When I first heard of Wealthica, I was quite intrigued. I signed up in 2017 for free, so here is my in-depth Wealthica review.
In this Ultimate Wealthica review post, I’ll go over:
- What Wealthica is (and why it’s one of the best Mint alternatives in Canada)
- A Q&A with the CEO of Wealthica
- Is Wealthica free?
- How Wealthica tracks your net worth
- Is Wealthica safe?
- What the Wealthica app looks like (Wealthica Add Ons)
- The Google Sheet Export Add-On and whether the cost is worth it
- Pros and Cons of Wealthica
Personal Capital of Canada
All over the personal finance blogosphere, you read about the virtues of Personal Capital (perhaps mainly because of the generous affiliate link, but also because it looks pretty awesome and comprehensive). Wealthica is basically like Personal Capital… but in Canada.
I didn’t sign up for Personal Capital because it is only available for individuals living in the US with US accounts– it’s not available for Canadians, to my knowledge. Then I found Wealthica.
Updated: July 2022
Currently, I track my net worth on a monthly basis in a little notebook (well for the past 20+ years I’ve been doing the same thing). It’s a great way to keep track of financial health so you can compare it to benchmarks like the average savings by age in Canada. It’s a little archaic, yes, but I’m not one for investment tracking spreadsheets because I can’t navigate my way through Excel.
I have also been sharing my net worth online for the past 11 years. One day when I reach financial independence and have ample time on my hands, I will take a class on how to use Excel, so in the meantime, investment tracking software and free online stock portfolio tracker it is.
Since I was curious, I signed up for Wealthica and the rest is history. Here’s my Wealthica review:
What is Wealthica?
As mentioned, Wealthica is considered the Personal Capital of Canada and it is very similar to Mint in a way, but for your investments and not day-to-day budgeting and spending. Wealthica a great Mint alternative in Canada for tracking your net worth and is more investment focused.
Here’s a comparison of Wealthica vs Mint.
With Wealthica, you can see all your investments in one place. Wealthica is the ultimate portfolio analysis tool in Canada because you can see your investment portfolio as a whole, especially if you have investments with different financial institutions and brokerages.
Wealthica was created in 2015 and is based out of Montreal, Quebec (this further adds to my theory that the Quebecois are pretty brilliant because they have poutine, SNC-Lavalin, and Dollarama).
As of March 2022, Wealthica is tracking over $18 Billion in aggregated investments. Tracking $18 billion of net worth is pretty impressive, especially for Canada (where we don’t have as much GDP and population compared to the United States)!
Who owns Wealthica? Wealthica was co-founded by Simon Boulet, Eric Chouinard, and Martin Leclair in 2015 because they wanted to have something similar to Mint.com but for their investments.
This is because they all identified that they had investments spread across 10 different institutions but they couldn’t track their performance and fees easily enough.
Wealthica’s co-founders also own and manage Stockchase, which helps Canadian investors track what the experts say about stocks (e.g. BNN Market call) that are on their watch list and portfolio, and then getting a sense of how companies are viewed by investing professionals. Here’s my review of Stockchase Premium.
Q&A with CEO Simon Boulet
As part of this Wealthica review, I did an interview with the CEO and co-founder of Wealthica, Simon Boulet in January 2020 and May 2021. I had some good (and some were burning questions) questions for him after being a user of Wealthica for a few years now.
After learning even more about Wealthica, I am even more fond of this start up and free financial tool. Hope you enjoy this Q&A as much as I did! Questions I ask Simon are in BOLD.
How did you come up with Wealthica?
My partners and I, Eric Chouinard and Martin Leclair, started Wealthica in early 2015. After selling our previous business back in 2013, we took some time off after the acquisition and in December 2014 we sat down together for coffee. The three of us realized we had investments spread across 10 different institutions and no way to get a complete view of our investments and to track our performance and fees. Eric initially came up with the idea that we should build something similar to Mint but for Canadian investments.
I wrote the first line of code for Wealthica in May 2015.
What is Wealthica?
Wealthica is a free online tool that allows investors to see all their investments in a single dashboard. We connect to your financial institutions every day and pull your account balances, holdings and transactions. Wealthica is the largest financial aggregator in Canada and the only aggregator specialized in Canadian investment accounts. Our proprietary aggregation technology allows connecting and importing data from 80+ Canadian financial institutions and investment portals.
How does Wealthica make money? Is it really the Personal Capital of Canada?
