More Money Podcast - 129 How to Be a Sustainable Investor - Tim Nash, The Sustainable Economist
Episode Date: November 15, 2017Is it possible to earn money on your investments without sacrificing your ethics? Tim Nash, investing coach and the blogger behind The Sustainable Economist explains why yes, you can! Long description...: As I mentioned in the episode, I first got to know Tim Nash (a.k.a. The Sustainable Economist) back in the spring when he invited me to his Good Investment Fair. So when I went to the fair, it really did open my eyes to a whole new world of investing. You don’t just have to buy funds that you think will perform well, you can do that and stay true to your values. And if Tim can help a couple create a totally vegan investing portfolio, then anyone can create a portfolio that speaks to them and what they stand for. I definitely know that I’m going to have to take a good look at my portfolios and see if there’s anything in there I don’t feel good about. Luckily, more and more robo-advisors are starting to offer portfolios that are more eco-friendly and socially responsible, so that’s definitely a sign that Tim is certainly onto something that will become more popular in years to come. Tim’s Model Portfolios Easy As Pie Portfolio Fossil Fuel Free Portfolio Organic Couch Potato Portfolio Socially Responsible Portfolio For full episode show notes, visit: https://jessicamoorhouse.com/129 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to episode 129 of the Mo Money Podcast. I am your host,
Jessica Morehouse. Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of the show. You're
going to love this episode because I loved it personally. I am talking to Tim Nash, who
is, well, he's known as the sustainable economist and he is an investing coach. And in this episode, we're
going to dive deep into what it means to not only invest wisely, but also invest sustainably.
Now, I actually met Tim, I guess, well, it was maybe six months ago now. I knew of him
and his blog and really liked what he was all about. But he gave me an invitation to this fair that he
put together. It was called the Sustainable Investing Fair. And it was really cool. There
was a bunch of different booths. And there was, you know, solar shares and co-power and
lots of different kind of ways to invest, but by also being sustainable and green and investing in clean energy and things
like that. And it really just opened up a whole new world in terms of what you can invest in.
So we talk more in depth about that. But before I get to that interview, here is a few words about
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how did you hear about us section?
Thank you,
Tim,
for joining me on the Mo Money Podcast.
I am stoked to talk to you about investing,
but specifically sustainable and just non-evil investing.
Not evil.
Less evil.
Less evil.
Yeah.
Let's be fair. Less evil. less evil for sure um so yeah i'm
so glad when we first met you invited me to what was that what was the the um event that you got
me to go to which i'm so glad you did it was a fun event it's called the good investment fair
so i basically i rented out a big room and I invited all these different community investment organizations. So organizations that sell community bonds and solar bonds and microfinance and all these different ways that you can do a lot of good with your money while still earning a financial return and sort of saving for retirement, whatever financial goals you got um and it was awesome we had like 10 booths set up around and
people could just go and we gave up fake money yeah i gave people like five million dollars or
something like million dollar bills and they had to decide who they wanted to invest their fake
money with and uh and it was a lot of fun it was a good way to learn about all these different
really cool impact investment organizations yeah i really opened my eyes to just different things
that you
could invest to because I feel like a lot of people want to think about investing. They're
like, okay, well, there's, you know, your regular stocks, mutual funds, index funds, ETFs, but I
had no idea solar share was a thing. I didn't know, you know, community bonds or green bonds
existed because I think, are they fairly relatively new? Is that kind of why? You know, a lot of them have been around for a while. Microfinance has been around for a long
time. I mean, when you think about different organizations like raising money, but now it's
just, it's a lot more structured than it was in the past. And I would say that it's starting to
get a lot more popular in the sense that it's always been very local. Like the point of it
is local investments, but now it's starting to loosen up where, you know, local is we're starting to realize
we're global citizens. So yeah, so it's definitely, they're still small. When I look at assets under
management, you know, it's grown a lot in the last probably five years, but it still has a long way
to go. And, but the biggest barrier is awareness. Just a lot of people have never thought about it
when they, they do their investing. They're just kind of giving their money and they're like, okay, to go. But the biggest barrier is awareness. Just a lot of people have never thought about it. When
they do their investing, they just kind of give their money and they're like, okay,
yeah, please. Yeah. Take care of yourself. I'll look at you once a year.
