Tracking a TIAA mixed fund account

[Eric Siegerman]

(Lost the attribution; sorry):
> Assets:TIAA (cash)
> Assets:TIAA:Lifecycle 1 (commodity)
> Assets:TIAA:Lifecycle 2 (commodity)
> Assets:TIAA:TIAA Mutual Fund (commodity)

I've never heard of TIAA before, but from what's been said, I
infer that an account there behaves enough like a normal
investment account for what follows to make sense, i.e. that it
can hold numerous securities, but can also directly hold cash.

If that's so, I'd make one small change to the suggested layout:
track the cash holdings in a fourth subaccount, rather than
dumping them into the parent account, like so:

    Assets:TIAA (placeholder -- see below)
    Assets:TIAA:Cash (cash)
    Assets:TIAA:Lifecycle 1 (commodity)
    etc.

That way you can see at a glance how much uninvested cash the
TIAA account holds, while the parent Assets:TIAA GNC account
shows its total value.

In this scheme, you'd never enter transactions directly into
Assets:TIAA, but only into its subaccounts.  Turning the former
into a "placeholder account" would help prevent mistakes in that
regard, but is entirely optional.

  - Eric