Invest in a Pension Plan

I am looking into a Pension plan. This is going to be a big commitment from my side and I would love that the money I invest would be used for sustainable projects. Would Tomorrow have a pension plan soon or does Tomorrow partner with some investment company or institution which provides such a service?

If you guys have experience with something similar let me know :slight_smile:

I don’t know much about this topic, but ökoworld is often promoted as a real sustainable provider. Apparently they do not have their website in English, but if you are really interested you can contact them and probably they can give you the information you need.

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I think Tomorrow is planning a Fond to invest in but hasn’t talked about details yet.

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I don’t have extensive knowledge about this, but here is another provider for looking into it: Umweltbank offers a variety of options, from Riester contracts (pension plan where one gets state contribution) to more old school pension plans.

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Wow, guys thank you a lot for your answers, I will check those links. I also hope Tomorrow will do create a pension plan, it makes total sense to me, to invest in a better future and environment where is worth to retire :slight_smile:

@Paolo Just to give you an insight into Tomorrow: I guess it depends a bit on the terminology. If you talk about a pension fund (which many companies in Germany offer and support chip in together with you partially), then it will be really tough to find something worth investing in. The reason being, that sustainable pension funds are so low in margin, that you’ll barely cover the inflation rate. Only advantage: well, they’re sustainable.

My suggestion would be to go for the most sustainable fond/etf. We’re currently working on one. It won’t be as lucrative as some you’ll find out there. But in comparison to all truly sustainable fonds, we’ll most likely get you the best results and charge the lowest fees.
For the time being you can browse your way through the web. You can start here (Finanztip.de) and here (ecoreporter) (Sorry, German only. Google Translate will help you though :slight_smile: ).

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Thanks will look into it :slight_smile:

Finanztip recommends IE00B57X3V84, which has Nestle as 3rd biggest Share…

In this article the compilation of the MSCI World SRI is also outdated. There’s no McDonalds included anymore. I’m also invested into this ETF and I can recommend it. It outperformed any other MSCI World ETF in the last year, even in the pandemic, almost a 28% yield. You can invest into it for free (no transaction costs through a monthly plan, only the 0,2% total expands ratio) through Trade Republic, which is a partner of Solarisbank too, so your transferred money from Tomorrow is almost immediately on your TR account.

But to anyone who reads this: Inform yourself, you’re your best investment advisor. That’s the way I did it :wink:

Cheers

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McDonald’s und Nestle. Sehr nachhaltig…

When looking for sustainable ETFs I can recommend to double check the selected Fond here: https://www.faire-fonds.info/
They have a lot of ETFs categorized and rated under different sustainable and social criteria!

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Hey thanks for your input @Lars. I admit, that I haven’t checked their recommendation thoroughly. It is worth noting that finanztip is not per se an entity to give advice on particular investment. Their objective is more or less to educate and to interest people in financial topics. Their content is nevertheless a great first source for anyone to get started on personal finance.

@Richi Thanks for the pointers. The website looks pretty cool. + Facing Finance is a great initiative to keep in mind when browsing for sustainable financial choices.

I have no idea what you are writing :sweat_smile:, I think I need to educate myself a bit. Any idea where someone can have some info explained in an easy way?

Unfortunately German only, but this is a great company for financial education: https://www.finanztip.de → Use Google Translate.

As mentioned by @Richi, Fair Finance is a great organisation. They don’t primarily occupy themselves with financial education. But they’re great for getting the latest news on the financial industry and education on a more institutional and international level: https://www.facing-finance.org/en/

Edit: Anybody got good FinEd sources in English? I’d be happy to get those for future reference :slight_smile:

@Paolo, here are a couple of things you can think about:

„Pension plan“ means a couple of things. First, there are saving plans where the government pays you a contribution. They are labeled „Riester“. What product one can get under the „Riester“ label is very divers. From traditional insurance plans, to savings builder accounts, to fonds and ETF portfolios. Each of them might have benefits depending on your personal situation. Riester contracts are available for employees, not business owners (I am generalizing a little, it’s more complex, but true for most people.)

Then you’ve got all kinds of „pension plans“ without state contribution, and their idea is that they invest in higher interest/higher risk investments during the savings period and shift towards more secure/lower interest investments when coming closer to retirement.

A typical employee in Germany might decide to sign up for a Riester product to profit from the contributions, but not to pay every penny into it, just enough to maximize the contributions. And additional money then might go into an ETF portfolio, life insurance, and so on.

Here’s an example for an ETF based strategy: Qurion provides ETF portfolios for both purposes, investing and saving for retirement, and they show here how the strategy differs between those portfolios. (I just picked Quirion because they explain it well and they offer portfolios that are focused on sustainability or meant for retirement – so I think it’s a good starting point to look at the differences, but there are many others.)

So if you don’t mind the extra effort, you could plan your individual strategy similar to what Qurion is doing: invest in a sustainable ETF portfolio where the ETFs are in line with your idea of sustainability and switch to a different strategy like the one Quirion calls „Altersvorsorge“ when you get closer to retirement. Assuming retirement isn’t around the corner for you, I can imagine many providers, including Tomorrow, coming up with more sustainable offerings in the future that might be appealing when it’s time to switch strategies.

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Thank you a lot for taking the time to write this :slight_smile: I will look into it. Your tips have already helped me a lot. Also, love the community spirit.

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Many thanks for the links and the recommendations! Since there is no accepted definition of what qualifies as SRI/ESG/green investment fund, there are so many products out there that put these letters in their name to piggyback on the current trend. Like some other commenters alluded to above, if you look at their actual composition, you really start to wonder what kind of companies suddenly qualify as sustainable… I think if you actually want to pick companies with a sustainable mission and a positive impact, there’s no way around (managed) mutual funds that actively screen companies against a list of criteria like their contribution towards the sustainable development goals and negative criteria like weapons, gambling, etc. Sure, that research comes at a cost that is higher than a simple index fund, and that’s why I’m really looking forward to the product that Tomorrow is about to launch in the hopefully not too distant future!

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Hello guys Ive just bought a magazine by Stiftung Warentest about Anlegen mit ETF für Einsteiger und Profis. It also focuses on Nachhaltige ETF. Looking forward to learn more about it. Will probably be a big challenge for my german as well :slight_smile: but I am confident.
@Vinz any news about the new Tomorrow investment products? :slight_smile:

Die EU möchte festlegen, wann Unternehmen und Banken das Wort nachhaltig in ihrer Werbung nutzen dürfen.

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