Exactly. And, and so this is a way for people that want to be a little bit more involved
that want to really know and invest in their local communities.
Absolutely. So yeah, thank you for bringing me to that because it really did kind of, yeah, open my eyes. I, you know, learned a ton. But before I just like start asking you
questions about everything you know, I would love to learn a little bit about you and your
background and how you became what people call you now, the sustainable economist.
Sure. You want my origin story? I do. Please enlighten me.
Absolutely. So I grew up in London, Ontario, with my dad in the investment industry. So I grew up
around stocks and bonds. I was one of those little rugrats running around the office.
And I always had a good brain for it. So from my undergrad, I went out to Halifax,
I studied economics and philosophy. So I was kind of the weird one in each of those departments. And in my third year, I got accepted to do an exchange to New Zealand.
And my intention was really just to go and party and play rugby and hitchhike around New Zealand.
But a few things happened there that sort of changed the course of my life.
The first is that I took a course in triple bottom line economics.
Intriguing. You've heard of the bottom line, right? You know, it's profit, like, it a course in triple bottom line economics. Intriguing.
You've heard of the bottom line, right?
You know, it's profit.
Like it's all about the bottom line.
For the first time, this was a course that looked at the triple bottom line, which is
people, planet, and profit.
So that rather than just money, it brought in human capital, social capital, and natural
capital into that equation.
And light bulbs just started going off in my head.
I had had a lot of issues with the way I was being taught the economic system.
That, you know, it was this big, behemoth thing.
It was all about profit maximization.
And spotty sense was always going off in my head saying,
wait a minute, something's wrong here.
And I couldn't quite put my finger on it.
But when I started to understand and look at it through this lens
of looking at, you know, human capital, health, education, knowledge, like these are really important things, social capital, things like trust, community well-being, and then obviously natural capital, which is the environment, which really our entire economy depends on our environment.
You know, those things were missing from my traditional economics teaching. So to get
insights there, it really opened up my mind. As well, I had a pretty profound spiritual experience
when I was in New Zealand, I won't get into it too much. But it really taught me how badly we're
damaging this planet. And it stopped being this intellectual exercise of, wait a minute, we're cutting down trees faster than they're growing back. This is a problem. And it became
this emotional thing where it was like, whoa, we're really messing things up. I don't know
if I'm allowed to swear. I'll say we're- Yeah, go ahead.
Okay. So we're really fucking up the planet. And it became this emotional, like, wow,
I need to do something about this. This is not Yeah. And on my way home from New Zealand, I stopped
and visited my uncle in China, Beijing for a couple weeks. And my sister was doing an
international development placement in Bangalore, India. And I traveled around India with her for
about two months. And I saw extreme poverty firsthand. And it made me realize how much of
a sheltered, privileged existence I had growing up in London,
Ontario.
Yeah.
Like I just, I'd never seen ecological, you know, and human problems so closely.
So I went back to my fourth year economics department full of questions.
Yeah, I bet.
My professors were not very happy with me.
I was asking a lot of tough questions and they didn't have answers.
Some of them were like, go do an independent study project.
Most of them just shut me down.
They're like, no, we don't talk about that.
So I graduated with my BA in economics with way more questions than I had answers.
So I went to Sweden and I did my master's in sustainability.
And it was awesome.
I learned basic what I call earth system sciences. So basic
biology, chemistry, physics, understanding climate change and the implications there.
Took a course on engineering for a sustainable society about all these cool new green technologies
that are coming out. And for my thesis, I looked at this idea of socially responsible investment.
And it was fascinating because as soon as I brought up,
you know, I talked to these big investment experts and I bring up the words ethical,
responsible, sustainable, people automatically assumed lower financial returns. Like right off
the bat, it was like, oh, that's cute. You want to save the world. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm in this
to make money. Yeah. But everything I was learning in Sweden was telling me that there's a business case
for sustainability.
