M1 Finance

[Wezzley77]

Does anyone use M1 Finance investing platform? It a newer platform that really does offer some interesting options. If so what's your feedback on it
?

[MotoTrojan]

A few of us are using it in our IRAs as part of hedgefundie’s leveraged adventure. So far so good with no complaints.

[PluckyDucky]

A few of us are using it in our IRAs as part of hedgefundie’s leveraged adventure. So far so good with no complaints.

I opened an account as a result of that thread. The information is not all the easiest to see, but it has many good features such as fractional shares and the UI aimed at rebalancing easily. I'm thinking of using it for more accounts for regular rebalancing.

[MotoTrojan]

A few of us are using it in our IRAs as part of hedgefundie’s leveraged adventure. So far so good with no complaints.

I opened an account as a result of that thread. The information is not all the easiest to see, but it has many good features such as fractional shares and the UI aimed at rebalancing easily. I'm thinking of using it for more accounts for regular rebalancing.

I see the rebalancing as pretty powerful indeed. Nice that a taxable allocation can be chosen and automatically maintained with regular contributions in a balanced way, with no sells or manual moves.

Not moving anything else there but cool none-the-less.

[RL1013]

We use M1 for my play money. Wife uses Robinhood. I like M1 better. I want to create a portfolio with a bunch of Vanguard ETFs.

[Wiggums]

We use M1 for my play money. Wife uses Robinhood. I like M1 better. I want to create a portfolio with a bunch of Vanguard ETFs.

Purely out of curiosity, do those companies charge a fee when you close your account?

[HEDGEFUNDIE]

Free trades and one-click rebalancing, what’s not to like?

[RL1013]

We use M1 for my play money. Wife uses Robinhood. I like M1 better. I want to create a portfolio with a bunch of Vanguard ETFs.

Purely out of curiosity, do those companies charge a fee when you close your account?

For transfer Robinhood charges $75 and M1 is $100.

But no fee to liquidate your stocks and transfer money to bank.

[Wiggums]

We use M1 for my play money. Wife uses Robinhood. I like M1 better. I want to create a portfolio with a bunch of Vanguard ETFs.

Purely out of curiosity, do those companies charge a fee when you close your account?

For transfer Robinhood charges $75 and M1 is $100.

But no fee to liquidate your stocks and transfer money to bank.

Ok, thanks. Good to know.

[Wezzley77]

Im strongly considering moving wife and I With IRA's to m1 from vanguard. So many cool features that are so beneficial.

[staythecourse]

We use M1 for my play money. Wife uses Robinhood. I like M1 better. I want to create a portfolio with a bunch of Vanguard ETFs.

Purely out of curiosity, do those companies charge a fee when you close your account?

For transfer Robinhood charges $75 and M1 is $100.

But no fee to liquidate your stocks and transfer money to bank.

That's why I didn't use it for my part in Hedgiefund's grand experiment. I just started a fidelity account and have 2 years of free trades and NO charge to close out or transfer. When 2 years are up I'll just find another platform that is offering something sweet and keep going back and forth for the free trades.

Good luck.

[Wezzley77]

Enlighten me on this Hedgefundie thing you guys Are speaking of??

[SVT]

Enlighten me on this Hedgefundie thing you guys Are speaking of??

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=272007

[whodidntante]

A few of us are using it in our IRAs as part of hedgefundie’s leveraged adventure. So far so good with no complaints.

Nearly everyone is leveraged somehow, and Toons is the only person on the forum trying to stop it. I think he would tell me to pay off a -2% loan, which is basically what a 0% loan is in real terms.

[MotoTrojan]

A few of us are using it in our IRAs as part of hedgefundie’s leveraged adventure. So far so good with no complaints.

Nearly everyone is leveraged somehow, and Toons is the only person on the forum trying to stop it. I think he would tell me to pay off a -2% loan, which is basically what a 0% loan is in real terms.

I am guilty of paying off a $25K 1.9% loan in December of 2017 but given that I DCA'd the new cashflow I didn't leave much (if any) on the table, given the market is only up ~8% from there and spent most of it's time below that point.

