Gyroscopic Investing

I've used CreditKarma in the past but have found that I have basically no need for credit anymore so I've kind of forgotten about it. Ironically, every time I log back in, it seems that my score has risen!

Pointedstick wrote: I've used CreditKarma in the past but have found that I have basically no need for credit anymore so I've kind of forgotten about it. Ironically, every time I log back in, it seems that my score has risen!

Amazing what happens when you don't buy stuff :-)

It's about creating your own DIY identity theft monitoring service, rather than knowing what your credit score is.  I would venture to guess that the vast majority of people on this forum have scores above 760 and thus no real need to worry about that specific #.

Does Fidelity Full View (which uses Yodlee) get the portfolio holdings of your mutual funds and ETF's to show you your aggregate net asset allocation?

EDIT: No, they don't.  Useless.

as long as it is held by fidelity full view grabs it in and includes it when showing the allocations .

it also includes my vanguard account in full view  totals but does not show it in the allocations. it does show it though when you run reports like the fidelity retirement income planner . 

i have all credit cards and bank accounts linked too so i get one grand total .  the expense tracker will follow money in and out from the banks too

mathjak107 wrote: as long as it is held by fidelity full view grabs it in and includes it when showing the allocations .

it also includes my vanguard account in full view  totals but does not show it in the allocations. it does show it though when you run reports like the fidelity retirement income planner . 

i have all credit cards and bank accounts linked too so i get one grand total .  the expense tracker will follow money in and out from the banks too

Why did you never use Quicken?  Or did you?

never used anything but full view . never really needed to

mathjak107 wrote: never used anything but full view . never really needed to

So you never cared about your aggregate asset allocation?  It was 100% into the Growth fund all the way?  Brass balls!

During my accumulation years it was growth model for decades.
Never rebalanced , only periodic swaps in some funds.


I know what my allocations are now because i only have 10% in a vanguard bond fund.  All the rest is in fidelity so i can see the allocation for the most part.

Just removed all my accounts from PC.  I'm tired of login errors whenever something screws up in the chain, the notices from the affected financial institution and the risk of the account being locked out and having to go through the annoying procedure to unlock it over the phone.  It's Quicken for a few more years, I fear.  Most of the login errors are on the accounts that Quicken doesn't support anyway!

I also, honestly, don't trust any of these companies to have top notch security for all these account logins not to be compromised.  It's only a matter of time before one of the these finance management providers or data aggregators such as Yodlee are hacked.

MachineGhost wrote: Just removed all my accounts from PC.  I'm tired of login errors whenever something screws up in the chain, the notices from the affected financial institution and the risk of the account being locked out and having to go through the annoying procedure to unlock it over the phone.  It's Quicken for a few more years, I fear.  Most of the login errors are on the accounts that Quicken doesn't support anyway!

I also, honestly, don't trust any of these companies to have top notch security for all these account logins not to be compromised.  It's only a matter of time before one of the these finance management providers or data aggregators such as Yodlee are hacked.

I refused to give my login creds to any third party providers, and my main brokerage account uses an electronic token with a rolling login code.

MachineGhost wrote: Run, don't walk, to http://www.personalcapital.com/ right away!!!  Just ignore the advisory junx.

Their online account support is impressive.

Perhaps endorse something only after you've used it for a little while?

Jack Jones wrote: Perhaps endorse something only after you've used it for a little while?

I went back to using PC because it has a best of breed retirement planner, except for maybe Fidelity which I'm still waiting for them to fix.

Anyway, the latest version of Quicken Premier 2016 is out at 40% off and only adds centralized bill support for a marginal value added.  Neat but not worth an overpriced $65.  As usual, nothing about the bugs that have been endemic since the 2007 version (which feels like when they sent all the programming offshore).  2015 was particularly bad for some people; I only have to task kill it when forcing an account reset and it locks up.  However, Quicken takes a few days to post bill payments (do they use CheckFree?), so a faster alternative is: https://www.prismmoney.com/

I've used Quicken, Microsoft Money, Morningstar, Google Finance, and Fidelity Full View in the past. In my opinion the latter is the best of the bunch if you are a Fidelity customer. I quit using it recently only because I worry about providing them with the  logon credentials to all my accounts. They say it is safe and I'm sure it is - until it's not. I've seen my own company suffer more than one multi-million dollar hack so I'm growing more paranoid in my old age.

I just recently got tired of entering all my data into a self-designed spreadsheet so I also took a look at Personal Portfolio Manager and Personal Capital. PPM doesn't access your online accounts at all and struck me as an obsolete piece of software. Personal Capital was interesting but had the same safety concern as Full View. SigFig was another that I looked at.

Ultimately I decided to stick with my spreadsheet and not just for the safety factor. Being able to get a quick and easy snapshot of your portfolio leads to the temptation to look more often, whereas having to enter all the data manually provides the lazy investor like me with good motivation not to look too often.

And also, if any of the tools mentioned above broke your investments into a nice PP-friendly chart, I'm not aware of it. Personal Capital seemed to show only percentage of bonds making no differentiation between long and short term. And I saw no way to enter gold holdings. It is possible I didn't play with it long enough however.

Fred wrote: And also, if any of the tools mentioned above broke your investments into a nice PP-friendly chart, I'm not aware of it. Personal Capital seemed to show only percentage of bonds making no differentiation between long and short term. And I saw no way to enter gold holdings. It is possible I didn't play with it long enough however.

You can add manual accounts with cash or stock tickers.  I had to do that with the online accounts with access errors.