Just received an email from these guys, no longer free for under $5k, now any balance over $100 will attract a fee of $2.50 a month.
Anyone thinking of leaving with this change, or you think it's still worth it?
Edit - Poll thanks to polarq
Spaceship Voyager Fee Change
brendanm on 29/09/2021 - 11:53
Last edited 30/09/2021 - 06:43 by 1 other user
Last edited 30/09/2021 - 06:43 by 1 other user
Poll Options
- 99Staying
- 203Leaving
- 96Never had an account, wont consider spaceship for future investments
- 7Never had an account, will consider spaceship for future investments
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Comments
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I know this isn't in the spirit of Ozb, but for a young person i think Spaceship still serves as a 'fun' and 'easy' introduction to investing, despite the higher fee for lower balances.
Look into CommSecc Pocket. It's limited but can get you into ETFs cheaply and easily. $2 transactions, CHESS sponsored, easy to use.
nah I withdrawing everything now and putting it into helium miner
This is such a disappointing move - have been using it as a $50 a week saving account for my infant daughter and yes currently down $12!!
Not giving any real notice or having a sliding scale of fees is a slap in the face for users and I will definitely be withdrawing funds to place elsewhere with lower fees.
I'd encourage jumping on their social media (facebook is more active) and leaving some 'appropriate' feedback.
Would offer advice but you seem intelligent.
I already withdrew my money and I will be cancelling the account. I only had $50, and already lost $1.50 this week.
It puts people off, because if you're only depositing something like $50/month, $2.50 feels like a lot to give up. And don't forget that most people start small, so with this fee change, why start at all? I avoided Raiz because of their fee, and opted in for Spaceship. I've built up a bigger balance now so will probably stay, at least for a bit, could see myself putting it all into ETFs.. but I can see Spaceship losing many low balance customers and see a steep decline in new customers.
The small customers could be costing them more in terms of admin, etc.
Most customers begin with a small balance and it grows. Fee increases that force small investors to leave means less big investors, as those small investors will eventually increase their balance in time.
I think time will tell whether this decision is good or not. You could be right, too many low balance accounts costing admin fees etc.. but I think it will highly discourage people from joining. Honestly if they included the round-up feature for each purchase like Raiz and what some banks do, I'd say the $2.50 is worth it.
Just curious what kind of admin tasks would that be? Aren't most of them automated anyway?
Automated doesnt mean server costs are free. Each user would thus cost the same base amount for a company, regardless if they had a lot of balance or little.
I'll be withdrawing my money from Spaceship when it (hopefully) levels out a bit.
Yep same here. Been losing money ever since I joined on their last deal here.
Such short notice for a significant change. Can’t trust what else they might do in future, so will be closing the account and move money back to saving account till I can invest it in an etf! Disappointing…
Not for something that has capital gain implication and dependent on market conditions. They could have given existing customer extra notice but yeah they didn’t have to. Their whole pitch was about starting small and now these fees makes it not very attractive. But it’s clear the kind of customers they want to attract. All the best to them, as they will have to perform very well or members won’t be very happy!
Their only true competitor Raiz has alot higher fees so it's still worth it. Gains have been pretty decent.
Would have loved a Poll on this.
- Staying
- Leaving
- Never had an account, wont consider spaceship for future investments
- Never had an account, will consider spaceship for future investments
Done
Ty!
People are up in arms for a $30/year fee (which itself is tax offset from the gains)? That is the price of a snitty and beer. If you cant stomach that fee than investing on the equities market does not fit your risk profile.
People are happy to pay a $9.50 brokerage fee then pay the etf management fees but people are brining out pitchforks for $2.50? Absolutely irrational.
yes i actually reactivated my auto-investment as was putting money through pearler after seeing this change
What's irrational is not understanding percentages. $30 a year on a balance of $200 is a 15% per annum fee. This was touted as a micro investing platform.
If your yearly investment amount is $200 you are going to get better returns at the local KFC than sweat it on the market.
🔥
You've again missed the point.
I'm closing account that I only opened 2 months ago. I only had $300 in there for fun and I know $2.50 is chump change, but I only created account for the no fees/no drama dipping toes in investing outside of super.
I withdrew my money.
CGT haha. What? the hundred or so dollars it has earnt?
Hardly worth keeping in there for that discount.
Fee-free was the only reason to stay with them. Gonski.
Those with large balances with Spaceship won't see much impact. In fact, the change is a saving over the old fee (for balances of >$30,000, assuming old 0.01% annual fee).
This looks like Spaceship clearing out small balance accounts (which are most impacted by the new fee).
Risk tolerance would be quite high to have $30K in this pretty much unknown entity. Wouldn't you want the security of CHESS backing for that amount?
