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Making an impact on the future of the planet can feel pretty overwhelming.
Here at Pocket Money, we fully subscribe to the idea that money makes the world go round. So today we are talking about some tangible things that every one of us can do if we want to go green with our money.
And believe it or not, these things can actually SAVE you money!
We're joined by Ben King, CSR and public affairs manager at Finder, to delve into the world of green financial products, ethical superannuation funds, solar power and everything in between. We hope this podcast will answer some questions you have and get you thinking about what you really value and how you can start taking action.
This episode is proudly presented by Future Super.
Note: This is based on a machine-generated transcript. We've tidied it up, sorry if any glitches slipped through.
Ben King If we all took this mindset, and we all shifted, and we could move that trillions of dollars of invested money towards a world that is net neutral and going towards this world that we want to see, that could be a credibly powerful thing for the whole of Australia.
Sally So sustainability is the buzzword of 2019. and rightfully so,
Marc while we may care about these issues, maybe we don't always put our money where our mouths off and walk the walk, walk the talk,
Sally walk the talk and talk the walk. And I think we are becoming more aware of how the decisions that we make with our money have big impacts on people and animals and the planet. But I think the big question that a lot of us have is where do you start?
Marc Yeah, that's right. So we have carbon neutral car insurance, ethical, super green energy, all these things. requires a little bit of thought before you sign on the dotted line. So we're speaking today with CSR and Public Affairs manager and find his resident green expert, Ben King, to discuss the practicalities around this and tips to help you make more sustainable money choices.
Sally And of course, because pocket money is a show all about, you know, these big picture things, but also how it impacts our day to day lives. I think it's important to note that doing right by our planet is cheaper than you think as well. So we kind of covered this when we chatted with a native vandyke on how to live a zero waste life on a budget a few episodes back, so make sure to check that out. But we'll definitely be asking some of those questions in today's episode too
Sally This episode of pocket money is proudly presented by Future Super. We all know that money makes the world go round. And as we'll get into a little bit in today's episode, you can use your superannuation to have a say in how it spins. Future Suber is a superannuation fund leading the movement to use the power of our money to build a future that's worth retiring into. If you're keen to learn more about how you can use your money to disrupt the old and build the new head to myfuturesuper.com.au/finder.
Marc All right, Sally, so shall we get our green shirts on? and talk to Ben?
Sally Yes, please.
Marc Welcome to the show, Ben. It's great to be here. We're really excited to have you on we're ready to go green Damn straight. So why don't you tell the listeners a bit about what you do at find out?
Ben King Sure. So I'm the CSR manager here at find so that's corporate social responsibility and it's kind of just trying to make sure that find a does good things for the world as well as make a little bit of money along the way. So big focus for us is all around sustainability and and working on sustainability issues for the last seven or eight years. So I kind of know a little bit about green finances and how to use your money to drive Better environmental impacts. And that's what we're talking about today.
Sally Definitely. And let's kick things off with a little bit of talk about superannuation. So can you tell us where our money goes? And what makes some super funds more ethical than others?
Ben King Yeah, I mean, this is one of my favourite topics when it comes to getting finances. I think I'm fairly recently moved to Australia. I'm from the UK and I think what a lot of Australians don't realise is that the SEPA system is super generous. So every employer has to give you nine and a half percent of your salary that goes into a part that you then manage yourself. So that's quite rare. And what it's led to is this huge pension pots. I think it's one of the biggest in the world fourth largest pinch point in the world. It's like 3 trillion Ozzy dollars being invested over half. So I think we're like as humans very bad at visualising what a trillion is. But someone said to me this the other day, that a million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 30 years and a trillion seconds is 31,000 years. It's like, the difference between a billion and trillion is huge. And this is all money that's being invested in something. So I kind of like to think of myself as a pot of money that I can invest in stuff that I care about. The other thing to think about was super is that we're all sort of late 20s, early 30s in this room, and we're probably worked with 70 or 80. Realistically, in this world, we're looking at like 50 year investment timelines, in 50 years time, some of the worst impacts of climate change will already be hitting as will have quite dramatic impact on our lives. So I think it's a really obvious example of a category where we should be investing our pension pots into the future that we want to see. So there are a bunch of options out there. And the good news is, it's easier to switch than you think the first one is futures cheaper. And the other one is Australia, Africa, Australia, Africa has been around a little bit longer, but they're two super funds that are directly focused on this topic of how do we invest money and where should we invest there.
