How to track a 401(k) you cannot connect to an app

A 401(k) belongs to a plan your employer sponsors. The day-to-day records are kept by a recordkeeper or plan administrator, and you see the account through that firm's participant website. It is a different thing from an individual brokerage account, even when the same company runs both.

Investing apps that read your holdings connect to brokerage accounts. Walnut, for example, connects to accounts at Public and Robinhood, at E*Trade, tastytrade, Webull, moomoo, Questrade, Wealthsimple, Trading 212 and Stake, and in read-only form at brokers such as Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard and Interactive Brokers. A plan recordkeeper's participant site is usually not on lists like that, and linking a personal brokerage account at the same company does not necessarily bring the workplace plan along with it, because the plan often lives behind a separate login.

The same is true of most deferred compensation plans and pensions. None of this means the money cannot be counted. It means the number has to come from you rather than from a sync.

A 401(k) statement can show more than one balance, and the one that matters for planning is the vested balance: the amount that would be yours if you left the job tomorrow.

The Department of Labor's guidance on retirement plans sets out the rules. You are always 100% vested in your own contributions. Employer matching contributions in a 401(k) can vest on a cliff schedule, fully after three years of service, or on a graded schedule that reaches at least 20% after two years and 100% after six. Until then part of the match on your statement is conditional.

A simple example: a statement shows $186,000, of which $20,000 is employer match that has not vested yet. The figure to track is $166,000. When the match vests, the tracked number catches up with the statement, and the jump is real money rather than a market move.

Loans are the other thing to read carefully. IRS rules let a plan lend the greater of $10,000 or half of your vested balance, capped at $50,000, generally repaid within five years (longer for a loan used to buy a main home). Statements present an outstanding loan in different ways, so pick one treatment and use it every quarter, otherwise the balance will appear to swing when nothing happened.

The Department of Labor requires defined contribution plans to send individual benefit statements at least quarterly when participants direct their own investments, which describes most 401(k)s. Plans where participants do not choose investments only have to send one a year.

The same quarterly statement is also where the fees show up. Under the Department of Labor's participant fee disclosure rule, plans report at least quarterly the dollar amount of plan fees actually charged to your account, with a description of what they paid for. That makes the statement the natural moment to update a tracked balance: the value is fresh, and you have the costs in front of you at the same time.

Updating more often than the statement arrives means logging into the plan's site and copying a figure that moves daily. Updating less often than quarterly means planning around a number that may be months out of date. Quarterly is the rhythm the plan itself keeps.

Walnut is an AI investing app. Its outside accounts feature exists for exactly the accounts described above, and you add one by talking to the assistant. There is no form to fill in.

1. Tell the assistant the name and balance

Something like "my work 401(k) is $166,000" is enough. The name is whatever you call the account, up to 80 characters, and the balance can be any amount from zero up.

2. Add the details that help later

You can also say who administers it, the date the balance was true (it defaults to today if you do not give one), and a short note of up to 300 characters, such as "vested only, excludes the outstanding loan". A note like that is what stops you entering the figure a different way next quarter.

3. Update it by restating the balance under the same name

Accounts are keyed on the name, and the match ignores capitalisation. Telling the assistant "my work 401(k) is now $171,500" replaces the old figure rather than adding a second account, so your total is never counted twice. The update rewrites the whole record, so repeat the administrator and note if you want them kept.

4. See it beside your connected accounts

On the Portfolio page the balance sits in its own card, "Accounts you told us about", with the date next to every figure. The label reads like "You told us this 12 days ago", and the date turns amber once a balance is more than 120 days old. Your goal progress on the dashboard adds it to what your brokers report, and it works even if you have not connected a broker at all.

Both kinds of account count toward your goal. They differ in where the number comes from and in how much Walnut can say about what is inside.

The Portfolio total deliberately shows broker money only. The stated balances sit underneath in their own card, which says plainly that Walnut cannot connect to these accounts and that nothing in it is verified, and when the assistant reads them back it describes them as self-reported. A total that quietly blends verified and stated money is how people end up planning around a balance they half remember.

