The Wall Street Journal - 11.09.2019

R6| Wednesday, September 11, 2019 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

JOURNAL REPORT | WEALTH MANAGEMENT

cellation window?

So it was time to do the math. Both Net-

flix and Amazon Prime (through which I get

HBO)offerwaystoseealistoftheshows

watched on an account. When I added it all

up, I was paying about three times more for

each hour of time watching HBO as com-

pared with Netflix, a premium I was choos-

ing for those “just in case” moments. I can-

celed later that afternoon, figuring I’d

resubscribe when the slate of fall shows

started.

I figure I can cut my video-subscription

bills in half. Each individual subscription may

not mean much. But add them up and

you’re talking real money.

Other people I know take a more ruthless

approach. A friend of mine, who is what I’d

consider a superuser, takes it a step further,

waiting for a critical mass of content to hit

any given streaming service before signing

back up.

For services with week-by-week offerings,

she’ll wait to subscribe until the month of

the finale and then binge-watch the whole

season. When dealing with streaming plat-

forms that upload full seasons at once, she

waits until there’s enough to keep her occu-

pied for a full month before re-engaging and

watching what she wants. She times it all

to get the most bang for her buck.

Of course, her version has certain disad-

vantages. She’ll sometimes miss that mo-

ment when a specific show or movie is the

hot topic online. She will occasionally hear

spoilers from friends eager to talk about a

twist ending. Still, when she rattled off all

the shows she has seen this year, it was

clear that she had seen significantly more

than I had at a fraction of the cost.

A video diet

There’s one other advantage to cutting all

these all-you-can-eat offerings: You eat a lot

less. It’s simple economics: If the price of

each individual show goes down, then you

consume more of it. That may be a good

thing if you’re talking about a gym member-

ship. But maybe it isn’t so good when you’re

talking about sitting on your couch watch-

ing movies and TV shows.

I admit I didn’t start with the intention of

cutting back time viewed, just money spent.

But there’s no question I ended up reading

and exploring the city more.

None of these calculations are necessarily

easy. But they are inevitable in the a la

carte world we live in. In the past, longer

contracts and bundled services gave con-

sumers a binary option: Either you bit the

bullet and paid or you skipped having some-

thing altogether.

Now, we have more freedom to make de-

cisions about each element of what we sub-

scribe to, but there’s still a binary compo-

nent. We can choose to let subscriptions

stay on autopilot or dive head first into a

subscription-hopping strategy. Though the

latter may cost more time and energy, it will

likely cost less money.

And after all, that money saved can be

used to try out whatever the hot subscrip-

tion startup is next month.

Mr. McAllisteris a reporter for The Wall

Street Journal in New York. Send comments

and questions [email protected].

GIACOMO BAGNARA

Millennials get most of the atten-

tion in the world of values-based

investing. But growing interest

from an older slice of the popula-

tion—Generation X—and their

deeper pockets is helping propel

sustainable investing into the

mainstream.

Millennials have long held the

impact-investing spotlight, driving

awareness of the environmental,

social and governmental perfor-

mance of corporations and spur-

ring wealth managers to create

funds and services focused on

those issues. ESG investing cur-

rently accounts for at least 26% of

professionally managed assets in

the U.S., up from 18% in 2016, ac-

cording to the nonprofit Forum

for Sustainable and Responsible

Investment. Fund giant BlackRock

forecasts that ESG exchange-

traded funds will draw in $400 bil-

lion by 2028, up from around $25

billion last year.

But some numbers suggest that

wealth managers might want to pay

more attention to Gen X—currently

ages 39 to 54—as well.

Gen X’s interest in investments

that make a positive ESG impact has

climbed faster than that of any other

generation in recent years, says

Jackie VanderBrug, head of sustain-

able and impact investing at Bank of

America. She says Gen X investors

are asking the bank’s financial advis-

ers to review their portfolios for im-

pact more than any other group.

Last year, some 63% of high-net-

worth Gen X investors reviewed

their portfolios for ESG investments,

up from 36% in 2013, according to a

survey by Bank of America of people

with $3 million or more in investible

assets. Millennials at that level were

still ahead, at 78%.

Jordan Bastien, a financial adviser

at RBC Wealth Management in Phila-

delphia who specializes in ESG, says

Gen X is her main client. “From

where I sit, Gen X investors are the

biggest movers in the ESG space to-

day,” says Ms. Bastien, adding that

although surveys generally say that

millennials are more interested in

ESG investing than Gen X, she sus-

pects that Gen X has more dollars in-

vested in ESG.

“There is a big difference between

interest and action,” she says.

