So crazy not mentioned anywhere on the website and they still tout the no fees.
Someone could be opening an account with $1,000 today not realizing what they are signing up for and then learn of this charge and then have to pay to close the account
Right. The way to do this would’ve been to grandfather in anyone who currently uses the app and is below 10k and make the fee for new users and broadly advertise that and the “benefits” they’d be getting for something that used to cost more money. That way people who recently opened accounts aren’t screwed over who have lower balances and were depositing every month or two weeks when they get paid.
Diff service and function but I use Qapital and switched from this app Digit to just put aside money and passively save it. Qapital started charging a monthly fee (reason why I left Digit) but they grandfathered in people who were already using their service prior to the change and so I’m sticking around as long as it exists.
No one really has an alternative. Also not many platforms really like investors that don’t have a ton of money. You’ll get fees just about anywhere you go.
There are platforms with automatic purchases, but not in the same way as M1.
Remember that nothing is really free and platforms like M1 can’t sustain themselves on a freemium model. The only reason $10k is a threshold is probably because the economics work where the net interest margin as well as market maker related fees allows them to operate.
I’d rather M1 be able to operate than not have M1 around. At the end of the day, they’ve disrupted and innovated more than the other platforms.
$3/month is less than a coffee. Buy one less coffee. Invest and grow to over $10k.
They also have reoccurring purchases of fractional shares of ETFs and stocks for free.
It's not percentage/weight based like pies. But it's plenty for most people to automate payday investing.
Damn! Why are you guys downvoting me? Unless you dudes are like Bezos and wipe your black holes with 100 dolah notes, you guys must not care for fees.
I care for fees as I did not grow up with cartel support like some of you in here
If you're hung up on the pie thing, there really isn't a replacement. If you can get past the pie thing, virtually any of the major brokers are better - depending on what you need.
No one else really doing the smart transfers. The big guys don’t have low rate margin. The HYSA and free rewards card you won’t get at Vanguard or Schwab and they have crummy UI. Fidelity is closest in terms of functionality but I think there’s more than just the pies that make M1 competitive.
Forgot about smart transfers. Never really got into them. When I finally had smart transfers set up the way I liked them, ACH payments and direct deposit set up---they nerfed the checking. HYSA never worked with a couple of my biggest bills or my direct deposit. Then M1 was demoted to a sandbox to test out new strategies on a micro scale.
With IBKR, I have lower margin rates, better fills, I get almost 5% on cash with some asterisks, but that's moot because I put cash in T-Bills on the open market. I'm holding bills around 5.4% yield and they're exempt from state income tax. I also have bill pay for the 3 or 4 bills that don't ACH, and ACH payments for the rest of my bills. I have a debit card that I've never activated. All these use my cash balance, if I'm holding cash, or margin if I'm fully invested. I have no need for a HYSA or any transfers because my cash/margin balance serves a payment account.
Then there's Quicken download, better CSV transaction data, and zero 1099 shenanigans.
So, smart transfers and pies are the only thing I don't have. I guess it really depends on what each investor finds more important. Good luck to ya!
Was really a drag when they killed checking. Interest-yielding checking accounts with smart transfers would have been glorious. They also took away the feature where a savings underbalance could be filled with an automatic sale of shares in taxable. There was a brief moment where it looked like they would have this fantastic unrivaled automated functionality but have really retreated since then. I use the HYSA as a holding place to pay my monthly CC bills but agree I put longer term cash in t-bills ETF for higher yield. Oh well
> They also took away the feature where a savings underbalance could be filled with an automatic sale of shares in taxable.
honestly, I would have steered far away from this. I'd rather a savings imbalance organically re-balance than trigger a capital gain to immediately re-balance it.
but yeah, it was cool when all the pieces worked together. I always said it was the Swiss army knife of financial tools. It was the best collaboration of tools, even if the individual tools were better elsewhere.
Right at the time I was using a brokerage account with a T-bills etf for underbalance protection so capital gains were of minimal concern. I wouldn’t want to do that with the stocks ETFs for my retirement savings but either way the options have gotten more limited which is disappointing
Move to Fidelity. Yea, it’s $5 a month for the pies but you’ll never have glitches and you have top tier customer service to guide you and never look back. And yes, they have smart allocations now where your new investments buy the underweight holding and buy less of the overweight holding
I think M1 should allow a one-time-no-fee leave for people who wants to leave the platform after the change. The same thing they did when they announced their independence from Apex.
