Review: Personal Capital .com

simplyelise

I signed up this morning for an account with personalcapital.com. It describes itself as a free financial advisement tool that lets you link all accounts and track your networth and see how moving life events and savings goals around can effect retirement savings.

I linked it to my bank account (1 checking, 2 savings, 1 credit card) and my retirement account and it's importing my husband's fedloan stuff right now. I could not link it to my husband's retirement which is through the state, but that was not surprising. It seems like their linking abilities are pretty vast though. 

So far I really like the interface and how easily you can view all your accounts on one page. Since really diving into budgeting and tracking expenses last year, I have focused less on the day to day dollar amounts in my accounts, so it was nice to be reminded that we actually have over $4000 that could be withdrawn in cash today if the emergency was dire enough, even though we only have $2000 in our actual efund.

For anyone else who has been curious about Mint or other tools where you can consolidate your entire portfolio, I totally recommend checking it out. They also have a bunch of tools for measuring how your retirement funds are doing compared to S&P and the like. I've only just started playing around with the retirement calculator tool, but I like it at least as well as other similar tools online. Once we get debt free and start focusing on retirement more, I think their investment tools will be really helpful also.

There's my $.02! I just discovered the site the other day, so I figured others might be curious like I was.

LillibetteV

Absolutely LOVE Personal Capital! I had a similar revelation that we're actually saving more than what we have automatically transferred into savings and it made me feel better about increasing the auto-transfer amount after a few months. The cash flow analysis is the best I've seen and I like it WAY better than Mint!

hoffse

Yeah they are miles ahead of Mint.

The one thing I really wish they let you do was set up a manual account so that you can track things like personal loans that may not be reflected as a loan through a bank.  The other thing that bugs me is their calculation of net worth is way off because they do not offset secured loans with the value of the property.  So for instance, our mortgage show up as mortgage debt, but I haven't been able to find a way to enter the value of our house as an offsetting asset.  So our net worth calculation is way wrong and always will be until they have a way to do that.

Still, for tracking cash flow and seeing everything in one place it's pretty good.  It's definitely one of the better products.

The retirement fee analyzer that they have is amazing - I do have to give them props for that one.

LillibetteV

You can set up a manual loan! We had to do that for our car since PC didn't link to that bank. When you go to add accounts it's under "more" 

You can also link in the Zestimate from Zillow.com to get your house value. It works well for us because it's pretty accurate (according to my local realtor) but I know for some people it's way off. "Add home value" is  at the bottom of the "add accounts" page too. I wish they linked to KBB for the cars too, but I just looked it up and manually added that value.

simplyelise

Yeah, I didn't pay attention to any of the mortgage stuff when setting it up because we rent. But it looks like if you click the "+Link" button, at the bottom of the dialogue box that pops up you can do manual entry of your home value. And if you click "More..." you can input other assets and liabilities manually.

I might end up having to do that with fedloan. It's still not connecting...

hoffse

LillibetteV said:

You can set up a manual loan! We had to do that for our car since PC didn't link to that bank. When you go to add accounts it's under "more" 

You can also link in the Zestimate from Zillow.com to get your house value. It works well for us because it's pretty accurate (according to my local realtor) but I know for some people it's way off. "Add home value" is  at the bottom of the "add accounts" page too. I wish they linked to KBB for the cars too, but I just looked it up and manually added that value.

THANK YOU.  I have never ever been able to find it and was kind of "meh" about it - I take it all back!

hoffse

simplyelise said:

Yeah, I didn't pay attention to any of the mortgage stuff when setting it up because we rent. But it looks like if you click the "+Link" button, at the bottom of the dialogue box that pops up you can do manual entry of your home value. And if you click "More..." you can input other assets and liabilities manually.

I might end up having to do that with fedloan. It's still not connecting...

Our fedloan connected, but H's Navient loan has never connected.  It will be good to finally be able to add it manually!  Maybe I can actually use this now.  

LillibetteV

it took me awhile to find it too - I wish it was more obvious!

hoffse

Out of curiosity, do either of you input jewelry or art as assets?

I've thought about it, but I don't know if I would be willing to liquidate my jewelry unless I was desperate or divorced.

LillibetteV

I personally do not (1) for the reason you said - I'd have to be really desperate to part with my jewelry and (2) we have some art and collectibles that can vary so much in value as times change.

For example I know the Lladro nativity scene I inherited from my grandmother was worth more several years ago than I'd probably be able to sell it for now (and I'd probably sell my jewelry before this nativity scene anyways...).  I don't want to have to track the value of ALL of those items when I know I won't sell them. My husband does keep an eye on prices for his action figures and rare comic books and will sell some when the prices swing up and he's done enjoying them - but that's more of a hobby for him and we don't bother counting it until something sells and we get the money in our account.

simplyelise

hoffse said:

Out of curiosity, do either of you input jewelry or art as assets?

