How to keep track of it all

Boa21

Another vote for MS money from me. Yep, every financial transaction has to be logged but it makes it easy for reconciling statements each month. I've not used the forecasting feature (which is what the OP was after) but I update the value of the wifes SIPP each month.

What I find really helpful if the bills and deposits section. All regular transactions like DDs and SOs are cleared into the accounts each payday for the month ahead. This makes it really clear what you've got left to live on until the next payday.

Ceme3000

I'm with HL and have no idea what my total return is. Their reporting is awful!  
I would be quite happy to pay for some software but there doesn't seem to be anything aimed at the UK market.  Would it be worthwhile dipping in and out of a Morningstar subscription? 

Linton

Ceme3000 said:

I'm with HL and have no idea what my total return is. Their reporting is awful!  
I would be quite happy to pay for some software but there doesn't seem to be anything aimed at the UK market.  Would it be worthwhile dipping in and out of a Morningstar subscription? 

If all you want is total return Ms Money will provide a wide range of reports, including total return taking into account any buys and sells you make, though you have to go to a bit of effort to get automated updating of prices working.   Trustnet/portfolio with trustnet/charting may help but it does not handle total return with multiple buys and sales, just the total return of the underlying investments.  Both trustnet/portfolio and FT/portfolio provide download to a spreadsheet from which you could in principle generate reports.

The paid-for facilities in Morningstar wont help much with the reports you seem to want, they are more for portfolio allocation analysis.

Albermarle

Would it be worthwhile dipping in and out of a Morningstar subscription? 

I know you should take Trustpilot reviews with a pinch of salt, but every other one is about problems cancelling after a trial period 

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/morningstar.com

AnotherJoe

Ceme3000 said:

I'm with HL and have no idea what my total return is. Their reporting is awful!  
I would be quite happy to pay for some software but there doesn't seem to be anything aimed at the UK market.  Would it be worthwhile dipping in and out of a Morningstar subscription? 

Yeh my yearly report once showed id made a whacking loss on my Apple shares. Like, huge. But Apple Had split 1 for 7 and then doubled in price so I'd actually doubled my money (ish, can't recall the exact numbers)   When I complained , the response, was, and I paraphrase "meh stuff happens"

They also don't track total return per stock, so whether it's dividends paid or extra shares bought , their return per investment simply shows current price vs price paid. Over a period that can make a big difference.  

Also, whilst I'm on a  roll, they don't even attempt to annualise or show (AFAIK) annual change, so for Investments having been held for different lengths then a straight comparison is wholly misleading. 

Had I known that I might have tracked it myself From the start but it doesn't seem worth the effort to do that now. I suppose, one rainy January day I could go Back a few years and knock up a simple spreadsheet to show that. Or maybe simply copy in the data from something like Morningstar showing growth of each investment annualised.

Does MS money and others discussed here do these things?

Linton

AnotherJoe said:

Ceme3000 said:

I'm with HL and have no idea what my total return is. Their reporting is awful!  
I would be quite happy to pay for some software but there doesn't seem to be anything aimed at the UK market.  Would it be worthwhile dipping in and out of a Morningstar subscription? 

Yeh my yearly report once showed id made a whacking loss on my Apple shares. Like, huge. But Apple Had split 1 for 7 and then doubled in price so I'd actually doubled my money (ish, can't recall the exact numbers)   When I complained , the response, was, and I paraphrase "meh stuff happens"

They also don't track total return per stock, so whether it's dividends paid or extra shares bought , their return per investment simply shows current price vs price paid. Over a period that can make a big difference.  

Also, whilst I'm on a  roll, they don't even attempt to annualise or show (AFAIK) annual change, so for Investments having been held for different lengths then a straight comparison is wholly misleading. 

Had I known that I might have tracked it myself From the start but it doesn't seem worth the effort to do that now. I suppose, one rainy January day I could go Back a few years and knock up a simple spreadsheet to show that. Or maybe simply copy in the data from something like Morningstar showing growth of each investment annualised.

Does MS money and others discussed here do these things?

Ms Money does report individual fund (and groups of funds) annualised returns including dividends taking account of the buys and sells.

enthusiasticsaver

I used a spreadsheet and extrapolated the pension information from the annual statements or online service portals.  I did not find it difficult at all but we just had my husbands DB and DC pension, I had a DB pension and a GMP and a SIPP and we both had state pensions.  Separate column for each year and while we were working I updated it each year until it got to a point where the income more or less matched the expenditure. Obviously the longer we worked the larger the pensions got but in the end we retired at 58.  Looking at our income and expenditure now 3  and 4 years later we could probably have retired earlier but it was a combination of finances and our work life conditions which determined when we retired not just money. 

Sailtheworld

It surprises me just how little people use products like Quicken & MS Money. Money was withdrawn in 2010 and the last UK version of Quicken was 2004 - almost certainly lack of demand. Some of the app based programs and alternatives are either crap or vastly overpriced for the functionality offered.

LHW99

I have several spreadsheets, one that keeps track of DC pensions, ISA & other savings, one for day to day expenditure and one to project future pension income updated annually from statements / DWP etc.

I got rid of my version of MS money early on, when I found it wanted to go online at random times to download information and I couldn't control it. I probably could work out how nowadays, but haven't found a reason to go back to it (or anything else).