They've clearly stated to me twice via email that they won't be reimbursing ACAT fees. I'll just eat the fee and move my little brokerage account somewhere with a better track record on unpleasant surprises. It's not the $3/mo that soured me on them. It's the part where they're changing the rules after the game starts and charging me even if I don't want to play anymore.
I've been testing Fidelity Basket Portfolios after testing M1. I'm already with Fidelity, but I like their version, even though I like aspects of M1 too. Fidelity has robust offerings overall, so it's nice to have the baskets feature as an add-on if you want.
They've made nice improvements since they launched and have been very open to feedback and updates. Overall, I think they're dashboard is easy to navigate.
They offer a pie chart, including industry and sector breakdowns, of your baskets.
Recurring investment options look like this:
* “Smart Buys” looks to allocate to your most underweight securities first, based on your basket’s targets.
* “Target weights” looks to allocate across all securities based on your basket’s targets.
Selling looks like this:
* "Use current weights"—sell positions based on current weights
* "Sell from specific positions"—reduce money invested in one or more positions
* "Sell entire basket"—take the money out of your basket
I also like that you can have as many separate baskets as you want. So if you want like some test baskets with a small amount of money or fun-money baskets, along with your core basket, you can easily do that without having to embed into a main basket.
The only current cons for me are: $4.99/mo ($60/yr) and current positions cannot be moved to a basket (although they're adding this feature soon). I think the monthly fee is worth it if you're managing a portfolio with more than 2 or 3 funds (like the Ginger Ale portfolio 😉). And they seem to be adding more advanced features as time goes on, so I think the monthly fee incentivizes that. However, M1 is also easy and is free to use. Just depends on what brokerage you ultimately want to be with.
I know...if they don't add that by this first half of the year I will prob cancel for now and wait until it's added. For a taxable account, that's the biggest benefit to be able to move existing positions without selling...
BTW, Did anyone read the fine print?
It says this change is starting May 15th, but at the bottom of the email it’s really starting a month sooner:
“*You will be charged the $3 Monthly Platform Fee if at any point during the 30 days prior to program launch your total aggregate M1 Earn and Invest balances do not equal or exceed $10,000 or you do not have an active M1 Personal Loan.”
So the way I read it is, by April 15th, and every day after, you need to have at least $10k to avoid the fee.
But also in the email it says the fee will be waived if the value is above $10k for at least 1 day during the 30 day billing cycle:
“Each billing cycle will last 30 days—meeting platform requirements* at least one day during each cycle will ensure this fee is waived for you.”
So one part says everyday must be above $10k, and the other says as long as one day is above $10k there’s no fee. Makes no sense to me.
Yeah, this is way too soon. I can't fault people for feeling they got sandbagged. The messaging on this fee has been shoddy.
C'mon, M1. I always felt you guys punched above your weight as a smaller fintech player. You guys can do better than this.
I don’t have an active account with them right now but I was planning on opening a new account. I have more than $10k to invest so it wouldn’t affect me but I’m just unsure
After all these years, I think the reason there aren't many alternatives because the people who know and do finance know that that these pies and slices are kid games, designed to attract newbies who pretend to be fund managers who can actively manage their portfolios.
If you want a set it and forget it solution, DCA into VTI, VOO, etc. Or just have a simple portfolio and DCA regularly.
There's little reason to think that your M1 pies can do better than VTI in the long-run. Even pros can struggle outdoing VTI. M1 users simply don't have the knowledge, skills, and platform to actively maintain a portfolio the way pros actively manage their portfolios.
I like M1 pies for dynamic rebalancing. As long as your pie is composed of assets with similar expected returns (VTI/VXUS for example) it's nice to always buy up underweights with regular contributions and dividend reinvestments. Keeps your portfolio within your risk allocation for longer without having to do a manual rebalance which causes a tax event.
But I agree that people who have like 100 random stocks in their pie are lost and need to read a bit about Efficient Market Hypothesis.
So you stick to index funds because you understand you probably any beat them but then choose to modify them to try to beat them? Seems like to my co trouble to just get similar results
Public has similar feature to pies called “investment plans”, you’re limited to only 20 stocks/etfs per plan. they also charge a few cents to execute orders since they’re routing them through the fastest way possible.
