Thank you to NetGalley and BroadLeaf Books for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

ESG, social responsible or social justice investing is one of those things that I know I should be doing and want to do but I feel like I don’t even know where to start. There’s so many injustices within current investment products and the companies who provide them (I’m looking at you, Blackrock), that the prospect of getting started feels so overwhelming.

Andrea provides an introduction to and step-by-step guide for social justice investing including focuses on gender, economic and racial injustices. Each chapter is a mix of investment guidance and social activism and includes short stories from those in the financial space doing the groundwork to develop and mobilize social justice investing. The book follows the investment journeys of three types of investors: a DIY-investor, an investor using a financial advisor and a 401k or employer-retirement sponsored investor.

The only flaw, which is not the authors fault, is the lack of resources that also include ESG analyses for Canadian ETFs. I would love to use the “invest your values” tool but the ETFs I buy do not show up.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Motley Fool’s David Gardner is famed for saying that we should invest in the world we want to live in. However, we also want to make money. How do we balance being investors that are socially responsible and not going broke at the same time? In The Social Justice Investor, Andrea Longton offers up ways to plan for your future while building a better future for everyone.

While it might be nice to imagine that we can maximize the value of the money we invest and do nothing but good, the two are not fully compatible. Part of deciding on a social justice path is taking a long, hard look at what you really need and what returns you will be satisfied with. This doesn’t mean you can’t meet or be the broader market with your socially-driven investing it just means you probably shouldn’t focus on it.

This is one of those larger questions. How much money do I need? As I work with my mother on her finances and study wealth inequality, I’ve seen there’s a lot of financial hoarding happening in older generations. Part of that makes sense, we don’t know how long we will live, what will happen, how can we possibly know how much is too much? This book asks the question of how much you would be willing to give up so that others can have a better world.

Another issue is not investing in things that do harm. Longton brings up the example of for-profit prison stocks but for the environmentally-minded, investing in oil and gas may not be desirable. It has been my experience as an investor that it’s easier to find the “no” list than the “yes” list. The book shares tools for research, including InvestYourValues, which reviews employer 401(k) funds and scores ETFs and mutual funds on a report card on a variety of social justice issues, from fossil fuels to gender equality.

Much of the advice in the book is aimed at investors without a lot of experience, and ETFs are a large part of the strategy. Using ETFs rather than researching companies on your own does take some of the work off of your plate but also limits your flexibility to some extent in terms of directly investing in the companies you choose. Another great idea in the book is one I’ve been considering for a while, which is changing where I bank and invest to focus on credit unions and other financial institutions that do more good in their communities.

All steps are important steps and the author is careful not to advocate an all-or-nothing approach. This book gives a wide range of perspectives from guest authors who have devoted their lives to social justice causes but the most relatable sections come from the fictional examples of everyday investors who aren’t necessary trying to change the world, they are just trying to do a little more good.