Currently we make most of our money licensing our software to advisors and to other software companies. We have a white labeled version of Wealthica that allows advisors and family offices to have a customized version of Wealthica for their clients. We’re also licensing our API to other FinTech companies to add our proprietary account aggregation technology to their own software.
Earlier this year we launched paid features on Wealthica, and we’re planning to start offering a Wealthica Premium subscription that would include additional features.
Wealthica is more of a technology company, more like Mint or Quickbooks Online. Personal Capital is more of a financial company; they are a robo-advisor. They have a dashboard that is similar to Wealthica “The Personal Capital of Canada”, but they make their money out of their financial services. Wealthica does not provide financial services or financial advice. Also Personal Capital is focused on the U.S. market and doesn’t work very well with Canadian financial institutions.
Personal Capital is a wealth manager who offers aggregation. Wealthica is an independent platform helping you achieve your financial goals.
Does Wealthica sell financial information to institutions?
We do not sell any of our user’s financial or personal information. When using Wealthica, you are giving us consent to connect to your financial institutions and to collect your data, but you are not granting us any right to your data. Your data remain yours, and if you decide to close your account with Wealthica, all your data is deleted from our servers.
We may use anonymized data for market research or analytical purposes. In the future we may recommend products based on your data, but without divulging any of your personal information to third parties without your consent.
What is your Wealthica review? What’s your favourite part of the technology?
I’m particularly proud of our recent partnership with Wealthscope, a Toronto-based startup that provides a portfolio analysis add-on in Wealthica.
The add-ons in Wealthica allow anyone with a basic knowledge of programming to extend Wealthica with their own reports or features. If you’re a developer and interested in personal finances you should look at the Wealthica.js library that is available for free on GitHub.
My favorite feature of the new version of Wealthica is without a doubt the Premium version of the Holdings section which now provides live quotes.
Related: How Much Should I Have saved by 40?
What’s next for Wealthica?
We’re working on bringing full support for cryptocurrencies to Wealthica. You will be able to automatically import your data from all the most popular crypto exchanges, as well as syncing your wallets. The Holdings section will be updated to provide live quotes for every cryptocurrencies that exis
How many users does Wealthica have right now?
We smashed our initial $10B goal in February 2021. Now we have our eyes on $100B. Our US expansion is underway and we are going to officially launch in the US later this year. Wealthica already has support for some of the most popular US institutions such as TD Ameritrade, Chase, Shwab, Robinhood, etc. and we already have over a hundred users using those connections today.
Can you explain how ‘API’ works in layman’s terms?
Our API is the technology that allows developers to build software using our aggregation technology. To take an oil and gas analogy, think of the API as the pipelines that transport your financial data from your financial institutions (the wells) to the end applications (the gas station). With your authorization, our platform connects to your financial institutions and processes your data and makes it available to applications you authorize through our API. The main application is our own Dashboard, but we are also making our API available to other software companies.
Where Can you See Money Weighted Returns?
The main chart at the top of Wealthica shows you your net worth history over time including any contributions you made.
What is the most useful feature that Wealthica users tell you about?
In general I think users are happy to finally have all their accounts under a single platform. The feedback I get the most is how simple it is to use Wealthica. People are surprised how easy it is to connect their institutions. nAlso, those who are familiar with other platforms like Mint or Personal Capital are surprised by the quality of the data we retrieve from their financial institutions. I guess that’s why we are often called Personal Capital of Canada.
Is Wealthica safe?
Being a developer myself, it was extremely important for me that we address security from day one on Wealthica. Security, confidentiality and compliance are integrated since day one and are an ongoing process. We have developed a robust architecture using the best security practices and available technologies. The entire platform is encrypted and none of our employees have access to the credentials our users entrust us with.
In term of privacy, we comply with the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
We’ve hired an external security firm to conduct regular security tests of our systems, and we’re looking at conducting an external security audit of our processes in 2020.
Who Are You Most PRoud Of?
In your recent interview with the Quebec magazine Finance and Investment, you mentioned that your dad was an entrepreneur and your mother went back to learn how to be a programmer after working in the insurance industry. They must be so proud of you for creating something so useful for so many Canadians, so much so, that we call it the Personal Capital of Canada.
I’m extremely proud of my parents. They taught me critical thinking and to have confidence in myself and in my abilities, two important things that I try to teach my own kids now.
