Understanding the Empower Personal Dashboard
Empower offers a free tool called the Personal Dashboard, which is designed to help you manage your budget, monitor your finances, and prepare for the future—all in one place. While Empower is known for its robo-advisor services catering to wealthier clients, it introduced this dashboard after acquiring Personal Capital in 2020.
The best part? You don’t need to be an investment client to benefit from the Personal Dashboard. It’s available at no cost, though you might see a few reminders about their other financial services while using it.
Who Should Use the Empower Personal Dashboard?
Empower’s Personal Dashboard is a great fit for anyone looking for a robust, no-cost financial tool. This app could be ideal for you if you:
- Need a clear, all-in-one view of your overall finances
- Are interested in tracking your net worth over time
- Want to minimize fees related to retirement and investments
- Prefer a free option over paid budgeting apps
- Would like to explore various financial scenarios to plan for retirement
- Have diverse assets to manage, such as cryptocurrencies, real estate, or collectibles
- Enjoy analyzing your cash flow, monthly expenses, and bills to understand your spending habits better
How to Get Started with the Empower Personal Dashboard
To start using the Empower Personal Dashboard, simply create an account with your email and connect your bank and investment accounts. This will bring all your financial information together in one place. After that, you can access a variety of tools to help you manage and optimize your finances.
Budget Planner
Empower places a strong emphasis on its budgeting features. The Budget Planner automatically tracks all your transactions and sorts them into different categories. Plus, you can create up to 30 custom categories tailored to your needs. This helps you monitor your spending and set savings goals to keep your finances in check. With a clear breakdown of your biggest spending areas, it’s easier to identify where you might be overspending.
Savings Planner
The Savings Planner is another standout feature of the Empower dashboard. It includes the Retirement Planner, which allows you to test different savings strategies to see if you’re on track for retirement. This tool considers your current savings, how much you save each year, your marital status, where you live, and other factors.
The Savings Planner also offers an emergency fund tool that keeps an eye on your cash reserves, making sure you have enough set aside to cover three to six months of expenses.
Debt Paydown
The Debt Paydown tool allows you to input details for various debts, such as loans and mortgages, providing a clear breakdown of what you owe and how those amounts change over time. It calculates your annual progress toward debt reduction, helping you see how your payments are impacting your overall financial health. Additionally, this tool can suggest personalized strategies to pay off your debt faster, whether you prefer to tackle high-interest debts first or focus on smaller balances for quick wins.
Investments
The Empower Personal Dashboard also includes a comprehensive investing section. By linking your brokerage account, you’ll receive a detailed view of your portfolio balances, conveniently organized by account. Empower makes it simple to track the performance of your investments over various time frames, offering insights into how your portfolio is growing. You can categorize your holdings automatically or manually, and even track alternative investments like real estate, gold, or cryptocurrencies.
Moreover, Empower gives you a clear picture of your net worth, breaking it down by account and asset type, so you can easily see your progress toward building wealth. It also categorizes your accounts, helping you understand your level of diversification across different types of investments, cash reserves, and liabilities, all within a single, easy-to-navigate dashboard.
Distinguishing Features
While many budgeting apps offer little more than simple budget summaries and spending notifications, Empower sets itself apart by using interactive scenarios, charts, and cash flow tables to help you tailor your budget and anticipate your financial future.
This is where the Savings and Retirement Planner tools really shine. Users can enter details like their current savings, how much they save each year, their target retirement age, and their expected spending in retirement. Empower also considers factors like household size, location, potential Social Security benefits, and more. With this information, the app calculates the likelihood of reaching your savings and retirement goals, presenting you with a probability score.
These tools help you see the impact of potential financial changes, allowing you to explore various paths and make informed decisions. You can save multiple scenarios directly to your dashboard, making it easy to compare and choose the strategy that best suits your future plans.
Empower Personal Dashboard Plans and Pricing
The Empower Personal Dashboard is completely free to use, which makes it a compelling option for those who want a comprehensive financial tool without any subscription fees. Empower generates revenue from its wealth management services, which are available to clients with a minimum investment of $100,000. These services do have associated fees, typically around 0.89% annually for portfolios up to $1 million, with lower rates for larger balances.
The free version of the dashboard includes a wide range of features, from budgeting tools to retirement and savings planners, all designed to help you manage your finances effectively. However, to access premium features like personalized investment advice or consultations with Empower’s Advisory Team, you’ll need to open a wealth management account. This account also grants access to other benefits, such as a dedicated financial advisor and a more in-depth analysis of your investment portfolio.
While the no-cost option is packed with tools for day-to-day financial management, those looking for more tailored guidance and direct access to professional advisors will find value in upgrading to paid wealth management services.
How to Get Started with Empower Personal Dashboard
Getting started with the Empower Personal Dashboard is quick and straightforward, requiring just four easy steps:
- Sign up by creating an account with your name, email, and password.
- Provide your ZIP code and phone number.
- Specify your primary financial goals, like tracking net worth, setting budgeting targets, or planning for a confident retirement.
- Link your bank and brokerage accounts to Empower.
To get the most out of Empower, linking all your financial accounts is highly recommended. The process is simple, and Empower connects with thousands of financial institutions, including popular investment apps like Robinhood. After selecting your institution, you log in with your existing credentials, allowing Empower to securely access and sync your data using Yodlee. The more accounts you link, the richer and more comprehensive your financial insights will be.
Be aware that during the sign-up process, you may be asked to schedule a call with an Empower Advisor. This is part of their onboarding process to introduce you to their services, but there’s no obligation to use their wealth management options or pay for any additional features.