Know what you own and know why you own it
It seems that we generally are always looking to improve our life, at every moment. We are eating better and healthier, buying more responsible, acting wiser. If there is something that stays always on our minds is how to go through each and every day for the best. And still, there is a gray area where we do not think very often or do a lot for it: our silver age money.
So far, all of us contributed and/or still contribute to a fund or another, for when the pension time comes. But as it happens already, such funds are very unsecured and they will disappear by the time we will be 60+. Many of the funds have invested over the years in various industries within their investment portfolio, starting from tobacco, fossil fuels to nuclear weapons.
Recently, beginning of 2018, biggest Europe's pension fund, ABP Netherlands, announced that they will cancel their investments in stocks deemed "hurtful for humankind health" and sell their multi-billion holdings investments in the coming next year. This will have repercussions on other funds that will follow the lead and on the industry in general.
The fin-tech startup Penstable believe that "pension is more than just money" and they started to build up what they call a sustainable, responsible alternative to pension savings.
The concept they are using is to select investments based on impact, something that represents the basis of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) too. As they call it, "the concept at Penstanble is to exclude investments which obviously put the planet and humanity at strain, but moreover, Penstable also selects certain companies which conduct business in accordance with the SDGs. We have a data driven approach. As a result, we can set the bar higher than the common exclusion of for instance tobacco, alcohol or companies using child labor. We intentionally pick companies which contribute in making a positive impact in questions of equality, health, the environment and the climate". (read more).
Knowing what you own and why you own it means a different way of thinking when it comes to money, and it will take some time until such concepts become daily reality. Such steps remind us however that responsibility goes beyond environment, energy, and others. It is also about our money and what it means to us for now and for the future.
