I should have added: it may not be this simple.

Investment Cash Accounts SHOULD BE just like any other cash account with the
added property of being associated with an Investment Account.
Unfortunately, the Money UI doesn't make it so simple and there are lots of
limitations on the details/creation/deletion/setup/"Favorite Account"/etc.
capabilities of Investment Cash Accounts that really are completely
arbitrary and unnecessary from the point of view of the underlying database
but are wholly creations of the Money UI. It **shouldn't be that way** but,
sadly, it is. That's why I offered choice b) as well.

"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote in
message news:u9HHvGCiHHA.3960[at]TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Can't say if you are missing something or what but let's try to figure out,
shall we?

Important clarifying disclaimer: I'm assuming you are using Money 2007
Deluxe/Premium, not Essentials (MEss for short). I'm also assuming you are
using Advanced Registers. You don't specify beyond Money 2007. Answering
these kinds of questions here used to be **a lot easier** before the
balkanization of Money features that began with M05.

Symbol is normally a property of an Investment. Investments are held in
Investment Accounts.

When you setup the Investment Account, IIRC (can't test from here), it asks
what type and IRA and derivatives is one of the choices. This gets reflected
in the Account Settings under flags like Tax Deferred and Retirement
Account. I don't believe that the IRA nature of the account is explicitly
reflected after setup outside of those two flags. But the setup dialog asks
the question to figure out how to set the flags. You might want to open the
Sample data file or create a test data file (File|New...skip aided setup)
and create a new investment account just to see how this plays out.

You say "it didn't accept the original amount, and wants to look for a stock
symbol for the earnings".

If by original amount you mean the starting balance--a value in the account
pre-dating what you are trying to track with Money--this might not surprise
me. But you should be able to either a) go into the Investment Cash Account
settings (again, can't test this here, sorry) and define the account
beginning balance, or b) add a transaction to the Investment Cash Account
register at the beginning--earliest date in the register--that just adds the
initial balance as an unassigned income transaction with an appropriate memo
clarifying what the transaction represents.

As to Money wanting a symbol for the earnings, are you in the Cash
Transactions register or the Investments register? (Menu on left; lists
Account Summary, Cash Transactions, Investment Transactions or something
very similar.) A transaction in the Investments register requires a symbol
or at least an investment name, A transaction in the cash register has no
place for a symbol/investment name (with the one exception of a Buy
Investments/CD transaction).

"Rick" <Rick[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:17CE8F84-FDCE-454F-A1A7-9A422A1E1C90[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

I don't see a place under the Investment Account to call it an IRA, or am I
missing something.
I had originally set it up as an investment account, but it didn't accept
the original amount, and wants to look for a stock symbol for the earnings.

Thanks for your quick response!

"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

For best treatment by things like Tax Estimator, I'd set it up as an
Investment (IRA) account. You may never have any Investments in the
Investment half of the account. It may just have interest earnings in the
Investment Cash Account. This essentially wastes the Investment Account, but
that's probably not a big deal.

"Rick" <Rick[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:63E91B90-FE33-4377-A55C-00E3B3978117[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

I am trying to set up my IRA in Money. It is through a bank, so there are
not investment type transactions, just the bank's own listings of interest.
Do I set this up as an investment account or something different?