M1 Finance Review [2022] - Investing Made Stupidly Simple

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i'm up over 60

that's crazy

what's going on y'all welcome back to

channel wealth hacker labs i'm your

grateful host jeff rose and i hope that

you like dessert because we're going to

get you a fat slice of pie yeah get pie

okay so we're not talking about that

kind of pie but we are talking about our

investment pies and when you think about

investment pies and most likely you

think of m1 finance

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even though m1 finance isn't a household

name yet they are a force to be reckoned

with

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i know many of you want to start

investing or you're looking at different

investment options but man there are

just so many different choices out there

you got m1 finance and betterment and

robinhood and stash fidelity vanguard i

mean the list goes on and on so in this

video i want to answer the most common

questions that i get about m1 finance so

today we'll be answering who is m1

finance what does m1 finance offer is m1

finance safe what about their fees and

is m1 finance for beginners and then i'm

also going to give you an

over-the-shoulder look at my personal m1

finance account and as a bonus i'm going

to have a more in-depth training on how

to set up your m1 finance account for

those that want to take it to the next

step all right before we get started a

few housekeeping items number one m1

finance did not pay me to do this video

so this is completely on my own number

two i am an m1 finance affiliate so that

means if you use the link in the

description to sign up for an m1 finance

account i do get paid a small referral

fee so if you do thank you thank you

thank you thank you number three i am an

m1 finance account owner so i actually

have two accounts with m1 finance i've

been using them for a number of years so

i would not recommend anything to you

that i haven't tested myself i approve

and finally number four if you want

access to the in-depth training on how

to set up your own m1 finance account

click the link in the description click

that link sign up you'll get all the

information you need to get access to

that live training so that you can

become a rock star on your m1 finance

account all right let's go ahead and get

started and find out what m1 finance is

all about let's go ahead and start and

answer the first question who is m1

finance or what is m1 finance so

basically m1 finance is a robo advisor

and you probably heard this term before

basically they are an investment app you

are not working with anybody directly so

you're not talking to a human

but you can start investing utilizing

their platform and what they are really

known for is their investment pies which

we will talk more here in a sec but you

know as fintech continues to evolve

really what makes m1 finance special is

that not only do they offer investing

but they also offer the ability to

borrow so you can actually take take out

loans with m1 finance they also have a

debit and credit card that you can also

use so really this is the direction that

a lot of these fintech companies are

going towards is having that all-in-one

solution basically m1 finance can become

your bank if you so choose now a common

question that many people have regarding

m1 finance is well are they brand new

because i've never heard of them and

when you want to compare to like a

fidelity or vanguard yes they are

relatively new so they were founded in

2015.

