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This post is going to cover the rest of the things that I spent money on for the week of 5/12-5/18. In the future I plan on having one post at the end of the week that goes over all of my purchases rather than multiple posts.

If you remember from my previous post, I had $96 left to spend for the rest of the week. Here is how the rest of my spending broke down:

• $2 for coffee
• $2 for a powerade at lunch
• $10 to park downtown
• $8 at Burgerville
• $14 for food and drinks with friends
• $6 for sunscreen
• $7 to share Chinese food for lunch
• $40 at Ross for some new work clothes
• $5 to wash my car

The total spending for this comes out to $94 dollars, so I beat my goal by $2! Right now I don’t care how much I beat my goal by, I just care that I beat my goal.

Here is the story behind my purchases:

For the weekend, my girlfriend and I were traveling to Portland, OR to visit some friends for the weekend. In order to get a head start on our drive down there, we decided to drive downtown and pay for parking ($10). Since she started an hour before me I had some time to kill so I bought a coffee ($2). It was really hot outside at lunch and I forgot to bring water so I went to Rite Aid and bought a Powerade ($2. Actually $1.09, but I don’t count change.) After work we drove down to Portland but got hungry along the three hour drive since we hadn’t eaten for lunch. We decided to stop at this fast food joint called Burgerville which was in this tiny town north of Vancouver, WA ($8). It actually wasn’t too bad. The next night we went out to dinner with our friends in Portland to this brew pub. I forget the name of it but they make some pretty good food. The beer wasn’t as memorable ($14). Before we left to go home we decided to do some tax free shopping in downtown Portland. I’ve decided to start wearing ties more often to work, so we decided to pick me out a couple of shirt/tie combos. I got two shirts and two ties ($40). For lunch we stopped at your typical Asian fast food place and got a two item combo to share ($7). On the way back we stopped at the Target at Jantzen Beach. The only thing I really needed was some sunscreen ($6). When I got home, I discovered that my car had gotten pretty dirty since the last time that I had washed it, so I decided to take it to the Brown Bear self wash. I always tend to miss a spot, but I don’t really trust the machines either. It looked good, but of course it rained the next day. It’s Seattle, go figure.

I had $2 left over from the week, but I also received $58 in repayment for utilities, so I actually had $60 in my wallet. I took out $60 from the ATM on Monday. It didn’t make sense to put $60 in just to take out $120. I’m actually not even sure if I can deposit money into the ATMs with the Money Pass symbol. I will try to find that out and report my findings.

The past few years there has been a lot of attention on the news about different ways to go green and make a difference in the environment. Even with all this focus on creating a greener way of life, large energy companies like ExxonMobil continue to make record profits. Something does not seem quite right here. As an environmentally conscious investor, one may focus the dilemma of choosing between a profitable company like ExxonMobil that will surely make them money, or searching high and low for some obscure environmentally friendly company. Once you do find that company, chances are they won’t even be profitable.

Portfolio 21 has taken the guesswork out of this for you. This investment company is based out of Portland, Oregon, which is the greenest city in the United States according to Popular Science Magazine. Simply put, Portfolio 21 only invests in companies that meet its stringent standards for being or working to become green companies.

The official strategy from their website reads, “Portfolio 21 invests in companies designing ecologically superior products, using renewable energy, and developing efficient production methods. Portfolio 21 companies seek to prosper in the 21st Century by recognizing environmental sustainability as a fundamental human challenge and a tremendous business opportunity.”

Besides looking for companies with strong balance sheets and income statements, Portfolio 21 also requires that companies have “ecologically superior product lines, . . . evolving product lines, investments in renewable energy, innovative transportation and distribution strategies, and efficient use of resources with respect to meeting human needs.” If a company starts to shy away from its green operations, Portfolio 21 will take action through what they call “Shareholder Activism.” Through this, they essentially file a complaint with the company to try to get them to return to their green ways. If this does not work, they will divest their funds. “If a company no longer meets our selection criteria, we divest. By divesting these companies we hope to send a clear signal to management regarding the importance of maintaining a focus on sustainable business strategies and improving performance in these areas on an ongoing basis.”

