Empower (formerly Personal Capital)

Empower's defining characteristic is its genuinely free comprehensive financial dashboard. Most "free" financial apps (Mint before shutdown, Personal Capital's legacy) eventually convert to paid subscriptions or upsell aggressively. Empower's free plan is permanent and feature-complete: unlimited account aggregation, net worth tracking, spending categorization, bill tracking, and budgeting tools. You can use Empower forever without spending anything. This contrasts with YNAB ($14.99/month) and EveryDollar ($12.99+/month). The free tier is ideal for those wanting one consolidated financial view without subscription costs. You can connect your checking account, savings account, credit cards, investment accounts, and loans—all synchronized daily. Empower pulls it together into one dashboard showing your total net worth, spending by category, upcoming bills, and investment performance. For comprehensive financial organization, this free offering is difficult to beat.

Empower excels at tracking net worth across all asset classes. You see your total assets (checking, savings, investments, real estate if estimated), total liabilities (credit cards, student loans, mortgage), and calculated net worth. The dashboard updates daily as account values change. You can see trends—is your net worth increasing (positive savings and investment returns) or decreasing? This big-picture view is psychologically motivating for those building wealth. Empower also aggregates all investments into a unified portfolio view. You can see your total allocation across stocks, bonds, real estate, and crypto, even if holdings are spread across 10+ accounts and brokers. This unified view reveals over-concentration (too much in one stock or company), enables rebalancing decisions, and helps you understand true diversification. For those with complex finances (multiple 401ks, taxable investments, crypto, real estate), Empower's aggregation is invaluable. Instead of juggling a dozen apps and accounts, you see everything in one place.

Empower's budgeting tools are less behavioral than YNAB but more comprehensive than basic tracking. You set category budgets (Housing, Groceries, Dining, Entertainment), and Empower automatically categorizes transactions and shows spending against budget. If you're $50 over on groceries or $200 under on dining, you see it. Unlike YNAB's "give every dollar a job" approach, Empower is informational: it tells you where money went and how you compared to budgets, but doesn't force pre-allocation decisions. This is effective for awareness but less likely to change behavior. Empower's strength is showing aggregate spending across categories and time. You can see that you spent $450 on dining this month vs. $350 last month, or that you spent 20% of income on housing vs. 25% the year before. These trend insights enable informed decisions about where to cut or adjust. For those already disciplined but wanting comprehensive tracking, Empower's approach is sufficient.

Empower includes goal-setting for retirement, college savings, major purchases, and net worth targets. You set a goal ("Retire at 65 with $2 million"), and Empower's calculators estimate required savings rates and investment returns. If you need $2 million but current trajectory gets you to $1.5 million, the calculator shows the shortfall and suggests increasing contributions or adjusting retirement age. This planning view is valuable for understanding financial feasibility. Empower also provides calculators for major life decisions: mortgage affordability, refinancing analysis, student loan payoff strategies, and insurance needs. These calculators educate and inform rather than mandate specific behavior. For someone wanting to understand their financial situation comprehensively, Empower's planning tools provide powerful insights.

For those with $100,000+ in investable assets, Empower's premium wealth management service (Empower Premium Plus) provides professional advisory. Your portfolio is assigned to a Certified Financial Planner who creates a customized investment strategy, rebalances quarterly, and provides ongoing financial guidance. The cost is a percentage-of-assets (AUM) fee: 0.65% on the first $1 million, 0.50% on the next $2 million, etc. So a $500,000 portfolio costs approximately $3,250 annually. This is competitive with robo-advisors (0.25-0.50%) and significantly cheaper than traditional advisors (1-2%). The premium service includes tax-loss harvesting, estate planning guidance, charitable giving strategies, and insurance analysis. For investors seeking professional management without the cost of traditional advisors, Empower's premium tier is attractive. The free tier is sufficient for basic users; the premium tier caters to those with substantial assets.