Why Do My Holdings Show as Cash Instead of Investments?

Last updated: August 21, 2026

Overview

When an invested position shows as cash in Mezzi, it usually means your institution sent us the holding without a usable price or ticker, so its value landed in the cash bucket instead of being classified as an investment. Your account total is still correct — it's the breakdown that's wrong. Email help@mezzi.com with the account name and the fund names you see on your brokerage statement, and we'll map them on our side.

⚠ What You May See

Match whichever of these is on your screen:

  • A large amount grouped under USD or cash in an account you know is fully invested.

  • A 401(k), 403(b), or 457(b) balance described as cash when it holds funds. One customer put it plainly: "this is shown as old cash, which is not true. It's invest in various funds."

  • A bond fund inside an employer plan categorized as cash or uninvested.

  • An RSU or stock-plan account showing as cash rather than shares.

  • Fund names that do appear in your holdings list — for example SS S&P 500 Index X or SS US Bond Index X — but with 0% performance contribution next to them.

⚙ How to Fix It

  1. Confirm the account total first. If the balance matches your brokerage, only the classification is off, and nothing about your net worth is wrong. If the total is also wrong, start with Why Does My Account Balance in Mezzi Differ from What My Brokerage Shows?.

  2. Check whether the connection is healthy. A degraded connection can leave an old snapshot in place, and an account that was mostly cash months ago will still read that way. If the account is flagged as stale or asking to be repaired, work through Account Showing Stale or Incorrect Data first.

  3. Send us the fund list. This is the step that actually resolves employer retirement plans. Email help@mezzi.com with:

    1. the account name as it appears in Mezzi

    2. each fund name and internal code from your plan statement

    3. a screenshot of the holdings screen in Mezzi

    4. We map those funds to comparable public securities so they classify correctly. Turnaround is usually within a business day.

  4. Don't delete and re-add the account. Reconnecting doesn't change how the fund is classified, and you'll lose the account's history in Mezzi.

💡 Why This Happens

There are two separate causes, and they look identical on screen.

The fund had no usable price. Employer plan holdings often arrive with an internal code instead of a public ticker, and sometimes with a quantity of zero. When Mezzi couldn't price the position, its value was absorbed into a synthetic cash figure. We fixed that specific behavior in June 2026 — Mezzi now falls back to the provider's own valuation rather than inflating cash. If you connected before then and still see cash, the mapping request in step 3 is what completes it.

The connection is degraded. Some institutions return an error such as INSTITUTION_CURRENTLY_UNAVAILABLE and keep serving the last successful snapshot. We've seen this on Transamerica Retirement Solutions connections, where moving the connection to a different data provider resolved it. You can't choose a provider yourself, so tell us the institution name and we'll route it.

Important Notes

Once a fund is mapped, allocation, Exposure X-Ray, and dividend figures update on the next data refresh, generally within a day. Performance history isn't rewritten retroactively — past days keep the values that were recorded at the time.

🗨 Still Need Help?

Email help@mezzi.com or text/call (415) 763-6997 with:

  • the account name in Mezzi and the institution it's connected to

  • a screenshot of the Mezzi holdings screen showing the cash grouping

  • a screenshot or list of the same positions from your brokerage

  • the fund names and any internal codes for holdings without tickers

Common Questions

  • Is my net worth wrong if holdings show as cash? Usually not. The dollar value is generally correct; it's sitting in the wrong category. Allocation, Exposure X-Ray, and dividend estimates are affected, but the total is not.

  • Can I fix the classification myself? Not for a connected account. Fund mapping happens on Mezzi's side. Manually added accounts are different — you can edit holdings there directly.

  • How long does a mapping take? Support typically applies it the same day or the next business day, and the change appears after the next data refresh.

  • Why does my RSU or stock plan account show as cash? Stock-plan accounts sometimes arrive without share-level detail. Send us the account name and we'll look at what your provider is returning.