What portfolio management tool do you use?

[W2R]

MS home office is $229. For some, I guess that is too much to spend for 3-5 years of use.

To be perfectly clear, I would pay several thousand to BUY MS Office. Like many others I bought Office 97 and prior versions, mostly out of gratitude to the developers, but after that buying became impossible.

Once again, it's not worth one cent to me to rent software. They control what they want to offer and that is their prerogative. As for me, it is my prerogative to continue with free Open Office if all they can offer is rentals. Guess I should be grateful to them, because they saved me all that money.

 

[tmm99]

I'm slowly learning my way around the Fidelity website. I have a IRA and a 401k there. I can see the YTD rate of return for the IRA under the "Performance" tab and the 401k under the "Investments" tab. I can see YTD, 1 yr., 3yr., 5yr. and since inception. Is this not what you are looking for?

Well, I can get to that, but that is not exactly YTD - It's more like YTD as of the last month end close. (You see "As of .../31/2017", so even if you are almost done with the month, you will see the YTD as of the last month end. I called Fidelity about it when I moved from VG to Fidelity and evidently, there is no way to check the real time (or close to real time) YTD online. At least, that is my understanding...

 

[splitwdw]

Well, I can get to that, but that is not exactly YTD - It's more like YTD as of the last month end close. (You see "As of .../31/2017", so even if you are almost done with the month, you will see the YTD as of the last month end. I called Fidelity about it when I moved from VG to Fidelity and evidently, there is no way to check the real time (or close to real time) YTD online. At least, that is my understanding...

Just checked and do see the 3/31/17, it's a little "grayed" out. Thx

 

[target2019]

To be perfectly clear, I would pay several thousand to BUY MS Office. Like many others I bought Office 97 and prior versions, mostly out of gratitude to the developers, but after that buying became impossible.

Once again, it's not worth one cent to me to rent software. They control what they want to offer and that is their prerogative. As for me, it is my prerogative to continue with free Open Office if all they can offer is rentals. Guess I should be grateful to them, because they saved me all that money.

I don't understand. You bought 97, but can't buy a newer version?

I have 97 too, just in case all the dual and quad cores melt down and I have to go back to Pentium.

Until last year I had my 5 and 3-1/2" floppies for Excel 2.0 PC.

 

[W2R]

I don't understand. You bought 97, but can't buy a newer version?

https://www.microsoftstore.com/stor...cid=Cat-Office_chart-office365home-8221444599

 

[easysurfer]

Well.. I have played around with a few of the suggestions. I did everything manually as I do not trust giving my passwords out to any of these tools.
- Looked at Google.. too basic and didn't see a way to see the allocation visually.
- Tried Full View by Fidelity. It imported my whole 401 as one account and I didn't see an easy way to get to the details. Maybe it had to be done manually. The tool seemed clunky.
- I tried Morning star on a few funds and then realized I had to pay to see any kind of analysis
- I downloaded excel spreadsheet templates that are on the internet. They seem complicated
- Quicken doesn't have the X-ray feature in the mac version yet.
- Personal Capital wasn't bad at all. All the tools are a pain to get the data into given 401 k funds that aren't in most of the tools. I was even able to split up the one Target Retirement fund into the appropriate allocations. It was able to give me what I was looking for.

That all said, I can see that our portfolio on the whole is too heavily weighted in cash/bonds and low on stocks. Given the current market, how would you recommend rebalancing? Dollar cost average over time?

Based on some other things I have seen, my 'small' taxable account that only has bonds in it should probably be mostly/all stocks. Hubby's 401k/IRA will probably be tapped first, given he is 65 and I am late 50s.

Thoughts?

Since the excel spreadsheet templates you downloaded on the internet seem complicated, have you thought about creating your own spreadsheet? That way you can control what data gets on there and make as simple as you like.

As for the rebalancing question, for me, I rebalance one a year in a large chunks to my desired allocation. But I do so in IRA accounts so there is not a tax event.

