In a fit of generosity due to my student loan coming through, I signed up to donate $10 a month to Environment California when a canvasser accosted me while coming out of Trader Joe’s yesterday. Apparently, a solar-energy bill, dubbed the Million Solar Roofs Initiative, needs 2 more votes to get through the Appropriations committee in Cali. The deadline’s tomorrow.
Did anyone else in SoCal know about this? When I got home, I saw Treehugger had posted an update. But until yesterday, this was news to me — (**Update, 9/9/05: The Millian Solar Roofs Initiative got killed! It got through the appropriations committee, but died due to political feuding between the democrats and the governator! C’mon blue senators — We can do better than this. I’m disillusioned enough about the Republicans in power, without Dems adding more pain to the mix. An excellent editorial from the LA Times here.)
Anyway: I’ve no more money to spend this week, but in order not to study for my qualifying exams, I looked through Environment California’s intro packet and read about Green Century Funds, enviro-socially responsible mutual funds founded by enviro-advocacy groups.
I don’t think I’d even have an IRA if it hadn’t been for my brief stint at a mutual fund company before making a mad dash out of the 9-5 world. The company had an amazing retirement plan though, kicking in the equivalent of 10% 15% of my annual pay into a retirement fund for me, without my ever contributing a cent. Too bad I left after a little over a year — I was only 10% vested.
Still, the retirement plan converted into an IRA when I left, and now I’m gonna transfer the long-neglected thing to Green Century, converting it into a Roth while I’m at it since Suze says that’s the way to go.
Damn — I should’ve waited a few weeks before transferring all my mom’s stuff to Washington Mutual –
August 26th, 2005 at 1:08 am
I haven’t looked into any kind of green IRA, but I know that when we set up our 401k, all the funds we selected (there are a bunch and you disperse the fundage over a spectrum to keep your return fairly stable) were specifically chosen to be as green as possible, with a few corporations that we absolutely did NOT want to invest in at all (so avoided funds that might buy into them, etc.).
I think that’s wise activism for anyone trying to sock a little away. I’ll have to look into the IRA thing when mine rolls over.
August 29th, 2005 at 7:21 pm
An update on the Million Solar Roofs bill: It passed with a vote of 13-5. Now it’s out of the appropriations committee. One hurdle left: the Assembly Floor.
More to come –