Investing, Banking, and Borrowing for Hands-Off Investors

Top perks

Integrated investing, banking, and borrowing

M1 Finance gives you access to a variety of investment products and a high-yield savings account. With the Owner’s Rewards Card by M1, you can earn between 2.5% and 10% cash back and automatically invest the money to grow your portfolio. The platform offers personal loans for up to $50,000, as well as margin loans at competitive interest rates. That said, the platform does not offer checking accounts as of February 2024. Look elsewhere if you want your all-in-one account to include debit cards.

No commissions or account fees

M1 Finance watches costs at every turn: no commission fees, no account management fees, and no application or origination fees for borrowing. It even reimburses ATM fees.

That doesn’t mean M1 is completely fee-free, though. You’ll pay a $50 account maintenance fee if your account balance is less than $50 and there’s no trading activity for 90 days. Other fees include a $100 outgoing transfer fee and $100 IRA termination fee, along with various charges if you request paper copies of documents.

Diverse account types

M1 Finance lets you open joint brokerage accounts with partners and custodial accounts for minors. Like individual brokerage accounts, they’re commission-free. However, only paying M1 Plus members get access to UTMA/UGMA custodial accounts.

Dynamic Rebalancing

When you deposit money into your account, M1 Finance’s algorithm identifies the segments of your portfolio that are underweight and puts money there first to help you stay on target with the allocation you chose. And when you withdraw money, the algorithm sells the portions of your portfolio that are overweight first.

Retirement investing

In addition to traditional stock brokerages and trust accounts, M1 Finance offers traditional, Roth, SEP IRAs, and rollover IRAs.

Limited-time promotions

M1 Finance frequently offers promotions available to new users for things like transferring a brokerage account or making a first-time deposit. Check our M1 Finance promotions page to keep tabs on current offers.

What could be improved

Access to advisors or recommendations

Unlike other online brokerages, M1 doesn’t provide investment advice or recommendations. It also doesn’t provide access to human advisors.

Not good for active traders

M1 has two trading windows. The morning window, which is available to all customers, begins at 9:30 a.m. ET every day the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is open. The afternoon trading window begins at 3 p.m. ET and is only available to M1 Plus customers. To use both trading windows in a single day, you need to have at least $25,000 in your account.

Essentially, what this means is you can only trade once daily, or twice per day if you’re an M1 Plus customer with the $25,000 account minimum. This shouldn’t matter to long-term investors, but if you’re a frequent trader, M1 isn’t a good fit.

No mutual fund access

Mutual funds are a popular investment choice with hands-off investors. But M1 doesn’t currently offer mutual fund access.

Tax-loss harvesting

Investors in high tax brackets or with large investment accounts will miss out on tax-loss harvesting, which could reduce their tax liability by offsetting taxable capital gains.

Automatic rebalancing

M1 Finance’s Dynamic Rebalancing helps to maintain your target asset allocation using the funds flowing into and out of your account. However, M1 Finance will not automatically reallocate the funds you’ve already invested; you must instruct the app to do so. That means you have to keep an eye on your asset allocation and ask for a rebalance if your portfolio starts to get out of whack.

This brokerage isn’t as hands-off as some competing robo-advisors, though its design makes it easy to see how your portfolio’s allocation compares with your target so you know when to ask for a rebalance.

$100 account minimum

M1 has a $100 minimum to open an account (or $500 for retirement accounts). That’s a drawback, considering that many competitors have no minimum to open an account.