By: Penny Nickel

Tim: I wish I'd titled the article differently. "Community investing" is meant to indicate investing in *communities*. I used it because it's a commonly-used term for banking options that support low-income communities, but obviously that's a niche term not everyone is familiar with and I can see how people would interpret it differently. The products are really banking products-- savings accounts, money market accounts, CDs-- which are there to hold your savings at minimum risk. Maybe other people do it differently, but I don't usually have "investment goals" in dollars and cents for my savings. My purpose for investing my savings is to find the best balance between earning interest and supporting the causes that are personally important to me. It is a personal balance. Some people might not be willing to give up any interest to have a social/environmental impact, others would be willing to give up 0.5% or 1%, others 2% or 3% or 5%. It depends on people's personal priorities, I just wanted folks to know about the options so they could decide if any of them fit with their priorities.I know that some people feel strongly that making money is one thing, and charitable giving/supporting causes should be entirely separate. But I think there are some good arguments that your impact is stronger if you allow many times more money to be lent out to support your causes than you would by giving directly. If you want to look at it in a making-money sense, you could just decrease your charitable giving by the amount of the opportunity costs you lose, and break even or even come out ahead. So you don't have to lose any money doing it this way (unless you are not making donations in the first place).But sometimes getting rich isn't just about your net worth. I want a rich life and I define that broadly, and part of that is feeling like I'm helping others and making the world a better place. For me that's part of the whole "get rich slowly" approach, and I thought there might be others here who are hoping to get some of that, too, out of this blog. For those who feel this is out of place, I'm sorry...(Thanks again, Brad.)
Read More... [Source: Comments on: Community Investing and Other Socially-Conscious Banking Options]