Read the Article
The Last Fork in the Road: Automating Your Portfolio with M1 Finance and Fidelity Baskets
By Paul Merriman, with Chris Pedersen and Daryl Bahls · PDF — Free download
Podcast & Video
🎧 Sound Investing Podcast
▶️ Watch on YouTube
What You'll Learn
01
Why automation is the last fork in the road — and how getting your hands off the portfolio is what lets you actually stay the course
02
How M1 Finance "pies" put a buy-and-hold portfolio on autopilot: automated contributions, on-the-fly rebalancing, fractional ETF shares, and one-button rebalancing
03
The pre-built Merriman pies — Ultimate Buy and Hold, All Value, All Small Cap Value, and the Aggressive Target Date glide path — plus why a pie has no live link back to the source
04
How Fidelity Basket Portfolios work as an alternative: a flat $4.99/month fee regardless of account size, eligible account types, and the TFLO short-term Treasury cash workaround
05
A clear side-by-side of M1 and Fidelity — trading windows, account minimums, how each firm counts the $10,000 threshold, and which may fit you best
06
How to mix and match Sound Investing portfolios, why the 10-fund Ultimate Buy and Hold still stands, and the move from AVUS to AVLC — and where AVSC fits
Tables & Tools
Key Takeaways
- The goal of automation is simple — the less you touch the soap, the larger the bar stays. Fully automating the process is what lets you stay the course.
- M1 Finance was built for the buy-and-hold investor: automated contributions flow into your chosen allocation, new money rebalances on the fly, and one button rebalances the whole account.
- M1 carries all the DFA funds and Avantis ETFs we recommend, with eight or nine pre-built Merriman pies in both 50/50 and 70/30 US-international configurations.
- A pie has no live link back to the source — update a portfolio on the website and your account won't change. On reflection, that's a feature, not a bug: a live link would look like managing your money and could create a tax problem.
- Fidelity Basket Portfolios charge a flat $4.99/month regardless of account size — on a $10 million account, that's roughly $60 a year to manage the whole thing.
- Fidelity has no money market option inside Baskets; investors step to cash using a short-term Treasury ETF such as TFLO. M1's batched trading windows remove the burden — and emotion — of choosing when to trade.
- M1 has grown from about $1 billion in assets under management in 2020 to roughly $12.5 billion in January 2026 — a twelvefold increase that speaks to the size question directly.
- Don't flail. The worst results go to investors who chase performance from pond to pond. If you genuinely chose the wrong portfolio, adjust slowly toward the total market — gently, not all at once.