BoA Rewards and Merill Edge

You are saying that you have to have an investment advisor or manager when you use ME financial services? That makes using them fairly unappealing- on a 100k account an annual 1k of service fees (to serve as the middle man for index fund holdings) is pretty exorbitant

Confused by this wrap fee. I don’t use the BoA credit cards but I believe the tiered levels are based off amounts held at BoA/ME. What fee are you talking about? They include all bank accounts -at BoA and brokerage accounts/IRAs etc at ME.

Ie I am platinum elite based on my bank accounts and I do some no fee trading in ME. I don’t see the fee you are referring to? Maybe I am missing it

I have been a Merrill Edge and BofA credit customer for years. IMO it is the best deal out there. Free trades and crazy points for travel that can be used on any airline or hotel.
I pay zero fees.

I switched to this service just before the Scottrade/TD Ameritrade merger in early 2018. I have been happy with it.

I have both the Premium Rewards Visa ($100 annual fee) and Cash Rewards MC ($0 fee) credit cards, and with the 75% "bonus" we get 5.25% cash back for online shopping (Cash Rewards card) and 3.5% on travel and 2.6% on all other purchases (Premium Rewards card). They refund $100/yr of airline fees (ie baggage) with the premium rewards card so if you travel you easily recover the fee that way.

The free trades were a very nice perk when I switched but Schwab forced everyone to $0 trades recently.

I think the interface on Merrill edge is relatively intuitive and they have some helpful tools for analyzing the performance and allocation of your investments. These tools break down ETFs as well - so say you own Microsoft across 3 or 4 ETFs, the tool will sum those to tell you your total exposure to Microsoft. I imagine other firms have this capability too but I think it is pretty cool.

With "preferred" status you go straight to the front of the queue whenever you call them, so service is good when you need it.

Almost all of my investments are in Vanguard ETFs - so you have access to those and many others with low fees. I do not believe there are any zero-fee funds (I think Vanguard offers this on their funds in their brokerage accounts).

I can't speak to the advisor question as I use a self-directed account. Clearly any fees you're paying to an advisor would eat in to the "rewards".

Anyway, I am always a little surprised this "bundle" BAML offers doesn't get more love on this board. I have a hard time thinking there is a better CC rewards program out there if you qualify for the 75% kicker.