Personal Capital reliability

Happyras

Happyras

Full time employment: Posting here.
Joined
Jun 6, 2015
Messages
892
Location
Redmond
For those that use Personal Capital for account tracking and finance planning (not for investing advice), are there others having issues with investment holdings not showing, but showing as all cash?

We primarily use Fidelity for our investment and trust accounts, but we have various bank accounts elsewhere to track. Recently, in fact Thursday morning just prior to a call with PC the data just disappeared. This was timely, as I was about to hear a pitch on their "free" investment services for 6 months.

Since then, I sometimes see all the holdings, and then switch screens and all is gone. Not a comforting or convenient situation. I tried a few other websites who consolidate investment account data and they all worked just fine. Their retirement planner is quite good, but without the holdings showing, it is worthless.

I was liking PC, but this makes me wonder if I should rely on another platform or use software on my computer instead. PC support said it might take up to 4 weeks to fix, I am wondering if this is a more common issue for others and they are stumped.:mad:
 
They can't sync with about half of my accounts these days. I don't rely on them except for a daily overview of the accounts they can track.
 
The only account of our several accounts that PC can’t sync with automatically is the TSP so, every now and then, I manually sync it. Your post made me notice that PC now treats the G Fund as government bonds, rather than cash, as it used to. So that’s an improvement.
 
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Not answering your question exactly but I used PC account tracking before I consolidated all my investment accounts at Fidelity. Based on my needs and evaluation, PC has the best tracking. I decided to compromise and use Fullview at Fidelity so I had a one stop shop. I have found that it meets my needs and it feels like it is getting better but I do not know if I am getting more accustomed or they have made changes. I have been happy with their response when I have had problems. And I do not miss the PC pitch for business.
 
I have no issue with PC updating. Although, the Capital One Credit Card account periodically (quite often, actually) requires a manual login... as does our Bank of the West Checking Account. Everything else is as expected.

FWIW, the daily emails with the previous day's activities has always been accurate (albeit duplicitous sometimes).

I hadn't noticed until this moment that there was a Zillow problem... I rarely (well, once I did) look at that.

Zillow Home Value (As of 3/03/2021)
3 months ago Updated
We are aware of the syncing issues affecting the Zestimate feature for users Home values. Our engineering team is diligently working on this issue, and we will provide any updates on this matter through this page.

In the meantime, please manually track your Home value by disabling the Zestimate feature in your setup.

We appreciate your patience and understanding in the interim!
Click to expand...
 
The broken Zillow link has been a minor pain, but the Fido data is a major loss of function. PC does a much better job of reviewing allocations, the Fido website has very limited analysis tools comparatively. I was just wondering if it was a unique issue to my accounts or if others had the same issue with Fido. I really do not like the Fido Full View, and it has more linking issues than PC. Perhaps it is limited to my accounts for some reason?

I tried the SigFig website this week, and it may be an OK replacement. Anyone using it?
 
Happyras said:
The broken Zillow link has been a minor pain, but the Fido data is a major loss of function. PC does a much better job of reviewing allocations, the Fido website has very limited analysis tools comparatively. I was just wondering if it was a unique issue to my accounts or if others had the same issue with Fido. I really do not like the Fido Full View, and it has more linking issues than PC. Perhaps it is limited to my accounts for some reason?

I tried the SigFig website this week, and it may be an OK replacement. Anyone using it?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I should have mentioned that I use E*Trade.

I had forgotten about SigFig. I found that the last time I checked in was August 11, 2018. At that time I used Capital One, which was merged into E*Trade so I had to delete the two portfolios and start from scratch.

SigFig synced with my E*Trade accounts with a simple User Name/Password entry (not a good thing) -- not like the hoops PC makes one go through. The synced data, however, was current and accurate.

Anyway, I believe the reason I "gave up" on SigFig was because it only tracks broker investments and not one's complete financial picture.

I am not plugging E*Trade (I have little experience to draw on) but they seem to have an abundance of tools -- again, no experience since I only use them to buy/sell and research individual tickers.
 
I like PC as a consolidator for all assets. I don't use it for planning purposes but rather more of an overview and sometimes to confirm available cash. Works fine for my needs. Some accounts (like Cap One credit card) have to be reconnected at least once a month but I believe that's something on the Cap One side not PC.
 
I signed up for PC several years ago then got concerned about giving their site access to ALL of our investment assets. Does this bother any of you? I hear lots of good things about PC.
 
monte1022 said:
I signed up for PC several years ago then got concerned about giving their site access to ALL of our investment assets. Does this bother any of you? I hear lots of good things about PC.
Click to expand...

