Organizing your portfolio

[Randleman1]

What is the best way to keep track of all of your finances?

I began reading WCI after I had already been investing with a financial adviser.  Of course, it wasn't long before I started putting funds into Vanguard and I have since ceased adding any funds to the American Funds and Fidelity accounts managed by my adviser.  However, I have not yet rolled those into Vanguard.  I also maxed out my 529 Plans, Roth IRA and 403b in Vanguard Funds, though my 403b is channeled through Lincoln Financial so I cannot see it from my personal Vanguard account.  Having maxed those accounts, I put some funds into Betterment and some commodities.  I also have some small investments in stocks that have been handed down from family.  Not to mention, I have a mortgage, car payments, student loans, 2 credit cards and ultimately 6 bank accounts from those.

This paper trail stresses me out.  There must be some way to manage this from one interface.  I have tried Mint.com, but it struggles to login to some of these accounts, and there are a number of other glitches that frustrate me.  Some may I should consolidate, and there are a few ways I plan to, but ultimately I hope to expand into other areas of investment which will only add to the complexity.

Maybe I just need to learn how to work Mint.com, but I am interested to know how others streamline their portfolio access.

[DarrVao777]

Personal Capital seems to be a little bit better at loading accounts

I use Mint to track my wife's holdings (we keep everything separate)

My end is pretty simple since I use Vanguard for everything and transferred everything else into Vanguard (taxable account, Roth IRA, and 529 are all with Vanguard). I log in at the beginning of each year to do the backdoor Roth. I log in once monthly to dump extra funds into the taxable account and the 529)

I do have a 401k with Principal but as it makes up <1% of my net worth, I don't follow it closely (same thing, one contribution at the beginning of the year and then I forget it)

Mortgage, car payments, credit cards are all set to autopay so I don't have to monitor them. We tend to be frugal (well, aside from the car leases) and consistent so there isn't much month to month variation. All autopays come out of my one checking account so checking up on the debits is always one fingerprint away on my iPhone banking app (Chase).

Short of that, it might come down to writing everything down (perhaps an Excel spreadsheet?) and monitoring them monthly until it becomes a set routine for you.

[PhysicianOnFIRE]

Another vote for Personal Capital. It can monitor all the investments (and does a better job than Mint) as well as the bank accounts.

I also use a spreadsheet, updated with data from Personal Capital, to monitor net worth and aid with rebalancing.

 

[Hatton]

I also use personal capital to monitor net worth from different sources.  Great graphics.  You could consolidate into vanguard.  I hold some American funds at vanguard. Eventually the goal is no car payment right?  Consolidate and pay stuff off.  Life simplifies.

[Jim]

One of the biggest problems I've had with account aggregators (mint.com, Quicken software, personal capital, etc) is that they can't deal with 2FA.  This is by design, of course, but it's still a problem.  The only financial institution that I use that has a solution for this is Capital One.  They use a read-only token that allows aggregators to, well, aggregate, without putting your money at any risk whatsoever, since the token is read-only.

 

[Randleman1]

hatton1 wrote:

Eventually the goal is no car payment right?  Consolidate and pay stuff off.  Life simplifies.

Click to expand...

Of course.  Actually, my vehicle was paid off, but I was able to get an auto-loan against it at 3.5% through USAA and used the cash to pay off higher interest educational loans.  All loans I have now are under 4% so I have them generally set to autopilot.

Thanks for all the replies.

[DoubleMDs]

Really like personal capital. Combine that with an excel spreadsheet updated every few months and it works well for me.