Ethical Alternatives: Inflation Fighters

Are your investments helping build a better world?

Prior to 2008, global financial events caused me to look closely at what was happening with my retirement savings. I did a complete investigation into what exactly was being done with my money. What I found out was troubling - damage was being done on my behalf so I could make money without doing any actual work or producing anything.

I learned that I had mutual funds invested in unsavory things like the Alberta Tar Sands. Further research unveiled weapons manufacturing, tobacco, and pharmaceutical companies (the same ones that are now targeting the under 5 crowd with their dodgy, profitable drugs). Most portfolios contain some or all of these unethical investments.


As a result of my inquiries, I liquidated everything. Since then I no longer watch the stock market in cycles of panic and elation, but rather, as a curiosity to see how the world I am extricating myself from is doing. But what about inflation?

We are told that unless we invest our money, it will slowly erode in purchasing power, and slip through our fingertips. Therefore, I have been brainstorming alternative strategies for overcoming inflation that are less harmful than traditional investments.

Ultimately, we need to work toward changing our monetary system and ending the manipulations by the financial industry and the governments that represent them. It is critical that we replace it with a system that benefits us all.

In the meantime, here are a few ideas that come to mind:

• Green/ethical investing allows you to invest and make a positive difference at the same time. This form of investing has tripled (in the UK) in the last decade as people seek to reduce the damage done on their behalf. However, there are differing opinions of what, exactly, constitutes 'ethical', so results may vary. Note: This week is National Ethical Investment Week in the UK.
• Deposit savings in a local credit union. Deposits are usually invested locally, so your investments are contributing toward improving conditions for you and your neighbours, not some CEO in a board room thousands of kilometers away. You still win even if you aren't making 10% annually.
• Reduce your budget by the amount of inflation.
• Grow a garden. Some of your best investments for the future may be things like seeds and gardening tools (and a good tent and camping gear).
• Keep a stocked pantry including foods that continue to go up in price. Some that I keep on hand are : peanut butter, flour, rice, beans, powdered milk, nuts, and the like.
• Cook your own food, bake your own bread.
• Reduce your expectations.
• Enjoy your money today without worrying what might happen in the future. For all we know, the entire financial system may collapse soon anyway.

What Aren't You Buying?

As current economic conditions continue to change our world a lot of people are getting closer to not buying anything. Who can afford it? We're not buying houses or Hummers, cottages or caviar. As catastrophic as it all seems, it is a shift in the right direction. Something is obviously not working in our current system when the few have so much, and the many so little. I am not buying that.

It is always possible to buy less. One persons extreme budget is another persons luxury living. However, if the goal is toward living with less, each small step counts. Wandering holy people get their possessions down to a piece of cloth and a bowl. It is hard to get more basic than that. They are truly not buying anything. It is something I aspire to - to live as lightly as possible, and be free of encumbrances.

Then we can follow our own unique adventure, unscripted by society or the marketplace. You can't buy a life, or be forced into one against your will - you have to make a life of your own choosing on your own. Each of us is writing our own story. For a long time my story has been about working toward not buying anything. It is going to take longer than I thought.

The following is a list of things I haven't been buying the last 5 years, or in some cases, have never spent money on. My life is better without them. When things are uncomplicated and uncluttered we can focus on what is important to us. When we live better with less, others currently scraping by can live better with more.

I'm Not Buying:

• cable TV
• individual car ownership
  
• meat... still with me?
  
• movies
• new clothes
• caffeine
  
• concert tickets
• restaurant meals
  
• credit
• inflated real estate
  
• vacations
• big bank financial advisers and the mutual funds they peddle
• the Wall Street Casino
  
• ultra soft toilet paper made from 300 year old trees
• disposable products
  
• popular culture
• mainstream media
• granite counter tops
  
• processed food
• having kids, unless you really, really, really want them
  
• working a job you don't like
• christmas presents
• endless upgrades
  
• fast food
• fashion
• planned obsolescence
• non-participatory democracy
• stainless steel
• alcohol

Congratulations if you made it to the end of that. You must be a non-conformist yourself.

