M1 Reviews 181

M1 Finance is weak overall. They offer loans against your stock portfolio (you can borrow out up to 30%), which is pretty cool, which is why I moved here to begin with.

I like the segregation of 'spend' versus 'invest' accounts. That's rather nice; you can actually reliably spend the money in your account with worrying it will disappear overnight due to some random margin requirement change.

However, their whole investment setup sucks. Instead of buying and selling individual stocks, you create a 'pie', where you allocate your stock portfolio funds into percentages that should go into different stocks, e.g., "50% Tesla, 50% Apple" would be one pie. You then buy / sell / rebalance this pie.

You can't short stocks. You can't trade on margin. You can only buy / sell once per day (lol) at a predefined time of day, not whenever you want. Their UI doesn't even show actual stock prices. Their UI shows a graph of your portfolio's value over time, but they make your deposits and withdrawals look as if they were gains or losses in your portfolio (why?).

Honestly, if you use M1, you'll basically have no idea what you're buying or selling, or when you're buying and selling it, or at what price, or even if you made or lost money on a trade. Customer service is mediocre, moving money takes ages, and the site is unintuitive.

I'm closing my account and moving back to eTrade.

Date of experience: May 28, 2022

hi i had sent a transfer on mar 29th for $20 it has not moved. gustave wandland

Date of experience: April 04, 2022

Pros: Simple setup, good concept, easy to use.

Cons: Getting your money out.

I have a Roth IRA with M1. It has taken 7 weeks now to roll my money out to another Roth IRA.
First, they didn't liquidate my entire portfolio after I said to sell 100% of the assets.
Second, they "never received" the rollover request from the requesting institution, even though the requester got a confirmation receipt.
Third, M1 and their custodian Apex Clearing gave me the customer service run around about who I needed to speak with. I finally got a senior CS rep who has been helpful but has no power to make anything happen.
M1 finally liquidated the $3 that was holding up my rollover after 5 days.
I had the requester re-send the request. No action again. Took me reaching out 2x more times for a status.
Now I'm being told I need a Medallion signature, which I have previously twice clarified if it was needed and was told no.
Still not complete with this. Requests have been sent 5x now and always a different reason they can't complete it. Wondering if Apex is insolvent at this point.

I would never recommend M1/Apex again after this. I now have to go through this whole mess again to get my wife's Roth out. I feel bad that I recommended to other family members as well. Thankfully the market hasn't been on a run the last 7 weeks, otherwise, I'd be losing my mind.

TL;DR: Fine if you never need your money out of M1. Process to get money out is a disaster.

Date of experience: March 04, 2022

M1 Finance does not honor its promotions such as its $500 bonus for new users. Not only that, I found out M1 Finance charges customers who wish to close their accounts. Google M1 Finance reviews and you will see what others think of M1 Finance. Moving from the invest to spend sections of the site took weeks and lots of help from M1. According to the latest terms and conditions on M1s site it also invalidates the promotion. A rep there told me they have a similar promotion whereby I need to move money to M1 Finance from another brokerage firm. I guess they'd charge me to move funds to another brokerage firm, the funds would be on hold for a few days at the other brokerage firm, I'd have to fill out a transfer request form at the other brokerage firm, it would take weeks to arrive at M1 Finance, and the funds would be in limbo for a few weeks at M1 Finance before they are even accessible. When I email support about closing the account without fees, they tell me I am ineligible for the promotion.

Date of experience: February 10, 2022

One Star for the reward to become a customer and/or refer others into this suck institution.

You may deposit a small amount of money, finally figure out the confusion of their simplistic methods.

However, if ever you want to close the account AVOID $100 FEE to transfer to another Broker. As-well-as the $25 FEE for drafting a check to get your money. See their long list of fees, including $20 FEE for Inactivity after you get tired of even trying to "invest" at this so-called broker.

Google: M1 Finance Fees

Save yourself time and money as I wish I did.

Date of experience: January 19, 2022

This is not a brokerage for serious investors. The "pie" system forces you to make allocations into stocks that maybe you don't want to, exiting a position cannot be done cleanly (you have to jump through a series of hoops over several days to exit a position and redeploy the cash), and M1 will execute trades you do not want, such as what they just did to me: selling shares I just received in a spin-off without any warning because they didn't give me a chance to add the stock to my "pie".

I will be ending my business with M1 at the earliest opportunity and going with a real brokerage that allows true freedom to invest as I see fit. This one is all about making things look flashy and cool, but all they've done is overthink and overcomplicate things; The people behind M1 attempted to reinvent the wheel and ended up with a square. I made a big mistake when I placed capital with this outfit.

Date of experience: November 16, 2021

I tried the platform and I didn't like it so I tried transferring my accounts to another brokerage. I have 2 accounts and they are charging me $100 for each account transfer and an additional $100 dollars to close each account. And if you don't close the account you will be charged additional monthly fees. I have been with 5 different brokerages over the years and I've never paid a penny in transfer fees or for closing an account.

Date of experience: October 25, 2021

I love M1. I love they way you choose your stocks and ETFs and make your own pie. I wish that some futures from M1 plus was in regular M1 but at least only the future like smart transfers. Also they need to improve on showing customers how much dividends we received on the first sight of the screen rather than us looking for it. Make it more easier but Overall I Love M1 and will forever use it.

Date of experience: June 23, 2021

M1 Finance is absolutely not legit. They claim to have an investment account, what they offer is some ridiculous "pie" scheme, where the investor does not know the price the securities are bought at. They expose people to tax liability. When I transferred my assets there, they offered me to either sell the assets exposing me to tax liability, or freeze the account.

They run some shady scheme with margin account masquerading as personal loans. The information that the account holder can lose their assets if they borrow money is carefully hidden.

They have ridiculous hidden fees like $100 for withdrawing your assets.

Date of experience: April 27, 2021

Unable to make the simplest of features to work. Don't invest with them . Been trying for an hour to unsubscribe or delete my account. Forgot my password and waited for half an hour for the email. Then the reset just didn't work. No unsubscribe on their spam mail. Jesus christ what is wrong with you .

Date of experience: April 19, 2021

These people can't even produce a monthly statement on time. What a joke. If you can't trust them to be able to do a simple task like having a monthly statement available when they say they will, do you really want to trust them with your money. Stay Away!

Date of experience: April 07, 2021

As soon as my deposit came to them they spent it on a stock i reviewed in their system. They decided that i want to buy it and when?!? w t f?
When i wanted to sell it they told me i can place a sell order but it will be bought either at 9:30am or at 3pm there are only 2 times of the day their system is able to sell it and it doesnt matter if dont like prices then. Their are in charge not you go speak with their customer service BOT. Not humans in this company only bots and it shows in their lack of brains with such a system.

Date of experience: March 25, 2021

So far i love this app, and and for beginners also I think it’s great, as here you will be able to learn, also the debit option is good and the borrow option i like it to, to be there just in case

Date of experience: March 11, 2021

This is not a review about the platform to say, this is more focused on the terrible, nonexistent customer service. Save yourself the stress and find another platform that will better assist you...
And save yourself the money that you will lose due to their crap way of full filling orders. You will lose money on your sales and you will over pay on your buys!

Date of experience: February 09, 2021

Love the design of the app and the platform, especially the investment pie options. Such a wonderful metaphor and minimalist approach. I decided to close my regular brokerage account and transfer the funds to M2. It’s the fourth day my account has been placed on pause or hold. No response from customer service other than standard acknowledgment of receipt of message. Still, the design beats all other fun tech designs out there. Too bad about the speed of service and response.

Date of experience: September 17, 2020