Sally So how do you pick an eco friendly super fund like, what what should we be looking out for if we do want to invest our super in something that does align with our values,
Ben King it kind of is all about the things that are important to you. So with all of these investment things, there's two ways they approach it. There's like negative screening, where they'll exclude certain companies that are investing. So you might find funds that don't invest in fossil fuel companies, for example. There's also sort of positive investment themes. So the fund will intentionally invest more in stuff that's working towards a sort of climate positive future. So renewable energy is a big one. But stuff like health care as well can often go into those positive impact themes. So lots of these funds like Australia, Africa and fugitive we've already mentioned have different approaches. So it's worth just going on and looking and sort of aligning what's important to you. For example, I'm with future super because they have a fund that directly tries to invest a percentage of your pension pot towards funding your energy projects directly.
Marc How do these types of super funds compared to others? Obviously, that's the probably the biggest question that someone will have when they're weighing these up, you know, when it comes to fee service, return on investment.
Ben King Yeah, I mean, it's always hard to judge performance on investment products because like prior performance isn't necessarily an indicator of future performance. So this all comes with a slight pinch of salt. But if you look at the biggest Superfund in Australia, it's Australian super for the last three years, it's been 8.67% per annum. If you look at future super in Australia ethical and they're balanced impact sort of similar funds, if you just see if it's been at 7.54 per annum, and Australian ethical balance has been at 8.9% per annum, they're performing a fairly comparable level. When you look at fees it does from my experience, from what I've seen, it does look like it's a little bit more expensive, particularly on future secret the moment if you're on that balanced impact fund, you're paying like a a 1.13% fee with an annual charge. You can pay that so Reading SEPA, it's it's sort of naught point 7%. So it's an important thing to consider, because those fees can have a big impact. So asacs did a study and estimates that a fund that charges, a 2% fee delivers a return of up to 20% lower than the fund that charges a 1% fee over a 30 year period. Assuming that both are growing at the same rate, this is a complicated calculation. And we're looking at like 30 year 40 or 50 year timeline. So it's, it's impossible to know now where to invest. For me, it's about standing for what I believe in and trying to invest in a world that I want to see.
Sally Yeah, and I think those are all good points. I was having a conversation with a friend about this and was saying, like, I feel like I really need to switch my super, I don't even really know where my money is going to probably look into some more ethical alternatives. And she was kind of like, Yeah, but why would I do that if it means that my nest egg is going to be small in the end, but I think you made a good point that past performance doesn't necessarily dictate future and hopefully some of these industries that these more ethical funds are contributing to will be growing.
Ben King Yeah, I think if you look at it like a fairly fundamental level, like something like fossil fuel industry is slowly shrinking, we all know that we need to use less coal less oil. If your investment fund is invested in these companies, at some point that's going to lose value. If your investment fund is looking towards the future, that climate positive future, then there's a good chance that will grow in that next that sort of timeframe that we're looking at.
Sally And for our listeners who maybe want to compare superbrawl look at what their current fund is investing in, where should they go? Because I was actually trying to find it for my current fund. And it was more difficult to find that I thought it would be
Ben King Yeah, it's not as easy as you hope find it does have some pages on it. We decompressive. If you can't find it quickly, and it's not on find out I generally suggest is calling obviously the fund. Hey, what's the performance of the last three, four or five years? What are you invested in? Do you have any policies on responsible investment ESG They have to have answers to these questions. And if you call them up, you might not get it from the the customer service rep who answers the phone, but they might send it through to you or send you a product sheet. They'll tell you the information.
Sally And if not, maybe send them like a passive aggressive tweet, I'm sure you get a response request.
