money scripts: voting (part 2)

To me, a money script is something that I believe I should do in connection to money, based primarily on something I absorbed as a child. I wrote earlier, that I was taught that it is important to vote, and this can actually provide financial benefits. As there are local elections coming up soon, I thought I'd discuss my second money script in connection with voting. This concerns who you should be voting for.

The script that I have, is that you shouldn't vote for the person that will make you best off, but for the person that would be best for society as a whole. This is generally how I try to vote. If I think about it rationally, do I think that this is a good idea?

I try to be a good person as I live my life (as I'm sure most other people do). As part of this, I realise that I am very priviledged in comparison with people in the rest of the world. In fact, I'm priviledged in comparison with a lot of people living in my own country. A good person would try and do something about this and improve other people's position. I'm trying to be a good person, so I should try and improve other people's position and one of the opportunities I have, is through my vote. So, overall, I think that I should vote for the benefit of everyone, not just myself.

How does this impact on my personal finances? Well, it means that I sometimes vote for people and policies that will make me worse off financially. But it wouldn't be better for society if I was a net beneficiary, so once policies are decided, I seek to minimise their negative effects on me. For example, I accept that raising the state pension age is beneficial to society and vote in favour of it, but to compensate, I plan to save and invest more so that this won't harm me.

What do you think? Should a person interested in improving their personal finances vote for policies that will benefit them, or not?

fair trade ethics?

When I buy coffee and tea to use at home, I make a point of always buying fairly traded brands. When I make teas and coffees at work, I always use the fair trade option rather than the Nescafe. I pride myself on these choices.

Yet when I go to a coffee house in town, I never ask for fair trade coffee. I never really bother to buy fair trade chocolate as I prefer cheaper Cadburys that I used to eat as a kid. I don't buy fair trade bananas, or flowers, or in fact anything else.

Should I be hanging my head in shame instead of being proud of my fair trade coffee round at work?Probably.

I don't know about you, but its hard to be consistently ethical, even when I've decided that something is important. Its so easy to just buy the cheapest brand, or forget to ask for the better option. From now on, I'm going to try harder. I will be attempting to trade as fairly as possible. But when no fair trade product is available in the shop should I avoid the un-fair trade products or should I buy them anyway as surely some of the money goes to the third world producers?

Being an ethical shopper is certainly never easy for me.

credit card ads

Last night, I was watching some rubbish on tv. It was on one of the commercial channels so I was plagued by ad breaks every quarter of an hour or so. One of the ads was for a Capital One credit card. It was advertising that Capital One has a lower interest rate than some other banks, and maybe you should switch to them to stop the interest from dragging you down.

This advert got me to thinking. If adverts reflect society then that means that its ok as far as society is concerned to be permanently in debt. But if you are forever in debt, then how can you get ahead. I find it really difficult to conceive of amassing any great sum of money, and think that it woud be a lot easier to try to get out of debt as at least you would have a goal to aim at. But then, how much harder must it be to contemplate having any money. And how much money must you spend on finance.

I guess people don't think about it too much. What should I be doing to change this? How can we make saving and investing more attractive?

mentally spending a non-existant windfall

Recently I was lucky enough to receive a substantial windfall of shares. I knew about six months in advance what the likely amount of it would be and I planned to spend it mainly on a deposit for my first house.

Having the time to decide how to spend it made me think that it might be useful to have an idea how I would spend any further substantial windfalls. This idea is also explored in Chapter 15 of The Bogleheads Guide to Investing which was the subject of a blog book review.

My favourite windfall would come from winning £125,000 on Who Wants to be a Millionaire and my least favourite is an inheritance from my parents, but I’ve decided that my general principles hold for any windfall above £5000. I would spend up to 60% of the total paying a big chunk off the mortgage, donate 10% to charity, spend 2.5% indulgently on myself and my family and up to 25% on having a large emergency savings pot. If there was any money left over, I’d invest it – probably after considering the options carefully for a few months.

What would you do with a windfall?