Update 2/8/24: It seems that this offer ended early as my referral offer changed overnight and my referral now only shows $100 for each side. I’ve been keeping a regular eye on this and it seems to have just changed today.
Brokerage app M1 Finance is offering a referral promotion that could be very lucrative in two-player mode if you have the cash available to meet the requirements, with a couple able to possibly earn up to $750 if Player 1 can sign up and refer Player 2. This caught my eye in part because we just cashed out some I-Bonds (which I had written about buying here) and we could essentially turn a quick $500 profit on that money within 30 days.
Referral promotion details
The basic deal here is that M1 Finance is offering a referral bonus promotion of $250 for both sides (Update 2/8/24: This bonus now down to $100 for both sides) when you refer a new customer to M1 Finance and they open an account and fund it with at least $10,000 within 30 days of opening the account. The $10K only has to remain at M1 for 30 days to trigger the bonus. While taking advantage of this promotion requires having $10K available, the bonus is a quick and easy win if you can swing the deposit requirement.
If you would like to sign up, feel free to use my referral link with my thanks.
You can find the full terms for this offer here. Key terms include:
Promotion Period: December 15, 2023 to March 31, 2024:
- You must have a funded M1 Invest account.
- You must send your referral code to a friend who is not currently an M1 customer.
- Your friend must use your referral code to sign up for a new M1 invest or retirement account.
- Your friend must be approved to open an M1 invest or retirement account.
- If your friend deposits at least the Account Opening Minimum Amount2Â into an invest or a retirement account within thirty (30) calendar days of their New User Sign- up Date, then you and your friend will receive $250, in addition to any other bonus you may receive.
- Your friend must maintain their initial deposit amount of at least the Account Opening Minimum Amount2Â in their account for 30 calendar days.
Maximizing in two-player mode
In my case, I already have an existing M1 Finance account, but my wife doesn’t. She just cashed out $10K in I-bonds since now is the time to do so for those who opened them in April or October of a couple of years ago since the interest rate as dropped to less than 4%. Rather than keeping that money in a high-yield savings account, we’ll open an M1 account for my wife and she can deposit that $10K. As long as she keeps that money there for 30 days, we’ll both get a $250 bonus (now a $100 bonus) — an easy $500 (now only $200) win in just 30 days.
If neither member of a two-player team has an M1 Finance account and you have $20K available to move to M1 Finance, you could do this:
- Player 1 opens an M1 account through a referral and deposits $10K for 30 days (
$250(now $100) bonus) - Player 1 refers Player 2 to open an M1 account and Player 2 deposits $10K for 30 days.
- Both Player 1 and Player 2 receive a
$250(Now $100) bonus for Player 2’s account - Collect a total profit of
$750(Now $300) by depositing $20K total ($10K for each player) for 30 days.
There isn’t any requirement to actually invest the money you deposit in your brokerage account, so you could just let it sit there for a month if you don’t care to invest it.
M1 account transfer bonus
M1 Finance also has an account transfer bonus going on. According to Doctor of Credit, both the referral deal and the account transfer bonus can stack. I haven’t done this myself, but it looks like it should work. You can find full details of the account transfer bonus here.
The account transfer bonus starts at $250 for transferring $100,000 in aggregate via Automated Customer Account Transfer Service (“ACATS”) within 30 days of opening your account. Bonuses are tiered and go up to $20,000 for $7mil. It’s probably not worth going after an account transfer bonus unless you have large accounts to transfer (and then you have to decide whether the reward is worth moving those large accounts).
IRA accounts should qualify (note: a 401K rollover does not), so someone who has been investing in an IRA(s?) for long enough might find the transfer bonuses of interest.
My experience with M1
I’ve tried several investing apps over the past four or five years. I don’t much care for SoFi Invest or Acorns. I keep a Webull account for their promotions, but the app is a bit busy for my liking (and offers a lot of features that are probably more useful for day traders, which is not my area of interest). I like the Robinhood and M1 interfaces the most out of the apps I’ve used. I find Merrill Egde’s app to seem very dated (though I keep accounts there for Platinum Honors status and just automate the investments).
