Solari Action Network

[CEngelbart]

Some Helpful Terms & Definitions

These terms are introduced in the Solari audio seminar
Beyond Socially Responsible Investing - Part II
Solari Portfolio Strategy: The Power of Financial Intimacy

Financial Intimacy - A whole new paradigm for investing
Implicit in the notion of financial intimacy is that our money, wherever it goes and whatever it does, is connected to us. If you look at most financial portfolios, people really don't know who they're investing in, they don't know where their money's going or what it does, they're blindly throwing money at the tapeworm in return for yields -- they're disassociated. And their map of their day to day life is separate and different from the map that they use to manage their money. What we're looking to do is to integrate so you're investing in the people you know and trust, and in the things that you know and trust or that the people you know and trust trust. So you're working through networks of trust which are intimate -- you have intimate knowledge, a heartfelt connection. You're using your money to create an intimate world.

What our money touches, we touch. What our money does, we do. And we want to take advantage of the power of that intimacy to do better, both for ourselves and for the world.

Solari Portfolio Strategy
Strategies have goals -- a strategy is a synergystic plan to achieve those goals. The goal of a Solari Portfolio Strategy is increasing the Popsicle Index. We do this by withdrawing our resources from the tapeworm economy and reengaging them in people and businesses which cause the Popsicle Index in the world to go up in a way that causes ours to go up. Our focus always with our portfolio is the Popsicle Index for ourselves and our family first. We do this by building a financially intimate world locally and globally through intimate knowledge and carefully cultivated connections and networks. Solari Portfolio Strategy begins with building up your home base in a way that reduces expenses and debt and increases self-sufficiency, and then repositioning your remaining investments into the four investment areas (below) to build real wealth in and around your home base, as well as in and around the home bases of the people in your networks you know and trust intimately.

The "Popsicle Index"
The "popsicle index" is the percent of people in a community who believe a child can leave their home, go to the nearest place to buy a popsicle alone, and come home alone safely. So for example when I was a child growing up in Philadelphia, the popsicle Index was 100% -- it was unthinkable that a child wasn't safe to go up to Spruce St., buy a popsicle and come home alone. And today, in my old neighborhood it's very low, probably 0-10%.

The Popsicle Index is based on how people in a neighborhood feel, rather than what academic experts calculate. One of the reasons it's so useful is that it's so simple, and something that any person in the neighborhood knows the answer to based on intimate knowledge and experience. It is remarkably useful for engaging conversation with people in our place, a catalyst for deep discussion and collaboration about our quality of life indicators that gives us more useful information than any academic studies ever would. When we get together with neighbors and talk about what causes our popsicle index to go up, and what causes it to go down, and each person defines those and we discuss them, what emerges is phenominal group intelligence about what's important and what's not, about how people really feel about their community and their world.

Solari's mission is that the popsicle index would be 100% worldwide, and our strategy to help accomplish that is to help teach people how to build a financial and investment system where we can make money from a rising popsicle Index. It's more than an index of well-being and general welfare, it's a true wealth index. What emerges in a rich discussion of the Popsicle Index can inform where the equity creation opportunities are in the community, emphasizing both living equity and financial equity. If there were a publicly traded venture or mutual fund for any community that didn't have a 100% Popsicle Index, the way you'd get your stock to go up is to get the Popsicle Index to go up. So this is a critical point -- in the Solari model, quality of life and wealth have an intimate integration. This is different from the non Solari world where the two are disassociated in a way that is very destructive of true wealth. Read more >>.


Investment Areas: Global / Local / Liquid / Nonliquid
In the Solari Portfolio Strategy we look at investments as falling into four categories. Picture two rows and two columns -- one of them being local vs. global, and the other liquid vs. nonliquid. So you'd have four quadrants to include:

- Global Liquid
- Global Nonliquid
- Local Liquid
- Local Nonliquid

"Local" refers to the place we live where our home base is. For our purposes "Global" no longer refers to big global corporations, it now means investing in other places away from my home base which could be a neighboring town or another place somewhere in the world. "Liquid" means I can sell it quickly at a readily knowable price, such as stocks, whereas "Nonliquid" takes longer to sell or liquidate, such as real estate.

This framework shifts us from an investment paradigm that is function based and abstract, to an investment paradigm that is very tangible and concrete. All of my investments will now organize out of my home base, based on who I know and what I have intellectual mastery in and a heartfelt connection with. We are shifting from investing in corporations, to investing in people and places that we know.

So we have global-liquid, global-illiquid, local-liquid, and local-illiquid. The growth in SRI has been concentrated in the global liquid. Now we shift the focus to de-centralize political and economic power away from the tapeworm, and start to bring liquidity to local investment and to leaders, businesses and small farmers who are making possible a more sustainable lifestyle.

So we are shifting our focus to financially intimate, solution oriented and place based investing, building real wealth through a rising Popsicle Index.



See also the definitions for terms presented Beyond Socially Responsible Investing Part I
http://www.solariactionnetwork.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=9910#9910

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