CHESS doesn't apply for managed funds.
It does for listed funds (some which are managed) on the ASX but at the end of the day there are risks with every investment that should be considered.
Any alternatives you can suggest? Spaceship performance has been great, far above that of Raiz. The fee increase is insignificant considering the gain I've made this year alone.
Yes i just withdrew my funds now, just had $200 in there so this fee will very quickly eat the balance if i did not withdraw.
For those withdrawing all their money from Spaceship/closing their account, where are people putting their money? A 'high interest' savings account?
I personally put mine into ASX.
Putting the money into my mortgage. It's a low return on the money, but completely guaranteed.
I had $1500 in SS and have withdrawn it. It's a matter of principle: SS touted itself as a micro investing platform with no fees under $5k. They've now implemented fees that are as high as 30% (on $100). Think about what they've done. The less money you have, the more you pay. How fair is that?
SS have basically done a bait and switch. They're free to do that of course, and I'm free to leave.
Hey fund managers need lambos too. The interns were laughing at me cause I could only afford a 100k Tesla :(
Not many other options apart from Spaceship, Raiz and CBA pocket.
I have 3k in spaceship (was about to put another 2.5k into it)
But I am going to take it out because of the fees, looking at commsec instead, is this a good move financially?
It's my house savings so I don't want to have a high risk account
That investment will cost you $5 on Commsec Pocket. You might want to look at Open Trader (available now) or Stake (available soon) which are both CHESS-sponsored, the same brokerage fee or cheaper than doing this via Pocket, and a wider range of investments than is available on Pocket.
Having said that, NDQ (available on Pocket) is probably the closest "match" to Spaceship in terms of portfolio, but has a MER of 0.48%, which is ballpark similar to what you'd be paying by staying with Spaceship.
(Edit: I've assumed you mean Commsec Pocket.)
Final thoughts: With ~$6K+ invested in Spaceship, I reckon you're getting close to the "breakeven" point where it could be worthwhile staying, provided you're happy with its portfolio and the market direction etc. Remember that you'll also have CGT issues to deal with by pulling your money out.
Have you maxed your FHSS? Worth looking into that if it's setting aside for a first home.
I'll have to have a look into it, had a quick read over the page and looks like I might have to sit down and have a read, is the interest through FHSS better than commsec and spaceship?
I have 4k invested and will be looking at other options, while $2.50 per month is not terrible on that balance i do not want to continue to invest with this company when its a clear and obvious attempt to drain the low value accounts.
If you invested $150 you would be charged $30 over the year, now very simple maths thats a 20% pa fee, spaceship would need to return a yearly average of more than 20% just try and maintain your account balance.
Yes covid gave them some good numbers but its not sustainable and they will not have a regular +20%pa return, so what that allows them to do is eat away at the small accounts until the hit $100, as soon as they have some good performance and the accounts go above $100 they can grab another $2.50. So those micro investors they targeted who have set and forget the small investment they made are being screwed.
Isn't this literally the definition of the old 'bait and switch' by firms?
How stupid are these guys!
Any alternatives? I want to play around with a couple thousand before committing a bigger balance.
Check out CommSec pocket
Don't know what everyone is up in arms about.. most people have Netflix right 🤭
Just cancelled
I feel like the $2.50 monthly fee is fine. Considering the gains you get compared to raiz, $2.50 is nothing. I currently have over $30k invested and will keep using spaceship :)
💪
Bugger these chaps off and get on to Sharies
Sharesies looks good, any cons?
Expensive. $15 brokerage on a $3000 investment for example.
If the fee was only charged when you added money in (for smaller value accounts), I'd stay and just change how often I added money in but because it is monthly no matter what, it's too high a charge for how I was using this (adding $20 a month to universe and earth - both under $200 and only like a dollar up currently).
I just started using spaceship 3 weeks ago at $100/week so my account balance is relatively low, especially after the recent losses. I am probably closing the account and sticking with my existing Vanguard ETF.
One thing I don't understand is why people are defending the changes - this feels like a scummy bait and switch, especially for people like myself who joined up through the recent promotions. Spaceship advertised itself as a micro investing platform targetting people who are new to investing and who want to invest their small change, no/low fees is a headline marketing message.
Maybe they are trying to re-badge as a high end fund… But it doesn't make much sense to my why they would create a fee structure that alienates its core customer base.
A percentage based fee would make sense and allow smaller accounts to grow their positions over time through the dollar cost averaging investment strategy rather than getting drowned out with fees straight away.
People with big account balances on spaceship, why not buy direct into a trusted index fund like VAS or NDQ?
why people are defending the changes
For some, the flat rate fees actually mean its cheaper!
Though to me it just looks like they did exactly what Raiz does with their fees. Flat fee per month. And its still cheaper than Raiz.
