Since creating my Personal Capital account, I have become an affiliate of the company, meaning I may receive a commission if you take advantage of these tools at no cost to you.
The concept of checking my net worth and monitoring my finances closely was key in building a large portfolio before 40 years old capable of supporting my family without ever working again.
- Checking net worth often is a bad idea, right? Wrong. It reminds you to make smart financial decisions.
- A Forbes study showed 80% of people with goals to save money give up in the first month.
- The habit of tracking your net worth will drastically improve the amount of money you invest each year.
- Lack of attention to net worth makes it easy to justify spending that derails your financial goals.
The Power of Tracking your Net Worth
The simple act of signing up for a FREE Personal Capital account to track your net worth will drastically improve your financial situation
- Totally FREE – No credit card info needs to be provided
- No contract or obligation of any kind
What is Personal Capital
- An online financial advisor with several free tools that can help you analyze your investments and grow your net worth.
- If you have financial accounts totaling over $100k, they’ll ask you if you want to sign you up for fee-based personalized management.
If you let them know you’re not interested in this services, they stop asking, but you can still use their free tools and track all your accounts in one place.
Why I Use Personal Capital
My wife Eileen has been tracking our net worth on Excel spreadsheets for the last 20 years.
Tracking on Excel manually is a considerable pain-in-the-ass, but it helped us achieve our financial goals.
I tried using other services like Mint, Quickbooks, and even my bank (USAA) website to combine accounts, but they all sucked!
- Using Personal Capital is so much easier and more accurate than tracking finances ourselves.
- We realized that over our saving careers, attention to our net worth and financial goals fueled our success in finances.
- We are retired for good at 45, enjoying the fruits of our investments, and looking forward to the new opportunities in front of us.
Here’s what I love about Personal Capital:
- A U.S. based online financial advisor with $16 billion under management.
- Has FREE must-use tools such as net worth tracker, investment planner, fee analyzer, and budgeting tools.
- Quickly combines all financial accounts on one well-organized page
- Signing up is simple, fast, and FREE.
- Risk-free. No obligation, doesn’t ask for credit card info.
Ok Rich, I want to Track my Finances with these FREE tools.
Just click on the link above, give your email address and phone number, and combine all the information about your investments and assets conveniently on one secure site.
Dashboard with Net Worth
Here’s how the home page looks with net worth in the top left corner and all your cash, investment, and mortgage accounts listed on the left side:
Mobile App
The mobile app is even better looking than the website. It’s organized well, with an outstanding interface.
Signing Up
- Quickly sign up with an email address and phone number, and in 10 minutes easily set up all your external accounts.
- Instantly view net worth and all assets at your fingertips – access to various FREE Tools to take control of your finances.
- Tracking net worth and expenses drives the right kind of financial behaviors.
- Totally free, no contracts, no risk
Which Tools are Free
Net Worth Tracking
The function on Personal Capital I use the most is seeing all my assets including real estate in one place and tracking my net worth. It is up to the minute information on everything and even tracks real estate market values through a link to Zillow.
It also shows cash flow, expenses, and budgeting all on the same home page.
- Tracking net worth drives smart money decisions drastically improving your finances.
- Constant attention on your portfolio results in putting almost every dollar to work for you.
- Using the cash flow and budgeting tools encourages wise choices with each purchase you make. (or don’t make!)
Investing Tools
There are several ways to improve your finances when you see it all together in one place. I’ll discuss a few of these helpful tools:
Portfolio Allocation Analyzer
You can see graphically how your investments are allocated to different sectors and decide if you need to diversify. It is easy to notice if you are too concentrated in a certain area or lacing exposure to a specific sector.
U.S. Sector Analysis
Do the same thing as above. You can check your level of diversification within just the U.S. sector.
Cash Flow Analyzer
With this tool, you can create a budget and track income and expenses from all your accounts. From here, you can set financial goals like saving for retirement or paying off debt. The analyzer will help you make a solid plan to reach those goals.
Retirement Fee Analyzer 401(k)/IRA/TSP
With Personal Capital’s fee analyzer, you’ll see exactly how much you have spent in each account on fees. It’ll let you know how much it’s costing you, and you made decide to make some smart adjustments based on that info.
In my case, a lot of my stuff is in funds with a .04% fee. That’s low, and not worth stressing over. I was in more expensive investments before, but realized it and got into pretty much identical funds with much lower fees.
Budgeting
The Personal Capital budgeting section allows you set monthly spending targets and shows you how far over or under you are.
You can filter spending by merchant, date, or category.
Retirement Planner
They’ve got a detailed retirement planner that takes into account social security benefits, current net worth, projected children’s college expenses, and yearly spending goals in retirement.
It uses state-of-the-art algorithms to show the statistical chances of meeting your goals based on different future market projections. It will also help you create a saving and investing strategy to achieve those goals.
- Drastically reduce spending by harnessing the power of tracking your net worth regularly.
- Putting every dollar I can to work, and seeing your net worth is a constant reminder of your larger financial goals.
Yes Rich, I’d like to use these free tools to boost my net worth.
- Just click the green button, give your email address, phone number, pick a password, you’re in!
- No credit card info needed – no commitment
Personal Capital Wealth Management
Personal Capital gives us great free tools, but that’s not where they make their money.
They are hoping you’ll sign up for their wealth management services.
Personally, I just signed up to use their free services, and have no plans to use their wealth management division.
Some people want help investing. Do what works for you.
Their services combine robo-advisor algorithms (investment advice done by a computer) with access to human financial advisors for a tailored approach to investment management.
Here is what you can expect when you sign up for their advisory services (from their website):
Their Philosophy on Personalized Asset Allocation
Their approach to asset allocation is driven by analysis as well as an understanding of your risk tolerance and goals.
This is an improvement over my two experiences having companies manage money for me (USAA and Bear Stearns).
In both cases, they didn’t take the time to understand my unique financial situation and their approach came off as cookie-cutter – not personalized.
Personal Capital explains below their more tailored approach:
They are fee-only, which I like. That means they aren’t incentivized to sell you overpriced or inappropriate financial products with fat commissions.
The fee structure is simple.
- You pay an annual flat fee of 0.89% for a portfolio between $100,000 (their minimum) and $1 million.
- Their fees get cheaper as your net worth goes up.
- There are no fees, trading fees, or commissions on top of this amount.
- All advising, buying, selling, and rebalancing is included.
- They include tax optimization.
Is Personal Capital Worth It?
It’s an impressive website and app with tons of free tools. I think giving up your email address and phone number for access to all of this is a smart move.
Pros:
- Many FREE tools that will encourage behavior to massively boost your Net Worth.
- Several tools that help cut expenses or eliminate unnecessary fees.
- Outstanding website layout and mobile application.
Cons:
- Management fees seem a little high.
- They will contact you about managing your money.
- Use Personal Capital’s FREE tools – it will help you boost net worth and cut expenses. You’ve got nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
- It’s seriously risk-free. There’s no obligation, no contract, no payment info entered. Try it.
- Click the button below to sign up. On the next page, enter an email address, phone number, and choose a password.
It’s that easy!
After you sign up, send me an email at rich@richonmoney.com. I will check in with you you after three months.
It’s worked great for me!
Rich on Money
P.S. I really do believe that tracking your net worth can skyrocket your financial growth. Sign up for Personal Capital risk-free now!