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Transcript

How to Invest Without Ignoring Your Values. · The Curve

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Today I am joined by a dear friend and also just amazing person.
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So Lily and I met years ago when
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the curve first started.
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One of our first ever partnerships actually was with the company that
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Lily works for, Pathfinder, which is an ethical KiwiSaber provider.
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Basically in this conversation
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I wanted to introduce you more to who she is.
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She's been on the podcast before but we didn't
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really get into who she is, what's her money story, what kind of decisions is she seeing being made
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around everything happening with the war, with these giant sort of celebrity CEOs that are
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sometimes problematic.
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There's just, I think, a lot of conversations happening within the curve
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ecosystem, but also outside of that around money and morals.
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And both of those things are complicated.
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Both of those things require experts.
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And I wanted to introduce you to Lily in a different way.
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She's going to be showing up in our content more and more in terms of answering your questions
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about exactly that.
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She's the Chief Marketing and Client Officer at Pathfinder and the insights that
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she gets, the research that she's privy to, just make her such a perfect person to speak to about
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this stuff.
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So this conversation is more about her personal money story, how growing up really
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shaped the way that she interacts with money and investing, as well as her thoughts on success and
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independence.
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It's a really insightful, interesting conversation and honestly really overdue for us.
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we used to do a lot of content like this and we haven't for a while and so it feels really good
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to be coming back to our roots on that one so I wanted to introduce you to Lily I wanted to
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introduce you to a really exciting new concept that we're going to be working on with her so
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you'll be seeing her voice and face a lot more but without rambling for too long here is this
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conversation with Lily I hope you really enjoy it and please let us know if you have any feedback
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Lily it's so lovely to have you here Lily is obviously now a friend however we first started
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working together about four years ago this was when Vic and I basically had first started the
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curve it was the moment that I'd gone full-time and it was during COVID and Lily was one of the
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first people to reach out and want to work with us in a collaborative content capacity.
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Lily works at Pathfinder, which is an incredible KiwiSaver provider.
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They have all sorts of amazing
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financial products, but their core investing thesis and what the whole team and everyone
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who works there lives by is that you don't have to compromise on returns by putting money into
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places that harm people, planet, animals.
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And I just think that that's incredible, particularly
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in a world where, I don't know, anything sort of ethical feels like it's been flushed down the
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toilet since Trump's been in power.
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And I just think that having a business that is so not
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trendset by that and actually knows that the long-term game is looking after the future you
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want to see and investing in that way, I think is just so, so cool.
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So Lily is, are you marketing
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director what's the technical title and my technical title is chief marketing and client
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officer wow it's very professional isn't it yeah it's a great technical title one of the things
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that um drew me to the curve in the early days that you were referring to was that ethical
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investing which is all that we do at pathfinder majorly uh overweights in terms of interest from
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investors from female investors so already it was obvious to me that you that the curve would be an
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incredible channel for our audience.
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But interestingly, women tend to get, as we know,
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overlooked in terms of, well, everything when it comes to finance, I feel is really
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an issue.
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So women's like in a financial company, if you have more female clients,
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particularly if you're looking at a KiwiSaver, that can be considered a negative because the
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average KiwiSaver balance of a woman is lower than a man.
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Interesting.
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So I think prior to
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our launch there hadn't really been a KiwiSaver with a specific focus on women and whilst I can't
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and I wouldn't say that that was strategic I think there is would there would have been a
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commercially minded person that would have thought actually that's not a great idea because women
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have lower balances on average and when I started working at Pathfinder and that was the truth for
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us we have more women investors than we have men and our balance skews lower instead of going well
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oh, this is a problem commercially,
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we collectively felt this was an opportunity
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to improve and increase the balance of female investors.
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And that was why a partnership with The Curve
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made so much sense
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because you were already trying to do the thing
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that we wanted to have happen,
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but also that we would benefit from.
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Yeah.
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And I think it's really worth saying,
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we don't talk often in this candid way
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when it comes to partnerships or how they work,
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but we were talking about this off mic
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before we started recording.
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brands that we work with inherently represent us because as people we are personally endorsing them
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and talking about them and so it's really important for us that we work with brands who
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and promote products with financial or otherwise that we actually believe in and there is so many
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partnerships and quite a lot of money that we have turned down because there's been
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people that don't align with our values whether it's from a product perspective the way they work
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etc and I think that the Pathfinder relationship now we've been working together for almost four
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years is one I'm so proud of.
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I actually wanted to before we talk about ethical investing I wanted
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to speak about your personal relationship with money because we're going to be working with
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Pathfinder for a long time hopefully.
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I want people to know who you are as a person and to
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feel connected to you because doing ongoing segments in our EDM, on the podcast, on socials,
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for people to not just think of you as someone that's inherently woven into ethical investing,
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I want to just introduce people to who you are as a person.
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I totally get that.
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And I think one of the things that makes me good at my job,
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despite or because of actually the fact that I'm a surprising candidate to do it,
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is really that I don't come from a financial background.
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And we were talking about this
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before and I wanted to sort of share a bit about my money story because it is a really unusual
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background.
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The fact that I'm new to finance, my eyes have been opened time and time again in a way
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that I want to recreate for investors, right?
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Not just about money, but about the potential that
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you can have to invest your money ethically.
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So when I was a kid, I had a really, it came from
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a really liberal household, very like left-leaning parents.
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My mother, she was, I think what we would
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call now like a radical sustainability advocate.
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But what then was just the consequence of being
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raised, I think post-World War II, but she was like determined.
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Like she made everything from
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scratch.
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She made all of our food from scratch.
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She like grew it.
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Meals, special meals routinely
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took multiple days to make.
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You know, she would cut our hair.
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But what was really interesting
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about her was that there was a layer of, I would say, aesthetic judgment that came with it.
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So she
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also had a very particular sense of style and taste.
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And so I guess if you're in control of
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everything, then you get to decide how it looks.
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So I think there was definitely a layer of that
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to it so there was a judgment and control component to it and then there was also a very
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and where that relates to money is that if you could buy something effectively it was common
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ah that's quite interesting so it was almost this kind of oh that family poor them because
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they've had to buy that which is less cool than what we've got because we made it it was almost
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it's kind of snobby yeah it was different that was definitely at least how I experienced it
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is there was a layer of aesthetic preference and judgment to it.
