Vol. 34 - Saving Money Socially Responsibly, The Easy Way
Marie Thomasson of Modern Assets is back to discuss socially responsible savings. We cover:
Aspiration Bank and why you should save your money there
Their Aspiration Impact Measurement
They are an investment management firm, not a bank but act as a third party
Who their main investors are
Complaints
Tradeoffs
We want to hear from you! If you have money questions or if you want us to assess your finances, please complete this form.
Stay connected:
Learn more about Marie by visiting her website
To read the full show notes, visit https://www.nursesonfirepodcast.com/cfp
How to subscribe, rate and review a podcast
To learn more about the giveaway, click here
Subscribe & Review
Love this episode? Please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform.
TRANSCRIPT:
Naseema McElroy: [00:00:00] All right. Nurses on fire. We are back with another episode with our certified financial planner, Marie Thomasson.
We learned about the history of socially responsible investing. How that now is. Termed impact investing. Now we're going to dig into the how, like, okay, so now we know these things, we know that it's our moral imperative to invest in these stocks, but like, how do we do that?
What does that look like in action in real life? Like in practice, what does that look like?
Marie Thomasson: [00:00:33] Alright. So this is where we get into like the meaty parts, because just like Instagram, and blogger, right? Like everything is new. So you have to keep this in mind. Like, this is why it's hard and this is why it's so inactionable sometimes because There's a lot of financial advisors or banks and whatnot that don't even offer these things.
You have to go out and search for it. So I am doing the heavy lifting for you and I am so happy to be doing this.
Naseema McElroy: [00:01:04] and we appreciate you for doing that.
Marie Thomasson: [00:01:07] Yes. So you are going to know, and what I would say is. Listen to all the episodes and, listen to the pros and cons listened to all the options and I'll be providing PDFs of all of this information for, for your listeners to make an informed decision.
So they can say, you know what, I'm going to do this now, but I'm going to put this on the list for next year. And that is a okay, like nothing wrong with that. Right. That's how we do everything in life. You got to start somewhere. So we're going to go through three different buckets, spend, save, and invest, and then we're going to go through each, within each one, each category we're going to do easy, medium hard.
So we're going to start out with a save, right? Like everybody saves money. you gotta save it somewhere. Please. Don't put it under your mattress. It's really bad idea. And, and so, so the example for today and Naseema, we've already talked about this a little bit. It's Aspiration bank, because you've got them listed on your website, right.
So they are, they're going to be the safe and the easy. Alright. So aspirin bank is the bank that is, it's like the feelgood bank, right? You pay what you can. And they have this, thing called aim.
Aspiration impact measurement. So you can bank with them. You pay what you want, which is a great market tactic. I will add because everybody goes, so the, the middle, But what they do on the banking side, that's unique is they will tell you of what you spend, , how good it is, like, where is your money going?
And, and it's almost like the, the really easy way of doing impact investing. So. In our lifetime, we're going to spend way more money. We safe. Certainly when we're younger, , you spend a whole lot of money when you're young, you invest just a little, and then when you're older, you flip that equation, right?
Like you're, you're investing less and less as you draw that money down. So if one of the biggest tools we have is how we spend than aspiration banks is a great job. Of helping you recognize just like that little, like reminder on your head, like, okay. That wasn't so cool. Like, why are you buying shit at Walmart or Amazon?
Right. so there's some catches though. And this is why this is, this is what makes aspiration easy. So inspiration is, is easy. I see, because they've got like a slick too track interface. They don't have actual like locations. It's all done online, but it's really easy to sign up for an account. aspiration is not actually a bank though.
So. Aspiration partners with banks. And I did a little bit of research for you. They do not partner with any credit unions. they're partnering with actual banks like for profit banks. So, You know, the, the money that you're putting into aspiration, it's not necessarily going to anywhere to, you know, to help the collective good necessarily aside from like the bank.
