Add an investment account and let GlidePath chart your allocation

Most personal-finance apps treat your 401(k) as a single number — “your retirement balance is $437,000.” GlidePath can do that too, but it can also go a level deeper: track every position, refresh prices automatically, and roll up your asset allocation across every account you own. This walks through setting that up.

What you’ll learn

When to track positions vs just a balance number
How to add your first investment account and positions
How prices get refreshed (and why nothing leaves your machine except symbols)
How asset allocation rolls up across multiple accounts

Before you start

You’ll need the account already added on /Accounts as type Retirement, Brokerage, or HSA. For each position you want to track, have the ticker symbol and the number of shares from your latest statement.

When to track positions

Position-level tracking is more work than just dropping in a balance. Use it when:

You want to see your asset allocation across all accounts (stocks vs bonds vs cash) without manually adding it up
You have concentrated positions — a chunk of one stock, or a target-date fund whose mix changes over time
You’re planning tax-loss harvesting or Roth conversions and need to know which positions to move

Skip it (just track the balance) when:

The account is a target-date fund and you trust the glidepath the fund managers run
The account is small enough that the allocation doesn’t move the household totals much

You can mix and match. Track positions on the brokerage where it matters, leave the small 401(k) as just a balance.

Step 1 — Open the Holdings page (1 min)

Open Holdings from the left nav (under Accounts). You’ll see two empty tables — one for positions (the per-account holdings list) and one for prices (the symbol price list, shared across all accounts).

[Screenshot: empty /Holdings page with the two table headers visible]

The prices table is shared. If you own VTI in three different accounts, GlidePath stores the price once and applies it to all three.

Step 2 — Add your positions (4 min)

Click Add holding. For each position:

Account — pick from the dropdown (only investment-type accounts appear)
Symbol — the ticker (VTI, BND, AAPL, FXAIX — whatever’s on your statement)
Shares — number of shares you hold
Cost basis (optional) — what you paid total for the position; lets GlidePath show unrealized gain/loss

[Screenshot: Add Holding form filled out with VTI in the Acme demo brokerage]

Don’t worry about getting cost basis perfect on day one — it’s a number you can backfill from your brokerage’s tax documents at the end of the year.

Try it: Open /Holdings ↗

Step 3 — Refresh prices (1 min)

Above the prices table, click Refresh prices. GlidePath sends the list of your symbols to a small server (just the symbol list — never your balances, never your shares) and pulls back the latest market price for each one.

The refresh takes a second or two. After it completes, every position has a current value and the table shows your total portfolio value.

[Screenshot: Holdings page after refresh, showing populated prices and total portfolio value]

What goes over the wire: the symbol list (“VTI, BND, AAPL”). What never goes over the wire: how many shares you own, the account names, your cost basis, anything else.

You can refresh as often as you want; once a week is usually plenty unless you’re actively trading. The price is also pulled automatically every time you visit /Holdings if the last refresh was over 24 hours ago.

Step 4 — Read the allocation roll-up (2 min)

Scroll down on /Holdings to the Asset allocation panel. GlidePath classifies every symbol you own into one of four buckets:

US Equity — domestic stock funds and ETFs
International Equity — ex-US developed and emerging
Fixed Income — bonds, bond funds, money market
Cash & Alternatives — savings cash, gold, anything else

The breakdown is across all your investment accounts combined — your 401(k), Roth, HSA, taxable brokerage. So if your 401(k) is 90/10 stocks/bonds and your IRA is 50/50, the roll-up shows you the household-wide picture.

[Screenshot: Asset allocation donut chart with the four buckets and percentages]

The big question this answers: “Am I where I want to be?” A 60-year-old with 80% stocks across all accounts might be more aggressive than they think. A 32-year-old with 60% bonds is probably too conservative. The number isn’t a verdict — it’s a starting point.

Step 5 — Watch it flow into net worth (1 min)

Open /NetWorth. The retirement-and-investment line on the trajectory chart now updates automatically every time prices refresh. Your dashboard net-worth tile does too.

You no longer have to manually update the balance on /Accounts every month — the per-position math does it for you. The /Accounts balance for an investment account is now the derived number (shares × prices), and the monthly close just refreshes prices instead of asking you to type a number.

What just happened

You went from “my 401(k) is worth $437,000” to “my household has 72% US equity, 18% international, 8% bonds, 2% cash, and the total is $437,000 because VTI is at $263.42 and I own 1,234 shares.” That’s a level of detail most planning apps don’t try to give you, and the privacy trade-off is just sending a list of tickers over the wire.

Your net-worth chart now updates with the market. Your asset allocation panel shows you whether you’re as diversified as you think. And the prices refresh quietly in the background every time you open the app.

Where to next

Your first Monte Carlo projection — coming soon — feed the holdings number into the retirement planner
Tax Valley explained — coming soon — if you have a traditional 401(k), this is where Roth conversion planning starts
Backups and data portability — coming soon — your positions are in plain files; you can take them with you

Ask Glide about this

Try: “What’s a reasonable stock-to-bond ratio for someone my age?” Glide will walk through the common rules of thumb (110-minus-age, target-date glidepaths, the bucket strategy) without telling you what to do.

Common pitfalls

Symbols are case-insensitive but spaces matter. “vti” is fine, “VTI ” (trailing space) is not. GlidePath trims for you, but if you see “symbol not found,” check for typos.
Mutual fund symbols vs ETF symbols are different. VTSAX (Vanguard Total Stock Market mutual fund) and VTI (the ETF version) are different securities with different prices. Use whichever one actually shows up on your statement.
The price refresh is one-way. If you sold shares, GlidePath doesn’t know — you need to update the shares number on /Holdings yourself. Set a 5-minute reminder when you place a trade.
Don’t track positions for accounts where you can’t reasonably know them. Some 401(k) target-date funds change their internal allocation quarterly. Track just the balance and move on.