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And like the swear word in our house was ordinary.
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Right?
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Like if I put on an outfit and I would be like,
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what does this look like?
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Or what do you think of this?
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And if she said, it's a bit ordinary, that was like, get it off.
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She was really talented at what she did as well.
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And she made extraordinary clothes.
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She was an artist and a fashion designer.
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Yeah, our house was really unique,
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but there was this subtext of judgment about what money was used for
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and you used it if you didn't really, you know, have your own taste
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and couldn't make your own things.
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So her favourite saying was that she could live off the smell of an oily rag,
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which is such a weird statement.
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It's really interesting how that, the concept,
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because I'd say my dad's probably quite similar.
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He's very crafty.
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He's, you know, is not liberal with how he spends money.
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Yeah.
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And I think on the one hand, it's so impressive to say
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you could live off the smell of an oily rag
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because it means really that you don't value things as much and actually you could be happy
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without spending money which in itself is quite impressive but there's also it kind of rocks me
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up a bit and I don't really know why that is or what annoys me about it but I feel like we've
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been demonized for spending money and the whole point of the curve is to try and empower women to
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feel like they can have their own spend their own so I don't know for that I find it's almost
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unhelpful because it makes you feel like money is the enemy or money is not good or I don't know.
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Well, there you go.
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This is like the one side of my entire existence and my money story relates
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to that completely.
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So if your position is that money is used by unoriginal people to do boring
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things, then you're not going to really lust after it, right?
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But then to counter that, my father is
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an architect and his clients were you know by virtue of being able to commission an architecturally
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designed house they were wealthy people right so we were this kind of mum never had to live off the
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smell of an oily rag because there was money yes but it was still I think you know looking back on
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this which is the virtue of a money story and if you haven't analyzed yours endlessly and obsessively
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I recommend that you do so because it can be really helpful.
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But I, like upon reflection,
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I think because architecture still kind of fell into the category of arts, it was okay.
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It was
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acceptable because it was, you know, a culturally appropriate addition.
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I'm not sure they didn't
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really, first of all, they didn't really talk about this at all.
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This is all just my kind of
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assessment after the fact.
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And I was never aware of how much money we had.
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I knew that we had some
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money.
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I knew that mom wasn't really into money.
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And so there was this really strange tension.
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I struggled then going from that position to trying to figure out, well, how do I make money?
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If I thought that having money from doing good things meant that you weren't doing good things
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anymore, I got really confused.
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So when I went into the world of work, I wasn't looking at it
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as how do I make money?
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I was looking at it as how do I do something original?
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How do I not be
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ordinary and how do I do something that's good you know that's like of service and and in the arts
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that was my driver isn't it so interesting how and I still don't know how I feel about this but
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and it would be interesting because obviously you're a mother so you might have thoughts on it
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I think that we do our kids a disservice by not explaining the difference and what your life
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would look like depending on what you choose to do for work because just because you do something
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for work, i.e.
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for money, doesn't mean you can't go and be creative or do things around that.
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And
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I grew up with this feeling of if I didn't do something creative, I was a cop out and a sell
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out and therefore I shouldn't care about money.
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But we live in a world where we have to pay for
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everything.
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And so, I don't know, I had a sort of similar feeling of I really wanted to not do
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something classic and I wanted to do something where I felt like I was doing what I loved rather
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than working and I think that confuses kids a lot because also then you get into the real world and
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you start seeing your friends diverge in terms of having lots of money and then some not having
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money and then you you struggle to relate to friends who are earning more and you can't do
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the things you want to do like I don't know it's this kind of unfair pressure I think to put on
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kids so yeah I guess my question would be do you feel like when you then went into the workforce
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there was this understanding of what you were striving for or what you were trying to achieve
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from your career and was that completely disconnected from financial outcome?
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It was almost completely disconnected from financial outcome.
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Now that I think back on it
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I went into the book industry so my logic was that if I was encouraging someone to read it
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didn't matter what they were reading from like a graphic novel to a biography of Churchill
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they were reading and I could feel good about that because the more people that read the better
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voila I worked in books and publishing for like the first 10 12 years of my existence I didn't
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realize I was missing a huge piece of the puzzle and I think part of it is that I had like a
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financial backstop because my parents even though it wasn't clear and I didn't know how to access it
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and I wasn't sure if when and how I would get support I did know there was a safety net there
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and I have come to admire the people that don't have a safety net and I know that's a really
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uncomfortable thing to say but the part that I admire is that they understand okay I need to
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unlock the mechanism of this financial system otherwise I'm going to be on the bottom of it
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forever and I just didn't get that that was I just didn't know that that wasn't even happening
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like I wasn't aware of it.
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Or that it's important really.
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Yeah.
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Do you think that you didn't advocate
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in those roles for like what you needed financially as in you then didn't ask for pay rises or do you
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feel in a way like if you look at the way that you worked or earn money that you kind of missed
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out a lot financially because you weren't advocating for?
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I would say it was less because
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I wasn't advocating more because I didn't know what to do with it when I got it and I think this
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is a big issue that I see in the creative industries in New Zealand.
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It is massively
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undervalued.
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It is really really hard for everyone from like a graphic designer to someone in film
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production to know what their worth is.
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There's no like standardization.
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There's very little
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protection.
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Like we have terrible IP protection for artists, for example, that don't get resale
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royalties.
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There are issues just embedded in our society that really undermine the creative arts
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work.
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And I see this a lot.
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It's a really interesting current trend is that the young
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generation now want to do something that they're passionate about, either because they love doing
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it like it's physically enjoyable or they want to work in a kind of a normal corporate environment
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but they want to do something meaningful like they want their work to count for something and for it
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to have purpose whereas a lot of us I would say millennial women have got to a certain age and
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then decided that's what I want rather than starting their career out yeah seeking that out
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it's almost like we we fell into what we were doing we did probably 15 years of work and then
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we stopped and we're like hold on I want something more meaningful and I feel like so many of my
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friends and people I know have had that same similar experience whereas the younger generation
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know it from the beginning which is so amazing yeah and the world of work I think is going to
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be massively influenced by this and same with investing because what used to be when you think
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about ethical investing which is like the nature of it is to consider more than just the financial
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ramifications of the company on society more broadly well now you've got a generation of
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people who who want a company to do that for them as a member of staff like as a matter of right
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So maybe this generation is going to insist upon more ethically investable companies because they don't want to work at companies that that's not happening at.