Was a easy savings… Been using over a year. Recommend alot of people. Now think going to have to change it… Was a set and forget for me.. Which is a shame as was going to use long term.. Never mind.
I was going to take one of the deals and keep a small balance with them.
Procrastination has saved me the effort of doing that and then switching :)Pro tip find enough mates to signup using your code and you'll end up with no monthly fee for both parties anyway!
That seems a little Ponzi.
I remember "You'll tell your friends about One.Tel" and where is One-Tel now…
Have less than $1500 and already running on -$30 after 2 months. Fees is definitely going to hurt.
Honestly I think this is also an awful time to make this announcement while the portfolio is dropping. My portfolio went from like +$70 to -$50 in a few days. With people seeing negative balances, and then knowing they will also be losing more with fees, this is a horrible time to announce it. They should have announced it a week or even a month ago when their portfolio was rising significantly.
On another note, do you think it's worth sticking around if you have $5k+? Or ETFs? What's your opinion?
My take is that, ultimately, the decision should come down to a risk-return assessment, after taking fees into consideration. If you remain bullish about the Spaceship portfolio and think it will continue to outperform index-based ETFs in the medium-to-long-term, then I would stay with them, even with less than $5K invested.
ETFs have fees too of course. The closest ETF to Spaceship is probably NDQ, which has an annual fee of 0.48%. But they are nowhere near identical in terms of composition and weights.
Its almost as if people dont know that Spaceship is like the stock market, it goes up and down. Now is a better time to double down and put more investment in actually.
As for 5k balance, it depends on whether you want to actively manage or passively, whether you see yourself investing regularly or big one off investments, and how long you want to invest for.
If you passively invest, spaceship can be better than some alternatives.
If you invest regularly, spaceship doesnt have fees like others for trades.
If you want to invest for a long period of time, $2.5/month is going to be a smaller percentage of your total investment soon.Obviously, if you only had $5k for zero fees, this is going to represent a big increase in fees. But if you have $5k+ closer to 20-30k, then theres really not much of a difference in the short term, and in the longer term, this fee will be less than you'd eventually pay with larger investments.
Already closed my account
Spaceship adds account fee for small investors: Is it still worth it?
https://www.finder.com.au/spaceship-increases-fee-small-inve…
Just drew out the funds and bought shiba inu
🚀 🚀 🚀Did you buy shib before the +70%
My investment is up 72% in a few hours lol, and to think my Spaceship investment only went up a few dollars over a year
In also have 50m shiba, will probably also buy shiba floki today thanks to elon musk lol
Lets go to the moon together 🚀 🚀 we dont need a spaceship
How does one buy floki? I think I'm about 350% up on shib at the moment.
@brendanm: Pancake swap via crypto wallet
Contract on BSC BEP20: 0x3dab450ee6451762e72647a05a205dd5697c5c2cHow much shiba do you have.
Pancake swap via crypto wallet
Contract on BSC BEP20: 0x3dab450ee6451762e726Will have to look into it.
How much shiba do you have.
Only 11m. I just bought a few different coins for a bit of a play, too scared to put actual money into crypto at the moment, though in saying that, my crypto returns are pretty decent so far percentage wise. Might chuck my spaceship money into crypto when I get it out.
When it lists on Robinhood there should be a nice increase.
☝️ Shibaire in d' house.
SHIB is murdering the market. $267m 24H longs are getting rekt.
@easternculture: I went and got some more, 45m now. Was expecting it to level out by now, surely it can't keep increasing until Robinhood.
@brendanm: True or that. That’s what I’ve been doing but it’s hard to resist selling when it’s this high.
@bobwokeup: I sold a small bit as it was coming down, and bought back in shortly after, got a few million for free at least.
On the fence about leaving. It's performing well. I did stop my regular weekly investment in the meantime though whilst I decide on what to do next.
Just hoping things get better and can break even and then leave.
Same here, been losing ever since I joined. Clearly they are investing in the wrong areas.
Sure everything has been going down for the past 10 months but not to the amount that Spaceship has. would have been better rolling money into etfs like NDQ with superhero.
Spot on and things weren’t too bad 10 months ago, it’s their investment strategy that needs work. My super went down but it’s now back up again.
@bobwokeup: Yeah most international indexes are down 15-20% where as universe is down 40%, the reports of spaceship also getting additional funding recently is worrying.
Ive backed off investing on the platform , should haveeft as soon as they changed the fee structure.
@DaTa: Oh gosh I didn’t hear about that, no good at all.
Yeah I kept mine to $5 a month, should probably stop that too.
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C'mon papa ozbargain, set them up with Interactive Brokers via the 1% cashback promotion and give them $100k to get started and they can add their pocket money on top.