Personal Capital Canada 2024: Is it Available?

Is Personal Capital available in Canada?

The famous U.S.-based net worth-tracking application is unfortunately not available for Canadians.

Because while Personal Capital is a fantastic net worth tracker, there is a viable alternative available to Canadians.

A good alternative for Personal Capital in Canada is Wealthica. Let’s see how apt a replacement Wealthica is for Personal Capital as we dive deep into its features, strengths, and weaknesses in this article.

Personal Capital: More Than Just A Net Worth-Tracking Application

The mission of Personal Capital is simple: “to transform financial lives through technology and people”. While almost all Personal Capital’s offerings adhere to this ideology, its crown jewel is its net worth-tracking dashboard.

It’s free to use and investment-focused, even though it also allows you to track your spending and budget.

Personal Capital also offers wealth management services by providing investment advice and portfolio services, and cash management services. And even though only less than 1% of its total users form part of its investment clients, the company still has a decent sum of Assets Under Management at about US$19.4 billion.

Personal Capital Personal Finance Software And Financial Tools

Even though the company focuses on investment and net worth tracking, the Personal Capital net worth-tracking dashboard is designed to give you a holistic view of your finances and cover almost the whole ground, including budgeting.

Whether or not you are interested in the wealth and investment management features that Personal Capital offers, the process of using the net worth-tracking dashboard starts by linking all your financial accounts.

You can link your checking accounts, savings accounts, IRAs, 401(k), among others, to your Personal Capital dashboard. Afterwards, you can start using the free financial tools that the dashboard offers.

Net Worth Tracking

The net worth tracker is fairly simple. It gives you a picture of your net worth by subtracting your financial liabilities from your assets.

This, thus, gives you a big picture of your wealth over time and helps you realize how debt eats up your wealth.

It also comes with a comprehensive portfolio tracker, allowing you to see each of your holdings and allocations, among other things. It also includes features like budgeting and cash flow, collective portfolio balance, and how your emergency fund is doing.

Savings Planner

This feature allows you to set your savings goals and, based on how much you are putting away in the designated accounts, tells you whether you are close to reaching your goals or not.

Retirement Planner

It informs you where you stand, and based on how much you are investing and how your investments are doing, it tells you how close you are to reaching your financial goals (in a percentage).

The Retirement Planner feature also helps you plan for longevity and lets you see how your net worth or retirement savings will deplete over time if you manage to live until your target age. You can also run different scenarios for better understanding.

Investment Checkup Tool And Fee Analyzer

The investment checker tool can be considered a robo-advisor. It doesn’t create a portfolio for you. However, based on your retirement goals, current net worth, and portfolio, it generates automatic suggestions to help you improve your returns and lessen your financial risk.

If you have a portfolio worth $100,000 or more, you can get access to professional advice from a human financial expert’s perspective.

Meanwhile, the 401(k) fee analyzer is a fantastic tool that shows you how different fees are eating into your retirement savings and offers you advice on how you can minimize those fees. After all, even small fees can culminate into a massive sum over decades.

If we’re talking about free features and tools that Personal Capital offers, it’s important to note that the cash management feature, which is an alternative to your checking account, is also completely free. In addition, it offers several competitive banking features and flexibility, and you can earn about 0.05% APY.

Personal Capital: Who Is It For?

Personal Capital, while not for Canadians, is useful for almost every individual and retail investor.

Financial experts who are used to more complex tools and already have a wide array of financial tools at their disposal might find the Personal Capital dashboard a bit simplistic. Still, for most individuals who don’t know where their 401 (k) is invested, Personal Capital is an empowering financial tool.

The Personal Capital Alternative For Canadians: Wealthica

Wealthica is also a portfolio-tracking and wealth-tracking platform that is free to use and specifically caters to Canadians. In many cases, Wealthica is quite similar to Personal Capital, but there are also differences.

Let’s look at some of the differences and similarities between the two net worth trackers below:

• Like Personal Capital, Wealthica is a holistic net worth tracker that gives you a complete and historical view of your finances, including any sum you have in your checking account, savings account (TFSA, RRSP, non-registered accounts), and trading or investment accounts. You can see your collective net worth or track the performance of each holding.
• Unlike Personal Capital, Wealthica doesn’t offer projections about where your net worth is heading.
• Both platforms allow you to track your investments in cryptocurrencies.
• Both platforms have budgeting features. You can create your budget and allow the apps to track your spending and measure whether it’s in sync with the budget you set up.
• A few investment-oriented features that give Wealthica an edge include its risk profile and performance report features. They allow you to see where your portfolio stands compared to your retirement goals.
• A major edge Personal Capital has over Wealthica is that it offers actual portfolio re-balancing advice and helps you hammer down your portfolio to match your investment goals better.
• Personal Capital is ideal for tracking the net worth of individuals. Wealthica, on the other hand, allows you to track the net worth of the whole family. It even has features like a private mode that allows you to seek advice from financial experts without sharing your actual “numbers” with them.
• Both tools provide you with fee-tracking features, so you can find out how much your banking and investing are costing you.

One significant difference between Wealthica and Personal Capital is that you have to pay a monthly fee for one of its two paid versions to access Wealthica’s full power, including its powerful portfolio analytics via Wealthscope.

However, to get into the Personal Capital “exclusive” club, where you’d have access to a dedicated financial advisor, portfolio analysis, and management, you need a net worth of at least US$100,000 or more.

Conclusion

Personal Capital is not available in Canada. And even though Wealthica offers some pretty neat net worth-tracking and wealth-tracking features and tools, I am sure more Canadians would love to have both options at their disposal.

However, instead of waiting for Personal Capital to cross the border and start offering connectivity to Canadian financial institutions, you might consider trying Wealthica.

It’s free, it’s safe, and it’s quite easy to use. Most importantly, it helps you glean a holistic picture of your finances, thus empowering you to take better care of your finance.