Transferring Balance between 529 accounts

Question

I have some 529 accounts that i am closing and transferring the balance to a new account.  What is the best way to do this?  The accounts are manually updated because they are not listed in the automatically updated accounts by Quicken.  What transaction and code should i use to close the source account?   Would this be a simple withdrawal that is not linked to the Deposit account?   In the Deposit account, Would this just be "Added shares" with the number of units and price for the investment selection?

Jim_Harman · Answer

Since there are no taxes due and you have already transferred the securities in Quicken, the best way to handle the security change is to Sell the old securities and Buy the replacements.

What will probably appear on your statement is shares sold in the old account, the cash transferred, and the new shares bought in the new account.

If these are set up as Single Mutual Fund accounts in Quicken, please let us know because it is a little more complicated.

poyznivy · Answer

Thank you so much!  that was very helpful and it worked.  In the new deposit account, the holdings are in a different security.  What is the best way to update that information -- an internal reallocation of holdings?  Thanks also for the suggestion of what to do with the Source account -- keep it but rename it so that it moves to the bottom of the list.

Sherlock · Answer

If you're transferring the entire balance of the original account to a new account, I suggest you consider continuing to use the original register in Quicken.  Otherwise, I if you're transferring security holdings, I suggest you use the Shares Transferred Between Accounts wizard: open the source account, select Enter Transactions and Shares Transferred Between Accounts in the Enter transaction: pull-down menu

Instead of closing an account register in Quicken, I suggest hiding the closed account's register: https://www.quicken.com/support/how-do-i-hide-or-close-account

A trick I find useful is to rename a closed account's register to coerce it to be sorted to the end of list and make it easily recognizable by prefixing the name with ZZZ