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But there's also kind of a downward force as well where corporations and companies that have been established through with a different perspective with just trying to generate as much revenue as possible at the lowest cost.
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they're still out there and they can kind of drive people you know young idealized graduates into a
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position that they didn't imagine for themselves so I think there's a really interesting tension
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in the world at the moment so you just spoke about you know almost getting to a certain age
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later in life probably in hindsight that you would have liked where the financial system
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started to click and you started to realize what you actually needed to do to get yourself from
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where you were to perhaps what you wanted or where you needed to be.
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Do you remember having
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any kind of penny drop moment or an aha, oh, okay, right, I need to start thinking about this
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differently?
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Was there something that happened or a time in your life that you remember starting to
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sit up and pay more attention to the financial, the need to care about your finances more?
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Yeah, I mean, I think I was miraculously stubborn in terms of when I first started working for Pathfinder, I kept my hat on just in the marketing lane.
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I understood the product, I understood the audience, and I was marketing.
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But I sort of refused to get under the hood much more deeply because of my background.
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My family had kind of made me think that this world, the financial world, was full of ordinary people.
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And so I didn't realize that what had happened to me, the way I'd been raised, the fact that money wasn't discussed, had so massively influenced my entire existence.
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And I think it's kind of an ego thing.
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It was pretty humbling to be like, oh, I'm not the architect of my own existence.
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I'm actually a product of my environment.
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Exactly.
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I'm a product of my childhood.
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And because it was unexamined, you know, there's this young quote that like it's something like your unconscious will drive your actions.
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And if you don't examine it, you'll call it fate.
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But it's just this.
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I love that quote.
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I got to a place of compassion with my parents because I definitely wasn't like intentional and they, you know, they didn't understand and I didn't understand that the relationship had resulted in me not feeling, me not being equipped to have my own financial independence.
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But when the penny dropped after reading about like writing my own money story, what happened was I could see it so clearly and then I could start making different decisions.
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Because then when I acted in a certain way, I understood where it came from.
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There was a pause and I could go, oh, I could just choose a different way to respond.
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So that was definitely the penny drop moment for me.
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I think as well, like I should mention for context that because of the way that I was raised to kind of seek out a meaningful existence rather than a profitable one and often at the expense of a profitable one, my husband and I, we had children really young.
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So we were very interested in being, you know, understanding the human experience and being guides to children.
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so really counter to the current movement where I know a lot of women who are waiting to get to a
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certain financial threshold before they even contemplate having children we were just all in
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really early and again pros and cons for everything but I had been diagnosed with polycystic
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ovaries and had had really terrible periods and was worried that I wouldn't be able to conceive
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but we had our first child when I was 24 and our second when I was 27 and we were able to conceive
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probably because we'd just like snuck in prior to that geriatric pregnancy classification.
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So
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we'd done that, but as a consequence, we just, we had two kids, you know, in our twenties.
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So
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whatever money we may have amassed at that point was pretty thinly spread across a family of four.
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Yeah, that was a reason why accepting more help from my family felt like the kind of natural and
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necessary thing to do.
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And it kind of attenuated my childhood.
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I felt like I went from a child to
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kind of a child with children.
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Yes.
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And because the attachment financially,
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when your parents are helping you does make you feel more controlled by maybe it's not the right
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word, but you, yeah, you're kind of still an extension of their family rather than necessarily
20:28
totally functioning self-sufficiently within your own new one.
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That's it.
20:31
That's exactly it.
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And I
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would say that that was the biggest thing that started to happen for me once I had my money
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realization that I was able to create financial independence would be that I could then start
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being, I could start building my own family rather than relying on anyone else's and that I was going
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to be the architect of that and that I was going to be the financial provider for that.
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I think for
20:54
me in large part, this idea of financial independence, I like those two words.
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I've
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always thought of them together, but if you look at them separately, financial and independence,
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the independence part is huge.
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So if you're in charge of your own money, you get to make your
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own decisions.
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You get to make your own mistakes.
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I think a lot of the time, if you're relying on
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somebody else, their instinct is going to be to want to come in and support you, best case,
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by trying to limit the bad ideas that you take, the bad actions you take or the bad ideas you
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follow.
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And I think for me, part of that was the consequence of that well meaning was that I didn't
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get to try and fail on my own a lot.
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And I didn't get to experience, so I didn't build that muscle
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of being a bit more risky and having to really know what it takes to defend myself and to keep
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myself going.
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And so for me, the idea of independence was actually more about, okay,
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yeah I think there's a part of it like what you say that we are independent people that we reach
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a certain age and we need to de-center and go okay I'm not your child anymore I'm actually this
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independent person in the world thank you for everything that you've done but you can kind of
22:13
do your journey now and I can do mine and whilst we satellite each other and I love you know we
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love each other and perhaps there is going to be some you know exchange at some stage I just
22:26
didn't want to live my life conditionally upon that.
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I needed to know that I was capable of
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making my own mistakes and doing my own thing and having my own back.
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Yeah, I really admire
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relationships where clear communication enables people to know where there are limits between an
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emotional relationship and a material relationship.
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I think it's one thing, like my husband has taught
22:49
me a huge amount about this.
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He's the kind of person that would give you the shirt off his back.
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he'd give you, you know, if you asked for 20 bucks, he'd give you 20 bucks and he wouldn't
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comment on what it was that you, he wouldn't even ask what it was you needed to use it for.
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I think that's the subtle difference, right?
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There are people in your life who you're like,
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oh my God, I need 20 bucks.
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And they're like, there you go.
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And then there are people who
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you're like, I need 20 bucks.
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And they're like, what for?
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And then they decide whether or not
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they think that's acceptable.
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Interesting.
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I love that you brought your husband up because
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I really want to talk about this.
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I think that your family dynamic is so unique in the most
23:20
beautiful way.
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You're the main earner in the household.
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So your husband is a stay-at-home
23:26
parent and puts so much time and love into your kids, which is amazing, but it's also
23:33
relatively uncommon.
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And it's becoming more uncommon for that to be anyone, whether it's a
23:38
man or a woman.
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So I just want to hear a bit about how that arrangement came about and what actually
23:45
is the setup for those who don't know.
23:47
Yeah.
