Keeping Track of Investments

[l2jperry]

Hello All,

This will be the first portfolio I am setting up, and since some of its contents are in an IRA, physical Gold, and more in a taxable account... I am curious, are there tools out there to keep track of your investments? For example, if I have a certain amount of VT, 30 year bonds, i-bonds, and physical gold coins... is there a way I can keep track of the gains and losses on each asset class, as well as the total gain/loss of the portfolio in general. I know this portfolio is meant to be set and forgot about, but I still will want to watch and evaluate until I get used to it. Since it seems like many of you on here know where your portfolio gains and losses are, I am assuming there are tools out there to keep track. Thanks! I appreciate all the help you've all given me so far.

[ns2]

I am not aware of any general purpose PP-friendly tracking tools. Morningstar is pretty good for setting up a general tracking portfolio using 4 ETFs to represent the asset classes if you want to check in once in a while.

But obviously it doesn't keep track of your physical gold or the ways you may invest cash.

I wrote my own C++ program that takes a snapshot of Fidelity's full-view cut/pasted into a text file and produces a report.  But I still have to enter information for physical gold and other cash.

[l2jperry]

Thanks NS2, so it sounds like something you'll have to do manually... i'll probably just use an excel sheet then since I am not really using ETFs.

[dualstow]

I like google drive (formerly google docs) because there are numerous threads here where you can learn to import live gold prices + specific bond prices into your spreadsheets.

[Ad Orientem]

Another way is to just set up multiple self contained PPs (i.e. one for your IRA one in taxable and one in your 401K if you can make it work there). You can use different brokers and different funds if that helps. It also adds a further level of diversification.