My mom went back to school in her 40s to become a programmer after a career in the insurance industry. And around the same time my father was working for Bell and we had a powerful computer at home with early access to the Internet. This sparked my passion for computers, programming and the internet at a young age.
Haha, that’s an interesting question. Back then I had a girlfriend who lived about 6 hours drive from my place. A big part of that money went in bus fares and other expenses to spend time together. Of course I was still a teenager at the time and made some questionable expenses too, like buying expensive electronics and computer parts. The rest was invested a few years later when I started my web hosting company.
Who Would YOu Have Lunch with Alive Or Dead?
Steve Wozniak. Wozniak cofounded Apple with Steve Jobs. Steve Wozniak was the tech guy, or ‘the geek’, behind Apple.
I don’t like the depiction that some TV shows try to portray of entrepreneurs, where you have to have good charisma and a high level of confidence in front of a camera or while on a stage.
I’m not comfortable pitching Wealthica in front of a large audience. I don’t like pitching Wealthica to Venture Capitalists or to investors.
I’m a tech person, and what I enjoy and I’m good at is using technology to build a product that makes a difference in people’s lives. I enjoy spending time with our developers, writing code and fixing bugs.
Successful entrepreneurs are those who know their strengths and weaknesses, and who know how to assemble a strong complementary team.
I kinda see myself as the Steve Wozniak of Wealthica in that sense.
How Much Does Wealthica Cost?
Wealthica, or the Personal Capital of Canada, is free to use. I obviously wouldn’t sign up for Wealthica if it wasn’t free!
Wealthica recently introduced a paid option called Wealthica Premium.
There are no Wealthica fees to track your investment portfolio, but there are some add-ons that you can pay for, for example, the Wealthica Google Sheets Add-On. It is $5.99 a month.
Another Add-On is the Wealthscope Add-On and it is $15.95/month.
This is what you can get with Wealthica Premium.
Wealthica Premium is $11.99 per month and if you subscribe to an annual plan (e.g. pay for the whole year upfront) you can get a 25% discount as an early adopter of Wealthica Premium.
The features of Wealthica Premium includes Export to Google Spreadsheet (which is normally $5.99/month), unlimited portfolios, and up-to-date stock prices.
How Wealthica Works To Track Your Net Worth
In this Wealthica review, we will look at how Wealthica actually tracks your net worth?
Similar to Personal Capital of Canada, Wealthica aggregates your data so that you can see all your investments in one place, on the investment dashboard. This would be especially relevant if you have multiple investment portfolios.
For example, I had multiple investments at one point, including TD e-series, Questrade, and BMO Investorline.
Wealthica also consolidates within investment brokerages. In Questrade, I have a TFSA, an RRSP, and a non-registered account. With Wealthica, it shows me the total amount of NA. TO (National Bank) that I own, even though the amount I have invested in National Bank is split between a few different accounts in Questrade (such as my TFSA and my non-registered account).
Wealthica has over 90+ banking and investment institutions that you can add to your net worth tracker to keep track of your money. These automatically sync your account holdings and transactions with Wealthica.
Here are some of the Canadian banking and investing institutions that are supported in Wealthica. Many of them you can get up to $2000 cash back for signing up for a new online brokerage account promotion or free trading commissions for a year.
You can also add bank accounts and not just investment brokerages. Now you can put that bank account you signed up for a new iPad or $300 cash to good use.
Related: How to Open, Invest, and Rebalance a TD e-series Portfolio
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read genymoney.ca’s disclaimer for further information.
Is Wealthica Secure And Safe to Use?
No Wealthica review is complete without looking at the safety of the “Personal Capital of Canada”.
As mentioned by Simon Boulet himself in the Q&A, Wealthica security is a priority and they use bank level security. Of course, whether Wealthica is safe was the first question that popped into my mind when I signed up for Wealthica and wrote this Wealthica review. It’s similar to Mint (a personal finance tracker, mainly for your bank accounts and credit cards). Wealthica is secure…Wealthica is read-only and you cannot actually move any money.
Wealthica also say they never sell, publish, or share your contact information or identifiable personal information to third parties.
Wealthica also use Amazon web services for their hosting infrastructure. They ask for API authorization from accounts and with other accounts (like for example Questrade), there is API access.
What does API stand for? API stands for Application Programming Interface. I’m not an IT professional and when I first logged into Wealthica and added Questrade, my reaction was like “how did they do that!?” and admittedly got a bit startled about the whole thing.
