Morningstar? But I'm so thrifffty!

calmloki

calmloki

Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Joined
Jan 8, 2007
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Um, signed on to Morningstar this morning to see what condition our portfolio is in and initially didn't just pop on. When I did get on via computer I got this message:

"Legacy Portfolio Manager
While you still have access to Portfolio Manager today, it will be retired for Basic users in the coming months. To continue tracking your investments and to keep your portfolio data, you'll need a subscription to Morningstar Investor."

The gal had signed on on her phone - or tried to - and got some cutesy message to the effect of "much like your stock earnings your Morningstar portfolio manager is gone - unless you pay us $35/month".

'Druther not. Other options that are as clear and simple as Morningstar? We have stocks and such in a number of institutions. It was nice to have the whole bunch tracked in one place.
 
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.
 
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You might look at Yahoo Finance. I don't think they are charging yet.
 
Spreadsheet!

It'll keep you sharp running all those numbers - and at $35/month (tax free) that's a pretty good salary for doing something you love - looking after your own money.
 
We are still running Quicken 6 - we try real hard to avoid $ubscriptions - like to pay for something one time and own it. That does mean we don't have all the functionality of the latest software, which means, in this case, our version of Quicken doesn't track our portfolio. Maybe we should bite the bullet and update.
 
Schwab, and probably others, can give a whole portfolio view. For a while I had a test portfolio with a DFA FA who used Fido as a custodian. After minimal fussing around with logins and rights, Schwab retrieved and displayed the Fido account right along with our regular Schwab accounts.

Quicken, as mentioned is an alternative. I download all of our financial account transactions every month and reconcile the balances. Quicken has a lot of analytical and reporting tools. I have found the accuracy on things like IRR to be dubious but summary numbers seem to be OK and lots of pretty graphs and charts are available. We just look at our situation once a year so don't use the Quicken tools much but YMMV.

(There is probably a Quicken workalike out there that does not involve annual payments. I actually would not pay for Quicken if I were not locked in with thousands of transactions.)
 
I don't like having to pay the annual ransom either. But being an active investor, I really need something like Quicken to keep track of all my accounts and transactions.

And the ability to download transactions really helps.

Just this morning, I happened to spot a pending transaction from my B of A account that did not make sense. Asked my wife who keeps track of monthly billings to settle them: "What is this payment to the county? It's too small to be RE tax."

She said "Oops, I meant to pay the electric company".

I was able to log in to B of A site, and cancel that transaction that was scheduled for tomorrow. I then made the payment to the electric company to avoid being late. A potential hassle has been serendipitously prevented.
 
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OldShooter said:
(There is probably a Quicken workalike out there that does not involve annual payments. I actually would not pay for Quicken if I were not locked in with thousands of transactions.)
Click to expand...
MoneyDance. One time fee to buy the software, it keeps working as long as you like. Free/discounted upgrades within a certain time frame (1-2 years), or just pay to buy a newer version ($49.99 + tax). Very active user board.

I can't speak to how well it works with investments, but you can download a free version to try for a few days (it's limited in the number of transactions). I believe the user board is public so you can see conversations about the investment function.

- Rita
 
NW-Bound said:
...
Just this morning, I happened to spot a pending transaction from my B of A account that did not make sense. Asked my wife who keeps track of monthly billings to settle them: "What is this payment to the county? It's too small to be RE tax."

She said "Oops, I meant to pay the electric company".

I was able to log in to B of A site, and cancel that transaction that was scheduled for tomorrow. I then made the payment to the electric company to avoid being late. A potential hassle has been serendipitously prevented.
Click to expand...
But you didn't need Quicken for any of that, right? When I need to, which is rarely, I just go to the Schwab bill pay gadget. I can see both historical and planned payments. I have found this useful a couple of times when a vendor on autopay increased prices on me without notice..
 
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.
 
OldShooter said:
But you didn't need Quicken for any of that, right? When I need to, which is rarely, I just go to the Schwab bill pay gadget. I can see both historical and planned payments. I have found this useful a couple of times when a vendor on autopay increased prices on me without notice..
Click to expand...

We use B of A banking account, and not Schwab. And yes, I can log into B of A checking account to see the scheduled pending payments. However, this is not my routine thing to do.

My wife takes care of all bill payments. I take care of all investment decisions.

Usually, the only thing I do with the checking account is to look at its balance, as reported by Quicken. If it runs low, it's my job to refill it from a brokerage account, or as withdrawal from one of the IRA accounts.

