+
upworthy
More

Millennials are making money by investing in the future.

True
The Rockefeller Foundation

If you invest $30,000 in three specific stocks, you could triple your money in 10 years.

At least that’s what acclaimed financial analyst Malcolm Berko wrote in his advice column last year.

The stocks you’d have to invest in, he said, are Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Lockheed Martin — three defense companies. In other words, what he’s saying is: You could triple your money in 10 years, but you’d be capitalizing on the U.S. revving up its defense spending.


But here’s the thing: Some investors, especially millennials, aren’t concerned with only the returns.

Image via iStock.

As a generation, millennials want to put their money into stocks that are good for the world.

They’ve seen firsthand how much can change in 25 years. They’ve seen technology move at warp speed, lived through major policy shifts, and watched the world’s population grow. They know they can effect change in the next 25 years — and they know we need change.

Millennials are also more apt to distrust financial institutions. As a generation, they had to enter the workforce amid record high unemployment rates, stagnant wages, and larger student debt bills than any previous generation. That’s why many millennials want to take financial matters into their own hands.

In the next several decades, an estimated $30 trillion will be passed down from baby boomers to younger generations. That means $30 trillion of the world’s assets could be reallocated into humanitarian endeavors.

In addition, by 2020, millennials will comprise 46% of the workforce, and as they become the primary earners, they will have an even greater effect on investing in this country.  

Image via iStock.

In fact, they may well be the first generation that considers making the world a better place along with investment returns.

And it makes sense if you think about it: This is the generation that was promised a return on investment on their college tuition and instead got stuck with a massive bill and waning job prospects. The world they grew up in taught them to put less stock into promised returns and care more about tangible value.

But there is a smart way for millennials to invest in making the world a better place. It’s called impact investing.

Impact investing essentially means putting money into causes that effect social change, explains Adam Connaker, an associate at The Rockefeller Foundation, a foundation that is working to solve the world’s biggest and most entrenched challenges through innovative finance mechanisms.

“You have a right as an investor, no matter your size, to ask what impact your investments are having in the world,” says Connaker.

If the projects do well, the investors see good returns on their investments. It proves altruism and making money on your investments are not mutually exclusive.

Eric Letsinger, founder and CEO of Quantified Ventures, says we are witnessing the largest transfer of wealth in our country’s history, while simultaneously seeing government funding for health, social, and environmental programs dry up. As a result, impact investing will likely get a huge boost from millennial investors thanks to inherited and newly accumulated wealth.

Many of these impact investing projects allow members of a community to invest in public works that will improve their own neighborhoods. For example, Jason Anderson, president and CEO of Neighborly Securities, worked on a deal in Burlington, Vermont, that encouraged residents to invest in public projects like building sidewalks, rehabilitating bike paths, and improving waterfront access to Lake Champlain.

Photo via Garrett Brinker/Neighborly.

“We've talked to resident investors up in Burlington who told us that the main reason they invested in the issuance was because they commute to and from work on that bike path every day,” says Anderson. “Because of their investment in the city, they can have a direct impact on that rehabilitation project.”

Putting money into city-centric or environmental initiatives allows investors to directly affect the future of our communities.

Image via iStock.

Letsinger says that in 2016, they worked on an environmental impact bond with DC Water. The project financed green infrastructure as an alternative to building large concrete tunnels for Washington, D.C.’s water utility.

“If the project succeeds, it presents a win-win to both the investors and DC Water: The investors earn a higher return than they would have on a standard municipal bond from DC Water, and DC Water has then proven that green infrastructure is highly cost-effective,” explains Letsinger.

In addition to the high returns for investors, the DC Water investment helped create green jobs and improve neighborhoods, and the success of this project will have future implications when it comes to making cities more environmentally friendly.

Because many millennials are a generation that would rather see green infrastructure go up in their neighborhood than watch their bank balance go up on a computer screen, they’re the first generation that could make impact investing the norm.

If the millennial generation commits to investing in causes, it could change how we see money.

Image via iStock.

In fact, Letsinger says that most of the impact investors his company works with are millennials. Working with clients who are motivated not just by making money but by improving the world for future generations allows impact investing firms to target niche causes in various communities around the world.

He also says 2017 was a particularly good year for impact investing, which bodes well at such an early stage. He means that the returns on investment were good — but also that they saw more interest among people looking to make a difference.

With impact investing, “values and returns can coexist, allowing investors to fight climate change, produce more affordable housing, and develop clean energy,” says Anderson.