[DonIce]

I am guilty of paying off a $25K 1.9% loan in December of 2017 but given that I DCA'd the new cashflow I didn't leave much (if any) on the table, given the market is only up ~8% from there and spent most of it's time below that point.

I paid off a $20k 0% student loan in 2010 instead of investing

[aristotelian]

We use M1 for my play money. Wife uses Robinhood. I like M1 better. I want to create a portfolio with a bunch of Vanguard ETFs.

Lol, that must be the most boring play money account ever!

[Windylotus]

Myself, wife and young adult kids have all moved our Roth IRAs to M1. We really like the simplicity of the platform. Following the Paul Merriman best-in-class ultimate buy and hold strategy. 10 funds at 10% each, easy to follow and rebalance when necessary.

[RL1013]

We use M1 for my play money. Wife uses Robinhood. I like M1 better. I want to create a portfolio with a bunch of Vanguard ETFs.

Lol, that must be the most boring play money account ever!

[CyclingDuo]

Does anyone use M1 Finance investing platform? It a newer platform that really does offer some interesting options. If so what's your feedback on it
?

Yes, we use it (as well as the Acorns platform) for investing a percentage of our side gig money only into taxable investing.

No fees. Fractional shares allowed. Rebalancing in taxable is automatically done via new contributions to rebalance. So in that essence, it is more of a hybrid robo application. One can manually TLH, but the platform does not do it automatically for you. One can set it up with automatic contributions, but I just make our contributions to M1 on the dates our side gig money rolls into our bank account (about 2-3X a month) which can be "lumpy" as well as having varied arrival dates. The amount that gets contributed each time is equally divided between the three pies we have established in our account.

We have established three pies at M1.

Three Fund Portfolio with Vanguard ETF's (Admiral pricing)
Paul Merriman's Buy & Hold Ultimate Portfolio designed for taxable
Individual Stock basket of over 50 stocks as a DIY fund

Merriman set up the pies for both taxable as well as tax deferred at M1 for his Buy & Hold portfolio, and one can choose the risk profile they feel the most comfortable with based on their tolerance. The Vanguard Three Fund ETF pie was a no brainer for me to pick, and the stock basket allowed me to choose our own little DIY fund for no trading fees.

The platform invests new contributions (or withdrawals) only one time in the morning each trading day (9 AM CT). Not a problem for our purposes of longer term holding/investing. If one wants to have a 2nd trading window, you would have to upgrade to the M1 Plus account ($125 per year) which includes a debit card, and the ability to borrow money.

The amount we have at M1 (and Acorns) is minimal compared to our overall portfolio. Original intent why we set them up was to keep the investments we make from our side gig money separated from the rest of our investments simply to help with my accounting/tracking of all matters related to our side gigs, and the reality that the amount sent each time is not enough to cover the purchase of full shares of multiple ETF's or stocks. In other words, these are small accounts totaling only about $10K for us at this point (with plans that our continued contributions from side gig money will keep flowing for a few more years).

There are pros and cons with each platform, but I consider it our small foray into robo based application investing.

I think M1 is a really ideal platform for a beginning or young investor who is just starting out and investing smaller amounts (not enough to purchase full ETF shares) and get the Three Fund Portfolio with Admiral share pricing in either an IRA or in taxable (at least the VTI and VXUS in taxable). It's really easy to set up and can all be done through the application downloaded on your phone or via the website. Of course, I wouldn't limit my recommendation to just young and beginning investors...

[sixtoeight]

Does anyone use M1 Finance investing platform? It a newer platform that really does offer some interesting options. If so what's your feedback on it
?

Of course, I wouldn't limit my recommendation to just young and beginning investors...

Why young and beginning investors? I'm perplexed by your recommendation at the end.

[CyclingDuo]

Does anyone use M1 Finance investing platform? It a newer platform that really does offer some interesting options. If so what's your feedback on it
?

Of course, I wouldn't limit my recommendation to just young and beginning investors...

Why young and beginning investors? I'm perplexed by your recommendation at the end.

