Quicken and Simple Investing Mode

[Katsmeow]

Does anyone use the Simple Investing Mode on Quicken? If so, I have a question.

I have an existing subscription that I haven't used in over a year. I am trying it again and now there is a Simple Investing mode. I am wondering if that would work better for me. Our investment accounts are currently entirely tax deferred accounts.

I don't really care about capital gains or any of the other more detailed investing reports.

However, I do take regular withdrawal from IRAs. Typically, I withdraw with some of the proceeds going to taxes and the other to my checking account. Will the Simple Investing Mode allow transactions to be made?

 

[pb4uski]

I dunno. I've used Quicken for years and don't see the allure of Simple Investing Mode.

All our financial accounts are defined in Quicken and I download all transactions periodically and then review and accept them. If I took a withdrawal from an IRA and had taxes withheld its usually all reflected in the download.

I'm interested in other responses that you'll get.

 

[Montecfo]

I started a new file with Quicken 1-1-21. I used the simple investing mode because I do not care to track changes in market value in quicken, as I do that elsewhere.

The simple investing mode you update manually, which is fine. But it does not track cash movements between investment accounts well. I have not decided the solution yet. Maybe treat them all as bank accounts to keep it simple or create a cash sub account for each brokerage. Or abandon this feature.

So I'd say so far not real satisfactory for me.

 

[NW-Bound]

I never knew about this feature, even though I have used Quicken for quite a few years.

Finally saw it in Edit->Preferences->Investment Transactions->Enable Simple Investing (positions only).

And this feature is selected by default. Hah! Then, why do I still get all the stock trades and dividend payouts listed, as that's always the way I have wanted?

Looked further, and discovered that after enabling this feature, I would have to go to Tools->Account List, then enable the feature for each account individually.

Anyway, this simple mode is not for me, particularly as I am an active investor, and want to know how each of my positions is performing. I guess if you are an indexer and have a 2-position or 3-position portfolio, it does not matter. But then, a passive investor would not have any transactions other than dividend payouts, and that's not a whole lot to be informed of.

 

[Katsmeow]

But then, a passive investor would not have any transactions other than dividend payouts, and that's not a whole lot to be informed of.

Well, not really. I am pretty passive. Everything is Index except some Wellesley. However, there are two things that I do.

I rebalance periodically so that does generate transactions.

We are in the withdrawal phase, so we do periodically withdraw from the IRA.

I find doing that in the traditional (complete) Investing complicated and tedious. So I wondered if going to Simple Mode would let me do those transactions more easily. I am still not sure of that. Will try to look into it more.

One reason I was thinking of doing it is that I can't get Quicken to download my Fidelity or Vanguard transactions from when I last logged on (in early 2020). I even disabled online transactions then recreated them and hoped that would work. Vanguard and Fidelity both say they downloaded but they didn't (and yes I had accept transactions selected).

 

[NW-Bound]

I have not used the Simple Investing feature, but from the description provided by Quicken, this option simply reflects the current balance of all positions of an account as reported by the financial institution. No transactions will be recorded.

In other words, the Quicken screen will reflect the current balance, but there's no information shown for how it gets there.

 

[Katsmeow]

I have not used the Simple Investing feature, but from the description provided by Quicken, this option simply reflects the current balance of all positions of an account as reported by the financial institution. No transactions will be recorded.

In other words, the Quicken screen will reflect the current balance, but there's no information shown for how it gets there.

But can you manually record a transaction showing you sold some of it and then sent that money to taxes and the checking account? I wouldn't need to download the transaction. But I would want to be able to manually show the transaction (which is what I do now in YNAB).

 

[NW-Bound]

^^^ I don't know, because I do not use this mode. But it appears that when this feature is turned on, Quicken will no longer show a screen where transactions are listed.

On the Web, some people say they can toggle and switch back and forth between the two modes. It appears that the transactions are still there, but hidden in the Simple Investing mode.

 

[Katsmeow]

^^^ I don't know, because I do not use this mode. But it appears that when this feature is turned on, Quicken will no longer show a screen where transactions are listed.

On the Web, some people say they can toggle and switch back and forth between the two modes. It appears that the transactions are still there, but hidden in the Simple Investing mode.

Thanks. I've posted a question on the Quicken forum but I think you are correct. I guess I could just enter an income transaction to my checking account and created an Income category for IRA income.

I probably will just stick with the Complete though.

But doing that I have to solve my actual bigger problem.

I have existing Fidelity and Vanguard accounts in my Quicken account. Since I came back to Quicken I can't get them to download. They have said they downloaded but no actual transactions are downloaded. I may have to delete the accounts entirely and recreate them which is a pain since I do have a number of previous IRA withdrawal transactions that I will have to get set up properly again.