Empower Personal Wealth
- Best for: Investors with accounts at several firms who want one free view of their net worth and fees
- What Sets It Apart: A Fee Analyzer, Investment Checkup, and Retirement Planner built into a tracker that costs nothing
- Features: Links checking, savings, credit card, loan, mortgage, investment, IRA, and 401(k) accounts; home values from Zillow; spending and budget tracking; iOS and Android apps
- Price: Dashboard $0; Personal Strategy advice 0.89% a year; Private Client 0.79% on the first $3 million, falling to 0.49% above $10 million
- Minimum Deposit: $0 for the dashboard; $100,000 for Personal Strategy; $1 million for Private Client
- Cost: Fund expenses on top of the advisory fee, averaging 0.06% for Personal Strategy’s ETFs
- Pros: Costs nothing, with no obligation to take the advice; net worth updates on its own; advice includes planning, a dedicated advisor, and tax-loss harvesting
- Cons: Marketing calls and texts after sign-up; 0.89% fee on the whole balance up to $1 million; balance history only from the day an account is linked
Sign up for the free Empower Personal Wealth dashboard to see every account you own in one place, with tools that check your fund fees and retirement plan. Turn down the advisory service it pitches unless you want a person managing your money, since its 0.89% yearly fee costs $890 on $100,000.
Empower Personal Wealth comes from Empower, the retirement company that bought Personal Capital, not the cash advance app that dropped the Empower name for Tilt. Its dashboard is free for anyone who wants every account in one view, and its advice is what Empower sells to the people who sign up.
Key Features
- A dashboard that links checking, savings, credit card, loan, mortgage, investment, IRA, and 401(k) accounts
- Net worth, what you own minus what you owe, with home values from Zillow
- Investment Checkup, Fee Analyzer, and Retirement Planner, which compare your investment mix with a suggested one, show what fees take from your retirement savings, and test retiring at different ages
- Spending and budget tracking
- Advice through Personal Strategy at 0.89% a year, with a $100,000 minimum, or Private Client at 0.79% on the first $3 million, with a $1 million minimum
Pros
- The dashboard costs nothing, and the advice is optional
- Net worth updates on its own from linked accounts, ready for a quarterly net worth check
- Advice includes financial planning, a dedicated advisor, and tax-loss harvesting, selling investments at a loss to offset taxable gains
Cons
- Marketing calls and texts after you sign up, autodialed ones included, until you opt out
- A 0.89% advisory fee on the whole balance up to $1 million
- Balance history starts the day you link an account, and older records can’t be imported
Investors with accounts at several firms get their net worth, fund fees, and retirement plan in one free view here, and never have to pay for advice to keep it. Savers who only want a portfolio managed pay less at a robo-advisor such as Wealthfront, whose software manages the portfolio for 0.25%, $250 a year on $100,000, against $890 at Empower, an extra $640 for an advisor and planning.
Learn more about Empower Personal Wealth or see how it compares to the best portfolio tracker apps.
Empower Personal Wealth
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