Key Takeaways
- Quicken is best for business.
- Empower (formerly Personal Capital) is the best of portfolio management.
- Empower’s primary focus is on investment and wealth management.
- Quicken offers a feature rich interface along with described categorization.
Personal finance is something that makes you struggle.
Even if you believe you are floating on the boat of good credit, you can get hit to the tip of the iceberg, aka debt.
So, if you don’t want to be the next Titanic, you need a personal finance tool to help you manage your finances.
But again, knowing which unique finance tool or software does its job well is complex.
We have compared Empower (formerly Personal Capital) and Quicken to help you choose the best.
What Is Personal Finance Software?
Personal finance software is a digital tool that helps individuals like us manage money, track expenses, create budgets, or monitor financial goals.
It becomes easier for you to make financial decisions while organizing and analyzing personal finances.
Your economic growth is bound to happen if you use individual finance software like Empower (formerly Personal Capital) and Quicken.
Will Personal Finance Software Benefit You?
Your finances can always be a mess. It won’t matter the amount of money you earn, the amount of money you invest, or even if you don’t.
You will benefit from using personal finance software to keep track of your finances.
You don’t need any expertise to use simple, unique finance software.
What Is Quicken?
Quicken is one of the major players in personal finance software.
Although it takes a subscription fee to use its services, it’s worth it.
You can manage your finances, track your spending, curate budgets, and monitor bank and credit account balances.
Its software and mobile app also offer bill-paying services, bill-payment alerts and custom-made financial reporting.
About Quicken
Following are the services Quicken has to offer:-
- Bill pays for full service.
- Tax planning.
- Budgeting tools, along with detailed reports.
- Debt management, planning and tracking.
- Property and home management.
- Automatic monitoring of financial accounts.
Quicken – Plans and Pricing
Quicken Simplifi
- Save more money
- Always know what you have left to spend or save
- Get insights with real time alerts & reports
- Customize your transactions
Quicken Classic Premier
- Manage & reduce debt
- Create a secure retirement
- Make tax time easy
- Create multiple budgets
Quicken Classic Deluxe
- Best-in-class investing tools
- Built-in tax reports
- Reconcile to the penny
- Track & pay bills in Quicken
What Is Empower?
Personal Capital has been renamed as Empower.
It has no subscription fee; it is entirely free.
It manages your financial accounts on a single platform.
Empower syncs with your bank, credit card, and investment accounts and helps control them.
Further, the software also contains a listing of all liabilities, assets, account transaction history and outstanding debt owed as per category.
About Empower (formerly Personal Capital)
- The fee for the first $1 million of assets is 0.89%.
- Paid services include a personal financial advisor.
- Tax and estate planning.
- Tax loss harvesting.
- Advice on insurance.
- Educational funds for children.
Best For Business – Quicken
Quicken can be especially useful if you own a small business and want to grow it.
This personal finance software has been through numerous improvements in recent years.
It can help with its home and business package and divide your expenses into categories.
Its feature, which can create reports, is a plus for small business owners.
Best For Portfolio Management – Empower (formerly Personal Capital)
With its easy-to-use personal dashboard, which helps keep track of your expenditures and budgeting, it is perfect for your portfolio management.
As mentioned, it offers personalized services for investment portfolios through personal financial advisors.
It can track every part of your investment, from balance to performance.
Empower v/s Quicken (Comparison Of Different Tools)
1. Investing Tool
- Quicken
Premier Edition includes investing as a feature.
You get access to features like Portfolio X-Ray, showing performance vs. the market of investments.
Such portfolio X-rays help you to make better buying and selling decisions.
Further, Quicken helps in minimizing taxes on all your assets.
- Empower
The free version of Empower (formerly Personal Capital) has investment tools that help track and balance your portfolio and its allocations.
Tools like Fee Analyzer can analyze your investment accounts to check broker and mutual fund fees.
You can also receive professional investment management for a price.
2. Budgeting Tool
- Quicken
Their app helps you see, track, and pay bills.
The app divides your spending into different categories and then gets you the income and expenses projection, which assists you in creating a budget.
