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How to use Money Market as a cash account

I have several investment accounts where the “cash” account is a money market account. When I buy a stock Quicken sees it as a sale of the money market account and wants to record proceeds “to this account’s cash balance.” Of course, this should be a deduction from the money market account since I purchased a stock.
This results in false balances in the money market and the non-existing “cash” account. This must be a common problem, so how do you all handle this? I know that I can create an affiliated cash account and use the money market account for that, but I already have a lot of investment accounts and this will make it confusing.
I use Quicken 2020 Home, Business, and Rental Property
This results in false balances in the money market and the non-existing “cash” account. This must be a common problem, so how do you all handle this? I know that I can create an affiliated cash account and use the money market account for that, but I already have a lot of investment accounts and this will make it confusing.
I use Quicken 2020 Home, Business, and Rental Property
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Best Answers
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Jim_Harman SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
You basically have two choices. Which is best for you depends on your personal preference and how your brokerage handles the downloaded transactions.
Option 1 is what you describe above - keep the cash in a MMF and when for example you buy stock, you sell the MMF with the proceeds going to the account's "Cash Balance" then the money for the purchase comes from the cash balance, reducing it to zero. Vanguard for example downloads all these transactions.
Option 2 is to ignore the MMF and keep all the cash in the cash balance. Some brokerages do this in their downloads, i.e. there are no Buys and Sells of the MMF. With other brokerages, you may need to delete the downloaded MMF Buys and Sells.
-- Jim QWin Premier subscription6 -
NotACPA SuperUser, Windows Beta Beta
For our taxable brokerage accounts, at Fidelity, I use the "Show cash in a checking account" option of the BROKERAGE accounts. These are our primary checking accounts.For our IRA accounts, I use option 2 (above).Q user since DOS version 5
Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Home & Business
Retired "Certified Information Systems Auditor" & Bank Audit VP5
Answers
Option 1 is what you describe above - keep the cash in a MMF and when for example you buy stock, you sell the MMF with the proceeds going to the account's "Cash Balance" then the money for the purchase comes from the cash balance, reducing it to zero. Vanguard for example downloads all these transactions.
Option 2 is to ignore the MMF and keep all the cash in the cash balance. Some brokerages do this in their downloads, i.e. there are no Buys and Sells of the MMF. With other brokerages, you may need to delete the downloaded MMF Buys and Sells.
Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Home & Business
Retired "Certified Information Systems Auditor" & Bank Audit VP
As a result, to simplify things, I have always shown my core fund as cash, this works fine for me.