Quicken® 2010 For Dummies®

Chapter 13. Tracking Tax-Deferred Investments

In This Chapter

• Knowing when to use Quicken investment record keeping

• Setting up a tax-deferred investment account

• Recording your initial investment

• Buying investments

• Recording profits

• Selling your investments

• Adjusting your share counts and price information

Investment record keeping is something that more of us need to think about. More of us are investing as the population ages and we prepare for retirement. And the near meltdown in the financial markets in 2008 means that we probably all need to save more.

Fortunately, Quicken provides great tools for managing your investments, including your tax-deferred investments. And this chapter talks about those tools. But first, I should talk about whether you even need to do this.

Deciding to Use Investment Features

The Quicken investment record-keeping feature lets you do three important things:

• Track your interest and dividend income

• Track real and potential capital gains and losses

• Measure an investment's performance by calculating the annual return from an investment

If you're a serious investor, these things probably sound worthwhile. But before you invest any time learning how Quicken investment record keeping works, be sure that you need all this power.

Are your investments tax-deferred?

If your investments are tax-deferred — if, for example, you're using individual retirement accounts (IRAs), Simple-IRAs, Roth accounts, or 401(k)s — you don't really need to track investment income and capital gains ...