Split an investment account into multiple accounts

I know it does not answer your question, but why on earth do you want to do this? A single mutual fund account is the most restrictive and unnatural account type in the spectrum of investment accounts.

I need to do this so that I can download mutual fund transactions from TIAA-CREF, which requires that each fund be in its own single mutual fund account.

If you truly need to do this, the shortest way is to merely create each account, then download transactions to that account; finally, delete the original account. If there are "local" transactions that don't get downloaded (or you can't download the entire history you want), you will need to add those manually.

Tom's advice is certainly the least trouble-free, but if you have substantial history, you may want to investigate this route. And you might want to do it to a test file before you apply it to your real data file, just in case it doesn't work as advertized.

Make a copy of your data file. From this copy delete all accounts except the one mutual-fund account. Now do File -> Export -> QIF -> (you might have to scroll upwards to see the "" option).

Take the exported QIF file and copy it two more times so you have 3 QIF files. Open each QIF file with Notepad or a similar editor. The format of each transaction in there is relatively easy to understand. Change the name of the account to an appropriate name and then remove the transactions for two mutual funds from each file. This way you'll be left with a QIF file with a unique account name inside and only the transactions appropriate to that security in the transaction register.

Now open your Quicken data file (try it on a copy first!) and do File -> Import -> QIF -> . three times, once for each of your QIF files. Now see if you can edit those accounts to be single mutual fund accounts.

Thanks for the suggestion. The problem I see is that in Quicken 2005, one can no longer import a QIF file into an investment account.

I am getting so sick and tired having to correct this to all and sundry.

It is correct that you cannot import *transactions* into an account. You can indeed import an *account* into a file.

TIAA-CREF is being its usual user-unfriendly self. Odd how many complaints there are about Intuit, and how few about the fi's. Ah well, that's life.

Anyway, I have two securities in a single account with TIAA-CREF, and I do not have any trouble downloading the limited data that TIAA-CREf provides into a single Quicken account.

I did check their web-site after seeing your post, and I do notice that they are now saying that users should setup single-mutual-fund accounts ... but I am not certain that it is necessary. I notice that they appear to make some distinctions between retirement accounts and non-retirement accounts; though the distinctions, and the reason for them, seem obscure to me. I have after-tax annuities with TIAA-CREF.

It it were me, I would make a test copy of my file; then attempt to download all the funds into my existing account first (perhaps this will require "lying" to Quicken). If that failed, I would setup individual brokerage accounts (not single mutual fund accounts) and try downloading to them. If that proved to be more work than it was worth (I can not believe that you could not actually download to non single-mutual-fund accounts); only then would I consider succumbing to their poor choice of approaches.

If downloading to regular brokerage accounts worked, I suspect that it might still require a bit of user manipulation to get things correct ... but I can't quite see how a single-mutual-fund account will leave you better off in the long run. I might understand how it would leave TIAA-CREF better off.

On Thu 19 May 2005 10:00:13p, John Pollard wrote in news:1pcje.8651$z_.1012 @attbi_s71:

Probably not odd at all. If they are like me they drop the fi and move on to one they like better.

I am sure you would also see MUCH less complaints about Quicken if there was the same level of competition on that end.

Its sort of like someone bitching and bitching about a stock in an investment newsgroup rather than just dumping it and moving on (now that seems really odd to me).

Agreed. Intuit should eliminate the single mutual fund account option, it just gets people into trouble down the road when they run up against its limitations.

I don't agree with that at all. Personally, I have been trying to convert my IRA to a single mutual fund account. Right now, I have a cash balance in Quicken that does not exist in reality and I have to use multiple transactions (to keep the cash balance at zero) when a single transaction should suffice. One very nice thing about single mutual funds is that a transfer in/out automatically turns into buyx/sellx. Very convenient! I know the conventional wisdom here is that this account type is "bad", but I prefer it and hope it stays.

Just my two cents, Peter

As a fellow TIAA-CREF soon-to-be-retiree, I strongly advise against doing what you propose. True, you won't be able to download directly to Quicken. But I find that it takes me only 15 minutes or so to enter the data manually from my quarterly statement and reconcile it...and I'm invested in 5 funds. By keeping all 3 of your holdings in one investment account, you'll have a much easier time of it if you later shift assets from one holding to another.

I have one investment account named "TIAA-CREF" and my paycheck is set up to transfer into it my own and the employer contributions each month. I treat TIAA Traditional as a share fund with a constant value of $1/share. Since the payments into the account will have already been entered, when the quarterly statement comes:

1. I buy a number of shares of TIAA Traditional equal to the number of dollars contributed each month (constant /share) and reinvest the quarterly interest at /share, using the dates shown on the statement for each transaction.

1. I buy the number of shares for each CREF stock fund and for TIAA Real Estate according to what the statement shows, again being careful to use the statement dates.

2. I update the per share prices of all funds except TIAA Traditional, dating the update according to the date of the statement.

1. I reconcile the cash balance of the account...which should always come out to zero or else to one month's contributions, depending on the relative dates of the last TIAA-CREF statement and the last paycheck contribution.

"DavidB" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

I'm loath to do the downloading as well. It always got me into trouble. Instead, I use the TIAA/CREF website and biweekly check the latest purchases.

My paycheck is set up to transfer money withheld for investment into TIAA as well as Vanguard, by transfer into a "holding account". This is because the withholding and the investment are never on the same day. Investment into TIAA/CREF and Vanguard then is a BuyX from the holding account.

I still have to perfect the automatic entry of the investment transactions. I used to use Q2002 DL, but switched to 05 DL, and the automatic entry is still very confusing to me. Final entry is usually an edit to fix the # shares ($/shares follows from the #$$ in combination with the # shares - never try to enter the $/share, but *always* let Quicken calculate that). In addition, my current setup enters an automatic buy, rather than BuyX, so that needs editing.

Getting a bigger monitor would help to get Quicken and Firefox legibly next to each other rather than overlapping. Please, lottery ...