In the past year, Portfolio has rejected some very notable companies as investment opportunities based on their lack of greenness. Some companies of note are:

• UPS
• News Corp
• Royal Bank of Scotland
• Yahoo!
• Bank of America
• Texas Instruments
• Corning

As of 3/31/2008, the companies Top 5 holdings are

• Novartis (3.1%)
• Novo Nordisk (2.7%)
• Nokia (2.4%)
• Staples (2.3%)
• IBM (2%)

Some other noteworthy companies were Google, Siemens, Canon, HSBC Holdings, Intel, Nike, HP, Briston-Meyers Squibb, Dell, & Whole Foods.

The fund is currently trading at $34.34 under the symbol PORTX. If you invest directly through the company, the minimum investment is $5,000, or $1,000 if you choose to set up a retirement account. It is also offered through many brokers as well where the minimum may vary. As of 12/31/2008, the fund managed $266M allocated over 115 different positions. Its’ annual return has been 17.39% over the past 5 years. Another thing that I like about the fund is that the managers of it have been managing it since its’ inception.

If green investing is something that you would like to start doing, but lack the time or research capabilities to do it, a fund like this may be appropriate for you. As always, make sure to look over the entire funds past performance and investment objectives and always remember that past performance is never an indicator of future returns.

This weekend my girlfriend and I went down to Portland, Oregon to visit some friends. It is always nice getting away from all the hustle and bustle of Seattle and going somewhere different. Portland is a nice city that seems to be quite a bit smaller than Seattle, but is not lacking in any of the amenities of a larger city. One of the main draws for people to the Portland area is the fact that Oregon does not have a sales tax. According to Taxadmin.gov, there were only five states that had no sales tax as of 1/1/2007. Those states were: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon.

The sales tax in Seattle is roughly 9%. When we go down to Portland, we like to take advantage of the fact that there is no sales tax. I got to thinking on the way down that there is probably a decent population that drives from Seattle to Portland and back in one day just for shopping. These people have no other reason to visit the city (ie: visiting friends/family, sightseeing etc.) They only make the trek to save some money. I started to think about how much money a person would need to spend in Portland so that their tax savings would equal what they spent on gas to get there.

The trip from Seattle to Portland is roughly 175 miles. This would make the round trip (175 x 2 = 350 miles). Let’s also assume that the car being used is fairly economical and gets 30 miles to the gallon and gas is $3.10 a gallon for regular (which it currently is in our neck of the woods). It would take the car (350 miles/30 mpg) 11.67 gallons of gas to make the whole trip. At $3.10/gallon, it would cost (11.67 x $3.10) $36.16 to make the trip. In order to save $36.16 in taxes, one would have to spend ($36.16/.09) $401.77. At this spending level, you would be no better off than shopping in Seattle. Anything spent over this amount, and your trip would be a success. If you spent any less than this amount, then it would actually cost you more to shop in this tax free environment. If you decided to carpool with a friend, then you would only have to spend half as much to break even.

Let’s take a look at a chart that shows how much you would need to spend based on the mileage of your car in order to break even.

Obviously, the worse the gas mileage, the more you would have to spend on goods to break even. Here is something else to think about. The lower the differential between tax rates, the more you would have to spend to break even. Lets go back to the 30 MPG example. Imagine if the tax rate in Seattle was only 6%. Here is how much you would have to spend. 350/30 = 11.67 gallons of gas x $3.10/gallon = $36.16 to make the trip. Now, we divide $36.06 by .06 rather than .09, and we get $601. With a change of only 3 percentage points, a consumer must spend almost 50% more to break even!

The lesson learned in this story is that although tax free purchases may sound good on the surface, you must spend a lot to make the trip worth it.

I have attached to this post a graph I created in Excel that shows how as MPGs decrease, one must increase their spending to make the tax free savings worth it.