API access involves linking accounts and you don’t have to share your account credentials. API Access is available for Questrade, Interactive Brokers, and Wealthsimple account holders.
These are the Canadian investment brokerages that currently have API access with Wealthica:
- Wealthsimple and Wealthsimple Trade
- Interactive Brokers
- Questrade
- CI Direct Investing
Related: Step-By-Step Guide on How to Invest your TFSA with Questrade
What’s New About The New Wealthica V2?
Well a few things, Wealthica “Personal Capital of Canada” introduced Wealthica Premium with version 2.
Also, the colour has changed to a more of a dark blue colour from purple.
At first I didn’t like it but the colour is growing on me.
For the desk top version, the Add-Ons are now called Power Ups and they are still the same (great to use and makes Wealthica an out of this world net worth and investment portfolio tracking experience).
They also added logos to the holdings, and you can click on the holding and you’ll see a summary of analysts opinions from Stockchase, such as “Bullish” and “Bearish” etc.
Wealthica V2 is great and the same functionality is still there, it just looks more sleek now!
Wealthica Power-Ups
As mentioned, Wealthica has some add-ons that you can add for free, and some add ons that you can pay for. These were changed to “Power Ups” instead of being called Add-Ons with Version 2.
The free Power Ups (or add-ons) are:
- Wealthica History
- Income Report (I use this regularly to calculate my dividends earned helpful to estimate taxes on my dividends in Canada)
- Cryptocurrencies Widget
- Realized Gains Report (this is useful too!)
- Coin Tracking (Bitcoin tracking)
- Performance Report (this one is addictive to use, you can track you portfolio performance compared to any stock or ETF or index, such as the S&P500)
- Budget Wizard
- Fees Report (This one is great so you can see how much in commissions you have paid)
- Balance Sheet Report (For if you include your real estate assets or liabilities)
- Stockchase Widget
- Developer Add-On (if you have the skills to modify Wealthica to suit your needs)
- Passiv Lite (this is a third party power up and is free, Passiv Elite is also free for Questrade users for the first year)
Here’s the investment performance Power Up (it’s free), here you can see how your portfolio does compared to an index or an ETF or a stock of your choosing. As you can see in the top bar, you can toggle the time period you want to look at, like toggle it to January 1 if you want to look at your YTD performance. My performance is the light blue, the green is the S&P500 and the purple is the S&P/TSX.
The Power Ups that have a monthly cost are:
- Wealthica Premium ($11.99/month)
- Google Sheets Export ($5.99/month)
- Microsoft Excel Export ($5.99/month)
- Wealthscope ($15.95/month) this is a third party power up
Wealthica App
In this Wealthica review, I’ll also look at the Wealthica App (the new V2 version). The Wealthica App is sleek, but it doesn’t have the add-ons and capabilities of the desktop version of Wealthica. It’s still pretty good though, you can see your net worth and toggle between timelines, you can see your holdings, your recent transactions, and your assets.
With the Wealthica App can toggle between the private mode and the regular mode just like with the desktop version, and it defaults to regular mode (shows all your money) in default when you first sign in.
This is what the private mode Wealthica V2 App dashboard looks like. You can easily go to settings and toggle off the private mode function to see your investments in all their glory.
Beside the dashboard, you can see your Holdings. This is what the Wealthica holdings look like in Private Mode– just ignore all the red, I know I am (haha….)
You can see your most recent transactions, including dividend payments, cash deposits, buys and sells. Finally the last part of the Wealthica App, you can see your assets. If you press the “sync” button, Wealthica will sync your investments and you can get an up to date snapshot of your money and investments.
The Wealthica App looks great, but I don’t think it’s something I would check on an App on a regular basis. I take my words back, I am a little obsessed right now with checking my liquid net worth regulary on the Wealthica App when I can’t log in from my computer.
To be honest, I probably sync my Wealthica App on a daily basis (this is another reason why some consider it the Personal Capital of Canada, addictive to update your portfolio net worth). Though I still prefer to use the desktop version because there’s more functionality.
Wealthica Google Sheets Export Add-On
In this Wealthica review/ Personal Capital of Canada review, I even review a paid Wealthica add-on.
Wealthica has an add-on that has a fee is called the Google Sheets Export. It’s like a Google Finance Portfolio replacement (remember that? They took it away unfortunately). It is the only add-on that has a fee to it. It is $5.99 per month for a subscription. Initially, I misread it and thought it was a one-time payment of $5.99, but that’s not the case.