Right. So that's like a little bit of a negative, but it's still not. We have a, it's not Wells Fargo. It's not chase. So, you know, already. You know, that's like a low, really low hurdle to jump just to, like, you basically just have to shuffle, like do the Trump shuffle and you can like, just not using one of those big three banks is, is good enough.
and they have access to ESG investments. So again, this is kind of like the baseline, aspiration is actually an RIA registered investment advisor. the hook is the banking. And what they really want is they want your investment money. And so they've got this, do good, feel good philosophy.
and what they're trying to do truly is because what's very sticky is, is investment assets. And so they want you to come over to their investment arm and invested in their ESG funds, by the way, are managed by UBS. So yet another, like it's not the same as the banks that are doing the actual, you know, savings, you know, banking.
their primary bank is called, I've got it here at coastal community bank. It's not a credit union. It is a smaller bank. So in that sense, it's good. Like at least it's a small business, a small business in the United States is defined as a company with less than 500 individuals, which I believe coastal community bank is.
so , it's far better than the alternative. but the, the one big problem that I have with aspiration bank is, and it's all on Wikipedia is if you look at their list of investors, as far as I can see, there's only one. kind of impact minded investor, the rest of them are, like your basic private equity, you know, CA you know, bottom dollar.
So what does that say? When you've got a bunch of investors who, who are profit over people, investing in a bank, that's all about, you know, supposedly people over profit. So, this is where you get into the nuances, right? So how much of this were you aware of? Zero.
Naseema McElroy: [00:06:49] Zero. I mean, nothing. This is a whole thing.
So this like for my audience, like whenever you're learning, chances are I'm learning too. This is like something where we're constantly growing in our knowledge base. And you know, for me, like the whole time I'm thinking about this, you know, The way I look at a bank it's a safe place to keep my money.
Right. And then I don't look too much further into it. I know that I would never open an IRA, the bank, and I know that there's high yield savings accounts where I can get better returns to my bank. But a lot of times we don't look at the back end of the bank and stuff. I know that, bank of America is horrible.
Citibank is horrible. I know that these things are horrible, but it's on the side of like the fees that they charge and discriminatory lending practices and things like this, but how they use your money is something we rarely ever think about. And it's something that I never had the wherewithal to think about.
And so thank you again for opening my eyes to this stuff, because, this is where we need to put our heads. Like this is what we need to focus on because these are very important topics.
Marie Thomasson: [00:07:58] Yeah. So, I mean, it is a for profit institution and there is nothing wrong with that. It's just. Go into it with your eyes open, , that they're doing a little bit less good than you realize.
So, it's slick, , it's easy to set up, you know, the tech is there. It's better than the, mass alternatives. but there's some issues with it where, you know, and we'll get into it next week. And the week after, like there's things that you can do that are way, way more impactful.
With your money. So your money in this case is not going , to be lent to out to, low income housing or, you know, whatever it is. It's, it's just not everything is done on like, you know, the bottom dollar, that's what they care about. And so I think considering that you can get an ESG portfolio almost anywhere.
That, you know, unless you really needed to be easy. And, and for some people you do like no shame there, right? Like if you need it easy, otherwise I'm not going to do it. Then by all means do it that that's already a huge step in the right direction. do you use aspiration for their ESG funds?
Naseema McElroy: [00:09:18] I don't use them at all. I'm really honestly, just learning more about them now
Marie Thomasson: [00:09:25] but see, that's the thing though. And I think that's a topic that's worth talking about because so many things we do, you know, like you've got people helping you, like they're trying to do good. and then people go to your website and they look at it and they're like, yeah, great.
Naseema McElroy: [00:09:43] Like the seam is doing, it must be great supporting it. Yeah. Right.
Marie Thomasson: [00:09:49] And so, you know, that's, you know, that, that can work, you know, it goes both ways, right? Like it can do a lot of good, it could do a lot of bad. And so, you know, then in an age of fake news or supposedly fake news, like actually reading the sources is a huge thing.
Like even I don't like who's got time for that. I go through Reddit and I, I read the comments and I read the, you know, the headline and then somebody somewhere will be like, did you even read? It told me like, ah, there's a paywall. Like there's no time. And so, we are in a society where there's so much information.
And that it's really hard. It's not that hard. It just takes time.