 

[CountryGal]

I have the skills to make my own spreadsheet, but not the desire. Was hoping for something easy. I had a glitch with Personal Capital that kept deleting a fund in one of the 401ks. It also contributed to showing a lower % for stocks than reality. While I still want to tweak the allocation, the total isn't as off as I thought it was.

Personal Capital is doing what I need it to do. I believe the glitch had to do with an & sign that I used in the name of the fund. When I removed it, the fund was not deleted.

 

[timo2]

Excel spreadsheet.

+1

 

[target2019]

https://www.microsoftstore.com/stor...cid=Cat-Office_chart-office365home-8221444599

I would buy this---
https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Office-Home-Business-Download/dp/B0153V61XU

Over a period of 3-5 years of use, I would have Excel and Word, and the cost per year would be $75, maybe $50, per year.

 

[target2019]

I have the skills to make my own spreadsheet, but not the desire. Was hoping for something easy. I had a glitch with Personal Capital that kept deleting a fund in one of the 401ks. It also contributed to showing a lower % for stocks than reality. While I still want to tweak the allocation, the total isn't as off as I thought it was.

Personal Capital is doing what I need it to do. I believe the glitch had to do with an & sign that I used in the name of the fund. When I removed it, the fund was not deleted.

What you will find is that glitches will come up from time to time and you'll need to investigate, and fix.
If this solution works for you, and requires little time, then go with it.

 

[lem1955]

I use Quicken for Mac to download all my investment transactions and balances. And I use Vanguard's Portfolio Tester Tool to plan AA rebalances. Before these tools were available I used Excel to manage investments but it was much more labor intensive. I would rather spend my time reading about investing than doing data entry into a spreadsheet.

 

[Gotadimple]

When the alternative is free, then $229 is too much for me. LibreCalc also runs on Linux, my OS of choice.

Libre or Open Office is free, you are correct, and you do get updates. There are slight differences between these and the MS products, as long as they meet your needs.

If one has to have the Office Suite on their computer (with no updates), then $229 is a reasonable cost, until you want to upgrade to newer software. If regularly updated software that isn't free is a choice, an annual Office subscription at $79/year plus local tax is a reasonable choice and close to the $229 and no update option.

I did use OO for years, until I had a volunteer project needing a database. OO's database program was great for handling data and querying. But, there was no reports module - still being developed. I am not trained in writing software and MS Access is great for creating reports easily - so back to paid software.

- Rita

 

[Tallman4123]

I've used Personal Capital for 3+ years, both for investment tracking and for budget tracking. It's adequate in both areas but does have some quirks as others have pointed out. I also transcribe my investment results - by account - into an Excel spreadsheet at the end of each month to document month-to-month performance.

 

[orangehairfella]

I've used Personal Capital for 3+ years, both for investment tracking and for budget tracking. It's adequate in both areas but does have some quirks as others have pointed out. I also transcribe my investment results - by account - into an Excel spreadsheet at the end of each month to document month-to-month performance.

This is also my method. Track everything in Personal Capital with monthly rollups in a spreadsheet.

 

[jazz4cash]

I'm slowly learning my way around the Fidelity website. I have a IRA and a 401k there. I can see the YTD rate of return for the IRA under the "Performance" tab and the 401k under the "Investments" tab. I can see YTD, 1 yr., 3yr., 5yr. and since inception. Is this not what you are looking for?

That's curious. I can't find YTD return for my Fido IRA anywhere and I only get the 401k YTD on the Mobil version or netbenefits. I mainly use the Fido GPS tool on the analysis tab. I manually add outside accounts quarterly and it meets my needs which is primarily asset allocation.

 

[Ian S]

I've used Personal Capital for 3+ years, both for investment tracking and for budget tracking. It's adequate in both areas but does have some quirks as others have pointed out. I also transcribe my investment results - by account - into an Excel spreadsheet at the end of each month to document month-to-month performance.