However, if I had to pick a single investment app, M1 Finance would be it. I’ve very much become a sort of Bogleheads 3-fund investor (a total stock market fund, a total international market fund, and a bond fund). I love that with M1 I could set up the funds I want and the asset allocation I want and it’ll automatically invest and rebalance as necessary. I like the easy pie chart view of my asset allocation. I’m sure it is missing bells and whistles that some will want, but I like the simplicity of it and the ability to have set it up exactly as I wanted it. Overall, I’m definitely a fan.
That said, a primarily online self-service brokerage account isn’t for everyone.
Bottom line
We sometimes see even easier checking account bonuses that require less money moved to trigger the bonus, but I could imagine this one appealing for the short time frame necessary to trigger the bonus. I think this deal becomes particularly exciting in 2-player mode since the chance to earn $750 (now only $300) with a total of $20K deposited for 30 days seems like a particularly good deal.
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Terms say sometimes on 2/7 the change happened. Promotion Period: February 7, 2024 to December 31, 2024
Guess whose P2 opened on 2/7? LOL. I just used the saved referral link, so not sure if we’ll get the $100/$100 or $250 since I’m not sure what time the cutover happened.
You win some, you lose some.
Opened account today. They have a new account sweetner if you deposit $10k+ plus in 14 days, you get at least $75. Wonder if it stacks?
Got my referral bonus < 1 wk. Is this safe to withdraw the money now?
Hello. Used one of the referral links above and my $10k deposit posted on 1/8 and the $250 bonus posted on 1/9, so all good there. However, I don’t have the refer and earn option in my account, so it seems that I’m not currently eligible to refer player 2. Is there a waiting period or any requirements to actually invest the money before you can refer?
Same here. Funded for 14 days and even got the bonus but still not eligible to refer p2
I ended up opening a support ticket. They had me update my app and once updated, the referral option was available.
My referral bonus just posted. That was fast! Not completely easy since they wanted a statement from the account I transferred, but easy enough to send that.
I also have an email that says I get $75 for depositing $10k within 14 days so I’m hoping that will stack.
Per the T&C,
So we probably won’t – that being said, my $250 also posted already so maybe their system is… quirky… and this posts as well
Yes, I just read the terms and according to them, in addition to what you mentioned, you need to keep the $10k there for 6 months. Not worth it for me. I’m taking the referral bonus money and running.
Not a great experience so far. As people have been mentioning in the comments all day, the link has no mention of any bonus. I see nothing in my account mentioning a $250 bonus. So clarity from somebody that has gone through this would be great. I sent a message to client support. Hopefully the link is still working correctly.
Yeah, they should have built a better landing page! That said, they sent an email with the fact that the referral bonus is $250 (that’s where I got the initial screen shot), it shows $250 in the app when you generate the link, and I shared a link to the full terms of the $250 deal. I also linked to a Doctor of Credit post about the $250 referral deal. The terms have it going through March 31. I can understand the hesitation — and I could understand passing on the deal if you don’t feel comfortable with it. On the flip side, I’ve already had a few $250 bonuses show up from people who funded their accounts (well ahead of schedule — based on the terms, I only expected to see a bonus within 14 days after a new account holder signed up and met their 30 days with $10K). I’m confident that they intend to honor the referral promotion.
If you wait a bit, I assume we’ll have a bunch of data points in here from those who have completed it. If you go through comments on the Doctor of Credit post I linked to, it sounds like past bonuses have posted relatively quickly. The terms say the bonus will post within 14 days of meeting the 30-day funding requirement, so at worst you’ll have to wait about a month and a half for data points.
Thanks, I went ahead and signed up. Clicking the link for the first time it’s just hard to tell whether they pulled the offer or just make no mention of it at sign up! Thanks for the write up.
