is:
a) Track the real fund with a Money Investment and the correct symbol as an
investment in the Investment to Watch Account. (Like "Vanguard Windsor",
symbol VWNDX.) b) Create a Money Investment, with no symbol, for the
investment holding in the Money 401k Account. (Like "Savings Plan VWNDX", no
symbol entered.) c) Buy and sell the 401(k) investment using $1 shares. This
makes the Buy Investment transactions entered in the Cash Account easy to do
without having to compute anything besides the percentage allocations across
funds. d) Occasionally update the share holdings (=statement values, given
the $1 shares) with Add/Remove Shares transactions using the Account
Summary|Quick Update tool.
You can use the plan NAVs per share if they routinely report it that way. My
plan doesn't issue all data based on units/unit value, just some of it, so
it has been easier for me to use the $1 shares. In some places in Money
help, they recommend 1 share at the current statement value. In that
scenario, you can never enter buys/sells to match your activity. I think
that the $1 shares method work out much better than the 1 share method.

Manage Your Contributions

Manage Your Employer's Contributions

Buy Investments

Update Investment Balances

Other Topics

Vesting

Loans

Expenses
------

Stuff that isn't in the draft just yet but is important to start to answer
your question:

1) You've got to understand what the investments really are and some things
about how your plan works. This gets to your question about setting up
Investements. Yes, at some point--and not necessarily in the account setup
wizard--you need to do this. If the Investments are real investments that
trade on the open market (rare in 401(k) plans--theya re easy to setup.
Otherwise see the guiance above to get started.

2) As to getting the contributions there to Invest (with Buy Investment
transactions) in the first place, The basic drill is to Transfer your money
from the splits of your gross paycheck in your existing Paycheck
transactions. If youa ren't yet tracking gross pay but are just depositing
the net in Money, this is yet another reason to split the gross down into
its consituent parts.

3) Employer contributions have about 10 ways they can be handled. See
http://umpmfaq.info/faqdb.php?q=14 for how I do it/recommend others
consider.

4) As to the percentage allocated Buys--what I do is Schedule a periodic
Bill (watch my words here) in the total amounf of the combined contributions
for that period and that is Split into multiple Buy Investment/CD linse, one
for each investment allocation. I use Excel to figure out the splits knowing
my percentage allocations. In my case this is really easy since the amount
contributed--mine and employer--is fixed for more or less a year at a time
and the investments are made weekly one week behind the deposit going into
my checking account. Your case may not be so easy, but this is another case
where the key ingredient to any solution--if it is to be reasonably
precise--is some time spent understanding your your plan really works.

As demonstrated by the draft tutorial, I could go on about this for days.
Digest this information and come back with more detailed questions so we can
tailor answers a little more closely to your needs.

There are lighter weight ways than all of this--typically just creating an
account and entering facts off the statements from time to time and ignoring
how these facts came to be--but I'm assuming you got here asking the
question because you want a "best practices" way of accurately tracking
what's going on.

<roopphagura[at]hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1169769607.388855.282440[at]s48g2000cws.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

First let me say that as a newbie i have learnt so much about money
though this group. I have managed to set up my main credit card,
checking and CD accounts for which I do an automatic download. But I'm
not sure how to set up a 401k account and do that automatic download. I
tried it via Banking but it seems that Charles Schwab retirment
services don't offer automatic download. There manual download doesn't
work either.

So how can can set up a 401K account in which I can enter transactions
manually? I tried other accounts but it asked me to set up investments
which I'm not sure is the right way. Also how do I link this account
such that my paycheck withdrwal automatically get reflected there based
on the % I have set for different investments? Totally lost here..

Thanks!