We originally shared a personal finance tool, Personal Capital, which has since been acquired by Empower and fully integrated. Its official name is now Empower Personal Dashboard. After the integration, the core features such as account aggregation, spending management, investment analysis, and retirement planning are still free to use. Some banks now also support OAuth authorization, and when you connect, you'll be redirected to the bank's official website to confirm access, so you do not need to enter your bank password in Empower.
In addition to the free personal finance tool, Empower also offers investment accounts, retirement accounts, and paid asset management services. However, using the free Personal Dashboard does not require transferring money to Empower, and it also does not require you to use its investment advisory services.
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About Empower
As we accumulate more and more credit cards, bank accounts, and investment accounts, it is no longer practical to track every expense by logging into each bank's online portal separately. Empower Personal Dashboard was formerly Personal Capital. Its main function is to bring together accounts spread across different banks, credit card issuers, and brokerages, allowing users to view their overall financial picture from a single page.
You can connect bank accounts, credit cards, brokerage accounts, 401(k)s, IRAs, loans, and mortgages into the free financial management system, then review account balances, every transaction, cash flow, credit card statements, and payment due dates. You can also use the spending categorization and budgeting features to see where your money goes each month. For investment accounts, Empower shows holdings and asset allocation in one place, helping users understand the mix of stocks, bonds, cash, and other assets. You can also review investment performance and plan for retirement. It supports viewing on phones, computers, and tablets, and for people with lots of credit cards and investment accounts, it is indeed much more convenient than logging in one by one.
If your asset size is larger, you can also choose the paid Personal Strategy asset management service. This service currently requires at least $100,000 in managed assets, with annual management fees starting at 0.89%; the higher-tier Wealth Management and Private Client services require $250,000 and $1 million, respectively. However, these paid services are separate from the free Personal Dashboard, and ordinary users only need the free tools.
It is worth noting that Yodlee Fastlink is still one of the main account aggregation services behind Empower. For financial institutions that support OAuth, users will be redirected directly to the bank or brokerage's official website to log in and authorize access; other institutions may continue to use Yodlee to complete account verification. According to Empower, the platform protects account information with data encryption, multi-factor authentication, and other security measures. That said, no third-party account aggregation tool can guarantee that data breaches or connection errors will never happen. If you are especially privacy-conscious, you can connect only the accounts you need to manage centrally rather than adding every financial account.
In the past, Empower and Mint were often compared when discussing personal finance management tools, but Mint has now shut down. Empower is also not exactly a traditional bookkeeping app; it is more focused on net worth aggregation, portfolio analysis, cash flow, and retirement planning. For people who only want to carefully track every day-to-day expense, Empower may not be necessary. But for people with many credit card, bank, and brokerage accounts, it remains a fairly complete free aggregation tool.
Sign up
The basic tools in Empower Personal Dashboard are currently free to register and use. Signing up for the free tools generally does not require an SSN; you mainly need an email address and phone number for account verification. You can register for free and use features such as account aggregation, spending management, investment analysis, and retirement planning through the link below.
After you sign up, Empower may offer free portfolio advice based on the size of the assets you connect, or introduce its paid asset management services. Whether to accept the consultation is entirely up to you and does not affect your use of the free tools.
How to use it
Using Empower's personal finance tool is still fairly straightforward. After registering, connect your bank, credit card, and investment accounts first, and the system will gradually build records of net worth, cash flow, spending, and investment portfolios. Below is a brief introduction to the main features.
Add accounts
After registering for Empower's personal finance tool, you'll enter the main interface, and the first step is naturally to add your bank, credit card, and investment accounts. Most common banks and brokerages can be found, but support changes as bank interfaces are updated.
There are currently two main ways to add accounts. Banks that support OAuth will open the bank's official login window, where you log in directly and authorize Empower to read the specified accounts; other financial institutions may still use Yodlee for verification. Once connected successfully, Empower will try to automatically import supported bank, credit card, loan, and investment accounts under the same login name.
The first connection usually requires additional verification. In my experience, you should read the prompts carefully: sometimes you need to enter a text message verification code, sometimes you need to confirm via email, and some banks require you to choose on their own website which accounts you want to share. The verification process varies a lot from bank to bank, so just follow the on-screen instructions step by step.
In addition to your own accounts, you can also bring together joint accounts or family accounts that you are authorized to manage. However, we only recommend connecting accounts you own or have already been legally authorized to access; do not add other people's bank or credit card login information casually. Account connections are not something you set up once and never need to maintain. Changes to a bank's login system, password changes, upgrades to two-factor authentication, or long periods of inactivity can all cause a connection to break and require reauthorization. Some institutions may also occasionally have issues such as delayed balances, duplicate accounts, or incomplete historical data.
When I recently logged back into my own Empower account, I found that a credit card I had previously connected and some historical data were not displaying correctly. I am still investigating whether this is due to a login system migration, an old Dashboard association, or an account sync issue. This also shows that Empower is better suited as an auxiliary management tool rather than the sole financial record.
If only one bank's account is missing, you can search for that financial institution again and refresh the connection. But if all accounts and historical data disappear at the same time, you should first confirm that you are logging into the original Personal Dashboard and the registered email address, and then contact Empower Support. Do not rush to delete old accounts and add them again, because after an account is deleted, the original historical balances and transaction records usually cannot be recovered.
