Is it possible to convert an existing investment "account" into an expense category?

Question

For many years now, I have been placing one of my automatic withdrawals from my paycheck into what I set up in Quicken as a "retirement account"; however, that money is not going into a physical account from which I can one day make withdrawals. It's just my contribution toward my future retirement - sort of like Social Security deductions that don't go to a physical account you own. I want to convert that "retirement account" into a regular expense category and have all transactions into that "account" converted to an expense.

jonaroberts · Answer

Thanks, guys. I should have tinkered around a bit more before I posted my question. What I ended up doing was creating an expense category, then went to Tools:Recategorize and recategorized all of the "Retirement Account" entries to the new expense category. Worked like a charm. I do appreciate your responses, though. Thank you!

volvogirl · Answer

Or you can just make an expense entry in the account for the balance and categorize it to a new expense category to zero out the account.  Then be sure to change your future paycheck withdrawals to the new expense category.

[Deleted User] · Answer

@jonaroberts do you use this category for any other transactions?  If not, the simplest way to convert this category to an expense is to go into your category list and edit this category from an "Income" to "Expense" and change the category name (description) to what you want.