The assistant can read your declared accounts back to you with their stated balances, dates and how old each one is. It uses them for three things: your total net worth, your retirement goal projection, and conversations about your overall mix of stocks, bonds and cash across everything you own.

It does not give keep, trim or exit calls on what is inside a declared account. Walnut stores no positions for it, only the balance, and nothing verifies the figure, so a fund-by-fund opinion would be built on guesswork. For a per-holding read the account has to be connectable, which a plan recordkeeper usually is not. If your plan offers a self-directed brokerage window, that part can sometimes be connected separately, depending on the broker.

For the inside of the plan, the plan's own documents are the source: the annual fee disclosure, the fund menu and the quarterly statement. Our guide on how to review your 401(k) with AI walks through reading those.

Take someone with $42,000 at Public and $18,000 at Robinhood, both connected, and a work 401(k) with a vested balance of $166,000 they tell the assistant about. Their goal is $1,000,000 in 15 years, adding $1,500 a month.

Walnut's goal projection assumes a 7% annual return. With the 401(k) counted, the starting value is $226,000. Grown at 7% for 15 years that becomes about $623,500 ($226,000 times 1.07 to the 15th power, which is about 2.759). The $1,500 monthly additions, compounded monthly over 180 months, add about $475,400. The projection lands near $1,099,000, above the target.

Without the 401(k), the starting value is $60,000, which grows to about $165,500. Add the same $475,400 of contributions and the projection is near $641,000, about $359,000 short. The same person, the same savings rate, and a very different answer, entirely because the largest account was invisible.

A 7% assumption is a planning convention, not a forecast, and real returns will differ year to year. The point of the example is the size of the gap a missing account creates.

People who have changed jobs often have a plan from a former employer they no longer log into. The Department of Labor's Retirement Savings Lost and Found database, created under the SECURE 2.0 Act, lists private-sector employer and union plans tied to your Social Security number, with the plan administrator's contact details.

Using it requires an identity-verified Login.gov account, which asks for your legal name, date of birth, Social Security number and photos of a driver's license. The Department of Labor is clear about its limits: a result shows that you participated in a plan at some point, not that money is still owed, and it cannot find IRAs, government plans or certain religious plans.

Once you have reached the administrator and have a balance, it can be tracked the same way as a current plan. Some people consolidate at that point instead; our guides on what happens to your 401(k) when you leave a job and how to consolidate multiple 401(k)s cover the options.

Counting unvested match. The statement total can include employer money you would forfeit if you left. Tracking the vested figure keeps the plan honest about what is actually yours.

Letting the balance go stale. A number entered once and never touched moves further from reality every quarter. Walnut's amber date after 120 days exists so an old figure cannot pass as a current one.

Counting a rolled-over plan twice. After a rollover into an IRA at a connected broker, the money appears in the broker sync. Setting the old plan's stated balance to $0 removes it from the total.

Switching definitions between quarters. Vested one quarter, total the next, loan included and then excluded: each switch looks like a gain or loss that never happened. A one-line note on the account fixes this.

Mixing stated and confirmed money in one figure. Keeping the two apart is what lets you see, at a glance, how much of your plan rests on numbers you typed in.

Forgetting the contribution limit. For 2026 the IRS limit on employee deferrals is $24,500, with an $8,000 catch-up from age 50 and a higher $11,250 catch-up for ages 60 to 63. A goal that assumes larger 401(k) contributions than the limit allows will overstate the projection.

Benefit statement frequency, vesting schedules and fee rules: U.S. Department of Labor, FAQs about retirement plans and ERISA. Quarterly disclosure of fees charged to participant accounts: Department of Labor, Field Assistance Bulletin 2012-02. Lost plans: Department of Labor, Retirement Savings Lost and Found. Plan loans: IRS, Retirement plans FAQs regarding loans. 2026 limits: IRS, 401(k) limit increases to $24,500 for 2026. Walnut is not a registered investment adviser, and this guide is educational rather than personalized financial advice.