I am glad I just happened to spot the mis-directed payment when I hit "download" on Quicken. I use Quicken to have a top view of all my accounts, investment, banking, HSA, as well as credit card accounts.
 
I subscribe to Morningstar but I think i did a 2 year deal. I do not find that I need the portfolio tools as I have E*Trade. I find the analysis is worth it, though i sometimes drop for months at a time.
 
I really did like Instant X-Ray for a quick snapshot of what I had in a total portfolio. I imagine you can get something similar at Schwab, Fidelity, etc. They are substituting stronger tools and access to analysts views of specific stocks, bonds, etc. All for $249+ tax a year (didn't that used to be $99?). Looks you can still access their columnists for free once this change happens.
 
I don't like letting apps have my account credentials so I just keep the share numbers up to date manually in a Google spread sheet. The spreadsheet automatically pulls the daily price. I used to keep YTD trailing returns on each holding pulling Morningstar data with an ImportXML function that Cathy63 kept us up to date on. Unfortunately, that nice functionality seems to be dead.

Vanguard and Schwab let you manually input outside account info and provide some portfolio analysis tools.
 
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We (she) got Yahoo finance to show our current portfolio yesterday. I had been there years ago and it wanted to show 4-5 old Vanguard portfolios with stocks we no longer have and it refuses to link with Vanguard (for me). Gal got it reporting our current holdings though and entered buy and sell dates for what we still hold. It does show holdings in the order we want, update the prices, and has columns for some good stuff like 52 week low. I'd like it to link and update and show transactions without manual entry. Just lazy that way.
 
This thread reminded me to check two portfolios I set up 4 years ago. The FA portfolio is now $620K, My 3-fund Vanguard portfolio constructed to the same AA is now $684K.

This was 90% stock and 10% int'l bond. So I picked Vanguard equivalents. All dividends are reinvested.

I don't know what the AUM fee is, but the picture does not get better for the investor.

I won't pay $35/month to review this in the future, though.
 
Morningstar

I am so disappointed that Morningstar is going to start charging a fee for portfolio daily updates. Does anyone have recommendations for a safe free service.

Cheers!
 
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".
 
Koolau said:
Spreadsheet!

It'll keep you sharp running all those numbers - and at $35/month (tax free) that's a pretty good salary for doing something you love - looking after your own money.
Click to expand...

My rule is if I can't do something on one tab or a spreadsheet, I need to simplify whatever it is I'm trying to represent. Mostly I've been able to do that.
 
NW-Bound said:
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".
Click to expand...
It's just one of life's tradeoffs. I absolutely will not deliberately upload portfolio information to any of the multitude of sites that offer to monitor, provide tools, etc. Including Morningstar. I worry that Quicken may be taking it without permission. Regardless, too much potential for misuse, hacking, etc.

But I did decide to trust Schwab and nothing bad or irritating has come from it. My Schwab guy knows me pretty well and he may be heading off any sales forays, but if so he is doing a good job.

Convenience with value hard to measure versus risk that's hard to estimate. Definitely a case where different folks will come to different decisions.
 
OldShooter said:
It's just one of life's tradeoffs. I absolutely will not deliberately upload portfolio information to any of the multitude of sites that offer to monitor, provide tools, etc. Including Morningstar. I worry that Quicken may be taking it without permission. Regardless, too much potential for misuse, hacking, etc.

But I did decide to trust Schwab and nothing bad or irritating has come from it. My Schwab guy knows me pretty well and he may be heading off any sales forays, but if so he is doing a good job.

Convenience with value hard to measure versus risk that's hard to estimate. Definitely a case where different folks will come to different decisions.
Click to expand...

I already use Quicken to provide a consolidated view of my financial affairs. Letting a Web site having access to my accounts does not give me any more info, plus they do not provide the same features as I have with Quicken.

I have resigned to paying a yearly ransom to Quicken, so there's no need to complicate things more with another lesser tool.
 
OldShooter said:
It's just one of life's tradeoffs. I absolutely will not deliberately upload portfolio information to any of the multitude of sites that offer to monitor, provide tools, etc. Including Morningstar. I worry that Quicken may be taking it without permission. Regardless, too much potential for misuse, hacking, etc.

But I did decide to trust Schwab and nothing bad or irritating has come from it. My Schwab guy knows me pretty well and he may be heading off any sales forays, but if so he is doing a good job.

Convenience with value hard to measure versus risk that's hard to estimate. Definitely a case where different folks will come to different decisions.
Click to expand...

Here, I thought I was the only one who questions how my data will be used (and who it will be shared with.) (I kinda gave up over on the cell phone forum.) YMMV
 
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