New York Life premier Variable Annuity II

Unknown

I purchased a variable annuity from NYL.  I do not ever connect to banks for downloads.  I do everything manually.  What I need to know is how do I enter this asset?  I will not be updating the price of each investment in the annuity just updating it quarterly to match my quarterly reports.  Thank you very much for any help you can give me!

J_Mike

I use a regular brokerage account, tax-deferred, to track my annuity.
I do manually track the activity for the various institutional funds - based on data from the issuers web site.

If you are not interested in tracking the detaied activity, the easiest alternative would be to simply carry the account value as a cash balance. You can update the cash balance periodically as desired.

Terry Faulkner

I also have a variable annuity and I still am at a loss how to track this.  I do want to track the quarterly price changes so that I can balance to the statement.  From the Quicken instructions, I believe that editing the price changes is the approach to take for maintaining the annuity.  However, I really am in the dark here and would appreciate step by step guidance on this.  Thanks so much.

Unknown

I do this in a slightly different manner.

I set up my annuities as IRA's...because, for me they are just that.  But you can set them up as any investment type account in Quicken that applies (I wouldn't use an asset type account unless you read farther down in this post). 

My annuities have specific unit holdings of mutual fund type securities.  Note...these are UNITS and not shares.  So these are non-standard funds.

I have created securities for each of the securities held in the annuity.  I DO NOT enter a stock symbol because these are not publicly traded over an exchange.

Then, I just sell or buy the securities held in the annuity as I would normal stock or mutual fund securities.  

The ONE caveat, however, is you will have to MANUALLY enter the unit price for those securities.  I do them every day through the INVESTING > PORTFOLIO > Price Update screen in Quicken.

But, you can track them weekly, monthly or quarterly.  My annuities "adjust" quarterly...that meaning that there are trades to re-balance my annuity according to what percentage of each security we set up.  Just by doing that, you will get unit prices from the sell and buy transactions because Quicken will calculate the UNIT price when you do the transaction.  I always let Quicken calculate unit (or share) prices.  All I'm interested in is the EXACT number of units (or shares) and the EXACT total amount of the transaction.  Completing those two amounts will allow Quicken to calculate the units price...and I don't care if the exact decimal amounts aren't the same as in the statement.

My annuities also charge a quarterly annuity benefit fee (basically, a service charge) which also results in sale of some of the securities and paid to a specific category in Quicken I've set up (for me, a category of "annuity benefit fee").

This seems to work very well for me.  The upside is I get to track my annuity value, and for me it's on a daily basis.  However, the downside is I get the actual value...but I DON'T get the Lifetime Income Basis.  The Lifetime Income Basis is what your annuitized withdrawals will be based on when you start taking your guaranteed income for life.  The Lifetime Income Basis multiplied by your withdrawal rate (typically 4-5%) equals you guaranteed income for life annually.  

For that, I actually track those amounts in an Excel spreadsheet.

And of course, hopefully, we all live long enough to have the actual value of the annuity get to zero yet still continue to receive our guaranteed lifetime income.

Now, if you want to track the Lifetime Income Basis in Quicken, then JM's advice above works better.  There, you just set up an asset account, enter the amount of your annuity initial value and add transactions to get to the Lifetime Income Basis.  That's a minimal maintenance approach.

But, I like to keep track of the sells, buys, exchanges and annuity benefit fees so I do it as I've outlined.  It's more hands on, but more accurate...at least I think so and it works fine for me.  

Unknown

BTW, if this confuses you after my explanation, let me know and I can help straighten things out for you.  It IS confusing, to an extent. 

Terry Faulkner

gmalis1 said:

I do this in a slightly different manner.

I set up my annuities as IRA's...because, for me they are just that.  But you can set them up as any investment type account in Quicken that applies (I wouldn't use an asset type account unless you read farther down in this post). 

My annuities have specific unit holdings of mutual fund type securities.  Note...these are UNITS and not shares.  So these are non-standard funds.

I have created securities for each of the securities held in the annuity.  I DO NOT enter a stock symbol because these are not publicly traded over an exchange.

Then, I just sell or buy the securities held in the annuity as I would normal stock or mutual fund securities.  

The ONE caveat, however, is you will have to MANUALLY enter the unit price for those securities.  I do them every day through the INVESTING > PORTFOLIO > Price Update screen in Quicken.

But, you can track them weekly, monthly or quarterly.  My annuities "adjust" quarterly...that meaning that there are trades to re-balance my annuity according to what percentage of each security we set up.  Just by doing that, you will get unit prices from the sell and buy transactions because Quicken will calculate the UNIT price when you do the transaction.  I always let Quicken calculate unit (or share) prices.  All I'm interested in is the EXACT number of units (or shares) and the EXACT total amount of the transaction.  Completing those two amounts will allow Quicken to calculate the units price...and I don't care if the exact decimal amounts aren't the same as in the statement.