Why young and beginning? You can start with as little as $100 which makes it ideal for those who don't have much savings or capital to begin with in the early going as well as those who do not need a full service broker in the beginning (Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, etc...). The ability to use smaller sums of money to purchase partial shares of ETF's and stocks with no commissions is why I say it is ideal.

I wasn't trying to perplex anyone, but saying I wouldn't limit my recommendation to young investors only - based on the same premise of commission free purchases of ETF's and stocks. Being that it is a start-up, time will tell if their services change or if the company morphs into something else. There may be older investors who are well established with their 401k/403b/457b's (not beginners) and may not have a taxable account. M1 could easily fill their need as well.

[William55]

I have been using M1 Finance now for just over two years, and I am extremely pleased with the service. I have a taxable account, a Roth IRA and Rolled my 401(k) into an M1 Target Date Expert pie. I have a ETF portfolio that I created myself in my Roth IRA and use my taxable account to a combo of stocks/ETFs. I have reoccurring deposit set up in my taxable account and usually make my Roth contribution right at the beginning of the new year, for the prior year. I was using Vanguard before and it was annoying having to wait till I had enough money for full shares of the ETFs I wanted to buy new shares was mostly just waiting till I had enough money to buy VTI or BND. Now my money is invested on weekly reoccurring basis and the money is spread across my portfolio always getting my portfolio to its targets allocation. Has definetly changed the way I way I invest and I can't imagine putting in manual buy sell order anymore

[livesoft]

Can one use M1 Finance to create a portfolio of ETFs that would mimic Wellesley or Wellington?

[PluckyDucky]

Can one use M1 Finance to create a portfolio of ETFs that would mimic Wellesley or Wellington?

You can copy it exactly with the holdings list from the fund info. You would have to follow along and update your pie to match the %s though. Some items may not be available on M1 Finance too. Using ETFs to approximate may be easier, especially for the bonds, but then you have expense ratios again.

https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-fu ... o-holdings

No expense ratio is nice. You would be saving 16 cents per $100!

[MotoTrojan]

Myself, wife and young adult kids have all moved our Roth IRAs to M1. We really like the simplicity of the platform. Following the Paul Merriman best-in-class ultimate buy and hold strategy. 10 funds at 10% each, easy to follow and rebalance when necessary.

Do you hold this same AA in other accounts? Way too complicated for me.

[Windylotus]

Myself, wife and young adult kids have all moved our Roth IRAs to M1. We really like the simplicity of the platform. Following the Paul Merriman best-in-class ultimate buy and hold strategy. 10 funds at 10% each, easy to follow and rebalance when necessary.

Do you hold this same AA in other accounts? Way too complicated for me.

MotoTrojan
No, we don't hold exactly the same AA in our 401k and TSP. We do tilt to value/small/mid-cap in those accounts and also keep our bond portion AA in DW's TSP G fund. 10 funds, 10% each, what's so complicated?

[Explorer]

Can one use M1 Finance to create a portfolio of ETFs that would mimic Wellesley or Wellington?

VYM (37%) + VCIT (63%) approximates to Wellesley
VIG (63%) + VCIT (37%) approximates to Wellington

[jacoavlu]

I transferred in kind a small taxable portfolio from Betterment to M1 in 2018 so that I could unwind the holdings under my own control without trading fees.

The transfer went smoothly, but the M1 platform appeared to reset the cost basis to equal the value of the shares on the day they got to M1. I contacted them immediately and they said it was a limitation of their platform, there was no way to fix the incorrect gains numbers that I would see online when viewing my account, but they assured me that their clearinghouse had the correct basis data on the back end and that my 1099 would be correct. I eventually liquidated all those holdings in 2018 while at M1.

Of course when I got my 1099 on 2/15/19 it was grossly incorrect reporting about $40k in STCG rather than what should have been about $4k in LTCG and some token STCG. The 1099 has the basis for lots of the holdings as zero. I contacted them immediately. They said they would fix it. After about a month I got a corrected but again grossly incorrect 1099 with only slightly different numbers. After lots of hassling, the second corrected 1099 looked correct, I got it about 5pm on 4/12/19.