The companies that are ahead of the curve
use less energy, less water, less materials
because they're more efficient, right?
Their employees are more productive
because they actually give a damn about the company.
And there's less turnover.
And the cost associated with hiring and training
a new employee, stupid high.
And then on the revenue side,
you've got customers that are more loyal
and often willing to pay a premium
for organic fair trade ethically sourced goods.
So I'm sitting there with my economist hat saying,
wait a minute, higher revenues, lower costs,
a more productive workforce.
This is a recipe for profitability.
And so my whole thesis was connecting the dots
between sustainability and profitability. And so my whole thesis was connecting the dots between sustainability
and profitability. And so, yeah. And so I came home, came back to Canada in July of 2008,
ready to take the investment world by storm. I was really strategic with my advisors on my thesis.
So I had a lot of people here in Toronto that, you know, the big firms that I wanted to get hired by were all my advisors.
So I was doing the coffee meeting thing when three months later, you know, October of 2008, the markets crashed.
Yeah, bad timing.
And they kept crashing.
Yeah, they did.
And I moved home to my parents' basement in London, Ontario.
Yeah.
Spent a couple months banging my head against the wall.
I'd wake up in the morning and turn on CNBC
and watch the markets collapse in real time.
Yeah.
So in January of 2009, I said, fuck it.
I'm starting my own business.
Good for you.
I taught myself HTML and I built a really ugly website.
And I went on Clipart and I printed two really ugly business cards.
But in this day and age, all you need is a website and business cards and boom, you're a consultant.
Yeah.
So I went out in the world and started doing that.
Wow.
Good for you for not just like, oh, crap.
I mean, I kind of, it took me a while to figure out what you figured out
in like probably a matter of months.
It sounds like we have a similar timeline.
I graduated, well, with my undergrad in 2009.
And I'm like, well, this is a terrible time
to find a job.
But that's awesome that you're like,
I'm going to take this as an opportunity
to start my own business.
That's amazing.
And you've been doing your, I mean, it. And so, and you've been doing your,
I mean, it's 2017 now, so you've been doing quite well. Well, my first business model failed.
Oh, well, that's okay. A failure is just a lesson.
Learning experiences. I went after institutional investors, foundations, pensions, endowments. I
had a little bit of success. I helped a group called the Catherine Donnelly Foundation. They needed a new manager for their $40 million endowment.
Oh, wow.
I helped them do that. They divested from fossil fuels before the oil markets crashed.
And they've been leaders in these community investments, community bonds, green bonds,
which has done better than traditional bonds over the last five years. So they made more money
while it was aligned with their value.
I thought that, you know, I got, that was my golden ticket that their recommendation,
you know, foundations would be lined up around the block to hire me, hire returns and do good
in the world. It seems like a no brainer, but meeting after meeting was no, no, not yet. Sorry,
no. And so about five years ago, I found myself broke with a failed business model um so
that's when I invented the sustainable economist brand I had to pivot yeah so I decided okay I'm
done trying to convince people yeah instead I'm just gonna write about my own experiences um I
was lucky I came into some money and early inheritance from my grandpa so I was able to
pay off my student loans and started thinking about how I would invest my own money.
And that's when I started blogging.
And I just started blogging about these different
socially responsible and green ETFs.
Really no one else was doing it.
They were out there, but no one was talking about it.
And then people started contacting me saying to him,
how do I do this too?
So it's been really exciting.
So it's, you know, that's
I like that you kind of figured, yeah, like you said, pivoted and eventually, and basically
started kind of, you know, just making it easy for people that wanted what you were offering
to find you instead of trying to convince people that don't want what you have.
