Personal Capital Review 2024 | Free Investment and Net Worth Tracking

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1. I’ve used a similar program called Mint. One thing I didn’t like about it was that it didn’t correctly auto-categorized many of my transactions. I didn’t like having to input all petty cash transactions manually, either.
   Having said that, I’ll give this one a try and see how well it auto-categorize my transactions.

   1. I haven’t used Mint in a while, but supposedly people are getting kinda fed up with the ads (PC doesn’t have any). I’m going to review that one in about a month so I’ll see for myself!

      This one does a pretty good job, although it gets a little confused about some of my business transactions. For example, it has no idea what the heck I’m doing when I write myself a paycheck from the business! Other than that I’m happy with it.

2. How do you get all your data into the program? How much time does it typically take for you to do it?
   Also, I am a millennial and know that the most valuable information about me is my financial data – given our situation. Do you know if they sell on data or info on users once uploaded? I like the idea but am not sure. Thanks for all the info!

   1. Hey Sunny! It took about 10 minutes to get all of our accounts in. Some of them take a bit longer because of two-step authentication, but overall it was pretty quick and basically like signing in to your online bank accounts all in one place. You do have to re-enter your passwords from time to time I’ve noticed (especially if you don’t open your account for a while).

      They do not share or sell your information. Check out their privacy policy at the bottom of the website – it is very clear about that!

3. I use PC on a semi-regular basis. I’m becoming less anal about checking my accounts on a daily basis — ain’t nobody got time for that! That said, you can’t be PC’s interface and ability to see your whole financial world in one window. To me, it’s a no brainer to use PC.

   1. *Beat (sorry, newer keyboard over here!)

      1. All good 🙂

   2. Yeah it’s such a no-brainer if you’re comfortable with technology haha! I didn’t mention it in the review, but one of the coolest things it does is the email notifications of how much you’ve spent over the week compared to the previous one!

4. I felt the shade being thrown my way as the lone baby boomer lurking on your site, ha. Hey I love your blog and all thing personal finance. Once I drink in all you are serving, I jump over to the blogs of those posting to check out their musings and get inebriated with motivation to win. I’ve just begun my war on $40k of stupid debt and hope to be victorious in 2 years!! Keep up the good work. Sara

   1. Hahahahaha Sara that just made my day! I like to give Boomers a hard time sometimes :)…mostly because there are so many things they can legitimately make fun of us for (man-buns and PokemonGo anyone?).

      Believe it or not I have a decent amount of boomers hanging out here! A lot of them like to share the info with their kids, so it’s pretty cool. Good luck on tackling the $40k, you’ll get there!!!!!

5. Wow this app is a GEM!

   1. Yep! It’s freaking awesome man.

6. As a boomer, I would NEVER give my account info. to anyone ( other than my wife) let alone on the net. It is not because I don’t trust people,,, I don’t trust anyone when it comes to money, hackers can get into anything.
   Maybe someday I will, but not today. Just old school.

   1. You already do the same thing by logging in to your brokerage accounts! 🙂 But, I get it. Not for everyone, millennials are just used to doing this type of stuff!

7. We use YNAB for budgeting, but thought I would give PC a try for quick Real Time updates. One thing I didn’t see is how to portray net worth accurately. We own a couple of rentals, one free and clear, and have a good amount of equity in our personal residence and property. I do not see where to include that in the net worth tracking. Without that net worth is not accurate. What am I missing?

   1. Hey Cork – you’re right, without that you’re really just looking at liquid net worth! If you go to the + button for accounts on the left side of the dashboard, click “add home value” at the bottom left.

      Now, they do partner with Zillow for market values, but you would just uncheck that box and fill in a manual home value. With that option you don’t need to put in the address.

      Also on the + popup, there is a “more” button where you can add car values, jewelery, art, etc. Hope that helps!

      Depending on how you are doing the cash flow for your rental, you can label those transactions individually to help organize them. If you want to be super accurate, you can just go in and manually update your home equity every month OR add an individual mortgage account.

      1. Helps tremendously. I knew there had to be a way. Of course, going through the tutorial would have been the obvious way, but you know, I’m a man! 😉

      2. Ha! Dude don’t worry I’m the same way. 🙂

   2. I use YNAB also. I am curious about this financial tool, though.

8. Personal Capital is really awesome. I started using it earlier this year and it is a great way to track your portfolio allocations and re-balance when necessary. I check it once a month or so to see how things are going and then use Quicken on a weekly basis for tracking expenses and paying bills. The combination of both is the perfect setup for me!

