#personalcapital

[simplemoneyman-blog]

Almost Beat The S&P 500 Index

  If you continued to ride the market and in the process acquired some more investments in stocks or ETFs, chances are you’ve done well in 2017. But how do you how well your investments are doing or if they could or should be doing better? That’s where benchmarks come into the picture.   It’s nice to see that your investments are experiencing gains. At the same time, a benchmark should be used to determine if the gains are appropriate. For many of us, the benchmark is usually the S&P 500 index or the Dow Jones Industrial Average.   The past year, I almost beat the S&P 500. This is based on the data provided by Personal Capital – one of my favorite personal finance tools.

  As you can see, I finished 2017 with 18.78% and the S&P with 19.42% a difference of only.64%. I believe I could have come even closer or would have beaten the index if I didn’t sell off some stocks that were performing really well, thus licking in gains, and then rebalancing/diversifying by buying ETFs.   The stocks I sold were doing well and of course, that’s why it was hard to sell. But I decided to follow the advice of billionaire Warren Buffet – “buy low, sell high”. If it was easy everyone would do it, right?   For financial and psychological reasons it may be hard to sell a stock in the first place. Therefore, a psychological trick I like to use is to not track the stock anymore after I sold it. If it continues to rise, I won’t be mad at myself for selling it. If it falls, I would have made the right decision, even though I’m no longer monitoring it.      

Portfolio Composition Which Generated An Almost 19% Return

  My portfolio is roughly comprised of the following:   401k account – Vanguard index funds including small-cap, mid-cap, and international and less than 10% in bonds. These are crazy cheap to own have which is my favorite characteristic. Spouses 401k account – this holds a TRowe Price target date fund. I have to actually go in and see if other options are offered and if am able to save in fees by selecting my own allocation of funds. I’m not a fan of target date funds since I prefer to do my own allocation of funds and save in fees as a result. Traditional and Roth IRA accounts – both IRA accounts have either REITs and/or high yielding dividend securities as they are tax-sheltered. I felt like an IRA account is appropriate for these types of securities for my situation as I can avoid paying tax on the income earned….for now :-) Brokerage accounts – a collection of stocks, index funds and ETFs in multiple industries with a heavy weighting in technology and consumer cyclical. I have this weighting because I am most likely an end-user of the products offered by these companies. For example, I own Proctor and Gamble (PG). Their brands include Crest, Gillette, and Pampers among many others. These are brands that we have been purchasing for years and thus are satisfied with the quality of the products. Their long history and continuous increase in dividend provide comfort to me as an investor. Kid’s 529 account – this is a target date TRowe Price fund based on the estimated date our son is expected to start college. I really don’t count this as my portfolio as the funds are earmarked for the specific purpose of college education. Cash balance – this is a safety net due to an emergency (e.g. loss of job or accident). Also, it is a buffer for a possible future value investment opportunity when one arises.    

Where Did I Do Well?

  Overall in the core stock market with companies that are continuing to rise such as such as AMZN and NOC, I’ve done alright. From my minuscule stake in these two stocks, I’ve benefitted from a gain of more than 49% from AMZN and about 24% from NOC as compared with the S&P:  

        Extracted From Google Finance  

Where Can I Improve?

  As I mentioned earlier, my spouse’s 401k is a target date fund. I can and plan to go into the account and see what changes can be made to maintain or improve diversification and reduce fees. Over time, fees can eat up returns and as the balance increases so do the number in fees. With so many low-cost options of funds out there that are performing well as compared to their high-fee counterparts; it just doesn’t make sense to continue to pay for under-performance.   I believe I can also improve by diversifying into small-cap index funds. For example, Vanguard’s small-cap ETF (VB) doesn’t have a minimum investment amount since it’s an ETF. The fund did not beat the S&P 500 index; however, at a glance, it’s attractive due to the following:   The fee is super-low at 0.06% and the average annual 10-year return is 9.68%.   It will allow me to further diversify, seek long-term growth via the growth industry and benefit from low-fees in my after-tax account.   It does pay a decent dividend, most recently at .775 per share with the dividend yield averaged out to 2.03%. I try to place the higher income generating investments into an IRA or Roth account anyway for the tax savings.       Have you measured your accounts with a benchmark for the past year? If so, how did you do? How do you usually assess your financial investments to see what can be improved or optimized? Please share your thoughts below.       _________________________________________________________________________

I use  because (1) it’s free, (2) it tracks all of my accounts and overall net worth, (3) my account balances automatically update, (4) it shows how my investments are diversified and allocated in various sectors, and (5) can use built-in tools like “Investment Checkup” to get….wait for it…free personalized advice!   Read the full article

[npawblems-blog]

Budgie-ting: It's Not Just for the Birds

Budgie-ting: It’s Not Just for the Birds

This is the first in a series of posts about managing your finances. We’ll talk about everything from day-to-day tracking to investing to home ownership. I don’t have a plan set in place, so I’m hoping we’ll just go where the wind takes us. If you have questions or comments, please leave them below or on the discussion board; the more interaction, the better!

