Empower and Quicken

Empower and Quicken are two of the most popular financial platforms available today. Both offer very profound wherever applications for budgeting as well as for personal finance management. And while Quicken is pretty weak regarding investment features, in the case of Empower, this structure is practically its core.

Which of the two is the better one? It depends on what you’re looking for. While Quicken, no shadow of a doubt, is the most robust budgeting platform, Quicken and other Functional capabilities you added in the Empower. However, that all-important component of investment remains there. And as it should be the other way in respect of financial management as such, it’s not a lesser benefit in favor of Empower.

Quick Compare Features of Empower and Quicken

FeatureEmpowerQuicken
Review Rating9.5/109.2/10
Investment Tracking
Budgeting
Retirement Planner
Net Worth TrackerX
Bill Tracker
Bill PayX
Reconcile TransactionsX
Track the Market Value of Your Home
Free Credit ScoreX
PromotionsFree10% off the first year
SynchronizationLink to any U.S. Based financial accountAble to sync with more than 14,500 financial institutions
AccessibilityDesktop, tablet, iOS, and Android mobile devicesDesktop, tablet, iOS, and Android mobile devices
Customer Service24/7 contact by phone or emailLive chat available
PricingFree$35.99 to $103.99/year

What is Empower?

Empower

Empower is an online platform for individual financial management that assists clients in planning and controlling their finances. The aim is to allow individuals to track their spending and investing activity, and their savings, and plan for their future retirement. Some of these include budgeting, managing investments, retirement planning, tracking net worth, and paying bills.

The service was formerly branded Personal Capital and tries to make financial management easier by connecting financial accounts and viewing the entire financial picture in one place. The services of Empower are mostly free of charge, but there is also a service for users with a large portfolio in the form of Wealth Management services.

Empower Free Version Features

The free version of Empower (Personal Capital) is quite sophisticated and comes with sufficient features aimed at enabling users to easily manage their finances. Below are the key features available in the free version of Empower:

Empower Free Version Features:

  • Investment Tracking: All your investment accounts can be traced in one screen, through linking various financial accounts. Further specifics of the allocation and performance of assets, and the fees on the assets are explained by Empower.
  • Budgeting: Begin by allocating budget amounts for different periods, follow through with spending, cut down on excessive spending, and notice any patterns of expenditures and their sources.
  • Retirement Planner: This helps you see how much you need to save to be ready for retirement by making use of the Retirement Planner tool.
  • Net Worth Tracker: By linking every other financial account (both assets such as savings and indebtedness like mortgages or loans), estimate and evaluate your overall net worth.
  • Bill Tracker: Manage and remember all your future bills along with their dates for bill payments, hence you won’t miss pay dates.
  • Cash Flow Analysis: Learn how much money comes in and how much goes out and understand your finances more comprehensively.
  • Market Value of Your Home: Monitor the estimated worth of your own and other properties by using some housing data.
  • Account Aggregation: Connect with most of your financial accounts such as banks, credit cards, mortgages, loans and investments
  • Spending Analyzer: Provides details about how you spend your money over time to improve your financial decisions.
  • Savings Planner: Gives you assistance towards setting up both short-term and long-term goals, ensuring you do not ignore savings.
  • Availability: Available for desktop, as well as for iPhone and Android tablets.

The free version of Empower is ideal for people who are looking for an overview of their finances and the means to manage investments, budgets, and savings effectively.

About Empower Wealth Management

One of the premium services offered by Empower (earlier Personal Capital) is the provision of Wealth Management Services that professionally manage significant portfolios on behalf of members. Clients are assigned trusted and appointed financial experts who assist them depending on their personal goals, appetite for risk, and other long-range decisions they need to make.

Along with a specified long-term investment objective, the investment strategy aims at the maximum efficient tax management, and diversification of the client’s portfolio and its growth through timely rebalanced changes in the asset structure.

Additionally, Empower Wealth Management has advanced inclusive financial planning that encompasses retirement, estate, legacy, and tax-efficient investment plans to achieve maximal returns. Users also benefit from the use of Empower’s features which include tracking budgets, future retirements, and other investments that come with management.

The service is availed to customers with at least $100,000 available for investment with the fees commencing at 0.89% of the assets managed on behalf of the clients. As a relief for high net-worth individuals and especially those looking to engage in a singular financial management strategy, Empower’s advisors use fiduciary standards when advising the client’s interests.

What is Quicken?

