Empower Review 2024

Personal Capital is presently Empower. Empower’s solution offering is threefold: a complete-featured robo-advisor platform and a suite of free economic management tools.

The former offers a nice-looking budgeting dashboard that enables you to update your financial accounts to monitor your day-to-day spending and cash flow. Anyone who wants to have a complete financial picture may benefit from this all-in-one remedy, which won them the top position in Forbes Advisor’s list of recommended financial services.

However, Empower’s robo-consultant platform makes the most sense for a quite particular sort of person. That’s someone who:

• Has now accrued $100, 000 in funding saving is willing to pay more to speak with a real economic expert?

The second point significantly narrows the field:

• According to research, the median financial resources for all U.S. families is $25, 000.
• Just about half of U.S. homes have any sort of retirement benefits, with a median number of simply $65,000.
• Only slightly more than personal stocks, with a middle number of $40,000.

Put it together, and just a piece of the people will have enough assets to qualify for Empower’s purchase services—unlike companies such as, or, which have lower or zero minimum balance requirements.

However, if you can meet the investment requirement and have access to financial planning experts, that may help explain Empower’s high fees, even though they may be more than what you would pay for comparable services at other robo-advisors. For instance, those with less than $1 million in assets under management pay 0.89% in fees at Empower, compared to 0.40% at competitor Betterment’s premium service with financial advisor access.

Think of Empower as a synthesis between a high- end robo- advisor and a budgeting app, which means you can let the Redwood Shores, Calif. based company manage your entire financial life, if you’re so inclined.

Empower’s Free Budgeting Platform

When you connect your financial accounts to Empower’s platform, you have access to a dashboard that resembles many other budgeting apps. You can see how your budget has changed over the past few months as well as your monthly cash flow.

This helpful tool helps you understand how much money you make each month and how much it is received. By linking to your mortgage, and any other loan accounts, Empower will give you a heads up when bills are due. As an added bonus, the app is both accessible on Android and iOS and is simple to use.

Empower’s Free Investment Planning Features

Empower can also be set up to monitor your investment accounts, which also provides a free investment review feature.

Link your investment accounts, and you can see how well your portfolio has fared using Empower’s “You Index,” a trademarked “You Index.” Essentially it combines your assets—from cash to bonds to stocks —and compares the performance to broad indexes, like the or a blended account. This handy tool enables you to quickly compare your portfolio performance and see where your money is being invested.

Empower provides a stunning interactive investment planning dashboard. When you enter some biographical information, such as age, income, and savings habits, the platform will display a “retirement planner” page that lists your resources, explains your options, and offers suggestions for improvements you can make to improve your situation. Even if they don’t end up earning an Empower customer, people who are unsure of where they stand in terms of their retirement goals should use this tool.

Empower has a savings planner that displays how well you are on top of your goals for the medium term, and how far you’ve come in terms of paying down your debts.

The retirement fee analyzer shows you how much in annual expenses you’re paying, how much it’s costing you over time, and whether your fee burden is higher than it should be. Is your portfolio too aggressive or conservative according to the investment checkup? and advises a stock and bond-target allocation.

If you have $100,000 in assets to manage and you’re willing to pay higher fees, you’ll gain access to Empower’s robo-advisor wealth management features.

Access to real financial professionals will probably be of the greatest interest to you. These answers your questions about investing and retiring, create a detailed financial plan, and assess how well you’re achieving your objectives. People who have officially entered middle age and want to make sure they are saving enough money for their children’s college education and their own golden years can feel a lot of relief.

Empower employs a team of strategists and big hitters to help you create tax-efficient portfolios that will redound to your long-term wealth. While has Sallie Krawcheck and Wealthfront has Burton Malkiel, Empower counted luminaries such as Harry Markowitz of modern portfolio theory fame, and Shlomo Benartzi, a leading behavioral economist, as key contributors.

