How do I learn how to manage my retirement accounts in Quicken?

fschmid

I have imported files from my financial institution into my financial account in Quicken but I don't think it is setting up the account correctly. Plus I haven't been updating on a regular basis. How can I get the account to balance?

Jim_Harman

How long has it been since the account share balances and cash agreed with your FI's statements? If you want to keep track of all the details and it has only been a few months, you could compare the transaction list (register) in Quicken to your statements and enter any missing transactions.

But if you are not concerned about tracking the performance of your retirement investments, just the account balance, you might consider using the new Simple investing mode. To enable this, go to Edit > Preferences > Investment transactions and check the Enable Simple Investing box. Back up your data file in case you do not like the result.

Then in your account, click the gear at the top right and pick Edit account details. In the Tracking method box, pick Simple.

In Simple mode, you will see a display like the investing Dashboard for your account rather than the usual transaction list. When you download from your FI, Quicken will update the share counts and prices of your holdings but will not download all the transactions. Note that once you have used Simple mode, it may be difficult to switch back to Complete mode because there will be missing transactions.

Ps56k2

fschmid said: I have imported files from my financial institution into my financial account in Quicken
but I don't think it is setting up the account correctly.

I guesss the question is... what do you think is wrong.

The normal sequence is....
1 - create your accounts in Quicken with the Add Account - and set them up as Retirement type accts.
2 - when setup, Quicken will also attempt to download any transactions and balances avail in your physical acct.
3 - in the future, you should be able to download any future transactions in the account.

What financial institution are you using for these accounts ?

fschmid

The part that looks wrong is the Cash Balance. I figure it should be close to $0.00 because the financial institution should be buying shares with all cash that is deposited into the account. I had a 401K through work and now I retired and moved all my funds from Principal to Raymond James. Shouldn't the 401K account now show zero cash balance?

Frankx

Hi @fschmid,

I assume that you did a rollover transaction where the positions in the 401k account were liquidated and new investments (in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etc.) were purchased by Raymond James with the rollover funds. 

Your new account will operate under whatever instructions that you provided to Raymond James.  For example, if you've instructed them to reinvest all dividends or interest in a money market mutual fund or some other investment, they should be doing that.  If you've not given them instructions, then you'll certainly be seeing your cash balance increase over time, if your investments pay dividends or interest income.

Let me know if you have any followups.

Frankx