Exactly. You got it. I was done burning my head against the wall, right? And it was swimming
upstream. I was exhausted. I was burnt out. So instead like, you know, it's just, and then people
started self-selecting that if they were putting in, you know, socially responsible ETF into Google,
there's a good chance that they were going to find my blog. Yeah. That's helpful. Yeah. So
it's pretty cool. So it's been, it's been a wild ride and you know, now I feel that I've got a
business model that works like I'm helping individuals and families.
And it's a lot of fun.
It's when you help people figure this stuff out.
And you can see the light bulbs going off in their head now,
where they realize that they can make really good decisions
and earn good financial returns,
but also feel good about the investments.
Absolutely.
Then it's pretty cool to see that evolution happen.
Absolutely. Do you think there's part of the reason is because there's, for me, in my perspective,
it seems like in the past couple of years, the idea of DIY investing and doing something different
that our parents or grandparents' generations, where they'd go to the bank, talk to an advisor,
the advisor would pick everything for them. And then you'd be like, all right, fine. It seems like
people want to take more ownership and get more educated. Do
you think that's kind of why people are more drawn to like hiring an investment coach so they can
like learn the tools and then do it themselves? Yeah. I mean, I think that's a big part of it.
Obviously the, the savings, like saving money on fees. Yeah. Yeah. So like there's a huge
financial incentive to do it yourself. And I think people are coming into that.
But also that I think that a lot of people now are making decisions more intentionally.
That we're looking at our consumption dollars and like, what kind of companies do I want to support?
And, you know, we're looking at where we travel.
We're looking at like all these different things through a bit more of a
deliberate lens. Right. And that with the internet, it's become so much easier to do things yourself.
Yeah. I always use the analogy. A lot of people, when they come to me, they're like,
oh, the idea of investing money on money online, it's scary. I don't like it.
And the analogy I always bring up is the first time you booked an airline ticket online.
Yeah. Like what did people used to do? Like they would call up a human and be like, Hey, I want to go to this place. And they're, and they would
like do it for you. Yeah. You don't do that anymore. And the first time it felt weird. You're
like, wait a minute. I'm going to book myself. No. Yeah. What if I do it wrong? Yeah. And then
you do it and you get to pick your dates. You get to pick your flight. You get to write, you get to
make sure you got the best deal, right? Customize everything. And then you're like and you get to pick your dates. You get to pick your flight. You get to, right, you get to make sure you got the best deal, right?
Customize everything.
And then you're like, whoa, that was so easy.
And so I feel that really that's, you know, there's a lot of this psychological barriers
around people investing their own money.
But once you actually do it once, you're like, oh, that was so easy.
Do you think it's also, I think, and it could be
just like, you know, a few years, you know, back when I was in my twenties and wanted to invest,
knew how important it was, but didn't know how to do it myself, even though it seemed like that's
what I wanted to do. I was afraid there's a lack of knowledge, but also seemed like there's a
couple of just barriers. Like, I don't know how to literally open up a brokerage account and pick what to invest in.
And so it was, you know, I just got paralyzed from that fear and, you know, kind of stalled all that.
Is that, you know, people just literally just give me a YouTube tutorial and have to freaking do it.
Yeah.
Well, so part of it is that absolutely, you know, breaking that down.
But it's also a big problem is the language involved.
Right.
It's acronym city.
So we've got RSP, TFSA, ETFs.
You know, you've got this really weird language, market orders, limit orders, stocks, auctions.
We're not taught this.
So it's literally a foreign language for most people.
And then you go and, you know, for the average person, they, you know, they start reading up on this stuff and, you know, and, and, and it's, uh, uh, it's,
it's like reading Greek, you know? So that's why sites like yours are so important because if you
can break it down and make it digestible for people and teach them the language in a way that's
entertaining and fun, right? Then that to me is really the first step is just wrapping your head
around the language of these things. Yeah. And things. And then from there, moving from that understanding the system to the implementation,
then it becomes so much easier. But if you jump in implementation and you don't know what a stock
price is or the difference between a bid price and an ask price, we're not taught these things
in school. No. And we think that because we were,
you know,
for so long taught that if you need to do anything finance wise, you have to go to a financial institution,
talk to a professional that we shouldn't be able to do it ourselves.