My first job out of college was at…

[joeyrob1]

Fintech Becomes Far Easier With Intuitive Software

Fintech Becomes Far Easier With Intuitive Software

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A wave of startups are making financial technology easier for the layperson. In the beginning, we had to grapple with often archaic and cryptic financial software on phones that, although relieved us from cumbersome paperwork, required too much technical knowledge to use. Now, we are seeing an influx of financial disrupters, in the forms of small, nimble companies, that are improving the quality of financial services through smartphones. And not just in technical ways these days, but with more intuitive and less burdensome user experiences.

Fintech has increasingly become one of the up and coming segments to look out for in 2015, as even financial magnates are taking to the smartphone space to help manage their financial portfolios. To note, banks are already on the move to integrate technology in financial services, and although they are still working to scale and integrate fintech products as quickly and efficiently as startups, this means fintech is indeed growing in global importance.

PersonalCapital

Personal Capital enables an investor to link any investment account, including retirement and taxable accounts, along with any asset and commodity you can imagine. Once linked, Personal Capital tracks performance, asset allocation, and fees.  Its biggest selling point? Its in-built graphs, which are color-coded unlike in most early Fintech software, which makes it easy to compare returns to an index or understand a portfolio’s asset allocation.

Call Levels

The main problem with most Fintech asset tracking software is that they are only geared towards tracking stocks and markets when you access the software. What sets Call Levels apart is that this software actually notifies you when your commodities or stock price targets are reached so that you can make real time decisions on your investment portfolio. With over 10,000 assets available across five asset types, including Bitcoin, you can rest assured that the market monitoring you are getting is complete. An added bonus is that you are getting a simple and easy-to-use interface on top, which shows you the essentials, which is a refreshing change from other similar software in the market.

Morningstar

Morningstar offers one of the most robust investment tracking tools available today. After you’ve entered your portfolio, it has its highly-popular tools available for users to evaluate their investments, including the basics, such as performance, investment costs, and comparison to various indexes. But where it sets itself apart are more advanced tools that actually allow users details of their portfolios with ease and clarity for a change, using careful labels, star ratings and a extremely user-friendly X-Ray feature.

FutureAdvisor

Ever dreamt of putting together financial portfolios of your entire family and getting the best financial advice out of all the information you provide? FutureAdvisor is the digital investment manager to implement. It is one of the smartest portfolio management software, because it even adjusts for investors’ age and appetite for risk. Previously, you needed to create accounts for each financial portfolio, but now everything comes together with FutureAdvisor.

—————–

Fintech software have always been known as aggressive and extremely helpful resources for the investors of today, but now they are becoming easier and more intuitive to interact with. In an age where investing is profitable and popular like never before, there is no better time to start looking into the increasing number of polished fintech software for asset tracking and portfolio management.

Brought to you by RobustTechHouse. We provide Fintech Development services.

Fintech Becomes Far Easier With Intuitive Software was originally published on RobustTechHouse - Mobile App Development Singapore

[personalcapitalreview3-blog]

https://www.viki.com/users/personalcapitalreview/about

 https://bmxmuseum.com/user/273169

 http://www.mappery.com/user.php?name=personalcapital

 https://public.tableau.com/profile/personalcapital#!/

 https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/9036012

 https://myearthcam.com/personalcapital

 https://personalcapital.doodlekit.com

 https://www.digitalocean.com/community/users/personalcapital

 http://qooh.me/personalcapital

 https://findery.com/personalcapital

[phoenyx-musicdotcom]

