Personal Capital is an online tool that can help you to get financial advice, as well as wealth management – for free.
In this article, we will run through all of the features that Personal Capital offers, and show you how we track our investments for free.
We are huge advocates of investing, and if you are serious about starting, Personal Capital is one of the best for helping you with this.
What is Personal Capital
Personal Capital is an online financial advisor and wealth management company that provides free tools for you to get an overview of your finances.
They were founded in 2009 by Bill Harris, Rob Foregger, Louie Gasparini and Paul Bergholm, with headquarters in California. They have $12 billion assets under management.
How Personal Capital Works
Personal Capital works by allowing you to link all of your financial accounts so that you can see them all in one place.
Their main focus is on investing, with various dashboards so that you can have a general overview of all of your financials.
In order to do this, you will need to go to the Personal Capital login and then link all of your accounts – checking accounts, retirement accounts, etc.
Personal Capital will help you to work on your financial goals each month by seeing a broad overview in one place.
Personal Capital Pro’s vs. Con’s
It’s always important to look at the pro’s and con’s of something new, and weigh up whether it is worth you doing it.
Pros
- The Personal Capital app is free
- It’s easy to use and visually appealing
- The security of the site is excellent
Cons
- There are fees if you want to upgrade and use their financial advisors
Personal Capital Free Dashboard
Net Worth Tool
Looking at your net worth is a good idea to get an overall higher look at your finances.
When you do the equation to calculate your net worth, you are doing your assets – liabilities.
Your assets are everything that you own e.g. cash, investments, jewelry, etc.
Your liabilities are anything that you owe money on, such as any debts you may have – student loans, credit card balances, mortgage, etc.
With the Personal Capital app, you are able to link all of your assets and liabilities, so it will be able to populate your net worth within the dashboard.
Every time that you log in you will be able to see (hopefully!) the positive growth of your net worth.
Cash Flow Analyzer
Personal Capital will log your income and expenses, and provides a chart of your data.
This is helpful because you will be able to have an overall view of your daily spending and how it is impacting your finances.
Budgeting With Personal Capital
We love the budgeting section of Personal Capital because you can section your spending into categories, and it will allocate percentages to each category.
This helps you to be able to see how much you are spending in each category and make any adjustments as needed.
You are also able to set a monthly savings target and keep track of it within this area.
Portfolio Analyzer
Want to have a look at your portfolio? Personal Capital helps you to do just that.
This is helpful especially when you have a diverse portfolio – it will save you from logging in to all of your different accounts.
Fee Analyzer
You pay fees on your retirement accounts, and these will affect how much you are able to invest – and therefore your retirement date. This is the best retirement calculator on there.
In the fee analyzer, you can see how much these fees are impacting your situation and any hidden fees in your mutual funds.
How to Sign Up For Personal Capital
If you’ve decided that you want to now sign up with Personal Capital for all of the great benefits, then here how to do it.
All that you need to sign up is:
- Your email address
- A password
- Your phone number
Your phone number is used to verify your identity.
Once you’re all signed up, you will need to connect all of your financial accounts.
Personal Capital Fees
Personal Capital is free! If you want to use the more advanced wealth management that they offer, the fees are as follows:
For Investment Services & Wealth Management Clients
- First $1million – 0.89%
For Private Clients
- First $3million – 0.79%
- Next $2million – 0.69%
- Next $5million – 0.59%
- Over $10million – 0.49%
Unique Features Offered by Personal Capital
There are some additional features that Personal Capital provides, which you can see a list of many of them in the list below:
- 401(k) Fee Analyzer
- Asset Allocation Target
- Budgeting
- Education Planner
- Email notifications
- Exclude From Advice
- Investment Checkup
- Personal Capital Cash
- Retirement Planner
- Retirement Paycheck
- Upcoming Bills
Personal Capital’s Wealth Management Service
Personal Capital is free to use unless you want to upgrade to their Wealth Management Service.
If you want to upgrade to their Wealth Management Service, you will have to pay a fee.
It is an advisory service, with financial advisors available to help you manage your financial portfolio.
Frequent Personal Capital FAQs
Is Personal Capital Safe?
This is a good question and one that you should always ask when setting up something new – especially if it is something financial.
Nobody within the Personal Capital company will be able to access your financial information – they take that aspect very seriously.
You will need to register every computer that you use and authorize the device that you are using to access it.
A handy feature is that you aren’t actually able to do any withdrawals or transfers within Personal Capital – it is just an overview of your finances.
Is Personal Capital Really Free?
Yes, Personal Capital is free. If you want to access additional features, that’s where you will pay for those, but there are no hidden charges.
Within the free version, you are able to get a lot of information, such as budgeting and a retirement planner which is handy to get a grip on your finances.
Should You Sign Up For Personal Capital?
The fact that it is free and you get access to so much information makes it a no-brainer for us.
We are of the opinion that you should try out a bunch of different things and find out which works best for you.
If you aren’t sure which one to pick when looking at Mint vs Personal Capital, we recommend checking out our article which compares the two.
Do you use Personal Capital? Or do you want to now?
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