If this trend continues, 20 years from now, financial advisers might be primarily offering environmental causes to invest in, rather than defense stocks.

Putting some savings into investments is something most people either already do or are going to do in the coming years. That doesn’t need to change — what can change is where we put that money.

We can no longer rely on our government to fund the social and environmental efforts needed to improve our society and planet as a whole. This financial shift to impact investing will allow us to pool our money with other people who also want to create positive change. As a result, it can happen on a larger scale than we ever thought possible. Plus, as an added bonus, you’ll likely find you can do well for yourself while simultaneously doing good in the world.

For more than 100 years, The Rockefeller Foundation’s mission has been to promote the well-being of humanity throughout the world. Together with partners and grantees, The Rockefeller Foundation strives to catalyze and scale transformative innovations, create unlikely partnerships that span sectors, and take risks others cannot — or will not.

Health

4 simple hacks to help you meet your healthy eating goals

Trying to eat healthier? Try these 4 totally doable tricks.

Photo by Anna Pelzer on Unsplash

Most of us want to eat healthier but need some help to make it happen.

True

When it comes to choosing what to eat, we live in a uniquely challenging era. Never before have humans known more about nutrition and how to eat for optimal health, and yet we’ve never been more surrounded by distractions and temptations that derail us from making healthy choices.

Some people might be able to decide “I’m going to eat healthier!” and do so without any problem, but those folks are unicorns. Most of us know what we should do, but need a little help making it happen—like some simple hacks, tips and tricks for avoiding pitfalls on the road to healthier eating.

While recognizing that what works for one person may not work for another, here are some helpful habits and approaches that might help you move closer to your healthy eating goals.

man pulling chip out of a chip bagOur mouths loves chips. Our bodies not so much.Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash

Goal: Snack on less junk food

Tip: Focus your willpower on the grocery store, not your home

Willpower is a limited commodity for most of us, and it is no match for a bag of potato chips sitting on top of the fridge. It’s just a fact. Channeling your willpower at the grocery store can save you from having to fight that battle at home. If you don’t bring chips into your house in the first place, you’ll find it a lot easier to reach for something healthier.

The key to successful shopping trips is to always go to the store with a specific list and a full stomach—you’ll feel much less tempted to buy the junky snack foods if you’re already satiated. Also, finding healthier alternatives that will still satisfy your cravings for salty or crunchy, or fatty foods helps. Sugar snap peas have a surprisingly satisfying crunch, apples and nut butter hit that sweet-and-salty craving, etc.

slice of cakeYou can eat well without giving up sweets completely.Photo by Caitlyn de Wild on Unsplash

Goal: Eat less sugar

Tip: Instead of “deprive,” think “delay” or “decrease and delight”

Sugar is a tricky one. Some people find it easier to cut out added sugars altogether, but that can create an all-or-nothing mindset that all too often results in “all.” Eating more whole foods and less processed foods can help us cut out a lot of ancillary sugar, but we still live in a world with birthday cakes and dessert courses.

One approach to dessert temptation is to delay instead of deprive. Tell yourself you can have any sweet you want…tomorrow. This mental trick flips the “I’ll just indulge today and start eating healthier tomorrow” idea on its head. It’s a lot easier to resist something you know you can have tomorrow than to say no to something you think you’ll never get to have again.

Another approach when you really want to enjoy a dessert at that moment is to decrease the amount and really truly savor it. Eat each bite slowly, delighting in the full taste and satisfaction of it. As soon as that delight starts to diminish, even a little, stop eating. You’ve gotten what you wanted out of it. You don’t have to finish it. (After all, you can always have more tomorrow!)

colorful fresh food on a plateA naturally colorful meal is a healthy meal.Photo by Anna Pelzer on Unsplash

Goal: Eat healthier meals

Tip: Focus on fresh foods and plan meals ahead of time

Meal planning is easier than ever before. The internet is filled with countless tools—everything from recipes to shopping lists to meal planning apps—and it’s as awesome as it is overwhelming.

Planning ahead takes the guesswork and decision fatigue out of cooking, preventing the inevitable “Let’s just order a pizza.” You can have a repeating 3-week or 4-week menu of your favorite meals so you never have to think about what you’re going to eat, or you can meal plan once a week to try new recipes and keep things fresh.