My annuities also charge a quarterly annuity benefit fee (basically, a service charge) which also results in sale of some of the securities and paid to a specific category in Quicken I've set up (for me, a category of "annuity benefit fee").

This seems to work very well for me.  The upside is I get to track my annuity value, and for me it's on a daily basis.  However, the downside is I get the actual value...but I DON'T get the Lifetime Income Basis.  The Lifetime Income Basis is what your annuitized withdrawals will be based on when you start taking your guaranteed income for life.  The Lifetime Income Basis multiplied by your withdrawal rate (typically 4-5%) equals you guaranteed income for life annually.  

For that, I actually track those amounts in an Excel spreadsheet.

And of course, hopefully, we all live long enough to have the actual value of the annuity get to zero yet still continue to receive our guaranteed lifetime income.

Now, if you want to track the Lifetime Income Basis in Quicken, then JM's advice above works better.  There, you just set up an asset account, enter the amount of your annuity initial value and add transactions to get to the Lifetime Income Basis.  That's a minimal maintenance approach.

But, I like to keep track of the sells, buys, exchanges and annuity benefit fees so I do it as I've outlined.  It's more hands on, but more accurate...at least I think so and it works fine for me.  

Thanks so much gmalis1.  I'm going to give this a try.  Knowing me I will be coming back with some more questions.  Really appreciate your taking the time and your guidance.

Unknown

gmalis1 said:

I do this in a slightly different manner.

I set up my annuities as IRA's...because, for me they are just that.  But you can set them up as any investment type account in Quicken that applies (I wouldn't use an asset type account unless you read farther down in this post). 

My annuities have specific unit holdings of mutual fund type securities.  Note...these are UNITS and not shares.  So these are non-standard funds.

I have created securities for each of the securities held in the annuity.  I DO NOT enter a stock symbol because these are not publicly traded over an exchange.

Then, I just sell or buy the securities held in the annuity as I would normal stock or mutual fund securities.  

The ONE caveat, however, is you will have to MANUALLY enter the unit price for those securities.  I do them every day through the INVESTING > PORTFOLIO > Price Update screen in Quicken.

But, you can track them weekly, monthly or quarterly.  My annuities "adjust" quarterly...that meaning that there are trades to re-balance my annuity according to what percentage of each security we set up.  Just by doing that, you will get unit prices from the sell and buy transactions because Quicken will calculate the UNIT price when you do the transaction.  I always let Quicken calculate unit (or share) prices.  All I'm interested in is the EXACT number of units (or shares) and the EXACT total amount of the transaction.  Completing those two amounts will allow Quicken to calculate the units price...and I don't care if the exact decimal amounts aren't the same as in the statement.

My annuities also charge a quarterly annuity benefit fee (basically, a service charge) which also results in sale of some of the securities and paid to a specific category in Quicken I've set up (for me, a category of "annuity benefit fee").

This seems to work very well for me.  The upside is I get to track my annuity value, and for me it's on a daily basis.  However, the downside is I get the actual value...but I DON'T get the Lifetime Income Basis.  The Lifetime Income Basis is what your annuitized withdrawals will be based on when you start taking your guaranteed income for life.  The Lifetime Income Basis multiplied by your withdrawal rate (typically 4-5%) equals you guaranteed income for life annually.  

For that, I actually track those amounts in an Excel spreadsheet.

And of course, hopefully, we all live long enough to have the actual value of the annuity get to zero yet still continue to receive our guaranteed lifetime income.

Now, if you want to track the Lifetime Income Basis in Quicken, then JM's advice above works better.  There, you just set up an asset account, enter the amount of your annuity initial value and add transactions to get to the Lifetime Income Basis.  That's a minimal maintenance approach.

But, I like to keep track of the sells, buys, exchanges and annuity benefit fees so I do it as I've outlined.  It's more hands on, but more accurate...at least I think so and it works fine for me.  

Thank you for trying to help, but I do not want to track each holding....there are way too many.

Unknown

JM said:

I use a regular brokerage account, tax-deferred, to track my annuity.
I do manually track the activity for the various institutional funds - based on data from the issuers web site.

If you are not interested in tracking the detaied activity, the easiest alternative would be to simply carry the account value as a cash balance. You can update the cash balance periodically as desired.

I am not interested in tracking the detailed activity.  Can you please elaborate how you would suggest I set this up so i can update the cash balance on a quarterly basis?  I am fairly new at this.  Thank you so much for your help! 

