Truth be told, there are probably more digital personal finance tools out there than we can even count.
And while lots of options means there’s likely a perfect tool for everyone — it also means many people either settle or give up the search before they find the one that’s just right for them.
Whether you’re looking to connect with a financial advisor, want to beef up how you’re budgeting your current cash flow, need a better view of your overall wealth, or all of the above; in this article we’re going to explore some popular personal finance tools so you can choose the best solution (or solutions) for your needs.
Personal Capital vs. Mint & Beyond — Why Your Choice Matters
It’s been found that the majority of people believe having the right digital finance tools can improve your life.
Why do we think that is?
There are several reasons why great wealth management tools can improve not just your financial life but your entire life.
Set Goals and Understand Your Progress Toward Them
Attainable goals are SMART: Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
It’s hard to make goals that align with these specifications when the key element that fuels those goals — your wealth — is scattered across papers, devices, accounts, and institutions.
With a personal finance tool that helps you keep track of your financial situation, you’ll have everything you need right in front of you to both build and track your progress on important goals for your financial life.
Diversify to Protect and Grow Your Portfolio
It’s not just various locations that make achieving the above goals difficult — it’s also all the various types of assets that a successful portfolio needs today.
Portfolio diversification is the practice of investing in different financial sectors that are uncorrelated, which protects your portfolio if any one of those sectors was to generate poor returns. Aside from just fluctuation protection, diversification is also quite important if you want to have your hands in all of the many, changing pots that could be generating ROI.
Having a capable investment management tool enables you to monitor your asset allocation no matter how varied it is, so you can be sure you’re diversified exactly the way you want to be.
Invest Along With the Trends
When you’re able to keep tabs on your diversified portfolio, it’s easier to move quickly and take advantage of changes in the market that are in your favor.
In a world where you can have traditional Fiat money and cutting-edge alternative assets in your portfolio at the same time, you need to make sure you have a flawless overview of both so that you can buy and sell the asset you want to, when you want to, in order to align with the trends that most inspire you — or anything inflation or a possible recession throws your way.
The Showdown: Personal Capital vs. Mint vs. Kubera
In the Personal Capital vs. Mint vs. Kubera discussion, your choice will be defined by what you want.
Hands-on financial planning and investment management advice? Budgeting help? All-in-one wealth and investment tracking?
Keep reading to learn the key features that make each of these tools unique so you can choose the one that best aligns with your goals.
Kubera: An All-in-One Tracker for Your Wealth, Important Documents, and More
Kubera Features
Kubera, built by diversified DIY investors for our fellow diversified DIY investors, is personal balance sheet software that helps users organize and keep track of all of their assets and net worth from a single, easy-to-use platform.
Kubera is as easy to use as an Excel spreadsheet and allows you to automatically add and track your credit cards, bank accounts, savings accounts, brokerage accounts, cryptocurrency accounts, and pretty much any other financial accounts (check out the thousands of financial institutions we connect to!).
In addition, you can manually add traditional assets (stocks, bonds, etc.), physical assets (jewelry, art, etc.), and even digital assets (domain names, trademarks, etc.) to get the most complete view of your portfolio as possible.
Diving into DeFi and crypto assets? Kubera is one of the only personal finance tools on the market with crypto tracker capabilities — finally making it possible to track your cutting-edge digital asset investments right alongside your more traditional ones.
Tickers for individual stocks and cryptocurrencies make it possible to watch the markets from the comfort of your Kubera dashboard so you can make fast and smart trading decisions.
And to take it another step further, Kubera even integrates with leading asset experts (such as Zillow in the U.S.) to feed your Kubera dashboard with the most up-to-date value of your homes, vehicles, and web domains.
Want to check out all your investments — and how they impact your net worth — at a glance?
Then pop over to Kubera’s Recap screen, which automatically crunches all the data in your dashboard so you can view daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly changes in net worth, asset allocation, and asset value.
Now how about a visual on the way your investments are performing?
We knew that would be important to our savvy users.
So we created an automatic calculator that finds IRR for investments (that’s internal rate of return).
All Kubera needs is the current value, price, and cash flow of an asset. The platform will add in holding time and automatically find an asset’s IRR in your preferred currency — and benchmark it against popular indices.
This information will be critical to making the right call about where to double-down and where to divest when it comes to your investments.
What also sets Kubera apart is its unique spin on the “retirement account” via its beneficiary management feature. This capability ensures the safe transfer of your entire portfolio of assets, financial information, and important legal documents to a designated beneficiary.
Mobile App?
Kubera doesn’t currently offer a mobile app, but we are still accessible on iOS and Android! Our small, dedicated team also continually works to improve our easy-to-access web app according to market shifts and user feedback.
