Personal Capital: Retirement

Category
Finance

Description of App

Personal Capital is the smart way to track and manage your financial life. We combine award-winning online financial tools that provide unprecedented transparency into your finances with personal attention from licensed financial planners. The result is a complete transformation in the way you understand, manage and grow your net worth.

THE MODERN WAY TO TRACK AND MANAGE YOUR NET WORTH
Our unique combination of people and technology makes Personal Capital the smart choice because you can see all of your accounts in one place. Our dashboard provides real-time data that uncovers trends and accurately reflects your cash flow. And as fiduciaries, our advisors are legally bound to act in your best interest so we will never put our personal financial gain above yours. Let Personal Capital help ensure that you’re always moving towards your financial goals – at significantly less cost than traditional financial advisors, and with no hidden fees.

PERSONAL CAPITAL: MILLIONS OF PEOPLE. BILLIONS IN ASSETS.
“2014 & 2015 CNBC Disruptor 50 List” – CNBC
"Best 5 Free Apps to Invest Smarter" – CNN
“Time Magazine's 50 Best Websites” – Time
“Best Online Tool to Track Your Investments” – Forbes
"App Store Staff Pick" – iTunes
"Editors’ Choice" – Macworld
“One of the top Registered Investment Advisors (RIA) in America” - The Financial Times

“Minimal account connection hassles, detailed financial information, and the option to speak directly with a financial advisor make Personal Capital the best free finance tracking app available.”
– Macworld

SIGNUP FOR FREE
With the free Personal Capital app, you can easily and quickly link your accounts. We integrate with over 14,000 financial data sources, including Fidelity, Schwab, Wells Fargo and thousands of local and regional credit unions. You can be up and running in about a minute for a 360° view of your financial life.

PERSONAL CAPITAL FOR APPLE WATCH
Set a spending target and track it on the go
Review new transactions

INTERACTIVE CASH FLOW TOOLS
Create and follow a budget
See if you’re spending more than you’re making
Monitor credit card balances
See detailed income and spending by category or payee
Drill down into a category to see transaction details
Review transactions in the last 24 hours with the Recent Transactions Today extension

TRACK YOUR INVESTMENTS
What’s the market doing? And how is it affecting your assets? Track the numbers by account, asset class or individual security.
Compare your portfolio against major market benchmarks and stay on track to meet your investing goals.
Install the Holdings Today extension to track daily market and individual holdings movement.

PERSONALIZED INVESTMENT ADVICE
Personal Capital advisors are licensed financial advisors who provide customized advice tailored specifically to your goals.

BUILT-IN INVESTMENT INTELLIGENCE
With Investment Checkup, you can compare your portfolio’s allocation to the ideal target allocation and see how well your investments are doing. Uncover opportunities for diversification, minimize risk, and pinpoint hidden fees to fine-tune and improve performance.

UNCOVER HIDDEN FEES
Is your portfolio working as hard as it could be? The Allocation Checkup feature could save you thousands on expensive mutual fund fees.

PLAN FOR THE FUTURE
Get a quick retirement plan based on your actual financial data
Easily add future goals like a home purchase, remodel, college spending, vacations
See the impact of your future goals on your overall financial health

BANK-LEVEL SECURITY
You can use the Personal Capital app with confidence. Our two-step remote authentication process builds in an extra measure of security to verify your identity and your device, so you can manage your money and finances knowing your data is safe.

Version

5.8.2

Free or Paid

Free

Apple Watch Support

Yes

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone
iPad

iOS Version

10.2

Accessibility Comments

This app has a lot to offer in the financial management arena. I've found everything from transaction review and categorization to reviewing investment performance working well with VoiceOver.

The app has a particularly handy feature for reviewing holdings. When you select holdings from the app's menu, you are given a screen that shows you what is called "You index" and then several standard investment benchmarks. Selecting one of those benchmarks, then shows you a comparison of your investments to that benchmark for the selected period. Each day in the period is one item using VoiceOver where the name of the item contains a percentage for your index and the benchmark based on percent increase or decrease from the start of the period in review.

