(Update 11/8/22: 3.35% now)
Personal Capital has launched Personal Capital Cash, a new FDIC account offering 2.3% APY and no monthly fees or minimums. Readers of this site might be familiar with Personal Capital as they previously offered a $100 Amazon gift card for signing up for an investment account.
This Personal Capital account isn’t as simple as it looks as Personal Capital doesn’t actually hold the funds, basically the funds are swept to partner banks where they earn a variable rate of interest and are eligible for FDIC insurance. Personally I find these sort of products/agreements confusing and would instead suggest just sticking to a high yield savings account. The advantage to this personal capital product is that you can have unlimited transactions (e.g withdrawals/deposits) whereas a traditional savings product is limited to six per month.
3.35% effective Nov 8th 2022 per email I received
Weak as hell now at 1.55%
lowered to 1.55%
I will wait for the sign up bonus.
I really love Personal Capital for managing my accounts and finances but not sure why anyone would use this when it’s essentially the same thing as Wealthfront but earns less.
I use and like personal capital, but will pass on this. Already have wealthfront and western state bank mm accounts at 2.5% and purepoint at 2.35%.
How is this better/different than Wealthfront, which is offering 2.51% up to 1MM?
Seems very similar. I note both require you to initiate push and pull transfers there, but you can still set up auto pay for cc bills right?
I currently use CapOne as my main account for that but the rates aren’t competitive.
Wealthfront doesn’t have bill pay yet. Neither does personal capital cash I think.
What about autopay from the credit card side?
No because they don’t give you an ACH number, etc. That also means no Paypal, Venmo, etc.
Would also be good to point out that personal capital advisory customers get 2.35% interest rather than the standard 2.3%. As one of those customers, i think this is actually much better than you make it out to be above when you consider now I can have my savings in one spot with a mostly market leading interest rate rather than separate banks, logins, etc.
Close enough if you don’t want to deal with more accounts, but FYI, Northern Bank Direct has reopened their 2.5% MMA for new applicants for a limited time, with a rate guarantee through the end of 2019 now.
If you’re just talking about savings accounts, there are other savings accounts with higher rates, with FDIC insurance up to $250,000. So Personal Capital Cash only seems beneficial if your savings balance is higher than that (up to $1,250,000) or if you need more than 6 withdrawals per month (with a drawback that you can’t initiate ACH transfers from outside).
If you mean savings + brokerage investments at the same place, then yeah, keeping everything in one place could be convenient. Though, in other brokerage accounts you could keep “savings” in a money market fund with a higher rate (also keep in mind state tax exemptions); that’s less convenient than a regular savings account, though not a lot different than Personal Capital Cash that requires you to initiate all transfers at their site.
The biggest question is do they allow CC funding, and if so, how much. 😉