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Just in terms of the commonality thing,
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like I remember because our son is 17 and I remember when my husband would first take him
23:57
to school and it was like almost alarming to see a man in the school environment.
24:03
That's how infrequently dads turned up at the school.
24:07
And all the mums would like flock around
24:08
him.
24:09
He was like this minor celebrity because he was a man, you know.
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And then by the time
24:14
our daughter graduated there was maybe like 40 percent of the work of the parents that turned
24:19
up were men on a regular basis so we've really seen from the beginning a massive change in
24:24
expectations and um around male parenting roles but yeah I think I mean we so we met at in a
24:31
university we've been together a really long time and we were both studying ethics and so we both
24:38
and always have been really deep thinkers and often talk about why we do things, how we could
24:44
do them differently, what it means that we do them in the way that we do them.
24:49
And that same
24:50
level of reflectiveness has definitely been brought to bear on having children.
24:54
Like I say,
24:55
you know, we had them early and that was intentional.
24:59
It tied into my mother being
25:01
unwell as well.
25:01
I really wanted her to be able to meet her grandchildren.
25:04
And so I felt a sense
25:06
obligation there.
25:07
And then how did you decide on the dynamic of you being more of the earner or
25:12
the person that's going to work in a traditional sense?
25:16
So to be totally frank, I wanted to have
25:19
more income.
25:21
I wanted to have more money in the household than I thought the kinds of jobs that
25:25
he would do would bring.
25:28
And so I thought I was more suited to a kind of higher earning job.
25:32
And
25:32
that seemed to make sense to both of us.
25:35
He's really, he's not work shy at all, will do anything
25:39
if he needs to, but is fundamentally disinterested in money for the pursuit of money.
25:44
And then also
25:45
a sense of real self, like honesty and self-appraisal from me.
25:49
I felt fundamentally
25:50
that my husband was the more patient parent that just frankly assessing the situation,
25:55
I would be better at bringing in money and he would be better at being like emotionally regulated
26:01
in a way that was safe and comfortable and loving and healthy for children.
26:06
Not to paint me as a
26:07
completely unstable person, but I just think like by comparison.
26:11
So if we were assessing our
26:13
strengths, that would be it.
26:15
And that has been, I would say, and you could ask the kids, but I think
26:19
that it has been really beneficial.
26:22
Like I say, they always, they know that someone is always
26:25
there for them, which is like what we want for our children, but it is the literal manifestation
26:29
of that.
26:30
And the price we pay is that we don't own our own home.
26:33
We rent intentionally and we
26:37
don't have the biggest portion of savings.
26:39
Obviously, I have a great KiwiSaver, which I'm
26:41
really proud of.
26:43
And we have some small savings, pockets of savings, but we don't have as much
26:47
money just fundamentally because we don't have two incomes.
26:50
And we instead have this, yeah,
26:53
this around the clock parent that is there for them as they grow.
26:57
We brought children into the
26:58
world so we prioritize them until such a time that they are able to stand on their own two feet
27:03
and take over way more of the reins when it comes to their own lives and when that happens that will
27:08
hearken in this like next epoch of our relationship together at which point if he wants to go back and
27:13
do some kind of work in the workforce to to generate money then he absolutely can and will
27:19
and he's ecstatic about the idea of having some money that he can spend on himself you know like
27:23
He would love that.
27:24
It is a huge sacrifice that he is making to not have that, you know,
27:29
sense of autonomy and being able to move through the world commercially
27:31
and buy material things.
27:33
But it's just that it is not as much of a priority right now
27:37
as raising the kids.
27:38
I would love to start talking about the threat of ethics throughout your life
27:41
because that really stems into the job that you're now doing,
27:44
to the way that you live your life.
27:46
And I think that ethics for you has been at the forefront
27:49
of a lot of decisions that you've made,
27:51
which obviously when you now work for an ethical investing firm that comes into play I'm sure you
27:58
never really imagined the money ethics colliding but that's obviously where you are in terms of
28:02
your career where did the interest in ethics come from and can you speak to that collision of finance
28:10
and ethics and and why the role that you're in right now is actually such an interesting one
28:15
given you've spent so long thinking about what is ethical?
28:19
Absolutely.
28:20
Both my father and mother are very wide readers.
28:22
There were lots and lots of books in our house as I was growing up.
28:27
And my father has always had an interest in philosophy.
28:31
So there was sort of casual philosophical conversations going around,
28:35
which I would say I would characterize as questions about why.
28:39
They're like why questions, not how or what,
28:42
which are kind of surface level questions.
28:44
but philosophical questioning is at the level of why.
28:47
Why do we do this?
28:48
Why is this happening in this way?
28:50
And so it inspires you to think more deeply.
28:53
I had an amazing teacher,
28:55
they always say you only need one,
28:57
at high school who let us call him by his first name,
29:00
so called Drew.
29:02
But he, in addition to the curriculum,
29:04
he set up a philosophy club.
29:07
I joined and it just completely changed my life.
29:10
For the first time ever, I loved school.
29:12
I loved something about school.
29:14
It felt important and meaningful.
29:16
I remember we read Sophie's Choice
29:18
and the class was we would read some material, short or long, and then we would sit around on
29:24
couches and we would talk.
29:26
And it was like eye-opening to do that at a teenager level
29:29
with your peers, but also teenagers are the most ripe for those kinds of conversations because
29:34
we're just coming into this idea of justice and freedom and we're really self-righteous and
29:40
you know, all of the responsibilities of being an adult haven't landed yet.
29:43
So you're a really
29:44
big thinker and a really free thinker.
29:46
And that was extraordinary.
29:48
And so I decided to study
29:49
ethics at university after I left high school.
29:52
And anyway, I was just always fascinated by this
29:56
idea of trying to understand why people do what they do.
29:59
And when I became familiar with Pathfinder
30:02
and understood that it was an ethical investing, and obviously my background wasn't in finance,
30:06
I just hyper-focused on the ethical.
30:08
My absolute fascination with ethics has meant that I've been able to contribute in really fundamental ways to the development in the ethical investment policy and how we assess concerning issues and how we might appraise them from a position of the philosophy of ethics.
30:26
So your experience, your learning, your education has all been very much intertwined with the idea of ethics and what's right or wrong.
30:36
I know for a fact that a lot of our listeners care deeply about the world, about the environment, social issues, global conflicts, of which there is a lot right now.