Naseema McElroy: [00:10:38] It takes time. And yeah, it was like, when you're on your phone, you're scrolling and you're like spinning 0.5 seconds on something to think about. And a lot of times we make our decisions off of that. So,
Marie Thomasson: [00:10:49] yeah, exactly. So, you know, not about like, not a bad place to start.
I will always support anybody. You know, the, the, the one thing I will say about using something like aspiration. Is that, because aspiration is not actually the bank, you know, it's, it's basically a third party bank. I did do kind of a deeper dive into this a few years ago, so I don't know where they're at now, but a lot of people were complaining because what happens when you have a third party, like.
things fall through the cracks and people weren't getting their cards. so there have been complaints, primarily there was a law on Reddit, which is where I go for a lot of my information. but, and, and even other places too. So. You know, if you want a bank, get a bank. And even for myself, you know, I hate to say, but for, for my business, I use chase because I know, you know, it's, it's sometimes cause it, it syncs up with QuickBooks.
And it's really easy. Everybody has chase quick pay to be able to pay, to pay vendors. you know, I know that I can send a wire out if I need to, like transfers are easy. one time I tried setting up an account with a us bank and they only let me make withdrawals of a thousand dollars at a time. And then it's like a $3 fee.
And I'm like, well, no wonder, like, why are you making this so hard?
Naseema McElroy: [00:12:13] Oh, see. Yeah, that's not. Okay.
Marie Thomasson: [00:12:15] Alright. So, you know, like I said, I use chase for my, for my business banking, you know, it's reliable. I know it's going to work. I know they're not going to lose my money in transit somewhere. And so, you gotta do business.
And so that's where you kind of have to take, take kind of a targeted approach to where are you going to put your efforts? So. When it comes to your savings, you don't, you don't want to mess that up, right. Or just even your checking. Like you don't want to have to worry if, if it's a worry for you that, you know, balancing your checking account or something's going to balance, you gotta do what works for you.
and so. With that, you know, I mean, know I started out really rosy with aspiration, and then I kind of, you know, went down the rabbit hole, aspiration really excels where some of these other options that we're going to talk about in later weeks fail because their tech, it just makes it easy and you can feel good about your banking.
You're still doing something good, but you're not jumping through all the hoops to do it. And I think that that's the biggest takeaway is that they've gotten the tech, they've got the interface that makes it easy and it is 100% better than the alternative that most of us go to. So. I'm not going to sit here and like, say, like move everything to aspiration.
but they have a place and if that's where you're at, like by all means, you know, go for aspiration. It's FDAC insured. I believe up to $2 million, they do this fancy thing because FDAC insurance is not $2 million. It's like 250,000. Yeah. Back in Oh eight Oh nine. Believe it or not.
I worked in institutional asset management. And so, and I actually worked in mortgage backed securities. And so I worked for all of those, millionaire portfolio managers, billionaire guys. And they're literally he running out of the office to go to the bank to take like 250 out to put it in another bank account because they were worried about banks failing because like there was a, a hot minute there where it was a real mess.
And so now what's been devised this isn't, you know, it's kind of an option for people who are much more high net worth because you gotta have 250,000 or more to even be worried about it. about FEIC insurance is there's there's companies that will go and like basically split up the 250 for you, or like your money.
Into $250,000 chunks and place it at different banks to make sure you get your FDAC insurance. So totally off topic. That's like, you know, for the really high net worth sabers, if you're saving $2 million, like. We need to talk cause we already talked about him.
Naseema McElroy: [00:15:08] Yeah, exactly. I'm like, well, I was thinking about that.
I'm just like, who has 200 million? I mean, $2 million just sitting in the bank.
Marie Thomasson: [00:15:15] I know. I know. So that should not be happening anyways for like 99.5% of the American population. So if you're doing that, then there's already a. A big problem because you're, everything's going to get eaten away. But,
Naseema McElroy: [00:15:33] I did have a question because this is along those lines.
So aspiration mate, like I'm still kind of confused on what they do because I'm looking at their website while you're talking. I'm just like, so are they, is it a savings account or is it an investment account? Like what exactly? Is it like, it's kind of like, huh, and why am I paying these fees? And what bank is it in?