It looks like there is a $100 fee to transfer your money out at the end, so effectively this is only a $150 bonus.
That’s pretty standard, but I think most brokerages will cover the fee when you’re transferring assets (I mean the brokerage to which you transfer them). So for instance, if in 30 days you open a Merrill Edge account, in many cases they will cover the fee to transfer out from another brokerage (by giving you a $100 credit or whatever the fee is). That’s just one example, but it’s fairly common practice at brokerages from what I’ve ever heard, and I’ve seen that account transfer of bonuses at Webull have often included a credit to offset that fee. When I opened a Merrill account years ago, they credited me for the charge I got hit with transferring out of Wells Fargo.
Can you still withdraw money back to your bank account for free?
Yes, ACH transfer is free. https://www.doctorofcredit.com/m1-finance-investing-review-plus-up-to-2500-brokerage-bonus-and-20-referral-bonus/#comment-1761676
Should I get a page that refers to the offer when clicking Nick’s link above? I just get a general log in page. Don’t want to screw it up.
Thanks!
Yeah, unfortunately, the landing page just looks generic. I don’t know why they don’t make it clearer.
Are there any safe investment accounts available to earn some return on the money for the 30 days such as a Treasury fund where there is no risk of capital loss?
There are lots of treasury bill-based ETFs, but I think anyone would tell you that investing comes with inherent risk of capital loss, so I can’t speak to that wish. However, if you go to the “fund” section and search for “Treasury”, you’ll find a much of treasury bill stuff.
Is the offer expired? I opened the link, butthe landing page showed $250 bonus needs to transfer in $100K+
Looks like you’re looking at the landing page for the account transfer offer. The referral offer is under a section of this post titled “Referral promotion details”. The account transfer bonus is something that you can apparently also do and stack if you wanted.
Thank you.
Nick, i signed up using your referral, but the landing page didn’t mention anything about $250. How do we know this is working?
The lack of a clear landing page stinks, but it looks like it is working. I just replied to another comment or two saying that you can wait for people to report success if you’re concerned about it, which is fair. I expect it to work as advertised as this appears to be a publicly-advertised referral promotion.
If you go for M1’s transfer bonus with an IRA, keep in mind that M1 will deposit the bonus into your taxable account and NOT the IRA itself. It’s baffling why after all these years they can’t figure out how to put the bonus into the IRA, when everyone else does that.
That’s good to know!
Same problem. I signed up but when I try to generate referral code for player 2 says I’m not eligible.
I assume you saw other comments — people reported being able to refer once their account was funded.
Nick, I used your referal link but I am confused. After signing up for a membership, which M2 account should I open? Brokerage? Spending checking? Saving?
An invest or retirement account – that’s in the terms I copied under the Promotion Details:
“Your friend must use your referral code to sign up for a new M1 invest or retirement account.
Your friend must be approved to open an M1 invest or retirement account.
If your friend deposits at least the Account Opening Minimum Amount2 into an invest or a retirement account within thirty (30) calendar days of their New User Sign- up Date, then you and your friend will receive $250, in addition to any other bonus you may receive.”
Got it thank you!
Got the $250. Hope you got it too Nick! Somehow it says I am not eligible to refer my P2. Any insight?
Any idea how long do this bonus might stick around for? Is it realistic to think I could sign up today, transfer the 10k, and wait 2 weeks before referring P2? Then after my account hits the 30 days I could transfer the 10k out and use it to fund P2 within 30 days of sign up?
I can probably do the full 20k, but would be nice if I could get by with only tying up 10k between the accounts.
See the Referral Promotion Details section of the post. I copied a section directly from the terms (and linked to the full terms); it runs until March 31, 2024.
(So yes, I think it would be possible probably to trigger with that same money jar)
Haha thanks. Read everything except the first and last bullets that were in smaller print ‍♂️