30:48
But they also do want to invest and build wealth.
30:51
And obviously those two things can sometimes feel like they are in conflict.
30:58
from the conversations that you've been having and obviously working at Pathfinder,
31:03
I would love to know why do you think ethical investing feels so overwhelming for people?
31:11
It's a great question.
31:12
I think one of the ways to answer that question is to jump back in time to
31:17
when we were doing the brand development for Pathfinder and a friend of mine was working on
31:21
it with me and he introduced me to Schwartz's values circumplex which is a real mouthful my
31:28
god yes just imagine a circle and inside the circle is a variety of different segments and
31:34
they represent different human values and it's largely just divided into like four major quadrants
31:42
and if you imagine there's a gathering on one side and one quadrant of things that are like
31:48
you know, self-reliance, security, financial stability.
31:53
And on the other side is benevolence,
31:56
care for others, sacrifice.
31:59
And these two quadrants are literally diametrically opposed
32:02
to each other.
32:03
That is how the world psychologically sees the idea of making money
32:08
and being good to people as like mutually exclusive.
32:11
Wow, that is so interesting.
32:13
Yeah.
32:13
And so I think that it is absolutely understandable that people are going through
32:18
this interesting transition where they feel like they want to make money, but they're
32:21
conflicted about how to do it.
32:23
And there's also a sense of kind of understandable mistrust or
32:26
suspicion that comes with that because we have been told over and over again that to make money,
32:31
you need to be ruthless.
32:33
You need to not care about other people, right?
32:36
And that doesn't
32:37
actually hold logically.
32:39
Maybe to make the most money, that would be true, but not just to make
32:45
money.
32:46
There's nothing about making money that means you can't do it if you're compassionate.
32:51
I understand that issue in terms of feeling like ethical investing is an oxymoron.
32:59
However,
33:00
what I've come to understand, which is why I'm so passionate about the work that I do,
33:04
is that it's on a continuum.
33:08
So like almost everything in life, it's not a yes or no
33:11
situation.
33:12
There's gray in between and people can absolutely make money from industries and
33:21
companies that have limited the negative impact that they have on the world around them.
33:26
They
33:27
absolutely can.
33:28
That's not a question.
33:30
If what your goal is, is to make the most amount of money
33:33
possible that you might have a slightly different approach to that because absolutely there are
33:37
things you would leave on the table if you're an ethical investor that will make money.
33:41
Is it a really hard position to be in where you're constantly looking at this is an investment we
33:47
will make or not because ethically it fits with and I guess the reason I'm asking this is you
33:52
just said you can find things to invest in that will make money that aren't having a incredibly
34:01
objective detrimental impact on the world however the idea of perfection does not exist because
34:09
while you may be investing in a company which is creating amazing new solar energy so that we can
34:17
move more into renewables there may be a founder who has really badly treated staff members or
34:24
you know you there's only so much research that you can do and you have to make a decision with
34:30
the information that you have and be comfortable with that.
34:32
Is that a difficult position for you
34:35
to be in the company that you work in to be constantly having to weigh it up and to know
34:41
there's not really ever a straight up right or wrong answer?
34:44
Because I just think that,
34:46
yeah, you can make a decision and it may be, for example, okay, I'm going to invest in this
34:51
particular company, company X, because it does X, Y, Z, and it doesn't do X, Y, Z.
34:56
But then in six
34:57
month's time you have new information that actually means that the scales are tilted and it's no longer
35:02
what you feel comfortable.
35:03
I just, I think that that would be a, it's a high pressure role to be
35:07
in, right?
35:07
Because things change and the decision could change again and again and again.
35:13
Yeah.
35:13
I
35:14
mean, absolutely.
35:15
I think fundamentally that is what Pathfinder offers though, which is this
35:19
ability to be flexible and this willingness to wade in to the gray area, the ethical gray area
35:25
and make an assessment based on our ethical investment policy
35:29
as to whether or not we will or won't invest
35:31
and an absolute acceptance that things change
35:34
and we need to keep constant vigil over the situation
35:38
so that we can adjust if we need to.
35:40
I think it's really interesting talking about mental models.
35:42
Typically in the finance world,
35:43
you've got people who love a spreadsheet,
35:47
very numerate and everything fits into its place.
35:51
There's an equation and it will have the same answer
35:54
every time you do it.
35:56
that's not exactly what we're proposing.
35:59
And it's not exactly what we do at Pathfinder.
36:01
We have to
36:01
have a quantitative analysis like everyone else.
36:04
So absolutely, we consider the financial metrics
36:06
of an investment.
36:08
And we try and do a quantitative version of an assessment for ethics.
36:12
But there
36:13
are things that pop up that we haven't captured.
36:15
There is things move really fast.
36:18
There's an
36:19
example around something at the moment, which I can give you an example of if you want.
36:23
Please.
36:23
research that we did recently.
36:24
So in terms of things that move really fast, Microsoft has been
36:28
a company that we've invested in for a long time because we have an ethical investment policy and
36:33
it doesn't breach our policy.
36:35
So it's in line with what we do.
36:37
We've invested in it for a long time.
36:39
And then recently it was mentioned in a special rapporteur report to the UN in a report called
36:46
economy of occupation to the economy of genocide.
36:50
And there were claims in there about Microsoft
36:54
and how it was being used in the war in Gaza.
36:58
Now, it didn't flag in our policy for weapons.
37:02
And so it was new to us.
37:04
But because the way the world moves so quickly, and because particularly
37:08
technology companies are at this interesting intersection with weapons companies now,
37:13
where many weapons require technology to run
37:16
or use technology to enhance themselves.
37:19
There is a crossover now that didn't used to exist.
37:22
How fascinating.
37:23
Weapons used to be guns and bullets and tanks and missiles and aircraft, right?
37:27
It was pretty easy to identify them.
37:30
Even though some of those still had technology used inside them,
37:34
like operating systems, maybe that technology was generic
37:37
and it was also used in car operating systems and stuff
37:40
So you could kind of go, well, the technology is neutral, but the actual weapon bit that I don't want to invest in, that's the plane and the bomb and the whatever.
37:49
Now, weapons are so much more complicated and they include the kind of ability for militaries to enhance their military maneuvers.
38:00
And this was the nature of the claim against Microsoft, which was that Azure cloud services were being used by the IDF, which is the Israeli Defense Force, by a special intelligence unit called 8200 to gather.
