This weekend's Your Money column goes out to all of the Bucks commenters and friends of mine who've declared themselves fed up with the stock market and traditional financial services providers and hungry for an alternate way of storing and deploying their money.
The storing part is easy enough, since you can deposit your assets in credit unions and Vanguard and the like. But the portfolio is a trickier thing. Would you be willing to divide your retirement savings among residential real estate, peer-to-peer loans and municipal bonds, for instance?
We can't define the risks precisely because we don't know the future long-term returns of any given asset class. But for those of you who do feel alienated by the standard stock-based investment portfolio and the companies that have their hands in it, how far are you willing to go and how much do you think you'll have to sacrifice to live a financial life governed by your princi ples (or anxieties)?
