Lazy Man and Money

Should you Invest in Water?

by 2 Comments

invest in water

World Water Day was earlier this week. Did you miss it? I did too. It’s better late than never, right?

Did you know there are 2 billion people without access to safe water? (Source: WorldWaterDay.org) That’s crazy. It’s one-quarter of the people on the planet.

Fortunately, the water in the United States is generally very good. In most places, you can get water very easily. Much of the time it is free. (The US isn’t perfect. There are the Flint, Michigan problems and our infrastructure is aging. We also have some extreme droughts in the southwest states.)

When we think of clean water, we think about environmental issues such as global warming and pollution. Those are certainly huge problems, and a great topic for Earth Day in April. Instead, today, I’d like to cover a water topic that few people seem to write about – investing in water.

Investing in water may sound silly. It’s not gold or oil or whatever you would think is a precious commodity to invest in. However, I think those climate change and pollution issues are going to make water an ever-increasing precious resource. Let’s face it, water is the most important resource. Humans can live without gold or oil – water is a completely different story.

Do you remember Cape Town’s water crisis of 2018? They almost ran out of water completely. There was a lot of talk about hitting “Day Zero” when there would be no water. Fortunately, they were able to take a number of steps to buy time and allow the rainfall to catch up. Today, Cape Town is in a good place.

It may seem like there’s plenty of water on the Earth. There is. However, only 1% of the Earth’s water is available and drinkable. The vast majority is saltwater. We can make that saltwater into drinking water, but the process of desalination isn’t cheap or easy.

Investing in Water

It turns out that there are several different water indexes out there. Some examples are:

  • Dow Jones U.S. Water Index (DJUSWU)
  • S&P Global Water Index
  • ISE Clean Edge Water Index

Unfortunately, those indexes created by companies aren’t very useful unless you can actually invest in them. You need an ETF or a mutual fund that you can buy. Fortunately, it looks like there are a few to choose from:

PowerShares Global Water ETF (NYSE: PIO) – This ETF focuses on companies that conserve and purify water globally.
PowerShares Water Resource ETF (NYSE: PHO) – This ETF focuses on companies that conserve and purify water in the United States.
Guggenheim S&P Global Water ETF (NYSE: CGW) – Like PIO, this ETF focuses on companies that conserve and purify water globally. It tracks a slightly different index, but it doesn’t differ too much from PIO. It has the lowest expense ratio of any of the water ETFs I looked at with a 0.57% expense ratio.

If I were to pick one ETF, I’d go with CGW. It has the lowest expense ratio and it is the most diversified. I would eliminate PHO because it lacks the global exposure of the other two ETFs. The performance of CGW and PIO is very, very similar over the last 5 years, so CGW wins with the lower expenses.

How Much Should You Invest in Water

If you’ve been convinced to invest in water, the next question is, “How much should you invest?”

That’s a difficult question. On one hand, water is a very narrow sector. It’s not very diversified at all. On the other hand, the water companies aren’t going away any time soon and I can see the sector growing a lot. It reminds me of investing in solar which has done very well for me since 2015.

Finally, there’s the idea that investing in clean water is… well… just a good thing. It’s investing in something that can only help humankind.

In the end, I’d say it’s probably appropriate for anywhere between 1-3% of your total portfolio. You’ll likely already have some of the companies in index funds. I try not to put too much emphasis on individual sectors. The issue with investing 1-3% of your money is that even if the water investments explode, your portfolio probably won’t see huge gains.

What do you think? Are you going to invest in water? Leave me a comment below and let me know.

Investing for 2030

by 2 Comments

As a personal finance blogger, I should be encouraging you to put your money in index funds with low expenses. It’s one of the few things that nearly all personal finance people agree upon. For example, this Lazy portfolio is built with almost all Vanguard funds.

That’s boring. While boring may be best, let’s pretend that your investing tastes are a little more crazy than the basic bread and water. Let’s say you want to spice it up. After a 10-year bull market, I’m managing stock market risk different nowadays.

I don’t believe that means that you have to sit back in extremely conservative investments and wait for a crash. You could have made to case to do that in 2015 and you would have missed out on years of great growth.

Instead, I’m combining the ideas of managing the risk with some investing ideas that I think will pay off by 2030.

Environmental Trends

We may or may not get a green new deal. Even if we don’t, anyone with any kind of intelligence is delivering warnings about the effects of climate change. For once, it isn’t just landing on deaf ears. Companies are changing how they operate. Microsoft vowed to undo all the carbon emmissions it has ever created by 2050.

Solar stocks would figure to one the big winners of the next 10 years. I recommended investing in solar in 2015 and feel even more strongly about it now. My investing pick is the Invesco Solar ETF (Ticker: TAN) which I’ve personally held for a long time. It’s expense ratio is a little high at 0.7%, but I think it’s worth it. I don’t know much about individual solar companies, so this is one way that I can simply invest in the whole trend.

Over the last few years, I’ve read that a lack of water is going to be the Next Big Trend. We saw a little of this with the Cape Town water crisis a couple of years back. I have to admit, conserving water is an old story. I remember hearing about it more than 35 years ago when I was 7. I don’t think Americans have done a great job of conserving water, and yet here we are, still with water.

