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Posted by Han on December 30, 2007, 8:49 am
Please log in for more thread options speedlever <speedlever.at.yahoodotcom> wrote in
> 199.45.49.11:
>
>
>> 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.
>>
>
> Han,
>
> 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.)
>
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.
--
Best regards
Han
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