Morningstar? But I'm so thrifffty!

[razztazz]

Does this new situation apply only to Morningstar's portfolio manager function or is the entire site going dark to non-paying members. I'm signed in but not getting any messages. The only thing I ever use there other than reading articles is the chart feature that gives total returns on mutual funds not just share price. That kind of info is hard to get online. Most chart places just throw current price at you.

 

[Badger]

I appreciated the convenience of having Morningstar track my investments on a spread sheet with daily updates but now that they are going to charge for that convenience I plan on removing all my information from the site if I can. I have only done a cursory look at TD Ameritrade/Schwab but it appears they do the same thing for me (at least for the individual stocks I purchased through them). A closer look will be done in a few days. The only other investments I have are tIRAs and Roth IRAs at Vanguard that I can easily look up at any time. If TD Ameritrade will accept the IRAs to also track I may include those too. Either way I won't need Morningstar anymore but Thank you to them for the past X years.

Cheers!

 

[frayne]

I've used the free Morningstar portfolio tracker for years and it's great for that quick and dirty spot check to how much you made or lost on any single day. I've also used it for hypothetical portfolios. With that said, I understand the reason Morningstar wants to monetize the feature but at $35 per month it is simply not a good value.

 

[OldShooter]

I appreciated the convenience of having Morningstar track my investments on a spread sheet with daily updates but now that they are going to charge for that convenience I plan on removing all my information from the site if I can. I have only done a cursory look at TD Ameritrade/Schwab but it appears they do the same thing for me (at least for the individual stocks I purchased through them). A closer look will be done in a few days. The only other investments I have are tIRAs and Roth IRAs at Vanguard that I can easily look up at any time. If TD Ameritrade will accept the IRAs to also track I may include those too. Either way I won't need Morningstar anymore but Thank you to them for the past X years.

Cheers!

I think you know this, but Schwab is absorbing TDAmeritrade. Before committing to the TD platform I'd suggest that you find out from Schwab whether that will continue to be offered for the long term. (I suspect not.) You may better off going directly to the Schwab platform to avoid a conversion in the near future. They will offer the argument that any conversion will be seamless and error free. That has to be the theory. The practice, however, may be different.

I did find this: https://www.investmentnews.com/schwab-on-track-to-begin-td-account-transitions-in-2022-213048

 

[nassa]

I use a spreadsheet as well. Here’s a good place to start with creating your own in the free Google Sheets.

https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Using_a_spreadsheet_to_maintain_a_portfolio

 

[ncbill]

Both Schwab and Merrill Edge Web sites offer to track and display everything for me if I give them all my login infos to the other financial sites. I don't go to Vanguard often to know if they offer the same.

Nope. Not doing that.

I think they want to know how much money I keep outside of their brokerage, so that they can nag me, "Come one, send it all over to us so you have it all in one place, and in our good hands".

I use Personal Capital for that...it's easy to ignore their marketing.

 

[OldShooter]

I use Personal Capital for that...it's easy to ignore their marketing.

But what are they doing with your data? To the extent anyone can be trusted I trust Schwab to not be selling my information because it is not in their best interest to do so. Same situation for most major brokers. Third party sites IMO are a different situation; selling customer data can be a major revenue source for them.

It has been demonstrated many times that individuals can be identified by companies that buy and combine pieces of "anonymous" data like census tract, age, sex, race, income, car age and model, etc. Also public record data like auto registrations and professional licenses. From what I have seen it’s a process of elimination.

 

[tydeman]

I use Gnucash which is free. It runs on Windows, Apple, Linux. It can retrieve stock prices and crypto prices. I converted from Quicken to Gnucash.

 

[rayvt]

I have not done this, but my understanding is that you can set up an Excel spreadsheet or a Googlesheets spreadsheet that will import your stock prices: https://www.morningbrew.com/money-scoop/stories/2021/08/24/formula-returns-realtime-stock-prices

Google sheets is what I have used every since Yahoo "enhanced" (i.e. made worthless) several years ago.
Better than any other portfolio tracker I tried. You can set it up how you want instead of being forced into what *they* think you should want.

 

[Retired Expat]

Is it that much, $35/month?

Quicken tracks my expenses and my investable assets across two dozen accounts, brokerage and banking too. And it costs me $52/year, regular price before any sales.

Maybe it was less due to the sales when I bought. Logged into my Amazon account, and it said there was a $20.80 coupon applied, but did not say specifically whether it came from Quicken or some other Amazon kickbacks that I happened to apply on that order. I think it came from Quicken. My memory is not that good anymore, particularly for a $20 item.

Mint which is from Quicken, I believe can aggregate all your accounts and track spending too and is free

 

[imnontrad]

I got this too. I may switch to Yahoo but right now I am still seeing the portfolio I built.
Or I may just try to do without this for a while. I tend to check my net worth too often. Fortunately, I do not react when the market fluctuates and I did NOT link that portfolio to any of my accounts (I just update manually)

 

[big-papa]

You can't create portfolios for tracking for obvious reasons, but I use the Morningstar version for libraries, which is accessible with a digital account at many local libraries. Pretty much all of the Morningstar tools are there and it's free.