38:15
They were gathering, recording a whole lot of Palestinian phone calls, and then they needed to store them.
38:21
And the Guardian reported on this really heavily at the time.
38:23
And according to them, the mantra was to try and collect and record like a million phone calls a day.
38:29
So we're talking about an extraordinary amount of data that they needed to hold somewhere and they didn't have capacity.
38:35
And so they used Microsoft to use their Azure cloud services to hold these calls.
38:42
Then they assessed these calls and the Guardian reported that they were using these calls to identify targets.
38:48
So that very holding of information.
38:51
Holy shit.
38:51
It's just so multifaceted, isn't it?
38:54
It's so not black and white.
38:55
No.
38:56
And that's a perfect example of how the world moves and how you can't just ignore.
39:00
We don't think you can ignore what's going on.
39:03
New uses of technology that maybe didn't flag previously need to be reinvestigated.
39:09
But to your point, is that difficult and hard?
39:12
I think some people who are very data-oriented and want a really simple yes or no, they would
39:17
find that really hard.
39:18
But because I love the why and because Pathfinder serves the audience who want their stocks
39:25
to be analyzed ethically, that's our bread and butter.
39:28
That's like what we live to do.
39:30
One of the things that I find a little bit confusing, and I think this is a really good
39:35
thing to understand if you haven't thought about this, because we actually had a moment
39:40
maybe six months ago where we spoke about Tesla and we had a huge amount of backlash come through.
39:46
And I remember I messaged you at the time, I messaged a bunch of friends being like,
39:48
oh God, I'm feeling really conflicted by this.
39:51
And it's kind of what you're saying,
39:53
you have to constantly assess things.
39:55
And if you don't have the time to be constantly assessing
39:59
your things, that's why having your money with someone like Pathfinder is great because they do
40:02
that for you.
40:03
But it's worth explaining when you're buying shares on the stock market, especially if
40:09
it's not an IPO, so it's not the company going out to get money from the market, it's actually
40:13
you're trading with other investors.
40:15
So you're not trading with the actual owner of that business.
40:20
you're not actually technically giving your money to a business you're you're exchanging with other
40:26
investors and I think that's kind of an interesting thing to bring up because for me I felt a bit
40:32
paralyzed by the idea of oh if I'm investing in Tesla I'm kind of giving money to Elon Musk and
40:38
I hate Elon Musk so I don't want to do that but actually I was like hold on I'm giving it to
40:43
someone else that's bought those shares, not necessarily him.
40:46
So there's this weird sort of
40:48
understanding where I guess in one breath you could argue buying someone's shares isn't directly
40:55
impacting the business, but the other is if people are buying more of a share, it's driving up the
41:01
value of that business, which in turn is giving the founder more money if they have shares, etc.
41:05
So there's kind of this like weird thing.
41:07
Can you just explain maybe how you think about this when
41:11
it comes to your own and maybe it's not necessarily pathfinders approach but yeah how do you think
41:16
about the line of buying shares technically not going into that company yeah it's a it's great
41:23
because I don't think people know about this I certainly didn't know about it for ages it's it's
41:27
what they call a secondary market so um like a primary market would be when you direct invest
41:33
invest directly into like a startup and it couldn't exist without that money going into it
41:37
and it's going directly into the business doing what the business does and that's often like a
41:41
private company that's getting money for investors from investors so like if we took money as the
41:46
curve it's going directly into our business or if we were listing on a public stock exchange and it
41:51
was our first public offering and people could invest in us that money comes straight in the
41:55
doors to us right and then the secondary market is when you're yeah buying and selling shares
42:00
one of the things about that is that they it obviously does a high an increased share price
42:06
equates to, in the world of business, a valuable company, as we know.
42:10
So whilst it's not directly
42:12
going to the company, it's going to the shareholders.
42:14
A lot of the people in the
42:15
company could be shareholders.
42:16
So there is an exchange while being indirect.
42:20
And I mean,
42:20
for example, with Elon Musk, I think he only, my understanding is that he gets paid only in shares.
42:25
So he doesn't get a salary.
42:27
He gets stock value.
42:29
I think he has an enormous salary too,
42:31
bonuses but anyway he definitely gets bonuses based on the stock value but the stock value
42:37
is tied to the performance of the company so which is actually can be a really smart way to
42:41
incentivize people I think the thing with Elon Musk and this is interesting because when when
42:45
I was preparing for this I was trying to think about some of the guidance I could give for an
42:51
individual to think philosophically about what to invest in and what not to invest in and I was
42:57
thinking about Tesla and this immense amount of vitriol and like real, real strong emotional
43:04
sentiment that people feel about the CEO.
43:07
One of the things I was thinking is that emotions
43:11
are really useful, but introduce them to your reasoning, right?
43:15
Like explore and examine why
43:19
you feel the way you feel is another way of saying that.
43:22
So if, for example, you say, I hate Elon
43:25
Musk so I don't want to invest in Tesla.
43:27
That's different from saying I hate Tesla because of the
43:32
wage disparity between Elon Musk and the median staff member.
43:38
One of those is about Tesla and one
43:40
of those is about Elon Musk.
43:43
Elon's a hard example because he's like enmeshed into this
43:47
company, but one of them is more like anchored in a feeling you have personally yourself.
43:52
The other is something that you can point to in the world that's factual.
43:58
You can say he's earning however many hundred times more than the median earner in Tesla.
44:05
Therefore, that's why I hate him.
44:07
And it's also why I don't want to invest in Tesla.
44:10
I think that's an interesting example.
44:11
Let's unpack my hay for Elon Musk for a second.
44:13
Great, do it.
44:14
So I have no issue with him earning lots of money.
44:16
That's not a problem for me.
44:17
He has a
44:18
shitload of stress.
44:19
He runs incredibly successful businesses that would be objectively unbelievably
44:23
stressful.
44:24
I think he totally deserves to be valued for his time.
44:27
I don't have an issue with
44:27
that.
