Personal Finance (Not Investing) • BofA/ME bonus offer and Platinum Honors - critique my plan please

Hi all,

I am looking at moving some assets to Merrill Edge for three main reasons:
- there is a $600 bonus offer for transferring $200k in new assets
- Platinum Honors for the BofA credit cards (I’m still considering which one specifically).
- stop direct depositing a portion of payroll to BofA chequing while still avoiding account fee

Currently my taxable and IRA accounts are at Vanguard. The taxable account specifically is invested in VTSAX and VTIAX, plus a small emergency fund in VUSXX.

My plan is as follows:

1. Call Vanguard to convert the VTSAX and VTIAX mutual fund holdings to their ETF counterparts, VTI and VXUS
2. Open a Merrill Edge brokerage account using the bonus offer
3. Initiate a partial transfer of assets from Vanguard brokerage (not IRA) to ME (VTI and VXUS only)
4. Apply for BofA card (TBD specifically which one) and make sure Platinum Honors is active
5. Leave assets in ME long enough for bonus deposit
6. Partial transfer back to Vanguard, leaving enough for PH

Any pitfalls or anything I’ve missed? From what I can tell, none of the above should trigger a taxable event, nor should there be any transfer fees.

Will all of the cost basis information survive the conversion to ETF and then transfer to ME?

Statistics: Posted by SwiftKey — Sun Feb 11, 2024 10:58 pm — Replies 0 — Views 102

---