3d ago

Is it worth investing if I can only contribute $50 a month?

Assuming I have a time horizon >10 years.

Edit: thanks for all the replies!!

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81 comments

Yes. Investing is always worth it unless you have credit card debit.
Set it up to automatically invest into the lowest fee index fund your broker offers.
- The lowest fee ETHICAL index fund. Careless investing is how we got evil corporations.
  
  Unfortunately, there aren't many ethics in the world when it comes to money.
  
  Several funds in my bank have ESG in the name.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental,_social,_and_governance
  Other terms in their fund names: fossil-free, climate, forest, sustainable agriculture.
  Their claims about them:
  in Finnish:
  https://www.s-pankki.fi/fi/private-banking-ja-varainhoito/vastuullisuus-ja-vaikuttavuus/vastuullisuus-sijoittamisessa/
  in Swedish:
  https://www.s-pankki.fi/sv/private-banking-och-kapitalforvaltning/ansvarsfullhet-och-paverkan/ansvarsfulla-investeringar/
  For machine translation, probably better use Swedish as the source because it shares the Indo-European language family with many of you readers' target languages, and has more speakers so maybe better translation engine training too.
  
  I wasn't trying to say that ethical funds don't exist, I'm well aware of them. I was saying that when money is on the line, loyalty and ethics often end up second place.
  
  I'm in the sidelines and I didn't know they existed and wanted to know more so I'm glad they posted it anyway
  
  ESG in the name
  Place to start but once you dig into it, it's not great either. A lot of the evaluations basically boil down to negative externalities, namely making sure that somehow whatever is problematic is NOT accounted for. That's how plenty of ESGs end up with ... other banks as stocks. They "abstracted themselves away" from problems whereas in reality they are funding the problems.
  
  These are pretty cool and I didn't know about them! I'm pretty me to investing, do you just look up ESGs or something?
  
  Can you recommend a single ethical index fund? I've been searching for the past decade
  Every time I find one, I look at their holdings and see companies like Google, Meta, Tesla, and for profit banks.
  
  The post didn't ask for ethical requirements to be included in the advice.
  Appending additional personal requirements turns the conversation towards one's personal soapbox.
  
  The post didn’t ask for ethical requirements to be included in the advice.
  Right... everything does have ethical requirements though. As soon as a member of a society does make something that impacts themselves and others it has ethical requirements. Some examples :
  voting (obviously)
  buying a Xmas (avoiding slave labor)
  selecting toilet paper (limiting pollution)
  buying a coffee (fair trade)
  paying an electricity bill (source of the energy)
  posting on Lemmy (avoiding centralization)
  Everything, literally everything we do, has ethical requirements. We don't have to say it because it's implied.
  Now... if you are genuinely curious about the topic I can only recommend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_in_mathematics showing that even in the most abstract field, there are ALSO ethical requirements. Nobody can avoid that.
  
  Not funding companies that destroy the planet and kill people is basic decency, not personal taste.

81 comments