Learning about Personal Capital was another result of reading the amazing Mr. Money Mustache blog. Personal Capital, which I’d never heard of, is basically Mint.com but for investments. It also includes features similar to Mint.com that allow you to review your spending and income, but it is actually more difficult to add accounts to Personal Capital than to Mint.com and for that reason I haven’t added all of mine. In fact originally I only tried Personal Capital for a grand total of five minutes before closing my account because it was so unnecessarily difficult to add my accounts.
However, after reading another blogger that I respect praise Personal Capital I tried again and discovered the answer to my account adding problems on Personal Capital’s blog. I powered through and am now almost an avid Personal Capital user. My favorite part of Personal Capital is its Fee Analyzer, which compiles all your investment fees and shows you how much money it will eat during your lifetime and how many years of working these fees will add. It’s incredibly helpful to see that information visually.
Personal Capital also breaks down income in an interesting way that I haven’t seen before. Instead of lumping it all together it classifies your income streams with their origin, including monthly investment income. This website helped me easily track my end of year dividends for my first year of investing. Overall Personal Capital is very colorful and clear.
My only complaint is that all of its investment trackers shows daily market fluctuations and displays the “1-day change” of your various investments, which is basically useless for a long-term investor and creates unnecessary stress that I try to avoid by showing that my “1-day change” was a loss of a few hundred or thousand dollars. For that reason I’ve been using Personal Capital sparingly except for its Fee Analyzer and Investment Recommendations based on my current asset allocation.