When you click on Google Sheets Export, you have to have a Google/ Gmail account in order to use this add-on. They tell you that you will be charged $5.99 per month until you cancel it.
It really only took a few clicks here and there and this amazing spreadsheet formed before my eyes (within seconds). It was pretty cool- because a spreadsheet like that would have taken me hours to make.
In order to get the Google Sheets document, you have to authorize Wealthica to access your Google Drive and then they will put a spreadsheet in there. Then you click “Create Spreadsheet”.
The two Google spreadsheets available that Wealthica can make for you are:
- A spreadsheet of all your investment positions: including ticker symbol, asset class, institution, account, number of shares, currency, book value, and market value.
- A spreadsheet of all your transactions: Including settlement date, type of transaction (like whether it was a purchase, a dividend distribution, or a sale), the currency, and the amount
After you click connect your Google and Wealthica accounts, Wealthica automatically creates a folder in your Google Drive called Wealthica Exports. This is what it looks like:
Then you can create your two spreadsheets and name them however you wish. I gave some very uncreative names for mine.
Finally, you can click through to the spreadsheets in your Google Drive and then you get the spreadsheet.
Here is what the investment positions spreadsheet looks like:
One downside is that some of the symbols are Google ‘Spreadsheetified’ (for lack of a better word…meaning that it is highlighted and clickable) and most of them are not. In my own Google Spreadsheet that I do manually, most of my symbols are highlighted and therefore you can see the market value more accurately reflect the amount.
However, this is a ‘snapshot’ of the day that you create the spreadsheet from Wealthica, so it makes sense that the symbols are not clickable.
Here is what the transactions Google spreadsheet look like:
Personally, I would like it even more if the titles were highlighted with the background in a nice colour, but the bolded font is still pretty good! The columns are organized and labelled well.
Is the Google Spreadsheet Export Add-On Worth It?
Personally, I think the $5.99 Google Spreadsheet Export add-on is totally worth it since it’s so similar to a Google Finance Portfolio replacement, but I wouldn’t pay for it on a monthly basis. The most useful would be year end (e.g. December 31) when I’m trying to collect transactions and purchases on an annual basis to keep track of buys and sells and distributions for tax time.
I currently document my purchases outside of my RRSP and TFSA in an old school notebook and with my dollar cost averaging it can get pretty frequent! So difficult to keep track of everything. Sometimes I also put in limit orders and the settlement date that I write in my old school notebook may not be reflective of the actual settlement date, so this is definitely worth the $5.99 and change to keep things accurate for tax time.
If they had a column for the dividend yield (or forward dividend yield) that would be even better!
However, you can add the dividends into your Google Spreadsheet by way of Google Finance formulas to add the data, or you can add this formula into your Google Spreadsheet:
=SUMIFS(Transactions!I3:I11,
There is more information on how to add total dividends collected in a Reddit post.
I guess if I were into spreadsheets and exporting my data into spreadsheets more regularly (I know a lot of people are fantastic and adept with spreadsheets) then the $5.99 may be worth it per month, but I don’t use this so much, so a ‘snapshot’ picture for me is fine.
Disconnecting Google Drive from Wealthica
I chose to disconnect Google Drive from Wealthica to cancel the monthly subscription. You get an invoice in the billing section that you can print out and use for tax purposes.
The google spreadsheet that was created is still there when you disconnect Google Drive from Wealthica. Then in ‘preferences’ (it is above the log out button), you click on your billing information and then you disconnect or remove your credit card.
After this is removed, you will not be billed on a monthly basis for the Google Spreadsheet Export Add-on but you also have to uninstall.
To uninstall the Google Sheets Add-On in Wealthica, you can click here and log in to your Wealthica account.
Anyway, in summary for this Wealthica review, I think the $5.99 Google Spreadsheet Add-On is worth it (if you are doing a snapshot of your portfolio) and is a good solution for a replacement of the Google Finance Portfolio, in a sense. I would not subscribe to it monthly though- but that’s because I am very averse to subscribing to things on a monthly basis!
This saves me a TON of time preparing my taxes when it comes to tax time and I don’t have to be embarrassed trying to review my old chicken scratch in my buy/sell notebook.
Wealthica review pros and cons:
Here are some of the pros and cons of Wealthica that I have identified for this Wealthica review aka Personal Capital of Canada.