Despite that, I’m going to trust the smart people in the room on this. Water management is going to be a very big business over the next 20 years. I’m just starting to look into how to invest in water. From what I’ve found, it seems like Investco’s PIO is the most well-rounded ETF for your investment dollar.

Emerging Markets

I opened the article with the mention of the US market’s decade-long bull run. By now that is common knowledge. During these last ten years, emerging markets haven’t fared quite as well. I’m expecting them to catch up. You likely already have some emerging markets in your portfolio anyway. I think many people could spice it up by increasing their asset allocation to include more emerging markets.

Vanguard’s Health Care ETF

It feels like an unusual time to recommend investing in a health care ETF like Vanguard’s VHT. It’s been up sharply over the last decade. I was on the fence about including VHT, but decided to add it in at the last minute. The nation is getting older and health care keeps marching on with the discoveries. With advances like CRISPR and gene therapy becoming possibilities there’s a lot of room for advancement.

Final Thoughts

I wanted to include a few more trends in this such as ride sharing and social media. Even though I personally invest a little money in these, I don’t feel comfortable suggesting them to others. The ride sharing companies are losing lots of money and it will be a while before they can make significant profits. Social media has a dark cloud of government legislation hanging over it.

What are some of your favorite places to invest in 2030? Let me know in the comments.

Frugal or Cheap: Using True Orange at a Restaurant?

by 38 Comments

We know there’s fine line between being frugal and being cheap. At this website, and many other other money-conscious websites, being frugal is something to be celebrated. There’s nothing wrong with trying to stretch a dollar. However, some times people take it too far, to the point of being cheap. That’s typically not something that is celebrated, save for a few people on TLC’s Extreme Cheapskates show.

Today, I’ve got something that I feel walks that fine line between frugal and cheap. I may have mentioned it a couple of times (especially in a SodaStream article), but I’m a big fan of True Orange. It’s a product that I don’t think a lot of people know about. Essentially it’s crystallized orange in a sugar packet-sized foil wrap. Add it to water (or carbonated water via a SodaStream) and you’ve got a lightly orange-flavored calorie-free drink. You avoid all the artificial sweeteners found in soda and the sugar in lemonade or juice. Nit-pickers may point out that soy (a controversial ingredient) and cane juice appear in the ingredients, but I believe it to be in too small a quantity to be significant. The same company makes True Lemon and True Lime, but their Orange is my favorite.

A couple of weeks ago, I got the idea that I could save myself a couple of dollars at restaurants by ordering water and add a packet of True Orange. The idea actually came to more for the health reasons mentioned above than the money saving reasons. I decided to put a packet in my thin wallet for future use. Last week, we were at the Olive Garden for lunch and it occurred to me this would be a good time to put my money saving plan into effect.

I had told my wife before and made sure that she wouldn’t be too embarrassed by my experiment. Her opinion was that you shouldn’t do in front of the waitress or with important company. Of course, I wouldn’t do that. I got to wondering whether it was “wrong” in the first place. I remember getting the following comment in my article about saving money at restaurants:

Drink water is fine. Request lemon is fine. But do NOT make pauper’s lemonade in a restaurant.
1. It is tacky
2. Water with lemon is a cost to the restaurant and a courtesy to the customer, don’t abuse it.
3. Your waiter will see you as a cheap-ass and presume you’ll also be skimping on the gratuity. Your service will be lousy.
4. Your waiter counts on you paying for drinks to up the bill as most people tip based on a percentage of the bill. It is the same amount of work for them to get your makings for lemonade, but they see no bump to the bill (and tip).

So: Drink water, even with lemon. Don’t make your own lemonade as it is rude, tacky and cheap. Don’t cheap out on the gratuity, unless you never plan to visit that restaurant again.

I don’t know if this is tacky or not. However, at least it is not a cost to the restaurant (other than water, which would be like charging to use the restroom). If the waiter doesn’t see me put a packet of True Orange in (my wife didn’t see it even when I forewarned her), he/she can’t see me as cheap and presume a lower tip. I think the commenter is wrong that the waiter should count on people to pay for drinks to up the bill. It’s probably fair the waiter to be disappointed in having a small bill table, but I don’t feel obligated to give the restaurant more money just so that they can expect a higher tip.

The other thing that I thought might be wrong is bringing in “outside food” to a restaurant. That’s tacky, right? But does a packet of calorie-free True Orange count as outside food? It’s not much different than a free lemon wedge right (except that it packs more flavor)? No restaurant, that I’ve been to, has giving me the option to purchase True Orange. It’s not like I’m taking away the sale of a product. I haven’t been to a restaurant that offers a similar calorie-free, no artificial sweetener alternative that I can buy (actually maybe unsweetened ice tea counts? I’m not a big ice tea fan).

At 5 cents a packet, True Orange can save some money. If you go to a restaurant once a week, you can spend anywhere between $100 and $150 in soda. The same amount of True Orange comes out to around $2.60. Is it the world’s best money saving tip? Nope. However if I do something that is healthier and keep $100 in my pocket, that’s a good thing, right?

So what’s your call? Does using True Orange in water in lieu of ordering a drink count as cheap or just great frugal thinking?