Quick Summary
Empower inherited many Mint users, but it was built for a different purpose. We look at what works, what is missing, and what alternatives exist for former Mint users.
When Mint shut down, millions of users needed to find a new home for their financial data. Empower (formerly Personal Capital) was one of the most recommended alternatives. It is free, it aggregates accounts, and it tracks net worth.
But here is the honest question that many former Mint users have been asking: does Empower actually replace what Mint did?
The short answer is - partially. Empower is excellent at some things Mint never did well, but it is missing core features that Mint users relied on daily.
What Empower Does Well
Investment Tracking
This is Empower’s real strength and where it goes far beyond what Mint ever offered. Portfolio allocation analysis, fee detection, performance tracking, and investment checkups are all included in the free tier. For anyone with investment accounts, these tools are genuinely valuable.
Net Worth Tracking
Empower provides a clean, historical view of your net worth across all connected accounts. The dashboard shows how your net worth has changed over time, broken down by account type. This is one of its most popular features and works reliably.
Retirement Planning
The retirement planner runs Monte Carlo simulations using your actual account data. You can adjust assumptions about retirement age, spending, Social Security, and investment returns to see how different scenarios play out. For a free tool, it is remarkably detailed.
Account Aggregation
Empower connects to a wide range of financial institutions and shows all your accounts in one place. Balances update automatically, and the dashboard gives you a consolidated view of your financial picture.
Where Empower Falls Short for Mint Users
Budgeting
This is the biggest gap. Mint was primarily a budgeting tool - users could set category budgets, track spending against those budgets, and get alerts when they were overspending. Empower has a spending tracker that categorizes transactions and allows setting basic budget targets, but it is minimal compared to what Mint offered.
The transaction categorization is not as refined, the budget interface feels secondary, and there are no features like bill tracking or spending alerts that Mint users depended on. For people who primarily used Mint for budgeting, Empower feels incomplete.
Bill Tracking
Mint tracked upcoming bills and warned you about due dates. Empower does not have a dedicated bill tracking feature. This was a small but useful part of the Mint experience that former users miss.
Credit Score
Mint provided free credit score tracking. Empower does not. Credit Karma (which received Mint’s official migration) does handle this, but it means using yet another tool.
The Advisory Upselling
Empower is a wealth management company. The free tools exist to attract potential advisory clients. This means:
- Periodic emails about their advisory services
- In-app prompts to speak with an advisor
- Phone calls from their advisory team (these can be opted out of, but the initial contact catches people off guard)
Mint had ads, which were annoying in their own way. But the sales approach from Empower feels different - more personal and more persistent. Some users do not mind. Others find it uncomfortable.
What Former Mint Users Actually Need
Most Mint users relied on a few core capabilities:
- Seeing all accounts in one place - Empower handles this well
- Tracking spending by category - Empower handles this partially
- Setting and tracking budgets - Empower handles this poorly
- Getting alerts about bills and overspending - Empower does not handle this
- Credit score monitoring - Empower does not handle this
If budgeting was your primary Mint use case, Empower alone is not a sufficient replacement. You would need to pair it with a dedicated budgeting tool.
Alternatives Worth Considering
Monarch Money ($99/year) is arguably the closest all-in-one replacement for Mint. It combines budgeting, account aggregation, net worth tracking, and investment views in one platform. The subscription cost is the main barrier.
YNAB ($99/year) is a strong budgeting app but focuses exclusively on budgeting - no investment tracking or net worth (beyond basic account totals).
Copilot is another option for iOS users, offering a clean interface with transaction tracking, budgeting, and investment views.
The Spreadsheet Approach
For former Mint users who are tired of switching between apps and want something more stable, spreadsheets offer a different kind of reliability. They do not depend on any company staying in business or maintaining a free tier.
The Net Worth Tracker handles the asset and liability tracking that Empower does well, but with your data staying entirely in your own Google account. The Financial Planning Template goes further - combining net worth tracking with income planning, expense projections, and long-term financial modeling.
Both are one-time purchases that work in Google Sheets. No subscriptions, no upselling, no risk of another app shutting down.
Bottom Line
Empower is a good tool that happens to be a mediocre Mint replacement. Its strengths - investment tracking, retirement planning, net worth - were never Mint’s focus. Its weaknesses - budgeting, bill tracking, spending management - were exactly what Mint users valued most.
If you primarily used Mint for investment visibility and net worth tracking, Empower works well. If you primarily used Mint for budgeting, Empower will likely leave you looking for something else.
Related templates:
- Net Worth Tracker - Track assets and liabilities over time
- Financial Planning Template - Comprehensive financial planning