Accounting Advice is Needed: US Retirement Accounts

[David T.]

Hello, 

I am in need of some advice regarding a sticky situation of my own creation.

We have a mutual fund retirement account which, because of various transitions, has moved around from one investment provider to another. Up to a point (about 7 years ago [!]), I dutifully tracked these investments and balanced them against the statements. However, one thing led to many others, and as a result, I lost the trail for several years—and because of how these things work, I am unable to retrieve statement or transaction information for a substantial time period. 

Actually, I should be clear that I lost track of the accounting on THAT side of the books. Because her paychecks were going into the rest of our finances, I dutifully created a split in her paycheck transactions that transferred the funds into the parent retirement cash account, but never entered the actual transactions that converted the cash into the mutual fund. Neither did I capture any dividend/capital gains payments. And, because I can’t get the statements any more, I have substantial gaps in the transaction trail.

So I have this situation where the cash account has a balance and the mutual fund has a share balance—neither of which matches reality. The cash account should be zero (obviously), and the mutual fund should have a higher share balance than I have for it.

Being as I am somewhat obsessive, I have spent a hell of a long time trying to fill in these blanks, but I am ready to set completeness aside, if I could just figure out how best to extract myself from the mess. I do want to have a sense of how well this asset is performing, and want the cost basis to be accurate if possible. 

I imagine that I need to create one or two transactions that bring the account up to date in terms of zeroing out the cash account and balancing the shares amount to match a statement. However, I do not know whether I need to create some further transaction or split that updates the cost basis—or whether assigning the cash balance to the missing shares would suffice. Mixed in to this is my concern that I not mess things up from a tax-accounting perspective (I live in the US).

I would really appreciate any instruction that the group can offer, as I am tired of looking at that big black hole in the chart of accounts!

TIA,
David