SASM 030 – How Personal Capital Simplifies Your Personal Finances with CEO Bill Harris
Summary: (http://valueofsimple.com/wp-content/uploads/Smart-and-Simple-Matters-Cover-200x200.jpg)Personal Capital proves that personal finance doesn’t need to be hard. Well, I think that’s been proven before, but the vast majority of people don’t know about it (or don’t believe it). So I brought Bill Harris – Personal Capital’s CEO – in for an episode of Smart and Simple Matters to do some fancy talkin’ with me about investing, budgets, and our relationship with money. I not going to lie. This episode gets a bit technical and might be advanced stuff depending on your current money savvy. Bill and I throw around words like diversification, asset allocation, Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_Investment_Advisor), and other ones you don’t hear every day. But I believe everyone can get something from Bill’s insight and this episode. So why should you care what Bill has to say? Well … Bill was the CEO of business behemoth PayPal, CEO of personal finance giant Intuit (maker of one of my favorite pieces of software – Quicken), contributes to Inc.com, and has raised over $50 million in funding for Personal Capital so far. He started his own mutual fund when he was thirteen-years-old, not to mention ran several contracting businesses before he left high school. And he’s generally right about everything he writes about, save an article here or there about why entrepreneurs make terrible investors (http://www.inc.com/magazine/201305/bill-harris/why-entrepreneurs-make-terrible-investors.html) (I disagree). If you care even a smidgen about personal finance – and especially investing – this is the episode for you. Insight You’ll Gain There’s a ton of plain English wisdom mixed in with our industry fancy talkin’. For example, you’ll learn about: * What your biggest financial problem is (and it’s not what you think). * Why you need to be invested in your investments. * How Bill started his own mutual fund when he was thirteen. * Why fragmented finances adds needless complexity … and how to solve that. * The right way to budget with big-time benefits. * How smart it is to centralize your financial life. * Why Personal Capital can help you be emotionally healthier. * How practical and vivid data visualization makes you feel in control. Resources and Items Mentioned in This Episode: * Websites: * Personal Capital (http://valueofsimple.com/percap) (referral link) * Resources: * Start Investing with $100 (http://www.startinvestingwith100.com/faq/) * Quicken (http://quicken.intuit.com/) * Mint.com (https://www.mint.com/) * Definitions and Examples: * Exchange Traded Funds (http://www.investopedia.com/video/play/understanding-etfs/) * Asset Allocation (http://www.investinganswers.com/financial-dictionary/investing/diversification-342) * Diversification (http://www.investinganswers.com/financial-dictionary/investing/diversification-342) * Etc.: * Personal Capital for iStuff (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/personal-capital-banking-investing/id504672168) * Personal Capital on Android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.personalcapital.pcapandroid&hl=en) Topics * [04:59] Bill’s seeds of awesomeness * [09:35] Solving the problem of fragmented finances and the chaos it brings * [15:28] How Personal Capital works * [17:52] What separates Personal Capital from similar services * [20:00] Aggregating your financial life in one place * [26:35] The emotions of money and building a better relationship * [29:28] Being invested in your investments Awesome Ways to Subscribe to the Show If you’re not already subscribed for automatic notifications of a new show, please do so with one of the links below. * Click here to subscribe with iTunes * Click here to subscribe via RSS (http://feeds.feedburner.com/ValueOfSimplePodcast) * Click here to subscribe via Stitcher
