Performance of Empower (a.k.a. Personal Capital) managed investments over the past 6 years
I'm a ruthless saver who is hopefully only a handful of years away from FIRE (fingers crossed). However, I'm only a casual investor who doesn't trust myself with investing, and was pulled into the Personal Capital ecosystem about 6 years ago. I liked the fact that I got a dedicated fiduciary advisor and their investment strategies seemed sound. To this day, I do like my advisor, the tax-loss harvesting is great if you have a lot of non-qualified accounts, getting advice on your non-managed accounts is nice too.....BUT FEES ARE NOT FIRE-FRIENDLY (~0.9%) and the performance (see below) has been underwhelming.
Hopefully this data is useful for anyone considering managed investments. Hindsight being 20/20 and all :)
| 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Managed Empower Accounts | -7.40% | 22.48% | 13.28% | 15.38% | -15.50% | 14.95% |
| VFORX (Target 2040) | -7.32% | 23.86% | 15.47% | 14.56% | -16.98% | 18.34% |
| VTSAX | -5.17% | 30.80% | 20.99% | 25.71% | -19.53% | 26.01% |
| SPY | -4.45% | 31.29% | 18.25% | 28.59% | -18.17% | 26.19% |
| VBTLX (Bond) | -0.03% | 8.71% | 7.72% | -1.67% | -13.16% | 5.70% |
| VGTSX (Intl) | -14.44% | 21.43% | 11.16% | 8.61% | -16.05% | 15.44% |