Marc Always also social media. What are some examples of ethical investment options? So for example, if we start with savings and term deposits,
Ben King yeah, I think this is another really interesting when people don't often think about their savings pot in the same way, it's very similar to Super you're putting this money away, it's accruing interest, you don't really think of that. But again, the bank is using that money somewhere, they're probably putting it in their own investment part. If you have a bank that invest in fossil fuel industries, you're probably funding fossil fuels somewhere down the line. So I think this is again, it's a powerful one to think about. There's a really great product by you bank called the green term deposit. So term deposit is is a savings account where you locked away for a certain number of months and it guarantees a certain level of return. But this one, the green term deposit slightly Different because it has a pretty competitive interest rate. But at the same time, it's being all that money is being used to support a range of mutable energy projects, initiatives. It's all backed by this organisation called the climate bonds initiative. So it's all legit. Another shameless plug, they want to find the green innovation award last year to find out what so it's an amazing product. And they've already shifted a whole bunch of savings towards, again, funding the future. You want to see, if you don't want to lock away your money for months on end, there are savings accounts from banks like bank Australia, who are you've probably seen that billboards that over Australia, they're the bank that doesn't invest in fossil fuels. There's a bunch of them, but they're very public about that. And they again, have a savings account that offers decent returns.
Sally And what about direct investments?
Ben King First thing first, when you're not looking at a savings account, you are looking at investment that has risk. So risk means that you can make more money than a savings account be you also the risk of losing money as the same whether it's sustainable, ethical or not. If you are interested in taking that risk, and trying to get The stock market game, I think probably the easiest ways for beginners is free these micro investing apps. So we've seen the rise of apps like rays and concept pocket. And these are all on your phone, they've got pretty low fees raised has a cool feature where if you go and spend, you know, you spend $2 50 on coffee or round up to $3 and put that 50 cents in a investment fund for you. And both rays and concept pocket have ethical investment options where they're making investments on your behalf that are sustainable. They do that through these things called exchange traded funds, or ETFs. Which kind of track stocks in the market. But yeah, it's kind of quite hands off pretty low fee and a good way to try it out. If you're worried about it. The downside of using a raise or concept pocket is you don't have that much control. So they've picked an ETF that they think is sustainable. They both pick the same one interestingly, and if you want to do it directly, you have more choice. There's a heap of ETS out there where you can invest in Or again, it's like to match your what you believe in. There's a whole different, like range of criteria. You can do that for share trading platforms like ag share trading saxa capital markets. And again, we've got bunch of pages on find if you're interested in investing, I think start there. There's a whole bunch of good guides on where you begin. And then I think once you understand the basics of how you invest, I think you can then put that ethical or sustainable lens on top of that.
Sally So a bit of a similar question to when we were talking about super just before but how do ethical investment options compare other fees and rights competitive? Because similar to what Mark said, I'm sure that that would be a lot of people's first question when I think you may be switching.
Ben King So yeah, I think the place to start on this is performance. So if we look at some of those ETFs that we've mentioned before the BitShares Australian standards leaders, the BitShares global sustainability leaders, these are two of the most popular at acident sustainability in Australia. They've performed really well in the last year when you can patents are sort of comparable ETF so the beach has Australia and sustainability is been at 22.39% for the year, and the BitShares globe stones leaders ETF is up 24.44% for the year, October 2019. That's crazy. Like that's good growth like that's not slow. That's like, I'd be pretty happy with a 20% return on the added about you guys.
Unknown Speaker Yeah
Ben King 50. But if you compare that to some of the other popular ETS that are unethical or whatever, wherever you want to use the biggest ETS, you look at Vanguard Australian shares index or the shares s&p 500 ETF. The first one is 19.24% for the year and 17.82 for the year for the I shares option. But again, don't forget that that's performance past performance doesn't mean you know, we might have a slowdown in the economy this year and it might not be the same. I'm not guaranteeing Africa ETS and also it's important to look at the fees. We've mentioned that asik exam Before these fees on big investments can stack up pretty quickly. And on these examples we've just used the BitShares examples are higher fees than those Vanguard and the ICS ones. But then it is also important to note that those two are popular are the two most popular ETS and I showed it because they're low fee. So I think that that those if you looking at, for example, the beach has Australian statements, it is a naught point three 9% fee per annum. That's fairly competitive across the market. There are some super low fees, yes. But that's not necessarily the case for all of them.
Sally So we've spoken about super term deposits, savings accounts, shares and ETFs. But it seems like there's a little bit of a theme running through everything that we've discussed. And I think it's really interesting. You kind of have to think about way up. Yeah, the returns and the phase and everything but also really think about where you want your money to go. And I think especially with Suba like For the longest time, I never thought of it as money that I was investing into something. I only thought of it as money that I would have when I retire. Yeah. So I think it's definitely an interesting conversation
Marc to have. People might not realise that even if you don't have a self managed super fun, you still have a degree of control over your super, even if it is just off the shelf. So yeah, like you may not think you are able to change where your money's being invested in your super but you actually might be able to so you've
Sally got the power.