We'll mess it up.
But it is all learned.
We can learn this stuff.
It's so easy to learn.
And most people like I have some of the smartest people.
I've like doctors and like lawyers are coming over,
like brilliant people,
engineers who are just like some of the smartest people I know. And they're just like, Tim,
I'm stupid when it comes to investing. It's like, no, you're not stupid. You just never tried.
Yeah, exactly.
Never learned. You never learned. And I'm cynical. I would argue that the financial industry,
specifically the big banks here in Canada, have a vested interest in keeping us stupid.
Right? I think that there's part of it is a little bit intentional
with some of these acronyms.
You know, when you look at this idea of MER,
Management Expense Ratio,
like if they called that an annual fee,
then it would be a very different story.
Yeah, that's probably true.
Most people are like MER.
And then walk away.
Right?
Oh, what's like, so, you know, i i'm cynical but i do feel that there is
a deliberate attempt to keep people stupid about this stuff and just saying don't worry about it
i've got it under control just pay me thousands of dollars every year in fees and and you don't
need to worry your your brain about um speaking of doing it DIY and kind of just like, you know, getting it started,
I guess one of the things that I found very helpful was sites like yours
and, of course, Dan Bortolotti's Canadian Couch Potato where there's model portfolios.
It was like, here's an example or here are some suggestions.
And I know his are great, but you also have model portfolios,
but I like how you call them.
There's the organic couch potato model portfolio.
I love organic.
That was my first one.
That was my first one.
I love it.
So I ripped off Dan Bartolotti.
He's great.
He's had me on his podcast.
He's the best.
Like, I love him dearly.
He's so smart.
But really what happened was when I was investing my own money,
I looked at his, everything kept pointing me towards these ketchup potato portfolios.
It made so much sense to me. But I looked at the ETFs that were inside. I looked at the companies
inside those ETFs and it made me gag. Like there were just companies in there that I was just like,
no, like I can't, I can't do it. And so that's when i started looking at these socially responsible
etfs um that actually mimic very closely uh the the the index approach that he uses but
what they do is they screen out sort of the worst of the worst than most evil companies
there's still some stuff there's still some shady characters but less evil to go back to the original
joke yeah that it's um that really it's getting rid of the
worst of the worst and i could at least stomach or tolerate those funds and so so basically i
ripped off his his approach and i just tweaked it with this idea of sustainability in mind
and you know i was trying to come up with a name and it was just sort of perfect the organic oh i
love it it's so clever and like how, yeah, you can buy the organic potatoes.
The fees are a little bit higher.
Like they are.
It's got a higher.
Yeah, exactly.
Just like an organic potato.
It's higher quality.
You get better.
It's in the long run.
It'll do better for you.
Right.
And, and it's, yeah.
Absolutely.
And I know you also have the socially responsible portfolio.
What is the difference between the two? Oh, yeah. I think all i did with the organic one is i added in the green
socially responsible is actually probably closer to the pure sort of catch potato where it's just
the sort of socially responsible indices and then with the organic catch potato um i added in uh
basically an asset class specifically for clean technologies,
which tends to be a bit riskier. It's higher volatility. Green companies tend to be smaller
companies. They also tend to be more growth focused. So they don't generally pay as high
dividends and they're more focused on growing and growing. But the idea is that if you understand
climate change and some of the challenges that we're at, it's not a question of if we transition to a green
economy, but like, we need to transition to a green economy. So like, when are we going to hit
those tipping points with, you know, with carbon pricing and all these different things, and it's
happening soon. And so for me, it was just kind of carving out part of that, that's the green,
that's, that's what makes it sort of the organic one,
is that it's making a bit of a deliberate bet
on the emergence of clean technologies,
which, you know, Dan Bartolotti
and the traditional indexers wouldn't like me for doing that.
But, you know, it's something that certainly
I wanted to explore too in my portfolio.
Absolutely.