Wealthica “Personal Capital of Canada” Pros
- Wealthica is FREE to sign up (I like free, including birthday freebies and free baby stuff). This is probably the biggest “PRO”
- It’s great if you use brokerages like Wealthsimple and Questrade because of API access and the ease of syncing
- Safe depending on your partner institution because of the API access, especially if you use Questrade, Wealthsimple, CI Direct Investing, or Interactive Brokers
- Wealthica sends you an email you to let you know if there are any changes to your accounts, if you like more frequent communication, you can choose to have a weekly email if you wanted or even daily for updates
- You can link Wealthica to Passiv (an alternative to robo advisors, helps you automatically rebalance) as an add-on
- It is a great way to check out the monthly dividends, and there is an automatic currency exchange rate (Canadian dollars) which makes tracking dividend income very easy (I usually manually add it up myself, that’s how low tech I am!)
Here’s a snapshot from Wealthica of my dividend income from December 2017 and from January 2018:
- Wealthica summarizes your commission/trading fees paid, and your dividends paid, your transaction history very clearly (to be honest, it is much better than Questrade ever does for me)
- For tax-preparation purposes, Wealthica will be very useful (it lists your transaction date so you don’t have to go digging around in your monthly summary reports)
- There is a “Family Office” option where you can aggregate your family’s net worth profiles
- It ‘aggregates’ the data among different accounts, so if I have 100 shares FTS.TO (Fortis) in my TFSA and 40 FTS.TO in my RRSP it aggregates it to show 140 shares of FTS and automatically calculates the book value between these accounts so you don’t have to.
- You can enable ‘private mode’ so that the actual numbers don’t show up on the screen (perfect for if you are checking your net worth at work haha).
- Set it to your default setting and just switch out of private mode when you want to see the numbers.
- You can manually input:
- Real Estate
- Valuable assets such as your car, jewelry, your wine collection (my wine collection would amount to $46 haha) or other valuable assets
- Alternative investments (I guess like Bitcoin??)
- Your debt and liabilities (e.g. mortgage debt)
- Their exchange rate is very accurate and updated daily- I no longer have to worry about manually calculating my exchange rate for the US dividends that I get (THIS IS PROBABLY THE BIGGEST PRO for me!). Wealthica also shows you the actual USD amount in case you want to keep track of this as well (and also shows the converted Canadian dollar amount).
- You can keep track of your fees that you pay- the fees you paid for your investments shows up on the main dashboard
- They have a Compare Mode under the Reports Tab where you can review and compare a previous date (that you can set) compared to today. It tells you the percentage and dollar amount increase or decrease in the comparison.
- Wealthica also has a Fees Report where you can see the exact amount of fees that you paid for a certain date range. With my DIY portfolio with Questrade for 2017, I paid just about $70 in fees. This is part of the free Power Ups.
Okay, Wealthica is really great, but what are some of the downsides or negative aspects identified in this Wealthica review?
Wealthica “Personal Capital of Canada” Cons
- As of October 2019 Wealthica now has Beta support for bank account tracking. I recently added my EQ Bank high interest savings account in Wealthica and it worked well.
- A con in this Wealthica review is that you have to manually enter your liability/ mortgage amount regularly
- There isn’t a chat support or phone support option (yet?) but there is a community forum where you can post your question and they seem pretty responsive and you can also email them
- If you add TD bank for example to Wealthica, it adds everything, even your joint accounts or RESP accounts (which I am trying not to track since I want to track my own performance). I was able add my TD e-series account.
- When tracking your history and returns, Wealthica imports 5 years of investing information via API from your brokerage.
- Finally, if you add your bank accounts, the net worth dashboard has huge fluctuations. However, if you want see how your investments are doing compared to the S&P500, you go to Add-On and click on the Performance tab.
Related: The Ultimate List of Canadian Dividend Investing Blogs
Here’s what I mean by huge fluctuations- one time I decided to add in my mortgage then I took it out. To get a more pure sense of how my investments were doing rather than the whole net worth.
Genymoney’s Wealthica Review
After using Wealthica for four years on a daily basis, my Wealthica review is positive.
I think it’s pretty neat but there are a few things that they could change. To really enhance the user experience (like for example, being able to toggle on and off certain investments within banking institutions. E.g. take out my RESP from the TD Easyweb. I can see why it is called the Personal Capital of Canada.
