Change IRA to 401(K) account type

I use Quicken 2005 and need to change an IRA investment account type to a

401(K) account type. Does anyone one have any ideas on how to accomplish this task?

I need to get all of the detail transactions to go from the IRA account to the 401(K) account for performance comparison reasons.

"Robert Brennan" wrote

It can't be done.

I don't understand why you think you need to do it. What performance differences do you expect to see?

The only way to end up with the result you are looking for - in a nutshell - is to create a new 401k account; export your IRA transactions to a qif file; import the qif file to the new 401k account; then delete the old IRA account.

John,

The reason I need to do it is because the way the retirement planning feature is built, it will not let you contribute more than $3,000/year to an account that is "typed" as an IRA. I assume that if one is "types" an account as a 401K account the limitations, if any, would be between $14,000 and $20,500 depending on how up to date the software is.

Quicken with Quicken 2005 will not let you import QIF files into investment accounts. I have tried.

I then researched it and it confirmed my suspicions.

If you have any suggestions I am open.

John:

I wouldn't blame JP for getting tired of the "Quicken can't import QIFs" complaint.

He has patiently explained on numerous occasions how to accomplish the task with a modicum of text editing.

This is just one of many threads that can be found by searching for "John Pollard" and "import QIF":

"I'll offer you this to get you started. Assuming that the first record in your current qif file looks like this:

!Type:Invst

Use a word processor and add the following four records *before* the first record in your current file.

!Account NMyInvestmentAccount TInvst ^

Substitute the name of your Quicken investment account for "MyInvestmentAccount".

Bob

The reason I need to do it is because the way the retirement planning feature is built, it will not let you contribute more than $3,000/year to an account that is "typed" as an IRA. I assume that if one is "types" an account as a 401K account the limitations, if any, would be between $14,000 and $20,500 depending on how up to date the software is.

Quicken with Quicken 2005 will not let you import QIF files into investment accounts. I have tried.

I then researched it and it confirmed my suspicions.

If you have any suggestions I am open.

"Robert Brennan" wrote

I don't use any of Quicken's planners so I can't give you any good advice there.

But you might consider upgrading to a newer version of Quicken; I took a quick look in Q2006 and I think its retirement planner may allow contributions of more than $3000 per year (maybe $4500). Maybe Q2007 allows even more. Someone here using those versions and doing retirement planning might be able to fill you in with more detail.

As to importing qif files in Q2005 and later versions; luckily for you, your research was not complete: you can import qif files into any account type in Q2005, Q2006 and Q2007 ... you just have to know how to do it. See this post:

John,

Your suggestion worked. The only problem I had was that in addition to the Investment transactions being loaded, other transactions, I assume associated with those investment entries were also loaded putting me into a double counting situation.

This is all now a moot point because I found out that the retirement planning feature for 401K accounts has a bug. Quicken has set the contribution limit to $3,000 even though the actual amount per the IRS even back in 2005 was at least $14,000.

Thanks for you help.