- Empower
They will link the app to your bank, credit and investment accounts.
Then, you provide account balances and transactions, spending, and income in each performance.
This will help you set a monthly target and inform you if you are overstepping your budget.
3. Retirement Planning
- Quicken
You can set up your retirement plan by setting retirement goals with this app.
You can switch to retirement planning without adding additional information.
This is because this app uses your planning assumptions from investment goals.
With their lifetime planner feature that provides for expected retirement benefits, you can plan assets for the future, etc.
- Empower
Its special retirement planning feature helps you decide the amount you need to save for retirement, and that too without any fee.
Further, it also keeps you informed if you are on the track of retirement goals.
Their fee analyzer will help you know which part of the retirement plan costs you the most and, hence, could lower those fees.
4. Security
- Quicken
This stores the data locally even when it connects to your bank to gather information but is held only locally.
You won’t have to worry about a third party getting to know about your data.
But you will have to practice caution with the device in which Quicken is installed.
- Empower
This encrypts all communication with their servers.
It also encrypts the data collected with AES-256 along with multi-layer key management, including rotating user-specific salts and keys.
And, of course, there are internal access controls, so it wouldn’t be possible for anyone to access your information at the Empower (formerly Personal Capital) office.
Quicken v/s Empower (formerly Personal Capital)
Here is a table of the pros and cons of Quicken and Empower (formerly Personal Capital) to help you decide better.
Pros Of Quicken And Empower
| Quicken | Empower |
|---|---|
Budgeting and financial management interface. | Free software. |
Indicates your credit rating. | Handy dashboard. |
Investments are easily tracked. | Track investments. |
Bill paying feature available. | Paid wealth management program. |
Many support options. | Syncs wide range of bank accounts. |
Can be used on different operating systems. | Can be used on different platforms. |
Cons Of Quicken And Empower
| Quicken | Empower |
|---|---|
Compulsory subscription needed. | Doesn’t indicate credit rating. |
Problems in syncing some bank accounts. | Bill paying feature unavailable. |
Final Comparison
Here is the final comparison considering the pros and cons of both Quicken and Empower (formerly Personal Capital).
Accordingly, Empower and Quicken both can monitor your savings and investments.
Both the software can also plan your retirement savings.
However, Quicken has a trend of declining users, mainly because of its paid nature.
Meanwhile, for Empower investment, monitoring is a good feature, but the upselling of financial advisors might be a drawback.
Alternatives To Empower v/s Quicken
These are essential players in the personal finance management and budgeting industry market.
But there are other alternatives to this software as well.
PocketSmith
PocketSmith is one of the most valuable personal finance software, assisting people in shaping their financial path.
You can see translation history and create insights. Further suggests areas where savings can be made.
You create your plans as per your choice on this software.
The work can be done in multiple currencies and gets converted automatically based on daily rates.
You can schedule upcoming bills via a budget calendar.
There are free and paid services available. The paid plan starts from $7.50.
You Need A Budget (YNAB)
Although it is a paid service, you get a 34-day free trial to test the software.
YNAB works across different devices. Even syncing to Alexa is possible.
Like all personal finance management software, it allows you to set saving and spending goals.
The interface is easy to understand. There are free online workshops that assist you in financial management.
Conclusion
There are many other personal finance management software out in the market.
You can choose the appropriate software depending on the kind of investments, budgeting and future plan.
You can also always take test drives on all these software and find your perfect match.
However, this guide for comparing Empower (formerly Personal Capital) v/s Quicken will help you go forward in the right direction.
Go on a personal finance software and get your investment to give you more returns, your budget more savings and your finances a better future.
Do you wish to make your finance management easier?
FAQs
There is an annual advisory fee for wealth management. However, budgeting and tracking tools are free to use.
Quicken doesn’t offer a free trial. But there is a 30-day money-back scheme if you believe Quicken isn’t for you.
There isn’t a tool within the Empower (formerly Personal Capital) to pay bills directly through it.
You can pay bills directly through Quicken. Quicken Bill Pay is now replaced by Quicken Bill Manager.