I think this will be a great tool for those who like to track their net worth and especially for those who like to track their dividends. This makes it easier for me so I don’t have to continuously track my ACB my sell and buy dates in my accounts. Because Wealthica summarizes it so I don’t have to print out 1000+ pages from Questrade’s e-statements haha.
Related: Capital Gains Tax Rate in Canada- Keeping it Simple
This is a no brainer sign up- especially if you use Questrade for your DIY investing and it is FREE!
I highly recommend this portfolio tracker and I check my Wealthica account every day. It gives me accurate information that Questrade cannot give me, reviewing this again, I can easily access (FOR FREE):
- The total value of my dividends (converted to Canadian dollars)
- Invested total value in a particular ETF or equity, even though I have it scattered throughout all my accounts in varying amounts (for example, my VXC ETF)
- The total value of my investment portfolio net worth
- Ability to easily compare the net worth a certain date to current numbers
- The transaction fees paid for certain dates (very helpful for me during tax season e.g. I toggled the dates to reflect January 1 to December 31)
- An updated snapshot of your asset allocation (as long as you input the correct allocation in the drop down of the stock on the computer (e.g. US equity).
Yup, this positive Wealthica review was no-brainer for me and hope it is the same for you.
Click here to sign up for the Personal Capital of Canada aka Wealthica so you can see all your investments in one place! And admire the beautiful view 😉
Readers, what is your Wealthica review?
GYM is a 30 something millennial interested in achieving financial freedom through disciplined saving, dividend and ETF investing, and living a minimalist lifestyle. Before you go, check out my recommendations page of financial tools I use to save and invest money. Don’t forget to subscribe for blog updates, a free dividend yield spreadsheet, and the free Young Money Bootcamp eCourse.
I never even heard of it! Not crazy about all those online tools where you link all your accounts.
I love Excel, I do everything on spreadsheets and have formulas all over the place…and charts! I am such an Excel geek:)
But it does take more time so maybe eventually I will sign up.
@Caroline- I’m not a fan of the online tools linking accounts either. I’m just using it for Questrade and am not going to put in my jewelry on there (haha like it suggests on their website). Your charts are IMPECCABLE and beautiful.
I never even heard of wealthica. I am old school and like my spreadsheets but I will check wealthica’s website. I probably should use a program to keep track of everything in one place.
@Steve- yeah they seem pretty new still, but seems like a good way to keep track of the portfolio.
Hi GYM, Feedly worked and I’m not late to the Friday night party here. Interesting. My brokerage firm has an aggregation tool that I use, but it’s just okay. At least it lets me see everything in one place. I also do some spreadsheet analysis being a finance and accounting guy from my Corporate days. I have been meaning to try Personal Capital just to see what all the buzz is about and maybe adopt it if I like it. Tom
@Tom- Yeah, and you should put a link at the bottom of your posts about your Personal Capital affiliate link! 😉 I think one referral can pay for a year’s blog hosting, just sayin’.
I always wanted Personal Capital!! The app just seems so cool and easy to use. I was so mad when I couldn’t find it. At first I was so desperate and downloaded it, hoping it still works for Canadians lol!
I don’t like mint and never liked it. They would disconnect my accounts and my NW was very inaccurate. So many ppl rave and love mint but I deactivated it and just use some spreadsheet lol. My ugly and boring spreadsheet just does a better job than mint!! Don’t mean to offend anyone but there’s something about mint and I that just don’t click haha… I hope Personal Capital comes to Canada soon?
I’ve never heard of wealthica btw. But it’s good to know its existence! ?
@fin$avvy panda- I thought it worked for Canadians too but it doesn’t seem so (and you confirmed it for me just now). I use Mint for my credit card purchases but that’s about it. I used to have more (linked bank accounts etc.) but I got worried about the safety of that.
And I was thinking… no bank account portion?? That’s sooo weird!
@fin$avvy panda- Yeah, I thought so too. In their Q&A section of the website says they are working on adding that soon.
Ahhh – you don’t use Excel?! I’m the nerdy kid at the office that raises their hand in the air to be the test pilot of Microsoft Office 2003 – 2016! Yikes. I just aged myself.
We don’t use any outside source…I have spreadsheets linking spreadsheets, that update other spreadsheets when I open them…I think I would be nervous to try something new!
Good review!