Quicken

Quicken is a personal finance application software that is the most popular of them all, assisting people in harmonizing their finances. Basic tools included are budgeting, checking one’s spending habits, and even paying bills as users can combine their banking, credit cards, loans, and stock accounts to provide a picture of net economic worth. This enables better management of monthly expenses and budgeting as Quicken provides features that track daily expenses to help users keep to their defined financial limits. It also comes with portable apps for ios and Android devices for easier retrieval of financial information anytime and anywhere.

As for the investment features, Quicken enables its clients to evaluate their portfolios, assess the performance of their investments, and measure the asset base. This feature provides an update to investors of where their money has been invested and how much return they are going to receive from that investment as well as plan for future investments such as retirement. Apart from those features, Quicken also includes retirement planning which estimates clients’ saving needs over time depending on how much they are currently earning and their expenditures. Its ability to import more than 14500 financial institutions ensures correct information is available across to all accounts and keeps everything current and in one spot.

Depending on the edition, Quicken also provides newer features such as bill payment, credit score tracking and property management. These activities appeal to people with more sophisticated arms around money, for instance small business owners or real estate developer. Quicken is a subscription-based service: different pricing plans are dependent on the level of service availed to the subscriber. It aims to perfect the solutions of the potential and actual users so that they do not have to switch software tools for different financial tasks and save some time for dealing with more important issues in their financial wellbeing.

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Quicken Investment Features

Quicken includes additional functionalities such as investment tools that allow users to follow, analyze, and manage their portfolios. These tools are appealing to a first-time investor and also people wanting to keep a close eye on their investments. Here are Quicken investment features:

  • Investment Tracking: Quicken makes it possible for its users to form a one-stop investment tracking system by allowing them to link brokerage accounts. This further extends to the holdings in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, etc. It updates itself with the latest more accurate updates including the values and performance of the investments.
  • Portfolio Performance Analysis: Through Quicken users can get reports about the performance, balances and transactions of a portfolio over time and looking to enhance the performance towards individual or more general capacity targets. Typical examples of such metrics include the gains and losses as well as the rate of return, which propels investors to put their investments in comparison with worked-out targets or accessed benchmarks.
  • Asset Allocation: The allocation of investments is possible in Quicken by use of its analysis tools ignoring fixed income composition that entails dividing up the portfolio and identifying categories of investment such as stocks, bonds, cash, etc. This feature eliminates the portfolio deleveraging risks by assuring users of properly diversified portfolios relative to the investment strategies being adopted.
  • Investment Goals & Planning: The program also possesses planning tools needed to target specific goals such as retirement or education funds among others. Limits can be set conveniently and advancement is supported by estimation of enhancement depicted by current portfolio holdings and future market activities.
  • Feedback on the Cost Basis and Capital Gains: Generally, the customers are supported by Quicken in tracking the amount that has been invested in specific stock purchases and sales. This helps individuals to compute the profits or losses that arise upon sale for reasons of tax thus simplifying the process of filing returns.
  • Reports on the Market Value of Shares: In order for the user may have the most relevant information about his or her projects, Quicken changes the market values of the portfolios on a day-to-day basis. This is particularly handy in determining the changes in stock prices and in gauging the total value of the investment.
  • Retrieval of Transactions of Brokerage Accounts: It is possible to use Quicken with various types of brokerage accounts in which one can use the automatic download of purchases or sells of stocks as well as dividend or interest payment transactions. This saves time by avoiding data inputting and ensures accuracy in investment records.
  • Desktops and Graphs: Quicken has a wide range of investment documentation to offer including the performance report, unrealized gains and losses, investment income, portfolio breakdown by assets, and more. These pictorial reports provide an eye view of what is strong and what is weak in the investor’s portfolio.
  • Notifications: They set alerts to be advised on major changes in the status of their recovered stocks such as huge losses, the stamina of the money, price achievements, and value of the portfolio. Ill-informed investors create opportunities for better purchasing for the markets.
  • The tenth aspect is Tax Planning: Quicken also provides certain tax services to its clientele such as management of capital gains, dividends, and interest income so that they are tax season-ready. It also facilitates tax-loss harvesting strategies to minimize potential tax burdens.

The investment aspects enable Quicken to be very useful to those clients who wish to make long-term financial investment plans and follow and manage their investment initiatives within the desired time frame.

