My thoughts about Newsletters
- You and thousands of other people have the same information every time a newsletter comes out. Buying solely on recommendation of an email at that point is useless. Stock price would have driven up already by the buying from all the people.
- A lot of people just use the newsletter as stock tips. You tell me, and I will buy it. They do not put any other effort into researching the stock. Most do not understand the approach of investing newsletter (long term, shorting, dividend based etc.) They do not understand if the newsletter philosophy matches or compliments their investing style.
- Never rely on single source of information. Be it a newsletter, stock advisor group, news article or some tip you read on twitter etc. I believe in the concept of idea funnel. Once you start researching a stock. You need to look at various sources of information. It can be company’s website, blogs, company’s 10K, product reviews on eCommerce website, expert newsletters etc. Reading and looking at as many sources as possible helps you to get a complete idea of the stock.
- I do believe Newsletters at the right price and of the right investing style can be of great value for the information they provide. They are, after all written by experts who put in many hours to write and recommend stocks. I genuinely feel they can add a lot of value to your own stock research. It can help you screen new stocks or go back to some stock you looked at the past and revisit it.
So keep the above points in mind before subscribing to a newsletter service. Today we will discuss a great deal I have come across recently if you are in the market for the Motley Fool Stock Advisor or Rule Breakers service.
What is Motley Fool Stock Advisor?
- It’s a service from Motley Fool that recommends 2 stocks every month.
- Their philosophy is to invest in companies that have competitive advantage. Plus, have a long term trend tailwind behind them.
- They also focus on companies with solid financials and whose management are shareholder friendly.
- They provide access to their forums with the membership which is full of very insightful discussions.
- You can also look at past recommendations and check out the performance of their picks.
- You also get access to some bonus reports/articles they write which could have lots of useful information, like tax guides, wealth creation, imp guides on new trends, companies etc.
Check out some reviews from : StockGumshoe, Chris Reining, Saving Advice, Day trade Review
What is Motley Fool Rule Breakers?
- It’s a service from Motley Fool that recommends 2 stocks every month.
- The philosophy here is to invest in upcoming companies. These companies are doing something new and trying to break things in an older industry.
- It mostly focuses on high growth companies. Because of this, they are often very expensive by most evaluations.
- Again you also have access to forums, few good research reports and ability to look at past picks and performance.
Check out some reviews from : StockGumshoe, WallStreetSurvivor
Personally, I have tried both these services and prefer motley fool stock advisor. Since I am a dividend investor I prefer stocks which are less expensive, have reliable cash flows and can keep paying me that dividend.
What’s the deal?
Earlier, with Rebates me, you could get about an 80$ discount when you signed up for one of the Motley Fool services. Click the arrow for old method which doesn’t work any longer.
Recently Rebates Me site has tied up with Motley Fool to give 85% cashback on purchases. Rebatesme is a cashback site that helps customer drive to their site for purchases. To incentivize customers, they offer cashback on purchases. They get some cut of the purchase you make on the eventual website. Currently they are offering 85% of your money back in form of cashback if you make any purchases on the motley fool website going through them!
Currently Stock Advisor membership is being sold for about 99$ on Motley Fool website:
So technically, if you buy this via the Rebatesme link, you can get about 85$ back in cash deposited to your Paypal account or to your credit card. Also do note that their Faq’s do say it will take about 3 months for them to pay out the 85$ since they want to make sure you do not cancel the subscription after getting the 85$ cashback. This doesn’t concern me that much however since Rebatesme seems to be recognized in the marketplace to honor their commitments.
Steps
Here are the steps in detail, please follow them properly to ensure that you do get the cashback (don’t worry, it’s no rocket science):
- Go to Rebates Me and create an account. Once you enter the details and account gets created, confirm your account by clicking on the verification link in email.
- Disable Adblocker: Rebates me works and motley fool work by tracking that you came to the Motley fool website via Rebates Me site. To make sure that happens, disable ad blocker from the browser for these 2 sites. Once you go to the site one by one just click on ad blocker symbol and select “disabled on this site”. Make sure to do that on both Motley Fool and Rebatesme sites.
- Shop!
Log into the rebates me account and search for motley fool. Make sure that the cashback shows up as 85% as shown above. Once you click shop now, the browser should open a new window with the motley fool website. In the previous tab on the rebates me site, you can click on my account and go to shopping trips and you should be able to see the most recent click to motley fool with the 85% rebate as shown :
This just makes sure that Rebates me has recorded your visit and you can now shop on Motley fool. Now in the next tab where Motley Fool had opened, you can proceed to buy the Stock advisor subscription. Currently the subscription shows up for 100$ so if you buy that, after a few days, on your rebates me account you should get a 85$ cashback making the price of 1 year of Motley fool Stock Advisor for only 15$!!
