“If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.”
Edmund Burke

Most of us want to invest our money where it will make a decent return for our later years .  You may do your own research or take the advice of a professional.  The usual things we look for are fund performance and fund expenses and we make our decisions from there.  There is an entire dimension that frequently is totally overlooked however, which is the sustainability and ethics of those investments.

Do you want to be investing in big oil or alternative energy?  Do you want to be investing in companies that put profit before the well being of their employees?  If you want to see the nature of the companies that your mutual funds are investing in, take a hard look at your prospectus and scrutinize them according to SRI scores (socially responsible investing)and see what their “heart rating” is by Green America.  

Some years back I told a family member that I held sustainable investments.  This person suggested that I best be more concerned about my financial security than my ethics in this realm. For one thing, my investments were doing quite well. For another thing, I wanted to be able to sleep at night knowing I wasn’t supporting enterprises that were harming the earth or supporting the enslavement of children.  Actually, sustainable investing has as good- or better track record to choose from.

There are a plethora of sustainable investments to choose from nowadays. Consult this chart to see how well SRI mutual funds line up with your values.  

Happy Green Investing!

Alanna also bogs at byalannapass.com