Dick
Tue Mar 02 10:23:36 CST 2004
Note that there are different levels of tracking a 401k. You can try to
mimic all of the activity and investments or just treat it as a lump of
money without regard to its investments and so on. What follows assumes you
are trying to track it closely.
Also for what follows, the key is to understand how your plan works. All of
them are different. Some are managed, some are self-managed. Unless you find
a fellow Money user in the newsgroup who is in the same plan and has done
this research, the newsgroup will not be able to help much in these areas.
As to accounting for employer contributions, see
http://www.bollar.org/msmoney/#Q14.
As to the issue with matching statements to transactions you put in, the
biggest issue here is always understanding the plan's internal activity and
dates and phasing. You may put the transactions in today, but they may run
one or two weeks behind. so the statements can get out of phase with your
entries.
You also need to understand the mechanics of your employer's match to really
align their activities with transactions you enter in Money. My employer
matches this week's contribution next week and it gets into the 401k in two
weeks. My wife's matches whenever they get around to it and it gets in the
401k the next day.
My theory, based on some effort spent to understand these mechanics, is that
my transactions are what they are and I largely ignore the statements--at
least in the sense that I don't have to reconcile values; I still check for
sanity.
Once all of the cash starts accumulating, you have to enter Buy transactions
in the cash account that buy investment positions in the investment account.
I schedule a bill with splits that are Buy Investment/CD:[name of
investment] according to my investment elections and the plan mechanics.
I also don't use the 401k Manager--it seems to do too many strange things
for my taste. I just use the Account Summary|Update Account choice to make
the balances match--granted the phasing issue described above is still a
problem.
As to the investments in the plan vs. Money Investments, several points are
in order:
1) The nature of the investments and what they really are should be in plan
prospectus data that you received when you selected these investments. This
is hard for me to help with. For reasons to be defined below, most all of
mine are just called "Mutual Fund" because everything else is too hard or
not meaningful.
2) On 401ks you have to be really careful since the "funds" may not exactly
match the underlying "investments." For instance, my employer's plan offers
a "Vanguard Windsor" (a common mutual fund) fund. But if I call the
investment in Money "Vanguard Windsor" and assign it the symbol VWNDX, my
results skew compared to the public funds daily quotes. This is because the
plan owns VWNDX in aggregate and some cash and does buys and sells on behalf
of all plan participants that hold this fund and takes some expenses off the
top on behalf of the same investors. So we don't really hold VWNDX, just
something almost exactly like it. So, I use "Salaried Savings Plan VWNDX"
with no symbol as the Money Investment. I have the real thing in the
Investments to Watch account.
3) Beware that many plans have "unit value" accounting--this is basically an
internal "per share" price that doesn't match any external numbers like the
quotes in the newspapers. (See above for the reason for this.) In my
employer's plan, these unit values are not consistently reported for every
transaction/statement. For this reason, for all my 401k funds, I use $1
shares in the total number of the dollar value of the investment or the buy
or sell.
4) When I get statements I do, occasionally, do an Account Summary|Update
Account to the investment/cash account balances shown on the statement. This
just sets the number of shares and dollar value to what I enter off the
statements. Since I use the $1 shares, this is the only way to account for
changes in investment value/holdings owing to dividends, interest, market
value, and expenses.
I know this is a lot to chew on. Have you looked at how the sample file is
setup?
"Kenneth" <kenneth@NOSPAM.com> wrote in message
news:104859imkeca821@corp.supernews.com...
> Okay, I'm in the process of learning the whole process of managing
> accounts with Money... up until now haven't had to do anything with a
> 401(k) plan. In my infinite lack of wisdom in this area, I have no idea
> how to set this thing up in Money 2004's 401(k) manager or confirm that
> it is in fact properly set up.
>
> I've successfully got the 401(k) account put into Money, and I have set
> up the last several paychecks' 401(k) contributions section to go to,
> for example, "My 401(k) Plan (Contributions)". Does this number
> typically also include the amount that my employer contributes also?
> I'm looking at my first statement which I received 12/31/03... and the
> numbers from my own Contributions and the "New Contributions" seciton
> are close, but not quite: Money 2004 says $269.86; the statement says
> $252.52 (note that this is before the Net Market Change of $7.16). Why
> the $17 difference? Is there a discrepancy other than maybe an
> incorrectly entered number in my paychecks?
>
> Also, how do I know what to enter for my investments for this account
> when trying to enter information from a statement? I see that the
> company is not listed as being one of Money's online banking accounts,
> but is there a way to download information for the individual
> investments? Even if I can't download information for them, I have no
> idea how to classify them... Bond, CD or U.S. Savings Bond, Equity or
> Index Option, Money Market, Mutual Fund, or Stock. Money presents me
> these choices but the name of the investment isn't always clear on what
> it is:
>
> SA12Gov'tCpBd
> SA21Balanced
> SA49Amer GrIn
> SA35FidVIPCon
> SA58FidVIPGro
> SA17MedCapEq
> SA56DelSmCpVl
>
> Although I do have some longer descriptions of the name, that still
> leaves me not knowing how to classify it in Money, or knowing how to
> confirm my numbers are right. Any suggested reading or advice would be
> greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Ken