Pricing Compare

FeatureEmpowerQuicken
Free Financial SoftwareYes, Empower’s financial software is free and used by 1.6 million people.No free version; annual subscription fee based on selected product.
Wealth Management Fee Structure– First $1M: 0.89%
– First $3M (Private clients): 0.79%
– Next $2M: 0.69%
– Next $5M: 0.59%
– Over $10M: 0.49%
Pricing based on product:
– Simplifi: $47.99/year
– Starter: $35.99/year
– Deluxe: $46.79/year ($51.99 after first year)
– Premier: $70.19/year ($77.99 after first year)
– Home & Business: $93.59/year ($103.99 after first year)
Managed AssetsFees apply to assets under management (AUM) – excludes 401(k) funds unless managed separately.No wealth management services provided, only personal finance and investment tracking tools.
Money-Back GuaranteeNot applicable.30-day money back guarantee.
Ability to Switch PlansNot available.Yes, users can switch plans within the 30-day trial period if dissatisfied.
Best FeatureFree financial dashboard and comprehensive wealth management for high-net-worth clients.Affordable personal finance management with several pricing tiers, including budgeting, bill management, and investment tracking.

Customer Service

Empower has solid customer service – particularly for its Wealth Management clients. People who subscribe to the premium services of Empower are assigned financial advisors who guide them in a personalized manner regarding investments and other financial needs. This type of service is ideal for investors who are dealing with their portfolios and their plans, and so want their advice. As for clients of Empower Wealth Management, they have to of course have advisors who can be reached by phone or email as well so there is always contact with the clients’ persons. Also, users of Empower’s free financial software can obtain limited assistance over the Internet, email, or telephone.

However, in contrast, Quicken offers customer support live chat, telephone support, and online support. Any of Quicken’s paid plans allow the subscribers to get help from the customer support team at given working hours. Quicken further comes with an innovative online support system within the product including articles, common questions and answers, common problems, and solutions guides. Then depending on the subscription plan, a sport of more advanced support is present where so that premium issues can be handled easily without much time before the users or any other person gets the answers that they need for the computer or financial management. Both Seekinghelp and Quicken have the same objective of offering assistance to users but the difference lies in the fact that Empower is more involved in the financial service while Quicken is more focused on the technical assistance and customer service.

Accessibility of Empower and Quicken

The financial software provided by Empower is made easily available across many devices such as desktop, tablet, and mobile devices be it on iOS or Android. Users can budget, make investments, and do financial planning from anywhere making it favorable for busy people. The tools and features in Empower’s platform help to enhance usability, allowing all users to navigate around with ease and not face any difficulties in operating it.

Quicken also makes sure that its services are accessible to the people as it extends its reach to different platforms. Quicken software can be used on computers, tablets, and even mobile devices such as iPhones and Android which accommodates the user in practicing their finances. The mobile application for Quicken enhances the capabilities of the computer platform whereby users settle their expenses and budget or invest without the need for a computer. Training users and maximizing the cloud features are also some challenges faced by Quicken, users are allowed to work from any device and retrieve their information online using the cloud. The two access levels are similar in that both address the dimension of accessibility to the user’s requirements in managing their finances.

Related Read:- 5 Simple Ways to Keep a Stress-Free Budget

Final Thought:

In their distinct domains, both Empower and Quicken can be regarded as topmost in finance platforms. Empower provides the greatest resource in portfolio performance and management for users intending to invest and retire ideally. It is very easy to sign up for the program as it has its primary features for saving, spending, and investing free of charge, and basic insights to the money management tools.

Quicken excels in the areas of creating budgets and tracking expenses keeping the users who love to have control over their spending satisfied. It is packed with tools that enable it to function effectively for day-to-day spending, bill commitments any feasible plan making and so many other options therefore making it rather a perfect financial management software for people who do not have the time to go for various options. In the end, it is the individual investment objectives that determine which combination of tools — whether improvements in the investment solution or efficient management of the budget will be chosen. By identifying the core features offered by each service, customers will be able to make decisions that fit their parameters and objectives economically.

FAQs:

Q: What is the primary reason for the existence of Empower?

Empower is to a large extent designed to render such services as wealth management and investment tracking, assist clients in developing a financial plan, tracking their investments, and planning for retirement.

Q: Does Quicken allow for budgeting?

Yes, assuming that budgeting is important; there are built-in budgeting and expense tracking tools that enable users to control their spending and achieve certain expenditure goals.

Q: Are the free variants of Empower and Quicken products available?

Yes, there is a free financial dashboard displayed on Empower but lacks the free version of Quicken, although there is a 30-day refund policy for any subscribed plans taken out.

Q: Is it possible to use Empower and Quicken on smartphones and tablets?

Both Empower and Quicken are available in desktop laptops as well as Tablets and Mobile phones –OS: iOS & Android at any time at any place.

Q: Which types of customer support do Empower and Quicken have?

Empower has phone and email support for its users who especially are Wealth Management clients whereas on the other hand Quicken has live chat and phone support for all its users.

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