One hint is that for any of the areas of the app that are showing financial data, use the More Options item to change the date range. The default in most cases is 30 days but you can change to other options such as 90 days, this year or last year.

While this app works very well with VoiceOver, one issue i've had at various times, is when adding a new account for the first time. It seems that entering characters in the password field is not always sending them to the password edit box. When this happens, I add the account from the www.personalcapital.com web site. I also find the Check Up option easier to read with VoiceOver on an iPad.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads all page elements.

Button Labeling

All buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

The app is fully accessible with VoiceOver and is easy to navigate and use.

Other Comments

To take full advantage of this app, you are going to want to link your various financial accounts. See my note in the accessibility comments about sometimes needing to do that from the web site as a one time setup item. That said, I've been using this app with excellent success for more than a year now.

Also be aware, that while this app is free, Personal Capital does offer investment advisory services for a fee if that's of interest. You do not have to use those services to use this app though and this has become one of my Go To iOS aps for financial matters.

App Store Link

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/personal-capital-money-investing/id504672168?mt…

Developer's Website

http://www.personalcapital.com

Developer's Twitter Username

@PersonalCapital

Recommendations

2 people have recommended this app

Most recently recommended by Kelly Ford 7 years 10 months ago

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Comments

By Steve Sawczyn on Thursday, January 5, 2017 - 10:32

I really do like Personal Capital as well although don't use it as often as I probably should. The app is very accessible and works extremely well.

By Mani on Thursday, January 5, 2017 - 10:32

Has anyone tried comparing it with Mint's app? I don't want to end up serving two masters. :)

I'm not a regular user of Mint but the times I have tried that app when looking for a new app for financial tracking,, the thing I didn't like was how the details for each transaction were broken into different parts so took multiple swipes to read each transaction. And they had things like left and such included in the names. Maybe all of that has changed but I know with Personal Capital, reviewing details is very clean and not a lot of extra clutter or multiple gestures per transaction.

By Jeff on Sunday, February 5, 2017 - 10:32

I'm looking for an app that allows me to see where I'm spending my money. How does this app categorize expenses? Are the categories customizable? Can expenses be adjusted manually? For instance, if I shop at a department store and buy a few groceries and some electronics, can that expense be divided into appropriate categories?

Is there a better app to accomplish what I want? How about the Mint app?

By Keith Bundy on Saturday, August 5, 2017 - 10:32

I see that Jeff's question was never answered, and I am wondering the same thing. Is there a way to track expenses and split them as needed?

Personal Capital sounds great, but I do want to know if this type of tracking is a possibility.

With respect to categories, you can customize categories to some degree. Transactions can fall into one of three types: income, expenses or other. With in those top level types, you can pick one of the existing categories or add your own.

With respect to splitting a transaction between two separate categories, as far as I have found this is not possible. Perhaps someone else knows different but as much as I do wish this was possible at times, I still find the ap of value with that limitation. This for me has become a go to app for tracking my finances. I haven't retired Excel and other more complextools for longer term planning but with most of my accounts linked, this works quite well.

Thanks, Kelly. This is useful information, and I think I'm going to get the app.

Regarding Excel, have you tried it in the IOS platform? If so, is it accessible?

While I'm quite familiar with Excel on the PC, I must admit I haven't tried it in IOS. Just curious.

By Kelly Ford on Saturday, October 5, 2019 - 10:32

Personal Capital remains one of my go to apps for basic tracking of finances and investment tracking but I have discovered and reported a serious accessibility bug in the cash flow area of this app. When you choose Cash Flow, much like other areas of the app, you can display information for a range of dates. When you pick a long enough date range, such as a year, Personal Capital gives you monthly totals for your income and expenses. However, these numbers are identical as communicated by VoiceOver.

I have changed the dollar amounts but retained the numbers being the same in the below example of what names would be read like.

January 2019, Income, $1,500, Expense, $1,500

February 2019, Income, $1,600, Expense, $1,600