FlashFi vs Empower (Personal Capital): Which Portfolio Tracker Works for Expats?

Disclosure: FlashFi is a competitor to the products mentioned.

Disclosure: FlashFi is a competitor. This is our honest assessment based on publicly available information.

TL;DR¶

Choose Empower if you live in the US, have all your accounts at US institutions, and want free automated account aggregation with a best-in-class retirement planner.

Choose FlashFi if you live abroad, hold assets in multiple currencies, or need a portfolio tracker that works regardless of which country you call home.

Empower is one of the best free financial dashboards available — for Americans living in America. The moment you move abroad or start investing internationally, it falls apart. FlashFi is built from the ground up for people whose finances cross borders.

Quick Comparison¶

What Is Empower?¶

Empower, formerly known as Personal Capital, is a financial services company that offers two distinct products: a free personal finance dashboard and a paid wealth management advisory service.

The free dashboard is the product most people know. It connects to your US bank accounts, brokerages, retirement plans, credit cards, and loans via Plaid, then gives you a consolidated view of your net worth, spending, and investments. On top of that, it offers genuinely powerful tools — a retirement planner that runs Monte Carlo simulations across thousands of scenarios, an investment checkup that analyzes your asset allocation, and a fee analyzer that surfaces hidden costs in your mutual funds and 401(k) plans.

The business model is straightforward: the free dashboard builds trust and surfaces users who might benefit from professional wealth management. Empower’s advisory service requires a minimum of $100,000 in investable assets and charges 0.89% AUM for the first million. At higher tiers ($1M+), fees drop to 0.79% and continue declining to 0.49% above $10M. Users of the free dashboard will receive calls from Empower’s advisory team — this is the tradeoff for a genuinely excellent free product.

What Is FlashFi?¶

FlashFi is a multi-currency portfolio tracker built for digital nomads, expats, and international investors. It tracks stocks, ETFs, crypto, cash accounts, and debt across any currency, converting everything to your chosen home currency with real-time exchange rates.

FlashFi uses manual entry rather than automated bank connections. You add your holdings, and FlashFi pulls live market prices and FX rates to keep your portfolio values current. Two paid tiers: Operator at $12/month for core tracking, and Apex at $39/month for advanced analytics.

Where Empower Wins¶

Let’s be honest — if you fit Empower’s target user profile, their free dashboard is hard to beat.

The Retirement Planner Is Best-in-Class¶

Empower’s retirement planner is widely regarded as one of the best free tools available for retirement forecasting. It runs Monte Carlo simulations across more than 5,000 market scenarios, incorporating your current savings, expected Social Security benefits, planned contributions, and spending goals. For anyone planning a US-based retirement, this tool alone is worth signing up for.

FlashFi does not offer retirement planning tools. If that is a core need, Empower has a clear advantage.

Automatic Account Aggregation¶

Empower connects to your accounts via Plaid and pulls in balances, transactions, and holdings automatically. New 401(k) contribution? It shows up. Dividend reinvested? Already reflected. This is genuinely easier than manual entry, and for someone with six or seven US accounts, the time savings compound.

FlashFi requires you to manually add holdings and update non-market positions (like cash accounts). Automated aggregation is more convenient — there is no way around that.

The Fee Analyzer Saves Real Money¶

Empower’s fee analyzer scans your investment accounts and surfaces the expense ratios you are actually paying across all your funds. Many people discover they are paying 0.5% to 1% in hidden fees they never noticed. This single tool can save thousands of dollars over a career by prompting a switch to lower-cost index funds.

FlashFi does not currently offer fee analysis.

Investment Checkup and Asset Allocation¶

The investment checkup compares your current asset allocation against a target allocation based on your age and risk profile. It shows you where you are over- or under-allocated across US stocks, international stocks, bonds, and alternatives. For US-based portfolios, this is a practical tool that helps maintain discipline.

It Is Free¶

The dashboard costs nothing. For a US-based investor who wants a consolidated view of their accounts with powerful analytical tools, the price-to-value ratio is effectively infinite. You cannot compete with free if the tool does what you need.

Where FlashFi Wins¶

Multi-Currency Support That Actually Works¶

This is the fundamental gap. Empower displays everything in USD and only connects to US financial institutions. If you hold a brokerage account in the UK denominated in GBP, a savings account in Singapore in SGD, and crypto purchased in EUR, Empower simply cannot track them.

FlashFi supports any currency. You set a home currency — USD, EUR, GBP, THB, whatever you choose — and every holding and account is converted in real time using live forex rates. Your net worth reflects actual exchange rate movements. If the dollar weakens against the euro, your EUR-denominated assets increase in value in USD terms, and you see that reflected immediately.

