401k value

[Roland Roberts]

Youssef Ltaief wrote:
> I had a 401K account with a previous employer that I rolled over to my new employers plan. The amount I rolled over was less than my total contributions because of loss in market value. How do I best categorize the loss.
>   
It sounds like you have only been using what I would call a "holding" 
account; moving your 401k contributions into an account and leaving 
them.  With that arrangement, your rollover will be less than your total 
contributions when you have a loss in market value.

What I do, and what I think is the recommended method, is that I 
periodically enter the actual stock purchases that my 401k contributions 
are buying.  The result is that my 401k "holding" account hovers near 
zero since all contributions ultimately end up being used for 
stock/mutual fund purchases.  When I rolled over my 401k, my old 401k 
holding account had a zero final balance and the amount rolled over 
matched the final value of the stocks/mutual funds.  There is no 
explicit loss.

If you have a long history of 401k contributions in the old account, 
that may be painful to enter, but I would suggest you use it going 
forward.  401k stock/mutual fund purchases and loss are not tax items, 
so how you account for it doesn't matter much.  Your contributions are 
non-taxable,  but it sounds like you've already been tracking that.

roland

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