The only thing worse than Quicken is everything else 
I haven’t used it, but a spreadsheet that might be helpful is at https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=150025
I have found Vanguard’s “Personal Return” feature quite helpful. I imagine that other firms have the equivalent.
Re Quicken, I upgraded recently, and it was easy to do. It really hasn’t changed that much, but I could not live without the automated downloads.
If someone is still able to contribute to their 401K while paying college tuition, they are most fortunate and have the discretionary income to do so.
Way up-thread someone had asked how much they would need in cash to provide the same revenue as a pension. My employer offers the option of a pension cash-out in lieu of guaranteed monthly income. People with a high tolerance for risk are tempted to take the cash, believing they can do better investing the money themselves. The formula for cash payout is $153,000 for every $1000 of guaranteed monthly income at age 65. The guaranteed monthly pension includes a survivor continuance for a designated beneficiary, about 25% of the total, and is adjusted for cost of living increases. I don’t know how they calculate the cash out amount, but thought I would throw the numbers out there.
^When I calculate present value/cash equivalent of guaranteed monthly income, I use an annuity calculator. Fidelity annuity calculator is aesy to use. They have options for survivor, inflation adjusted.
Some employers do not give any option for lump sum while some only give lump sum.
One big issue to keep in mind is the solvency and strength of whatever company will be holding and paying out any annuity. If you’re not positive about the strength, might be better to roll the lump sum into an IRA or other account.
I used the Fidelity annuity calculator to price out a non-survivor annuity with 2% annual increase, for $1000/month the price was $227,000 if you are 65 and start taking payments immediately.
So $153,000 doesn’t seem like a great deal.
Without the 2% annual increase the Fidelity calculator came up with about $180,000 (less for men, more for women) to generate $1000/month. However even with low inflation it seems 2% is a reasonable increase to include for calculations. It’s like gambling odds, the house always wins. The pension fund management doesn’t want too many people opting for cash out so they offer a low-ball amount. The calculator was easy to use, thanks for the tip Iglooo.
https://gie.fidelity.com/estimator/gie/gielanding
@IxnayBob
Thank you for the link. I’ll take a closer look at Vanguard’s info, but most of the pre-Admiral shares transactions are just lumped together as one $ amount so aren’t included using the original basis, if I’m reading the statement correctly.
Edited to add: Vanguard tells me online account info only show internal rate of return for past 10 years. There is no tool to show rate of return since account inception. Past 10 years are somewhat jagged years so if I want/need to see all my transactions, I’ll have to resort to getting transactions entered into Quicken.
Figured it out so no longer need to ask the question. Isn’t life grand?
Thanks @dstark. I’m following you and @Busdriver11 and using 25%.
@AttorneyMother, for a number of reasons (eg, tracking, avoiding inadvertent wash sales, easier rebalancing with new money) it is easier if you don’t automatically reinvest dividends. Direct them to a MM account and then decide where to invest the proceeds. My life was simplified when I made this small change 
OOh, didn’t think of that ixnay. We have several that automatically do dividend reinvestment
The one area I find lacking (and perhaps I’ve just misrepresented its significance, or haven’t spent time to set it up properly) is that many products that aggregate assets don’t clearly bring out the net after tax versus gross values. If I have 10 grand in my bank, it’s 10 grand of my money. If it’s 10 grand in a 401(k), it may only be 7K of cash in hand. Similarly, in non-retirement ETF/mutual fund accounts, maybe most of it is available, or perhaps a significant portion is subject to a 15% hit. When I look at the numbers in the spreadsheet with this adjustment, the retirement accounts that have the bulk of our assets shrink a lot more than our regular accounts and allocations change significantly too.
I bought Quicken recently and probably need to spend some time setting it up. My initial downloads and links just haven’t been reconciled and numbers are quite a ways off. Unlike Ixnay, it’s only raised my BP thus far.
@Dad-of_3, once you get it set up, your downloads will simplify your life. There are some things that continue to give me agita with Quicken, and they mostly have to do with years-ago closing of a 401k and transferring to another, and/or old conversions from Investor to Admiral class at Vanguard. Those kinks have since been worked out in Quicken, and I don’t think they’ll affect new users, but I’m just too lazy to go back and fix some anomaly that cropped up 8 years ago.
