Looking for a good way to aggregate accounts to track investments

[convergent]

I have accounts at Fidelity, TRowePrice, TDAmeritrade, Scottrade, and banks. Even though I am good about letting things sit for the long term, I would like to easily be able to see everything aggregated in one place without logging into every different account and then capturing values and putting them in a spreadsheet. Is there any software or website that would "safely" be able to log into the accounts and aggregate values? Would they also allow me to keep historical trends and/or do analysis on the information?

Thanks,

 

[Exrook]

I've been using Personal Capital for a couple years now. It should do most of what you want. As far as 'safely', I believe that it is as safe as any other similar site. There are those who will argue that it is not safe enough, but so far I have heard of no issues.

 

[fritz]

I use Morningstar (free service) to track our funds - rather than logging into fund companies (especially if you have two step verification and you don't want the hassle, or many holders of your investments). You can put them there and they'll track them daily. You do have to adjust your shares when dividends and capital gains are declared, but for an easy look at all your funds in one place whenever you want a quick review - simple enough program. You can also upgrade your free Morningstar account to a paid version for the extras they provide (I never have and I used a non-identifiable email to join and for access).

 

[jazz4cash]

I believe Fido has this service available but I input outside accounts manually and update quarterly. I can't imagine any automated link is as safe no link between accounts.


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[SeattleRain]

I've been using Personal Capital for a couple years now. It should do most of what you want. As far as 'safely', I believe that it is as safe as any other similar site. There are those who will argue that it is not safe enough, but so far I have heard of no issues.

+1 for Personal Capital. Lots of great analytics tools as well.

It is free except they will push for you to talk one of their advisors. Just tell them you aren't interested and they will leave you alone.

 

[brewer12345]

Excel works great. One-time investment in setting up a spreadsheet and then I audit the sheet annually to confirm that the number of shares in each account is what it says it is.

 

[wanaberetiree]

Fidelity has the Full View and Vanguard as well allows link internal an external accounts.

 

[MRG]

Just add the other accounts into Fidelty's RIP. They'll update automatically.

 

[Another Reader]

I use Personal Capital. A couple of accounts don't link, so I enter those manually. I like their tools as well. Eventually I expect that free service to go away, so I try to keep up with Full View. Although they both use Yodlee, each program has its quirks.

 

[Sunset]

Excel works great. One-time investment in setting up a spreadsheet and then I audit the sheet annually to confirm that the number of shares in each account is what it says it is.

I have the same issue as OP, but I'm too chicken to give away my login to some place for my various brokerages.

Are you using a spreadsheet that pulls in today's values for each share as that I think would the pretty important ?

 

[target2019]

Just updated my Google sheet. It gets me close enough to the total.
At end of month I get total shares or dollars and paste into the spreadsheet.

To start, try something like this:

cellA1 - type in ticker
cellA2 - =Googlefinance(A1, "name")
cellA3 - =GoogleFinance(A1, "price")
cellA4 - type in no. of shares owned
cellA5 - =A3*A4

 

[Turn_the_Page]

Google Sheets for me also to track values, asset allocation, average expense ratio. Yes, I have to update the number of shares, which I do maybe quarterly.

 

[LOL!]

One can use all the sites mentioned without giving out one's login credentials for one's accounts. One simply updates the total number of shares in the external accounts manually.

One doesn't have to put any transactions in these sites, just the total number of shares whenever they change significantly. All the sites will look up prices for you. I've used Fidelity, Vanguard, Morningstar, Personal Capital, and TDAmeritrade which all have places to enter manually portfolios.

Let's face it, one should not have a lot of transactions and the total number of shares for any investment in any account should not change most of the time. Furthermore, one should not have a lot of different investments in each account. Indeed, I think one should probably have no more then one or two investments in each account. For instance, a Roth IRA could have one single fund in it.

Furthermore, one should login online anyways to each of their accounts at least once a month to check for fraud and hacking. Once a month is about the most one needs to see any changes in number of shares.

If you have a Windows PC, Microsoft has free software called MS Money that is freely downloadable and can keep track of all your numbers without an internet connection and without logging in to your accounts. You would have to enter the numbers manually, but I think that is a good thing since it will help nudge you to have fewer investments and make fewer transactions. This would get one all the historical trends and graphs and charts, too.