Hey hi! Its me...Phoenyx! 🦋 Your friendly neighborhood Personal Capital Enthusiast! 🤩How many of you have seen this commercial on a random Wednesday? Its EVERYWHERE!👀👀🙌🏾 Thank you @cabinetgram for trusting me with the vision. This was such an awesome shoot! All love! Hi Marta! @goshmarta Stay stead fast to your vision. Success will soon follow! I love you surround yourself with💛💛💛 people that love you. You love you! Love and light Phoenyx 💜💡🦋 #action #commercial #actress #personalcapital #earlybirdspecial #moneymanagement #videooftheday #tvcouple #black #blackandwhitephotography #success #dreams #sticktotheplan #teleprompter #coldread #professional #driven #motivated #unfuckwithable #goddess #african #healer #financialadvisor #money #saving #retirement #planforthefuture #forthepeolle (at Oakland, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/B8wKJX8pPWT/?igshid=niffa6qzu34v

[lab-angel]

A lot of fanciness for a simple girl

It's my birthday month, I feel special. Also I was inspired by Marie Kondo to organize my digital files. What tips do you have for tidying up?

I stuck around this month. I played badminton with a couple friends the first weekend, hung out with alumni from my graduate college the next weekend, spent MLK Day weekend with my boyfriend in SF, and was very much a homebody last weekend. My boyfriend has never been to a Women’s March and I considered taking him the Saturday before MLK Day, but did laundry and yoga instead. He made some digital…

[hatchinganegg]

I started tracking my networth (monthly review) a couple of years ago. I would say the most progress on wealth building occurred during this time as it transitioned from my peripheral vision to a clear focus. . I switched from a spreadsheet to using #personalcapital app to track my NW. In part 1 of the “Beyond 30 Day Series” we review this important baseline step. Check out the link in my profile! Thank you! . . #hatchinganegg #fit2finance #beyond30days #financialindependence #abundancemindset #prosperity #earlyretirement #moneymatters #networth #getyourgrowon https://www.instagram.com/p/BnFTJkVlm1N/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1377kznbaosg2

[chauzer]

via Twitter https://twitter.com/chauzer

[seanpomory]

Dave Ramsey, one of my favorite money mentors and a world renowned teacher, recommends Mint.com to get out of debt - among other things. Although he doesn't talk about Millennials in particular he does say that simple tools makes it simpler to pay attention to finances, meaning it'll be easier to track spending and saving.

[simplemoneyman-blog]

Almost Beat The S&P 500 Index

  If you continued to ride the market and in the process acquired some more investments in stocks or ETFs, chances are you’ve done well in 2017. But how do you how well your investments are doing or if they could or should be doing better? That’s where benchmarks come into the picture.   It’s nice to see that your investments are experiencing gains. At the same time, a benchmark should be used to determine if the gains are appropriate. For many of us, the benchmark is usually the S&P 500 index or the Dow Jones Industrial Average.   The past year, I almost beat the S&P 500. This is based on the data provided by Personal Capital – one of my favorite personal finance tools.

  As you can see, I finished 2017 with 18.78% and the S&P with 19.42% a difference of only.64%. I believe I could have come even closer or would have beaten the index if I didn’t sell off some stocks that were performing really well, thus licking in gains, and then rebalancing/diversifying by buying ETFs.   The stocks I sold were doing well and of course, that’s why it was hard to sell. But I decided to follow the advice of billionaire Warren Buffet – “buy low, sell high”. If it was easy everyone would do it, right?   For financial and psychological reasons it may be hard to sell a stock in the first place. Therefore, a psychological trick I like to use is to not track the stock anymore after I sold it. If it continues to rise, I won’t be mad at myself for selling it. If it falls, I would have made the right decision, even though I’m no longer monitoring it.      

Portfolio Composition Which Generated An Almost 19% Return

  My portfolio is roughly comprised of the following:   401k account – Vanguard index funds including small-cap, mid-cap, and international and less than 10% in bonds. These are crazy cheap to own have which is my favorite characteristic. Spouses 401k account – this holds a TRowe Price target date fund. I have to actually go in and see if other options are offered and if am able to save in fees by selecting my own allocation of funds. I’m not a fan of target date funds since I prefer to do my own allocation of funds and save in fees as a result. Traditional and Roth IRA accounts – both IRA accounts have either REITs and/or high yielding dividend securities as they are tax-sheltered. I felt like an IRA account is appropriate for these types of securities for my situation as I can avoid paying tax on the income earned….for now :-) Brokerage accounts – a collection of stocks, index funds and ETFs in multiple industries with a heavy weighting in technology and consumer cyclical. I have this weighting because I am most likely an end-user of the products offered by these companies. For example, I own Proctor and Gamble (PG). Their brands include Crest, Gillette, and Pampers among many others. These are brands that we have been purchasing for years and thus are satisfied with the quality of the products. Their long history and continuous increase in dividend provide comfort to me as an investor. Kid’s 529 account – this is a target date TRowe Price fund based on the estimated date our son is expected to start college. I really don’t count this as my portfolio as the funds are earmarked for the specific purpose of college education. Cash balance – this is a safety net due to an emergency (e.g. loss of job or accident). Also, it is a buffer for a possible future value investment opportunity when one arises.    

