If you’ve ever wondered whether your portfolio is working hard enough—or coasting on yesterday’s asset mix—Empower’s Investment Checkup aims to answer that question in minutes.
A free feature of the Empower Personal Dashboard™, the Investment Checkup tool helps investors evaluate the strength of their asset allocation against long-term goals. More than a surface-level snapshot, the tool blends real-time account data with personalized modeling to suggest potential improvements in risk, diversification, and return potential.
To find out how well it really works, Benzinga gained full access to the Empower Personal Dashboard and put the Investment Checkup through its paces. What we found was robust. A sleek, intuitive interface backed by serious financial modeling—Monte Carlo projections, efficient frontier plots, and dollar-based rebalancing suggestions.
For any investor looking to sharpen their strategy—or just make sure they’re not leaving money on the table—the tool delivers insights that go far beyond the usual app charts and pie graphs.
Why the Investment Checkup Matters
- Uncover hidden imbalances. A quick scan flags whether you’re overweight or underweight in any sector and highlights concentration risks you may not see at the account level.
- Benchmark against the S&P 500 (ARCA: SPY). The tool overlays your portfolio’s historical and projected performance on top of major market indices, giving instant context.
- Receive a data-backed alternative allocation. Based on your age, risk tolerance and retirement goals, Empower proposes an “optimal blend” designed to improve risk-adjusted returns.
- Identify risk-reduction paths. Side-by-side simulations show how small tweaks—often just rebalancing into international equities or trimming excess bonds—could increase projected nest-egg size while reducing volatility.
Step-by-Step Walk-Through
1. Quick Onboarding + Complimentary Advisor Session
The moment you log in, Empower invites you to schedule a free 30-minute call with a fiduciary advisor. A built-in calendar makes booking painless. (You keep the written recommendations whether or not you hire Empower for ongoing management.)
2. Clean, Intuitive Dashboard
Net-Worth Overview. Assets and liabilities are front and center, with drill-downs for 401(k), brokerage, loans and more.
- 90-Day Net-Worth Chart. A rolling line graph tracks daily swings—helpful for spotting trends without spreadsheet work.
- Budget Prompt. Link cash or credit accounts and the system builds a monthly budget automatically.
- Mini-Widgets. Retirement Savings, Emergency Fund progress, Market Movers and a finance-news “FOMO” feed round out the home on desktop (there is a slightly different experience on mobile).
3. Launching the Investment Checkup
Click “Find Out” and you’ll complete three short screens. Alternatively, you can click Investing in the top navigation or Investment Checkup on the mobile menu.
- Investment Profile—marital status, age, target retirement age
- Risk Profile—five clear risk-tolerance descriptions from “Highest Safety” to “Highest Growth”
- Retirement Plan—annual savings, desired retirement spending, investable assets and net worth (the tool can auto-fill from linked accounts)
4. The Recommendation Engine
Based on your answers, Empower delivers:
Panel | What You See |
Alternative Allocation | Six-asset-class breakdown (cash, U.S. & intl. stocks/bonds, alternatives) with risk/return stats. |
Historical Performance | Inflation-adjusted growth curve since 1992, comparing your current allocation to the alternative. |
Future Projections | Monte-Carlo median outcome and 10% worst-case scenario. In our test, shifting to the recommended mix added $260,000 to the median retirement projection. |
Risk & Return | Efficient-frontier scatter plot shows whether you’re taking extra risk for too little return. |
Allocation Comparison | Bar chart plus dollar amounts you’d need to buy or sell to hit target weights. |
A single click reveals actionable next steps—and, Empower offers to handle the rebalancing for you (must be an Empower client to gain access to rebalancing, and advisory fees start at 0.89% for portfolios over $100,000).
What We Liked Most
Feature | Why It Stood Out |
Granular—but not overwhelming—detail | From sector heat maps to dollar-based trade suggestions, the insights feel practical instead of academic. |
Scenario math you can trust | Monte Carlo and efficient-frontier visuals translate textbook finance into plain English. |
Seamless hand-off to human advice | If the numbers spark questions, you’re one click from a fiduciary advisor. |
All free for DIY investors | The Checkup, Dashboard, budgeting and net-worth tracking cost $0; advisory is optional. |
A Few Trade-Offs
Consideration | What It Means |
Advisor upsell | The platform nudges you toward meeting with an advisor for a free consultation. Not a downside if you want help, but worth noting for investors who would rather do it themselves. |
Self-directed rebalancing | You can implement the suggestions yourself, but the interface doesn’t auto-trade outside Empower-managed accounts. |
Aggressive assumptions may surprise some users | If you click “Highest Growth,” expect a stock-heavy recommendation; conservative savers might see large dollar reallocations. |
Bottom Line: We Think It’s Worth The Login
After putting Empower’s Investment Checkup through real use, Benzinga came away genuinely impressed. This isn’t one of those flashy “investment tools” that spits out vague advice or cookie-cutter allocations. Instead, it offers a detailed, data-driven breakdown of your current portfolio, layered with alternative strategies that actually account for risk, time horizon, and retirement targets.
The allocation, performance, and risk modules wouldn’t feel out of place in financial-planning software that costs hundreds of dollars a year. Yet here, they’re accessible for free—backed by clear visuals, interactive graphs, and just enough explanation to make complex ideas feel manageable. You don’t need to be a financial advisor to understand what’s happening—and that’s a rare thing.
Could the platform nudge you toward paid advice? Yes. But the tool still holds serious standalone value for self-directed investors. Even if you never speak to an advisor, you’ll walk away with sharper awareness of how your portfolio is structured, where you might be taking unnecessary risk, and what it could mean for your future outcomes.
In a world where financial blind spots can cost you tens—or hundreds—of thousands over time, a 15-minute login to run the numbers feels like time well spent.
Questions And Answers
What is the Empower Investment Checkup tool?
The Investment Checkup is a free feature within the Empower Personal Dashboard that analyzes your current portfolio and compares it to a recommended “alternative allocation” based on your risk tolerance, retirement goals, and asset mix. It helps highlight imbalances, benchmark performance, and model potential improvements.
Do I need to be an Empower client to use the Investment Checkup?
No. You can access the full Checkup experience by creating a free Empower Dashboard account and linking your financial accounts. While Empower does offer paid advisory services, using the Checkup tool is free and doesn’t require committing to ongoing management.
How does the Checkup tool generate recommendations?
The tool uses a blend of real-time data from your linked accounts and your answers to a short investment profile questionnaire. It then applies Empower’s proprietary models to build a custom allocation designed to optimize returns for your risk level and goals.
Empower Personal Wealth, LLC (“EPW”) compensates Benzinga for new leads. Benzinga is not an investment client of Empower Advisory Group, LLC.