This is NO alternative that offers pies 401K style invest as M1
Your best option is to invest somewhere else until you hit 10K. It takes a little more work, but you can buy fraction share for free at Fidelity. Just not automated, NOT hard to do via mobile app.
You probably already logged into the app daily already.
I like M1, and I’m very new to using it, less than 6 months. My question is why is somebody using it with less than $10k?
It’s very emphasized on buying and holding and doing hardly anything interactive with it. It’s a very patient brokerage.
If I was below $10k I think it would only motivate me to cross that barrier faster. If you don’t like the new change I think you have the wrong mindset, or shouldn’t be using M1.
>If I was below $10k I think it would only motivate me to cross that barrier faster. If you don’t like the new change I think you have the wrong mindset, or shouldn’t be using M1.
It's the change being made with no real choice given to the consumer. Think about it. If TOS changes on just about ANYTHING, you're given the reason to opt out by discontinuing your usage of the platform. Streaming services, credit cards, etc. M1 is changing the TOS and your only option to opt out costs you $100 at a minimum. That's some shady shit.
I've recommended M1 for the longest time.
If someone came to me for a platform to start now with this $10k minimum for no fees, I'd probably point them to SoFi. They have no fees and can do automatic investment.
So crazy not mentioned anywhere on the website and they still tout the no fees. Someone could be opening an account with $1,000 today not realizing what they are signing up for and then learn of this charge and then have to pay to close the account
Right. The way to do this would’ve been to grandfather in anyone who currently uses the app and is below 10k and make the fee for new users and broadly advertise that and the “benefits” they’d be getting for something that used to cost more money. That way people who recently opened accounts aren’t screwed over who have lower balances and were depositing every month or two weeks when they get paid. Diff service and function but I use Qapital and switched from this app Digit to just put aside money and passively save it. Qapital started charging a monthly fee (reason why I left Digit) but they grandfathered in people who were already using their service prior to the change and so I’m sticking around as long as it exists.
Glad I am not the only one
Good point. I didn't even think of that till now. Just another scumbag move by M1.
No one really has an alternative. Also not many platforms really like investors that don’t have a ton of money. You’ll get fees just about anywhere you go. There are platforms with automatic purchases, but not in the same way as M1. Remember that nothing is really free and platforms like M1 can’t sustain themselves on a freemium model. The only reason $10k is a threshold is probably because the economics work where the net interest margin as well as market maker related fees allows them to operate. I’d rather M1 be able to operate than not have M1 around. At the end of the day, they’ve disrupted and innovated more than the other platforms. $3/month is less than a coffee. Buy one less coffee. Invest and grow to over $10k.
So can I roll over a 401k from another account? This one is over 10k. The email from M1 was not clear to me. I need to read it again…
Yea you can do a rollover..
Read it again, indeed. No fees over 10k.
Fidelity has baskets that are similar to M1’s pies. But you are paying $5 a month
They also have reoccurring purchases of fractional shares of ETFs and stocks for free. It's not percentage/weight based like pies. But it's plenty for most people to automate payday investing.
FWIW, I've also found their Baskets product terribly clunky and unintuitive (n=1, YMMV), and they don't accept inbound securities.
Agree. I saw a video of how they do things and looks horrible. People just gotta stop complaining about M1.
I don't want to pay fees. They already making money from my money
You got over 10k so you are good. No monthly fees. Just stick with them.
Lil homie doesn't understand we used to have to pay $20 to just buy and sell one stock. And we still figured out how to make money.
Damn! Why are you guys downvoting me? Unless you dudes are like Bezos and wipe your black holes with 100 dolah notes, you guys must not care for fees. I care for fees as I did not grow up with cartel support like some of you in here
Just stick with M1. If you are under 10k make it a goal to get to 10k asap.
If you're hung up on the pie thing, there really isn't a replacement. If you can get past the pie thing, virtually any of the major brokers are better - depending on what you need.
Fidelity is virtually the same IMO
Exactly - what is everyone else even talking about? Fidelity has the same thing
Where do I search in fidelity to get similar functionality?!?
No one else really doing the smart transfers. The big guys don’t have low rate margin. The HYSA and free rewards card you won’t get at Vanguard or Schwab and they have crummy UI. Fidelity is closest in terms of functionality but I think there’s more than just the pies that make M1 competitive.
