Personal Capital is the #1 free financial tool online to track your net worth, analyze your investments, and plan for retirement. this is the Personal Capital Retirement Paycheck review.
Their Retirement Planner tool is by far the best retirement calculator out there because they use your real expenses and income to run hundreds of Monte Carlo simulations to forecast your retirement cash flow.
Here are some screenshots of the Personal Capital Retirement Planner at work.
Your ultimate goal is reach “very good shape” or “excellent” shape where the cash flow of your projected portfolio value covers 100% or more of you desired retirement spending needs..
Below, you will see that this person’s portfolio has a 99% chance of covering their $11,667 monthly retirement spending by a wide margin.
About Personal Capital Retirement Paycheck
Most recently, Personal Capital has introduced a new service called Retirement Paycheck.
Retirement Paycheck provides clarity on which accounts you should use to provide your retirement income and in which order to minimize taxes. For example, it could help you determine if you should withdraw funds from a taxable investment account ahead of an IRA account. It could be a valuable addition to your retirement planning strategy.
Personal Capital Retirement Paycheck is available to clients who are part of Personal Capital Wealth Management. You provide a few financial data points, your expected retirement spending goals, and your state of residence, and Personal Capital will let you know the optimum account sequence to begin taking distributions from during retirement.
Personal Capital Retirement Paycheck maps out your various recommended income sources. This includes expected dividends and any portfolio withdrawals you’ll need to reach your after-tax retirement spending goals. It will show not only the withdrawals, but also provide you with estimates of the taxes that will be due as a result.
Your projected income will be compared to your spending line, and when required minimum distributions begin, the service will layer them on top. It will even advise you if either a Roth conversion or tax gain harvesting will make sense.
A built-in advantage of Personal Capital Retirement Paycheck is the financial aggregator capability. Since all your financial activity will run through the platform, Personal Capital will have an accurate assessment of your spending habits. In that way, the spending projections in retirement will be based on your actual spending history, not vague estimates.
Personal Capital Retirement Planner
If you are not a Personal Capital wealth management client, you can always use their award-winning free Retirement Planner tool to help prepare for your future retirement.
Using actual financial information from any accounts you’ve linked to Personal Capital, you’ll get a realistic assessment of whether or not you’re ready for retirement.
It even enables you to anticipate big expenses, like planning for college for your children, buying a new home, or wisely spending no more than 1/10th your gross income on a new car. You can add these events to the Retirement Planner, and see how they’ll impact your retirement plan.
You can also include outside income sources, such as occassional freelance income, Social Security income, business sale income and more.
Everybody should leverage Personal Capital’s free financial tools to get a better holistic view of their money.
How To Gain Access To Retirement Paycheck
To take advantage of Personal Capital Retirement Paycheck you must participate in Personal Capital Wealth Management. That requires a minimum investment balance of $100,000 in the plan itself. Personal Capital can also help you to manage your other investment accounts, even those they don’t manage directly. But you will need to meet that minimum investment to qualify for the advisory service.
Their annual asset management fee ranges from 0.5% – 0.89%, depending on how much in assets they manage for you.
If you are not a Personal Capital Wealth Management client, then simply utilize their free Retirement Planning Tool. I run it at least once every 6 months to make sure my financial future is on track.
The more you can stay on top of your finances, the better you can optimize your finances. Too many people wake up 10, 15, 20 years later and wonder where all their money went. It’s because they didn’t use a free tool like Personal Capital to track their wealth.
Nobody cares more about your money than you. Since using Personal Capital in 2012, I’ve seen my net worth more than triple. Click here to sign up today.
About the Author: In 2012, Sam was able to retire at the age of 34 largely due to his investments that now generate roughly $200,000 a year in passive income. He spends his time playing tennis, hanging out with family, consulting for leading fintech companies and writing online to help others achieve financial freedom.
About Financial Samurai: Financial Samurai was started in 2009 and is now one of the most trusted personal finance sites today with over 1.5 million organic pageviews a month. Everything is written based off first hand experience because money is too important to be left up to pontification. Also check out my Personal Capital versus Mint comparison.