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I won’t ever forget the first time this question came up, because it represented one of the first times I realized that my wonderful, idealistic, environmentalist, lesbian, we’re-all-the-same-inside mother is just as hypocritical as everyone else. When I started reading about Socially Responsble Investing when I was about 20, I confronted about her investments and she basically shrugged. “I need my money to make money,” she said, and she left her investments in their blue-chip funds and continued to donate what I saw as guilt money to big environmental non-profits.

Am I perfect? No. When there are decent socially conscious alternatives in a sector I’m invested in, I choose those options, even if it means my returns will be lower. But I also own some mainstream funds, and like one of the other commenters said, it’s questionable whether my house is a completely ethical investment (my family and I are definitely harbingers of gentrification in my neighborhood).

I’m also okay with tobacco, alcohol and gambling. I’m not so keen on weapons, pollution, homophobic and racist policies, exploitation of third world workers, generally bad labor practices, etc. We all have our pet causes.

I do the best I can, and I try to remember not to throw stones. I still disagree with my mother’s attitude about it, but I also realize I can’t spend all my time researching every company I buy from and every company in every fund I own.

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For a while my mutual funds were all with a socially-conscious mutual fund company, but a) they’ve had consistently lower returns than other options I have and b) their morals don’t match mine. For example, I discovered that they give high ratings to a company which I despise for its extremely anti-competitive practices. This mutual fund company is still valuable because for those morals that we do share, they have a lot of clout with companies and can get them to make changes that I as an individual investor could not.

Still, I admit that overall, I am pretty good at ignoring all kinds of things of which I don’t approve. My money is invested, from most to least, in

1st) my house, which was built a little too close to the 100-year flood plain for my tastes and which requires me to pay taxes to a city which often makes extremely unwise decisions,

a distant 2nd) a small-cap mutual fund which probably owns plenty of stocks from companies doing things I wish they didn’t do,

a close 3rd) my company’s defined-benefit retirement plan which is fairly well run and relatively fair but which also probably invests in not-so-great companies,

a distant 4th) stock in companies I really like (I call this my “play money” because this seems risky),

5th) a money market account in a bank of probably typical sliminess.

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I like to think that what I choose to purchase offsets any investing dilemmas (maybe I’m just making myself feel good, who knows). BUT, if people aren’t buying their animal tested product it doesn’t matter how many shareholders they have, they will have to change their stripes (pun intended, sort of).

As for #1 above, I’d say bring on the smokes. As long as there is a market for them, I don’t have a problem with them making a profit. That being said I think smoking is a choice. If you want to do it, you do so knowing the health risks. I am VERY glad to see more and more 100% smoke free establishments. Smoke really bothers me & I would’ve never survived a workplace full of smoke. I can’t even survive a bar full of smoke anymore, so I skip it entirely unless it is smoke free (and even then bars aren’t my thing).

I like to think the power is in the purchasing more than the investing side. If they aren’t making the profits because we stop buying then they will no longer be attractive investments and/or they will need to change to more acceptable business practices.

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