M1 Finance is a well known financial app among today's younger investors.
Starting out as a simple brokerage platform, M1 Finance now offers a wide variety of products ranging from credit, checking and savings accounts, to personal and margin loans, with an optional premium subscription offering.
If you’re researching about the platform, you might be wondering how M1 Finance can make you money.
We’re going to go over all the different ways their financial products can make you a profit.
We also made this video outlining the same process if you want to watch along!
Usually these change and are offered for a limited time for newcomers, but there’s a likely chance that if you’re reading this article, you haven’t signed up for M1 yet.
Check their website to see what promotions are going on, you never know what kind of bonus you could get.
If you’re transferring over large sums from your other accounts, several thousand dollars etc, depending on the promo you could make a clean $1k or more.
And hey, even if it ends up just being another $50, that’s still $50 you didn’t have before!
The main way to make money with M1 Finance is through investing.
The most common way to make money investing in the stock market is by buying low and selling high.
Let's say you buy a stock for $50 and then a year later it is trading for $65.
If you sell, that is a capital gain of $15 per share, money in your pocket!
Of course, you have to sell the stock/ETF in order to realize the capital gain.
Keep in mind, it is possible to lose money if the market goes in the other direction.
M1 Finance is really popular among dividend investors.
That is largely due to automation features built in such as dynamic rebalancing and portfolio level dividend reinvestment.
When you invest in stocks/ETFs, many of these investments pay out dividends. This is usually on a quarterly basis.
When you earn dividends, you can either cash them out by transferring the money to the bank or you could reinvest them.
Keep in mind, reinvesting allows you to earn compound interest.
If you are curious, here's our full guide on what happens with dividends with M1 Finance.
This is the latest new offering from M1 Finance.
The Owner's Rewards Card is a credit card that integrates directly with your portfolio.
All M1 members can apply for the Owner's Rewards Card but Plus members get the annual fee waived! Without a Plus membership, the card has an annual fee of $95.
Essentially, this card allows you to earn cash back rewards for shopping at companies that you also invest in. There is a list of participating brands on their website, and the cash back reward ranges from 2.5% to 10%.
Keep in mind, this is a credit card. If you don't pay off your balance in full monthly, it could quickly end up costing you a real amount of money.
, we have the M1 Spend checking account.
In order to earn the 3.3% APY on the checking account, you do need to be an M1 Plus member.
This is a checking account that integrates directly with your portfolio allowing you to move money between accounts with ease.
You also earn 1% cash back on purchases and 1.3% APY on deposits assuming you have an active M1 Plus membership.
M1 Finance is unveiling their latest offering; a high yield savings account exclusive to their M1 Plus subscribers.
At its unveiling, M1 quoted their high yield savings account as offering 4.5% APY, which is quite competitive in the current high yield savings market. Usually, savings accounts will offer up to around 1.2% APY.
Though 4.5% might not sound like a big deal if you’re new to finance, but this is a very aggressive rate of return that rivals what can be made on certain dividend investing strategies.
The difference is, though dividend investing may still out-earn a high yield savings account, the savings account isn’t exposed to the many fluctuations and risks found on the stock market.
A pretty attractive offer, if you can afford an M1 Plus subscription.
As you’ve read above, a lot of the best features M1 Finance offers are within its premium M1 Plus subscription, which costs $125 a year.
That can sound like a steep cost for “an app subscription”, but the potential it has to make you money is actually pretty real.
To figure out if an M1 Plus subscription is suitable for you, calculate how much it could earn you within a year.
With an interest rate of 4.5% on their savings account, it would take a savings account worth $3000 to generate a little over $125 in interest each year.
This amount gained back alone would pay for the subscription cost.
$3000 in your savings account might sound impossible for you depending on your situation, but it’s actually a great starting goal for any savings account.
With the other features the M1 Plus subscription offers, including waiving the $95 annual fee for their credit card, the subscription pays for itself pretty quickly, before helping you make more money with all the features we’ve listed above.
Another aspect of the M1 Plus subscription is that while the actual financial cost may seem secondary after our calculations, there is a second, unseen cost in the subscription: your incentivized loyalty.
If you’re taking advantage of their investing pie features, are able to use their credit card offering in a healthy way, and use their savings account to full effect, there is a lot of money M1 can make you!
However, if you don’t choose to follow through and invest in your finances regularly, it could just end up being another annual bill.
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