@Mrs. Defined Sight- I have an excel spreadsheet for dividends but that’s about it. And I can’t keep track of my ACB very well (especially annoying for non-registered investments) haha because I keep buying regularly. So this is helpful. Wow you sound like the Spreadsheet master… spreadsheets linking spreadsheets…?
For your ACB try adjusted cost base.ca..there is a free version if you have a small portfolio..I use the paid version , good for 5 portfolios and it give you all the paper work for income tax. Plus you can deduct the fees which are veryl reasonable, around $49 a year if I remember.
@Dan- Thanks, yes I have had a look at that from comments from this post https://genymoney.ca/capital-gains-tax-rate-in-canada-keeping-it-simple/
Sorry, deduct the fees? You mean I can claim this fee on my tax return? As what? Thanks.
@GYM:
I did use Mint for a while and then lost interest in it…let’s just say I’m a bit old school and just scrawl things around. I do a bit of excel, but just too lazy to commit to building anything useful financially with it. I did check out Personal Capital at some point because every blogger appeared to have their affiliate link, but it appeared to be for U.S. residents.
I will take a closer look at Wealthica and see how it works.
@Enoch- Good to know I’m not the only one who prefers to be old school and use the pen and paper!
Hi GYM,
So, I know it sounds archaic, especially considering the tools out there today, but we still track our net worth manually, in paper, I would say at least once a month. I think this is important to track your net worth so that you’re clear on your financial status, and your current limitations, and it’s s also a great motivation to keep working towards your goals. After reading your post, I am intrigued (and with a little FOMO, haha) by Wealthica and Personal Capital (since we are in the US). You’ve opened my eyes! 🙂 Thanks!!!
Also, I’d be careful checking up my net worth in a computer at work, even if the numbers are “covered”, I’m a bit paranoid, and screenshots of “stuff” can be taken or stored remotely. This is especially true for work computers, where the assumption is almost always that you have no expectation of privacy. Bummer! So, I’d say it’s best to do it on the phone but only if you can’t wait until you get home, because for some reason you need to see your net worth update that very same minute! 😉
@Lily- Hi Lily! I just do it once a month and I love tracking my net worth. I agree that it’s an important exercise to do regularly but I would prefer to do it by hand instead of refreshing. I have enough trouble refreshing my pageviews. If I were to refresh my net worth that might become another addiction haha. Yeah, I would never open or check work stuff on my work computer. The downside of Wealthica is they email you your information (e.g. you have 5 new transactions) and that worries me in terms of privacy. There is a way to stop email notifications though.
I use it and I think it’s great. The main thing I wish it did was track total return for bonds and dividend-paying stocks. Right now I have to track the actual (total) return of my bonds myself since Wealthica only tracks the capital gains/losses but doesn’t add in the dividends received. Seems like something they could add pretty easily. Right now all my bond holdings seem to be losses which is only true if you ignore the dividend payments. Their actual returns have been pretty good so far, Wealthica just doesn’t know it.
Anyway, Wealthica does actually have an asset allocation function. If you look at ‘Holdings’ there’s a progress-bar-type thing at the top of the screen and when you mouse over it it shows which assets are where and how much of the portfolio the represent. You have to make sure you label your assets correctly though, otherwise it seems to think everything is a Canadian Equity but that’s easy enough to modify (just click it and select the right field!).
@Mike- Thanks so much for sharing your experience Mike. Yes, a total return of dividend-paying stocks would be awesome- especially when you see the return eclipse the book value! Oh gosh, THANK YOU so much for helping me out with that! Everything was mislabelled and equities are ALL blue (and the different shades of blue isn’t very obvious even when I got everything recategorized). Yes, I can see the asset allocation better now. They don’t have an option to split US and International asset allocation for an individual ETF (e.g. VXC) though. Thank you Mike!
Hi, for information on your post, I have developed on my own an application for Wealthica on Android. Still in progress but some good functionnality are available. Feel free to download and to give me your feed back.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.nocorp.wealthica
Regards
Nicolas
@Nicolas- Cool! I don’t use Android but I’ll checkout your app webpage.
Does Wealthica have the capability (or widget or add-on or power up etc) to monitor your investments and show how much you may be paying in fees? I’ve heard Personal Capitol has that capability.
@Hadley- No problem, yes it does! It doesn’t break down the MER fees on ETFs but it shows you if you’ve paid commissions to your brokerage.
Disregard! I read more carefully. This is excellent. Thanks