According to survey results, roughly 70% of Americans planned to set goals at the beginning of this year. Health and fitness topped the list, financial goals were the second most common, and a third of goal-setters intended to create religious or spiritual goals.
Juggling goals in multiple areas of your life can be challenging. What if there was a way you could make progress on all your goals at once?
Values-based financial planning and faith-based investing allow you to align your money with your beliefs and broader life goals.
Instead of adapting your lifestyle and goals to suit your finances, you can tailor your investments and financial goals to fit your unique needs.
If you’re wondering how to work toward your financial goals in uncertain economic times, values-based financial planning could be worth considering. Keep reading to learn more.
What Is Values-Based Investing?
Value-based investing was first pioneered by Bill Bachrach, a renowned financial advisor and author. His philosophy is that financial planning should cater to one’s life goals, values, and aspirations. It should align with your ethics, unique needs, and your plans for the future.
It should not just be a matter of “keeping your money safe.” Instead, it should facilitate any visions you have, match your personality, safeguard you, and help you make a difference in the world, in whatever way you choose.
Why It’s Important
Most people don’t want to save money for money’s sake. They want money for the things it can do for them.
Everyone has a set of priorities in life, and their financial planning should cater to this.
A robust life insurance policy is going to be a lot more important for a sole breadwinner supporting a growing family than for someone who’s in retirement. Comprehensive health insurance may be more important for someone who has a history of health complications than for a young professional who’s never been sick a day in their life.
Capital preservation is critical for people who want to pass down their wealth to successive generations. On the other hand, an older couple without children may prefer to enjoy some of their capital while they are fit and able.
Traditional Investing vs. Values-Based Investing
Unfortunately, run-of-the-mill financial planning doesn’t always cater to these different needs. Instead of focusing on how to serve individual clients, it is primarily product-focused.
Rather than tailored portfolios that mirror the things that are important to you, traditional financial planning is all about comparing competing products.
Nowadays, the path to investing is more streamlined and direct, and your options are more diverse. If you partner with the right financial advisor, they can craft a unique portfolio for you rather than selling you a stock-standard list of investment and insurance products.
How Values-Based Investing Can Help You Work Toward Your Financial Goals
It’s all well and good to say that your finances should support your life goals, but what does this look like in action? What are the tangible benefits?
Enhanced Savings Motivation
Survey results show that 70% of Americans are feeling financially stressed. If you feel like your money isn’t going as far as it used to, it can be hard to stick to a savings plan.
If your savings plan is directly contributing to an important life goal or something you’re passionate about, you’re more likely to adhere to your savings plan. For instance, if you love travel and part of your financial plan is to set money aside every month for trips abroad, you may have more motivation to save money instead of spending it.
Enhanced motivation can play a big role in ensuring sustainable finance goals.
Better Pairing With Your Personality
Values-based investing can also be more effective because it’s designed to match your personality. For instance, do you love adventure or security?
If you value security above all else, you’ll want to minimize risk in your portfolio, ensure retirement readiness, and create a very comprehensive insurance plan.
Alternatively, if you’re an adventure lover at heart, you may want to focus on saving for an adventurous endeavor, such as a coast-to-coast road trip. Or, you may want to allocate a portion of your portfolio to higher-risk investments that will keep you engaged and excited.
Voting With Your Wealth
Values-based investing can also allow you to “vote” with your wealth. Just like you can use your buying power to support ethical business models, like organic farming or cruelty-free cosmetics, you can practice ethical investing.
For example, if you’re passionate about sustainability, your financial advisor can ensure you don’t invest in industries that have high carbon emissions, like airline craft companies or fossil fuel companies.
You can also practice Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) by buying shares in companies with fair labor practices, ethical supply chains, and inclusive hiring practices.
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing takes into account all of these factors, plus environmental impacts.
It might not seem like how you invest your money has a big impact, but recent study findings show that just 15 days of income generation (of which investment income equaled more than half) among the top-earning households in the US has the same carbon footprint as the income generation of the poorest 10% of citizens over an entire lifetime.
Faith-Based Investing Can Align Your Money With Your Beliefs
Faith-based investing is another values-based investing approach that enables you to align your money with your beliefs and achieve financial integrity by avoiding industries that you find morally questionable. Such as gambling, firearms, alcohol, tobacco, or certain types of entertainment.
Instead, you can put your money to use in philanthropic investments or community investing.
Looking for a Values-Based Financial Planning Solution?
Values-based financial planning and faith-based investing can allow you to harness your money as a tool for working toward your unique goals and aspirations while still taking into consideration time horizon and risks appropriate to your circumstance.
If you want to align your money with your beliefs and personal needs, we are the people to speak to.
Here at RP&WM, we’re passionate about helping our clients pursue their financial goals in a way that’s truly tailored to them.
Contact us to discuss how you can make your money work harder and smarter for you.
