[GNC] Investments - I want to play too! (figuring out money into holding account, purchase bond or stock index fund out of holding fund)

[Kalpesh Patel]

You should use SPAXX as if it was just another security, like mutual fund or stock -- technically those brokerage do not hold cold cash in the brokerage account, but rather deal with money market "fund", so you sell SPAXX at $1/share to convert into cash and buy them at $1/share when you deposit cash into the account. 

I use parent account of the individual funds to move that "cash" around. In your case you should have SPAXX, FZROX, FZILX, etc, (as Mutual Fund account type) underneath say "Fidelity 401K" asset account (set as Asset account type) under Assets / Investments / Brokerage Accounts /. Now when you sell SPAXX, put its cash from the sale into "Fidelity 401K". When you purchase shares of FZROX for example, you would take money from "Fidelity 401K"  account. This way technically your brokerage account transactions will match this "Fidelity 401K" account when you reconcile and will be able to keep track of individual securities holding as well. "Fidelity 401K" now acts as the go-between account for real cash. If you never hold cash then all transaction should add up to zero. See the attached image.


-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Griffis <bruce.griffis at gmail.com> 
Sent: Monday, September 02, 2024 4:02 PM
To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Subject: [GNC] Investments - I want to play too! (figuring out money into holding account, purchase bond or stock index fund out of holding fund)

So, I retired last year. I did a rollover IRA, moving money from a 401K into an individual IRA account. Investments are extremely simple. Just index stock funds and bond fund.

I don't need to track my old 401K. However, I do want to track the money going in to my holding funds, then that money going out into an indexed stock fund. At Fidelity, the holding fund is a short term government bond fund called SPAXX. It currently pays about 4.9% and reinvests. I have money invested pre-tax into one account and post-tax money popped into a second account. So I'd like to figure out my small post-tax account.

Under Assets / Investments / Brokerage Accounts / Mutual Funds I have SPAXX. Definition is FIDELITY GOVERNMENT MONEY MARKET. Symbol is SPAXX. 
Online Quotes is working and I can get quotes. It is defined as account type Mutual Fund.

While I was figuring it out, I rolled over a small amount before retirement in four separate transactions. Since I have this defined as a Mutual Fund, my first transaction looks like:

TRANSFERRED FROM DIRECT ROLLOVER FROM xxxxx PLAN yyyy as of Aug-30-2023
(Cash)

2815.17 shares

1.00 price

Buy 2815.17


I did four separate small rollovers to get my after-tax account funded before retiring. With that SPAXX, I bought in to one index bond fund (FXNAX), one total US indexed stock fund (FZROX) and one International index fund (FZILX). But I have no idea how to indicate this in GnuCash. 
What I did do was set up FXNAX under Bonds and FZROX, FZILX under Market Index.  The Bond Fund has account type Mutual Fund, as does FZROX and FZILX.

One area I am going very wrong is in recording my sale of SPAXX to purchase FZROX or FZILX or FXNAX. Under FXNAX I have a transaction YOU BOUGHT PROSPECTUS UNDER SEPARATE COVER FIDELITY U.S. BOND INDEX FUND
(FXNAX) (Cash) of 396.432 shares at 10.09 price for a toal of $4,000. 
Under transfer, I am transferring out of SPAXX. However, when I go back and look at my SPAXX account, I do not see it go down by $4k. So I have to be doing something wrong as I don't show that money coming out of SPAXX.

Can someone step me through buying a stock index fund using money in a money market type of fund? Volume for me is very low. I just funded a pre-tax account and a post-tax account, went for a US Bond market index fund, an International fund, a US fund, have dividend reinvestments and maybe re-balance once or twice a year.


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