Personal Capital Mobile App Review
By: Casey Botticello
Tags: Investing, Business, Venture Capital, Entrepreneurship, Technology

What is Personal Capital?

Personal Capital is an online tool, available from your desktop or phone, that will help you:

Monitor all of your financial accounts in real-time — whether checking account, certificate of deposit, or retirement account

Get objective investment advice designed to make you — not the advisor — money

Provide investment options that are tailored to your goals

How Personal Capital Works

Personal Capital offers a free version and a premium version that features direct investment management. Whichever version you use, your account is actually held by Pershing Advisor Solutions, who acts as trustee for your account.

I can’t speak personally to the premium account, but the standard free account allows users to seamlessly integrate all their investment data in a single page. Although free users are offered investment advice with the occasional pop-up notice or email, the platform itself does not have any annoying third party ads.

The Free Version

With the free version, you get full use of the Personal Capital platform as well as a free consultation from a financial advisor (Click Here to download the app and get $20 for using the free app!). That advisor will give you a personalized analysis of your investments and recommendations as to what you can do with your portfolio. Your financial advisor can be contacted by phone, email, or by online chat.

In fact, the only feature that differentiates the free version from Personal Capital’s premium product is their personalized portfolio management. Other than that, the free version includes all of the many features and benefits that are available on the platform, including the ability to aggregate all of your financial accounts, the 401(k) analyzer, objective investment advice and investment check-ups, a real-time financial dashboard, and access via the mobile app.

The Premium Version

Also known as their Wealth Management program, Personal Capital’s premium program includes active management of your investment portfolio. Like other similar products, they first determine your risk tolerance, personal preferences, and investment goals. Using that evaluation, they then create a portfolio tailored to fit within those parameters.

The fee structure for this service is as follows:

0.89% of the first $1 million

0.79% of the first $3 million

0.69% of the next $2 million

0.59% of the next $5 million

0.49% on balances over $10 million

These fees are quite reasonable when compared with fees of 1% to 2% that are customarily charged by active investment management services. The fees apply only to the assets you have under management at Personal Capital, and not to other investments that may be aggregated on the site, such as your 401(k) plan.

And, that’s it. There are no additional fees. Personal Capital does not charge trading, commission, administrative, or any other types of investment fees. Your only cost is the annual, all-inclusive percentage that applies to your portfolio level.

Investment Strategy.

Personal Capital uses Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), to manage your portfolio. MPT focuses less on individual security selection, and more on diversification across broad asset classes. Those asset classes include:

US stocks (which can include individual stocks)

US bonds

International stocks

International bonds

Alternative investments (including ETFs and commodities)

Cash

Though Personal Capital makes use of funds in constructing your portfolio, they may also include up to 100 individual securities in order to avoid being too heavily concentrated in a small number of companies.

Personal Capital uses an integrated investment approach to managing your investments, which is a pretty unique feature. This means that they factor in all of your investment holdings — including those not managed by Personal Capital — in managing your portfolio. For example, though they don’t manage your 401(k) account, your 401(k) allocations will be considered when making decisions about your investments that are actually managed by Personal Capital.

Personal Capital Tools and Benefits

There are many benefits to using Personal Capital to streamline your financial accounts, including:

The Investment Checkup

This tool analyzes your investment portfolio and gives a risk assessment of it, to make sure that your level of risk is consistent with your goals. This will help you to create an asset allocation that will get you where you need to go with your investments.

Retirement Planner

You can often find retirement planners or retirement calculators on various sites throughout the Internet. But what better place than to have it available where you also have all of your investment accounts listed? Personal Capital’s Retirement Planner allows you to run numbers on your retirement to make sure that you will be prepared when the time comes. It allows you to incorporate major changes in your life into your retirement planning, such as the birth of a child or saving for college.

Net Worth Calculator

Since Personal Capital aggregates all of your financial accounts on the same platform, they can also provide you with ongoing monitoring of your net worth. This will enable you to get the most comprehensive view of your financial situation since it not only takes into account your assets but also your debts. Net worth is the best single indicator of your overall financial strength, and this will give you an opportunity to track it.

Cash Flow Analyzer

Though our focus in this article has been primarily on the investment side of Personal Capital, it’s important to recognize that it also includes a budgeting capability. The Cash Flow Analyzer tracks your income and expenses from all sources, letting you know where you’re spending money (or spending too much of it), which will help you to make adjustments that will improve your overall budget.

Mobile App