Activate Your Money

CHAPTER 1Values-Aligned Investing: Step into Your Financial Power

Whether you realize it or not, you're already an investor. Your money is having an impact somewhere, somehow. This is true even if all you have is a savings account. Every entity in which you save or invest your money is using your assets for some purpose. The question is whether this supports the things you value—or undermines them.

When you take greater responsibility for understanding your investments, you can use the power of your capital to make a difference in the world. Values-aligned investing, while novel, is not a new practice. In the US, it can be traced back to 1758 when religious societies like the Quakers didn't allow their members to invest in companies involved in the slave trade.¹ The momentum picked up in the 1960s when opponents of the Vietnam War blacklisted weapons manufacturers and continued into the 1980s as students demanded divestiture from South Africa as a response to apartheid. Today many people are interested in “voting with their dollars” and boycott companies that do not support their values and patronize the ones that do.

In the best-case scenario, 100% of your portfolio would be invested in the things that matter to you. Personally, I have made a pledge to invest all of my assets in alignment with my values. But you don't have to make the same commitment I did. You might prefer to make a smaller commitment initially and take this step-by-step. Perhaps you could start by shifting ...