Custom Index/Fund - for alloc of 529 funds

harry askenazi

Quicken doesnt auto import from NYSAVES.org - NY's 529c site.
NYSAVEs offers vanguard's products but the ones I chose (target age based funds), don't have a ticker. Instead, they tell me what percent is allocated to each of 4 diff vanguard funds.

As a result it's cumbersome to track investments. Right now, I have the contributions that get made from my savings account transfer to the 529c account in quicken. To track the investment performance though, I'd need to enter the tickers.

Instead of manually figuring out the % allocation to each fund each month, and creating 4 transactions for every transfer, is there a way to create a custom fund which includes separately weighted allocations of diff funds? And then create a price for the fund that I'll manually adjust each month?

Jim_Harman

Quicken does not have a way to make a combination fund as you describe.

If you go to the NYSAVES website or your statement, does it show the share price and shares held for the combination fund that you own? If so, you can set up a security in Quicken and update the prices manually.

harry askenazi

Yes it does show a share price. I know I can create a security but was hoping to create an allocation to track as part of my overall portfolio. The challenge is that there is no "US/Domestic" stocks option. Oddly, I only have more granular domestic stock categories (like small cap, large cap etc), even though there is a higher level "Domestic bonds" category

Ps56k2

For my 529 account - I had to do it all manually....

Create a new manual Quicken Account - then create a "virtual security" just make it up and Add Security -
then add the shares of the "virtual security" to the account,
and update the share price whenever I had a new transaction or statement.

[EDIT] -also updated topic title to include the 529 mention

Jim_Harman

The Large Cap and small cap (small cap is actually mid and small cap combined) options are for US stocks. International is for all non-US stocks. For a total US stock market fund, you can set the allocations to 75% Large cap/25% small cap or whatever it is.

If you know the allocations and percentages of the underlying funds, you can compute the combined allocation if it is not given on the provider's website. If it is a "target date" fund, the allocations will change over time and you should update them in Quicken every year or so.

This is set by going to the Security Detail view and clicking on Edit details. If you select Mixture and Define, you can set the percentage allocations of the fund. Be sure to un-check Download asset class information if you have set the allocation yourself.

You can also assign some custom asset classes but the last I looked that feature was pretty buggy and it was best to stick with the pre-defined asset classes.

Because a 529 account is earmarked for education, you may not want to include its assets and allocation in your overall allocation and portfolio. If that is the case, you can mark the 529 account as "Separate" in Quicken and it will be excluded by default from your investing reports.