Financial freedom is the modern-day dream of every American. However, the freedom to spend lavishly can only be reached by actually spending cautiously and growing your savings stronger each month.
The average American doesn’t receive proper financial education before entering the job market. They're usually left to figure out the cranks of the financial system on their own. This makes it imperative to find a financial advisor who has extensive experience and brainpower when it comes to personal money management. Unfortunately, for someone who is trying to save money and doesn't have the established skills to manage their funds, spending more money to hire someone is infeasible.
Empower steps in packing as a solution to this challenge and attempts to fill the void of financial advice and management tools in your life.
In this article, we will explore:
- What is Empower Finance?
- How Does Empower Finance work in the US?
- Is Empower Finance Free or Paid?
- Is the Empower Finance App Secure?
What is Empower Finance?
Empower manifests their mission statement and purpose into their name itself. They strive to empower individuals to reconquer their spending and achieve their financial goals.
Empower is a mobile app that gathers all your account information and connects them into a simple, elegant and modern interface. Empower then uses its rich features base in assisting you to track, spend, save, budget and learn mindfully.
How Does Empower Finance Work?
Empower Finance uses its vision of becoming a financial expert by addressing key issues required to master spending and savings. It provides a comprehensive system of features to empower you to journey to your financial freedom.
Below is a list of features offered by Empower Finance to explaining how it achieves this:
1. Financial Monitoring and Tracking
Empower supports over 10,000 US banks, credit card, loan, investment, cryptocurrency and 401(K) accounts. It accumulates all your account and card information and connects them.
The app’s built-in statistical tools curate this data and present you with your financial overview chart. The expenses can be divided into categories. This information is then fed into its budgeting tools which calculate whether you're over or under your spend limit.
2. Automatic Savings
Empower uses the insight that setting aside money for the future by overlooking present gratifications is difficult. It prompts for a weekly savings target input and gets to work.
This is how the app helps you save:
- Empower studies your income and expenses daily
- Empower sets aside more money if excess cash is detected and sets aside less money if expenses are detected trending up
- Empower grows your AutoSave account at 0.25% APY* (Annual Percentage Yield). Deposits made by Empower are FDIC insured up to $250,000.
You just have to choose a checking account which you want your money to be saved from and Empower will make up to four transfers each week to help you reach your targets. Money transfers are charge-free. If a weekly target is not reached, the same target will be attempted the following week.
3. Smart Recommendations
- Subscriptions and Lowering of Bills
Empower is constantly on the hunt for clawing down unrequired recurring bills and subscriptions. It provides data on unused subscriptions, highlights the amount that can be saved and recommends cancellations.
Their systems also hunt for lower prices on your phone, cable and electric bills and negotiate better prices on your behalf! It also helps identify better savings accounts with higher interest rates.
- Updates and Reminders
The app monitors your money and sends you proactive notifications like bill increases, missed bills, bank fees, credit utilization, and more.
- Automated Expert Advice
Connecting your financial accounts to the Empower app allows it to analyze your bills, paychecks, and purchases continuously to detect patterns and trends that you might be unaware of. Empower uses this data to send you expert personalized advice for smarter and informed decisions.
- Personal Human Coach
If you understand the gains of financial education, a coach seems like a worthy investment. The best and most rewarding part is that you get a personal human coach, having a snapshot of your entire financial life, included in the $6/month amount for the Empower app!
Financial advisors in the US usually cost $100 – $300 per hour on average or they come with a fixed price of $1,000 – $3,000.
A discussion with a coach about your challenges would bring clarity and direction to your vision. With a network of financial experts, Empower attempts at making financial education affordable in real-time to its users.
4. Interest Checking Account
This is the most distinctive feature of Empower, it allows individuals to open an Empower checking account which seamlessly works with their app. These accounts are also empowered with numerous benefits and features as follows:
- 0.25% APY on all your money
- Slick peach debit card
- Visa zero liability insurance
- 3 monthly ATM reimbursements
- No account minimums
- Unlimited transfers
- Empower deposits are FDIC insured up to $250,000
- Re-order your debit card in the app
- Freeze your debit card in the app
- 24/7 notifications to track spending
We compare Empower’s checking account with the traditional account to see how they fare against each other:
| Interest Checking Account | Traditional Checking Accounts | |
| APY | 0.25%* | 0.04% |
| Overdraft Fees | $0 | $35
|
| Foreign Transaction Fees | 1% | 3% |
| Card Replacement Fees | $0 | $5 |
| Minimum Opening Deposit | $0 | $25-$50 |
Is Empower Free or Paid?
Empower provides all its features for free for the first 30 days. After the 30 days trial period is over, Empower charges a $6 monthly fee.
Empower is a premium app by default and aims to substitute a human financial advisor. It does so by providing the same value and bringing down the cost. Also, it comes with the added convenience of mobilizing all your financial data in your pocket at all times.
Is the Empower App Secure?
Empower offers to transfer a lot of your financial responsibility on their shoulders. To do so, it requires your account information and bank details. This entails the question of data privacy and security provided by the app.
Wismo secures all accounts with multi-fold security parameters. These measures include:
- Bank-Level Security
- AES 256-BIT Encryption
- Touch ID
- Multi-Factor Authentication
Wrap Up
Empower does a good job at proving their claim of providing a ‘personalized financial expert in your pocket.’ Empower Finance’s mission of empowering the individuals to ‘Earn, save, and spend more wisely’ comes packed with a combination of fundamental as well as advanced unique features.
Fundamental features like spend tracker, budget tracker and automatic savings. As well as unique and advanced features like smart recommendations to save money on unwanted subscriptions and bills, human coaches to address financial challenges and interest checking accounts to supersizes your savings and provide other benefits.
All in all, this armed and comprehensive financial toolkit makes the price of $6/month makes Empower a great investment.