Conscious Money Challenge. Are you willing to open your eyes?
If you have investment money in the stock market, whether through a retirement account or a straight brokerage account, I challenge you today to find out what your money is invested in and make a conscious choice about what you are supporting in the world.
If you aren’t sure how to do this, grab your last account statement (or go online) and find the 5 letter code that indicates where your money is invested.
Then, type that into Google and review the breakdown of holdings.
For example, AGTHX, the Growth Fund of America. It sounds so nice.
I might have even picked it myself back in the day when I worked for the big law firm said, “Hey Alexis, you’ve got a 401k, how do you want it invested?”
I looked at the options on the paper they gave me, closed my eyes, put my finger down and filled in the little bubbles on my form. Totally blind.
Ridiculous, but I didn’t know any better. And my guess is you don’t either.
So, are you willing to stay blind? Or are you ready to wake up?
We vote with our dollars, but not just with what we buy, but with HOW WE INVEST.
Most of us, though, are investing blindly.
Using robo-funds, or financial advisors who only care about their own commissions or getting your money under management, or simply ignoring it because it’s too complex.
But, really, it’s not. For example …
Type AGTHX into google and you can see that if you are invested in what they call the Growth Fund of America, you are investing in Phillip Morris (the tobacco company that hid data on nicotine’s addictive properties), EOG Resources (fracking!), and Amgen (a company that may be suppressing a true cure for cancer to promote it’s own bottom line — unverified).
Come on, people.
Are you really desiring to support big tobacco, fracking and big pharma?
Or do you think we can do something better with your money?
Wake up, please. Let’s take back control and not invest blindly just because we want that “safe” 5% return for our retirement. It’s not safe, it’s a lie.
What will your retirement be anyway if we are living in a world without clean water (fracking), where we cannot get access to our own natural healing (big pharma), and where lying to addict people is considered acceptable (big tobacco)?
We can change this, but we have to wake up to do it.
Message me at support@eyeswideopenlife if you want help looking at how you are using your resources. It’s time we made a change. And it starts with you.