I'm at a bank, talking with an investment counselor. She's intrigued by my ethical investments, and asks so many questions our roles soon seem reversed. I find myself confessing...

"I inherited a conventional IRA from my mom that was invested in things I disapproved of--military contractors, alcohol and tobacco companies and so on. I worked hard to switch those investments over to my own social funds, even if it cost me in the short term."

And suddenly I flash on the Declaration of Independence! "If America's about the pursuit of profit, go sell drugs or steal--that'll maximize your take! But if it's really about the pursuit of happiness, then social investing pays better, even if it WAS less profitable than cutthroat trading--and that was just a myth."

Hmm. I'm ignoring the bonus pleasure of altruism, since so many folks deny its reality. But who denies the reverse? Blood money, like blood diamonds, feels worse. People vary in how much worse, but it's dirty and it feels dirty. Clean money's just as available, so why deal in dirty money at all?

Much simpler than struggling to balance good for others and self. And a lot less stressful than Tooth and Claw.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Altruism vs selfishness: the dream points out that clarity about what (dis)pleases me leads to ethical behavior without sacrifice or struggle! I wonder if it's hinting this works nonfinancially, too?
• ACTION 1: Sell off the last 1% of my assets tied up in questionable funds from my mom's estate. It's a legal/paperwork hassle, but get started.
• ACTION 2: Discuss with housemates: transfer our mortgage to a credit union? Our bank's small, local, well-run... but still for-profit.
• ACTION 3: Post this dream! Urge readers to bail from big banks, get into small, locally controlled ones, or better yet, credit unions; and invest in ethical funds (my personal fave: Ariel Appreciation. Long-term, but why invest short-term? That's just siphoning profit out of fluctuations--market vampirism. But long-term investment in ethical firms is a political act, a VOTE. Vote for real productivity! It's paid solidly for me. Read Benjamin Graham and his student Warren Buffett. "Get rich slow!")
• ACTION 4: Nonfinancially too... clarify what I like, and then pursue happiness. And don't worry too much about whose. Happiness isn't fussy about that.

A NOTE SEVEN MONTHS LATER

It really is a myth that social investing underperforms. Be warned if you're comparison shopping: apps are crap. I just compared my real yield for the last 20 months (40.2%) to the yield shown on my housemate's default iPad app for market-tracking (don't have it in front of me, but 25%ish) and the yield reported by my broker's own tracker app (also around 25%, even with dollar figures disproving this right next to it!) Again: my real earnings were a good 50% higher than these convenient apps showed! They're quick-and-dirty estimators; by default they emphasize share-price, ignoring the complexities of reinvested dividends and bonuses. They claim to report "total return" but they don't!

And since social funds tend to invest in firms paying high dividends, and aren't so interested in raising the share-price of the fund as a whole, the casual investor is likely to underestimate the yield of social investing generally! I did. I hoped only to keep up with the wider, dirtier market, not beat it.

Nice guys finish first! But your tools may distort that fact.

A NOTE FIFTEEN MONTHS LATER STILL

Still true. Nearly two years now since the dream, my money's nearly doubled, outperforming the market... and those apps register barely two-thirds of my actual gains, making it look like ethical investments underperformed. Oh, and a friend using a third app from another broker has found similar errors! The underestimation is widespread.

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