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Welcome to another Friday vlog. Wanna try something new here and do more of a laid back type review and we’ll see how this goes but my main thing here is let’s still keep it informative, just maybe a little bit more laid back.
Three Advantages of M1 Finance
But M1 finance is who I wanna talk about and someone that I would highly, highly recommend, and I’ll explain more of that as we unfold here. But it’s something where I was thinking, that sounds a little too good to be true. All these different claims and the way it’s supposedly structured. So I’ve kinda put this on the back burner for a while, but finally a couple weeks ago I thought, you know, let me just dig a little bit deeper. So I signed up for an account, I funded the account, and let me just say, I’m extremely impressed. Mainly three different facets and all working together in a very nice fashion.
Zero Dollar Commissions
First one is, zero dollar commissions. So it’s free. Yeah, I get it. There’s Robin Hood, but Robin Hood is pure garbage compared to M1 Finance, assuming this, assuming you want to invest. If you wanna trade, M1 Finance, I’m not gonna say they’re awesome for that. Maybe you can make it work, but maybe. But as far as investing when you compare it to Robin Hood at the time of this recording. Yeah, Robin Hood is truly a piece of garbage and here is exactly why. So yes, they’re both equal, they have zero dollar commissions. But M1 Finance allows you to buy partial shares. I’m gonna talk more about that when you go to my desktop here in a little bit. So they’re just partial shares. But the big one is M1 Fiance offers tax friendly accounts. All those different accounts that’ll allow your money to grow tax-free over time, which as of right now Robin Hood does not offer and from an investing standpoint, remember, we’re not talking about trading we’re talking investing, M1 Finance blows Robin Hood out of the water for that reason. The tax-friendly accounts, I’m assuming Robin Hood has something like that in the works and they better catch up with that, because right now M1 Finance, that gives them a huge advantage over Robin Hood. And again, the partial shares, huge, huge advantage, which I’ll get more into as we go to the desktop.
Is M1 Finance Legit?
Now as far as M1 Finance, are they legit? Yes they are, you can go and look down in the fine print and they’re register with all the agencies that they need to be, so it’s not like it’s some fly by operation or anything like that. So they’re totally legit, and from a piece of mind perspective, it’s like I said, at first it’s like, I don’t know, but yeah, they’re registered across the board. It’s not like they’re being run out of some bunker in insert other country that you may not trust name. They’re run right out of, I think Chicago off the top of my head, but they’re run out of the United States, and they got a lot of good things going for it from that perspective.
As far as how’s it look, how’s it work. Very, very streamlined, very, very efficient. And I don’t wanna get too much into that ’cause we’re about to go to my desktop so I can show you how it all works. So with that being said, yeah, let’s go to the desktop and I’ll show you exactly how it works and how it all functions from a visual appealing perspective.
Welcome to my desktop here, and right here we are just at M1 Finance, their homepage. And right up here, quite straightforward. You would just come up there and click log in. That brings you to the log in page and from there we’ll just click log in. Obviously my stuff’s already preloaded, but you would just type in your information. Click log in there, and here is what the behind the scenes looks like in terms of a desktop.
A little context here, I have only put in 100 dollars, because I just wanted to test it out and not just think it works good, or wow, in theory that works good. I wanted to put a little bit of money in here. Now this is not what I’m gonna personally use. I already have an account where I don’t pay any fees because my checking accounts and such meet certain balances but, and not to pat myself on the back, but their balances were, some people it would be understandable if you can’t meet those. So a way to get around those higher balances that some, I use Merrill Edge through Bank of America and I use Bank of America for my banking, but if you don’t have the amount of money to meet those minimums, like I said, this is a way around that. So this is why I am recommending it but then not necessarily using it. Because I already have a zero fee and zero commission broker, but that’s not available to everybody, again, due to those account commissions.
Partial Shares
But, so my point here is that I have used it, though. I have put 100 dollars to work and I just bought Apple with it. And just to kind of illustrate the big and powerful thing that stands out to me, so just clicking on that, like I said, the key word, or I should say key number, being 100 dollars that I’ve used. And you can see that the average share price when I bought Apple, was 168.79. So you go through that math and you’re thinking, well, if you only had 100 dollars, but it cost 168, then most brokers you would not be able to purchase a share. However, because M1 Finance offers partial shares, as I’ve talked about, right up here you can see what my position actually looks like. It’s still allowed me to buy some of Apple’s shares and right now I don’t own a full Apple share, but I own .77017 of a share. And that may look, oh, you don’t even own one? You’re looking at things the wrong way. Just the ability to get involved with Apple, in and of itself is pretty powerful. And actually, you look up here, and you know, bought Apple at a pretty good time. At least at the recording of this video. But I’m already up 14 percent on my money. So 14 percent, I’ll take that. And 14 percent is 14 percent whether it’s a .77 share or 77 shares, it’s still a good return on your money. But the concept here is that M1 Finance allowed me to get involved for just less than what a price of a share cost. And a lot of brokers, you would’ve never been able to get the 14 percent return because you couldn’t have ever bought a share in the first place. So that’s kinda the big thing here, is just how they allow you to get involved and I know I’ve talked about that already but this is how it plays out. Where again, when I bought it was 168, but I only had 100 dollars, but it still allowed me to buy .77 worth of shares. So that kind of how it’s all broken down right there.