Where Did I Do Well?

  Overall in the core stock market with companies that are continuing to rise such as such as AMZN and NOC, I’ve done alright. From my minuscule stake in these two stocks, I’ve benefitted from a gain of more than 49% from AMZN and about 24% from NOC as compared with the S&P:  

        Extracted From Google Finance  

Where Can I Improve?

  As I mentioned earlier, my spouse’s 401k is a target date fund. I can and plan to go into the account and see what changes can be made to maintain or improve diversification and reduce fees. Over time, fees can eat up returns and as the balance increases so do the number in fees. With so many low-cost options of funds out there that are performing well as compared to their high-fee counterparts; it just doesn’t make sense to continue to pay for under-performance.   I believe I can also improve by diversifying into small-cap index funds. For example, Vanguard’s small-cap ETF (VB) doesn’t have a minimum investment amount since it’s an ETF. The fund did not beat the S&P 500 index; however, at a glance, it’s attractive due to the following:   The fee is super-low at 0.06% and the average annual 10-year return is 9.68%.   It will allow me to further diversify, seek long-term growth via the growth industry and benefit from low-fees in my after-tax account.   It does pay a decent dividend, most recently at .775 per share with the dividend yield averaged out to 2.03%. I try to place the higher income generating investments into an IRA or Roth account anyway for the tax savings.       Have you measured your accounts with a benchmark for the past year? If so, how did you do? How do you usually assess your financial investments to see what can be improved or optimized? Please share your thoughts below.       _________________________________________________________________________

I use  because (1) it’s free, (2) it tracks all of my accounts and overall net worth, (3) my account balances automatically update, (4) it shows how my investments are diversified and allocated in various sectors, and (5) can use built-in tools like “Investment Checkup” to get….wait for it…free personalized advice!   Read the full article

[simplemoneyman-blog]

Almost Beat The S&P 500 Index

  If you continued to ride the market and in the process acquired some more investments in stocks or ETFs, chances are you’ve done well in 2017. But how do you how well your investments are doing or if they could or should be doing better? That’s where benchmarks come into the picture.   It’s nice to see that your investments are experiencing gains. At the same time, a benchmark should be used to determine if the gains are appropriate. For many of us, the benchmark is usually the S&P 500 index or the Dow Jones Industrial Average.   The past year, I almost beat the S&P 500. This is based on the data provided by Personal Capital – one of my favorite personal finance tools.

  As you can see, I finished 2017 with 18.78% and the S&P with 19.42% a difference of only.64%. I believe I could have come even closer or would have beaten the index if I didn’t sell off some stocks that were performing really well, thus licking in gains, and then rebalancing/diversifying by buying ETFs.   The stocks I sold were doing well and of course, that’s why it was hard to sell. But I decided to follow the advice of billionaire Warren Buffet – “buy low, sell high”. If it was easy everyone would do it, right?   For financial and psychological reasons it may be hard to sell a stock in the first place. Therefore, a psychological trick I like to use is to not track the stock anymore after I sold it. If it continues to rise, I won’t be mad at myself for selling it. If it falls, I would have made the right decision, even though I’m no longer monitoring it.      

