After you set up an investment or retirement account, you must describe each security in the account. Securitiesare the stocks, mutual funds, certifi-cates, bonds, or other financial instruments that the account tracks. Gather the paperwork and follow these steps to describe each security that you own. If you just purchased more shares of a security that you already own and have already described in an investment or retirement account, skip ahead to “Handling Stocks” or “Handling Mutual Funds,” later in this chapter.
1. Click the Investing tab.
2. In the Investing window, click the Portfolio Manager link.
You land in the Portfolio Manager window. You can also get there by clicking the Investing Tools button and choosing Portfolio Manager from the drop-down menu.
3. Click the Work with Investments link and then choose Set Up a New Investment from the drop-down menu.
You’ll find the Work with Investments link under Common Tasks on the left side of the window. After you click Set Up a New Investment, the first New Investment dialog box appears.
4. Click the down arrow to open the Account drop-down list; then choose the investment or retirement account where you track the security and click Next.
If no account names appear on the menu, you haven’t set up an invest-ment or retireinvest-ment account yet. Chapter 8 explains how to do that.
and enter the security’s name or ticker symbol; then click Next.
If you entered a ticker symbol, Money knows the name of the investment and what type of investment you are tracking, you see the Transaction Details dialog box, and you can skip ahead to Step 8. If you entered a name instead of a ticker symbol, you see the Create New Investment dialog box, shown on the left side of Figure 9-2. In this dialog box, you tell Money what kind of investment you are tracking.
6. Select an option to describe the security and then click Next.
Which dialog box you see next depends on which option you selected.
In Figure 9-2, I chose the Stock option, so the New Stock dialog box asks me to enter the stock’s symbol. Except for bonds, Money asks for your investment’s ticker symbol. In the case of a bond, you will be asked for the coupon rate, interest paid, maturity date, and call date.
7. Fill in the New dialog box or boxes and then click the Finish button.
If you can, enter the ticker symbol for your mutual fund, stock, or money market fund in the New dialog box (refer to Figure 9-2). That way, you can update the security’s price from the Internet and save a lot of time that you would otherwise spend updating the price by hand. If you don’t know the Figure 9-2:
Telling Money what kind of security you are dealing with.
ticker symbol, look for it carefully on your brokerage statement — you can usually find it there. Or try clicking the Find Symbol button to go on the Internet and find the ticker symbol.
If you are describing a bond you purchased, see “Recording the purchase of a bond,” later in this chapter.
8. In the following dialog box, shown in Figure 9-3, enter in the Quantity text box the number of shares of the security you own.
For mutual funds and stocks, enter the number of shares you own. If you are describing the purchase of a single CD or bond, enter 1. For invest-ments such as precious metals, enter the number of ounces or other unit of measurement.
You don’t have to fill in the bottom three boxes in the New Investment dialog box, but do so if you intend to track the value of the security from the day you purchased it. By filling in these boxes, you can analyze your investment to see how it has grown or shrunk over time.
9. In the Date Acquired text box, enter the date that you purchased the security; enter the price per unit you paid in the Price text box; enter the commission if you paid one in the Commission and Fees text box;
click the Next button.
When you enter share prices of stock, you can enter fractions. For exam-ple, you can enter 501⁄2or 101⁄4.Money converts the entry to a decimal.
If you are tracking the value of this security from the day you bought it, be sure to enter data about your original purchase. You may have bought more shares in the security or sold shares in the past. The value may have gone up or down. You need to enter purchase data as of the date you entered back in the Date Acquired text box.
Figure 9-3:
Describing the value of the security.
account; if other securities you track in this account need listing, click the Yes button, click the Next button, and return to Step 3.
Do not pass Go and do not collect $200.
Repeat Steps 5 through 9 for each security that your investment or retire-ment account tracks.