so yeah that's about six seven years so

that's not that old but compared to a

lot of

fintech and a lot of investment apps

that are popping up left and right i

mean they're pretty much og by now now

another way that you can see if a firm

is legitimate is how

big are they what is their size

that's what she said

okay maybe not that kind of size the

size i'm talking about is what's

referred to as aum or assets under

management in this techcrunch article m1

finance reported that they raised 150

million dollars to boost their valuation

at

1.45 billion but that's not answering

the question what is their aum well in

this article it shared now this is going

back to july

that their current aum back then was 4.5

billion dollars 4.5 billion so that is a

lot of money but how does that compare

to some of their competitors so if we

look at say a robin hood you know this

report shows that robin hood has 80

billion dollars e-trade 600 billion

dollars td ameritrade

1.3 trillion dollars so at 4.5 billion

like that's a lot of money

but they're still relatively small

compared to a robin hood e-trade and

some of the other bigger investment

firms either way 4.5 billion dollars is

nothing to scoff at and i've got no

issues with that size like if they had a

hundred million

then i'd be a little bit more concerned

especially for an investment app let's

now talk about what does m1 finance

offer and let's first we're going to

start with types of accounts so with m1

finance you can open up your traditional

type of investment accounts so that

includes it could be a single account it

could be a joint account these are your

basic brokerage accounts that you open

at other investment firms they also

offer ira so traditional roth sep iras

now for me the one that i was really

excited about is they offer trust

accounts and this is one of them

actually this is the main account that i

have with m1 finance so for my 401k

this is set up as a trust account and i

was super excited to see that i could

set up my 401k trust account with m1

finance now that i couldn't do at other

places you know like robin hood robin

hood seriously like you have more aum

but you can't open roth iras or trust

accounts like come on get with the

picture if you have kids you can also

set up custodial accounts with m1

finance so i was really impressed with

the types of accounts that you can set

up with them they offer everything that

you would need what about investments

what sort of investments do they offer

so here's another reason why i'm a big

fan of m1 finance so m1 finance offers

individual stocks and also etfs so you

can buy both now the other thing that

makes m1 finance also cool is that they

offer

fractional shares so that means if you

only have a hundred dollars to invest

and you want to buy tesla you know if

you go to e-trade if you go to other

traditional brokerage firms you can't

buy and share a tesla you don't have

enough but with m1 finance you can buy a

fractional share of tesla depending on

how much you have to invest you don't

have to put it all in tesla as well if

you want to put that with tesla or you

want to put that in an etf or split it

up you can also do that too so it offers

a lot of flexibility now what most

people are familiar with with m1 finance

is their investment pies and i'll show

you more behind-the-scenes look at my

pie near the end of this video but with

their investment pies basically you can

build your own pie so if you want to

build a pie so let's say if you want if

you have a thousand dollars and you want

to put 25 of that into tesla stock and

25

into a vanguard etf and the other 25

into another stock or another etf you

can build your own pie now for some

people that might be discouraging it

might be scary oh i don't know how to do

that i don't want to build my own pie i

don't trust myself well m1 finance also

offers their community and expert pies

so basically you have other investment

experts that have already created their

own pies that you can just select that

pie

as long as it matches your investment

goals and your investment timeline

so all the heavy lifting all the hard

work is done for you now this is beyond

the scope of what i want to talk about

in this video but i would be remiss if i

didn't at least address the fact that m1

finance also offers a borrow product so

they have m1 borrow and they also have

m1 spend and they have their credit card

so if you need a loan if you need a

credit card if you want to earn interest

on money sitting in cash m1 finance also

have solutions for those as well as you

can see m1 finance has everything that

you need to meet all of your financial

needs does that still make m1

finance safe that is the next question

that many people want to know

are they safe well if you didn't know

this about any sort of investment firm

is that they have to be regulated by

some sort of governing body and in this

case with all investment firms that

governing body is finra so they are a

registered broker dealer with finra

which also means that they have to have

what's called sipc insurance sipc stands

for securities investor protection

corporation and basically what that says

is that if m1 finance were to go under

you're going to have protection up to

500 000

which also includes 250 000 for cash so

are they safe yes

now if you want to do some more digging

if you don't trust what i'm saying and

you want to find out more you can go to

finra broker check and you can actually

find

their what's called their adv which is

their client brochure and i was actually

on here looking at all their different

disclosures so this is all the stuff

that they have to file with the state

and also with the finra board that

everything has to be reviewed so if you

want to find out who their principals

are you know everything that's going on

behind the scenes if there's been any uh

litigation there's been any complaints

filed against them which i couldn't find

any by the way so you can go if you want

to search

m1 finance a d v

then you can find all their different

client brochures so this is the one on

broker check and i found other resources

on here once again this is if you're

like that attorney you want to do some

snooping doing some sleuthing to find

out more about them you can but what i

found i didn't find anything that was uh

wrong any wrongdoing so is anyone

finance safe yes they are guaranteed so

at this point you're probably thinking

okay jeff this sounds all very good but

as they usually say you know if it

sounds too good to be true it probably

is so m1 finance has to be like super

expensive their fees have to be

outrageous

so let's tackle that question what is m1

finances fees well i mean this is the

crazy thing with a lot of these

different robo advisors and m1 finance

is not the first one to do this but they

went to a model where basically they

offer

free trading that means that any of

these etfs that you buy

anything that you sell you know there

are

no fees and you're like okay well how in

the world

do they do that

and this is actually a blog post that

the ceo wrote when they announced this

