Simplest Way to Manage Investments, Spending, And Income: Empower Personal Dashboard

I decided to take the plunge into the world of all-in-one personal finance and investing software.  Some folks use Quicken, Mint, or Wealthfront.  I looked at all of those, and tried some but they didn’t quite do what I wanted to do.  They were either too clunky, cumbersome and time consuming to use, or they didn’t get the investment management part done correctly.

Enter Empower Personal Dashboard (formerly known as Personal Capital).  This is a slick web site that makes managing your finances and investments quicker, easier, and prettier.  All your credit cards, checking, banking, investments, 401k’s, IRA’s, and other accounts are in one place, conveniently summarized.

The online investment and personal finance tracking services at Empower Personal Dashboard are totally free, no strings attached.  They also offer a financial advisory service for accounts over $100,000 in value, however they do charge a fee for the professional advisory services.  But you can use the investment and personal finance management engine free of charge forever.

My First Time Using Empower Personal Dashboard

After putting in my username and password, Empower Personal Dashboard got down to business by asking me to put in all my financial accounts.  In about 5 minutes I added:

• Three accounts at investment firms (1 Vanguard and his and hers accounts at Fidelity).  This includes 2 brokerage accounts, 8 IRA’s, and 1 HSA
• Two 401k accounts (his and hers) and a 457b account
• 3 savings and 1 checking account at our credit union
• A mortgage loan with a different credit union
• College 529 savings accounts for our 3 kids
• 3 credit card accounts

This process was amazingly easy to get all those accounts consolidated into one place.

To finish linking all of my accounts, I spent another 5 minutes verifying super secret security questions on a few accounts like what’s my dog’s favorite hobby and which tooth did my second grade bestie lose first.

I expected glitches when I was importing my accounts.  We have 25 different financial accounts spread across ten different companies or login ID’s.  Zero glitches.  Everything imported cleanly and accurately on the first try.  So far, Empower Personal Dashboard is doing what it is supposed to – streamline my personal finances and investments.

I tweaked the descriptions of a few similar accounts like our his and hers Vanguard traditional IRA’s.  I added my name or Mrs. RootofGood’s name (so I can keep them straight).  Editing these descriptions and names is simple – click the little edit button, change your description, click save.  Done.

I deleted a few duplicate accounts where they appeared both on my Fidelity login and Mrs. RootofGood’s Fidelity login so that these accounts only show up once on Empower Personal Dashboard‘s display.  Easy again.  This step is where I have had problems in the past with Money or Quicken – getting all the accounts to show up once, and only once (and one reason why I never used them).

I manually add in my cash balance pension fund, and another cash balance retirement account (an ESOP).  The ESOP account balance will have to be updated annually by me when I receive the statement from the plan sponsor.  That’s about the only manual update required since Empower Personal Dashboard automatically pulls transactions and balances from your myriad financial accounts.

In about 20 minutes I have taken our household’s relatively complicated financial life (27accounts total) and displayed everything on one screen.  With pretty, interactive graphs and charts.

After getting all the accounts into Empower Personal Dashboard, I wanted to play around and explore the different features and displays.  Income, spending, cash flow, cash balances, portfolio allocation, overview of investment fees – all easily accessible from the Empower Personal Dashboard web page.  Before using Empower Personal Dashboard, I had to manually go to all of my investment accounts and credit cards and download then copy/paste the transactions and balances into my own spreadsheets to check on what I was spending or manage my investment portfolio.

Income

My monthy income is right there, categorized and summarized in a colorful graph.  Before using Empower Personal Dashboard, I always knew roughly what we had coming in each month, but this really puts it in perspective with exact numbers and categories.  I was surprised our investment income was over $2,500 for the month.  I never added it up before, and it is surprisingly large.   Now that I’m retired, Empower Personal Dashboard is going to be a great tool to help me keep track of cash flow and available cash in my accounts.

Expenses

Expenses are as cleanly presented as income.  No surprises here.  Our mortgage is the highest expense, and groceries are the next highest.  The childcare expense is gone now that I’m retired (which also makes me a stay at home dad).

Investment Asset Allocation

The way my investment portfolio’s asset allocation is presented is probably the coolest part of Empower Personal Dashboard.  I try to keep my US investments roughly equal to my international investments, and the graphic makes it easy to tell that I’m within a percent of hitting that goal.

You can drill down into any specific area in your asset allocation.  I wanted to take a detailed look at my US Stock allocation, to see whether I’m sticking with my goal of maintaining a tilt toward small cap and value investments.

I’m doing pretty good.  The mid cap and small cap bands together are bigger than the large cap, which is what I want.  The value boxes on the left are bigger than the growth boxes on the right.  I’m on track.

I also took a peek at cash sitting around in my investment portfolio.  Looking at the summary made me realize I have been slightly negligent in investing my cash.  I try to stay fully invested.  I just discovered I have over $15,000 sitting in a money market account (ticker VMMXX) in my IRA from a recent retirement fund rollover.  I also discovered $1,407 sitting in the FDIC-Insured Deposit Sweep, which is our HSA’s cash account.  I thought I was pretty diligent in managing my investments, but staring at these cash balances sitting there earning nothing makes me realize I have a little work to do.  At least now I have a tool to draw attention to lazy cash sitting around!  Let’s get that money making more money!

Empower Personal Dashboard also has apps on Apple Itunes and Google Play Market (for Android).  I’ve used the Empower Personal Dashboard app quite a bit and it accomplishes most of the same tasks as the desktop version with a different feel and layout.

Give Empower Personal Dashboard a shot and see how you like the look and feel.  I love the interface so far, and it will save me hours each month managing my personal finances and investments.

Well, that’s Empower Personal Dashboard in a nutshell. I’ve been happy using the personal finance and investment tracking tools for almost a decade.  Expense tracking is a CRITICAL component of reaching financial independence and Empower Personal Dashboard (formerly known as Personal Capital) makes it so much easier to automate my expense tracking.

I haven’t used their wealth management service since I’m a big fan of do it yourself investing, but I’ve laid out the services they offer for those interested in for-fee wealth management.

Let me know your experiences with Empower Personal Dashboard if you try it out!  Anything I’m missing?