Ben King Yeah, I mean, and it's never been easier to switch your seat but like I've mentioned that I'm with futures even I changed that a few months ago. It was the easiest thing ever. It took me two or three minutes. Like I put in my details, it found my old fund that put it all in it's easier to switch to new think.
Sally Yeah, I know personally, it's one of those things that I've just kind of put off because yeah, I have this misconception that it's just gonna I'm gonna have to sit down it's gonna take me hours to like contact my existing fund and whatever, but that's good tonight.
Marc The superphone will give you a sack of money and Super Bowl Yeah,
Sally exactly as like a big dollar sign on it. Yeah.
Marc So we touched on your banking, and how that can also be put into ethical or green investments. How do you know if your bank is doing the right thing by the environment? So, you know, it's not the easiest thing to find information. And banks usually aren't super transparent about their investments, unless, as you mentioned before, it's part of a marketing campaign. So how do you steer around that?
Ben King Yeah, I mean, this is a quite a tough one. There is a charity out there called market forces that have done a pretty cool analysis of how Australian banks have or haven't learned to fossil fuel industries. And that's a big part of sustainability and going forward. As some of the bigger fossil fuel free banks out there, bank, Australia, we've mentioned Bendigo Bank, me bank. This one's a bit more complicated and it kind of applies to everything we've already spoken about. But there's kind of two ways you can think about a bank in terms of how it treats climate change and sustainability. They can either refuse to invest in fossil fuel companies, for example, and lots of them do like the ones we just mentioned. Or they can become kind of very active shareholders in these companies. So you can take a position where you do buy shares in fossil fuel companies, but you go to all of their AGM, and you vote down the stuff that you think are you make sure that you know suggest that they shouldn't be in cold anymore, become slightly greener or lower their emissions or whatever it is, you become this active participant in the business. And that's certainly been the approach of some of the the biggest super funds. So I know for example, Australian super kind of take that approach they've that they would say they're very sustainable and that they take these sort of stakeholder engagement positions where they work with these companies and say, we won't vote we won't agree with you. We won't vote this for the AGM unless you make these changes. So there's kind of two approaches to thinking about it.
Sally And how do Australian banks stack up globally?
Ben King actually pretty well. I think all of the big banks in Australia have big sustainability teams. MSCI run a sort of ESG rating system for all companies that are listed around the world. ESG stands for environment, social governance. So it's like these factors that mean you're a good company effectively, Westpac is a double A, which means it's the leader puts it in the top 13% of all banking stocks in the world, which is pretty impressive and na be NAB a and Zed calm bank, or a so this is pretty good a in triple A double A is good. And being an A grade puts them in the top 45% globally. So I think there's a bit of a misconception that the big banks are terrible environment, they're all doing pretty amazing stuff. They're in a bit of an arms race on who can announce the the most impressive renewable energy plan and all this kind of stuff that they're doing great stuff. They've got big teams working on it. So I think we shouldn't underestimate what the normal Bank of Australia is doing on sustainability. It's a great
Marc Okay, so Ben, we're now at the stage in our conversation, where we're going to tackle underrated versus overrated. So this is a fun little segment where we give you a topic and then you tell us whether it's overrated or underrated. Okay, and why I'm ready.
Sally So first things first going vegan, underrated or overrated.
Ben King overrated. vegetarianism better.
Sally Oh, tell us why I'm vegetarian, sir. I'm keen to hear about this.
Ben King Well, I think the big ones from a sustainability perspective is beef. If you can cut our beef even as a start, that's massive. I think going whole hog vegan. Unless your game changes combat. Maybe a step too far. Oh, I didn't hate vegans.
Marc Then it's your choice. The British Royal Family overrated. Oh, tell us why.
Sally Yeah, give us the dead.
Ben King unelected monarchs is quite dated, isn't it? I'm not like a strong like, let's take. But I wouldn't be devastated if we made a slow transition away from having one. It's it's Yeah, I think Australians like them more than the British. On the whole.
Marc There's a lot of fanfare I noticed.
Sally Definitely the crown there.
Unknown Speaker Yeah, I mean, come on amazing.
