Ethical saving

kafkaf99

I have an old ISA that needs updating to one that actually gains some interest which contains £20k of my life's savings. I'm 40 and in low wage employment so saving is much more difficult for me than it used to be but I do have £3k in easy access savings in the bank for emergencies.
I want my money to reflect my sustainability values but I also want it to work hard for me so that I can retire comfortably, so have been looking into ethical savings and investment options. I am going to part-transfer my ISA savings to Triodos Ethical Cash ISA (0.45%) but I would also like to try a S&S ISA as well. Triodos offer an ethical S&S ISA but I'm not sure whether there are limitations I need to be aware of. Any advice would be appreciated.
I did think another option would be to try the latter with a £2.5k investment and compare it to £2.5k investment in Vanguard or another provider offering a mixed global standard fund with sustainable portfolio. I realise this would mean paying multiple platform fees and different provider's charges, keeping track of them all over the 7-10yr + period I'm proposing but it could be an interesting experiment.
Anything outside of the cash ISA route is new for me but I have been doing my research into other options for a while and would like to dabble in s&s. Hence me arriving here to see if you can help me find a balanced way of managing my values and risk with my life savings.
Thanks in advance for any guidance you can give me.

masonic

The 0.4% S&S ISA platform fee looks relatively expensive and the more you invest the more those fees will mount up. The management charges of the few funds they offer look reasonable, so a useful step would be to compare past performance and OCF with alternative funds that are available from a cheap whole of market provider. It would be better to back-test the various options rather than try to spread your money between them to see how they perform. "Ethical" means different things to different people, so there may be ethical funds that don't meet your ideals, and funds without an explicit ethical label that you might find suitable to include. Greater choice can be useful in that respect.

Similarly with the cash aspect, there may be other options such as higher rate Sharia compliant savings products, depending on what it is you wish to avoid having your money used for.

kafkaf99

Thanks for your guidance @masonic. It's great to get a more experienced point of view. I will compare past performance as you've suggested rather than trying to spread my money between them.
I am keen to steer away from investment in fossil fuels as much as possible which seems to go against a lot of the usual s&s guidance for achieving high yields because I get the impression I'm having to compromise by spending more on charges and working with a much narrower market. I'll go back to doing some more research.
If anyone can share their experience of these nuances, what works best, and whether my idea of having to compromise this way is a good assumption to make, I'd be really grateful. Thanks again. 

richardsmith911

I've come across these new players Clim8 Invest they have not launched yet but they offer S&S ISA and also, seem to do sustainable investing. I have not really heard of these before, have you? From the grand scheme of things, they sound different, esp with their referral incentive of planting a tree instead of throwing money away. 

I've signed up to their waitlist, will keep you posted how it is once they've launched. 

kafkaf99

Thanks @richardsmith911. Clim8 Invest looks like a really interesting prospect. I'll be keeping an eye on their launch now too.
Thanks for sharing your findings. The responses I've had remind me how this forum is such a goldmine of valuable information.

Albermarle

You might have seen that Triodos have also a crowdfunding site . There have been a lot of negative issues with crowdfunding /P2P but this site is somewhat different , which you would expect as it is directly linked to an established and ethical bank.
They offer long term bonds in ethical and green investments, although opportunities only come up from time to time .Typically the bonds offer around 4.5% return over > 10 years . Of course  there are no guarantees you will get your money back and the bonds are not easily tradeable/sellable before the end date.
However the due diligence on the crowdfunded bonds is far superior to what you normally see with crowdfunding and in many cases Triodos are lending money directly at the same time. 

Gulpiyuri

 richardsmith911 said:

I've come across these new players Clim8 Invest they have not launched yet but they offer S&S ISA and also, seem to do sustainable investing. I have not really heard of these before, have you? From the grand scheme of things, they sound different, esp with their referral incentive of planting a tree instead of throwing money away. 

I've signed up to their waitlist, will keep you posted how it is once they've launched. 

Planting a tree for signing up on the waitlist? That's original! 

beetleboy72

Most of the main platforms offer ESG funds now. Interactive investor have a list of their top 30. That might be a good place to do some research?