- Here is my account for proof. I did this when it was 50% cashback and I thought it was a great deal then. Imagine my mind when the cashback jumped to 85%. I think it takes 30-45 days for the cashback to go from pending to payable. Once it is payable then you can deposit in your paypal account!
In Conclusion
As I mentioned before, right price and for the right type of newsletter can be great value for money. It can be an excellent source of idea. I think 15$ for 1 year of motley fool stock advisor is an impossible deal to beat! In no time would it be worth it!
UPDATE 1
I received my cashback rebate, here is the proof:
from rebatesme acct:
and my paypal account with some other extra rebates:
UPDATE 2
Rebatesme has reduced the offer of cashback from 85% to 80% which will still bring you about 80$ on a 100$ motley fool
stock advisor subscription. In my opinion it is still great deal! Especially since I have confirmed that cashback is being paid out 3 months after the transaction.
However, I recently found another reputed cashback portal: Extrabux which is offering 80$ cashback on motley fool Stock Advisor or Rule Breakers service. Extrabux is a site that helps drive traffic to sellers like Motley Fool by offering cashback to its customers (people like me & you). They incentivize us by providing cashback on purchases we make and they make some % of the revenue we shop for via their portal. If we check, currently they are offering 80$ cashback on purchases made from Motley Fool.
Here are their conditions:
Currently both Stock Advisor & Rule Breakers membership is being sold for about 99$ each on Motley Fool website:
So technically, if you buy this via the Extrabux portal, you can get about 80$ back in cash back. You can withdraw it to your Paypal account or to your credit card. Also do note that their Faq’s do say it will take about 3 months for them to pay out the 80$ since they want to make sure you do not cancel the subscription after getting the 80$ cashback. This doesn’t concern me that much. Since, Extrabux is big, popular player in the marketplace which honors their commitments.
Steps
Here are the steps in detail, please follow them properly to ensure that you do get the cashback (don’t worry, it’s no rocket science):
- Go to Extrabux and create an account by clicking join for free. You can enter the details and your account gets created. Little pro tip here, you can even google referral link for Extrabux and try to join using that to get 15-20$ in extra bonus. I usually do not post referral link, so my link is just the standard signup page with no affiliate or any referral on it. But I did sign up using someone else’s referral link.
- Disable Adblocker: Extrabux and motley fool work by tracking that you came to the Motley fool website via Extrabux site. To make sure that happens, disable ad blocker from the browser for these 2 sites. Once you go to the site one by one just click on ad blocker symbol and select “disabled on this site”. Make sure to do that on both Motley Fool and Extrabux sites. Here are some more instructions Extrabux mentions one can try to do to make sure their purchase is tracked and they get the cashback. Nothing special in my opinion.
- Shop!
In a new window, log into the Extrabux account and search for motley fool. Make sure that the cashback shows up as 80$ as shown above.
Once you click start shopping, the browser should open a new window with the motley fool website. Now make your purchase. Both stock advisor and rule breakers cost 99$ for the first year. This time around I bought rule breakers service from Motley Fool .
After making the purchase, go back to the window with the Extrabux site, you can click on Purchases on top and you should be able to see the most recent click to motley fool with the msg saying “awaiting for information from store”:
- The next day itself I got an email from Extrabux confirming my purchase and showing details about 80$ cashback to be deposited in 90 days in my account.
- If I check my purchases section again now it shows up with 80$ cashback in pending status:
Time for another pro tip, for new users who signed up to Extrabux just for this, seems like I can click the Boost Cashback to 100$ button and now I can see 100$ owed in back to me!! This makes my motley fool subscription absolutely free.
UPDATE 1
So, it took 5 months instead of the promised 3 months wait for cashback, but I am happy to report I got all 100$ back as I paid part of my subscription:
I was then able to withdraw it to my choice of payment method:
So, looks like using the above method it is possible for us to get motley fool stock advisor or rule breaker service for 0-20 USD. This in my opinion is a great deal! I wouldn’t mind throwing 20$ for expanding my circle of ideas to research into. A word of warning: I signed up for this service in October 2019 and received my cashback in Mar 2020, so it took 5 months.
UPDATE 2
looks like even Extrabux has reduced cashback from 80$ to 10$ since Jan 2020. So here is the website which I keep tabs on to identify the next portal that will give me good cashback:
If you notice, currently Citibank, Dollar Dig are offering 60 to 65$ back respectively. Some sites offering miles or their own currency. So you still have the option to go to any of these sites and sign up for motley fool from a link on there. The process in most places will be similar to what I described here. But do make sure you read reviews of some of these sites before actually using them.
If you liked this article, check out how I get free Barron’s and WSJ subscription for my financial news fix and how you can do it in 5 simple steps.
Disclaimer: None of the links in this article are my referral links or affiliate links. I do not get any benefit of purchases you make. Signed up personally and found the forums and tax resources section highly useful. I genuinely feel this is a great deal and so have decided to share with my readers.