I don’t think that anything I’ve done in the past 3 or 4 years is anything but reconciled to the penny. Before that, well, close enough
Well here is a development that might have an impact on my retirement plan.
http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/pensionandbenefitcommission.shtml
I think the commission did a fairly good job outlining the issues. Please no political posts on this.
The proposal would cost me at least $11,000 a year in reduced pension. it would remain to be seen how the new cash balance plan would work and how much of that it could replace. The devil is in the details of course.The plan they propose is different from a plan the State already has. They propose a plan with 4% contributions by both employer and employee while the State already has a plan called the Alternative Benefit Plan where the employee contributes 5% and the state contributes 8%. I think it is a cash balance plan.
I happen to be very lucky because I love my job so that will enable me to mitigate any change. I think this plan even if passed will most likely come with provisions that carves people like me out based on my age and years of service.
For newer employees I think they are better off with this plan than the pension terms that they are under.
@tom1944,
I am not unsympathetic, but that trend exists almost everywhere. When my wife and I began (independently) working at her current employer, they had a DB (defined benefit) pension. I don’t remember the exact percentages, but after a reasonable number of years, you’d receive a percentage (70%?) of your salary as a pension. They changed it to a cash plan, and while they contribute to it every year, as it stands now, if my wife were to retire and not draw on it until age 70 (ie, wait just like waiting for SS, else the pension is much less), she’d get $52k per year, without a COLA. I’m not disparaging $52k, but that’s 13 years from now, and it is not close to what was there when she signed on. Thankfully, we saved for retirement in addition.
At the same time, the original 401k allowed 6% employee contributions, with the company matching 2x the employee contribution (to IRS limits, of course) – up to 18% total. In spite of the generous plan, many coworkers didn’t participate. I wonder if any of them stayed out because they though their pensions would be there to take care of things. Belt AND suspenders if you want to be sure your pants won’t fall down.
@IxnayBob, could you provide more details on the following?
My IRAs and non-retirement investments are in Vanguard mutual funds, and I have all dividends reinvested and simply use the statements from Vanguard for recording purposes. I deliberately don’t buy individual stocks to save recordkeeping trouble. I do understand about the rebalancing concern, and am OK on that score. But I was not aware of tracking and wash sale potential issues. Should I be doing something different?
THANKS for your helpful input on this thread!
Ixnay- no need for any sympathy as I said I love my job so I can easily mitigate any change. If there is actually a change. That is still questionable.
If the change does happen even the reduced pension will be a solid base in the 3 or 4 legged stool of my retirement plan. If they freeze the pension they would have to stop taking the 7.5% of my pay they take for my contribution to the pension plan. I will keep contributing at least that amount into the new cash balance plan or an alternative retirement vehicle.
@JEM, thank you for your kind words. For IRAs, you generally don’t have to worry about rebalancing issues related to dividends, ie, if you auto reinvest the dividends in Fund A, but rebalancing calls for money in Fund B, there’s no problem – you can sell some Fund A and apply it to Fund B.
In a taxable account, it can matter. In the above situation, it’s at least messy. But, say that you are TLHing (Tax Loss Harvesting), ie, selling Fund C at a loss to offset a gain in Fund D. The wash rule is
So, if you reinvested dividends in Fund C, your subsequent sale (of Fund C or a “substantially identical” fund) might not be viewed, in a tax sense, as a loss.
The tracking of basis may, or may not, be complicated by dividend reinvestment. In a tax-advantaged account, basis usually doesn’t matter. In a taxable fund, if you’re using average cost accounting or FIFO, Vanguard is tracking it for you. If your accounts are recent, Vanguard is also tracking specific lot basis (I think since 2011??). And, if you’re using Quicken, as I do, you can deal with the dividend reinvestment and let Quicken compute the basis. But, I find that little lots of $23.12 done at quarter end are a PITA and aren’t worth it, so I just pile all dividends into the MM and then decide what to buy with it.
ETA: the IRS could make this simpler for everyone if they just agreed that a dividend reinvestment does not count as a purchase that would trigger a wash sale violation. I know that it’s technically a purchase, but …