Personal Capital: A Detailed Evaluation.

Review of Personal Capital

When it comes to personal finance apps, most of them concentrate on spending, saving, and budgeting. However, Personal Capital differs from the norm by prioritizing investments and retirement planning. It offers a comprehensive range of views of your assets, offers customized advice, and calculates retirement estimates. 

The app also offers transaction management and cryptocurrency-tracking capabilities. Essentially, Personal Capital enables you to visualize how your current financial actions can affect your retirement plans.

A financial roadmap can help you develop a plan for achieving your short-term and long-term financial goals. Therefore, personal capital can serve this purpose appropriately.

Personal Capital offers a range of features, including investment tracking, retirement planning, and budgeting tools.

Additionally, Personal Capital is the right tool for those who want to focus on their long-term financial goals, especially retirement planning. Although it offers some standard personal finance features, its primary strength lies in investment tracking and retirement planning.

When choosing a wealth management service, it’s necessary to consider the management fee and how it fits into your overall financial plan. Therefore, the Personal capital app can be recommended for you as you figure out how to open an account with a financial management app.

Vanguard Personal Advisor Services offers personalized investment management to help you achieve your financial goals. Personal Capital offers similar services with the added benefit of its digital wealth management platform.

By providing you with personalized insights, Personal Capital assists you in making informed decisions about your financial journey. Whether you want to track your investments or monitor your cryptocurrency, Personal Capital is excellent.

Additionally, a team of financial advisors can also provide personalized guidance towards a finance app like the personal capital app.

Formerly Personal Capital investment, the platform has a reputation for offering comprehensive wealth management services. Therefore, this review of 2023 will likely show a continued focus on personal finance and investing.

Personal Capital is a free personal finance service that is available to all users. The app generates revenue by sharing user information with its “marketing partners.” However, the company insists that it only uses the information for its product and service marketing purposes.

The app assures users that it does not sell sensitive financial information such as account numbers, balances, or transaction history. Legal disclosure is available to users, providing clear and concise information about the information collected from visitors.

Although Personal Capital provides a paid service for private clients that includes tax-efficient portfolio customization, this review only covers the free services.

The free service provides various financial planning tools and features that help users navigate their finances. With no hidden fees or charges, users can access Personal Capital’s free services without fear of unexpected costs. Whether you are looking for financial planning tools or investment tracking, Personal Capital is an excellent choice for managing your finances.

Additionally, Personal Capital offers tax optimization strategies as part of its wealth management services to help clients minimize their tax burden and maximize their returns.

Personal capital charges are very fair and users can easily afford to access financial information, and tools offered by the app.

Personal Capital employs a range of security measures to protect its users’ data. The company’s data centers are equipped with various internal and top-notch systems. The systems prevent unauthorized access and monitor suspicious activities.

The app also uses military-grade encryption algorithms (256-bit AES) to secure users’ information. To inform users, Personal Capital issues daily emails that summarize their transactions from the previous day, enabling them to detect and report fraudulent activity faster.

Personal Capital’s security features are not limited to its data centers. The app also provides various options that beef up user security. such as multi-factor authentication, foreign login alerts, and mobile app verification.

These measures ensure the protection of users’ accounts against unauthorized access and malicious activity. While Personal Capital takes significant steps to safeguard user data, users need to take their security seriously.

Getting started with Personal Capital is easy. After creating an account and answering a few questions, you can add financial accounts by selecting your financial institution from the list of popular options. 

Personal Capital then connects to the institution and downloads the most recent transactions. The app creates an entry for each account under the appropriate category.

Before diving into your finances, it’s recommended to spend some time in the settings to customize your experience. Here, you can subscribe to Personal Capital informational emails, and exclude investment income and dividends from Cash Flow & Budgeting. 

Thereafter you set up additional security measures, such as two-factor authentication. The settings also display the name of the device used to log in to Personal Capital and the dates of your first and most recent visit.

Generally, setting up Personal Capital is quick and easy, and the app provides users with a detailed view of their finances. The ability to customize settings and security measures further improves the user experience. This makes Personal Capital an important tool for managing personal finances.

Personal Capital’s polished and professional user interface and navigation system are impressive. The left vertical pane shows all your accounts and their balances. A simple toolbar then runs horizontally across the top, dividing the site into its functional areas and subsections.

The first thing that welcomes you upon logging in is the dashboard, which provides a lot of information on one screen, similar to Editors’ Choice winner Mint.

However, Personal Capital manages to do this with fewer ads and less scrolling. The top of the dashboard features a 90-day graph of your net worth, followed by two boxes, one of which contains a budget graph.

Personal Capital’s budget tools are reliable. You cannot set up monthly budgets in various categories like you can with Quicken Deluxe, but the site calculates an average of your monthly spending based on historical data. You can exchange this number with the one you determine.

 A clock-like graphic shows where you are in the month, the current date, along with your total spending up to that date. There are categories with your current spending total for each, and one can go through them to see the underlying transactions.

Finally, the dashboard displays your current emergency fund total and retirement plan progress. Unfortunately, you cannot customize this page like you can on some other financial websites.

In the Overview menu, your net worth is displayed.  Generally, Personal Capital’s user-friendly interface and comprehensive dashboard make it a top choice for tracking your finances.

The Personal Capital’s Transactions page, in the Overview menu, allows users to view their register by account type and select the date range. While not as thorough as Count About, Personal Capital’s transaction management has improved.

Clicking a transaction in the register provides information on the date, account, and description. Personal Capital’s spending categories are generally in order, and now offer the ability to split transactions into multiple categories.

