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<anonymous[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:028001c47cad$20fb67f0$7d02280a[at]phx.gbl...
- quote -

Mike - you said in the note below:
"Then you'll add a Bill to go to the 401k cash account
that is split into five (where's the match money get
invested) Buy Investment/CD:[name of investment]
transactions matching your list. This invests the money."

Is this the only way to get money to invest the 401K
withhoding into separate accounts? I just posted this
question but then saw your response - do you have to set
up a "bill" for each of the funds you have in order
to 'buy' a split of funds (say $100 split across 3 funds
within a 401k)?


- quote -

I think Mr. Dick Watson posted the following for me a couple of months ago
when I was setting up the 401K account into MS 2004. Works great, but you
*should* manually go to your 401K website to retrieve the actual NAV's
associated with your 401k/Paycheck


I keep thinking that one of these days, Real Soon Now, I'll write a
dedicated tutorial for the FAQ on 401ks. They can be very complicated.

I'm not sure you can achieve what you want in less than two transactions
(one of which is your existing paycheck) with lots of splits.

There are only two cases in all of Money where it will compute the values in
a transaction: loan payments and DRP planned payments. So, there is no way
to teach money about 15% and 3% and all of the investment splits as
percentages. Excel is very handy for lots of this. I've long wished that
Money could be taught expressions (e.g, the ability to set a split amount to
something like =15%*ThisTransaction.Category("Wages and Salary:Gross
Wages")), but it hasn't ever happened.

Your paycheck should end up with a Transfer:[410k cash acct] on the before
taxes tab for the 15% and an income entry (as a negative number--the 3%
match) like Wages & Salaryeferred Income and then another Transfer:[401k
cash acct] (as the same 3% positive number) both on the after taxes tab.
This puts all of your contributions and your match money in the cash
account. Then you'll add a Bill to go to the 401k cash account that is split
into five (where's the match money get invested) Buy Investment/CD:[name of
investment] transactions matching your list. This invests the money.

Be careful about the NAVs and updating them. Depending on your plan, the
funds may not be the same as similar public funds. My employer's plan, for
instance, offers something almost exactly like VWNDX, but they scrape some
extra plan fees off the top. In these cases, and since the plan does not
uniformly report transactions in units, I don't assign a symbol and just use
$1 shares with quantity equal to amount for every transaction.

This was from a post earlier this week:
=========
The basic steps, assuming you already have 1) a 401k Investment Account and
an associated Cash Account setup in Money, 2) have already worked out
Investments for the 401k and how to value them, and 3) have a scheduled
paycheck transaction setup in Money:

1) Add a Transfer:[name of 401k Cash Account] split to the before and/or
after tax tabs of the scheduled paycheck in the amount of your contribution.

2) Depending on the plan, you should also recognize the employer deferred
income for their contribution and transfer it to the 401k cash account as
well. See http://umpmfaq.info/faqdb.php?q=14 for more on this step. You can
do this in the Paycheck (see the FAQ for caveats) or in separate
transactions.

3) Now that all of the contribution money has made it to the cash account,
you need to buy investments. This can also be a scheduled transaction, but
there are some caveats: a) if you are buying more that one investment with
each set of contributions, do not use a Scheduled Investment Purchase. Use a
Scheduled Bill. For each investment, in the splits of the Scheduled Bill,
enter "buy investment/cd" as the category. Money will not offer this in the
pull down, but will be glad to take it. Then Money will let you pick the
investment. Set the value equal to the fraction of your total investment in
this investment for this cycle. You create as many "buy investment/cd"
splits as there are ways you are investing the contributions. The final rub
is what share price to use--this depends on the plan and the investment and
how you are having Money do all this.

Whatever you do should be dictated by the way the plan works and when your
employer makes contributions and when the contributions all actually get
invested.

I know this is a lot to swallow. Handling 401ks and mortgage refis are two
of the most complicated things in Money. Both are complicated, in part, by
the huge range of different circumstances for individual users--in the case
of 401ks, the plans and investments and so forth vary for everybody--making
it hard to write one-size-fits-all answers.

Mess with it and come back with more specific questions and we'll take a
swing at those as well.

End Quote

"JS" <js17[at]nospam.bellsth.com> wrote in message
news:vmnFc.2049$Dv.468[at]bignews2.bellsouth.net...
- quote -

As Dick Watson also pointed out, I have my pay check set up to move the
contribution into the cash account of the 401K account. I also have set
up a Biweekly matching contribution to the same cash account. Finally I
have set up Biweekly purchases of the Mutual Funds. These purchases come
from the Cash account and have the Total set but the quantity and price
are left blank. That is except for the purchase of a bond fund that
maintains a 1.00 share value. Thus each two weeks I first update prices
to find out the current value of the funds prior to entering these
purchases in my account register. When I enter these values I first
enter the unit price and allow Money to calculate the number of shares,
then I delete the per share price and round the number of shares to the
3 digits used by the Mutual fund and allow Money to calculate the per
share price to reach this value.

From the Paycheck, I identify what portion of the pay check is before
taxes and what is after taxes, and what is retirement qualified so that
I can collect the information that is later used to match the W2 against
my records. Since the my contribution and the employer contribution is
based on percentage of pay, I have found that an excel spreadsheet is
the easiest way to keep track of the amounts going toward retirement.
Especially as the percentage varies with the total amount of pay
received for the year.

Art

Randy Forcier wrote:

- quote -

The prime difference between a Buy and an Add Shares is that the Buy allows
(presumes? I don't think it requires) a "transfer" source of the cash to
make the purchase. IF you are accounting for the cash side of things--e.g.,
transferring the cash from your paycheck to the 401k cash account--then a
Buy would make more sense as it would then account for the investment of
that cash in one transaction.

"Randy Forcier" <rgforcier[at]hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:2afa201c466aa$6d8458c0$a301280a[at]phx.gbl...
- quote -

Can you explain the difference between the "Buy"
and "Add" feature when making entries? I too have
payroll deductions and am trying to keep track of these
investments and am undecided on which of these entries to
make when applying my 401K investments each payday.

Thanks
- quote -

My personal method is to track all transactions. I know this is not
necessary and one could simply track totals. But in my case I have the
decuctions from pay entered into the cash account, I also enter the cash
match from my employer added to my 401K cash account. i then buy shares
on the same interval, I track the shar prices and re-invest didvidends
at the purchase price. Thus at all times I have the total number of
shares, price per share, and the total value.

I have seen some discriptions where one skips the step of "buying" and
use the "add" shares where you do not have to identify where the funds
come from, but I then do not know what one does with the personal
contributions. I guess one could lower salary by theat amount, but would
not be able to generate a complete and accurate W2.

JS wrote:
- quote -

Could someone post the steps to take for using the 401k manager in Money
2004? At one point there was a good write up on how to use (the program
would then add/remove shares).

I took the steps I thought necessary, but this time mny input values for
price and total (therefore adding value to my portfolio). Previous times,
only the add / remove shares (quantity) was populated.

Thanks.