I think it's ridiculous that a brokerage and tech company like M1 couldn't get this right without lots of hassle. This should be their bread and butter. Just numbers and dates in computers. One would probably have no troubles starting from scratch with them. But given my experience I would never get involved with them again.

[Explorer]

I transferred in kind a small taxable portfolio from Betterment to M1 in 2018 so that I could unwind the holdings under my own control without trading fees.

The transfer went smoothly, but the M1 platform appeared to reset the cost basis to equal the value of the shares on the day they got to M1. I contacted them immediately and they said it was a limitation of their platform, there was no way to fix the incorrect gains numbers that I would see online when viewing my account, but they assured me that their clearinghouse had the correct basis data on the back end and that my 1099 would be correct. I eventually liquidated all those holdings in 2018 while at M1.

Of course when I got my 1099 on 2/15/19 it was grossly incorrect reporting about $40k in STCG rather than what should have been about $4k in LTCG and some token STCG. The 1099 has the basis for lots of the holdings as zero. I contacted them immediately. They said they would fix it. After about a month I got a corrected but again grossly incorrect 1099 with only slightly different numbers. After lots of hassling, the second corrected 1099 looked correct, I got it about 5pm on 4/12/19.

I think it's ridiculous that a brokerage and tech company like M1 couldn't get this right without lots of hassle. This should be their bread and butter. Just numbers and dates in computers. One would probably have no troubles starting from scratch with them. But given my experience I would never get involved with them again.

Excellent post.. thanks.. this sort of nuances rarely get discussed. Thanks for bringing this out. I do have M1 accounts but I purchased all the ETFs with them.. I will redeem them when appropriate and move cash out.

[wootwoot]

If M1 had free TLH I would consider it. Their current offerings don't interest me.

[557880yvi]

We recently consolidated most of our brokerage and retirement accounts with Vanguard as we recently retired early and wanted to streamline managing our finances. The decision was made in part because of the features that the Advantage account offered. Then within months of making this change (and a tremendous amount of work), Vanguard is cancelling the Advantage account (yes, we are really PO'd by this because they clearly knew they had already made the decision to eliminate Advantage while we were consolidating our accounts with them!) and now we have to return to handling most transactions by moving funds from Vanguard to a bank. For those familiar with the Advantage accounts, do you think M1 would alleviate needing a separate bank account for ACH's, EFT's, Bill Pay, etc.? We are also strongly considering creating the Paul Merriman Buy and Hold portfolio to invest/manage our retirement assets and it seems that M1 would make this quite simple? Thank you!

[jacoavlu]

See my post just a few up about a small portfolio I transferred to M1.

I’m convinced M1 is not ready for prime time

[557880yvi]

Wow, not getting cost basis correct? That is scary... makes you wonder what else is not ready for prime time! thank you

[stan1]

I think it's ridiculous that a brokerage and tech company like M1 couldn't get this right without lots of hassle. This should be their bread and butter. Just numbers and dates in computers. One would probably have no troubles starting from scratch with them. But given my experience I would never get involved with them again.

Cost basis is actually pretty complicated it seems. Vanguard has problems getting it right too (even for covered shares from some reports).

[LadyGeek]

This thread is now in the Investing - Theory, News & General forum (general question).

[livesoft]

I think it's ridiculous that a brokerage and tech company like M1 couldn't get this right without lots of hassle. This should be their bread and butter. Just numbers and dates in computers. One would probably have no troubles starting from scratch with them. But given my experience I would never get involved with them again.

As readers of this forum may remember seeing: One of my criteria for a selecting brokerage is correct and timely 1099s each year.

[mikestorm]

I requested M1 to facilitate a *partial* liquidation of my Roth from Vanguard. They took the whole thing. M1 blamed their clearinghouse.

It took a few emails to reverse the difference, but it's all good now.

[HEDGEFUNDIE]

I requested M1 to facilitate a *partial* liquidation of my Roth from Vanguard. They took the whole thing. M1 blamed their clearinghouse.