Portfolio Composition Which Generated An Almost 19% Return

  My portfolio is roughly comprised of the following:   401k account – Vanguard index funds including small-cap, mid-cap, and international and less than 10% in bonds. These are crazy cheap to own have which is my favorite characteristic. Spouses 401k account – this holds a TRowe Price target date fund. I have to actually go in and see if other options are offered and if am able to save in fees by selecting my own allocation of funds. I’m not a fan of target date funds since I prefer to do my own allocation of funds and save in fees as a result. Traditional and Roth IRA accounts – both IRA accounts have either REITs and/or high yielding dividend securities as they are tax-sheltered. I felt like an IRA account is appropriate for these types of securities for my situation as I can avoid paying tax on the income earned….for now :-) Brokerage accounts – a collection of stocks, index funds and ETFs in multiple industries with a heavy weighting in technology and consumer cyclical. I have this weighting because I am most likely an end-user of the products offered by these companies. For example, I own Proctor and Gamble (PG). Their brands include Crest, Gillette, and Pampers among many others. These are brands that we have been purchasing for years and thus are satisfied with the quality of the products. Their long history and continuous increase in dividend provide comfort to me as an investor. Kid’s 529 account – this is a target date TRowe Price fund based on the estimated date our son is expected to start college. I really don’t count this as my portfolio as the funds are earmarked for the specific purpose of college education. Cash balance – this is a safety net due to an emergency (e.g. loss of job or accident). Also, it is a buffer for a possible future value investment opportunity when one arises.    

Where Did I Do Well?

  Overall in the core stock market with companies that are continuing to rise such as such as AMZN and NOC, I’ve done alright. From my minuscule stake in these two stocks, I’ve benefitted from a gain of more than 49% from AMZN and about 24% from NOC as compared with the S&P:  

        Extracted From Google Finance  

Where Can I Improve?

  As I mentioned earlier, my spouse’s 401k is a target date fund. I can and plan to go into the account and see what changes can be made to maintain or improve diversification and reduce fees. Over time, fees can eat up returns and as the balance increases so do the number in fees. With so many low-cost options of funds out there that are performing well as compared to their high-fee counterparts; it just doesn’t make sense to continue to pay for under-performance.   I believe I can also improve by diversifying into small-cap index funds. For example, Vanguard’s small-cap ETF (VB) doesn’t have a minimum investment amount since it’s an ETF. The fund did not beat the S&P 500 index; however, at a glance, it’s attractive due to the following:   The fee is super-low at 0.06% and the average annual 10-year return is 9.68%.   It will allow me to further diversify, seek long-term growth via the growth industry and benefit from low-fees in my after-tax account.   It does pay a decent dividend, most recently at .775 per share with the dividend yield averaged out to 2.03%. I try to place the higher income generating investments into an IRA or Roth account anyway for the tax savings.       Have you measured your accounts with a benchmark for the past year? If so, how did you do? How do you usually assess your financial investments to see what can be improved or optimized? Please share your thoughts below.       _________________________________________________________________________

I use  because (1) it’s free, (2) it tracks all of my accounts and overall net worth, (3) my account balances automatically update, (4) it shows how my investments are diversified and allocated in various sectors, and (5) can use built-in tools like “Investment Checkup” to get….wait for it…free personalized advice!   Read the full article

[phoenyx-musicdotcom]

Personal Capital! This commercial is National! It is such a joy when your brother reaches out to you from Atlanta to tell you he was so excited to see your face on his tv screen! Then my aunt in Ohio posted on FB about the same commercial. I am truly grateful for the opportunities awarded me by the love of my life! My love, my God, my Universe! Thank you. It has been a long road, and I am here! I am NOT BUILT TO BREAK! AséOooooooo Phoenyx #phoenyx #THEEMPRESS #thePhoenyx #commercial #actress #internationalrecordingartist #videoftheday #personalcapital #dasstudio #singer #songwriter #grateful #woman #gifted #model #artist #magic #mastermanifestor #music #fashion #family #love #consciousness #lightworker #goddess #beauty #family #happy #finance #retirement (at San Francisco, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/B514sgQp-P1/?igshid=1eae9s453wieg

[simplemoneyman-blog]

Simple Personal Capital Review

  Since college, which was back in the early 2000s, I’ve been using excel spreadsheets to manage my finances. After various versions, I finally settled on what I have now and it’s available for free to everyone here. It focuses on tracking income and expenses and hopefully what’s left over.   My spreadsheet helps me to track income and expenses and ensure that I follow my budget. If not, it helps me identify where my spending may be out of control and then I can develop a plan to help bring it back into control.   Apart from this tracking mechanism, for the past couple of years, I’ve been using a personal finance tool called Personal Capital. Instantaneously, I learned it’s a lot more advanced than my excel spreadsheet and includes some nice visuals as well.   I first read about Personal Capital from one of my favorite bloggers; Financial Samurai. He had some great things to say about the tool and so I decided to give it a shot. It was love at first usage. :-)    