It might help to designate one day a week to “shop and chop”—getting and prepping the ingredients for the week’s meals so they’re ready to go in your fridge or freezer.

woman holding blueberries in her handsOrganic foods are better for the Earth and for us.Photo by andrew welch on Unsplash

Goal: Eat more organic/humanely raised food

Tip: Utilize the “dirty dozen” and “clean 15” lists to prioritize

Many people choose organic because they want to avoid pesticides and other potentially harmful chemicals. Organic food is also better for the planet, and according to the Mayo Clinic, studies have shown that organic produce is higher in certain nutrients.

Most people don’t buy everything organic, but there are some foods that should take priority over others. Each year, researchers from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) analyze thousands of samples of dozens of fruits and vegetables. From this data, they create a list of the “Dirty Dozen” and “Clean 15” fruits and vegetables, indicating what produce has the most and least pesticide residue. These lists give people a good place to start focusing their transition to more organic foods.

To make organic eating even simpler, you can shop O Organics® at your local Albertsons or Safeway stores. The O Organics brand offers a wide range of affordable USDA-certified organic products in every aisle. If you’re focusing on fresh foods, O Organics produce is always grown without synthetic pesticides, is farmed to conserve biodiversity, and is always non-GMO. All animal-based O Organics products are certified humane as well. Even switching part of your grocery list to organic can make a positive impact on the planet and the people you feed.

Healthy eating habits don’t have to be all or nothing, and they don’t have to be complicated. A few simple mindset changes at home and habit changes at the grocery store can make a big difference.

Around 1 a.m. on April 24, semi-truck drivers in the Oak Park area of Michigan received a distress call from area police: An unidentified man was standing on the edge of a local bridge, apparently ready to jump onto the freeway below.

Those drivers then did something amazing. They raced to the scene to help — and lined up their trucks under the bridge, providing a relatively safe landing space should the man jump.

Keep ReadingShow less
Family

12 hilariously relatable comics about life as a new mom.

Embarrassing stains on your T-shirt, sniffing someone's bum to check if they have pooped, the first time having sex post-giving birth — as a new mom, your life turns upside-down.

All illustrations by Ingebritt ter Veld. Reprinted here with permission.

Some good not so good moments with babies.



Embarrassing stains on your T-shirt, sniffing someone's bum to check if they have pooped, the first time having sex post-giving birth — as a new mom, your life turns upside-down.

Illustrator Ingebritt ter Veld and Corinne de Vries, who works for Hippe-Birth Cards, a webshop for birth announcements, had babies shortly after one another.

Keep ReadingShow less
Education

3,700-year-old Babylonian stone tablet gets translated, changes history

They were doing trigonometry 1500 years before the Greeks.

via UNSW

Dr. Daniel Mansfield and his team at the University of New South Wales in Australia have just made an incredible discovery. While studying a 3,700-year-old tablet from the ancient civilization of Babylon, they found evidence that the Babylonians were doing something astounding: trigonometry!

Most historians have credited the Greeks with creating the study of triangles' sides and angles, but this tablet presents indisputable evidence that the Babylonians were using the technique 1,500 years before the Greeks ever were.

Keep ReadingShow less
Health

Women shared how they make sexist men explain their nasty jokes, and it's so satisfying

Making them sit in the discomfort of their own filth is an excellent way to shut that garbage down.


Ask almost any woman about a time a man said or did something sexually inappropriate to them, and she'll have a story or four to tell. According to a survey NPR published last year, 81% of women report having experienced sexual harassment, with verbal harassment being the most common. (By contrast, 43% of men report being sexually harassed. Naturally harassment toward anyone of any sex or gender is not okay, but women have been putting up with this ish unchecked for centuries.)

One form of verbal sexual harassment is the all too common sexist or sexual "joke." Ha ha ha, I'm going to say something explicit or demeaning about you and then we can all laugh about how hilarious it is. And I'll probably get away with it because you'll be too embarrassed to say anything, and if you do you'll be accused of being overly sensitive. Ha! Won't that be a hoot?

Keep ReadingShow less

People started a viral thread about the most random facts they know

Certain people have an innate ability to remember random facts. They are great at trivia but can also be insufferable know-it-alls.

So why are some people better at recalling random facts than others? Researchers in Europe believe that it's because their brains are more efficiently wired than other people's.

"We assume that more efficient networking of the brain contributes to better integration of pieces of information and thus leads to better results in a general knowledge test," biopsychologist Erhan Genc, from Ruhr University Bochum, said according to Science Alert.

Keep ReadingShow less
via NASA

Back in the late '80s, NASA was looking for ways to detoxify the air in its space stations. So it conducted a study to determine the most effective plants for filtering the air of toxic agents and converting carbon dioxide to oxygen.

Keep ReadingShow less