It took a few emails to reverse the difference, but it's all good now.

I think this is key. M1 actually has support reps who respond to you individually and in a timely manner. If they screw up they own up to the error and get it fixed for you.

Can anyone say the same for Vanguard?

[texas lawdog]

I requested M1 to facilitate a *partial* liquidation of my Roth from Vanguard. They took the whole thing. M1 blamed their clearinghouse.

It took a few emails to reverse the difference, but it's all good now.

I think this is key. M1 actually has support reps who respond to you individually and in a timely manner. If they screw up they own up to the error and get it fixed for you.

Can anyone say the same for Vanguard?

I agree completely and since Vanguards service standards have started to erode, M1 will be getting more of my business in the future compared to Vanguard.

[Freefun]

I think it's ridiculous that a brokerage and tech company like M1 couldn't get this right without lots of hassle. This should be their bread and butter. Just numbers and dates in computers. One would probably have no troubles starting from scratch with them. But given my experience I would never get involved with them again.

Cost basis is actually pretty complicated it seems. Vanguard has problems getting it right too (even for covered shares from some reports).

+1

I transferred in kind from betterment to VG and VG messed up my cost basis. They eventually fixed it but it took lots of patience and maybe 6 months. As far as I can tell it’s all manual- someone actually types all that in.

Edit to add I may open an M1 account with play money to participate in the hedgefundie adventure.

[MotoTrojan]

Agree with sentiments about their support. Partial and ultimately full Roth transfer was seamless.

Given Roth this was just an annoyance but I was surprised to see my overall gain/loss reset after the second transfer: I track my own XIRR and overall gain/loss so it was fine but I’m surprised they couldn’t input the transfer as a deposit is, and leave my net gain.

[reformed.trader]

Love it.

[MotoTrojan]

I do not believe you need M1+ to borrow, you just get a 0.25% better rate. Not worth it without a lot of borrowing.

[HEDGEFUNDIE]

Rate for regular M1 borrow just dropped to 3.75%

[BogleFan510]

Just saw a funds transfer promo for M1 on Facebook, so if one was considering it, they have joined the transfer game. Interested in any follow-up experiences from BH investors. How is customer service?

[willthrill81]

It was a learning curve for me to figure out how to buy and sell on the platform, but it wasn't too bad. I have no complaints, especially considering that it's free.

I requested M1 to facilitate a *partial* liquidation of my Roth from Vanguard. They took the whole thing. M1 blamed their clearinghouse.

It took a few emails to reverse the difference, but it's all good now.

I think this is key. M1 actually has support reps who respond to you individually and in a timely manner. If they screw up they own up to the error and get it fixed for you.

Can anyone say the same for Vanguard?

I agree completely and since Vanguards service standards have started to erode, M1 will be getting more of my business in the future compared to Vanguard.

The same is true of me. I transferred my IRA from Vanguard to M1 because Vanguard is increasingly turning into a 'parent', telling people what they are and aren't allowed to own, such as leveraged ETFs. I don't own a leveraged ETF in my IRA, but if I want to at some point, that's none of Vanguard's business.

[SlowMovingInvestor]

Just saw a funds transfer promo for M1 on Facebook, so if one was considering it, they have joined the transfer game. Interested in any follow-up experiences from BH investors. How is customer service?

I'm thinking of the promo too, but I have no interest in doing anything but transferring an IRA to them, holding for the appropriate period and transferring out after the bonus. I assume they support ACATS inbound and outbound ?

Also, can one setup the account to do NO automatic rebalancing, NO transactions at all ?

[FrankTheViking]

I have been using M1 for the past year. New investor, only platform I have used. I like it, as I understand it it's not TLH friendly but other than that no complaints. Customer service is via email support ticket, always get a response within 2-3 days that addresses my concern / questions.

[jocdoc]

More interesting than the transfer bonus is the 1% apr FDIC insured savings account with M1 plus. They have a free one year trial subscription expiring at the end of the month for this service earlier in the year and I transferred my Ally cash there.
JC