I've been purchasing ETFs to buy and hold. I don't intend to sell them for many years.
At first I used a 3 month free brokerage deal from Commsec, so I have some ETFs sitting with them. Since then I have also created accounts with Westpac and NAB for the 1 month and 6 month free brokerage. Each account has a different CHESS account connected and they are all in my own name. My NAB deal is still current so I intend to keep buying new ETFs on that account for free for the next 5 months. I don't expect the free brokerage deals to keep popping up forever and at somepoint I will have to pay for my brokerage. Presumably I will use selfwealth or something cheap like that.
Having 3 seperate accounts is a bit of a nightmare for me though. I'm not sure if I should merge the accounts now or wait until I settle on a paid broker that I will stay with long term.
Have any of you had any similar experiences, and if so, what did you do?
I ended up with several all over the place, in the end I picked the one I wanted to stick with and moved them all there. It didn't cost me anything, but there were quite a few pieces of paper that I had to fill out. I am so glad it got it all consolidated, it was so hard to keep track of them in separate accounts.