How do you record 529 Plan funds?

[Morrison J. Chang]

On Tue, 2008-03-25 at 21:40 -0400, Geoff Catlin wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'd like to track a 529 College Savings Plan account and I'm having 
> trouble recording stock/fund purchases. I've set up some accounts:
> 
> Assets
>   529 Plans
>     Name of Plan Here
>       Cash
>       Funds
> 

Pretty much what I have as an account layout.

> I added transactions to transfer money into the Cash account from 
> Equity:Opening Balances, but I'm stumped on how to record an actual fund 
> purchase. The fund in question is "Vanguard Age-Based Option: Aggressive 
> Track: Aggressive Growth Portfolio", it's particular to the 529 Plan and 
> is not publicly traded. How does one record this type of transaction? Is 
> it possible to add generic securities? Is there a better approach?

I have them setup as Mutual Fund accounts. You buy into them like
regular mutual funds. You can setup generic mutual funds in Gnucash.

For example when I created the 529 fund securities I created a separate
Type for the 529 funds instead of using 'FUND'. So for example my
"Moderate Age Based Fund" has a made-up symbol of 'MABF' and a type of
'NY529'. 

So when I get my quarterly statement, I go into the price editor and
just update the funds in 'NY529'.

> Thanks,
> 
> -Geoff

-Morrison