they actually announced this back in

2017 so they've been doing this for

quite some time

but basically the how they're able to do

this is you know obviously there is no

such thing as a free lunch but with them

how they're making money so we talked

about their lending platforms that they

have they also offer margins so if

you're looking to borrow money against

your stock or your etfs basically borrow

against your securities you can do that

and there is margin loan rates that you

have to pay now you don't have to do

that that's just something that they

offer

the other thing is that when they are

taking all of these orders right

when you have 4.5 billion under

management and people are initiating all

these different trades or they're doing

rebalancing you know they have to go

through a clearing house so you know

they'll find certain ones that they go

through they work out these different

deals and they're bringing

mass trades to these clearing houses you

know they're going to get paid you know

for all these different trades that are

being executed as well so there is stuff

going on behind the scenes behind the

scenes now does a lot of that pass to

you i mean you do incur some of that but

if you want to compare that to some of

the traditional brokerages where you

know if they're charging you 10 15 20 or

more to make a trade on a stock or an

etf like what m1 finance is charging is

pennies in comparison come on be real so

in regards to trading you know paying

any trading fees there aren't any fees

if you want to look at some of their

miscellaneous fees that could happen so

just here's a quick list so you can see

you know there's overnight mail there is

a wire fee if you are transferring your

account out so if you get tired of m1

finance and you want to move it to

robinhood or somewhere else there is a

100

transfer out fee if you have a roth ira

with them and you want to close that

account there's a 100

termination fee so there are some fees

associated with their accounts if you

have them but most of that includes if

you are closing your account

transferring transferring your account

out as far as like making trades doing

rebalancing there are no trades for that

so let me just say like i'm glad that

i'm no longer a practicing financial

planner because if i had to compete with

the m1 finances and the robin hoods of

the world that aren't charging any

trading fees like it just the

competition is so fierce and when you

look at what they offer and the

technology and the platform like it is

really legit alright so that answers

that question what about is

m1 finance for beginners and as somebody

that has been a financial planner for

over 16 years been creating content for

you know over a decade on personal

finance and investing you know i see all

the challenges that a lot of people have

in regards to investing and when i look

at m1 finance do i think that they are

for beginners the answer is yes now that

response might surprise many of you

because you know as i shared earlier

about their investment pies with m1

finance like you have to

pick your own stocks your own etfs and

also build your own pies so in that case

does that make them an investment

platform that is for beginners

and the reason that i would say yes is

because

one when you actually look at their

interface like it is so easy to do a

search for stocks and etfs and create

your own pies but even more so is that

if you aren't comfortable

building your own pie you have the

expert pies that are already done for

you and when i look at those expert pies

to me that's when i think of a place

like betterment

and for those that aren't familiar with

betterment they're another robo advisor

and one of the things i've always liked

about betterment is that you don't have

to build your pies like you don't have

to choose the investments you just

choose your financial goals

and your investment timeline and your

risk tolerance and they

do the rest so with m1 finance like if

if you don't want to build your own pie

like you don't want to own tesla stock

if you don't want to build you know your

own tech stock portfolio you don't have

to you just choose one of the expert

pies that aligns with what you are

trying to achieve so in regards to that

that's why i believe that m1 finance is

a great investment platform for any

beginner but also great for anybody that

is not a beginner that that wants to do

their own research and build their own

custom portfolios okay so we've answered

all of the major questions that you had

regarding m1 finance it's time to

finally look at a over-the-shoulder look

of my own personal m1 finance account

now as i mentioned i do have two m1

finance accounts the one i'm going to

share with you today is my trust account

which is the larger of the two so here

is how it looks so this is m1 finance i

guess i need to also say if you want a

more in-depth tutorial on how to set up

your investment pies with m1 finance

once again click the link in the

description you'll get access to that

tutorial all right so here is my m1

finance account this is the desktop

version you know they do have the

investment app as well

which is also super easy to use

it was easier for me to share my

desktop version here so this is my trust

account and you can see the gain that

i've made uh this was all started

relatively almost like in the middle

actually yeah right here so this account

was started

march 2nd of 2012

so this was really kind of

during the pandemic is when i started to

do this and there have been uh some

recent changes like i just recently made

some changes on this but you can look at

some of my current holdings you know

definitely a lot of emphasis on the tech

sector we got drop drop box paypal

alphabet disney facebook

coinbase apple amazon tesla

and even though this says crypto pie

that's actually only really one security

uh and that is the pro shares trust

which is the bitcoin pro shares trust

the pro shares bitcoin strategy so that

is the bitcoin etf that you can buy i

was trying to add a few different other

investments in that crypto pie but

nothing yet that i wanted to add so even

though that looks like it's its own pie

it's really just one

investment one holding which is the pro

shares bitcoin strategy etf so whenever

you initially build out your pie you

choose the percentage of that stock or

that investment that you want allocated

so in this case here with tesla you know

my initial

target was 14

the actual is 19 and that's because

tesla has done

really well and it was until i recently

just kind of made

some adjustments on this portfolio where

tesla actually was a much higher weight

but as you can see i've got a 35 000

gain

just on tesla stock

688

just to give you an idea now in this

case here so let's say i want to update

my pi like i want to make an adjustment

well then i would just hit edit so right

now here is the my current pi that i

have and you can see all the different

percentages that i'm targeting with each

of these stocks or each of these

different investments so if i want to

add a slice

i would just click this button here

add a slice and then all here is the

