Welcome to Progressive Pockets! I go by GG, that’s short for Genet Gimja
The Social Justice Investor by Andrea Longton. This book was released in April of 2024. I was pleased to receive an advance copy of it and I want to tell you a little about the book today. What should I read is a question I get a lot from listeners and I think it’s fun to pop on here every once in a while to talk about a book that you might be interested in.
Even though this is a personal finance book, it doesn’t have a technical handbook type of feel to it, I do have some personal finance books that are almost more like a reference book. I keep them on my shelf and frequently look up very specific information in there. But this book isn’t exactly like that. In a way it almost reads like a novel, there are a lot of scenes, a lot of dialogue, a lot of conversations where we as the readers are almost flies on the wall as the person in the story is learning about a new topic like socially responsible ETFs or something. I think when you first get it, you’ll probably read it from front to back, and then I think you will probably keep it on hand for refreshers whenever you want to remember how a concept works.
And then the book also has these interludes all throughout the book where people are sharing their stories of how they’ve thought about their investments and their social justice values and how they have thought about bringing those two into closer alignment.
And then the book follows these 3 characters, avatars.
- Angela, is the DIY investor. She opens an online investment account to build wealth after she leaves her teaching position to become primary caregiver to her three young children.
- Tom, is the 401(k) investor, shapes his 401(k) to reflect his personal values while saving for retirement.
- Nicole, an investor working with a financial advisor, decides to use her accumulated wealth to finance the world in which she wants to live.
The first part of the book is tackling a great question of why even think about investing as a way to advance our societal goals. Why not just give money away instead? The author tackles that question by providing some solid reasons, for example: investments let you recycle your money over and over again. Investments can be good for long term commitment to a bigger problem.
Personally, my thought is that investments along with giving some of your money away along with other daily financial decisions that we talk about all the time on this show, all of those tools can work in harmony. So I don’t think it’s about whether we should give our money away versus investing it in socially responsible ways. I think it’s both. The problems of the world are complicated and will require all of the tools in our toolbelts.
There’s a section on financial planners, how to decide if you want to work with one, how they charge for their services, how to work with one. All of this is written for people who want to manage their money to set themselves and their families up for safety in the future but don’t want to do it by any means necessary. People who want their money strategies to at least somewhat reflect their social values.
There are also sections in here that I think might be good for readers who sort of freeze up when they are talking or thinking about money. People who are very new to it all, setting up a 401K at a job for example. Or there’s a portion where the author is talking about thinking about your investment strategy as a balanced diet and thinking through the various food groups you want to include and shopping for those components at a farmer’s market with all the different options that you’ll find when you’re trying to set up your money strategy. So it’s definitely written for a beginners level investor in mind.
The other thing that I really like about this book and I hope the author will hear this and find a way to build out the book’s website to include all of this information on there, but I really like the additional info at the end of the book. I like the section with the list of online resources and tools. There are so many great websites listed there, places where you can find investments, places where you look up your bank to see if it is matching your values, or to find a better one, websites where you can find financial advisors, and other places to find tools if you’re trying to invest in certain types of companies that really match your values.
There’s also a compendium of social justice investing organizations, so you can find your people. Some of them are providing intro level basic investing education, some of them are support groups for people like us who are trying to figure all of this out and do better with our own money.
It’s a handy book and easy to read. Within the world of personal finance, there aren’t a ton of books written with social values in mind, so I appreciate this contribution into that space.
So to recap, here’s what we covered today:
- The Social Justice Investor by Andrea Longton was released in April 2024, you can get a copy wherever you get your books, including Bookshop dot org which if you’ve never shopped there before is seriously so cool, and an Amazon alternative for those who are interested.
- The book is a very smooth read, almost reads like a novel, written for beginning investors who are interested in social justice and also investing for their financial futures.
- It includes easy to understand information about how to do a financial detox, how to find a financial planner, how to do a mixed approach where maybe a portion of your money is in traditional investments and the other portion is in socially responsible investments.
If you have a few more minutes, I want to suggest another episode that you might enjoy, I went over a lot of book recos in that episode and it continues to be popular, that’s episode 25 “What should I be reading?” it was recorded before this show was rebranded.
Let’s end with a quote, and this one comes from this book.
“Our power as investors is to finance the world in which we want to live.”
I am thinking about doing a book give away for this book so join the newsletter, that’s where I can do things like that. You can sign up at progressive pockets dot com, or you can email progressive pockets at gmail dot com.
That’s all from me today, I have a short stack of books on this topic that I’m currently reading so I am looking forward to sharing more about those. I hope you have a great day today, and let’s talk again soon!