Works From Anywhere in the World¶

Empower only supports US-based financial institutions connected through Plaid. If you are a US expat who moved to Portugal, you can still see your old Fidelity IRA — but your Portuguese bank account, your European brokerage, and your local pension are invisible. Over time, as more of your financial life moves overseas, Empower shows you less and less of the picture.

FlashFi uses manual entry, which means it works regardless of which country your accounts are in. Interactive Brokers in Ireland, a Wise multi-currency account, a Thai bank account, a New Zealand KiwiSaver — all trackable, all converted to your home currency.

Designed for the Expat Financial Reality¶

Digital nomads and expats have financial situations that US-centric tools were not designed for. You might earn in USD but spend in THB. You might have a retirement account in your home country and a brokerage in your country of residence. You might hold cash in three currencies as a hedge against any single currency weakening.

FlashFi was built for this reality. The entire data model assumes multi-currency from the start, not as an afterthought.

No Advisory Upsell¶

Empower’s free dashboard comes with sales calls from their wealth management team. Multiple users report receiving calls within days of signing up. You can ask them to stop, and they generally respect the request, but the business model is fundamentally about funneling dashboard users into advisory clients.

FlashFi is a subscription product. You pay $12/month or $39/month and that is the entire business relationship. No upsells, no advisory pitches, no phone calls.

Privacy by Design¶

Empower requires read access to all of your financial accounts via Plaid — bank balances, transaction history, investment positions. That data is used to provide the dashboard experience, but it also informs their advisory targeting.

FlashFi uses manual entry. You enter what you choose to enter. No bank credentials are shared, no transaction history is scraped. You control what the system knows about you.

Who Should Choose Empower¶

Empower is the right choice if:

• You live in the United States and plan to stay there
• All of your financial accounts are at US institutions
• You want automatic account aggregation (minimal manual work)
• You value retirement planning tools and investment analysis
• You want a free product and can tolerate occasional advisory sales calls
• You are planning for a traditional US-based retirement

Empower is genuinely excellent at what it does. For a US-based investor with a 401(k), an IRA, a couple of bank accounts, and a brokerage account — all at American institutions — there is no reason to pay for another tool. The free dashboard gives you more than most paid alternatives.

Who Should Choose FlashFi¶

FlashFi is the right choice if:

• You live outside the US, or you move between countries
• You hold assets in multiple currencies
• You have accounts at non-US financial institutions
• You are a US expat whose financial life has partially or fully moved overseas
• You want a complete picture of your global net worth in one place
• You prefer not to share bank credentials with a third party
• You value a clean subscription model with no advisory upsells

The manual entry tradeoff is real — FlashFi requires more hands-on work than Empower’s automatic aggregation. But for international investors, the alternative to manual entry is not automatic entry — it is no tracking at all, because tools like Empower simply do not support your accounts.

The Expat Scenario¶

Here is a concrete example. Say you are a US citizen who moved to Lisbon two years ago. Your financial picture:

• Fidelity 401(k) from your old employer ($180K, USD)
• Schwab brokerage account ($45K, USD)
• Banco BPI checking account (EUR)
• Interactive Brokers EU account with European ETFs (EUR)
• Wise multi-currency account (USD, EUR, GBP)
• Crypto on Kraken (purchased in EUR)

With Empower: You see the Fidelity 401(k) and Schwab brokerage. Everything else is invisible. You have a partial view that becomes less representative of your actual net worth every month.

With FlashFi: You track everything. Each holding in its native currency, each account balance updated, the complete picture converted to whichever currency you consider home. When the EUR/USD rate moves, you see the impact on your net worth in real time.

Can You Use Both?¶

Yes, and this is a pragmatic approach for US expats who still maintain stateside accounts. Use Empower’s free dashboard to monitor your US retirement accounts and take advantage of the retirement planner and fee analyzer. Use FlashFi to track your global portfolio — including those same US accounts alongside your international holdings — so you have a single, complete view of your net worth across all currencies.

The Bottom Line¶

Empower is an outstanding free tool for US-based investors. The retirement planner, fee analyzer, and investment checkup are genuinely best-in-class, and the automatic account aggregation via Plaid is a real convenience advantage.

But Empower was built for a world where your financial life exists entirely within the US banking system. If your life does not fit that assumption — if you live abroad, invest internationally, earn or spend in multiple currencies — Empower gives you an incomplete picture at best and is unusable at worst.

FlashFi costs money where Empower is free. That is a real tradeoff. What you get for that cost is a tool that works wherever you are, in whatever currencies you use, without requiring you to hand over your bank credentials. For the growing number of people whose finances cross borders, that is worth paying for.

Try FlashFi — Start Tracking

By David Brougham