So many things not to buy. It is a challenge in a materialistic world, but is also satisfying in a way that buying things never can be. It feels like self-control, restraint, and thrift. It feels right, like an instinct.
Are there things you are cutting back on? What aren't you buying?

Are Pirates Plundering Your On-line Personal Information?

It used to be that you only had to worry about petty thieves combing your on-line presence for sensitive information. Now professional plunderers are getting into the act, and lenders may be poking around. Who is looking at your tweets and Facebook friend choices, and what are they doing with this information?

How lenders and collection agencies use your social networking information has been in the news recently, making one think about how our on-line information can be misused. The pirates are on the horizon, and they want your information and your doubloons.

These purveyors of legal loansharking are sailing a sea of data provided by us, sometimes unwittingly. They are looking to gain a profitable advantage, whether by tailor-making advertising just for you, or by providing information about you and your choices to someone who wants something from you. I am not alright with either one of these uses of my data.

What exactly are they looking for in this piratical cruise through your on-line life? Writing about frugality and cutting up credit cards, using cash only for all purchases, or closing your bank account and burying your treasure? If so, I can kiss my credit card goodbye. Good riddance, I say.

Those sailing under the Jolly Roger, international flag of pirates, do not have anything I want - I do not agree to their outrageous terms. In the moonlight you can see they are the walking dead, and they don't even adhere to the Pirate Code. Credit card interest rates of up to 20% is an obvious unfair distribution of booty, for example, which contravenes the code of proper plunderers.

The good news is that we do have some control over how our personal information is shared on social networking sites. If you are a member of one or more, now is a good time to check your profile and settings to ensure you are getting the privacy you are comfortable with and deserve.

You can choose to say no to web sites that refuse to protect your information to your satisfaction. We can also choose to say no to those who wish to engage us in debt slavery aboard the Royal Fortune (Black Bart's ship). I would rather walk the plank and take my chance with the real sharks.



And if you do bury your doubloons in a treasure chest (or coffee tin) in the back yard, 30 paces from the oak tree, remember to draw a map.

Get Out of Debt Slavery

"Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like." - Will Rogers



Credit has its place in our modern world because some things are worth borrowing for (an education), and for convenience. Somewhere along the line of the debt train, though, we have been demoted from being valued passengers in cushy coaches to shoveling in the coal car. Now the whole system has run out of steam.

Garth Turner points out, "Canadian household debt has red-lined. The country’s accountants have just warned that families now owe $1.3 trillion, most personal debt on credit cards and LOCs. Sadly, 85% of us have unpaid credit card bills. Worse, a third of all families could not handle an unexpected $5,000 expense. Even worse, one in ten families could not pay a $500 bill."

The big banks are now expecting billions of dollars worth of write-offs as customers default on credit card balances. This will do nothing for economic recovery, nor will it reduce the suffering of those who were sucked into the illusion of wealth. Now they may be without work, and without access to money. When you are buying groceries with your credit card this spells trouble.

If you can not afford to pay your balance in full at the end of the month you have fallen into the trap. Before long you are like a small developing country with insurmountable IMF responsibilities . Unable to ever repay the principal, you are reduced to working just to make interest payments. In this situation we often turn to risky behaviour as the only possible way of ever retiring the balance.

Desperation follows, a willingness to sell your life, to do anything to get out of the hole. Individuals turn to crime, and countries open their borders to foreign exploitation. At the very least you have to take a job that you do not enjoy, if you can even find one these days. In BC welfare rolls have swelled by nearly 50% over this time last year. It is impossible to get out of debt without a job.

If you have a credit card pay off your balance in full every month. If you do have a large balance do all you can to pay it off as soon as you can. Then cut your credit card in tiny pieces and cancel your account.

The credit train deserves to be derailed. Quit shoveling coal for the top 10%'s benefit. All your stuff loses its lustre, anyway, when you sit down to calculate the interest paid, the stress experienced, and the work that must be done to acquire it. Debt free is the way to be.