Switch to green investments with Betterment
If you have any kind of investment account, it’s likely your investments are being used to finance fossil fuels. You can have a massive impact simply by switching to climate friendly investments. Since the green energy economy is booming, you don’t have to sacrifice financial returns to ensure your investments align with your values.
About Betterment
Betterment
Betterment has an excellent Social Responsibility Impact portfolio option for climate.
Roughly half of the Climate Impact portfolio is invested in CRBN, which tracks the global stock market with an emphasis on companies with lower carbon emissions. Some is invested in fossil fuel reserve free funds — aka funds that exclude companies that own fossil fuel reserves, like Chevron & Exxon. A small portion of the portfolio is also invested in funding energy efficiency, green construction, water, and climate adaptation projects.
For diversification purposes, there are still a handful of non-climate focused funds in the Climate Impact Portfolio, but on the whole, the portfolio has a 50% lower carbon footprint than Betterment's core portfolio.
Beyond having great climate portfolio options, Betterment is also rated the clear leader among robo-advisors by NerdWallet.
There's a simple $10 minimum balance requirement as well as good goal-oriented features to help you invest in your retirement. Getting in touch with a human financial advisor is inexpensive compared to other robo-advisors.
Another great option
Wealthfront
Wealthfront, another leading robo-advisor, recently started offering socially responsible investment options. While it has a $500 account minimum, its services will also improve as your assets grow to over $100,000. You'll get more control over your portfolio with features to customize your fund allocation and exclude specific stocks.
Its goal setting tools and dashboard are excellent, using data from third-parties to estimate how much it'll cost to achieve goals like buying a home or paying for tuition. We recommend Wealthfront for more experienced investors who are comfortable reading detailed methodologies & have larger amounts of assets to manage.
Additional reading
Documentary · MSCI
Net-Zero Now
An hour-long documentary that explores how investors can drive the transition to a net-zero economy.
Blog post · Betterment
Betterment SRI Portfolio Strategy
Blog post · Wealthfront
Socially Responsible Investing with Wealthfront