Marc object of the show,
Sally but also the Bondi Beach.
Ben King You guys, there on the spot. I live there. And I'm going to say it's overrated.
Sally Tell us why
Ben King it's a bit too busy. Most of the time, I love it in the mornings or in the evenings, like more so than winter where it's like quiet. It's an amazing beach. But most of the time that amazing This makes it a bit too busy.
Sally Definitely talk coffee here, Ben.
Unknown Speaker Row family, brown died.
Marc What is the most underrated sport?
Ben King serving me up? What is this little man game called? colourful? It's a Dutch game mixed genda everyone can attack and defend. I actually used to play for England.
Sally know make sure to drop some evidence in the show notes.
Ben King This is crazy. What does it look like? A colourful is a size five football. It's like this kind of size five is hard. It's been more inflated. The thing the more interesting there is the basket. It's three and a half metres high. So that's like the top of the backboard in basketball, super high really hard scoring. And it's like a yellow plastic bucket.
Sally Oh my god, I have zero chance.
Unknown Speaker That's not quite true. sport for all.
Sally Oh my god. I don't know if I believe you. And last but not least recycling
Ben King is pretty post and spicy topics me?
Marc Well, it's all about.
Ben King I'm gonna say overrated. it again. Yeah, we're in a real interesting time on recycling, where a lot of the Asian countries that were receiving recycling for cheap, no longer doing so. And particularly Australia, it's like, well, what the hell do we do with all this recycling? Like, look, we make a lot of effort to put it in the right place and put it in the right Ben. And we don't have good solutions for actually recycling that, right now, a cost like cost effective price. So recycling As it stands, the overrated I think, as a concept is underrated and like big into like reuse and actually making sure you sort of have stuff that you use again and again, rather than plastics that you can put in the recycling bin and that be melted down and be used again, because that process is a bit broken at the moment. I think we'll fix it. But there's a lot of upfront investment to get those recycling centres working in a slightly longer answer.
Sally No, I think it's a very important point. And we Yeah, we had an interesting podcast, so Episode with a native and doc about living like a more sustainable life. And she made that point quite a few times as well
Unknown Speaker that love that one
Unknown Speaker on the show, by the way, guys.
Unknown Speaker Money under right.
Marc Awesome. Well, thanks for that, Ben. That was very enlightening.
Sally Very spicy.
Marc We're talking about going green without money today. And a big part of that is obviously where we live now houses. I understand the Australians have three main factors to consider when they're choosing a green energy provide us so what other?
Ben King Yes, sir, I think energies again, it's a huge one. How we generate electricity is huge, like massive percentage of carbon emissions for every country in the world. And again, you have the power with your choice and who you go with to choose a greener option. As you say, there's kind of three options in Australia you've got green power, which is green, capital G, capital P is another initiative. So it's, you pay a little bit extra for every kilowatt hour of electricity you use. And that money is directly funding, like green power initiatives around Australia. It's a cool programme, it's not really done around the rest of the world. You also have like the option to have carbon neutral plans. So there's quite a few brands like power shop and energy locals, he'll do this a standard. So you ought to go them as your energy provider, and they'll for all the electricity you use, they'll buy carbon offsets, that means you're carbon neutral, which is pretty cool. And then the final one is there's this thing called the green electricity Guide, which is a guide created by Greenpeace, and it rates all of the providers in Australia, out of five for how green sustainable their sounds super easy, you just go on the guide. It's all on our energy tables as well and find a and a high rating means they're green alone, a great low green rating means they're not green. The good thing about these free options is they're not mutually exclusive. So for example, someone like power shop will score super highly in the green lectricity Guide. All of their energy plans are sort of carbon neutral as standard. And they'll be able to offer you this government green power on top of their plan for a small fee per kilowatt hour. It's pretty simple.
Sally Oh, you can go three for three.
Unknown Speaker Yeah.
Sally And of course, we have to ask this question a these green energy providers more expensive than other energy options.
