Improved offer available again. Merrill Edge is the self-directed brokerage arm formed after Bank of America and Merrill Lynch merged together. They are currently offering an increased cash bonus of up to $1,000 for moving “new money” or assets over to them from another brokerage firm. This new bonus is linked to the BofA/Merrill Preferred Rewards program, which is another reason to consider using them as it gets you waived banking fees and extra credit card rewards. Here’s an overview along with my personal experience as I’ve had an account with them for a few years now. Cash bonus. Brokerage firms love to collect assets. The good news is they don’t require cash that will be earning zero interest, and Edge… [Read More...]

Although I avoid daily stock market quotes, I have been reading Jeremy Grantham’s quarterly letters and the GMO 7-Year Asset Class Return Forecasts for over 10 years now. These projections are based on their proprietary models, with a strong focus on historical valuation. Each year, I can now compare their current forward-looking forecast against how their past forecasts have turned out. Here’s the GMO forecast looking forward as of November 2020: Here was their forecast back in July 2013: Using the S&P 500 as US Large Cap, we see that the forecast of -2.1% annualized real return was quite far off. ETFReplay shows that both the IVV and VOO S&P 500 ETFs returned +117% between July 30, 2013 to July 30, 2020. That is an annualized return of 11.7%. SmartAsset shows… [Read More...]

Limited-time transfer offer bump, now up to $4,375. Free 1 year trial of M1 Plus. My favorite option in the now-crowded “robo-advisor” category is technically not a registered advisor at all, it is M1 Finance. Here’s a quick rundown of what makes them different: Fully customizable. You pick your own target asset allocation “pie”. (You can add ETFs or individual stocks.) You can simply copy one of the many model portfolios out there, or customize it as you like. You have full control! M1 handles the boring stuff, like rebalancing or dividing a $100 contribution across 8 different ETFs. Here is my pie which I named the My Money Blog Portfolio. No commissions. Free stock/ETF trades with a low $100 minimum… [Read More...]

Updated with multiple new limited-time promos. I have the strange hobby of trying out new fintech apps while also collecting their sign-up incentives. Here are several different brokerage apps that offer some variation of free stock trades, modern user interface, real-time quotes, and social sharing. Many are structured like a free lottery ticket with a minimum payout – the odds are that you’ll get a stock valued on the lower end of the ranges mentioned, but I have gotten a few big shares like AAPL before the recent split. They all require a referral link, which means I can get some free stocks as well. A couple are offering 2X to 4X their usual bonuses right now. WeBull 4 Free Stocks Offer Open a … [Read More...]

Updated December 2020. Here is my 3-year update on my experiment comparing a Fundrise eREIT portfolio and the Vanguard REIT ETF. In Fundrise, we have a start-up that bought a concentrated basket of roughly 20 properties chosen from the private market. In Vanguard, we have a one of the largest real estate ETFs in the world that owns a passive slice of 181 public-traded REITs. I invested $1,000 into both in October 2017 and plan to let them run for at least 5 years. Fundrise Starter Portfolio background. When I bought in, the Fundrise Starter Portfolio was a simple 50/50 mix of two eREITs: the Fundrise Income eREIT and the Fundrise Growth eREIT*. Since these are finite baskets of entire properties, over time they will close one fund and start another… [Read More...]

In terms of your retirement accounts, 2020 was definitely a year where it helped to simply ignore the constant market news and hold onto the assets that you believe have long-term promise. It was also a good year to own the entire haystack. Here are the annual returns for select asset classes as benchmarked by ETFs per Morningstar after market close 12/31/20. Commentary. This NYT article explains Why Markets Boomed in a Year of Human Misery. A big part of that is the huge amount of money the US government and Federal Reserve will be spending around a trillion dollars on unemployment insurance benefits, stimulus checks, and forgivable PPP loans. The Federal Reserve also kept it easy for corporations to borrow money with liquidity and near-zero interest… [Read More...]