This is helpful for expenses at stores that sell items for multiple categories. Users can hide duplicate transactions and attach images. They can also edit multiple transactions at once.

Additionally, Personal Capital now offers tracking of cryptocurrency through account downloads. This new feature is welcome for those who have put their resources into cryptocurrency.

Overall, Personal Capital’s transaction management has improved, and the inclusion of cryptocurrency tracking is a useful feature for those interested in the digital asset market.

The dashboard provides a brief overview of your budget and cash flow. By clicking links in the menu, you can have more detailed information on these areas.

Personal Capital offers a free money management tool that allows you to track your spending, create a budget, and manage your bills.

Personal Capital also offers a free-to-use financial dashboard. The dashboard allows you to track all of your account bills in one place.

 Unfortunately, unlike Quicken Deluxe, Personal Capital does not offer features to enter upcoming bills, track them, or make payments. However, you can view the last prices and statement balance. You can also mark the bill as paid and visit the bank’s website from this screen. In contrast, the Mint app only displays bills once the date is due.

Personal Capital partners with UMB Bank n.a. to offer Personal Capital Cash, and a savings account. This allows unlimited monthly transfers and has no minimum balance requirement.

As of June 23, 2022, the account offers an interest rate of between 0.89 and 1.390%, with Personal Capital Advisory clients eligible for a higher rate of 1.489%. You can use this account to link to your checking account for paying bills or setting up direct deposit for your paychecks.

Personal Capital Cash offers both individual and joint accounts. It works as a convenient way to save money while earning interest. The account provides beautiful interest rates, making it a compelling option for Personal Capital Advisory clients.

Empowered personal financial users can integrate their accounts with Personal Capital to get a comprehensive view of their finances in one place.

A cash management account can help you earn a higher interest rate than a traditional savings account. while still providing the flexibility to access your funds when in need.

Personal Capital is popular for its portfolio tracking and retirement planning capabilities. Once you’ve linked your brokerage accounts, you can easily view their holdings, balances, and performance.

Similarly, Personal Capital’s digital wealth management platform offers automated portfolio management and investment tracking.

A well-diversified investment portfolio is key to long-term wealth management. Additionally, with a management account, you can invest up to 10 million dollars and benefit from professional portfolio management. Similarly, with a portfolio of 1 million dollars, you may benefit from the personalized attention of a dedicated wealth management advisor.

The partnership between Empower Financial Advisor and Personal Capital also offers personalized investment management services to help clients achieve their financial goals.

Personal Capital’s Retirement Planner is a powerful tool. It utilizes your financial information to help determine if you can retire peacefully. You can add Income Events, such as Social Security and Pension Income, and Spending Goals, such as Retirement Spending and Higher Education.

 You can edit any of these goals and assumptions, including the Inflation Rate, and save them to compare different scenarios. The site runs simulations to determine if you will retire when you want with the income you have.

As you come nearer to retirement, you can use Personal Capital’s Smart Withdrawal tool to plan how and when to use the money you’ve saved. All of these features provide excellent insight into your investment choices and retirement preparedness. No other personal finance service that was reviewed does such a thorough job or offers such flexibility and projection.

Personal Capital Retirement Planner is an excellent tool for anyone planning a good life after retirement. By allowing users to add Income Events and Spending, it’s easy to compare different scenarios and determine the best course of action.

The Smart Withdrawal tool helps you plan how to use your savings, and the detailed cash flow table breaks down key numbers by age. Personal Capital’s Retirement Planner is one of the best tools available for retirement planning.

Additionally, the Planning services offered by Personal Capital can help you develop a personalized strategy for managing your finances. 

Finally, Free tools like budgeting apps and investment calculators can be invaluable resources for managing your finances after retirement. Therefore, free financial tools are very critical when it comes to money management.

Personal Capital’s Advisory Services is a fee-based service that provides personalized investment advice and recommendations to clients with portfolios over $100,000. As a fiduciary, the company is duty-bound to act in the best interest of its clients.

The service includes the guidance of a professional investment team, which can help navigate the current stock market.

This service can be a reliable option for those who want more customized and comprehensive investment management. However, it may not be appropriate for those who prefer a more hands-off approach or have smaller portfolios.

personal finance websites, customizable pre-built report templates are not commonly offered unlike in small business accounting software and other financial tools. Instead, data is presented in various ways such as charts and lists, with the option to apply filters to view specific information.

Personal Capital follows this trend, although it cannot export a report. However, I found that I was still able to customize data and view it in my desired format.

Personal Capital provides top-notch customer support. Their help box is easy to use and provides relevant articles that answer common queries. For example, if you want to know if it is possible to transact, a simple search will provide an article with a clear and informative response.

Additionally, the site has an extensive library of helpful articles in various categories, like troubleshooting which offers in-depth explanations and tutorials.

While personalized financial advice is not available through this platform, I found that I did not need it as I got my questions answered quickly and efficiently. The site is so intuitive and user-friendly that I did not require a live tech support contact.

In summary, Personal Capital customer support is comprehensive, efficient, and designed to help users find the answers they need quickly and easily.

Personal Capital provides users with both Android and iPhone apps, which have a similar layout to the browser-based site but with some differences. While the opening screen is less comprehensive, it does display important information such as net worth graphs, account balances, and asset/liability totals.

 Navigation is achieved through a vertical pane on the left side. This gives access to sections of the site. The app is not as detailed as the browser-based site. But it provides access to most features.

The app allows users to view transactions such as deposits, expenses, or all transactions, but it does not allow users to add transactions. Cash flow and budgeting can be tracked using charts and transaction registers.