I've thought about it, but I don't know if I would be willing to liquidate my jewelry unless I was desperate or divorced.

It's not really a going concern for me! My wedding and engagement ring are both sapphires and only worth about $1400 total when purchased new. Other than that I don't have any art or jewelry of value beyond sentimental. And I come from a long line of poor to average folk, so I don't expect anything to be passed down. 

If I did have anything of value, I still probably wouldn't list it in this kind of networth calculator unless I didn't plan to keep it. Maybe for the super rich who might have several non-sentimental pieces they'd be willing to liquidate, it makes more sense to include.

hoffse

Yeah, there are a couple things I might list, though you guys are right that tracking price is difficult - I figure if I'm willing to part with it before the house, then it's fair game.  I have some silver, crystal, etc. that I like but don't really love, and if we needed some quick cash I wouldn't have much trouble parting with it.

I would sell the house before selling my jewelry or our musical instruments though.

LillibetteV

We really just focused on the house/car and the accounts we could link along with one manual loan for the car (which is sooooo close to being paid off!). We have some savings bonds that we won't add into the equation until they are cashed in. We also don't account for credit card cash back either until it's posted to our accounts and calculated as "income". Technically everything in my house could be sold if I needed cash desperately enough, ya know? 

I use PC to get an overall picture of our financial life, but I don't budget to the penny. We hardly ever use cash for example, but when we do we don't bother to track it.

hoffse

LillibetteV said:

We really just focused on the house/car and the accounts we could link along with one manual loan for the car (which is sooooo close to being paid off!). We have some savings bonds that we won't add into the equation until they are cashed in. We also don't account for credit card cash back either until it's posted to our accounts and calculated as "income". Technically everything in my house could be sold if I needed cash desperately enough, ya know? 

I use PC to get an overall picture of our financial life, but I don't budget to the penny. We hardly ever use cash for example, but when we do we don't bother to track it.

Yeah, it's good for the big picture stuff.  I've never counted CC points either.  We'd have another $1500 or so if we did, because I'm sitting on a bunch that I haven't redeemed.  

Odds are our net worth isn't going to be positive until the second half of next year.  Sigh... I almost want to add assets to bring that number up!  Oh well, it will get there in a few months based on our savings rate and cash flow if I can just be patient.  I have the house and cars on there now since they are major assets that offset corresponding loans or are soon to be sold (probably going to sell my car end of next year).  I guess I shouldn't count the other personal property, even if it would improve our numbers significantly!

LillibetteV

Seeing the negative can be a good motivator! I definitely wouldn't try to pump it up with a bunch of smaller assets you have around the house.  

We had some massive vet bills this fall and I kept redoing the math and thinking "well, if those hadn't come up our savings rate would be X for the year". But. Those bills DID come up. And our savings rate is less because of it. And that's ok because that's what emergency funds are for. PC doesn't let me fudge the numbers and it was good motivation to see that negative cash for that month and really buckle down on the rest of our spending. 

hoffse

Yeah, you're right.  But I'm trying to be less motivated in 2016 than 2015!  We set some seriously ambitious goals in 2015, and it strained our relationship trying to accomplish them.  I'd rather be negative for a couple months longer than going through that again, even if being negative really bothers me.

Oh well, I just need to be patient.  We'll be positive in 2016 just based on the debt payoff schedule and our retirement contributions.  Anything we save on top of that will just move the numbers more quickly.  

We started 2015 with an absolutely massive negative net worth - solidly in the 6 figures - thanks to our law school debt.  It's not incredibly high for our profession, but it sure did feel big, especially when it's staring at you on the screen in big red numbers!  Anyway, turning that number positive in under 2 years will be an accomplishment, so I just need to focus on the big picture and let it play out.

Unfortunately, patience is not one of my virtues....

jtmh2012

I track mine in Quicken.  Just never liked having all that data online with some company I don't know being able to reach into my accounts.  A lot of that is because I'm in IT and so pay attention to a lot of the data breaches probably more so than most.

However, back to the point.  I don't put asset values in.  I don't feel like having to manually track the value.  I also don't put temporary things like CDs in there, so the networth calculation is artificially low.  I do have all of our checking/savings, credit cards, investment accounts, and loans in there though.

LillibetteV

I'm the super ambitious saver too - my husband and I came up with a middle ground that works for us to avoid fights. I have a set minimum I like to keep in our emergency fund that isn't overly ambitious, but it's the bare minimum that keeps my anxiety under control haha. Once we hit that number I eased up and he saw for himself how much of a difference that made in my worrying. Now that we've dipped below that number (again..vet bills ain't cheap) he's on board with my crazy squirrel mode until we get it back to where I'm comfortable, which should be another month or so since I'll have a ton of OT coming up for a trial I'm working on.