44:28
However, I don't like that he is one of the most powerful people in the world and money comes
44:34
of power so he so he has a lot of influence and things like politics and I don't believe or think
44:41
that he is a good person so it's really difficult for me because I feel like he's so closely linked
44:47
to Tesla however I also see Tesla as a reasonably interesting uh and potentially good investment
44:56
I don't know what my answer there was who thought is what I feel but I don't know how
45:01
how would I look at that and say so I think it's really interesting like one of the things that we
45:06
could say is unique about Tesla and Elon Musk is that there is way more information available
45:12
about him as a personality than there would be about numerous other CEOs of the companies that
45:19
you do invest in like I would probably say to you if you want almost a celebrity he's almost a
45:23
celebrity right and so it's almost by virtue of that you know more about him and also the you
45:29
know a lot, not personally, but you know a lot based on what the press have said about him.
45:34
And so there is this noise that comes with him and it is a political noise.
45:39
People talk about
45:40
it because they have something to win or something that they want someone else to lose.
45:44
And so it's
45:44
loaded.
45:45
I would almost challenge, if you're setting a precedent with your thinking that you
45:50
need to feel morally in alignment with the CEOs that run the companies that you invest in,
45:56
I would probably challenge that that might be quite a hard threshold to keep.
46:00
A, how would you find out about all of them?
46:02
And B, probably they're not going to be the same kind of folks that you would want to
46:06
hang out with, you know, each to their own.
46:08
But it is a really interesting thing when you start to unravel, like, what is it that
46:13
we can really do in the world of investing specifically?
46:16
It's a different question if you go, would I give him money directly?
46:20
No, but you're not.
46:21
You're giving money to him so that he can continue to do the EV work
46:25
and so that he can continue to evolve these kind of robotic technologies.
46:29
So it might be, yes, I'm not going to go for a dinner party with him.
46:32
I don't want to be friends with him.
46:34
I don't want to hear his opinion on XYZ,
46:36
but I can swallow the fact that he is obviously doing a good job
46:40
at the front of a business, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
46:43
And that's how I get comfortable with the decision.
46:45
That might be one way.
46:47
Absolutely, is to be able to divorce a little bit.
46:50
But I mean, to the point with when you're doing ethical investment analysis, one of the things you do consider is governance.
46:56
You know, are there concerns in how the company is being governed?
47:00
And that's really directly the place where we can do an assessment of Elon Musk due to concerns around this and also historical concerns around union rights, union issues.
47:12
Is that sort of how he treats workers?
47:14
Yes.
47:14
Pathfinder chose to divest Tesla about a year ago, I think now.
47:19
And you can read more about
47:20
that on our website.
47:21
But I think it is, yeah, it is a really interesting decision that each
47:24
person needs to make.
47:25
But yeah, question it.
47:26
There's this technique in philosophy called
47:28
universalization, which is a big word for just meaning what would happen if everybody did that.
47:34
It's obviously how you parent children.
47:36
But the question is like, okay, so broadly,
47:39
if you were going to only invest in companies that the CEOs of which you liked,
47:44
how many companies would be available how would you probably not that many yeah before we sort of
47:49
finish this conversation I'd love to leave people listening with some kind of I guess just practical
47:56
insights or ways to start reflecting more on their values and a lot of people don't really know where
48:02
to start with that so could we maybe go through what would be the first step that someone could
48:07
make when it comes to wanting to start thinking about being a little bit more ethical or mindful
48:14
when it comes to their money and whether that's investing or otherwise what's a good kind of
48:19
first stepping stone for someone yeah I think um back to the home of my passion which is philosophy
48:25
and philosophy of ethics um so it's really around asking questions and being able to
48:34
develop your critical thinking.
48:36
So I think a lot of the times people get panicked and they feel
48:39
trapped and they have a really strong emotion and they don't know what action to take as a
48:43
consequence of it.
48:44
Critical thinking and the process of kind of asking philosophical questions
48:48
allows you to unpack that and then explain why you got to where you got to.
48:54
So it gives you some
48:55
breathing room and it allows you to understand yourself better.
48:59
I was thinking about some simple
49:01
things to do to begin the process of approaching things more philosophically.
49:05
And some of them,
49:07
some basics are that you can, and this may sound really primary school, but bear with me,
49:13
ask open-ended questions.
49:14
Why this is important is that sometimes we will ask a question that
49:18
assumes the answer.
49:20
And then we trap people into giving us an answer that already fits the bias
49:24
that we held.
49:25
So if you're genuinely curious about something, try and remove the personal
49:30
feeling you already have about it so that you can learn as much as possible because your position
49:34
might change.
49:34
Instead of saying, is it selfish to invest in oil and gas?
49:38
You might say, what are
49:40
the reasons for someone wanting to invest in oil and gas in 2026?
49:44
Well, you might think it's selfish
49:45
or bad or wrong or whatever.
49:47
You're not going to learn very much if that's the position that
49:49
you're starting from.
49:50
So it can be really interesting to be open-minded and just kind of
49:53
relax a little bit and ask open-ended questions.
49:56
I was also thinking that being open to being
49:58
totally wrong is also really important.
50:01
I just think this is so important and it's really hard
50:04
to do, especially if you're a passionate person, which I imagine a lot of people who care about
50:09
ethics and money are quite passionate, but you're right.
50:11
You have to be, you always have to be open
50:14
to being proved wrong.
50:15
Otherwise there's no point in even having conversations.
50:18
So I think this
50:18
being totally wrong thing is, I think the cornerstone of how we can change the culture
50:23
wars and how we can get ourselves out of the very didactic and very argumentative and not very fun
50:29
place that we find ourselves in.
50:31
There's one of my favorite philosophers, Voltaire has a quote,
50:34
which I love, which is, doubt is uncomfortable, but certainty is absurd.
50:41
I love the sass with
50:42
which that is written, because it is uncomfortable to be in a position where you're not certain,
50:47
but also who are you to say that something's totally, absolutely, obviously right?
50:52
Like,
50:52
you know, I think about scientists.
50:54
They have an idea and then they test it and they test it to try
50:58
and make it fail.
51:00
And if after endless testing, it doesn't fail, they think maybe it might be
51:05
all right until someone else proves it's wrong.
51:07
So think about, you know, a way to do this with
51:09
ethical investing is think again, what is the other side of this?
51:12
Like how would someone,
51:13
what's the opposite way of thinking about this and what's interesting about that?
51:17
Having a position of what's interesting, by the way, rather than what's right
51:21
is also like a really nice way to navigate the world.
51:23
It's much less stressful.
51:25
And then I guess the final bit of,
51:28
like the final tip that I wanted to give
51:30
was one of my favorites,
51:32
which is an encouragement to enjoy the arts.
