Sustainable Personal Finance
by Karen on September 17th, 2008
Hello! I welcomed you to the ShoreBank blog a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to check back in. I do a lot of work with consumer savings products and sustainable personal finance is an idea that comes up regularly. I wanted to take some time and dive into this topic today.
It has been amazing to watch the explosion of “sustainable” options in our daily lives. Organic food is a great example. Organic food once was a niche product … hard to find, sold in out of the way locations and not aimed at the general population. That’s no longer the case. These days, organics are widely available, and a much wider range of people are buying them. (I can even get organic versions of foods I never knew existed!) Not everything I buy is organic but I like to have choices and I like to know what the choices mean.
“Sustainable” options are also available in the broad category of personal finance. The choices often start with how people spend their money – before they even pick a savings vehicle. Certainly where you live, how you commute and what you eat are all part of the bigger financial picture. With any luck, however, after these choices there is some money to be saved.
Your money can work for you both financially and in support of sustainable initiatives. This brings us to the issue of asset classes – how much of your savings should be in cash or stocks or bonds or other assets. There has long been a Socially Responsible Investing industry, particularly with regard to stocks. They can include (or exclude) companies based on specific screening criteria like industry or employee practices.
Some portion of your money, however, will likely be in a form of cash. These products, like checking accounts, savings accounts and CDs, are found at banks and related financial institutions…but sustainable banking products do not seem to get much media coverage.
There are many ways to think about sustainability within the banking industry. The biggest one is to look at what the bank does with your deposit. Banks use deposits to fund their loan portfolios. So if your bank is making loans to companies that are local then your money is funding the local economy. If they are making loans to shoe manufacturers then you are supporting that industry.
Other areas to look at are the bank’s internal practices and the options they give you as the customer. For example, do they offer paperless accounts? Do they have a clear policy regarding internal energy use? Do they support “green” building practices?
ShoreBank is a community development and environmental bank – we track our loan portfolio against these two primary areas of focus. And we are working to make our operations more sustainable. (In fact we just opened a new office and incorporated many green features – I will share more on that in a future posting.)
We are working hard to provide you with options in sustainable personal finance – we look forward to continuing to innovate and to sharing our experiences along the way.
And if you are interested in banking with us the quickest way is to open our online High-Yield Savings Account at (it has a 3.50% APY* with a $1 minimum).
*The Annual Percentage Yield (APY) is effective as of June 4, 2008, and is subject to change without notice. APY is valid only with a ShoreBank online high-yield savings account. Fees could reduce earnings on the account. A minimum balance of $1.00 is required to open the account and obtain the stated APY.
Tags: community development, environmental sustainability, green banking, ShoreBank Direct, socially responsible investing, triple bottom line
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