Merrill Edge will give you up to $900 if you move your IRAs over to them. They will do the same for your non-retirement accounts as well. Notice I said “move” not “sell off”.
You would NOT sell off your IRAs, stocks, mutual funds, etc. You are simply moving where they are held. I had them pull over some mutual funds that I had a Fidelity Investments and TDAmeritrade. Now I have those exact same mutual funds at Merrill.
If you are a geezer and still have paper stock certificates in a lockbox in your closet, well, um, what can I say? I know, congratulations on having a computer! Enough with the sarcasm. You can move those paper certificates over to them as well.
The more you move over, the more promotional cash they give you. See this PDF for all the details. NOTE: The PDF says you need to enroll in this offer by April 15th, but they extended it through the end of the month.
The process is very simple. Call them (888.637.3343) to enroll in the offer. Then you will have 45 days to get your assets over there. That is accomplished by having them do all the work while on the phone with them. It took me 20 minutes. Once your assets have been there for 90 days, you get your cash bonus!
This is for new and existing Merrill customers. I already took advantage of a similar promotion a couple years ago. You have to wait 12 months between promotions. So I did and got the promotion again this year.
Keep this in mind: If you are a few bucks short of moving to the next tier of Merrill’s bonus, you can always add good old-fashioned cash to put you over the top! That’s what I did.
If you get charged a “Transfer Out” fee by the place that currently holds your assets, Merrill with reimburse you. It has been my experience that appears as a “$75 ACAT fee”. When your assets finally get to Merrill, make sure you ask them about that.
In case you were wondering, about 10 years ago, Bank of America bought Merrill Lynch. “Merrill Edge” was created to merge the Bank of America online investors and Merrill Lynch’s investment tools area. Here’s their wikipedia page.
