When looking into investments, there is always plenty of talk around the common concerns of how to make as much money as possible, how to know what a good investment looks like, and so on. But there is another way of looking at all this which you might want to think about too, and that is the ethical side of things. Whenever you are getting into an investment, it’s definitely worth knowing whether it can be considered a truly ethical investment or not.
This is important for the sake of your own peace of mind, and to ensure that your investments are not inhibiting anybody else or the planet too much. So let’s take a look at what ethical investment looks like, and how you can practice it yourself.
Environmental Concerns
One of the most important things to think about when you are trying to invest ethically is what kind of effect your investments are likely to have on the environment and the planet in general. It can be hard to know exactly what impact you are having in this way, but it’s not impossible, and you can at least try to find out the essentials of how you are impacting upon the natural world when you invest in something.
Some forms of investment might become less attractive once you are looking at things in this way. Cryptocurrency, for instance, is under fire often for causing a lot of energy wastage around the world. But even with investments that might seem fairly renewable, you will often have to think about the effect on the environment.
For instance, if you are investing in property, it’s wise to seek a statement of environmental effects to ensure that you know the full extent of the investment’s impact. These are things you should always focus on as best as you can before moving forward.
Social Impact
Every investment will also have some kind of level of social impact, and this too is something that needs to be looked into as much as possible. You need to get a good sense of what kind of effect you are likely to be having on people as you delve into your investment. Of course, as with the environmental concern, it is not always immediately obvious what kind of impact you are having. But you should at least try to do your basic research and see if you can find out.
There are so many ways in which you might be affecting people socially. Is your investment creating jobs, or removing their possibility? Is there a chance that you are actually making life harder for some people? If you are not entirely confident that you are not harming people’s livelihoods, then you need to step back and think again about what you are doing.
As you might have worked out already, the social and environmental impacts will often feed into one another too. This is often true of different kinds of impacts, and that is something you should look into as well.
Supporting The Right Businesses
You’ll also find it beneficial to look closely and carefully at which businesses you are supporting, directly or implicitly, in investing in a particular stock or fund of any kind. You have to know whether they are working to improve things or not, in general. As long as you have a good sense of this, you are going to at least safely know whether or not you are supporting the right companies. Then it is a simple case of switching your interest out, as necessary.
This does require a lot of research, but it’s worth it if it means that you can feel better about the kind of impact you are likely having on the world as a whole. Ethical investment takes a lot of work, as you can see, which is one reason why people find it so challenging to do. But it is absolutely worth it.
Choosing Wisely
So it’s all about researching deeply and choosing wisely. You might find that it’s surprisingly easy to be able to invest ethically, as long as you are placing this need above the need for making more money. That, of course, is a switch that a lot of people are not willing to make. But if you are willing to make it, you will find that you are very soon going to be leading the way in one of the most important ways an investor can. And that is something that is much more rewarding than profit.