[moneydance] 401k Allocation

[Dan Hensley]

On Thu, 2007-01-04 at 10:38 -0500, L Pfeffer wrote:
> Since my New Year's resolution is to keep better track of the family  
> finances ...
> 
> Is there a relatively automatic way to allocate both my husband's and  
> his empoyer's contributions to the 401k plan?
> 
> Here's what happens every paycheck:
> 
> - part of gross salary to 401k
> - employer contributes to 401k
> - some shares of each of 4 funds are purchased
> 
> I can get the first transaction done; it's an easy Deposit: Gross  
> salary, Payment: Retirement account. But I can't figure out how to do  
> the others, without manually going in to the retirement account each  
> pay period. [Weekly, so there are a lot of transactions!]

The first two are pretty easy if they're consistent.  You already
figured out the first one--it's just a split on your paycheck
transaction.

The second one is basically the same thing.  I'd add a line item on your
paycheck containing the employer contribution.  You'll also need to add
an offsetting split so the net gain is 0 though.  Just use some generic
income account (i.e. Deposit), or if you want to track the whole thing,
create an income account just for this.

The third is almost impossible, because each financial institution seems
to round things differently.  You'd have to know the fund prices on the
day the shares were purchased (which is not necessarily the paycheck
date).  Dividing the total contribution by the share price doesn't
necessarily give you the correct number of shares.  It depends on how
they're rounded.

So unfortunately you'll have to do this manually, or by downloading.  I
do mine manually, but it's monthly so it's not too bad.  I could
probably download as well, but I haven't bothered to go that route.

Dan


> 
> In a perfect finance program, this could all be done via splits in  
> the single paycheck transaction. I really like MoneyDance, but it's  
> not perfect -- any suggestions on approaching perfection?
> 
> --Liz
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