12 Personal Finance, Investing and Retirement Tools

Personal finance, investing and retirement planning tools can help you make the most of your money. From budgeting to investing, saving to improving your credit, the resources below will empower you to take back control of your finances.

Unless noted otherwise, I use each of the tools listed below:

Tools I Use

Monarch Money

I’ve used dozens of budgeting tools over the years. I regularly use at least half a dozen for testing purposes. Today, Monarch Money is my overall favorite and the one my wife and I use.

Simply put, it offers by far the most features, it’s easy to use, has an excellent mobile experience, and dare I say, makes budgeting fun (ok, tolerable).

Unlike many other budgeting apps, Monarch is continually adding new and improving existing features. One of its latest updates is the ability to sync Amazon and Target purchases and automatically categorize them based on what you purchased. I’m not sure how they did it, but it works.

You can get 50% off the first year subscription (after a 7-day free trial) with promo code ROB50.

Empower

Empower is a comprehensive free financial management tool. It can do just about everything. You can connect your bank accounts, credit cards, and investment accounts. Once you link your accounts, Empower can track your budget, cash flow, and upcoming bills. But it’s much more than a budgeting app.

The app tracks your net worth over time. It also tracks all of your investments, including retirement and brokerage accounts. Empower then provides automated analysis of your asset allocation, investment fees, and retirement planning.

Empower also offers a high-yield cash account. It’s FDIC-insured and offers a competitive rate.

I’ve used Empower for years. Based on my experience, I created a Empower Review and User’s Guide if you want more details.

Boldin

Unlike Personal Capital, Boldin is a paid tool. It’s worth every penny. In my opinion, it is the most robust retirement planning software available directly to consumers. You can use the tool to model everything from retirement spending to Roth conversions to social security and medicare premiums.

There is a learning curve to Boldin, but it’s worth the time and effort. They also give you a free 14-day trial to check it out.

You can also check out this Q&A session I held where we walked through many features of the software.

Kubera

I met the founders of Kubera years ago when the app first launched. To be honest, at the time I didn’t think much of it. You could connect your accounts and track your net worth, but the tool costs $249 a year (after a 14-day free trial). Empower was and still is free. For many people, this will still be a showstopper.

So why do I use Kubera? First, it does a lot more today. Yes, it tracks net worth, and in a way I find visually appealing. I can customize the dashboard, organize assets into categories of my choosing, and it’s all very easy to do.

Beyond net worth, you can see your asset allocation, track every conceivable asset, and connect all of your liabilities. While I don’t invest in crypto, Kubera offers they most robust crypto-tracking. You can connect to crypto exchanges, wallets, or coins.

You can track vehicle values with a VIN, domain values, and real estate. And Kubera doesn’t just use Zillow for real estate values. It determines values using multiple data sources.

In short, it’s the most sophisticated net worth tracking available today.

Vanguard

Vanguard is a mutual fund company that popularized index fund investing. You can set up just about any type of account, including IRAs and taxable accounts. From there, you can invest in target date retirement funds and low-cost index funds. I’ve used Vanguard’s funds and brokerage services for years.

Fidelity

Fidelity also offers low-cost index funds and any account type you’d need. If I had to pick one broker to use, it would be Fidelity. There are several reasons for this:

• Technology: Fidelity’s website and app are easy to use and provide a wealth of information about your accounts and the markets.
• Full View: Powered by eMoneyAdvisor, Full View is a free tool that enables you to track all of your accounts, including those held outside of Fidelity. While it doesn’t compare to Personal Capital, in my opinion, it’s still a useful tool.
• Customer Service: I’ve never had a bad experience with Fidelity. No company is perfect, but Fidelity offers some of the best customer service I’ve experience with any investment platform.

Betterment

Betterment is a robo-advisor, similar to Wealthfront. They both offer a simple way to start investing, but they both do charge a fee. While the fee is modest, we know from Retire Before Mom and Dad that every basis point in fees costs us a lot of money over our lifetimes. Still, I think robo-advisors are a reasonable choice for those who want a service that can handle your asset allocation and rebalancing.

I use Betterment to invest our credit card rewards. You can check out my video on Betterment, which shows you my account and some of Betterment’s features.

Portfolio Visualizer

This free tool is one of the best I’ve found at evaluating the historical performance of a portfolio. You can add specific investments (stocks, ETFs or mutual funds) and Portfolio Visualizer will return the historical returns of the portfolio along with a wealth of data (e.g., CAGR, standard deviation, worst drawdown). You can also evaluate portfolios using asset classes rather than specific investments.

Another feature I use is its Monte Carlo simulation. It’s particularly useful for modeling retirement spending scenarios, like the 4% Rule.

Here’s a video guide to Portfolio Visualizer.

FI Calc App

FI Calc is a free tool that models retirement spending based on a specific drawdown strategy. You can easily set your years in retirement, nest egg balance, first-year spending, and select one of several drawdown strategies. The tool also allows you to model other retirement income and one-time large expenditures.

The results, based on historical data, show by year (from 1926 to the present) whether your money would have lasted through retirement. Importantly, it also shows those years when you would have almost run out of money.

Morningstar

Morningstar is arguably the best source of information on stocks, mutual funds and ETFs. Enter a ticker and Morningstar returns a wealth of information including a fund’s expense ratio, investing style, historical performance and volatility, and top investments.

Morningstar Investor is its new portfolio tracking tool. I’m still testing it, but my initial impression is that it is a step in the right direction but still needs a lot of work.

Tiller Money

Tiller Money combines an automated budgeting app with the power of a spreadsheet. Once you connect your bank and credit card accounts to Tiller, it downloads your transaction data and balances into either Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. From there you can evaluate and categorize your spending.

1Password

A password manager is a must. It enables you to use complex, lengthy passwords without have to remember them. I used LastPass for years, but after its data breach issues, I switched to 1Password. It’s very easy to use, works on all my devices, and I can share passwords with anybody I choose without actually revealing the password to them.