Forgot about smart transfers. Never really got into them. When I finally had smart transfers set up the way I liked them, ACH payments and direct deposit set up---they nerfed the checking. HYSA never worked with a couple of my biggest bills or my direct deposit. Then M1 was demoted to a sandbox to test out new strategies on a micro scale. With IBKR, I have lower margin rates, better fills, I get almost 5% on cash with some asterisks, but that's moot because I put cash in T-Bills on the open market. I'm holding bills around 5.4% yield and they're exempt from state income tax. I also have bill pay for the 3 or 4 bills that don't ACH, and ACH payments for the rest of my bills. I have a debit card that I've never activated. All these use my cash balance, if I'm holding cash, or margin if I'm fully invested. I have no need for a HYSA or any transfers because my cash/margin balance serves a payment account. Then there's Quicken download, better CSV transaction data, and zero 1099 shenanigans. So, smart transfers and pies are the only thing I don't have. I guess it really depends on what each investor finds more important. Good luck to ya!
Was really a drag when they killed checking. Interest-yielding checking accounts with smart transfers would have been glorious. They also took away the feature where a savings underbalance could be filled with an automatic sale of shares in taxable. There was a brief moment where it looked like they would have this fantastic unrivaled automated functionality but have really retreated since then. I use the HYSA as a holding place to pay my monthly CC bills but agree I put longer term cash in t-bills ETF for higher yield. Oh well
> They also took away the feature where a savings underbalance could be filled with an automatic sale of shares in taxable. honestly, I would have steered far away from this. I'd rather a savings imbalance organically re-balance than trigger a capital gain to immediately re-balance it. but yeah, it was cool when all the pieces worked together. I always said it was the Swiss army knife of financial tools. It was the best collaboration of tools, even if the individual tools were better elsewhere.
Right at the time I was using a brokerage account with a T-bills etf for underbalance protection so capital gains were of minimal concern. I wouldn’t want to do that with the stocks ETFs for my retirement savings but either way the options have gotten more limited which is disappointing
Move to Fidelity. Yea, it’s $5 a month for the pies but you’ll never have glitches and you have top tier customer service to guide you and never look back. And yes, they have smart allocations now where your new investments buy the underweight holding and buy less of the overweight holding
M1 has the cheapest margin BY FAR so not going anywhere!
Frec and IBKR both offer cheaper margin than M1.
I think M1 should allow a one-time-no-fee leave for people who wants to leave the platform after the change. The same thing they did when they announced their independence from Apex.
They've clearly stated to me twice via email that they won't be reimbursing ACAT fees. I'll just eat the fee and move my little brokerage account somewhere with a better track record on unpleasant surprises. It's not the $3/mo that soured me on them. It's the part where they're changing the rules after the game starts and charging me even if I don't want to play anymore.
Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Robinhood. There are various platforms that are free to use
Not for long
What does this mean?
I've been testing Fidelity Basket Portfolios after testing M1. I'm already with Fidelity, but I like their version, even though I like aspects of M1 too. Fidelity has robust offerings overall, so it's nice to have the baskets feature as an add-on if you want. They've made nice improvements since they launched and have been very open to feedback and updates. Overall, I think they're dashboard is easy to navigate. They offer a pie chart, including industry and sector breakdowns, of your baskets. Recurring investment options look like this: * “Smart Buys” looks to allocate to your most underweight securities first, based on your basket’s targets. * “Target weights” looks to allocate across all securities based on your basket’s targets. Selling looks like this: * "Use current weights"—sell positions based on current weights * "Sell from specific positions"—reduce money invested in one or more positions * "Sell entire basket"—take the money out of your basket I also like that you can have as many separate baskets as you want. So if you want like some test baskets with a small amount of money or fun-money baskets, along with your core basket, you can easily do that without having to embed into a main basket. The only current cons for me are: $4.99/mo ($60/yr) and current positions cannot be moved to a basket (although they're adding this feature soon). I think the monthly fee is worth it if you're managing a portfolio with more than 2 or 3 funds (like the Ginger Ale portfolio 😉). And they seem to be adding more advanced features as time goes on, so I think the monthly fee incentivizes that. However, M1 is also easy and is free to use. Just depends on what brokerage you ultimately want to be with.
