Merging accounts

Posted by John Oliver on August 27, 2009, 9:31 pm

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A long time ago, when I set up my IRA, it had one mutual fund in it.
Since then, I've diversified,a nd now there are several, but I created a
new account for each one because... well, because I just didn't know any
better. But my 401(k) is just one account that lists entries from each
of the several mutual funds it's in. I would like to merge all of my
IRA accounts in Quicken into just one account, and go forward from
there. How can I do that?

--
* John Oliver http://www.john-oliver.net/ *

Posted by John Pollard on August 29, 2009, 9:56 am

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John Oliver wrote:

> A long time ago, when I set up my IRA, it had one mutual fund in it.

> Since then, I've diversified,a nd now there are several, but I

> created a new account for each one because... well, because I just

> didn't know any better. But my 401(k) is just one account that lists

> entries from each of the several mutual funds it's in. I would like

> to merge all of my IRA accounts in Quicken into just one account, and

> go forward from there. How can I do that?

Two approaches I can think of:

1.) Use the Quicken "Shares transferred between accounts" to transfer the
IRA account holdings into one of the existing IRA accounts (or all of the
IRA accounts into one new IRA account). If you have a problem with
Quicken thinking that the transfer of cash (should you have any to
transfer) is a "contribution" to the receiving account; you can create a
dummy "cash" security, use all your cash to buy shares of the dummy cash
security at $1/share, transfer the dummy cash security just as you do the
other real securities, then sell all the dummy cash shares at $1/share in
the receiving account.

2.) Export all but one IRA account to one QIF file per account. Massage
the QIF files and import them into the remaining Quicken IRA account as
described in the following post (you could also export all the existing
accounts and import them into a new IRA account, if you chose). You would
want to use the "Special handling for transfers" option in the QIF file
import dialog.

https://qlc.intuit.com/post/show_post_full_view/dQMNaWtX4r3OK1acfArQA8

Following this, you'd delete the old IRA accounts.

I would make certain to backup before trying either approach.

--

John Pollard