That's my biggest complaint with P.C.: it should offer the ability to download the data to your own spreadsheet software. That's why I use SigFig. It's so easy I do it every week.

 

[Cat-tirement]

Very easy to use. For a simple price, just use this in a spreadsheet cell:
=STOCK(A2,price)
where A2 is the cell with the symbol.

Besides price, you can get a couple dozen other attributes for a given stock. Very well done (although long overdue).

Thanks for the tip, I didn't know that was available. I guess I'll have to try the newer version of Numbers now. (I have been holding at an earlier version, before they stripped out features to make it more like iOS.)

 

[Cat-tirement]

And I use Vanguard's Portfolio Tester Tool to plan AA rebalances.

I've recently started using their portfolio analyzer/tester tool too. It allows you to enter outside accounts, good since only half our stuff is at Vanguard. There's no automatic updating, but I'm another who won't trust other account passwords with a single service. Since I only look at it quarterly or monthly at most, manually updating the outside accounts isn't a big deal to me.

 

[24601NoMore]

FundManager is an AWESOME tool. It allowed me to "finally" get control over a very complex portfolio with way more funds and investments than I 'should' have..shows returns over various time periods, nice charting/graphing capabilities and a lot more.

It's a really well written piece of software. (Coming from a tech background I appreciate well designed software, especially after using the piece of .... known as Quicken).

I also wrote some custom macros in Excel that allow me to slice and dice my PF in ways that FM doesn't do natively. Not sure if any of the freeware spreadsheets can do VBA macros..

 

[dadu007]

This is a related workaround for Personal Capital that I figured out and have posted elsewhere:

Personal Capital tip: Do you have any monies or funds in PC that somehow show up as "unallocated"? (no automated and applicable asset allocation) Here's how to change that, manually: Add a new manual investment account. Name it accordingly. Add one new holding, only 1 share of the ticker QCERQ (happens to be a JP Morgan sweep code, but PC doesn't know that), with the share value equal to your entire fund holding. (For example, suppose we have a variable annuity with an insurance company which holds the Franklin Income VIP Fund. There is no ticker for that fund, as it is only held in insurance annuity accounts. And let's say we have $125,000 in that fund in the annuity. You would then add 1 share of QCERQ @ $125,000 per share in the new manual PC investment portfolio you just created.)
Now, go to Portfolio>Asset Allocation in PC. Click on the "Manual Allocation" button in the general upper right area. You will see your "unallocated" QCERQ with a value of $125,000. Click on that and then, from the actual fund prospectus, enter the percentages of the fund's allocations and Save. Boom! Allocation now accounted for! The only downside is that you'll have to occasionally update the total balance of your fund holding to get the most recent allocation. Cheers!

 

[youbet]

I use the portfolio management tool on the Schwab web site. Works great for what I need. It handles both internal and external accounts, provides an AA calculation (including drilling down into multi-asset class funds such as Wellesley) and allows any combination of various accounts to be grouped.

The only negative is that it will not go out and look up changes in the external accounts such as my 401k. I have to enter changes manually. (It will automatically apply the closing value of the security or fund at the end of the day but it won't look for changes in the number of shares you own) Since I'm long FIRE'd and not contributing to my 401k, not a big deal. Changes only happen when I rebalance.

 

[dadu007]

You can use the formula I posted above. Press ctrl+alt+F9 and excel will automatically download the current price.

@trixs: the formula in your quote is incomplete (missing closing parenthesis and more...).
Do you have the complete string for Excel? (not Google Sheets)?

Edit: Found it elsewhere!: =NUMBERVALUE(WEBSERVICE("http://finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s="&B7&"&f=l1"))

where B7 is cell with whatever ticker you're using...

Edit #2: weird; I see that the forum truncates the formula once posted! For those interested, after the 1 you need to add a quotation mark " and then two closed parenthesis ))