list of all the different options that i

have

over 3

83 different results so here i can do a

search let's say if i want to buy

google's already listed there i don't

know who it i would name but let's just

i mean i mean search for tesla oh okay

there's a tesla if you want to buy gm

there's gm there's gamestop you know if

you want to buy amc oh there's amc uh if

there's a vanguard etf that you want to

buy

uh so v

n t

v n

q yeah so the vanguard real estate etf

so these are the ones that are also

available so this is how you would just

do this search right and then you would

just say you want to click on if you

want to add berkshire hathaway so then

you would add that

to now it is currently added to my

investment pie but right now my pie is

off because i have this berkshire stock

one percent so right now it's totally

101 so i would need to take away

one of these other stocks to make sure

that that balance is out but i don't

want to add berkshire right now so we're

going to

exit out of that confirm yes so if you

didn't want to build your own pie or you

want to add one of the expert pies to

your own pie

you can also do that as well so how that

would look you know

come back to where we just were we're

going to add a slice

and then at the top here you can see

stocks we've got funds so here's all the

vanguard funds we talked about we have

my pie so here's the one that i've

created and now you have your expert

pies so this is when i talked about like

kind of like betterment where you have

all these different pies already created

for you so you've got general investing

plan for retirement responsible

investing income earners just stocks and

bonds and then you also have this

other strategies which is a little bit

more on the if you just i don't say

risky side but basically you're just

looking at

well let's just look this is what it

looks like right so you have arc for

those of you who are kathy wood so you

can buy the arc etfs

you can do cannabis you want you want a

portfolio man if you need some cannabis

you know like after you get high to get

some pie i mean that's the perfect fit i

mean i did not know i was going to be

there anyway so you got domestic growth

domestic value so here's just some other

strategies the arc etf that's a very

popular one that people will also use

but let's just look at general investing

so you got ultra conservative moderately

conservative moderately aggressive ultra

aggressive let's look at a moderate so

as you can see here there are 10

holdings shows you the dividend yield

that this pie offers and if you actually

click on it

you can actually see

what the holdings are so here there are

10 holdings and this pie we've got the

vanguard total bond etf we got the

vanguard developed markets etf it shows

you the target weight

so you actually see the holdings that

what you have so if you want to add if i

want to add this to my pi

then this is what i would do i would

just add it here and it would be done

and then i would determine how much

weight

would i want of my portfolio to go in

that one pie maybe you're not sure if

you are ultra aggressive or ultra

conservative but you know when you want

to retire

you may have heard of target date funds

so guess what they also offer that here

so in the retirement strategies you have

your

2020 aggressive you go up to 2040

aggressive 2060

moderate or conservative so in this case

here you would choose the investment pie

that is

closest to whenever you think that you

are going to retire you see these

offered mostly like in 401k plans

retirement accounts and just makes it

super easy basically you're choosing

your retirement year it's going to build

the portfolio for you so let's look at a

2050 or 2045 moderate so you can see all

the different holdings we got 16

different slices so basically 16

different etfs all

composed for this 2045

moderately aggressive portfolio now what

i really like is that you don't have to

choose one pie over the other or like

man what if i want to do like build my

own pie for a little bit of my portfolio

and the rest of it i feel more

comfortable putting that in an expert

pie

you can do that too like that's what i

totally love about m1 finance is that if

you you know if you want to just start

with an expert pie let somebody else

make those decisions for you you can do

that as you build more confidence if you

want to start then selecting your own

stocks or etfs and build your own

custom pie you can do that all in the

same account like that's what i

absolutely love about m1 finance one

last thing i wanted to point out as you

can see here where m1 finance offers

this rebalance feature which i think is

just so super cool so in this case here

you know with my tesla stock you know

right now the actual weight is 19

the target weight is 14

so if this got completely out of whack

and i want to get that closer to that 14

i could just hit rebalance and then m1

finance would make all the trades

necessary you know selling tesla stock

buying whatever stock that i would want

to get that up to its equal weight now

one word of caution if you do do this

if this is a taxable account

recognize like when you do this there is

going to be

some sort of taxable event that happens

so you may have to pay a short-term or

long-term capital gain now for me like i

never did that i didn't care

that that tesla stock had risen so much

and was you know

representing a larger percentage in my

portfolio like i was totally cool with

that you know i would only be concerned

if oh if i bought a stock and all of a

sudden it just took off went crazy and

now there's risk that stock is going to

go under or you know i just don't have a

lot of faith or confidence that stock is

going to hold its current price then

i would think about doing a rebalance or

just selling it completely you know but

but with tesla stock i'm like heck like

yeah it can keep going up for all i care

like i don't want to lose the number of

shares that i have so that's why i never

did a rebalance on my account but

something if you want to do on yours you

most definitely can

and all it takes is clicking this little

button and it will take care of it for

you i hope you can see how easy m1

finance is to use you know i shared my

desktop view of m1 finance i assure you

their mobile app is just as easy to use

and if you have never invested in your

life i promise you like you're not going

to get stuck but if you are interested

you want to take that next step take the

plunge

on getting set up with m1 finance in a

investment account or maybe a roth or

traditional ira check out the link in

the description that you can get access

to that more in-depth training on how to

set up your m1 finance account how to

set up your investment pies i'll show

you how to do it step by step no hose

bar everything that you need to know to

make sure that you get it set up

properly all right so i hope you enjoyed

this video until next time this is jeff

rose reminding you that it's your money

it's your life and only you can make it

awesome until then peace

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you