The OP writes they let things sit for a long term, so I recommend they check out the Fidelity Guided Portfolio Summary (GPS) tool which can be found under the "Analysis" tab of their Fidelity account as shown next:

 

[Cobra9777]

I've used both Fidelity Full-View and Personal Capital. They both work fine and have some great analytical tools beyond just tracking. Neither is perfect however. I've had to work through various quirks with both. For example, DW's 457B has an S&P 500 index fund that comes over with no ticker. Personal Capital allows you to provide a manual classification. Full-View does not. So in the GPS asset allocation it shows as 'Unknown.'

Most of our investments are at Fidelity, so I feel a bit more secure using Fidelity's Full-View. But I like Personal Capital better for the interface and analytics. I also update an Excel spreadsheet monthly, so I don't really need either one for investment tracking, but it is convenient. I also use them for expense tracking and categorization. Full-View is a little better than Personal Capital for that part. For example, you can set up custom categories and split a transaction. Personal Capital can't do either.

 

[LOL!]

I found Personal Capital to be mostly fluff and pretty pictures. It gave no more useful information than the other sites. Personal Capital gave a lot more useless cosmetic information which was not actionable.

For those who like PC, can you give 3 specific actions that you took because of unique nformation that PC gave you that the other firms did not provide please? Thanks!

 

[Sunset]

One can use all the sites mentioned without giving out one's login credentials for one's accounts. One simply updates the total number of shares in the external accounts manually.

One doesn't have to put any transactions in these sites, just the total number of shares whenever they change significantly.

Furthermore, one should login online anyways to each of their accounts at least once a month to check for fraud and hacking. Once a month is about the most one needs to see any changes in number of shares.

Thanks....
I tried this at Vanguard, and just told it where the other account was, which acts ONLY like a label (it does not log in).
Then I put in symbol and # of shares,
It shows total and adds the total to my Vanguard total.

Once I finished of course, I realized now I don't have to log into the other sites, so it might reduce how many times I look at the other sites

 

[Cobra9777]

I found Personal Capital to be mostly fluff and pretty pictures. It gave no more useful information than the other sites. Personal Capital gave a lot more useless cosmetic information which was not actionable.

For those who like PC, can you give 3 specific actions that you took because of unique nformation that PC gave you that the other firms did not provide please? Thanks!

I use both Full-View/GPS and Personal Capital, and I've already commented about some pros and cons of each. At present, I can't get an accurate AA from Full-View/GPS because it does not allow manual classification of tickerless fund holdings. That renders GPS fairly useless for me unless I decide to delete that account in Full-View and maintain it manually.

On Personal Capital, I like the so-called "You Index." Nothing too fancy, it's just a backward extrapolation of your current mix of holdings compared to various benchmarks over various periods of time. I also like the expense ratio analysis, which prompted me to swap out some higher-ER ETFs when I first retired. I also tweaked the AA at the same time based on PC's breakdown of certain things such as emerging vs developed equities, corporate vs government bonds, cash held by bond funds, etc. I also like PC's graphic presentation of where my portfolio lands on the efficient frontier and the easy-to-understand rebalancing recommendations. I've made portfolio changes based on both.

Full View/GPS has some of this as well, but not all. It also has some analytical breakdowns that PC does not, such as bond credit quality, municipal bond sectors, mutual fund ratings, and equity style boxes. GPS also lets you set up pro-forma accounts to test changes you are considering. I also like the direct interaction with the RIP tool. Both tools pull in real estate values from Zillow.

As I said previously, they both work fine but neither is perfect. Personally, I think PC's analytical information is presented more clearly and thus more useful to me. The main advantage of Full-View/GPS is the direct linkage into other Fidelity tools for further research and analysis. And I prefer Full-View for expense tracking because I can split transactions and use custom categories that conform exactly to my Excel spreadsheet with 25 years of spending history.

 

[LOL!]

Just an FYI: Vanguard does not update all the prices used in the Portfolio Watch tool until a few hours before US stock markets open.

That means that the Total dollar amount in "Balances and Holdings" will be different from the Total dollar amount in "Portfolio Watch" except for just before markets open. And that includes weekends and holidays. For instance from Friday Market close last week until Tuesday morning this week, the dollar amount in "Portfolio Watch" was always wrong for me.

Also, Fidelity GPS does not update prices at all for manually entered accounts unless one clicks on "Edit" and "Save" for each account that you want updated prices.