Things I Love About Personal Capital

  Personal Capital is a tool to help people track and manage their finances from a macro and micro level. In particular, it helps manage investments which are my number one personal finance priority. Personal Capital offers the following to users:   It can link various account types such as checking and savings, retirement, brokerages, college savings plans, IRAs, credit cards, mortgage companies, and more from many institutions.   It’s free to use and available on a computer, smartphone, and tablet.   Identifies all of your investment holdings.   Identifies which sectors you’re invested in (e.g., Basic Materials, Communication, Consumer Defense, Consumer Cyclical, Energy, Financial Services, etc.).   Identifies your allocation (e.g., International Stocks, US Stocks, Alternatives, Bonds, Cash, etc.).   Identifies how much in dividend income you are earning and from which investments.   Captures how much cash you have available to invest across all of your accounts.   Includes easy to use tools under the ‘Planning’ Menu like the Retirement Planner (to project your monthly spending ability), Investment Checkup (to analyze the effectiveness of your portfolio and efficiency of your asset allocation based on your risk profile) and Retirement Fee Analyzer (compiles the fees you are paying to your funds so that you may make changes). I’ve personally made changes to my investment and retirement accounts based on the valuable data provided by these three tools.   Automatically updates your balances each time you log on (e.g., bank accounts, money market accounts, 401k, IRA and other types of retirement accounts, brokerage accounts, college savings accounts, loan balances, and manual assets and liabilities you enter.   Tracks the performance of your entire portfolio against other indexes. See below for my Portfolio comparison VS the S&P 500 for the full 2016:

      Personal Capital’s Team Will Even Talk To You For Free

  You may even be able to set-up a phone conversation with them to see if there are any questions you may have about your portfolio or Personal Capital’s software. This involves a detail 45 minute to an hour-long conversation. As part of this conversation, they’ll ask things like:   when you’d like to retire, what type of retirement you envision, lots of travel time with friends and family a combination of both how important is a college-savings plan for your kids if you have any, the level of life insurance that’s appropriate for you,   I’d like to make you aware that depending on the size of your account, they may approach you for their investment advisory service. At the time I was informed that the fee would be .89% of your account value per year which includes a team of personal financial advisors. I politely declined for now as I prefer and enjoy managing my own finances.    

Personal Capital Offers Your Basic Analysis As Well

  You can still do the basic income and expense reconciliation things by going to Banking in the top menu and clicking on Cash Flow. You will see a transactional history of all Income or Expense from any accounts you wish to see by using the “All Accounts” tab:  

    It Can Become Addictive

  Admittedly I log on at least a couple times a week using my smartphone. It’s really easy to just check up on your net worth, see if your dividends are being added to your investment balance and transactional history.   It’s so easy to link you accounts and the balances automatically update every time you log on. And as a result, I was finding myself logging on a few times a week and for apparently no reason. It was like hey let me just make sure that my net worth is around the same as it was a couple of days ago. Why wouldn’t it be, unless some major financial event took place?   I wouldn’t count this as a drawback for the software, but just a word of caution for the user.   If you’re investing for the long-term, it takes time to build and continually adjust your portfolio and allow your investments to grow. Personal Capital’s software is there to help you monitor your long-term growth and make these adjustments along the way.   I don’t work for Personal Capital, but I do highly recommend their free tool. If I can give you only reason, it’s that you don’t have to log onto multiple financial accounts just to see how you’ve earned, saved, invested, or spent your money.     Your Thoughts: Do you use Personal Capital? What do you like and don’t like about it? Do you use a different Personal Finance tool? If so, how does it compare to Personal Capital?       ______________________________________________________________________

I use  because (1) it’s free, (2) it tracks all of my accounts and overall net worth, (3) my account balances automatically update, (4) it shows how my investments are diversified and allocated in various sectors, and (5) can use built-in tools like “Investment Checkup” to get….wait for it…free personalized advice!   Read the full article

[simplemoneyman-blog]

Simple Personal Capital Review

  Since college, which was back in the early 2000s, I’ve been using excel spreadsheets to manage my finances. After various versions, I finally settled on what I have now and it’s available for free to everyone here. It focuses on tracking income and expenses and hopefully what’s left over.   My spreadsheet helps me to track income and expenses and ensure that I follow my budget. If not, it helps me identify where my spending may be out of control and then I can develop a plan to help bring it back into control.   Apart from this tracking mechanism, for the past couple of years, I’ve been using a personal finance tool called Personal Capital. Instantaneously, I learned it’s a lot more advanced than my excel spreadsheet and includes some nice visuals as well.   I first read about Personal Capital from one of my favorite bloggers; Financial Samurai. He had some great things to say about the tool and so I decided to give it a shot. It was love at first usage. :-)    

