Thoughts on Personal Capital, Future Advisor, Other Online Investment Tools

[britri3650]

I tried Future Advisor and they recommended that I sell a bunch of mutual funds to save on fees, and reinvest in ETFs. Do these online investment websites really offer sound, investment advice for those looking to invest for retirement using the diversified, low/no fee index fund or ETF approach? I am a federal worker with money in a TSP as well as in outside IRAs. What's the most cost and tax efficient, easy way for me to maintain a diversified portfolio across my TSP and IRAs? Is it index funds, ETFs, or some other way? Thanks.

[jcandoitbig]

Personal Capital just came out with something called "investment checkup"

it's a very cool new tool, check it out!

[Mississippi Mudstache]

I started using Personal Capital about a month ago and I heartily recommend it. I've done away with my tracking spreadsheet that I used to use - I had a 401(k), two t.IRAs, a Roth IRA, and HSA that was also linked to a brokerage account, two checking accounts, a savings account, and two credit cards to keep track of. Obviously, it took a lot of time to track manually. Personal Capital makes it a 5-minute process to check all of my accounts.

I haven't really used their investment advice much, but their software pretty much gives me a big thumbs up. I invest exclusively using index funds and ETFs that do not charge fees for trades, so my expenses are very low, and my allocation is right where I want it.

[matchewed]

I signed up to Personal Capital about a month ago as well. It's cool, most of it is redundant with other things like Mint/my personal spreadsheets, but the big thing I enjoyed was how well it broke down how much I was spending with fees. Seeing that visualized in front of me made me take some direct actions that I had been sort of wishy washy on.

So it didn't communicate anything I didn't know already but it did present it in a manner which had a bigger impact than my previous presentations of the same information.

[MilStachian]

Agreed, Personal Capital is a great piece of software for tracking finances.

Matchewed and Mississippi Mudstache, can you gents post your finance spreadsheets to the below forum link?  I'm trying to collect all the spreadsheets we Mustachians use to track our staches.

https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/share-your-financial-spreadsheets!/

[matchewed]

Agreed, Personal Capital is a great piece of software for tracking finances.

Matchewed and Mississippi Mudstache, can you gents post your finance spreadsheets to the below forum link?  I'm trying to collect all the spreadsheets we Mustachians use to track our staches.

https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/share-your-financial-spreadsheets!/

No thank you. No offense to your goal it is mostly because of my tool (aka it's not you it's me and really it's me). Mine is a horrendous eye bleed inducing monster. It is not fit for human consumption. It has mostly been built starting from when I knew jack shit about excel to today where I've learned a great deal more and I haven't had the reason to rebuild it with a nicer interface as I don't particularly need that nicer interface. It's also very personal, not in the sense of privacy, just very unique as I built it for me with my particular set of circumstances and not for general use.