Empower recently migrated its financial dashboard with its other retirement apps. The migration created significant issues for some users, preventing them from logging in. This in turn resulted in many looking for alternatives to Empower.
In this article, I’ll explain what happened and offer some alternatives to Empower.
Empower Migration Issues
I’ve used the Empower Financial Dashboard for over a decade. Long-time users recall that it was called Personal Capital when it launched in 2011. Later acquired by Empower, it continues to offer a free financial dashboard that handles budgeting, cashflow, investment tracking and analysis, and retirement planning.
The recent migration brought with it three changes:
- Registration form: New sign-ups to the free Empower dashboard will be required to choose a username when signing up.
- Appointments: After registration, users are asked questions about their goals. After answering, users are now prompted to schedule an appointment before connecting accounts. The user can bypass scheduling by clicking the skip button.
- Unified experience: Empower merged its separate apps and dashboards. Before, there was a separate login and experience for workplace retirement plan participants, and ‘direct to consumer’ free tools and wealth management clients. Now, there is a single place to access everything – e.g., a user’s employer sponsored 401(k), free tools, Empower Cash management accounts, and Personal Strategy wealth management portfolio, among other products.
It was the migration to a single login that created the most issues for users. One Reddit user described the issue–“For me, its broken. Forced to login to the new site and login not working, forgot password not working, phone/VRU not working. Totally…not working.”
While I didn’t experience problems logging in, my data was not immediately available. I even relinked accounts and watched as the system struggled to link any data from credit cards and investment accounts. After 24 hours, however, these issues were resolved. For me, Empower is now working without any issues.
It may be that you just need to give it some time.
3 Alternatives to Empower
Finding true alternatives to Empower is difficult for two reasons.
First, Empower is free. With the closing of Mint, there are no free alternatives that come close to matching Empower’s features.
Second, Empower is the only tool at present that combines robust investment and retirement planning tools with budgeting features. To be clear, there are tools that do any one of these jobs as well as or even better than Empower. I’m not aware, however, of any tools that tackles all three tasks (budgeting, investing and retirement planning) in a single tool.
Finding the right alternative to Empower, therefore, requires deciding what’s most important to you–budgeting, investment tracking or retirement planning. The five options below cover in some degree at least two of these three features.
For comparison purposes, here are my ratings for each of these features as offered by Empower:
Budgeting: B-
Investment Tracking: A
Retirement Planning: B+
Cost: A+
1. Origin
Origin is a relatively new app. It’s unique for two reasons. First, it’s done an excellent job of incorporating AI into its app. Users can ask its AI Advisor questions about their financial data. Second, it’s goal is to cover all aspects of one’s finances. As an example, users can file simple tax returns for free and assisted filing for a low fee. You can also schedule a call with a CFP for a small fee.
Budgeting: A-
The app has sold budgeting features. You can create and track a spending plan. A recurring expense feature enables you to keep an eye on subscriptions. It categorizes expenses well, and the interface is excellent.
Investment Tracking: B+
Unlike most budgeting apps that can track investments, Origin does a good job of showing a portfolio’s asset allocation. You can also see your holdings, view specific accounts, track performance, and distinguish between your accounts and a significant other’s accounts.
Retirement Planning: N/A
While it doesn’t offer a retirement planner, you can talk to a CFP for a low fee.
Cost: B+
For a limited time, you can get Origin for $1 for the first year with this link, after that $99/year.
2. Quicken Simplifi
Quicken Simplifi covers, at least in theory, budgeting, investing and retirement. It’s also one of the least expensive options ($5.99/month, although you can get the first year for $2.99/month with this link).
Budgeting: A-
It’s budgeting features are its most advanced. You can create a spending plan, track bills and subscriptions, and create goals. After linking your accounts, it downloads and categorizes your transactions. It offers a calendar view and a variety of reports.
Investment Tracking: B-
Its investment tracking covers balances, transactions and performance. It does not show you asset allocation or fees, both excellent features offered by Empower.
Retirement Planning: C-
Finally, its retirement planning tool is very basic. It creates a retirement projection based on your current age and savings, retirement contributions, information on when you plan to retire, how much you spend in retirement, and assumptions you enter about investment returns and taxes.
Cost: A-
For those who rely heavily on Empowers investment and/or retirement planning tools, Quicken Simplifi will be a big disappointment. If budgeting is your primary focus, with investments and retirement a nice extra, Quicken Simplifi is worth considering.
3. Monarch Money
Monarch Money is the budgeting app I currently use to manage our finances. I use about a dozen other apps for testing purposes. It is best-in-class for budgeting. It’s investment tracking and retirement planning features, however, are lackluster.
Budgeting: A+
Monarch’s budgeting features are excellent. If you can think of a budget feature, Monarch probably has it. You can check out our more detailed Monarch review here.
Investment Tracking: B
With Monarch you can track your holdings, balances and performance. While it has an asset allocation feature, it does not provide stock and bond allocations for mutual funds or ETFs.
Retirement Planning: C-
It does offer a retirement goal that users can create. It’s very basic and falls far short of what Empower offers.
Cost: B+
Monarch costs $99/year, although you can get 50% off the first year with promo code ROB50.
Other Apps Worth Considering
The focus above is on apps that cover at least two of the three key features Empower offers. If you are willing to look at apps that cover just one of the the three, you’ll have a lot more options.
For example, for retirement planning both Boldin and ProjectionLab are excellent.
If your focus is on investment tracking and analysis, Stock Rover is an excellent choice. I should caution that Stock Rover does take some time to learn, but it offers a wealth of investing tools.