Things I Love About Personal Capital

  Personal Capital is a tool to help people track and manage their finances from a macro and micro level. In particular, it helps manage investments which are my number one personal finance priority. Personal Capital offers the following to users:   It can link various account types such as checking and savings, retirement, brokerages, college savings plans, IRAs, credit cards, mortgage companies, and more from many institutions.   It’s free to use and available on a computer, smartphone, and tablet.   Identifies all of your investment holdings.   Identifies which sectors you’re invested in (e.g., Basic Materials, Communication, Consumer Defense, Consumer Cyclical, Energy, Financial Services, etc.).   Identifies your allocation (e.g., International Stocks, US Stocks, Alternatives, Bonds, Cash, etc.).   Identifies how much in dividend income you are earning and from which investments.   Captures how much cash you have available to invest across all of your accounts.   Includes easy to use tools under the ‘Planning’ Menu like the Retirement Planner (to project your monthly spending ability), Investment Checkup (to analyze the effectiveness of your portfolio and efficiency of your asset allocation based on your risk profile) and Retirement Fee Analyzer (compiles the fees you are paying to your funds so that you may make changes). I’ve personally made changes to my investment and retirement accounts based on the valuable data provided by these three tools.   Automatically updates your balances each time you log on (e.g., bank accounts, money market accounts, 401k, IRA and other types of retirement accounts, brokerage accounts, college savings accounts, loan balances, and manual assets and liabilities you enter.   Tracks the performance of your entire portfolio against other indexes. See below for my Portfolio comparison VS the S&P 500 for the full 2016:

      Personal Capital’s Team Will Even Talk To You For Free

  You may even be able to set-up a phone conversation with them to see if there are any questions you may have about your portfolio or Personal Capital’s software. This involves a detail 45 minute to an hour-long conversation. As part of this conversation, they’ll ask things like:   when you’d like to retire, what type of retirement you envision, lots of travel time with friends and family a combination of both how important is a college-savings plan for your kids if you have any, the level of life insurance that’s appropriate for you,   I’d like to make you aware that depending on the size of your account, they may approach you for their investment advisory service. At the time I was informed that the fee would be .89% of your account value per year which includes a team of personal financial advisors. I politely declined for now as I prefer and enjoy managing my own finances.    

Personal Capital Offers Your Basic Analysis As Well

  You can still do the basic income and expense reconciliation things by going to Banking in the top menu and clicking on Cash Flow. You will see a transactional history of all Income or Expense from any accounts you wish to see by using the “All Accounts” tab:  

    It Can Become Addictive

  Admittedly I log on at least a couple times a week using my smartphone. It’s really easy to just check up on your net worth, see if your dividends are being added to your investment balance and transactional history.   It’s so easy to link you accounts and the balances automatically update every time you log on. And as a result, I was finding myself logging on a few times a week and for apparently no reason. It was like hey let me just make sure that my net worth is around the same as it was a couple of days ago. Why wouldn’t it be, unless some major financial event took place?   I wouldn’t count this as a drawback for the software, but just a word of caution for the user.   If you’re investing for the long-term, it takes time to build and continually adjust your portfolio and allow your investments to grow. Personal Capital’s software is there to help you monitor your long-term growth and make these adjustments along the way.   I don’t work for Personal Capital, but I do highly recommend their free tool. If I can give you only reason, it’s that you don’t have to log onto multiple financial accounts just to see how you’ve earned, saved, invested, or spent your money.     Your Thoughts: Do you use Personal Capital? What do you like and don’t like about it? Do you use a different Personal Finance tool? If so, how does it compare to Personal Capital?       ______________________________________________________________________

I use  because (1) it’s free, (2) it tracks all of my accounts and overall net worth, (3) my account balances automatically update, (4) it shows how my investments are diversified and allocated in various sectors, and (5) can use built-in tools like “Investment Checkup” to get….wait for it…free personalized advice!   Read the full article

[simplemoneyman-blog]

