Personal Capital allows for some high-level financial plays, such as advanced tax strategies and completely hands-free investing, but that comes at a cost.
Key Takeaways
- Private Equity Access: This is the kind of league where you’re able to get access to privacy equity investments that are closed-off to the general public.
- Net Worth Tracking: Plan how to improve your net worth, make a detail-oriented investment plan, and see returns YoY.
- Best Robo-Advisor: There are a lot of robo-advisors out there, but you can bet that one with a single user barrier-to-entry of $100K is pretty stupendous.
Pros & Cons
High-roller? Personal Capital caters to anyone with $100k to open an account, and offers some of the best features in any robo-advisor firm in the US. But is it worth it?
Without spoiling the entire Personal Capital review, yes, they are worth it. This is a different approach to automated investing with real people who can help you beat the market more than an algorithm can.
Personal Capital comes with a ton of value, and we can’t wait to explain all the ups (and the few downs) that come from being a member of theirs.
About Personal Capital
Founded in 2009, Personal Capital is headed by their president Jay Shah, with over 31,400 investment clients and $22.4B in asset management under their control.
For some context, that’s nearly $750k per person on average. Worldwide, they hold over $1T+ in assets for their clientele. Personal Capital is designed for wealthy individuals, and are an Empower branded company.
Services
- Wealth Management: Not sure where to invest or how to start? Personal Capital knows, and they’ll help guide you along every single step. If you start your account with $250k, you get six months of wealth management for absolutely free.
- 401(k) Planning and Management: Plan out your 401(k), get those matched dollars, and maximize your tax-deferred retirement savings.
- Financial Tools: Net worth trackers, savings planners, retirement planners, and more tools are at your disposal.
- Personal Strategy: This registered trademark system is dedicated to personalizing your portfolio and helping you achieve greater wealth.
Pricing
Everything comes down to the management fee system. If you’re in the realm of $100k, the account minimum, then you can expect to pay a maximum of 0.89% in management fees.
However, this changes as your account grows, so between $100k and $10 million, you will lower down to 0.49% as an absolute minimum.
Otherwise, pricing is fairly straightforward. Wealth management depends on your account and assets, which is impossible to accurately determine at this stage, so if Personal Capital sounds like a good choice to use, set up an account and see what they have to offer you in terms of wealth management.
Who is Personal Capital Best for?
Personal Capital is specifically designed for those with investment requirements that punch up above broad index funds and basic cryptocurrency.
Old money in this country is invested in other means, deep rooted into businesses, financial products, and financial institutions such as Personal Capital, and that’s where wealth maintenance comes from.
If you have an abundance to invest and you want people to handle it for you properly, Personal Capital is specifically designed for that.
Yes, they have a robo-advisor program which is why we ranked them in our 9 best robo-advisors of 2022, but their real benefit comes from.
Compare to Other Advisors
Personal Capital FAQ's
Yes, Personal Capital is a trustworthy business that has no accounts of foul play or any major issues. In fact, despite only being around since 2009, they’ve become one of the most-trusted financial institutions for individuals with more than $100k, specifically because they target the investment-related struggles that people run into.
In the grand scheme, $100k isn’t a lot, but it’s enough to make some serious changes if you invest it properly—they’re trusted, and those are the people they’re looking for.
It’s good at what it does, but it’s not your run-of-the-mill budgeting app for anyone and everyone to use. It’s designed to help wealthy individuals map out their financial plan.
Ideally, anyone who gains use from the Personal Capital budgeting portion of their app is already wealthy and in control of their money, but they simply require a little bit more to help take their investments over the line to the next level.
Personal Capital has a high ceiling, meaning that if you want to use their service, you have to deposit at least $100K. They use their app like a lead generation magnet, bringing individuals to their service where a portion of them become clients.
That $100K is meant to sit in your account and be used by Personal Capital (it’s still your money) for their investments and to help promise loans and other financial products.
It becomes leverage in their business while you make money from robo-advisory services. Additionally, they make money from management fees as well as fees no greater than 0.89% annually for assets under management.
The percentage slightly drops as you scale up your total account worth, down to 0.59% at $10M+.
Very clearly within the confines of their privacy policy, Personal Capital states “We do not sell or allow your information to be used for any purpose other than to market our own products and services,” and continue to say that they never share sensitive financial information with their marketing partners.
Similarly to other companies, they are sharing some information about you to third-party companies that they work with and trust, but they’re not allowing your critical info to be part of that, which is an A+ from us for privacy protection.
Personal Capital
Take control of your finances with Personal Capital's personal finance tools. Get access to wealth management services and free financial management tools.
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Review Summary:
Personal Capital is designed to make sure you can see all your different financial products in one place.
