Go Ethical With Some of your Savings
Not everyone can afford to have savings but some people are saving for key moments – their wedding, their first home, helping kids through college, the ‘third age’, the fourth…
Most of us don’t think twice about what might be happening to our savings while they are sitting in the bank. We don’t imagine they might be buying tanks or tobacco. How could we sleep at night if they were ? So how about moving some savings – however small an amount – to an ethical account.
One such ethical bank is Triodos. Here Triodos explains the merits of banking ethically
Triodos has a range of different accounts like these
Triodos has also recently launched a share issue allowing individuals to invest in the UK’s flourishing renewables industry. To find out more visit www.triodosrenewables.co.uk
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24 Aug 2005
I’ve invested (very modestly) with Triodos for a little while now; now I’m anxious to know what will happen to me if I let them know I’m a Greenbelt person….
09 Oct 2005
I’ve moved my ISA and another savings account to the Co-op. Working on current account – the complications of moving have put me off so far. I’ve been meaning to do this for years – thanks to Generous for giving me the push I needed.
19 Dec 2005
Thinking about this one. We like the look of Shared Interest based in Newcastle. We’re going to talk to some others who currently have investments there and see what the criac is as it were !! May well become an action very soon.
GB , 29 Mar 2006
Until this moment i’d never heard of Triodos, but i’ll look them. With the help of an IFA we were able to put our Baby bond into ethical….whatever you do with them… and we both have ISA’s – doubling up as pension funds – in ethical schemes. It may suprise you that the Isa’s are with Invesco and we are getting good returns, we could get better returns but the fees are decent. I did like the look of what the Co-op were offering but felt the fees were a bit high. My dream of retiring at 50 has been shot to hell…but i’d probably get board anyway.
Nicki, if the bank is causing you problems with the account move just threatening to report them to you local trading standards or the financial servcies onbudsman, they’ll soon shut up.
06 Apr 2006
We have banked with the Co-op bank for years,mostly telephone banking. They are very efficient & ethical
08 Apr 2006
We’ve invested our daughter’s baby bond with CIS who put the money into the FTSE4good, and we both have ISA’s with Smile.
12 Jun 2006
Co-op Bank are not as ethical as you may think. Since 1992, the Bank has supposedly followed an ethical investment policy which is supposed to offer people (all increasingly being forced to use bank accounts), somewhere environmentally friendly to stash their cash. In this promotion of ‘capitalism-lite’, the Co-op is joined by a handful of smaller banks like the Ecology Building Society and Triodos, but its preference for larger profits has led it to compete with the real bad guys at places like Barclays and NatWest. Co-op bosses have realised that they can’t make profits big enough to impress City fat cats without dancing with the devil themselves and hence their decision to invest in Glaxo Smithkline and Vodafone. Click on teh link below to see further details. http://www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news539.htm
Hull, GB , 21 Jun 2006
I have found the Ecology Building Society very helpful with this. The C0-op provides a useful back up.
28 Jun 2006
I am in process of moving to smile ( the co-op on line bank)- so far so good and not as difficult as you might think. Sorry to hear that co-op may not be as good as they sound but ain’t that life. We all crave for easy solutions and of course often there are none- but as they say in brownies ‘I promise to do my best’...
Weymouth, GB , 09 Aug 2006
Another option is to invest with your local credit union (if you have one). The returns are pretty rubbish but your money is used to loan to other members. it provides small cheap(relatively) loans to those who cannot access or afford the big banks.