MONEY TALKS
How you spend your money reflects what you believe in. If you feel like your spending is off-track, check out our tips to make sure you’re following your head—and your heart.
Tips to ensure your spending aligns with your values
Many Canadians take an active role in determining and maintain
ing their money values, aligning their spending with the areas they’ve identified as important to them. Things like safety and security, power, freedom, charity, comfort, independence and higher learning are all worth prioritizing, and aren’t mutually exclusive: You can value safety as well as independence, for example. Your money values can also change along with time and various life circumstances. These tips will help you feel good about where your dollars are being doled out.
HERE ARE THREE WAYS TO HELP YOU CONNECT YOUR PAYCHECK AND YOUR PRINCIPLES.
1 IDENTIFY WHAT MONEY VALUES YOU HAVE.
Explore why what you’ve prioritized is important to you. For example, if someone identifies charity as a money value, it’s important to explore what that means specifically to them. For one individual, charity may mean supporting their place of worship and community of faith. For another, it may mean international development. Some questions you can ask yourself include Why is this money value important to me? How does it align with my other values? How does this value manifest itself in my life?
2 ALIGN YOUR VALUES WITH YOUR DAY-TO-DAY SPENDING.
A major example of essential daily spending is food. Where do you get your groceries? Do you buy from American or Canadian retailers? Do you buy groceries from big retailers or smaller, local ones? What foods are you buying— organic, free-range, pesticide-free— or none of the above? Do you support local farmers and growers? Think about the restaurants you frequent—are they chains owned by management companies or local establishments that make their food from scratch? Another area to consider is transportation. Is the way you get around aligned with your environmental values? And how about the stores you frequent? Are the products created sustainably while also respecting human rights?
3 ALIGN YOUR VALUES TO YOUR INVESTMENTS.
If you want to go further in aligning your values to your money, consider where you’re investing your money. Impact investing allows you to focus on values that are important to you. This could be environmental, social, and/or governance initiatives. To learn more, chat with your financial planner. Ask your advisor questions about these kinds of investments, as well as their financial impact on you (e.g., rates of return).
Aligning your money with your values takes time, research, and active decision-making, so it’s important not to get overwhelmed. Be gentle and start small, because the world won’t change with one action but rather a series of positive steps taken by many people.