 

[Ian S]

For investments, I like SigFig. It has customizable columns for a wide variety of parameters and IMHO an easy on the eyes gui. You can download your data in csv format and I do that on a weekly basis. You can plot values for up to a year in the program but I like to have the weekly details in spreadsheet format.

Personal Capital is OK but I tired of their calls trying to drum up advisor business. Mint is good is you want everything tracked including cars, real estate, credit cards, budgets etc. On my smartphone I use both SigFig and Bishinews StockQuote. The latter requires manual entry but their end of the day price updates for mutual funds are faster than for SigFig.

 

[LOL!]

I use both Full-View/GPS and Personal Capital, and I've already commented about some pros and cons of each. At present, I can't get an accurate AA from Full-View/GPS because it does not allow manual classification of tickerless fund holdings. That renders GPS fairly useless for me unless I decide to delete that account in Full-View and maintain it manually.
[...]

Thanks for the additional feedback.

A tip for folks who have assets that cannot be looked up by ticker symbol: Find a proxy ticker symbol and figure out the number of shares for the same dollar amount. For example, suppose one has a collective trust in one's 401(k) which mimics an S&P500 index fund, then just use VFIAX (Vanguard S&P500 index fund) as the ticker symbol with the appropriate number of shares.

(But yes, one would have to maintain that manually like Cobra9777 wrote.)

 

[Cobra9777]

...A tip for folks who have assets that cannot be looked up by ticker symbol: Find a proxy ticker symbol and figure out the number of shares for the same dollar amount. For example, suppose one has a collective trust in one's 401(k) which mimics an S&P500 index fund, then just use VFIAX (Vanguard S&P500 index fund) as the ticker symbol with the appropriate number of shares.

(But yes, one would have to maintain that manually like Cobra9777 wrote.)

That's why the advantage goes to Personal Capital on that particular item because they allow proxy tickers or manual classification of investment funds with no ticker. You set it up one time and that's it, no manual maintenance. The amount comes in fine at login, just no ticker to feed the analytics. Same for Full-View, but no capability to specify a proxy ticker without going completely manual as you described. Not a huge deal, but ours is a tax-deferred account with reinvested dividends, so the share count creeps up every month. For now, we keep it automated in both systems, and just ignore the GPS portfolio analysis, at least on the equity side. The bond side is fine and a little more detailed than Personal Capital.

 

[pjigar]

Almost all account aggregation is serviced by Yodlee on the backend. So you want to make sure the front-end is secured with multi-factor authentication. I have been using Bank of America (My Accounts) for over 10 years (yes, that long). Back in the days, BoA issued a "Secure ID Cards" that generated a one-time use code. Now they offer one-time code on your cell phone. Multi-factor authentication was a very crucial feature for me since I was going to give aways passwords to all my account on a single platform.

Multi-factor authentication = two or more of the following authentications
Something you know (password, pass phrase, security picture, etc.)
Something you have (Secure ID, cell phone, etc.)
Something you are (finger print, iris scan, etc.)

 

[5oneanddone]

MInT works very well.


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[Exrook]

Almost all account aggregation is serviced by Yodlee on the backend. So you want to make sure the front-end is secured with multi-factor authentication. I have been using Bank of America (My Accounts) for over 10 years (yes, that long). Back in the days, BoA issued a "Secure ID Cards" that generated a one-time use code. Now they offer one-time code on your cell phone. Multi-factor authentication was a very crucial feature for me since I was going to give aways passwords to all my account on a single platform.

Multi-factor authentication = two or more of the following authentications
Something you know (password, pass phrase, security picture, etc.)
Something you have (Secure ID, cell phone, etc.)
Something you are (finger print, iris scan, etc.)

Don't be so sure on multi-factor authentication. It isn't as safe as it appears:

Two-Factor Authentication Bypassed in Simple Attacks | SecurityWeek.Com

 

[jazz4cash]

I've used both Fidelity Full-View and Personal Capital. They both work fine and have some great analytical tools beyond just tracking. Neither is perfect however. I've had to work through various quirks with both. For example, DW's 457B has an S&P 500 index fund that comes over with no ticker. Personal Capital allows you to provide a manual classification. Full-View does not. So in the GPS asset allocation it shows as 'Unknown.'



.

We do have some proprietary accounts in Fido that have no ticker but I still classify them with a %stocks, bonds, cash and include the dollar total for the GPS analytical tool. The reports are very good.


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