Personal Capital

When I asked for a refund, they offered me 6 months of free services starting now. This company is an absolute joke. Besides them duping me into paying them for 5 months of service, the allocations they gave me are under performing the S&P500 (historically over several years) when I said I want an aggressive portfolio. All trust has been destroyed.

First, no one was available to meet with a potential new client. After requesting that a different advisor be assigned, I had a couple of reasonable conversations where they made multiple pitches for my business. They'll tell you that if you're looking to be the index, they are not helpful. I appreciate the transparency there, but when you ask them why they charge you 0.8-1% to "manage" investments, their answer is: a) We are cheaper than big Wall Street firms b) We have great customer service. So I'll tackle each of them.

The first is mostly true, but that doesn't justify giving them your money. They are much more expensive than other advisory firms from Betterment to Facet Wealth to even a human advisor at Vanguard. But Morgan Stanley charges 0.95% or lower and gets you access to a much broader range of investments. The second is definitely not true. 4 months after they were supposed to provide the promotional credit, there is no sign of action despite multiple emails to multiple people on their teams. And having worked with Betterment and Facet Wealth in parallel, their customer "service" is pretty useless. The irony in all this was when I asked about some of the negative customer reviews, they tried so hard to defend themselves about how clients have immediate access to their money, etc. They don't even pony up what they were committed to.

And going back to their "personalized investment strategy", I kid you not, this was their proposal. 1) Open IRA, Trust (which they should know I already have! They are linked to my account). 2) Consolidate accounts and transfer to Personal Capital (Absolutely no bias/conflict of interest there of course). 3) Implement in a tax conscious manner (How? Pay them and they'll tell you!). 4) Address other financial needs. Save yourselves a great deal of money (invest in index funds, or use a cheaper/better wealth management firm) and headache. Don't ever engage with a live person at Personal Capital. I will admit their free tools are mostly great, and would recommend them to anyone.

In the six short months I was fully invested in their "portfolio", even with an excellent market (May 2020 to November 2020), I lost about 5% of my investment, due to poor performance and high advisory fees. Also, my dashboard never functioned properly, because it contained the original investments that I funded my account with; they were never able to technically resolve this. Whether you are just beginning to invest, or have invested for years, this isn't the company for anyone.

I would prefer to scroll/click through a robo-advisor than talk to condescending advisors who are offering the same types of recommendations a robo-advisor would anyways. Bottom Line: Customer service does not make up for their higher fees. Their recommendations do not outshine what a robo-advisor can give you (My opinion based off the sales pitch. I did not want to work with them) for asset allocations (market cap weight vs. equal weights etc).

1. Personal Capital charges 6 times the fee of Betterment. They justified the significantly higher fee by telling me that their returns outperform Betterment, and that they provide a financial advisory team that can help me with retirement planning and other financial advice.

2. I don't know where they get the data saying they outperform Betterment, but when I crunched the numbers, they definitely don't. Both during strong market rallies and market crashes, they've underformed Betterment.

3. The most infuriating feature of PC and the primary reason I'm closing my account for good: you can't withdraw funds from your PC investment account without going through their advisory team first! I actively invest in alternative assets such as real estate or business loans, so a few times a year I need to move funds. Betterment lets you withdraw whenever you want with a few clicks in their online portal. PC forces you to make an appointment with them (and you will almost never be able to book a same-week appointment). I understand making appointments for financial planning, but this is just a simple transaction to withdraw some funds! During the appointment they'll make you discuss your situation and why you want to withdraw and they'll try to talk you out of it. They tell you to think on it and schedule another follow up appointment next week.

It literally used to take me 2 weeks to be able to withdraw funds from the account! They even once FORGOT to make the transaction until I asked them more than a week later why I didn't see the withdrawal being processed. After I asked to close my PC account because I was fed up with these immense barriers to make such a routine transaction, they finally agreed to not force me to make appointments anymore, and told me they'll process a withdrawal if I write them an email or directly call their advisory number (but I have to specifically state in the email or on the call that I don't want to discuss my reasons for the withdrawal). This worked a few times, but now I just get the answering machine for 2 days straight, and no one responds to my emails. Since they're forcing me to once again only speak to them via appointment, my next appointment will be to close my account with them forever.

4. PC's promise of providing you a team of financial advisors seems like it would be worth the higher fee, but it turned out to be entirely useless. They told me they could provide me investing advice. When I ask them for advice (for example, about my alternative investments), the only advice they will give is to tell me to liquidate my assets and transfer those funds into my PC investment account. They even told me more than once to get rid of my crowdfunded real estate investments because "we have REITs in our portfolio so you don't need other real estate investments". It was laughable when one advisor tried to scare me out of my alternative investments by claiming "they likely charge very high fees", and I informed him that PC's fees are 3x higher.

Before I signed on for their advisory service, they also had promised that their financial advisors could help me with retirement planning. I've repeatedly tried to get them to help with that, and they keep just pointing me to their free retirement planning tool (you don't need a PC investment account to use it). I told them I've already tried the free retirement planning tool but it makes a lot of assumptions that don't fit my situation, which is why I wanted a financial advisor in the first place. They basically told me "Tough luck, our tool isn't designed for people who want to retire as early as you, and we can't provide you any help beyond showing you how to use the tool". So what the hell am I paying these advisors for??? PC's "human touch" (their supposed advantage over robo-advisors like Betterment) have proven to be nothing but an impediment, a barrier to making simple transactions. Good riddance when I finally can close the account.

I had 2 SEP accounts that were also transferred and unbeknownst to me, all my holdings were sold. The pitch I was sold on the phone led me to believe we were diversifying a little bit but stocks I held like AMZN should never have been let go. 2 stocks I was holding that were sold off are up a total of $48,602 today. The total gain on my 2 SEP accounts over the last year is only $24,142.23 which is half of only 2 of the stock's gains I previously held. I'm in IT so I held many tech stocks which are all doing amazing and I cannot reap the benefits of that because I chose to let Personal Capital manage my money.