On Blue Marbles and Vegan Stories

As you may know, I've ghostwritten several dozen books, a dozen of which are about personal finance, and several of which were New York Times bestsellers. Furthermore, my husband is a CFP (Certified Financial Planner) who manages the money of a bunch of families in addition to my measly retirement accounts. Measly, as in, if I weren't married to him I wouldn't be able to invest my money with him because I don't have enough.

Vegan and otherwise-activist friends constantly ask me for investment advice, which of course I am not qualified to dole out, but I can sometimes point them in a helpful direction. I must first say that I think everyone should have a financial planner who communicates with them about their goals and needs and time horizons (i.e., when you'll need what money), and of course their principles.

Principles are what cause most problems for vegans regarding investing, as there are few options for the (financially) average person. When you eliminate all of the industries you don't want to support, and when you consider that most funds have many companies in them, most funds will have a company or two (or ten) that you don't want to support, not to mention the exact companies (though not the general make-up) of the fund are not static. This is not even close to an ideal situation.

Another thing that trips up many vegans--in my experience--is that their anti-capitalism stance translates into not appreciating money or how necessary it's going to be when they reach 65. I know I've said this before, but needing money for retirement is real. Most of us are going to reach an age when we are not as appreciated as when we were younger, and that will be reflected in our dwindling opportunities for income generation (again, this won't happen to everyone, but it is most often the case). How are you going to take care of yourself after you're 60 or 65? Do you know how much money you'll need for food, health insurance, a home, a car, and the insurances they require?

Recently a couple of people close to me who have gone vegan and are unabashed capitalists, noted (and this is just one quote that expresses the sentiment): "What's with all these vegan people wearing their poverty on their sleeve?" Granted, that's a judgment from a person entirely on the outside, who has peeked in for all of three hours (he went to his first vegan gathering), but there is a grain of truth in it, at least from what I've seen in 20 years.

Okay, enough of the lecture. Today I bring you Blue Marble, a "Socially Active Investment Firm" that "specializes in services that serve green and social investors with SRI accounts such as: Retirement, College, Trust, Estate, Business, Non-Profit and Charity." (SRI means socially-responsible investing, by the way.) The site has great calculators in the "info kiosk," and you can invest with under $10,000 (I pretended I wanted to start an IRA with under $10,000 to see if that was possible, and it was), which doesn't happen too often when it comes to highly-specialized investments. There are also helpful and informative articles, graphics and slideshows, and I found that nothing was condescending.

You won't agree with everything or all of their choices, but if you're looking for a way to invest or even for some venture philanthropy opportunities that might return some cash (that's the way I look at some investments), Blue Marble might be a good match for you.

And finally, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine needs your vegan success story.

Have you been able to improve your health with a vegan diet?

Have you lost a significant amount of weight from being on a vegan diet and kept it off? Have you had success in treating diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, arthritis, migraines, acne, or some other condition with a vegan diet? Well, we need you!  

Please share your experience with us so we can share it with others. We often hear from journalists looking for success stories and we may want to put them in touch with you, feature you in one of our publications, or post your experience to our Web site. If you have a compelling story you're willing to share with the press, please submit your story here.               

Thank you and we look forward to hearing about your success story soon. Due to the large number of submissions, we will be unable to contact each person individually.

Questions can be sent to success@pcrm.org.

Appreciate our "tiny, lovely, and fragile blue marble" today, and every day.

Comments

[Elaine Vigneault]

Thank you for addressing this. I'm vegan and don't support many of the companies I've formerly invested in (by default because of no choice in my former company's 401k). But I also need to plan for my financial future. I rolled my account over into another not-so-ethical investment firm just because that was convenient and easy at the time. But now I have a bit more money, so I have more real choices.

Another ethical alternative is investing in one's own business, which can be vegan :) I plan to do that, to open my own business in the near future.

I'm really glad you're considering the needs to vegans and helping to encourage your readers to be financially responsible. We all need to plan for the future. Our vegan diets will likely ensure that we have long, healthy lives, so we ought to plan well for them.

[Dan]

I agree, Mary, financial planning for the future is important. Thanks for the Blue Marble tip.

As to unabashed vegan capitalists, I’ll chime in as someone who does not have a problem with things like market economies and wealth accumulation, per se. What I have a problem with (albeit, I’m generally apolitical except for animal rights) is specific and significant injustices and abuses within any given market economy. I prefer markets that are reasonably fair, not necessarily free, and I’m willing to pay the cost in overall societal wealth to achieve more equality. IOW, I’m all for liberty until we start “othering”, excluding, and significantly oppressing.

The “pro-market economy” endorsement is the politically conservative side of me that sees the folly of central planning and forced communism given human nature (broadly speaking) and other factors (such as market knowledge). The justice and equality side of me (i.e. the “leftist” in me) would like to see a big, fat inheritance tax (and a few other taxes on certain undesirable “goods”), the proceeds of which would go to educate economically disadvantaged kids to give them a fairer start in our *so-called* “meritocracy” (and no, it’s no more “double taxation” than ANY other tax – the double-tax argument is a glaring fallacy). I’d also like to see permanent mandatory 2-year military service for anyone of the current draft age who passes capability tests, absolutely INCLUDING the sons and daughters of wealthy weapons manufacturers, military suppliers, senators, and presidents (!!!) (in fact, the public spotlight should be on these people’s kids). Perhaps this country wouldn’t be so war-happy if the kids of the more affluent sector of the bourgeoisie and politically powerful had a decent chance of catching a bullet or explosion and not coming home (or coming home deformed).

*The apolitical guy who just offended everybody within the entire political spectrum steps off his soap box now* ;-)

[Mary Martin]

Dan,
I agree on the military service and I do think the tax structure is a disaster. I'm oddly pro market if it were actually fair. We don't appear to be going in that direction. I'd also like to see required service--humanitarian or otherwise. I've always told my husband that if we had a child I'd want to use her vacation times (if she weren't homeschooled) to do service work here and abroad. Of course his response is: "What? No golf camp? No skiing in Val d'Isere? Oy.)

And Dan and Elaine (Dan, you're probably already familiar)--perhaps you might want to look into Rocky Mountain Humane Investing (http://www.greeninvestment.com), supposedly the first to establish Animal Testing and Humane issues as a screening criteria.

[Dan]

Mary,

I agree that it’s not going in that direction.

I also agree that humanitarian service would be good, perhaps as a part of military service (e.g. 1 year military training, 1 year humanitarian service, unless there’s a war). About service work during vacation, that sounds good for the long summer break of what, two-three months? About 6 weeks of service work in the summer sounds good. I’d leave vacation during the school year for fun and R&R, though – all work and no play makes life at least dull, if not intolerable.

I wasn’t familiar with Rocky Mountain Humane Investing (although I’m a CPA in public practice, I’m not involved in personal tax or financial planning); thanks for that tip! I have my retirement funds in real estate, which while it is far from perfect, is about as good as I can do socially, ethically, and environmentally speaking, given that our firm participates in a retirement program which limits our choices (especially with regard to socially responsible investing). My other option is to opt out of the firm’s tax-advantaged plan, which is financially disastrous. That said, I do have a little savings outside of the firm’s program, some of which I may be able to direct toward RMHI.