51:37
So the arts is like where and how we build empathy.
51:41
And the more empathy you have
51:42
for more people outside of yourself,
51:44
the better your reasoning will be,
51:46
the more thorough your logic will be
51:47
because you'll be compassionate
51:49
and being able to understand multiple points of view,
51:52
a little bit like how impressive it is when you meet someone
51:56
who's multilingual because they have the ability to get –
51:59
language is an expression of a culture and they can get inside various cultures.
52:03
But we can do this too by reading books and going to theatre
52:07
and watching films and just remember to not watch
52:10
always American-made films.
52:13
But yeah, it develops your ability to make more interesting,
52:17
to depersonalize issues and find positions you're comfortable with because you can explain them but
52:22
a win-win situation is the best kind so something that takes into account other people as well as
52:26
yourself and just yeah take some of the pressure off yourself don't try and find perfect just try
52:31
and find the best possible answer for now now we've been speaking for a very long time but what
52:36
we wanted to do with the curve and pathfinder because there is just so many questions and
52:44
moral dilemmas that come up with regards to money and morals.
52:48
So we have not workshopped the name.
52:50
I don't know if we're going to call it money and morals, but the whole point is we want this to be
52:54
an ongoing conversation with the Curve community and so that you have access to ask questions
53:00
and for us to explore them to help you make sense of a space that can be really confusing.
53:06
And so Lily is going to be that person, which is so, so exciting, whether it's, I don't know,
53:11
maybe should you invest in oil companies or how do you think about what's happening with the war
53:16
and where your money should go or it might be yeah just overarching like world conflict how can we
53:24
think about that or can we steer clear from that while also making money you know there's consumer
53:29
choices there's climate impact there's so many elements you know and when it comes to spending
53:35
money as a consumer we've gotten really used to the idea of spending money with businesses that
53:40
you want to see grow but the conversation hasn't been extended in a more in-depth way to the way
53:46
that you invest and so I'm really looking forward to having this as an ongoing conversation and
53:50
thread throughout our content and for you to be the person that people can speak to or ask
53:54
questions on so the podcast you'll have like some show notes in there as a link if you want to
53:59
submit any questions that you have you might want to send a voice note we're going to be regularly
54:04
picking ones that we know are going to be interesting to a lot of people answering them
54:08
And I also think because the reality of money and morals is never simple.
54:13
Yeah, I just think hopefully it will make this entire ecosystem feel a little bit less overwhelming, a little bit more transparent, a little bit more nuanced with support and different frameworks to look at things.
54:29
and I think what's amazing about Pathfinder even being open to this is the fact that there's a lot
54:35
of companies that talk about being ethical and there's a lot of there's a lot of greenwashing
54:39
we all know that but I think the courage to stand here and have an ongoing segment where you're
54:45
asking and answering questions about what is right or wrong or how do we approach this or not
54:51
do we invest do we divest and it being such an open forum I think just makes people feel more
54:56
trusting because you're also open to being told differently in the same way that you're telling
55:02
the audience to think about things differently.
55:05
I know for a fact that if someone came to Pathfinder
55:08
and said, hey, can you look at this or can you explain why you've done that?
55:12
You never shy away
55:13
from the truth or the reasoning or the information.
55:16
I think that in a world where there's a lot of
55:19
mistrust and particularly in the financial industry, honestly, for us to be working with
55:25
the brand that is so transparent and open is something I'm really proud of.
55:29
And I'm really
55:30
looking forward to this in general.
55:33
I think that it's going to be so beneficial for so many people.
55:35
Thank you.
55:35
I think absolutely the financial industries have been really impenetrable and
55:41
in many ways intentionally designed to keep people out.
55:45
Even just the words and nomenclature
55:47
that is used, it's like a whole different language.
55:50
And sometimes we're like, could you,
55:51
you know, you see this now decoding financial language, you do it beautifully.
55:54
It's like,
55:54
do you have to say it in that way?
55:56
Yeah we shouldn't even need to decode it doesn't need
55:58
to happen.
55:58
Exactly and so you think about it you're like okay they've got this language that's
56:01
locked us out they've got these rules that we don't understand it's intentional so being able
56:05
to meet people where they are explain things even though they're difficult and tricky and can you
56:10
know but not assuming that our audience isn't smart enough to get it you absolutely are and
56:14
you just haven't had anyone take the time to explain it before so that's what we hope to be
56:19
able to do.
56:20
And we're going to be doing we're going to look at things that are happening in
56:22
the news.
56:22
So for example, the war or maybe Ozempic, like the different weight loss drugs,
56:29
like how do we think about that with a moral lens and just anything that sort of comes into the news
56:35
where we think this is really interesting and there's definitely a moral angle.
56:38
We're going
56:38
to be working with Lily to unpack it more and look at more information that can be shared to
56:44
explain it in a way that maybe people haven't thought about before.
56:46
So yeah, I'm really looking
56:48
forward to it.
56:48
And thank you so much for coming on the podcast and being so open because I know
56:53
traditionally the financial industry and people who work in it are not often like that.
56:58
And I just,
56:59
yeah, so much respect for you and what you're doing.
57:01
So thank you.
57:02
You're very welcome.
57:02
Please edit it kindly.
57:07
Thank you so much for listening to Raising the Curb.
57:09
These conversations are designed to teach
57:11
you everything you need to know to be better with your money, from saving to investing,
57:14
to talking with your friends about your salaries, all of that stuff.
57:17
And if you like what you heard,
57:18
we would love if you could please hit subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a comment.
57:22
Let us know what you thought about the episode.
57:24
And it only takes one second and it would really
57:27
make our week, our month, our year.
57:28
Yeah.
57:29
Yeah.
57:29
So please do it.
57:30
Okay.
57:30
Love you.
57:31
Bye.
57:32
Okay, quickly, the curve was created to empower and educate you about investing,
57:36
but we are not financial advisors.
57:38
Our platform exists for educational purposes only,
57:41
and it doesn't provide personalized investing advice for your individual needs and should not
57:44
be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision.
57:48
And always remember to do your own
57:49
research before making any investment or financial decision.
57:52
We're here for any knowledge and support
57:54
you need, but the final call is always yours.
57:56
And thanks for being here.
57:58
You got this.
57:58
Yeah,
57:59
we know you got this.