Simple Personal Capital Review

  Since college, which was back in the early 2000s, I’ve been using excel spreadsheets to manage my finances. After various versions, I finally settled on what I have now and it’s available for free to everyone here. It focuses on tracking income and expenses and hopefully what’s left over.   My spreadsheet helps me to track income and expenses and ensure that I follow my budget. If not, it helps me identify where my spending may be out of control and then I can develop a plan to help bring it back into control.   Apart from this tracking mechanism, for the past couple of years, I’ve been using a personal finance tool called Personal Capital. Instantaneously, I learned it’s a lot more advanced than my excel spreadsheet and includes some nice visuals as well.   I first read about Personal Capital from one of my favorite bloggers; Financial Samurai. He had some great things to say about the tool and so I decided to give it a shot. It was love at first usage. :-)    

Things I Love About Personal Capital

  Personal Capital is a tool to help people track and manage their finances from a macro and micro level. In particular, it helps manage investments which are my number one personal finance priority. Personal Capital offers the following to users:   It can link various account types such as checking and savings, retirement, brokerages, college savings plans, IRAs, credit cards, mortgage companies, and more from many institutions.   It’s free to use and available on a computer, smartphone, and tablet.   Identifies all of your investment holdings.   Identifies which sectors you’re invested in (e.g., Basic Materials, Communication, Consumer Defense, Consumer Cyclical, Energy, Financial Services, etc.).   Identifies your allocation (e.g., International Stocks, US Stocks, Alternatives, Bonds, Cash, etc.).   Identifies how much in dividend income you are earning and from which investments.   Captures how much cash you have available to invest across all of your accounts.   Includes easy to use tools under the ‘Planning’ Menu like the Retirement Planner (to project your monthly spending ability), Investment Checkup (to analyze the effectiveness of your portfolio and efficiency of your asset allocation based on your risk profile) and Retirement Fee Analyzer (compiles the fees you are paying to your funds so that you may make changes). I’ve personally made changes to my investment and retirement accounts based on the valuable data provided by these three tools.   Automatically updates your balances each time you log on (e.g., bank accounts, money market accounts, 401k, IRA and other types of retirement accounts, brokerage accounts, college savings accounts, loan balances, and manual assets and liabilities you enter.   Tracks the performance of your entire portfolio against other indexes. See below for my Portfolio comparison VS the S&P 500 for the full 2016:

      Personal Capital’s Team Will Even Talk To You For Free

  You may even be able to set-up a phone conversation with them to see if there are any questions you may have about your portfolio or Personal Capital’s software. This involves a detail 45 minute to an hour-long conversation. As part of this conversation, they’ll ask things like:   when you’d like to retire, what type of retirement you envision, lots of travel time with friends and family a combination of both how important is a college-savings plan for your kids if you have any, the level of life insurance that’s appropriate for you,   I’d like to make you aware that depending on the size of your account, they may approach you for their investment advisory service. At the time I was informed that the fee would be .89% of your account value per year which includes a team of personal financial advisors. I politely declined for now as I prefer and enjoy managing my own finances.    

Personal Capital Offers Your Basic Analysis As Well

  You can still do the basic income and expense reconciliation things by going to Banking in the top menu and clicking on Cash Flow. You will see a transactional history of all Income or Expense from any accounts you wish to see by using the “All Accounts” tab:  

    It Can Become Addictive

  Admittedly I log on at least a couple times a week using my smartphone. It’s really easy to just check up on your net worth, see if your dividends are being added to your investment balance and transactional history.   It’s so easy to link you accounts and the balances automatically update every time you log on. And as a result, I was finding myself logging on a few times a week and for apparently no reason. It was like hey let me just make sure that my net worth is around the same as it was a couple of days ago. Why wouldn’t it be, unless some major financial event took place?   I wouldn’t count this as a drawback for the software, but just a word of caution for the user.   If you’re investing for the long-term, it takes time to build and continually adjust your portfolio and allow your investments to grow. Personal Capital’s software is there to help you monitor your long-term growth and make these adjustments along the way.   I don’t work for Personal Capital, but I do highly recommend their free tool. If I can give you only reason, it’s that you don’t have to log onto multiple financial accounts just to see how you’ve earned, saved, invested, or spent your money.     Your Thoughts: Do you use Personal Capital? What do you like and don’t like about it? Do you use a different Personal Finance tool? If so, how does it compare to Personal Capital?       ______________________________________________________________________

I use  because (1) it’s free, (2) it tracks all of my accounts and overall net worth, (3) my account balances automatically update, (4) it shows how my investments are diversified and allocated in various sectors, and (5) can use built-in tools like “Investment Checkup” to get….wait for it…free personalized advice!   Read the full article