One-Cent Banana Split

Read Time / 2 Minutes

Theme / Ethical Investing

Which banana to choose?   It was an important decision because it was a financial decision.  Choose the right banana and the banana split would cost one cent.  Choose the wrong banana and it would be full price.  My parents did the paying, but I did the picking!

It was a Sunday evening ritual.  After Sunday evening service our family would often join another family at the local ice-cream shop, where a bowl of bananas was waiting.  Each banana had a tightly folded piece of white paper taped to it, containing the price for a banana split.  As a grade-schooler, I would either be excited or disappointed depending on my choice.  The right choice, however, was purely by chance.

Picking a banana by chance is one thing but approaching life by chance is another thing, especially when investing for the future.  Making investment decisions should be based on research, not luck.  For example, ethical investing is a growing trend in the investment world.  With the rise of technology, investing firms have more ability to research the multiple layers of supply-chains to uncover unfair labor practices – including forced labor.

With the growing insight we have into supply-chains, we can be more strategic in our investment decisions.   Let’s invest through investment firms that investigate the bowels of supply-chains to see if there are people-groups, in remote parts of the world, who are essentially serving as slaves with no hope of fair treatment.  Perhaps wisdom from the past speaks to us today: “Dead flies make the perfumer’s ointment give off a stench, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor” (Ecclesiastes 10:1).

As a child, I occasionally chose a one-cent banana.  I was lucky.  Let’s not make luck our approach to investing ethically.

Doug Hanson, MBA

Wealth Advisor

208.697.3699

doug@christianwm.com