So I'd like to dig deep a little bit on,
like, in your mind, what does it mean to you, you know, invest sustainably? What's the, what does that mean
as sustainable investment? I know it's a whole big deal in it. It's a can of worms in there.
So everyone probably has a different idea of it. So I'd love to know what your point of view is.
So, so I've got my definition and I've got mine and that's, you know, and in Sweden,
I learned this whole framework for strategic sustainable development and all that.
But I've let go of it.
I've dropped it.
So for me, it's really, it's about asking my clients.
Yeah.
So like Jessica, it's really about asking you, like, what does sustainability mean to you?
Oh, gosh.
Yeah.
It's a hard question.
Yeah.
Do you want to give it a shot?
You don't have to.
I don't know if I know the answer offhand, I guess.
It's okay.
In terms of like, you know,
ideally if I were to...
I probably have to take a look at my investments
and see what's really going on.
And I'm sure they're not sustainable.
Let's play a game.
Let's play a game, okay?
Okay.
This is a game I play with my clients.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk to you about different things that
are in your index funds. And I want you to either give me a thumbs up. Yeah, that's good. A thumb
sideways. Tolerate it, but it's not a deal breaker or a thumbs down, which is just like, no, that
this is not, I'm not happy about this. Like, okay. So there are different things. They're different.
And I get so many different issues. I'll just choose a couple of the more popular ones.
Okay.
But pharmaceutical companies,
how do you feel about owning pharma?
I guess like middle sideways.
Okay.
Sideways.
Cool.
Tobacco companies.
Oh,
big thumbs down.
Okay.
Talk to me about that.
Why is that?
It just,
it doesn't feel right.
I just,
I can't stand how it,
you know,
kills people basically.
It hurts too many people that I know. So no. Right. So that it, you know, kills people basically. It's hurt too many people that I know. So no.
Right. So that's, you know, Philip Morris would be in your index fund.
I'm sorry. Military companies.
I guess like middle.
Okay. That's cool. Yeah. What about fossil fuels?
Pipelines, things like that. You okay with that?
I think I'm middle.
I want to say thumbs down, but I'm going to say middle.
That's fine.
And everyone has a different definition, right?
And this is what I'm getting at,
is that there is no one size fits all.
There's no, yeah, right answer.
And all you can do is look at the companies inside
and be deliberate and say, where do you draw the line?
And so now the question becomes, you know,
if tobacco, I'll use that. That was a thumbs down for you. So that's a good example. If it's
an actual deal breaker for you know that tobacco companies is going to be tiny fraction of your
index. Yeah. So we're talking like a fraction, a fraction of your portfolio. So if you can tolerate
that and you, it's not a big deal, then that's fine. But if you came to me and you were like,
Tim, you know, I've had people in my life affected by uh by cancer and it's i know that tobacco causes cancer and i just can't
stand the idea of profiting one penny from that then it would be very simple of just simply instead
of going with the traditional couch potato indexes yeah going to these socially responsible indexes
which get rid, and tobacco
is one of the sectors they get rid of, not all the things I mentioned are part of that screen,
but tobacco is. And you could get similar returns, if not maybe a little bit better,
because it's been a little bit better over the last five years, but you could get similar returns
by and avoid tobacco. So it's tricky. And that's what I call sort of the
doing less evil and everyone has different. Oh my goodness. Uh, I just worked with a couple of
their vegans. So I did a vegan portfolio. Oh, I love that. I mean, not that I could ever be vegan,
but I love that that's a portfolio you can get. It was right. Like it was, it wasn't easy. Yeah.
I bet it wasn't. For Yeah, I bet it wasn't.
For me, I talked before about my cynicism. So in my portfolio, I've got banks are a thumbs down.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to invest in a lot of these big banks that just do horrible things.
You know, when I read about Wells Fargo and the sales tactics that are involved and know that every Canadian bank has those same sales tactics. Right. Like, I can't.
So, right?
So for everyone, it's going to be different.
Yeah.
And then from there, the flip side of the question is,
that's the sort of doing what's evil, is the doing what's good.