Ben King And it depends which type you're looking at again, so the carbon neutral plans are often the same or cheaper depending on what plan you're on now and whether you've switched in a while. And for some providers like energy Australia, so a lot of the population are with energy Australia, and then Australia have a carbon neutral plan that's opt in and you literally just need to find them up. So if you're with an industry and you're listening to this, call them up today and say hey, I want to go carbon neutral and they just say yet coffee national Kool Aid GLD something similar. It's $1 a week. Like energy locals PowerShot A pretty price competitive as well. So worth checking out carbon neutral. If you're like on a tight budget, green power does come at a premium. So the way that green power works this government initiative is you pay a little bit more per kilowatt hour, but it's not as much as you might think. So for example, I'm with energy locals. And I'm 100% green power because I have to practice what I preach. And for me, I with energy Lakers, it's just under four cents per kilowatt hour. So I use around three and a half thousand kilowatt hour and a flat with my girlfriend in Bondi. And so for that additional 100% green power, which is all going towards this amazing renewable energy projects that government accredited in Australia. I'm paying about hundred and $36 a year. So that's like $10 a month, which is, you know, in Australia that's i'd barely get a beer and Sydney for
Marc less than 10% of Australians have switched to green energy so far. Do you know why this might be?
Ben King Yeah, I think Immediately these options can be a bit confusing when you first start to go looking. And I think the government that green power programme will often be the first thing that comes up when you Google it. And that is a premium several days, I will it will cost me more. And it does. But I think that's kind of skewed. Everyone's understanding a bit, you can go green free carbon neutral energy, which is probably about the same price what you're paying right now. So I think if more people understood their options, and definitely agree, electricity grid is a great resource on this. I think uptake would be a bit higher.
Sally Yeah, that's cool to know. Because I think that is the misconception, like you were saying, but if there are things that you can do, where you can contact your energy provider, and all it is is a coal and then you know, they can offset and make and you can be carbon neutral. Like why not?
Marc And I think I'm with polish up and I didn't even realise this.
Ben King You just like this smiley logo. Yeah. Made me feel good.
Sally And what about appliances and other products that we have in our harm? So I'm just A lot of people have noticed, you know, on their fridges or other appliances. There's like the energy rating sticker. So what does this mean?
Ben King Basically a higher star rating means it uses less energy for whatever job it's doing. So a fridge will keep your food cold for less energy usage. And that kind of has this payback period down the line because you're paying less in energy bills to power that appliance basically. So our PR team, our Insights Team actually did a little bit of analysis on this last year. And they looked at dryers as an example. So if you take a two star rated dryer, the average cost is about $700. Up front, it'll cost you just over $300 to power it. So across five years, it's like just below two and a half thousand dollars across 10 years. It's like 3008 dot $3,800. If you compare that to have super high rated one, eight star, you're paying way more France you're looking at like 1600 dollars up front, but the annual running Cost is down to like hundred dollars a month. So across five years, you're looking at like just over $2,000 and costs 10 years, you're looking at $2,500. So it's like this upfront costs, which will put people off. But actually, if you do the calculations, you might be better off getting a higher rate of the plans. It's it might save you money in the long term, but also it's about the environmental impact. So if you're using less energy, you're less likely to be funding fossil fuels all these things, and it's greener option in the long term.
Marc So also talking about energy in the home. What about solar?
Ben King So when does that sort of become worth it? I mean, this calculation is even more complicated than the appliance one. Australia is definitely one of the best place in the world to instal solar. We have loads of sun.
Ben King That's why we all moved here. And you know, I mean, I mean, you guys are
Ben King the biggest driver of the payback period of solar is when you use electricity. So if you're the type of person that uses a lot of electricity in the day when the sun is shining the paper periods can be really short, because the way it works is if you don't use it and you don't have a battery to store the power, you get paid for the electricity coming out of your solar panels. But that's way less than you pay for energy. So the best way to use energy from solar panels is to use it when it comes through the panels. If you export 75% of your energy to the grid, which means you're probably not using much in the day, then the payback period for most people in Australia for a decent five kilowatt system is about five to seven years. But if you're using 50% of the power coming from your solar panel, so you are using it in the day quite a lot. It can be like as low as two years for a payback period in some states.
Sally I was saying before this that my mom got solar power panels on the weekend, so she'll be very happy to hear this. And of course
Ben King it's an interesting one did she do that for cost reasons, all environmental reasons.
Sally She did it for virus but I think it was more environments. You know, go Sally's mom 70s hippie lady. So you've given us a lot of great tips today, Ben. But if you could encourage our listeners to do one thing to make a greener money choice after this episode, what would it be?
