Personal Capital

Author: Jenna Vasquez

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The Good

• Free services
• Two-factor authentication
• Easy dashboard

Personal Capital is a free service, but also offers wealth management tools at a premium price. This funding from the wealth management program allows Personal Capital to keep their site free of ads. When you first log in to Personal Capital it walks you through the easy process of linking your accounts (with your banking login information and PINs) so that transactions can be automatically synchronized to your dashboard. You can also manually add accounts by simply providing a name and the current account balance. Personal Capital employs 2-factor authentication to log in to the site as well as utilizing firewalls, continuous monitoring, and 256-bit military-grade encryption algorithms. You can get daily emails showing activity on all your accounts to better guard against fraud. Personal Capital also works with federal protections like the FDIC and SIPC. Here is more information about Personal Capital's security practices. Personal Capital is a free online personal finance tool focused on monitoring your cash flow, net worth, and investment performance on all of your accounts. The following are some highlights about Personal Capital:

• Free
• Wealth management program
• No ads
• Easy set up
• Automatically synced transactions
• Crisp design
• Mobile apps
• Personal investment performance
• High security

The Personal Capital home page dashboard is clean, easy to read, and beautifully designed with easy to read the charts. At a glance, you will see how your cash flow is moving and how your net worth is growing. You can drill down into the charts for more detailed information on transactions. You can also access all of this information while mobile, with apps offered on phones and tablets through:

• Apple
• Google Play
• Amazon

Behind the scenes of your investments Personal Capital calculates a proprietary number that they call the You Index™ which shows your investment performance over time. You can also avail yourself of their free financial advice on 401(k) allocation or get an investment checkup on how your funds are balanced. Personal Capital's security practices are very robust. The CEO, Bill Harris, founded the company that originally invented the systems that banks use for their secure transactions. You can also get daily emails showing activity on all your accounts to better guard against fraud.

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The Bad

• Minimal tracking tools
• Tracking additional accounts
• Wealth management services can be pricey

There are minimal budget and goal saving tracking tools built into Personal Capital. As a result, Personal Capital also doesn't offer email and text alerts for account balances or bills due, only a few notifications within the program. Some of the common concerns include:

• Minimal budget and goal tools
• Few alerts
• Cannot add transactions to manual accounts

If you manually add an account you cannot add transactions. The only way to track these accounts is to edit the balance on an ongoing basis. Personal Capital's core service is free. If you'd like advice about investment strategies or wealth management, the fee schedule is as follows:

• First $1 Million: 0.89%
• First $3 Million: 0.79%
• Next $2 Million: 0.69%
• Next $5 Million: 0.59%
• Over $10 Million: 0.49%

Although the majority of Personal Capital's wealth management services require a fee to use, they will help with some financial planning and 401(k) allocations for free. Personal Capital's free Investment Checkup checks your current retirement plan and provides portfolio recommendations based on when you want to retire and how much risk tolerance you have. You can upgrade from Personal Capital's free tools to a plan focused on wealth management and investment advice.

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The Bottom Line

Personal Capital is focused on growing wealth for people who can't yet afford top tier financial advisors. It's free tools focus on investments and net worth rather than budgets and savings goals. If you're already comfortable with budgeting and want to take your finances to another level, Personal Capital might be a great fit for you. It's a great tool to get you on top of your personal finances. Those that use Personal Capital can expect the following from the service:

1. Free and paid subscriptions available
2. Quality budgeting tools
3. Advanced security
4. Cannot add transactions