So what can you feel good about?
What's the world you want to retire into?
Right?
So, you know, looking at things like renewable energy, water infrastructure, environmental services, which is cleaning up pollution, some of this community stuff we mentioned, right? Community bonds, microfinance. And we're not going to do that with all your money. portfolio in a deliberate amount that fits in with your overall risk return profile yeah right
that we can carve out part of your money where you're still going to earn good financial returns
and potentially like if my thesis is right about green technologies but like climate change is real
and we need to do something about it you know energy efficient products and services are going
to do really well in the coming decades then um, you know, you can make more money than you
would have otherwise. But regardless, you're going to feel good about it. Yeah. And what's
funny for me is that one of the biggest problems of do-it-yourself investors is when people panic,
that when there is a crash, people, right, they feel it emotionally and they sell. And
it's fascinating. But what I find with my clients is when they believe in their investments and they feel good about them, they don't sell. Interesting. They feel like there's more of a
commitment or attachment to it. It's more of a long-term approach and they understand it and
they've gone through and they get it. And so they're much less likely to sort of panic sell,
which is the worst thing you can do as a do-it-yourself investor. And they actually
hang on to things and they ride it out because they know, well, even if it's done poorly
financially, at least I feel good about it. And which to me is a really fascinating behavior.
I would never would have guessed that that would be a side benefit of this. But when people do
invest intentionally, I think they become a bit more
patient and they become a bit more long-term. And we all know that the best approach when it
comes to investing is to be patient and long-term. Which is so much easier said than done. My goodness. So if this helps. Yeah, no, I love this idea that you can, it's almost like
you're being part of social change and, you know, economic change and just, you know, you're kind of,
you know, voting with your investments. And I don't think people really think about that with
their investments. They don't really think that they can have a voice by choosing what investments
they want to. You got it. You got it. And there are other tactics like this is one is sort of owning
the stuff. And there are things like shareholder engagement, where you can buy funds where they'll
actively because you as a shareholder, right, you're an owner of the company. So they'll push
for things like disclosure, and they'll push for, know different uh social environmental and governance issues
so there are a number of different ways that but in my mind you know you talk about leverage points
in terms of changing the system and like oh boy like investments in the stock market drives so
much of of our economy that for me it's i get really excited when I recognize right now it is a niche thing.
Not many people have thought about it,
but imagine a world where,
you know,
75% of,
of,
uh,
investors are looking at these factors,
knowing that it's a way to make a smart decision that now all of a sudden the
market market forces are pushing companies towards social responsibility, fair treatment of their employees, ethical practices and best standards.
For me, this is how we can fix a lot of those problems. absolutely yeah yeah it's powerful it's it's funny that you know most people think of investments as
dry and boring but uh you've somehow made it really exciting and like we went deep shocker
i'm sorry slash you're welcome yeah yeah um well tim it has been a pleasure chatting with you
if anyone wants to learn more about this very niche,
but hopefully it won't always be niche.
It'll be a little bit more broad and widespread
in the next couple of decades, let's be honest.
How can they find you and learn more?
Sure.
So right now my home address on the internet
is at sustainableeconomist.com.
People can follow me on Twitter.
I'm at Time Nash, T I M E N A S H.
Um, but really the, the best thing would be to, to go to the website. Uh, you can sign up for a free newsletter, um, check out. I haven't been writing as often as I would like. It's
always a challenge with us. I know when you get busy working, it gets in the way,
but, uh, you know, that's, that's the little corner of the Internet that I have to share my thoughts.
And that was Episode 129 with Tim Nash, the sustainable economist.
Make sure to check him out at SustainableEconomist.com.
He's got a blog on there. He has a free newsletter.
But most importantly, he has those model portfolios that we talked about
in the episode that you'll probably want to check out. So make sure you do. And of course, I'm going
to include a bunch of information about what we talked about in this episode in the show notes.
So make sure to go to jessicamorehouse.com slash 129 for all of that good stuff. And before I let
you go, there are a few words that I would like to share
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