How to link Fidelity Fixed Annuity account in Quicken Classic

Question

I recently opened a fixed annuity account at Fidelity. I see the Fixed Annuity account within the Fidelity website but if I try to add a new account in Quicken from Fidelity Investments the new Fixed Annuity account does not show up in Quicken. Any ideas how I can track the fixed annuity in Quicken Classic?

Boatnmaniac · Answer

Quicken does not support downloading of Annuities of any kind nor from any investment company.

What I have done for my deferred annuity with Fidelity and for another annuity with Thrivent:

* Added offline IRA brokerage accounts.  Most annuities are perhaps most similar from a tax perspective to IRA accounts with contributions to and distributions from managed in a similar manner.  If the annuity is for $100,000, enter the Opening Balance as $100,000 as a transfer in from either a taxable account or as a rollover transfer in from a different retirement account.
* Created a new security for the annuity.  This will be an offline, manual security.  For example, my annuity with Fidelity is a USAA Deferred Annuity so I named it "USAA Def Annuity".  I did not give it a ticker symbol.
* Enter a BUY transaction in the IRA brokerage account for 100,000 shares @ $1.00/share pulling the cash from the cash balance of the account.  When done, there should be a $0.00 cash balance in the account.
* About 1X per month I manually enter a ReinDiv transaction in the the IRA account for X shares @ $1.00/share to account for account value increases.  You can decide to update the value of the account on a different time schedule if you wish.
* When I get a distribution from the annuity, I manually enter a SELL transaction for X shares @ $1.00/share so the total matches the dollar amount of the distribution.  The cash from the SELL transaction is either transferred to a taxable account or is rolled over to a traditional IRA account.

I've been doing it this way for years and it seems to work well for me and in how Quicken captures/reports the tax implications.

I know others have managed annuities differently than I do.  Hopefully one or more of them will post how they do it so you can determine which method might work best for you.

NotACPA · Answer

What does this account actually hold?

And when you TOOLS, Account List and click EDIT adjacent to the account that you created in Q, what shows as the "Financial Institution".  Fidelity uses multiple FI names