Investments

• I have several different accounts with the same mutual fund.  Therefore, the stock ticker symbol is the same for each investment. How can I place the same symbol on separate accounts in order to complete on-line updates?

You can use the same FUND in as many ACCOUNTS as you want.  Don't try to create a separate FUND for each type of contribution.  Remove all of the occurrences for the fund that you put into your employer's contribution and replace them with the fund that you use for your contribution.  Add the ticker, and all contributions' prices will be updated with the one fund.

Here's what we're trying to accomplish:  Two accounts:  One "AIM IRA", one "AIM Mutual Fund".  In those two accounts there will be one fund (which you have called Mutual Fund/IRA, but I would use the name of the fund itself, like T. Rowe Price New Horizons, or Fidelity Contrafund).

Imagine if you started over from a brand new Money file (not that I want you to do this, mind you)....

First you would create your two new investment accounts: "AIM IRA" and "AIM Mutual Fund".  Then, you would start entering the buy transactions into the IRA account.  The first time that you entered a buy transaction, you would type in the fund's name, "AIM Summit Fund, Inc." and then Money would ask you what type of investment it is.  You would select Mutual Fund and press next.  On that next screen, Money wants to know the symbol, which is "SMMIX".  Then you would complete the buy transaction.

Then you would go and put in the remainder of the buy, sell, whatever transactions for the IRA.

Then you would go to the "AIM Mutual Fund" account and start entering buy transactions.  Since the fund in your IRA and your Mutual Fund is the same, you can simply start typing in the name of the fund "AIM Summit Fund, Inc." and Money will automatically complete entering the name for you.  Each of your buy, sell, whatever transactions for your Mutual Fund should use this name.

Now, let's go back to your account -- you want to get your transactions entered using the same fund name.  The old fund names will still be left behind, and you can delete them from the portfolio view once you have deleted all of the transactions that relate to them.

• How can you update savings bond prices from within Money?

Money doesn't handle savings bond price updates in this version.  My suggestion is to use the U.S. Treasury Department's Savings Bond Wizard to track your bonds, and update the price in an asset account called "Savings Bonds" periodically.

• How to you enter Employer Contributions to a 401(k)?

The answer to this is hidden in the Money help file, but here is the answer in brief: It is easiest to enter the employer's contributions only when you get a statement and choose to "update account," which is similar to reconciling a non-retirement account. For each investment you have in the account, Money will ask you for your contributions for the period, your employer's contributions for the period, dividends, and interest. Then you enter the ending number of shares and either the ending market value or the ending price per share. Money will then debit your cash account for your contributions and compute the new shares purchased and your gain or loss for the period. For more information, search for "retirement, tracking" in Money 98's online help.   (Thanks to an anonymous contributor for updating this entry.)

---

Financial Planning

• I am using the Money Insider Tax Worksheet and Money can't find my Wages and Salary entries.  Also in the Tax Forecasts, it feels like some things are missing.  Does this have something to do with Category Concepts?

Kimberly Smith writes:

Money 98 estimates the value of some fields by inspecting your Money data and Category Concepts that have transactions assigned to them.

You can assign a Category Concept when you create a new category, in Category Details for your existing categories (such as Income), or the first time you use a category that has no concept assignment. There are several Category Concepts included in Money 98. You cannot edit, delete, or create Category Concepts, as they are hard-coded into the product.

Fields in the worksheet are calculated from categories assigned to a certain Concept. For fields such as Income, it is not sufficient to enter just the transactions that are in the file. Because estimation often occurs in the middle of the year, Money needs a means to estimate what the value of a concept will be at the end of the year.

For a given concept:

a.. If there is at least one future payment in Bills for a category in the Concept for the year in which you are estimating taxes, Money adds the actual transactions for the given year and for the future scheduled transactions. It then enters the value in the appropriate field.

b.. If there are no future payments in Bills for a category in the Concept for the year in which you are estimating taxes, Money counts the number of whole months before the current date for the given tax year. It then calculates the total actual transactions for the given year and multiplies the values by 12. Next, Money divides by the number of whole months. It then enters the value in the appropriate field.

• What the heck does "Pay Yourself First" mean, and how does Money expect me to "Pay Myself First" when I have all of these bills?

Pay Yourself First is a philosophy that you have to plan for your debt reduction and savings before you can actually make headway.  If you think about your expenses, only some of them are fixed, like the rent or mortgage, but others are variable, like those spent eating out, or perhaps on the telephone.  If you don't put your own goals first, you'll never achieve them.

The first time you do your budget, set a goal (get out of debt, buy a car, whatever) and put that as your first expense on the budget.  Then budget the necessities and finally the frills.  The budget might not balance the first time, but give it a hard look.  You may find a way to make it work.  Visit Your Life, a Canadian site, to learn more about how to "Pay Yourself First".