Wife's company 401k offers own stock fund - how to enter it

Nalgas · May 11

My wife's company, UBS, offers a company stock fund in their 401k. You buy units of this fund at a certain price, and those correlate to a proportion of actual company shares at the market price.

The register downloads transactions of the fund units and their price which is way lower than the equivalent shares x market price. So the account value in the register is about $100k less than the value of this fund in the 401k website summary page; I assume that they show you the value the actual shares.

Do I ignore the $100k difference? Or is there a better way to manage this type of fund.

Thank you

Nalgas · May 12

Got it.

Thank you

[Deleted User] · May 11

@Nalgas it sounds like your wife's 401(k) plan offers a "unitized" stock fund. The price for this unitized stock fund will not match the published price for the actual stock.

This unitized stock setup is common in 401(k) plans that offer company stock. It is a way to get around the T+3 or three day settlement for stock funds that need to process daily in a 401(k) plan. When a 401(k) provider sets up a unitized fund, they start with an arbitrary number of units and unitized stock price to equal the MV of the stock fund when it was initiated. From that point, they will value the fund daily, and update the price and shares to mirror the MV of the actual stock.

What I would do then is set the stock fund in Quicken with a fictitious fund ID and update the unitized stock price manually. I think there should be a way to find or get the unitized stock prices from her online account.

Otherwise, you will always have MV difference between what UBS reports and what you have in Quicken.

Nalgas · May 12

thanks @CaliQkn

So you suggested that I add a fictitious fund such as THE FUND which will contain the unitized shares, and then I manually update the unitized price from her 401k website, for example? Isn't that what quicken downloads when I update?

[Deleted User] · May 12

@Nalgas The reason to use the fictitious fund ID instead of the real ticker for the stock is so the stock fund isn't automatically updated with the actual stock prices.

Quicken will not download prices for these unitized funds. They are not real funds with published prices. That is why you need to update the prices for the unitized stock fund manually.

It sounds like you are already using the correct number of unitized shares for the fund. Its just that the prices are incorrect because the actual stock prices are being downloaded instead of the unitized stock prices.

[Deleted User] · May 12

@Nalgas If the stock fund set up on Quicken has the correct units and you don't want to change the fund already set up in Quicken, you can just simply change or update the downloaded stock prices with the unitized prices. Again, this will need to be done manually.

Nalgas · May 12

Got it.

Thank you

Wife's company 401k offers own stock fund - how to enter it

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