Unknown

Terry Faulkner said:

I also have a variable annuity and I still am at a loss how to track this.  I do want to track the quarterly price changes so that I can balance to the statement.  From the Quicken instructions, I believe that editing the price changes is the approach to take for maintaining the annuity.  However, I really am in the dark here and would appreciate step by step guidance on this.  Thanks so much.

Hi Terry,
When you have set yours up to track, would you kindly let me know how you did it?  Thank you very much!

Terry Faulkner

gmalis1, I already have questions, no surprise!

 #1 You say you use INVESTING > PORTFOLIO > Price Update to update the price.  I'm using Quicken 2017 and this is what I have for that path INVESTING> TOOLS> SECURITY LIST> UPDATE> EDIT PRICE HISTORY or this path INVESTING>PORTFOLIO>PORTFOLIO AS OF FIELD (calendar date)> QUOTE/PRICE column to make the change.  Any idea which approach I should take or do they both end up with the same result.  Sorry, I am a neophyte with Quicken Investments.

#2 With your approach are you are able to balance to a quarterly or annual statement?

Thanks SO much, Terry

Tom Young

Terry Faulkner said:

gmalis1, I already have questions, no surprise!

 #1 You say you use INVESTING > PORTFOLIO > Price Update to update the price.  I'm using Quicken 2017 and this is what I have for that path INVESTING> TOOLS> SECURITY LIST> UPDATE> EDIT PRICE HISTORY or this path INVESTING>PORTFOLIO>PORTFOLIO AS OF FIELD (calendar date)> QUOTE/PRICE column to make the change.  Any idea which approach I should take or do they both end up with the same result.  Sorry, I am a neophyte with Quicken Investments.

#2 With your approach are you are able to balance to a quarterly or annual statement?

Thanks SO much, Terry

"#1 You say you use INVESTING > PORTFOLIO > Price Update to update the price."

I believe what gmailis1 is suggesting is to:

Click on the "Investing" tab - not the menu item "Investing" with all its drop-down choices - then click on "Portfolio".  If you Group by "Accounts" you should have something that looks like the attached.  Change the "As of" date to whatever date is appropriate, it will be "today's" date if you are doing this daily, then simply click on the "Quote/Price" dollar amount for the securities and change the price to "today's" price.  You can see in the picture that all of the prices have that little clock face next to them, meaning they are out of date.  Once you enter "today's" price that clock face disappears.

Terry Faulkner

Thank you Tom

Unknown

Terry Faulkner said:

gmalis1, I already have questions, no surprise!

 #1 You say you use INVESTING > PORTFOLIO > Price Update to update the price.  I'm using Quicken 2017 and this is what I have for that path INVESTING> TOOLS> SECURITY LIST> UPDATE> EDIT PRICE HISTORY or this path INVESTING>PORTFOLIO>PORTFOLIO AS OF FIELD (calendar date)> QUOTE/PRICE column to make the change.  Any idea which approach I should take or do they both end up with the same result.  Sorry, I am a neophyte with Quicken Investments.

#2 With your approach are you are able to balance to a quarterly or annual statement?

Thanks SO much, Terry

Exactly.  I just enter the prices directly on that screen.  

Terry Faulkner

Terry Faulkner said:

gmalis1, I already have questions, no surprise!

 #1 You say you use INVESTING > PORTFOLIO > Price Update to update the price.  I'm using Quicken 2017 and this is what I have for that path INVESTING> TOOLS> SECURITY LIST> UPDATE> EDIT PRICE HISTORY or this path INVESTING>PORTFOLIO>PORTFOLIO AS OF FIELD (calendar date)> QUOTE/PRICE column to make the change.  Any idea which approach I should take or do they both end up with the same result.  Sorry, I am a neophyte with Quicken Investments.

#2 With your approach are you are able to balance to a quarterly or annual statement?

Thanks SO much, Terry

Thanks ...getting close to getting this done.  When I enter the prices there though, I encounter rounding issues that cause me not to balance to the quarterly statement.  Are you balancing to the statement?  If so, how do you do that?
Thanks, Terry

Tom Young

Terry Faulkner said:

gmalis1, I already have questions, no surprise!

 #1 You say you use INVESTING > PORTFOLIO > Price Update to update the price.  I'm using Quicken 2017 and this is what I have for that path INVESTING> TOOLS> SECURITY LIST> UPDATE> EDIT PRICE HISTORY or this path INVESTING>PORTFOLIO>PORTFOLIO AS OF FIELD (calendar date)> QUOTE/PRICE column to make the change.  Any idea which approach I should take or do they both end up with the same result.  Sorry, I am a neophyte with Quicken Investments.

#2 With your approach are you are able to balance to a quarterly or annual statement?

Thanks SO much, Terry

Since both the quote and the number of shares can accept 6 numbers to the right of the decimal point I can't see how you really could have rounding errors unless the quarterly statement is truncating numbers from a presentation standpoint.   