Ben King Well, if you have energy Australia, ring them. That's a good five minutes. And it's a big save. But I think generally for everyone, the big one for me is super. Like here in Australia. We're blessed with a pension system that is both generous and how much they give us and pretty flexible and how we invest it. So use that pot of money to invest into a world that you want to retire and not one that's two degrees hotter and we're all moving because it's the icebergs melting
Sally Moreau living under under the sea. Well, thank you so much, Ben, our very own Captain Planet.
Ben King Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. Check out find the green everyone. It's a great section of our site that delves into sustainable options.
Sally Yeah, we'll make sure to drop that in the show notes. Lots of helpful resources there.
Marc Okay, so Alex, I'm feeling suitably sustainable.
Sally I'm feeling suitably guilty, sustainable. I'm ready to go.
Marc Yeah, I think that's dispelled a lot of the myths I had around investing in a sustainable or ethical way. And it also has driven home that the definitions of these things can be chopped up by different organisations and different investments. So I, you do need to do your own research, find out how a bank or a company defines their policy on sustainability or whatever it is before you invest. So you know what, you're actually where your cash is going.
Sally Yeah, exactly. And I think as well another good point that Ben made was that even if you are just doing one of these things, that that's better than nothing. You know what I mean? And just maybe being a little bit more thoughtful when you are comparing some of these options like it can go a long way having a cape competition drawer is one thing and then yeah, like we said, putting your money where your mouth is, is another.
Marc And another interesting thing is that some of these superfans are actually investing in these fossil fuel companies and then using their influence to have a better outcome. So I think that's I love that Yeah.
Sally Yeah. I love like imagining them being like, didn't didn't like going into these companies we'd like to do taking them down from within.
Marc Hopefully they do that.
Sally I mean, if they don't, what am I investing in?
Marc Exactly, we want on the boots on the ground.
Sally So we hope that today's episode has left you all feeling as inspired as it clearly has left us. And maybe you'll have a bit of a think about how some of your financial decisions impact more than your bank balance. As we mentioned throughout the episode will include a bunch of the helpful resources that Ben mentioned, including a link to our grain find comparison hub in our show. notes at finder.com.au you slash podcast.
Marc Yeah, that's right. And as always subscribe to poker money wherever you happen to receive your podcasts from my personal favourite Spotify, but that's just me. And follow us on Instagram at pocket money podcast. Love it full stop period done
Sally the end, but not really. So as we're heading towards the tail end of the year mark and I will be taking a well deserved break. But if you you know, maybe you're feeling ready to tackle your 2020 New Year's goals. Feel free to go back through some of our old pocket money episodes and get inspired.
Marc Yeah, that's right go through the old catalogue. As we say in the beers. Check out some of our old episodes while we rest our vocal pipes. Thanks for listening to pocket money from find out. Head over to find a.com slash podcast for the show notes for this episode. The find the podcast is in To provide you with tips, tools and strategies that will help you make better decisions. Although we're licenced and authorised, we don't provide financial advice. So please consider your own situation or get advice before making any decisions based on anything now. Sure. Thanks for listening
The Finder Pocket Money podcast is intended to provide you with tips, tools and strategies that will help you make better decisions. Although we're licensed and authorised, we (and our guests) aren't providing any form of financial or legal advice. So please consider your own situation and get proper advice about your individual circumstances before making any decisions based on anything in our show. Thanks for listening.
Have questions for the Pocket Money crew? Want to suggest a future episode idea? Hoping to speak with other curious young adults sorting through their lives and their money? Join our community for exclusive access and discussions about the show and all things money:
Pocket Money is hosted by Sally McMullen and Marc Terrano. The show is produced by Franko Ali and Ankita Shetty. Editing and theme music from Brianna Ansaldo of Bamby Media.
finder.com.au (ACL 385509. CAR 432664) is Australia's most popular comparison site. We like to help, and we understand that our podcast provides information, insight and entertainment, but it's not personal advice. Consider your own circumstances (or get advice) before you make any decision based on our general comments and commentary.
Sally McMullen was a creative content producer at Finder. Sally wrote about credit cards for almost 5 years, authoring almost 900 articles on Finder alone. She has also been published in Yahoo Finance, Dynamic Business, Financy and Mamamia, as well as Music Feeds and Rolling Stone. Sally has a Bachelor of Communication and Media Studies majoring in Journalism (Hons) from the University of Wollongong.
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