Posting to follow. I think MMM posted something about this, particularly about someone who did not want to invest in a good index fund because one of the companies was firearms or tobacco related...maybe? I forget. I think the comparison he made revealed that choosing the investment w/o the 'bad' company ended up costing you thousands and thousands of dollars in the long run. There simply wasn't a big enough market of folks with values like yours to warrant an investment company making an 'ethical' index fund that had comparable returns as the mainstream one, for lack of better words. Anyone, keep me honest here! I can't find the article. Maybe it was MadFientist? (Oh, THANK YOU FOR FINDING IT! JLCollins)
Yours is the Admiral Shares S&P 500 Index Fund, which may have a company or two your beliefs don't jive with? (not sure, I'm not going to look through a list of 500 companies :p ) ...but if it is the best, most efficient investment choice, is choosing something else really worth the loss of gains?
When you own 500 shares split between $10k, do you really think the fraction that goes to that company ( 1/500th, for simplicity or $20) really benefits them, assuming everything is weighed equally? (It isn't. Bigger companies get a better % of your dollars). Even at $100k, it's only $200. $1MM, $2k. I'd wager your other $998,000 is doing more good for the world than that $2k is doing harm, right? There are many folks that could retire on less than a million bucks on these forums (myself included), so maybe having 1/500th or 2/500ths of your money invested in something you don't agree with is worth the efficiency and simplicity vs. foregoing gains? At the end of the day it's your survival and your retirement. I respect that.
1/500 is 0.20%, 2/500 = 0.40%. Even if there were 5 companies, that's only 1%. I'm cool being 1% evil at the end of the day. That's pretty conservative. :)
Maybe this is weird, but when I invest in VTSAX I don't think of it as investing in individual companies, but investing in a product/theme that Vanguard created. As long as Vanguard is good, honest, and respectable I'm a happy customer. I simply don't expend any time/energy/thought into the nitty gritty. With VTSAX I'm essentially investing in America, for better or worse. 'Murica, y'know.