Social Responsibility and Investing: How to Make the World a Better Place

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This blog is about peace, love and spreadsheets, but I mostly talk about spreadsheets. With all the news going on about the world's challenges and what we can do to fight the badness, I wanted to talk about the peace and love part a bit.

Here is my take. We could talk all day about socially conscious investing, environmental social and governance, diversity, research, boycotts, where to shop and where to not shop. But it's not where I spend my energy.

I do not stress about which companies I invest in or shop at. It is too much work. They all have some good people working for them, and some less good. The only one I boycott is Hobby Lobby because they not only have poor ethical practices but also terrible customer service and they refuse to use bar codes and that's weird. I need multiple reasons to boycott a company - not just one. Some place might love DEI, but encourage wasteful consumerism, another place might be under fire for wage discrimination one week but feature a struggling family-owned small business the next week. Who can tell. So I just gave up, I try to buy as little as possible from everywhere.

The majority of my investments are in whole market index funds like FZROX. I have a few little ESG/DEI funds like SHE, but again, it's The System.

Instead, I use my energy to look for charities where I can make a direct impact. Target doesn't care if I remove $200/mo from them and send it to Costco, but my local food bank is extremely grateful! I have one credit card just for charities, so I can set a goal and stick to it. My four biggest monthly donations:

  • Amnesty International
  • International Rescue Committee
  • United Methodist Committee on Relief
  • Local food bank

Then there are a few smaller ones where I do not give hundreds of dollars a year, I just pitch in: 

  • The public state college where I graduated
  • Grapevine because it's a small fun local giving circle
  • Public radio

I started small, many years ago, and just bumped them all up over time. I set charity goals and try to make them. I'm proud of it. I call this the real investment. My returns won't be tallied up every quarter but the investment is in the world and its future. I gave up trying to find perfect companies to invest in, there were too many disappointments.

My contributions are inclusive, not exclusive. I don't look at what to hate on, boycott or cut out, I look at where I can vote "yes". 


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