Account structure for IRA mutual funds

[Sean Fulmer]

On Sun, 2006-11-05 at 08:48 -0600, Robert Ramsdell wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-11-03 at 22:30 +0000, Sean Fulmer wrote:
> 
> > Finally, it came to matching transactions. I didn't have anywhere to account for
> > the stuff I rolled into the IRA from an old 401(k), so I created another asset
> > account for the 401(k), with an opening balance that matched the total of the
> > rollover.
> 
> It all sounded good until this.  I suspect that the proper place for the
> old 401(k) is in the Equity tree.  Then the IRA asset account will have
> a positive balance.

The only thing I have under Equity is the Opening Balances account that
GnuCash created for me. That account contains an opening balance
transaction for the initial balance of the old 401(k).

My IRA overall has a positive balance due to the value of the funds.

I think my point of confusion is in the IRA Asset account itself. It
always has a balance of zero, because anything that goes into it is then
distributed out to the various mutual funds. Is a $0 account actually an
asset?

Also, I'm not sure that I should have the mutual funds as children of
the IRA asset account.

I'm thinking I should move the funds themselves to a placeholder account
'IRA Funds', and rename the IRA asset account to something like 'IRA
Contributions' - but I'm not sure how to categorize the account. I don't
think it should be an Asset. Maybe it should be a Bank account?

Sean