Empower’s so-called Personal Strategy, which creates a specific investment portfolio for you based on your needs and long-term goals, is a part of its appeal. To create a portfolio that aims to maximize your returns based on the timeline and level of risk you indicate in a questionnaire, it uses Monte Carlo simulations to assess the likelihood of you meeting your retirement needs.

Those looking for an edge over a pure passive indexing approach—keeping your money in an ETF that tracks a broad index like the —may appreciate Empower’s “smart weighting” approach, which allows for you to have access to smaller, and potentially higher growing, investments than you might get from competing robo- advisors.

This strategy gives you a more active edge when it comes to investing in your portfolio’s equity portion, which might involve purchasing individual stocks. It also helps to explain why Empower charges higher fees than many of its rivals that offer robo-advisor services. Carefully incorporating individual stocks requires more than just a simple algorithmic approach on its part.

Empower’s hybrid approach to robo- investing—mostly passive investing, some active investing—may make sense if you’re the kind of person who’s willing to pay higher fees in the hopes of gaining bigger returns. However, keep in mind that higher costs do n’t always lead to better outcomes, and you run the risk of underperforming.

Empower will also provide guidance on how to manage your portfolio in terms of taxes by using a more common robo-advisor feature and examining your asset allocation across your tax-advantaged retirement accounts. This lets Empower place securities that make regular income payments, like bonds, in tax-advantaged accounts, such as an individual retirement account (IRA), so that they won’t raise your taxes. This may make it easier for you to increase your taxable brokerage account’s equity exposure.

All of that work doesn’t come free. Empower offers three service tiers, with varying fees and minimum balances:

• Investment Services. For balances between $100,000 and $200,000, you pay an 0.89% fee for a portfolio of managed ETFs and help from one financial advisor.
• Wealth Management. For balances of $200,000 to $1 million, you pay the same 0.89% fee, but you’ll have access to two financial advisors and a portfolio that will include individual stocks, when appropriate.
• Private Clients. For balances above $1 million, you start to see a decrease in fees, all the way down to 0.49% once you hit $10 million. This nets you access to Empower’s Investment committee, two financial advisors, extra love for your retirement planning and even private equity investment options.

According to an Empower spokesperson, the average price for those in the Investment Services tier is about 0.10%, while those in the highest tiers are about 0.07%. In either case, you’ll be put in ETFs offered by Vanguard, Schwab and iShares, among others.

There is no minimum or fee involved with the budgeting, spending and portfolio management tools mentioned above, nor for Empower Cash, which is the company’s checking account.

However you feel about Empower’s offerings, these prices are steep. If you start with $150,000 invested, contribute an additional $10,000 each year and earn a ho- hum 7% return for 15 years, you’ll end up paying nearly $70,000 in fees with Empower, compared to only $20,000 with Wealthfront.

Empower offers an easy-to-navigate suite of tools and resources—many of which anyone, even non-clients, may use to get a 360-degree view of all of their finances.

Empower’s retirement tools, which provide you with information on your potential retirement preparedness based on your Social Security claimant’s timing and level of investment strategy, provide information on your options.

The investment platform is sophisticated, supported by a team of industry veterans, and makes promises to use its skill to reduce taxes while delivering better returns than you can with a standard index fund.

You can talk to a qualified financial advisor to learn how your money is being invested, how well your goals are progressing, and what to do when your life circumstances change.

Empower’s major downside is the cost. A fee of 0.89% is just much higher than what you’ll pay with other leading robos, including Betterment and Wealthfront. Empower is still a, despite adding more personal touches to make the cost more bearable. You log in, respond to questions, and link crucial financial accounts. Then, the longer you invest, money is later put into a portfolio that matches your risk and goal profile.

Once you’ve accumulated at least $200,000 in your portfolio, Empower allows for individual stocks in your portfolio, but many users are financially well acclimatized before the benefit becomes effective, if you even consider active stock picking to be a benefit.

When deciding to sign up with Empower, only do so if you are aware that speaking with a financial professional frequently will save you the potential thousands of dollars in fees and lost money.