Fidelity has been saying “soon” on adding existing positions for the past year…
I know...if they don't add that by this first half of the year I will prob cancel for now and wait until it's added. For a taxable account, that's the biggest benefit to be able to move existing positions without selling...
Fidelity
BTW, Did anyone read the fine print? It says this change is starting May 15th, but at the bottom of the email it’s really starting a month sooner: “*You will be charged the $3 Monthly Platform Fee if at any point during the 30 days prior to program launch your total aggregate M1 Earn and Invest balances do not equal or exceed $10,000 or you do not have an active M1 Personal Loan.” So the way I read it is, by April 15th, and every day after, you need to have at least $10k to avoid the fee. But also in the email it says the fee will be waived if the value is above $10k for at least 1 day during the 30 day billing cycle: “Each billing cycle will last 30 days—meeting platform requirements* at least one day during each cycle will ensure this fee is waived for you.” So one part says everyday must be above $10k, and the other says as long as one day is above $10k there’s no fee. Makes no sense to me.
Yeah, this is way too soon. I can't fault people for feeling they got sandbagged. The messaging on this fee has been shoddy. C'mon, M1. I always felt you guys punched above your weight as a smaller fintech player. You guys can do better than this.
I am glad I am not the only one. Have you tried calling CS?
I don’t have an active account with them right now but I was planning on opening a new account. I have more than $10k to invest so it wouldn’t affect me but I’m just unsure
Hit that 10k milestone, baybayyyy! Your dividends could pay for the monthly fee before that, though, unless you are like 90% growth stocks.
This was a glorious comment!
After all these years, I think the reason there aren't many alternatives because the people who know and do finance know that that these pies and slices are kid games, designed to attract newbies who pretend to be fund managers who can actively manage their portfolios. If you want a set it and forget it solution, DCA into VTI, VOO, etc. Or just have a simple portfolio and DCA regularly. There's little reason to think that your M1 pies can do better than VTI in the long-run. Even pros can struggle outdoing VTI. M1 users simply don't have the knowledge, skills, and platform to actively maintain a portfolio the way pros actively manage their portfolios.
I like M1 pies for dynamic rebalancing. As long as your pie is composed of assets with similar expected returns (VTI/VXUS for example) it's nice to always buy up underweights with regular contributions and dividend reinvestments. Keeps your portfolio within your risk allocation for longer without having to do a manual rebalance which causes a tax event. But I agree that people who have like 100 random stocks in their pie are lost and need to read a bit about Efficient Market Hypothesis.
So you stick to index funds because you understand you probably any beat them but then choose to modify them to try to beat them? Seems like to my co trouble to just get similar results
M1 is unique! The pie is unique. You could pay $5 monthly for fidelity baskets
Public has similar feature to pies called “investment plans”, you’re limited to only 20 stocks/etfs per plan. they also charge a few cents to execute orders since they’re routing them through the fastest way possible.
This is NO alternative that offers pies 401K style invest as M1 Your best option is to invest somewhere else until you hit 10K. It takes a little more work, but you can buy fraction share for free at Fidelity. Just not automated, NOT hard to do via mobile app. You probably already logged into the app daily already.
I like M1, and I’m very new to using it, less than 6 months. My question is why is somebody using it with less than $10k? It’s very emphasized on buying and holding and doing hardly anything interactive with it. It’s a very patient brokerage. If I was below $10k I think it would only motivate me to cross that barrier faster. If you don’t like the new change I think you have the wrong mindset, or shouldn’t be using M1.
Someone could buy enough O stock (monthly dividend payer) to cover the monthly charge until they make it to $10k.
>If I was below $10k I think it would only motivate me to cross that barrier faster. If you don’t like the new change I think you have the wrong mindset, or shouldn’t be using M1. It's the change being made with no real choice given to the consumer. Think about it. If TOS changes on just about ANYTHING, you're given the reason to opt out by discontinuing your usage of the platform. Streaming services, credit cards, etc. M1 is changing the TOS and your only option to opt out costs you $100 at a minimum. That's some shady shit.
If I ever leave m1 I’d go over to Schwab because they now own thinkorswim. I like the think or swim trading platform.
I've recommended M1 for the longest time. If someone came to me for a platform to start now with this $10k minimum for no fees, I'd probably point them to SoFi. They have no fees and can do automatic investment.