   1. Nice Jon! Yeah, it’s a great tool for a lot of reasons. No reason for people not to use it in my opinion.

9. At first, I wasn’t too interested in this website. But after opening my first brokerage account, I’m definitely going to check it out. I’ve learned it is a lot easier to organize with just a few things and then keep everything organized as you acquire new things, then to wait till you’re overloaded and it takes hours/days on end to straighten it out lol. Also, I checked my credit score and I am up 60 points from the last time I checked it two months ago!!! Hooray!! Progress!! Thanks for the great articles!

   1. No problem Christa! Like I mentioned in the article, we love it. It’s just easier than having to open up a bunch of different accounts! I actually have my boat value in there too haha

10. I downloaded Personal Capital a few years ago, but still find myself using almost exclusively Mint. For whatever reason, a ton of my accounts simply cannot connect to Personal Capital and they won’t add them. Oddly, my Fidelity HSA – which I use as a secret retirement account – cannot connect to Personal Capital. When I asked them about it, they told me that HSA’s aren’t supported. That’s a pretty big problem if I’m using it to track my investments. Since Mint has worked fine for me, I’ve just been sticking with it.

    To track my investment portfolio, I tend to use an app called SigFig, which connects everything and seems to work pretty well.

    1. Thanks for the tip – I haven’t run into any issues like that yet, but I’ll update if I do!

    2. I have an HSA through work with Health Equity and it pulled that data in just fine. I am having trouble linking a few other sites though. One of them is my primary bank account of all things.

       I agree about the Mint though. I do like it better than PC for tracking transactions, but I got to admit the PC investment tracking and forecasting is miles ahead of Mint’s. It’s a nice tool for that in itself.

       1. Thanks Jeffrey – I’ve been doing some more digging and from what I’ve found the HSA’s are supported. I’m going to call today and check on the Fidelity one. I have to resubmit my main bank account info from time to time because of the authentication on the bank’s website. All in all though, it’s free so I can’t complain too much haha

       2. No idea why. My 401(k) was with fidelity and had no problem connecting. But my HSA, also with fidelity wouldn’t show up. I contacted Personal Capital (even tweeted them I think) and the response was that they don’t support HSAs. As of today, still can’t see my Fidelity HSA and they don’t support my work HSA through which my employer contributions get sent into.

          Various other personal bank accounts I have aren’t supported either. So unfortunately, I just don’t get an accurate picture of what my account balances or net worth are from Personal Capital.

       3. That’s a bummer, we’ve found it to be very helpful! I’m going to speak with them today and double check the HSA info. I know a decent amount of my readers have them.

          *Update*
          I contacted PC to see if they support HSA accounts (specifically Fidelity). Here was their response:

          “Thanks for contacting Personal Capital Support. Yes, you should be able to link your Fidelity HSA account to Personal Capital. We do support HSA accounts in general, and specific account support depends on the institution.”

          Another option for anyone that has issues is to manually add an account using the “more” option in the “+” dropdown on the left hand side of the dashboard. Hope that helps!

11. I used Mint for quite a long time and thought I’d give this app a try and I have to say I love it. When I linked my 401K and click on the fee analyzer I was amazed at what I was paying in fees for the funds I was invested in! Granted a savvy investor would have known to check the fees (I’m an amateur), it opened my eyes to what I would lose in fees over time. Thanks for posting on this, it’s my new favorite finance app!

    1. Daniel that’s awesome! It’s crazy how many extra fees get packaged in to mutual funds isn’t it? Glad it helped!!!!! 🙂

12. Thank you SO MUCH for reviewing PC! 2017 is my year to crush student loan debt and take control of my finances, and I’ve never found a site as user-friendly and helpful as PC. I signed up this morning after reading your review, and I’m already in love! 🙂 Also, your blog is so inspiring. Reading through the site is fueling my motivation to tackle my financial goals. Thanks again!

    1. 🙂 No problem June! It really is a great resource considering that it’s free. I like the weekly spending updates and the retirement projections!

       Glad you like the site!

13. Hi,

    I’m a novice Quicken 2016 user. Don’t do much other than track transactions to see where my money goes each month. I’d like to monitor my HSA account with it but Quicken doesn’t have a way to create an HSA account. I’ve seen online where some people try it but it’s really not a valid HSA account.

    Does PC allow you to set up an HSA account? Will I be able to monitor pre-tax contributions to it (monthly from my paycheck & company annual contrib’s) as well as payments from it for my health expenses?

    Thank you.

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