投资理财软件 Personal Capital Review

Jun 1

Jun 1 投资理财软件 Personal Capital Review

This article is for (适用人群)：

(1) People who who wants to understand their financial situation better but don’t want to go to a financial advisor or pay anything for it.

(2) People who want to track their net worth

(3) People who want to understand their monthly/yearly income and expenses - difference sources of income & where they spend the money

(4) People who want to play around with different scenario about saving rates and retirement plan

(5) People who want to make a financial plan to buy a house

(6) People who want to make a financial plan to pay off their student debt or save college fund for their kids

Personal Capital

The following functions review will be focusing on the free version (Free Financial Dashboard).

1. Financial Aggregator

Consolidate all your accounts including savings, checking, investments, loans, and credit cards into one single dashboard. You can see

Your net worth (you can even put your primary house into the system with a market value, but I only focus on the categories mentioned above.)
Total amount you owe to the banks for personal loan or credit cards. This way, you know your outstanding debt and it is a good reminder to focus on paying them off. Nowadays when we swipe our credit card too often that we lose track of how much we spend all the time.
Time series to see the changes

Now i don’t have to login all the different systems (and remember all those user names and passwords) to keep track of my finance.

2. Budgeting

You can track your cash flow and expense patterns. You can see what categories your major spendings are. The monthly summary could also give you an overview of where your money went. If you made a budget plan, set goals, this is a great tool to help you develop strategies to reach those goals and monitor your progress.

Here is a quick overview of their cash flow and budgeting tools

3. 401k Analyzer and Retirement Planning

The tool can help you uncover various fees your 401k plan cost you. (yes, each fund may charge your a fee)
You can also play with different scenarios on your retirement plan - when you want to retire, how much money you want to save and how much you want to spend after you don’t work - then you will have a target plan to work towards on how much money to save and invest every month from now on. (they do all the math for you and now you just need to work on getting that monthly target income for saving and investment)
Linked with your 401k and IRA accounts, you will see their performance and return here as well.