Sub-Accounts for Retirement

Cyrano
Cyrano Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭
edited January 6 in Investing (Mac)

I have a 401k through Fidelity that contains accounts for both my previous employer and my current employer. (My previous employer account has a better fee structure, so I am letting it ride…) My new employer also allows a BrokerageLink option, which has both a Traditional and Roth offering. So, functionally, my single 401k account has four (4) "sub-accounts" that are individually tracked within Fidelity - Employer A, Employer B "Normal", Employer B "Brokerage Link Traditional", and Employer B "Brokerage Link Roth" - but are all rolled into a single "final answer" for reporting, statements, etc.

I have been manually checking all four Fidelity sub-account registers and making sure that I have all deposits and investments and reinvestments and brokerage fees (and, and, and…) properly captured in my single Quicken account, but it is easy to overlook individual line items in the single combined Quicken register - and therefore either to miss something or to enter it twice. (Then the reconciliation investigation starts…)

It would be really handy to be able to create four individual "sub-registers" or "sub-accounts" within the single 401k Quicken account in order to align with the four individual screens that I have to walk through on the Fidelity site. From what I can tell, this is not currently an offering within Quicken. Am I missing something simple? Or is this indeed a missing capability?

I am using Quicken Classic Deluxe, Version 8.3.3, on MacOS 15.6.1

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Comments

  • volvogirl
    volvogirl Quicken Windows Other SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭

    What do you mean "….. are all rolled into a single "final answer"…? You get 1 statement from Fidelity? Those should actually be 4 separate Quicken Accounts or maybe 3. The ROTH definity should be a separate account. Employer A & B should probably be separate accounts. 

    I'm staying on Quicken 2013 Premier for Windows.

  • Cyrano
    Cyrano Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭

    Yes - I get one statement from Fidelity.

    Within the Fidelity site (which is really the impetus for my question) my "home screen" shows a single total - for simplicity, let's say a total of $100,000. Under that single total, it shows (let's say) Employer A = $50,000 and Employer B = $50,000. Each of those has their own register - but they are "rolled up" into a single total. At this point, I am able to deal with it easily - because the subtotals are also shown, and I do indeed have two Quicken accounts (one for each), and I can "at a glance" check the balances in the Quicken Sidebar against those on the Fidelity site. If that was the extent of the issue, I would have (and have for years) remained silent and not bothered the group.

    The complication really shows up with the "BrokerageLink" accounts. At the Fidelity "home screen", all that is displayed is the total Employer B balance; it is acknowledged that the BrokerageLink accounts exist, but no balances are provided. (This balance matches my "at a glance" check with the Quicken Sidebar.) If I look at the transaction details for that Employer B account, however, it only shows the transactions within the "Normal" account - no information about the BrokerageLink accounts is provided.

    To get to the BrokerageLink information, I have to go deeper into the Fidelity system. Once I get there, I can see ALL of the individual account information for all four sub-accounts - and they are obviously treated as sub-accounts, since they still roll into a single total. From there, I can see (for example) Employer A = $50,000, Employer B "Normal" = $25,000, Employer B "Brokerage Link Traditional" = $10,000, and Employer B "Brokerage Link Roth" = $15,000 - but there is nothing that totals up to the "Employer B" total of $50,000. From this portion of the site, I can see the BrokerageLink transactions that were not available from the "home" level of the site - but they are separate from the Employer B "Normal" transactions.

    Fidelity is very clearly treating them as four individual "sub-accounts" that are then rolled into a single answer. Well, technically, I suppose they are treating them as two individual "sub-accounts", one of which actually has three "sub-sub-accounts"… 🤔

    While I probably could set up four individual Quicken accounts to capture the details, that does not jibe with how I interact with the Fidelity site - hence my question. My payroll contributions are a single transaction into the Employer B account - which is then distributed through the three Employer B "sub-accounts".

    I know that I could set up four Quicken accounts as a work-around and then do a bunch of transfers between those accounts - but being able to structure the "sub-accounts" to match what I actually see on the investment site would be really handy…

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