I hate the whole publicly traded model of companies. I hate capitalism. But have to engage in trading stocks (I mostly do Mutual Funds and a small quantity of direct stocks) so that my money doesn't lose value by sitting in a bank or cash.
Same thing with credit cards, don't like taking loans and getting marked on a centralised list for that but it's a safer option than using your own money.
Fortunately I don't do crypto so that's a plus.
there's mutual funds and ETFs that invest solely in ESG (environmental, social, and governance) funds. i honestly don't know if it's just marketing ploy or what but i know they're a thing and might be worth looking into [edit: i looked into these. they're a ploy. don't buy these. it's just S&P 500 shit with 4-10x the expense ratio]
finance capitalism is all dirty and bad. 401ks + others are just a trick to make people care about the market when it literally ONLY helps rich ppl and no one else. best to just do a total market fund try not to think about it so much.
hysa's are worse imo. they take your money and gamble the ever living fuck out of it a million times over until the economy collapses.
You have to be careful with those. I looked into something like that and the page about their principles touted opposition to nuclear power. Looked into who was running the fund and sure enough, big oil.
i went ahead and pulled some up ESGs out of curiosity to look at the holdings. ESGV, SDG, NUDV.
primary holdings were shit like microsoft, nvidia, tesla, amgen, novartis, home depot, johnson john, coca cola, etc. it's literally just S&P 500 but with like 4-10x the expense ratio.
fucking. lol.
A lot of the ESG stuff is shell companies owned by the usual suspects that technically don't do anything because it is literally just a shell company for Exxon or something.