Virginia 529 Plan - Available, but link to existing account or not?

James J

Here's some background and my question:

I have been tracking the 529 as simply a cash account in Quicken, just to have the total balance included in my overall numbers.  We have two kids we are saving for, but I have just one cash account called College 529.  I just realized (see further below) that I can in fact link the 529 with Quicken. 

What's weird, to me, is that each kid has three accounts.  That's a total of six accounts that are part of this 529 plan.  Virginia 529 organizes it like this because each account is for a specific mix of stocks - one account follows the S&P, one is for international stocks, one account is for bonds, etc.  So I have my savings divided up among these accounts in order to achieve the right asset allocation for each kid.  And that's how I now have a total of six accounts with the 529.

When I do the setup to download the 529 info into Quicken, what's my best course of action, to keep all the records neatly organized?

Can I link all of them to the existing Quicken cash account that I have been using to track the 529 balance for both kids and all 529 accounts?

Should I just delete the existing cash account I have in Quicken and start over?  This sounds like a bad idea, because I've been making monthly transfers from my checking account to this cash account for the past few years.  If I delete the existing cash account, isn't that going to mess up my checking account which had been the source of my transfers into the 529?

Should I zero out the cash account, hide it from view, and download the six separate accounts from the Virginia 529?

Or is there a way to download all six into a single Quicken account?

I want to be able to track the total balance of the 529 plan plus I want to be able to incorporate the 529 assets into Quickens asset allocation tools.

Thanks for any advice here!

So apparently it is possible to link your Virginia 529 plan to Quicken.   It's not real intuitive and I didn't actually follow through 100% becuase I have a question first.  But to do it, you can follow the instructions here: https://www.virginia529.com/blog/link-your-personal-finance-software-to-your-virginia529-account/

Then, when you attempt to setup downloads and Quicken presents you with the screen where you would normally input the name of the financial institution, it worked for me when I pasted in the url found in the instructions at the link above.  See the pic here:

James J

Well.  Looks like I did not read the directions closely enough.  On the linked page above, it explicitly says:

PLEASE NOTE: At this time Virginia529 accounts cannot be linked to any Quicken financial tools.