Like, even just looking at the, looking at their website, even though the interface online looks really, really nice. I'm still confused. So are you, so were you talking about, were you talking about it as a savings account that. Okay. So like as a savings account, like an alternative to putting your savings account in a bank.
Okay. Okay. That's what I thought. But then I got confused by the website, so I was just like, what? Yeah.
Marie Thomasson: [00:16:21] And this is because it's an investment firm who, who is, you know, trying to look like a bank, but they're not.
Naseema McElroy: [00:16:30] So Their role is to act like a high yield, a higher yield savings.
So an alternative to just putting your money into a standard
Marie Thomasson: [00:16:36] bank account, their goal is to act like a feel good account.
Naseema McElroy: [00:16:43] Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. Got you. Okay.
Marie Thomasson: [00:16:46] Goal is to get the socially conscious investor and saver and consumer that's their goal. So, and that's also the goal, you know, of, of all those people who've, you know, made investments in the company.
So they're going for a very particular market, like, you know, basically millennials, gen Z, people with money who actually give a shit and, You know, and it's working and it's just fine as a, savings account when not, you can totally invest with them. but it is confusing because they are confusing.
They have a confusing structure, like it's not aspiration bank. It's it's coastal community bank. I have to keep looking at the page. Right. Like, and they've got all these banking partners and, and then they've got aspiration investments. It's all over the place. But if you just want to sign up for a bank account and save your money and get there, aspiration impact measurement that tells you, like, , if nothing else that you get a report telling you, or just like a reminder that you've spent X number of dollars at the gas station, and that's like not the greatest place to be spending your money.
Like maybe it'll make you think twice.
Naseema McElroy: [00:18:00] No, it was cute. I was looking at it. It was like, they take how much money you spend on gas and then, what they give to like carbon neutral places. Wow. That's interesting. Yeah, it is very interesting. It is very like field goodie. Like, you know, it's talking about redwoods, sustainability, sustainability, and all this kind of stuff, which is, which is cool and which are things people are looking to support. but I'm still like so confused.
Naseema McElroy: [00:18:34] What did I do? Yes.
Marie Thomasson: [00:18:38] well, I probably haven't helped the confusion by shedding a light on, on really like what it is. but you know, this is again, when we came, we come back to the subject of sustainable investing. This is why it's tricky. This is 100% why it's hard, right? There's pros and cons to everything. if you want to be super sustainable social justice oriented, then like, I don't know where in the world you can live and what company, like there's no such thing as a socially responsible company.
I think it was the head of Patagonia who you said that like, there is no responsible company, cause that's like, that's like. Not the purpose of a company. and I think that you have to get comfortable with that idea that there is no perfect solution. and everything's going to have a trade off and that's kind of what we're talking about now.
Like there's, these are the trade offs and, and it's up for you to decide, like what's more important to you right now. Is it ease of use? is it feeling good about it? Is it just making it least a shift away from, you know, Wells Fargo? Who's awful. and if so, then, then that's fantastic. Like start right there.
Naseema McElroy: [00:19:55] For people who are looking for a place to save money. So this is episode is about places to save money in a socially responsible, impactful way. Aspiration bank is a good place to start.
Marie Thomasson: [00:20:09] Easy option.
Naseema McElroy: [00:20:11] Yeah. Easy button. That's the easy button.
Marie Thomasson: [00:20:13] That's the, that's the easy button right there.
Naseema McElroy: [00:20:15] Yep. And so for next week's episode, we're going to talk about something a little bit more challenging,
Hey there I’m Naseema
My dream is for everyone to know that financial independence is attainable with a little intentionality. Learn how I can help you finally break the cycle of living paycheck to paycheck.
Join the Facebook Community
Join the Financially Intentional community and get access to resources to guide you on the path to Financial Freedom.
Watch these Videos To Learn How to…
Keep Listening
Here are some more episodes you may enjoy…
In this episode, we'll explore why disability insurance is important, how it works, and why it's important to have coverage.