Automated Investing With Pies
What I really like is My Pies, and for those of that that have watched my 101 series, I don’t use a pie example, but I use pizza as an example. And the way you can look at that is you click on multiple, you can add as many as you want. You can go right up here. They have the create new pie, so you could do that if you wanted to. For me, if that said create new pizza, that would be perfect, but again, that just goes back to the previous video I’ve done. But you just click right here, and it’s just breaking down my holdings. I only have one, like I said, all I’ve bought is Apple. But then it’s just showing you all the information about it. And the cool thing here is if you were to wanna add another slice to your pie, another slice to your pizza for those of you that have watched my 101 video. Then yeah, all you would do right there is click add slice, and you can go and add whatever sort of stock you want.
Market Research
So if you wanna do a bit of research here, up on the Discover, I mean they have all sorts of different companies that you can go through, and even if one’s not listed. Let me just come up, let’s see. What’s a company out there? I don’t know, there’s Facebook right there. What about Google? No, Amazon. I don’t see Amazon. So A-M-Z-N, so right there you have Amazon. And right there if you wanted to, you can do some basic research here. And if you wanted to, you would just add this as a slice to your overall pie. And it’s really as simple as that.
The other thing is well, Clay, I don’t wanna do stocks, I wanna do index funds. Well, again let’s go back to the Discover tab right there. And let’s just, you know, the SPY probably the most famous index fund out there. There you go, you can click on that. And if you were to wanna add that, well then, there you go. So it’s not only stocks that you can add. You are able to add index funds and all that other stuff and everything else.
There’s funding, very easy to fund. You can look at your activity, you can look at the holdings, which we’ve already done. So all sorts of good streamlined processes, but again, at the end of the day, what really separates this from a lot of other brokers is yes, the zero dollar fees. They’re not the only zero dollar fees out there. But the ability to buy partial shares. That is huge, because, yeah, if you can just do 100 bucks a month or 200 bucks a month, then you would never be able to buy Amazon. I mean, Amazon right now at the time of this video is trading for up over 1000 dollars a share. So I mean, heck, you could show up with 1000 dollars and a lot of brokers, you would never be able to buy Amazon. I should probably pull up Amazon so you can actually see what I mean by that. So right here, yeah, at the time of this recording Amazon currently trading for over 1600 dollars a share. So really, you could show up with 1500 and still not be able to buy Amazon with many brokers out there, but with M1 Finance they would still allow you to get involved with that.
Retirement Accounts: IRA’s and 401k’s
And as I already alluded, they do have their retirement accounts, which is huge. So the IRAs and the 401k and all that sort of stuff. And that also separates it from a lot of different accounts out there, they just don’t have those retirement accounts, but M1 Finance really does seem to have it all. So like I said, this is just a quick, kind of brief behind the scenes, how it all works. But after using it, not only from adding funds and then buying stock, I can tell you it was very straightforward, very streamlined, and anybody can do it, you just have to have a basic understanding of how, you know, if you wanna buy, well then you gotta look at the price. But I guess now that I think about it out loud here, that’s not even necessarily required because you just tell it how much you want. I wanna put 100 dollars let’s say, in Amazon, and it does the rest, it does the math for you, and it’ll just give you the amount of shares that 100 dollars would give you. So by no means you need to be a math genius or anything like that. So even from really a basic, basic understanding of math, you don’t even need that. You just need to know much of something you wanna buy. And that’s that, I mean, that’s it. If you have 100 bucks, and you just tell it, I wanna 100 dollars of Amazon. I want 200 dollars of Apple, so on and so forth. So it truly is very streamlined. I hope you found that beneficial, and I know have repeated this many times over but I’m just gonna do it one more time.
Conclusion: Should I Use M1 Fiannce?
Partial shares, the ability to get involved is what matters. It really stinks with some of these share prices to think that a lot of people just have sit there and, well, I can’t get involved yet. I can’t get involved yet. But with M1 Finance, you can get involved right away and that’s the awesome thing and I think that really makes it. Especially, once again, in combination with the tax-friendly status and structure of the accounts with the IRAs and all that good stuff. I mean, there’s a lot of great things going on. A lot of great dynamics that are working together for the investing perspective, and Robin Hood, maybe someday the can catch up and try to one up each other. But hey, that’s the beautiful thing about free markets. Competition, it’s gonna drive up services. But right now, M1 Finance, like I said. I do not have an account with Robin Hood, but I do with M1 Finance as you saw in the video.
Finally, if you wanna just get a quick 10 dollars, then down below this video, so if you’re watching this on YouTube, in the description section, or if you’re watching this on claytrader.com, just down below the video. Click on that link, and you will get 10 dollars. Just click on the link and there you go. Full disclosure that is an affiliate link and I will also get 10 dollars, though. So if you’re saying, Clay no, you’re a scumbag. I don’t want you to make anything. Okay, I guess don’t click on that link. But if you want a quick 10 dollars in like a half a second for just clicking on it and then filling it out then yeah, use that link down below. And it’s a win-win situation, but I assure you I’m not recommending them because I’ll get 10 dollars. I’m not trying to be cocky or anything, but 10 dollars is not really worth recommending some total garbage person just to get 10 dollars. So I really do, I was impressed, and from now on if I know anybody with the smaller accounts and just looking to get started, M1 Finance will be where I direct them. Because again, zero dollar commissions, partial shareablity, tax-friendly accounts. How could you not recommend that to somebody? It seems to be too good to be true, but it’s not. So yeah, sign up in that link down below.