For tracking my portfolio itself, I simply use a spreadsheet, which I've been doing since 2004 or so. After logging into my account it takes me about 5 minutes to update my data, which also monitors my overall AA and flags for any rebalancing opportunities. Part of my "me time" in the early morning hours before anybody else gets up.

I also use some of the data tools in Excel under Data->Get Data From web where I grab YTD returns of various funds from WSJ's website. Occasionally some fund I monitor doesn't update on the WSJ website, but that usually clears up in a day or so.

 

[winpplui]

I just use google sheets, and built my own spreadsheet... I realize YMMV if you have non-equity assets without common tickers that won't be pulled in.

For bank accounts I just update them one a month via logging into client and pasting the balance into the google sheet. It's not great but it works.

I am doing the same, but with an "add on" called "mojito" that grabs data automatically from mint.com

Mojito is free as well as mint. I have my whole finance history since 12 years ago.
It might need some tweeking ( like filling blank data) but is very helpful.
Also you can customize it google sheets with your own graphs

 

[winpplui]

I am doing the same, but with an "add on" called "mojito" that grabs data automatically from mint.com

Mojito is free as well as mint. I have my whole finance history since 12 years ago.
It might need some tweeking ( like filling blank data) but is very helpful.
Also you can customize it google sheets with your own graphs

If anyone is interested, link is http://b3devs.blogspot.com/

 

[FLJim]

I have used Quicken "forever" - maybe back in the MS-DOS days (?) I gladly pay their yearly subscription fee because I get value from it. No annoying ads - they use the revenue to keep updating and improving the product.

 

[OldShooter]

I would be very wary about using Mint. You can be absolutely sure that Quicken did not buy Mint because they wanted to nurture and enhance a free competitor to Quicken. They undoubtedly have plans to extract revenue from the Mint customer base. The only questions are when? and how?

Quicken and Intuit's history is to force users to pay by disabling features. I experienced this with QuickBooks several times. With the current Quicken "subscription" if you don't pay up every year you can no longer download data like bank transactions. So that trick would be an easy one to play on the Mint base: "You want to download you will have to upgrade to Quicken and we have a special price for your first year." or "You want to download you will have to upgrade from the free version of Mint to the subscription version and we have a special price for your first year." ( I consider that latter to be less likely because in the long term they really won't want to maintain two different code bases.)

TANSTAAFL, y'all.

 

[RandomPJ]

Quicken is only $52/yr? Maybe I should switch over to a newer version and get that.

 

[kbst]

So I got the same message and have been using this for years and years. for years and years. Does anyone know how to transfer this over to another free service?

 

[kbst]

And are there any free services anymore? We I have Ameritrade accounts and Vanguard and fidelity can use any of those accounts to track everything together?

 

[mrfeh]

So I got the same message and have been using this for years and years. for years and years. Does anyone know how to transfer this over to another free service?

I poked around M* and didn't see a way to export the data, unfortunately.

I've also been using M* for years and will miss it. Although it was somewhat manual, I appreciated how it tracked dividends for you and is very flexible in displaying performance.

 

[NW-Bound]

Quicken is only $52/yr? Maybe I should switch over to a newer version and get that.

I just checked on Amazon. Quicken Deluxe is still $52/year. While I don't like to pay their annual ransom, it's worth it to pay $1/week to be able to download all checking and credit card transactions, plus my investment transactions as well as dividend payouts. I would have spent several hours per week doing data entry to save that $1.

Now, there may be some other software that have the same functionality for less money. However, I spent several hours in the past to investigate and evaluate, and came away empty handed. So, have not been in the mood to try again.

And by the way, the download from Schwab works again. For a while there, I was upset that my account infos at Schwab were not kept up-to-date on my Quicken screen.

I would have moved money out of Schwab (had 5 accounts there, his/her IRA/Roth plus banking account), but procrastinated because these are not the accounts I use for active trading. Else, I need accurate and up-to-date account balances to show up on the Quicken screen to have a big overall picture.

PS. I used to buy Quicken Premier, but downgraded to Quicken Deluxe when they raised the price. The extra features in Premier that I used were few and not essential.

 

[Koolau]

I would be very wary about using Mint. You can be absolutely sure that Quicken did not buy Mint because they wanted to nurture and enhance a free competitor to Quicken. They undoubtedly have plans to extract revenue from the Mint customer base. The only questions are when? and how?

Quicken and Intuit's history is to force users to pay by disabling features. I experienced this with QuickBooks several times. With the current Quicken "subscription" if you don't pay up every year you can no longer download data like bank transactions. So that trick would be an easy one to play on the Mint base: "You want to download you will have to upgrade to Quicken and we have a special price for your first year." or "You want to download you will have to upgrade from the free version of Mint to the subscription version and we have a special price for your first year." ( I consider that latter to be less likely because in the long term they really won't want to maintain two different code bases.)

TANSTAAFL, y'all.

So if you actually have to pay for the service, do they promise not to exploit you (and your data)? Or is it a case of adding insult to injury when you pay for it?

 

[Yoheadden]

It’s disappointing to hear they will start charging for this. I too, received the nightly portfolio updates and used the services to check on my/potential investments.

FIDO offers a portfolio tracker. I have all of my Vanguard accounts, as well as, my local checking account show up when I log on. I don’t know what tools they offer because my go to was Morningstar. I guess I’ll have to do a deeper dive now.