Can You Save Money and the World at the Same Time?
Your personal values and personal finances may not have to be at odds after all.

You millennial, you. Is it crazy to think that you could practice sound personal finance while at the same time putting money toward the well-being of the planet and the people on it? Many would say yes, you’re crazy, finance is for greed. Until very recently.
Did you see the new report by Morgan Stanley showing that almost 40 percent of millennials are “very interested” in sustainable investing? That 75 percent believe their investments can help address climate change? And that 84 percent believe their investments can help lift people out of poverty?
These are either just delusional millennials reading too many Kanye tweets, or this report could be onto something.
Most managed accounts for retirement or regular savings put your money into diversified portfolios of interest-bearing things that probably include index funds — then give you a portion of the kickback. A lot of these interest-bearing things are on the stock market, which means that, at bottom, they are actual companies. These often include oil and gas companies, cigarette companies, or private prison companies.
Which means a portion of your money is likely being used to support new oil pipelines (or increased sales of cigarettes, or more people in prisons) just as it’s giving you interest.
Some have looked at this situation and said: But I try my best to live my values in my relationships and work. Shouldn’t I try to do the same with my finances?
With the rise of robo-advisors, it’s becoming cheaper and more accessible to save money in ways that were previously only accessible to the wealthy. At the same time, customization is sweeping through industries like music (see Spotify) and fashion (see Bow & Drape). It looks like customization is coming to personal finance, too.
Curious, I did some research. I found not only that it is possible to save money while you customize where your money goes, but that there is now a menu of companies to choose from, all with different approaches, prices, and tradeoffs. Their tools help regular people reach our personal financial goals while making contributions to changing the world (or at least not actively supporting the terrible stuff). It seems there is enough diversity among them that you should be able to find one that works for you.
Betterment’s SRI Portfolio
Betterment is a well-known robo-advisor. Perhaps less well known is their Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) portfolio, launched only this year. They say this option may exclude stocks (but not bonds) from companies like Exxon, Pfizer, and Philip Morris. Definitely an improvement if you don’t want to support oil or cigarettes with your savings. Read more on the technical side of things here (to sign up, you need to buy their mainstream service — find instructions on the bottom of the page).
Swell Investing
Swell is interesting because it is much more targeted. It lets you invest in themes like “Green Tech”, “Clean Water”, or “Healthy Living” that the team puts together based on its global megatrends research. They say they do full-on due diligence on each company they include, and that they’re doing all the risk and return balancing and such. Plus, for many of Swell’s portfolios, the returns look to be consistently above the US stock market average. Read more about their approach here.
Motif Investing
If you’re all about customization, you should look into Motif. Their platform lets you do automated investing (like Swell), trade stocks manually, and even access IPOs. They have portfolios aligned to “Sustainable Planet”, “Fair Labor”, and “Good Corporate Behavior”, so you can invest, as they say, without compromise. Find out more about their impact portfolios here.
Grow
Grow has three portfolio options: Global Sustainable Leaders, which contains top sustainable companies from the US and around the world, Global Governance Leaders, which gives you the top companies in governance from around the world, and US Sustainable Leaders, which is just like the first but, surprise, only US-focused. It looks like they haven’t released their app yet, but you can sign up for early access here.
OpenInvest
This one I’d missed originally, but it is a fantastic addition to the list. OpenInvest is one of the most customizable of all, in that they have more options to tailor your portfolio to specific issue areas while keeping your financial goals and risk tolerance in mind. For certain competitors, OpenInvest will even tell you what red flags are hiding in your portfolio — things like fossil fuels and weapons companies. Find out more and sign up here.
Aspiration
Founded by former Clinton speechwriter Andrei Cherny, Aspiration gives you a choice between checking, investment, and retirement accounts. Fun facts: Their checking account was rated Money’s “Best Checking Account in America”, gives hefty interest rates of up to 1 percent, and charges no ATM fees worldwide. Plus, an extremely cool feature: Their app can now tell you the impact of your monthly spending, rated on social and environmental metrics. Learn more and sign up here.
The fact that JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are getting into the game, too, should indicate that the millennials aren’t delusional after all. If you’re interested in the evidence on how sustainable and impact investments perform relative to regular old investments, Introducing the Impact Investing Benchmark and the Comprehensive Business Case for Sustainability are both worth a read. For the ultra-curious among you, you may find it useful to get a sense of the full spectrum of ways social and financial goals can interact.
To be clear, saving this way should not give you moral license to pass on other stuff you do to make a difference. This should not be a replacement for donations to urgent causes, hours volunteered, work put in, or hard conversations had. Instead, it’s best to look at these platforms as an alternative to your standard-issue savings account — and as just one more way in which you can make an impact.
So now you can save while saving the world. Or, at least, save while keeping your money from touching the things aiding and abetting civilization’s decline. Maybe in the future we’ll be able to target small investments even more tightly, or make sure our investment portfolios don’t support companies owned by certain political figures. But in the meantime, these options can be a good start to help you align your finances with your conscience.
This post was updated to include OpenInvest on 18 September, 2017 and Aspiration on 22 September, 2017.
Have suggestions about additional resources? Know a better Kanye tweet? Send them to hi@christianpetroske.com.