View the overall picture
On the Overview screen, you can see the balances of all accounts, credit card debt, investment assets, loans, and your overall net worth, and you can also use charts to see how your net worth changes over time.
The current Dashboard also shows investment performance, retirement savings, budgets, cash flow, emergency funds, and debt repayment information. For people with a lot of accounts, the most valuable thing is not any single chart, but the ability to see at a glance roughly where your assets, liabilities, and cash flow stand.
Track every transaction/income
Viewing Transactions is the feature I use most often and rely on the most. After all, when you have nearly 30 active credit cards, it is obviously not practical to log in and check them one by one. On the aggregation page, you can quickly spot unfamiliar charges and then log into the corresponding bank account to verify them. If they are indeed not your own expenses, you can lock the card or contact customer service right away.Empower can display imported transactions and also lets you filter by account types such as Cash, Investment, Credit, Loan, and Mortgage. You can also manually edit spending categories and create custom categories, which makes it easier to review different types of spending over a specific period.
Whether Pending Transaction entries are shown depends on whether your bank provides that data to Empower, and not all financial institutions support it. Even when pending transactions do appear, balances and transaction status may still lag, so after spotting unusual spending, you should still go back to the card issuer's website to confirm.
You can also view activity in each investment account here by choosing the Investment filter. For people who use multiple brokerage accounts, it is convenient to check recent transactions and overall asset changes without logging in to each broker separately.
Viewing Credit Card Due Dates and Bills
Clicking a card in the overview list lets you see that card's balance, available credit, APR, and recent transactions. Some card issuers also provide bill information such as Due Date, Minimum Due, and Statement Balance to Empower, but not every bank sends the same fields.
If you do not want to review cards one by one, you can also go to the Bills page to view due reminders for credit cards, loans, and mortgages in one place. Note that the bill amounts and due dates shown by Empower depend on the data sent by the issuer, and delays or missing data can happen from time to time. As a result, it is better used as a cross-check and cannot fully replace bank statements.
Someone like me who used to prefer manual payments could reduce the chance of missing a Due Date this way. Even so, I still recommend setting AutoPay on every card to pay at least the Minimum Payment, then using bank alerts and Empower checks together as two or three layers of backup.
Over the past five or six years, I have missed two payments, both times discovering the mistake one day late. After paying, fortunately it did not affect my credit report. At that time, Discover also waived a Late Fee for me once, but that was just my personal experience then and does not mean every bank will waive fees now. Even being one day late can still trigger a Late Fee; if it goes longer, it may also be reported to the credit bureaus.
Investment Account Management
Investment account management has always been one of Empower's more distinctive features. After linking brokerage, 401(k), IRA, and similar accounts, you can view stocks, ETFs, bonds, cash, and other investment products across accounts in one place, and compare your portfolio with market benchmarks such as the S&P 500.
Additionally, you can quickly see how your overall assets are allocated. For example, whether stocks make up too large a share, whether you are holding too much cash, or whether your positions in a certain company or industry are too concentrated.
I usually do not keep detailed transaction-by-transaction records, but I still want to know how much I spent on different categories over a given period, such as how much I spent on groceries, restaurants, and travel this month. Empower's transaction categorization and cash flow features can provide a rough summary without my having to enter data manually every day.
However, aggregated data like this is not always 100% accurate. Some transactions may be miscategorized, and brokerage positions can also be delayed because of interface issues. Therefore, Empower is suitable for understanding overall trends, but when filing taxes, reconciling cost basis, or making important investment decisions, you should still rely on the official records from your bank and broker.
Planning Features
- Set a Monthly Budget: Review monthly spending based on imported transactions, and compare spending changes between the current month and last month. I do not use this feature very often, but it can still be helpful for people who want to keep their monthly budget under control.
- Retirement Planner: Simulate retirement savings based on current assets, savings rate, expected retirement date, and future expenses.
- Savings Planner: Plan retirement savings, education expenses, and other long-term goals, and see whether your current savings rate is enough.
- Emergency Fund and Debt Paydown: Estimate your emergency fund and track changes in credit card, loan, and other debt balances.
I personally do not like setting very detailed goals and budgets, because I often do not end up following them strictly anyway. For people who are already fairly disciplined about spending, it is enough to know roughly where the money went. Rather than worrying about spending $20 more on food in a month, it may be better to think about how to increase income and long-term investment returns.
Still, retirement planning and net worth trends are worth checking from time to time. They cannot replace formal financial planning, but they can help us spot insufficient savings, an unbalanced asset allocation, or debt that is growing too quickly.
Summary
I am sure that many of you have already earned plenty of rewards by following this site across credit cards, bank accounts, and investment platforms. When you have only a few accounts, logging into each bank separately is not a big problem; but once your credit card, bank, and brokerage accounts start piling up, you really need a tool that lets you view assets, liabilities, transactions, and bills in one place.
Empower Personal Dashboard is still one of the more complete free options, especially for people with many accounts who want to view net worth and investment portfolios. Its drawbacks are also obvious: account connections need maintenance, some bank data can lag or break, and you may occasionally run into issues with historical data or login migrations.
So I recommend using Empower as an account aggregation and cross-checking tool, rather than as your only payment reminder or official financial record. Credit card payments should still be set to AutoPay, and important transaction and investment data should still be confirmed on the bank, card issuer, and broker websites.
Overall, using Empower to centralize account management, avoid missing card payments, leaving cash idle for too long, or failing to notice suspicious transactions in time, still has real value.
