Is M1 Finance right for you? — The Little Dollar

John Butrick
The Little Dollar
Published in
3 min readAug 17, 2019

I have to say, M1 Finance is one of my favorite investing platforms. Offering well setup portfolios and allowing you to choose your own stocks for investing is a niche all its own. These guys really outdid the investing platforms market.

Lets check them out

If you are already familiar with M1 Finance and wish to get started You can sign up using my affiliate link and can get started on your portfolio with $10 invested towards your future!

M1 finance is setup to offer a great traditional brokerage account fused with a roboadvisor. You also can get a prebuilt portfolio or build your own. This offers you the freedom to pick and choose your stocks or just ETFs.

The Prebuilt protfolios contain securities that will align with your goals and risk tolerance. These are pies you can choose by name. ex. Industries, Income earning, General Investing, etc.

‘Expert Pies use proven methodologies used by some of the worlds most successful brokerages and advisors’ -M1 Finance website.

You can also choose Custom pies, (this is what I did, REITs for the win!)

M1 finance also offers commission free rebalancing to your portfolio. This is crazy knowing that M1 finance offers fractional shares up to 1/10000 of a share. Meaning you can invest in Amazon which trades around $1,800 for only 0.18 cents.

M1 finance will also rebalance and auto invest you cash in the account as low as $10. This means that M1 finance does not hold cash in your account and will do trades in a particular way.

  • Buying will buy low or underweight shares after making deposits.
  • Selling will sell high or overweight shares that follows a tax efficient selling

Features-

  • M1 traditional brokerage accounts have a $100 minimal deposit amount.
  • M1 Retirement accounts have a $500 minimal deposit amount
  • M1 finance offers thousands of Stocks and ETFs.
  • There are no Penny stocks
  • No Fee investing
  • No Mutual Funds are offered.

Pros:

  • 100% Fee Free investing
  • 100% Flexibility with your investments.
  • Can buy Fractional shares
  • Automated Investing/ Deposits
  • Retirement accounts for tax sheltered investing

Cons:

  • No Tax loss harvesting, However does have Tax Minimization
  • M1 finance is not for Traders.
  • M1 finance does not offer Mutual Funds, so Mutual fund investors are out of luck
  • Your funds are fully invested at all times. You brokerage account does not hold cash

Who is M1 finance for and not for?

M1 finance is for experienced investors who are looking to automate investments. M1 finance is also for beginners who want to have some DIY investing. but be aware of the risks that come with investing.

M1 finance is also for those who want a set it and deal with it very little amounts of time.

M1 finance is NOT for Traders and inexperience beginners though. You cannot buy and sell single shares like traders do. You also have a very powerful platform with M1 finance. Inexperienced beginners should start with Robinhood.

Getting Started with M1 Finance-

If you are ready to start investing and would like to use M1 Finance to get started. You can use my exclusive link to get $10 to your portfolio just by signing up.

you will need to enter your information such as bank accounts and social security and tax identificaton.

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Originally published at https://thelittledollar.com on August 17, 2019.

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John Butrick
The Little Dollar

Founder at The Little Dollar | Online Entreprenuership and Personal Finance | Writer and Virtual Assistant | Crypto Investor | UBI advocate | #YangGang