The Ethical Investor

Book excerpt: A fun, practical guide to growing your wealth while making a difference Is the money in your bank account helping to fund the fossil fuel and tobacco industries? Do you know which companies your superannuation is invested in? Want to put your money where your ethics are but have no idea where to start? Journalist Nicole Haddow is passionate about financial freedom, but as an investment novice she wanted to find out – is it possible to grow wealth while also doing your bit for the planet and its population? In The Ethical Investor, Nicole guides us through the steps she took to ensure her hard-earned cash isn’t going straight into the pockets of toxic companies. She reassesses what her money currently contributes to and seeks ways to make her strategies greener, chatting with industry experts on everything from superannuation and shares to neo banks and apps to help you get started in micro-investing. Nicole shares the necessary changes she made to have a superannuation account that’s investing in ethical organisations, a share portfolio on a limited budget with investments in a range of growing sustainable businesses and a strategy for making her home more sustainable. And now you can too! Nicole Haddow is a Melbourne-based journalist and author of Smashed Avocado: How I Cracked the Property Market and You Can Too, which is currently being developed into a documentary series. She was the executive property writer for the Australian Financial Review.