I done have this issue with any of the other connected accounts I have with other financial institutions. My only complaint is that Venmo constantly thinks that my account-which has been connected to the Personal Capital app, I believe through Plaid-is being hacked. That has been a very nice surprise, and makes me feel even more confident that Personal Capital is in the user’s corner-I would have expected more predatory non-fiduciary financial advisor services, or a fee for service.
One incredible service that the app provides is free fiduciary services for users with over $100k in financial holdings.
The investment allocation breakdowns are great, and intelligent recommendations are readily listed, though I wish that some better additional learning resources were immediately available within the app, tied to those intelligent recommended actions. I’m also a user of Mint (which is also good), and overall prefer Personal Capital. Incredibly favorable dashboards and visualizations, better than any other for personally finance. Looking forward to getting more financial advice as my relational with their company continues. Hoping my earnings are as good as they say they will be. That still remains to be seen how well that does. I ended up opening some accounts with Personal Capital after meeting with the investment advisor. Would definitely recommend this app and the desktop app as well. It allows me to easily confirm what I’ve spent on things before I’ve forgotten about them. I do like getting daily cash flow reports in my email. Also, the connection to Zillow for estimating home values has been down for several months. For example, I couldn’t get my US Savings bonds and my NC 529 account to connect. A few drawbacks is not everything could be connected. Personal Capital automatically updates everything, with the exception of my Capital One accounts, which apparently is an issue from Capital One’s end.
In the past, I’ve tried tracking my finances using iBank, but it didn’t update automatically very well and was a lot of work to maintain. Also, like that it tracks my spending so I know how I well I’m keeping to a budget each month. I love that I can get a big picture overview of my net worth, determine if I’m saving enough for my child’s education, if I’m saving enough for retirement, and seeing an aggregate of all my investments in one place.
I read a lot of online reviews of financial software offerings before I found Personal Capital. In any case, overall a fairly useful service! I am sure they also get a handle on your “data” to understand aggregate trends of their customers (and who knows what else?). Luckily you can opt out of the paid advisory service and just use the financial tracking with the app which is still a useful benefit. They will cold call about 1-2x per month.
It is optional, but they are somewhat pushy trying to get you to speak with their advisors (which is a paid service!). They started out not offering additional advisory services but eventually moved into that space. There is also other useful features like the retirement planner which allows you to get a good high level view of your retirement progress and add future events like home renovations or vehicle purchases, and asset allocation analysis and budget tracking. I have bought 2 homes and sold 1, been through market cycles, tracked retirement accounts and other financial accounts, and everything is there to see in the app and online. Been using Personal Capital for over 5 years and it is very useful to be able to see your financial history at your fingertips.