Hey everyone, I just got Freetrade Plus for a month.
To be really honest as much as I love Freetrade I feel the Ā£9.99 p/Month / Ā£120 a year really really hard to understand and justify, I just canāt quite figure out who could actually justify Ā£120 a year unless you are a pretty big retail investor investing a lot of money with great returns.
Freetrade is all about long-term investing so other than Stop losses why are limit and Trigger orders really necessary as they feel like Day trading techniques and are absolutely not worth paying for as basic retail investor.
Not bashing just trying to understand how you can get your Ā£120 worth unless you are a somewhat big investor?
EDIT: Just an Edit, btw Iām not bashing Freetrade although locked stocks behind Plus is a shame, I do understand that Freetrade Plus is probably only made for bigger investors.
Limit orders, stop losses etc with 3% interest to cover the cost for me. Getting the additional benefits whilst holding the 4K for an opportunity that sits right and it makes it cost free technically.
I donāt really need the order types either, but given the really poor interest rates in savings accounts atm i think its worth putting in 4k to get the account and an isa essentially for free
Because itās cheaper than paying the Ā£3 a month for the ISA, which I think is already good value.
I guess you think that sounds odd, but for me itās just simple maths.
Iāve got spare cash sitting in a savings account that earns a pitiful half a percent or something. If I move Ā£4000 of that into my Freetrade account and just leave it there doing nothing, it cancels out the cost of plus, and I save Ā£36 a year on the ISA fee, so effectively that Ā£4000 is earning 0.9% interest. Which obviously beats my savings account. And it gives me extra features I donāt really use (although I have used limit orders occasionally).
being honest, I probably donāt get the benefits of plus. I donāt have a single āplus onlyā stock and I have probably only used 2 limit orders so far. However, my ISA spans 3 tax years and is currently acting as my savings account (yup, maniac, I know) which has enough in there that it can move by the value a years subscription in a matter of hours, as others suggested, the cost is relative to your portfolio size and general strategy.
I pretty much have it for the option to use limit orders if/when I need them.
Well I look simply as it costing either a couple pints a month or a single share in GME over the year and it is paid To me, and I donāt have tonnes of money to burn, it is best to just write off the charge and forget it and if it is too tight to consider that then maybe GIA/ISA is best.
My only annoyance is you canāt pay up front all fees as I hate transactions in my bank monthly at random times but thatās just my OCD of wanting the statement nice and tidy
Of course all the reasons mentioned by others are actually VERY good sensible reasons though!
Freetrade Plus is literally one of the cheapest stock brokers available. They are transparent on fees so whilst it may seem a lot you will almost certainly be paying more elsewhere.
Nothing is free. Companies have to make moneyā¦
If you are just starting out then stick with the free option and as you build your savings move to plus.
Actually, just to add to that. If you think that the cost of plus is excessive and youāre worried about wasting Ā£120 over the year (which to be clear, I donāt think it is), itās possibly an indicator that you should think carefully if investing in stocks is the right thing for you at this point in time. If the value of your investments was halved tomorrow, could you afford it? If the answer is no, donāt start investing.
On the flip side, if you can afford to lose say a couple of hundred pounds, then obviously you should start investing that, and for small investments it doesnāt make sense to pay extra for plus. If you have a small portfolio, you should start with the bigger companies and ETFs that you can buy without plus, as these are much less likely to lose as much money anyway. And if itās only a small portfolio, having a GIA rather than an ISA is no big deal as youāll likely be unlikely to be anywhere near the CGT allowance limit.
Like you Samuel, I donāt personally see the value of it for me as I donāt buy any Plus-walled stocks, donāt hold cash and havenāt used many limit orders (yet). But I have accepted that Plus is a product that is perhaps just not targeted at me and is more geared towards larger/more serious investors, and I think thatās totally fine.
Actually despite all of this I did recently subscribe to Plus, because I have seen how quickly they added to it (the 4k cash interest was a surprising and swift addition), I may go into SIPPs soon, I already have an ISA so it effectively only makes it Ā£7 more, may start to store some cash and as a FT Investor I donāt mind them having some of my money.
But yeah, you are right, I think for investors at our size/level it is not easy to justify it. But actually thatās ok
I dont have enough invested atm to justify it but when I have enough invested to make it worthwhile moving my isa and opening a sipp I will be taking out plus. Right now I would prefer to be investing that 120 a yr.
I think having the walled off stocks within plus is a bad call - the freemium account should provide full market access and the plus account should remain having the other account enhancements.
Without meaning to sound rude as it isnāt meant to but that is not the most sensible path for a business as that would cut revenue significantly and probably make FT unviable It is actually sensible for the user to get a taster with shares etc and if they want more then they pay.
It isnāt cheap to run the operation and most would not bother paying for Plus then and it isnāt a registered charity
The problem with Plus is that it seems expensive unless you have a big portfolio or constantly change investments. Iām subscribed but I question whether it is worth Ā£120 per year. Maybe there needs to be a cheaper option that gives more market access but not the other features.
Ā£120 a year with an ISA included is not expensive in any way shape or form I really donāt get the people trying to make the company become a unviable business
No-one is forced to expand to the Plus world and they have many many stocks for free but if FT take away all the incentive to actually pay for the service then we will all be looking for a new service as FT wonāt be around long.
I would say it is also still cheaper for people with small portfolios who want Plus stocks if they purchase small amounts than paying the Ā£5-10 transaction fees others charge.
In this community there are some big differences in what people think is expensive or not. Thatās a good thing, fintech opens up access to investing for people who would have been completely excluded only a few years ago. But it must be hard to cater to a diversity of customers, especially when people have been trained to expect everything online to be instant and free, and donāt know what they donāt know about investing.
To me, and I donāt have tonnes of money to burn, it is best to just write off the charge and forget it and if it is too tight to consider that then maybe GIA/ISA is best.
It is actually sensible for the user to get a taster with shares etc and if they want more then they pay.