Money dashboards, brokers and budgeting apps
Plot My Money and Empower compared
How Plot My Money and Empower's free dashboard and Retirement Planner compare on features, simulations and price, from Empower's own pages checked November 5, 2026.
Empower offers a free personal dashboard with a Retirement Planner, budgeting and net worth tools, and sells paid investment management. Plot My Money is a planning app with no investment products. This page compares the planning tools and the published prices.
Who each one is for
Empower is for people who want their accounts, spending and retirement outlook in one free dashboard. Its tools page lists portfolio analysis, a Retirement Planner, budgeting and cash flow, net worth, transactions, a savings planner, debt paydown and an emergency fund tool. Its wealth management page describes paid advice from Empower Advisory Group.
Plot My Money is for US households planning for retirement or already retired. It shows what's safe to spend each month, tests the plan across thousands of simulated markets, and plans taxes, Social Security and withdrawals year by year. It runs in a browser on phones and computers, and has an Advisor plan for planners who work with clients.
Features side by side
“Not published” means we didn't find the feature on Empower's public pages. It doesn't mean the feature is missing.
| Feature | Plot My Money | Empower | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes | Yes | Tools |
| Monte Carlo simulation | Yes | Yes | Retirement number article |
| Dynamic spending strategies or guardrails | Yes | Not published | Pages checked |
| Federal income tax, year by year | Yes | Not published | Pages checked |
| State income tax | Yes | Not published | Pages checked |
| Roth conversion planning | Yes | Not published | Pages checked |
| Withdrawal order choices | Yes | Not published | Pages checked |
| Social Security claiming comparison | Yes | Not published | Pages checked |
| Medicare premiums and IRMAA | Yes | Not published | Pages checked |
| Equity compensation (RSUs, options, ESPP) | Yes | Not published | Pages checked |
| Estate tax, federal and state | Yes | Not published | Pages checked |
| Side-by-side scenarios | Yes | Yes | Retirement Planner |
| User-written rules tested in every simulation | Yes | Not published | Pages checked |
| PDF report | Yes | Not published | Pages checked |
| Automatic account linking | No | Yes | Tools |
| AI assistant | No | Not published | Pages checked |
| iOS or Android app | No | Yes | Tools |
| Countries other than the US | No | Not published | Pages checked |
Notes on the table:
- Monte Carlo. Empower's article on your retirement number says "Empower's Monte Carlo software uses 5,000 scenarios". It gives a probability-of-success ranking of low, medium or high.
- Scenarios. The Retirement Planner page says you can "Compare scenarios to see what impact they could have on your retirement."
- Account linking. The tools page says "The more accounts you connect, the more powerful the tools and data will be."
- Apps. The tools page links to the Apple App Store and Google Play.
- Plot My Money. Monte Carlo runs up to 1,000 simulated markets on the free plan and up to 10,000 on Plus. The phone experience is an installable web app, not a store app. Account linking isn't offered, so balances are entered by hand or imported from files.
Pricing as published
Plot My Money has a free plan and two paid plans. Plus covers your household, at a yearly price of the amount shown before you subscribe. The Advisor plan covers a set number of client households, at a yearly price of the amount shown before you subscribe. Until paid plans go on sale, every feature is included for every household. See plans and billing.
Empower (from its tools page and wealth management page, checked November 5, 2026):
- The tools page says "The dashboard experience and financial tools are completely free."
- Paid advice has three tiers by invested assets: Investment Services from $100K, Wealth Management from $250K and Private Client from $1M.
- The advisory fee is "an annual advisory fee as a percentage of your total assets under management (AUM) using a tiered fee structure". The rates appear in a table image we couldn't read as text, so they aren't repeated here.
Where Empower is stronger
- Linked accounts. The free dashboard pulls in accounts you connect, so balances and transactions update without manual entry.
- Budgeting and transactions. It categorizes spending automatically and tracks cash flow, which Plot My Money doesn't do from bank data.
- Store apps for iOS and Android, linked from the tools page.
- Human advisors are available for a fee through its wealth management service.
- Free. The dashboard and its tools cost nothing.
Who should pick which
- Pick Empower if you want a free dashboard that tracks linked accounts and spending, with a retirement outlook alongside.
- Pick Empower if you'd like the option of paid, ongoing investment management from the same firm.
- Pick Plot My Money if you want taxes, Roth conversions, Social Security claiming and Medicare premiums worked out year by year.
- Pick Plot My Money if you want a planning tool that doesn't sell investment products.
How to switch
Plot My Money doesn't import Empower files, so you set up your plan again. Have your latest balances, pay, spending and Social Security estimates to hand.
- Start a plan and answer the setup questions about your household, income, spending and accounts.
- If you have a holdings file, import it as Excel or CSV on the Accounts screen.
- Add Social Security from your SSA statement, plus pensions and any other income.
- Compare the results with your old plan. Differences usually come from assumptions about returns, inflation, taxes and spending.
You can download your plan as a JSON file at any time. See getting started and importing and exporting.
Sources
Each page below was read on November 5, 2026.