Personal Capital

Caramel · Post by **Caramel** » Wed Mar 14, 2018 11:22 pm

Does anyone use Personal Capital or Mint or any other cloud based financial software? Would you be willing to share your experience? Are they safe? Any issues you had to deal with? I have been using Quicken for the past 20 years. Because of their new subscription based pricing policies, I am considering moving to another platform. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

indian · Post by **indian** » Thu Mar 15, 2018 1:23 am

I use both mint and personal capital for several years. I like both. But I prefer personal capital as it manages investment and scenarios better. Mint is good for tracking expenses, not investments.

dixit · Post by **dixit** » Thu Mar 15, 2018 2:34 am

Checkout this past thread ---
http://www.r2iclubforums.com/forums/showthread.php/36417-Anybody-using-Mint-com?

greyfri · Post by **greyfri** » Thu Mar 15, 2018 5:29 am

I have lots of brokerage and bank accounts. I would never even consider putting all my passwords in one place in the cloud (whether it's personal capital or Mint), no matter how secure it is.

Remember the old proverb about eggs and a basket ? I would just continue to use Quicken. I believe the cost is what .. $30/year for Deluxe ? Seems inexpensive.

Personally, I use a spreadsheet which I update every weekend, but I use it only to track net worth and cash. I don't use budgets or track expenses.

Desi · Post by **Desi** » Thu Mar 15, 2018 7:16 am

No issues with Personal Capital. They will manage your investment and charge you a fee.

wikiinvest is a good way to consolidate all your accounts at one place.

puneri_punter · Post by **puneri_punter** » Sun Mar 18, 2018 7:08 am

I also have been using Quicken for the last 20 years, since 1997. During the sale by Intuit, there was a lot uncertainty about Quicken's future. I did extensive research, also opened accounts in Personal Capital, Mint, Future Adviser and Financial engines. Also played around with some open source products.
It all depends on your financial situation and the level of sophistication you want.

I am a power user of Quicken. First, I use it for managing not just my banking/expenses/budgeting but also my investments and rental properties. Second, I have robust reporting needs (whats the point of have 20 years worth of data if cannot analyse it). Third, I am paranoid about storing all my personal financial data on a website. I would rather have it locally on my hard disk.

There is no product in the market that does all of this. Quicken is the only game in town. As a result, you have to pay a premium which is more expensive Quicken.

One of the article during the Quicken sale had a very memorable quote "Quicken is a Lamborghini in a world that happy to go around on a skateboard".

If you have basic needs, any of the new sites are good. My personal preference is for Personal Capital. I continue to use their free portion of their site.

shoonya · Post by **shoonya** » Sun Mar 18, 2018 10:57 am

Is there a way to turn on two-factor authentication on your accounts, and still use wikiinvest of Personal Capital?
I'd be more comfortable using these aggregators, if I had control that they are pulling my account information only when I am logged into their site.

> Personally, I use a spreadsheet which I update every weekend, but I use it only to track net worth and cash. I don't use budgets or track expenses.

Do you use any APIs to pull in account positions and current market value in each account; or update them manually?

greyfri · Post by **greyfri** » Sun Mar 18, 2018 6:15 pm

shoonya;672446
> Personally, I use a spreadsheet which I update every weekend, but I use it only to track net worth and cash. I don't use budgets or track expenses.

Do you use any APIs to pull in account positions and current market value in each account; or update them manually?

I update manually. I have accounts in literally half a dozen online brokerages (long story as to why), so I would have to write scripts to pull down info from 6 brokers. Plus, I would have to use screen scraping in many cases since they don't have supported APIs. And I don't like installing programming tools (indeed, anything not absolutely needed) on the computer where I have my financial, tax and personal information. It's enough effort (and likely to change in the case of screen scraping) that I haven't bothered.

I did look briefly at GnuCash, but it's a little confusing, and doesn't have good AA reports, and it's download scripts are out of date. It takes me only 20-30 minutes to update asset balance manually every weekend. I don't update holdings, since I think AA is most crucial in deciding returns.

Quicken offered a 'mistake' $0 price for a weekend a month ago. I grabbed it then, but they later revoked it to offer only 2 months of service. I do have access to them for a few weeks more. I really find their asset allocation reports to be useful (with as many accounts as I have, individual brokerage asset allocation reports are incomplete), but I don't know if I'll keep them once the offer period expires.

Desi · Post by **Desi** » Sun Mar 18, 2018 6:29 pm

Wikinvest and personal capital do not have two step authentication.

You can try out either. I like wikiinvest, some others like personal capital. If you are not happy, yo can change passwords and cancel account with wikiinvest or personal capital.

indian · Post by **indian** » Sun Mar 18, 2018 9:00 pm

Puneri

What is special about Quicken? i have never used it. what does it offer that is not available in online tools