My wife has a 403b account with Valic (no choice - hospital mandated). Q will not update since Q05. This file is a mess with lots of placeholders, and needs to be cleaned up.
I would like to get accurate data. Is the cleanest way to do this to delete the account and start over? To keep the data (reasonably) current, visit the Valic site monthly and adjust share balance?
I've tried adjusting share balances etc. but just seem to create more problems than I fix. Valic did several exchange redemption/exchange purchase transactions earlier this year and I don't know how to record those properly either. I tried to sell/buy but ended up with short sale transactions and generally contributed to the mess.
speedlever wrote in news:Xns9A164707FA709speedleveryahoocom@66.250.146.128:
Rule #1 Make sure you have a backup, or preferably more than 1 backup, daily for the last couple of weeks, then weekly, then monthly.
For Rules 2 through 10, see rule 1
Rule 11 Do not delete an account if there are transfers between that account and other accounts (that you do not delete). Doing so messes things up (understandably). Rule 12 Keep your data up to date. If you need to fudge things to get up to date, make an adjusting transaction that you clearly mark as such. Rule 13 Always - ALWAYS - use the dollar amounts and number of shares in stock and stock-like transactions. NEVER enter the per share stock price. Quicken will calculate that from the number of shares and transaction dollar amounts. What you DO want is to have the dollars and share numbers match. NOBODY really cares in transactions about the per share price. That can only be a suggestion when calculating potential value. In the real transaction it is the total transaction yield that counts.
Thanks for your thoughts. This file has been a mess for a long time. I'd really like to clean it up but am not sure how to attack it. As you can imagine, there are tons of placeholders.
Rules 1-10: I backup to my laptop, so have been fiddling with it on the main PC and then restoring from my laptop (back to the original mess) when I see my changes are not working.
Rule 11.. hmm. My wife has payroll deductions to the Valic account. But since Valic won't update online, what would be affected? I see her payroll deductions going to the Quicken account. But since there's no online update available, there's just a dollar amount going to the Valic account which coincides with her payroll deductions. Valic then divvies up everything according to her elections. I see no option but to update each security manually by visiting Valic and getting regular updates.
Rule 12. Up-to-date is a relative term. All I know to do is go online, view the current Valic account status and go in and adjust share balance saccordingly... which gets the data close. And then there are the exchange- redemption/purchase issues. Any reason why I can't treat that as a sell/buy transaction?
Rule 13.. understood.. but I'd forgotten that. Thanks for the reminder.
Is there a better way to do this?
(This = clean up the account and keep the data accurate.)
speedlever wrote in news:Xns9A1655371584Bspeedleveryahoocom@66.250.146.128:
I think you need to better define your needs. Do you need to keep track of now old transactions, or could you start a new account and then start keeping track of transactions from now on?
I am guessing that this is a retirement/pension account. As such, it may not need exacting detail of purchases (price, date, quantity). I would just start a new account with the positions as of December 31, then go on with that. Make an adjusting transaction(s) in the old account to zero it out.
Now for the paycheck transactions. Change the deduction for the pension to go as a transfer to a "holding" account. I use a bogus asset account. Over time the net amount here should be zero. Deduction from paycheck to Valic goes to the holding account. Then when Valic's purchasing information becomes available, you "purchase" with a transfer from the holding account. This better reflects real life: Employer sends money from your paycheck to Valic. Then (eventually) Valic uses this to purvhase securities (or whatever) as you have directed. A 2-step process.
Han wrote in news:Xns9A1659B28514Bikkezelf@199.45.49.11:
Yes, your assumption is correct.
The holding account makes a lot of sense. Now I'll just hafta figure out how to make the adjusting ta and setup the holding account. It would be simpler if Valic would update their system to allow downloads to the latest Q spec.
snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote in news:e84745cc-6f40-4318-b1fd-366384fee312 @s8g2000prg.googlegroups.com:
I don't think that will work too well. In Excel, editing references of transfers between accounts (paycheck - holding account - pension investment account) will prevent the file from being imported correctly, AFAIK. Qif was the preferred method for doing export/import, but it has been crippled by Intuit. From their point of view that was logical, since qif provided a way for financial institutions to use sort of public domain software to let clients import their data, and Intuit lost revenue (poor things). So they came up with a proprietary way of doing things (OFX/QFX), and forced the FIs to pay, and you to be frustrated.
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