There have been many posts on this subject. Bottom line is PC uses the same system that your bank does. So if you trust your bank (or brokerage), than you should trust PC.
 
i have also been using PC for several years. actually stopped once b/c of the major bugs and issues and restarted using them after better exp were being expressed here and at bogleheads.

never used PC for advice more for better tracking of investments since Mint never has been good at tracking them.

seems like every 9-12 months or so I have connectivity issued, fidelity now showing all cash, tsp, couple other banks as well that info and/or connections is off.

i am currently giving Fullview a shot, but they seem to be having Safari issues (which are known) so one needs to use another browser.

i like to mostly use these sites as a transaction monitoring system, trying to find a happy medium that can replace quicken (which i used for 25+ yrs) has become a nuisance.

being patient for now w/ PC given all increasing issues over the last few months.

will see
 
I think PC did some kind of update over the weekend. I had a lot of accounts that would not sync. Often it's due to new security requirements of the bank or brokerage, over which they have no control. I was able to fix one after the update. The others, nope.
 
Another Reader said:
I think PC did some kind of update over the weekend. I had a lot of accounts that would not sync. Often it's due to new security requirements of the bank or brokerage, over which they have no control. I was able to fix one after the update. The others, nope.
Click to expand...

I find no change. I just went to my account and, although, it made me verify the Capital One account (a common occurrence), it did so without issue. Everything else updated as expected.
 
Today, my PC updated all accounts in theory, but Fido is still showing as all cash, no securities. My other accounts are showing all transactions correctly, but they do not hold securities. Nice to hear I am not alone....or not.
 
I have had problems logging in to Personal Capital the last 24 hours. It does not recognize my password. Three tries and you must reset your password. Then I get a reset code, and it does not recognize that. Not sure what is going on, but it is undermining my confidence.
 
Lagniappe said:
I have had problems logging in to Personal Capital the last 24 hours. It does not recognize my password. Three tries and you must reset your password. Then I get a reset code, and it does not recognize that. Not sure what is going on, but it is undermining my confidence.
Click to expand...

Well, today I had no problem logging in and the Fido update worked and provided view of all securities. Obviously it is hard to trust this going forward, but I tried both SigFig and Mint, and they were lame, short on features and buggy as well. I deleted my accounts on those two platforms, and will hope PC can improve.
 
Sounds like PC is a fantastic program. :cool:

I use a Google sheet that has all my accounts listed (assets). Most of my investments are VTI through Fidelity, so it's easy to import current prices. My cash holdings don't fluctuate too much so that number doesn't change too much. Once a month, I make sure all the bills are paid and then make sure my accounts line up with my G sheet (only update is usually when there is a dividend payout or reinvestment). That monthly reconciliation takes about 10-15 minutes.
 
FWIW, I use PC to track my funds, and while there are a few quirks (I have to manually link/update a few accounts to get the most current info in some bank accounts), I think the software works pretty well. The dashboard gives me a pretty good overview of my finances, I can track my expenses, and my understanding is that it is secure/safe (I hope that is the case anyway). I’m less familiar with other products, so my perspective is limited, but I like it.
 
I find one of the more valuable of PC 's features is "Your Daily Financial Monitor." This is an email sent every morning listing the previous day's activity from all of your accounts (well, the one's you've given permission to access). That is: a list of transactions in, for instance, your checking and credit card account(s), the top "Gainers" and top "Losers" from your investment accounts, and "Accounts that need your attention."

How does this email help me?

By presenting your financial transactions and account activity each day, Personal Capital helps you look out for unauthorized activity in any of your financial accounts.
Click to expand...
 
I stopped trying to get this to work years ago. Once you start using PIN #'s and two-factor authentication for security PC becomes mostly useless. The final straw was that Schwab no longer allows the 3rd party aggregator Plaid to access their data, and that is what most services like PC use. It makes Schwab unusable for *most* of these types of services, including setting up ACH transfers. Rather a PITA.
 
RonBoyd said:
I find one of the more valuable of PC 's features is "Your Daily Financial Monitor." This is an email sent every morning listing the previous day's activity from all of your accounts (well, the one's you've given permission to access). That is: a list of transactions in, for instance, your checking and credit card account(s), the top "Gainers" and top "Losers" from your investment accounts, and "Accounts that need your attention."
Click to expand...

I don't see the option to subscribe to this. Could you direct me?
 
Had 4-5 accounts linked to PC stop syncing over the summer (mix of checking, credit card and investment accounts). No red dot, no error messages, no failure to request 2FA - just transactions no longer syncing and the updated date for each affected account stuck on whatever date PC stopped syncing it correctly.

If I setup a new PC account and add these logins as new accounts they sync just fine. Also, PC support is worthless. They just close my support requests without actually fixing anything.

Any ideas for troubleshooting this on my own?
 
Too many broken links to make it useful.

I manually entered a proxy portfolio just to track performance. I also changed my phone number so that they would stop calling me.

Now my retirement planning projections are now broken. It used to be a great tool. Now, it's meh.
 
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