Unknown

Terry Faulkner said:

gmalis1, I already have questions, no surprise!

 #1 You say you use INVESTING > PORTFOLIO > Price Update to update the price.  I'm using Quicken 2017 and this is what I have for that path INVESTING> TOOLS> SECURITY LIST> UPDATE> EDIT PRICE HISTORY or this path INVESTING>PORTFOLIO>PORTFOLIO AS OF FIELD (calendar date)> QUOTE/PRICE column to make the change.  Any idea which approach I should take or do they both end up with the same result.  Sorry, I am a neophyte with Quicken Investments.

#2 With your approach are you are able to balance to a quarterly or annual statement?

Thanks SO much, Terry

@Terry...yes I balance to my statement (based on the statement ending date and the security prices per unit for that date) and I can see my balance daily on the annuities websites.

Now, I may be off by a few cents, but usually nothing more than that.  And periodically, I use the same Price Update view to confirm the number of units that I own for each security.  As long as the units are correct, I'm usually dead on.

But, once again, you may have to sell some units to pay for whatever fees your annuity company charges.  So, those have to be accounted for.

And of course, there is always human error...putting in an incorrect number of units or entering a wayward price per unit. 

Terry Faulkner

Terry Faulkner said:

I also have a variable annuity and I still am at a loss how to track this.  I do want to track the quarterly price changes so that I can balance to the statement.  From the Quicken instructions, I believe that editing the price changes is the approach to take for maintaining the annuity.  However, I really am in the dark here and would appreciate step by step guidance on this.  Thanks so much.

Guidance on manually
maintaining a variable annuity in Quicken. 
I’m using Quicken Premier 2017.  I
do not pretend to be an expert but this does work and I am certainly open to
any guidance from our Super Users, so please jump in and provide your
expertise.

Some concepts that you may find helpful, some of which other
users have gratefully explained and some I have picked up from trial and error.  I did speak at length with the Quicken Help
Desk but nobody there had any understanding of a variable annuity.

Rounding cents with your financial institution may be an
issue so don’t expect to balance to the penny with your statements.

To set up a variable annuity, set up as a Brokerage
account.

Tools -> Add Account -> Brokerage

The Quicken tutorials do a fairly good job of
advising how to set up so I’m not going to cover that here.

 ...Assuming now that you have entered your Buys to set up your account.

Using your statement, enter the fund prices for all the
dates available on your statement.  My
statement has the prices for the dates that charges are assessed, dates for
transfers from one stock to another, dates for reallocations among the funds
and quarter end dates.  I enter the
prices for all those dates so that I have a better fund performance picture.

To make those price changes, on the Investing Tab, enter the
as of date and then below in the Quote/Price column, enter the prices
from your statement.

 

 Again, from your statement...

My account has quarterly charges that I will show you how
to enter.  From your Accounts window,
select your account. Then select Enter
Transactions.  I use Miscellaneous
Expense as the transaction type to enter the quarterly charges.  Enter the charges for each of the funds in
your account.

 

Then, I also Remove
Shares so that the share count will be correct as well as the fund dollar
amount as a result of the quarterly charge. 
The share count used for the charge should also be listed on your
statement.

 

Quarterly my account reallocates.  This means that funds are moved from one
account to another to balance according to the pre-agreed investing
strategy.  The reallocation consists of
first selling the entirety of all the funds and then buying the same funds back
in different quantities.

Below is an example of a Sell

 

To make things easier because in these reallocations the
entire fund is sold, I check the Sell all
shares in this account.  Do not populate the Price Received. Rather leave that field
blank and populate the Total sale
field.  It is my opinion that this keeps
the transaction as clean as possible within Quicken.

 Below is an example of a Buy

Notice again, that Number of shares and Total cost only were entered.  Let Quicken determine the Price Paid.

 

 The only other type of transaction I’ve encountered is a
transfer.  In my account a transfer is a
move between funds.  Treat those as Sells
and Buys as shown above.

I suspect that your annuity has idiosyncrasies that differ
from mine.  So I hope that you will add
to our knowledge base as you identify those.

Unknown

Terry Faulkner said:

I also have a variable annuity and I still am at a loss how to track this.  I do want to track the quarterly price changes so that I can balance to the statement.  From the Quicken instructions, I believe that editing the price changes is the approach to take for maintaining the annuity.  However, I really am in the dark here and would appreciate step by step guidance on this.  Thanks so much.

Pretty much nailed it.

The only difference I use is that I execute a SELL transaction rather than a Shares Removed to cover the cash needed to pay the annuity benefit fee (the MiscExpense). 

But aside from that, you are spot on with dealing with variable annuities in Quicken.  

Nice job outlining the method.