Does Your Investment Portfolio Reflect Your Values?

This post is sponsored by Seasons of Advice Wealth Management 

Did you know that sound investment principles can be compatible with personal causes that you care about?

It’s true. It’s not a binary choice — once you recognize that investing in businesses committed to reducing greenhouse gases or fossil fuels, among other causes, won’t compromise your returns.

Welcome to the idea of socially inspired investing.

“Companies that pay more attention to things that are good for society and for the environment will be the companies in 5-10 years that will be doing the best,” said Charles Hamowy CEO and founder of Seasons of Advice Wealth Management. “Those are the companies that get the capital, that have products that sell and are not being protested against, and are in industries that don’t have to clean up toxic waste.”

Hamowy adds that in the last year, some of the best performing investments are ones that fall into the socially inspired investing category. “As an investment strategy, it’s logical.”

The first step is figuring out the causes that you care about.

Do you support animal welfare? Do you want to support companies that address climate change, or that support LGBTQ rights? How about companies that help to fight deforestation and reduce fossil fuels?

Once you’ve identified the causes that are important to you, then ask yourself: Does my existing portfolio reflect what I care about?

That’s where Seasons of Advice Wealth Management comes in. SOA Wealth has portfolios that can be custom designed to individual preferences. They can evaluate your portfolio, see what you’re doing, whether a particular fund you’re in which might for example, have exposure to gun manufacturers, that you may not have known about.

Then SOA can look at asset classes that are aligned with your values — at which point you’ll need the right architecture to construct a portfolio from the ground up.

“It’s very hard to tweak an existing portfolio,” Hamowy says. “If you’re using mutual funds or indexes, you can’t take things out of it. What you have to do is go to a different class of assets, investments, mutual funds, indexes and individual securities that were built from the ground up with the values that you want.”

Can you still invest in something through SOA that’s not socially responsible?

“Absolutely,” said Hamowy. “We’re not going to stand on a soapbox here. It’s your money, your choice. Socially inspired investing is adding another filter to the process that many people didn’t even know existed. This is a breakthrough moment.”

For more information go to SOAWEALTH.com or call (855) MY-SEASONS.

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