Best way to hide old 401K

rwrighthi

Long time user of Quicken but at a novice level for investments. I've had a 401K at my last job which started 20+ years ago. The fund manager did not have downloads available then and I was too busy to manually add all the transactions to the account. Just saw the pa[er from the fund and filed it away. I did show transfers into the account for my payroll deductions into the fund just not any other transactions. The account in Quicken shows 15K in cash; the the fund actually is close to 125K.

Fast forward to today. The job went away 3 years ago, the 401K fund management companies have changed several times. Downloads are now available. What I'd like to do if possible is to bring in the "new" account under it's current fund manager and keep it up to date. I know how to do that so that's not the problem.

I'm wondering if it's a good idea or maybe someone has a better way to close out the old 401K since it's basically garbage. I thought I might create an expense category for this temp transaction, cash out the "money" in the account and pretend to spend it. Then hide the account from the account list. Since basically it's paper money I don't see a problem doing that but I'm no expert so I'm asking advice.

The 401K will then get updates and be up to date.

Am I wrong to consider this or is there a better way to do this?

Using Quicken Windows, subscription on a Win10 machine. Running version 36.23

Thanks, Ron

Chris_QPW

Do I understand you correctly that the account doesn't have securities in it, just cash?

If so the easiest way to do this is run a reconcile, mark all the transactions as cleared and accept a balance adjustment when you select to finish the reconcile.  Once that is done select the transaction and change the category to [401K Account Name].  That will remove the amount from the account without changing any category or other account.

Note if you do have securities in this account use remove shares first.

rwrighthi

Hi Chris,
Just checked. I must have tried to keep up with manually entering the shares as in the beginning there there are some shares listed, then I must have given up.

When I looked at the account I didn't scroll back far enough. So I will have to the remove shares first?

Chris_QPW

Yes, since you no longer own those shares remove them first.  Just use the Remove Shares action.