Deferred Annuity upload to Quicken Investing

artg

I have a deferred annuity which I classify and track as part of my investments. I classify it as a domestic bond fund.  Today I started taking advantage of the Quicken Investing website where my investments are uploaded and analyzed.  I'm pretty impressed (so far) with the tools on the website.  Unfortunately my annuity (which of course) has no symbol shows up with a value of $0.  Has anyone figured out a work around for this dilemma please?  

NotACPA

I believe that you're allowed to select WHICH securities upload to the website.

I'd just not upload the annuity.

BTW, I have an annuity also ... and I track it as a separate account since it's value doesn't fluctuate like a regular security.

artg

NotACPA: Thank you.  However, I'd like to upload and I like to track it in a similar manner as the desk top version "Investing Tab."  I currently track it as a separate account (like you) in my Portfolio.  I guess what I'm looking for is the "magic" button I need to push to manual input a value on the website (quicken.investing) and call the annuity a cash account. By the way, if it can't be done that's a satisfactory answer, I'd just like to hear from someone who's tried as well.

NotACPA

@artg, I'm unclear on something.  Do you hold the annuity in a Q investments type account, wherein it's a "security"?  How are you currently adjusting the value (or, are you)?

Mine is just a regular Asset type account ... and not listed as a security.

But, what appears to be another difference between our experiences, is that I receive monthly payouts from mine (it's 34 years old).

artg

@NotACPA: Again, thank you.  I set it up as a separate security in my investments.  It's a deferred (interest rate sensitive) annuity.  More specifically I designed it as a "money market" with a share value of $1.  I MANUALLY adjust the value by "reinvesting interest." The action is labeled as "Reinvint."  Once a month I make an automatic purchase of more shares so I add the value of my purchase at $1 per share.  Did I say that right? Or better yet, am I clear (understandable?)  

NotACPA

OK, I think I understand what you're doing.  For that Annuity/MMF, what TYPE of security have you classified it as?  You can view this by doing CTRL-Y.

I thought that everything EXCEPT a security type of "Market Index" uploaded.

artg

Good morning @NotACPA. Before I answer your question I like "CTRL-Y" as a shortcut; thanks for the tip. 

As to your question:
TYPE: Annuity
Asset Class: Domestic Bond

I chose "Domestic Bond" because my rate of return on the Annuity was much closer to a bond mutual fund (as opposed to a MM fund.) I know that's not totally consistent given I (manually) value the share price at $1 which makes it look like a money market fund. 

I'm wide open to changing either (or both of those) answer given they're manual entries.

Thank you for your patience in trying to help me.  I'm just not sure there's a viable work around to this.

NotACPA

Try changing the Type to "Mutual Fund" and see if that helps. 

Annuity seems to be a security type that you've created ... and maybe Q isn't recognizing that.

Jim_Harman

I suspect that because the annuity is not publicly traded like a stock or mutual fund, you can't track its performance on investing.Quicken.com. 

NotACPA

Jim_Harman said:

I suspect that because the annuity is not publicly traded like a stock or mutual fund, you can't track its performance on investing.Quicken.com. 

BUT, he should be able to current it's current value (managed thru Q desktop) on Q.com ... once he can upload the security.

artg

@NotACPA and @Jim_Harman:

Good morning. I changed it (my annuity) to a mutual fund and it still did NOT show up (with any value) on investing.Quicken.  By the way, it shows up with a value (accurate to the penny) on the Quicken Cloud.

I suspect that at the end of the day Jim is correct in as much as the annuity is not traded like a stock and investing.quicken is not going to recognize any value.

As much as I like to consider my annuity an investment it is, and will always be, an insurance product.  

With that said I'm still open to any suggestions.

Thank you both.

Jim_Harman

What analysis on investing.Quicken.com are you using that is not available in Quicken by itself?

Between the Investing Portfolio views and the investment performance report, it has a pretty comprehensive set of tools.

artg

@Jim_Harman. Good (fair) question Jim. I just started using the investing.quicken in the last couple of days whereas I've been using the Investment tab in the desktop version for (many) years. So far I like the risk/return vs. model portfolios and the Portfolio overlap between different accounts.  My wife and I have a  non-qualified mutual fund account (with seven different funds) as well as each of us having IRA's with various ETFs.  The truth of the matter is I just enjoy it (investing.quicken) because it's new to me.  The fact is you're correct in that the desktop application considers my annuity a domestic bond fund and accounts for every penny.  So, this issue with investing.quicken is not the end of the world...it's just a challenge that I'm trying to make work.  (By the way, both IRA's are managed portfolios with 12 different ETFs so I'm clearly not making any decisions in that world.) 

Jim_Harman

Another option for portfolio analysis is the X-Ray option in Premier. This sends your portfolio to Morningstar which applies its analysis to your asset allocation, stock overlap, etc. 

However this analysis also only includes securities that are in Morningstar's database. 

artg

@Jim_Harman.  Jim:  I use the Portfolio X-Ray tool five mornings a week (Tue-Sat) following the previous days market close and I enjoy it very much.  It's extremely useful and informative.  Of course the change from day to day is negligible (to say the least.) Again, this is more for personal enjoyment than anything else and the morning ritual goes great with a cup of coffee. 

mshiggins

From C. D. Bales:

I don't use Quicken.com investing, but I have tested it with several different versions of Quicken over the years.

My understanding of the way the site is intended to work is: Quicken One Step Updates are responsible for uploading the number of shares held; Quicken.com is responsible for getting the security prices and computing the values.

And I believe that Quicken.com uses the same source of prices as Quicken on your PC (qw.exe); so if a security price is not available on your pc, it's probably not available at Quicken.com

I know of no way to manually update security prices at Quicken.com.

[I have not tested this, but .... Since you say you're treating your annuity as a money market fund, you might try looking up the ticker symbol for some money market fund you are never going to use, and assigning that ticker to your annuity. If that causes a problem, you can delete the security at Quicken.com, delete the ticker from Quicken, and upload to Quicken.com again.]

mshiggins

From C. D. Bales:

I have since tested the suggestion I made in my previous post: I uploaded 500 shares of a totally bogus security name with an actual money market ticker symbol to Quicken.com.

I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that Quicken.com used the uploaded money market ticker symbol to correctly price the holdings of that bogus security @$1.00/share - giving that security a value of $500.

The bad news is that Quicken gives the bogus security the correct name of the money market fund whose ticker symbol I sent.

If you can live with the incorrect security name at Quicken.com, you should be able to get a correct market value for your Annuity at Quicken.com.

artg

@mshiggins:  Thank you.  I'm really not interested in that type of work around but I appreciate your effort.  The fact is QWin Premier has always (and still does) provide me plenty of investment analysis and/or insight.  I just wanted to see what this new "toy" could do and it's powerful.  Unfortunately it just won't allow manual input (which you've confirmed.)  At some point I'm confident investing.quicken will allow some degree of manual workarounds...I can't be the only Quicken user with an annuity.

In the meantime, thanks again.