Security
Kubera employs bank-level security, cutting-edge encryption practices, and two-factor authentication. We also keep your banking and crypto credentials safe using industry-leading third-party financial account aggregator services.
Cost
Kubera offers affordable and easy-to-understand pricing so that we can keep your data safe and protect your privacy without advertising — unlike some of the other financial tools on this list.
Summary: Kubera is the best all-in-one wealth management tool for high-net-worth individuals, global citizens, & cryptocurrency investors who need to track wealth assets, financial information, and more in a single, safe place.
Personal Capital: A Financial Planner with (Paid) Financial Advice
Personal Capital Features
The free version of Personal Capital offers a platform where users can bring together their bank accounts, credit card accounts, loan accounts, investment accounts, and other financial accounts to get an overview of all the elements that make up their wealth.
With all of this access to your financial information, Personal Capital provides some handy personal finance tools: an Investment Checkup tool for re-analyzing your portfolio allocation, a net worth calculator, a retirement planner dashboard, budgeting functionality, a 30-day look at cash flow, a custom fee analyzer to uncover sneaky payments, and more.
But, disclaimer: This dashboard isn’t really what Personal Capital has become known for.
Personal Capital really specializes in, well, personalized money management services. Their bread and butter lies in their team of advisors that offers different levels of white-glove financial management when it comes to financial services like retirement planning, investment advice, and more.
In our research, we found that these paid tiers are marketed heavily to users once they sign up for Personal Capital’s free tools — another feature that the platform has (unfortunately) become known for.
Mobile App?
Personal Capital does have a mobile app for users.
Security
Personal Capital’s security features include encryption, access controls, and fraud detection to keep user data safe.
Cost
Personal Capital’s free service includes the dashboard we discussed above.
However, the paid version offers more features, including access to Personal Capital’s investment services, in which your investment portfolio is actively managed.
Paid tiers become accessible once investors put $100K+ in their Personal Capital account. Investment fees start at .89% of the value of assets under management.
Summary: While Personal Capital has basic free financial planning tools, it’s probably best for people who are looking to pay for personalized financial advice.
Mint: A Straightforward Budgeting App
Mint Features
In the world of budgeting tools, Mint reigns supreme.
Ultimately, Mint is a tool for analyzing where your cash flow goes every month and creating detailed budgets to better direct that money toward your goals.
Mint does this by connecting with your bank, credit cards, and other financial accounts to view and organize purchases into different categories — which can be created both automatically and manually. With this insight into their spending habits, users can get a clear idea of exactly where their money is going.
Other features include a free credit score, credit monitoring, credit reports, bill payment reminders, notifications for unusual spending or overages, portfolio tracking, a tool that catches hidden fees, saving goal creation, and calculators to help budget for large expenditures like houses and loan repayments.
Mobile App?
Yes, Mint provides a mobile app for users who want to engage with their budgets on the go.
Security
Mint is equipped to safeguard user data with security scanning during data transfers, multi-factor authentication, and remote deletion.
Cost
Mint is free to use. However, it’s important to note that this means the company generates revenue through advertisements and a cut from the credit cards and other products it recommends. For that reason we suggest double-checking all of their recommendations as they have a vested interest beyond just your financial success.
Summary: Mint is a good budgeting platform for people who need help tracking where their money is going and planning for expenses.
How to Choose the Right Personal Finance App
Now that you’ve got the lowdown on what the leading finance and investment tools offer, it’s time to make a choice.
But how?
Lucky for you, we’ve already created a set of steps for choosing a good fit when it comes to your wealth management platform:
- Define your financial goals (retirement goals, short-term savings goals, etc.)
- Identify the features you want in a financial app that’ll help you achieve these goals (Need help with bill pay? Understanding your net worth? Investment advice?)
- When you’ve found an option or two that suit your desires, make sure they also suit your needs (cost, security, customer service, etc.)
- Finally, don’t forget to read the reviews before making a final choice!
For a more comprehensive walkthrough of the above steps, we strongly recommend you check out our guide: How to Choose the Best Wealth Management App in 2021.
Personal Capital vs. Mint vs. Kubera: Which One Will You Choose?
Personal Capital is a financial planner that focuses on (paid) personalized financial advice; Mint is a budgeting tool; and Kubera is a tracker for your various wealth assets, important documents, and more.
Whichever wins out in the battle of Personal Capital vs. Mint vs. Kubera will depend on what you need the tool to do.
If an all-encompassing view of your wealth is what you’re looking for in your financial management tool, give Kubera a spin.
Kubera is accessible around the world on desktop, iOS, and Android devices. And, we can even work with you alongside your financial advisor when they add our white-label solution to their client portal.