Ms. Bastien, 42, says her genera-

tion embraces social and environ-

mental investing because they lived

through movements like the drive for

Title IX protection against discrimi-

nation in education based on sex;

protests against Nike sweatshop la-

bor and the Exxon Valdez oil spill;

and the pursuit of careers by a grow-

ing number of women.

And they have more money to in-

vest. Today’s American Gen Xers

have about $9.2 trillion more net

wealth than millennials, despite hav-

ing a smaller population, and that

gap is likely to grow to nearly $17

trillion over the next decade, accord-

ing to the Deloitte Center for Finan-

pleased to see more and more

companies of all kinds aligning

their businesses with positive so-

cial outcomes.

“It’s no longer about avoiding

the bad,” Ms. Childs says. “It’s

about positively affirming the

good and knowing that in doing so

your financial returns will im-

prove.”

The investment platform Plum,

a British startup with about

500,000 users, says its Gen X in-

vestors are more likely to put

money in its ethical fund than its

millennial investors. The fund,

managed by Aberdeen Standard

Investments and launched in 2014,

holds companies with positive en-

vironmental, labor, human-rights

and anticorruption records as de-

fined by the United Nations princi-

ples for responsible businesses. It

also screens out companies in-

volved in extreme factory farming,

tobacco, alcohol and fur.

The fund has grown to £329 million

($406 million) in assets as of June, up

from £75 million in January 2016.

“What we believe, and we would

have to further document, is that as

people mature and have children

they start becoming more sensitive

towards the place they are leaving

behind for their children to live in,”

says Victor Trokoudes, co-founder

and chief executive at Plum. “We feel

this is reflected by their increased

commitment.”

Mr. Holger is a reporter for

Dow Jones Newswires in

Barcelona. He can be reached at

[email protected].

WHAT GENERATION IS LEADING THE WAY IN ESG INVESTING? YOU’LL BE SURPRISED.

BYDIETERHOLGER

cial Services. Gen Xers are projected

to accrue $19.4 trillion in net wealth

in the next 10 years, compared with

$11.6 trillion for millennials.

Donna Childs, a 54-year-old on the

cusp of Gen X and the owner of

Rhode Island-based disaster-prepara-

tion company Prisere LLC, says she

started making investments based on

the ESG performance of companies

around 15 years ago. She doesn’t

work with a financial adviser, but in-

dividually picks stocks with high ESG

scores for her pension fund and

401(k).

Most funds just screened out “sin

stocks” like alcohol and tobacco com-

panies when she first got involved in

ESG investing. Today, Ms. Childs is

Sources: 2018 U.S. Trust Insights on Wealth and Worth; Bank of America (ESG impact); Deloitte Center for Financial Services (wealth)

80

0

20

40

60

%

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

Millennials Generation X

Baby Boomers Silent Generation

Millennials Generation X

Baby Boomers Silent Generation

Percentage of high-net-worth investors who have

reviewed portfolios for ESG impact Estimated net wealth in the U.S., by generation

WheretheMoneyIs

$120 trillion

0

20

40

60

80

100

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Of course, as the gym membership key

tag I carried around for years could attest

to, paying for services without actually us-

ing them is hardly something new. Subscrip-

tions have always been bought aspiration-

ally. What’s new—thanks to the proliferation

of monthly subscriptions combined with a

new cutting-the-cord ethos—is the amount

of mental gymnastics we have to do when

deciding whether or not to keep paying for

them over time.

The obvious answer is subscription hop-

ping. At its core, canceling and resubscribing

later seems like a no-brainer. After all, why

pay for something that you aren’t using?

You wouldn’t shell out for an unlimited sub-

waycardifyouwereonlyintownfora

weekend.

But in practice, there’s something a lot

harder about the decision to reup a sub-

scription service for video. It’s often less

about what you do use and more about

what you could use. Maybe there’s going to

be a new show you might like, and you just

don’t know about it yet. Or maybe you really

will get around to watching that show you

haven’t had any interest in so far.

Out of the conversation

There’s also a social component. Do you

want to be the only one of your friends who

didn’t watch “Succession” because you de-

cided HBO wasn’t worth it? Do you want to

go to work and have everybody talking

about the latest season of “Mindhunter,” but

you can’t join in because you got rid of your

Netflix subscription?

So, when I contemplated canceling my

HBO Go subscription a few months back, it

was harder than I expected. Though the

shows I was interested in had wrapped up,

it wasn’t difficult to imagine a scenario

where I might regret that choice. What

then? For the price of a single movie ticket,

wouldn’t it be better not to feel that regret,

and to give myself the option of watching a

hundred movies? Besides, did I really want

to have to be vigilant about when my sub-

scription renewed so I didn’t miss my can-

The High Cost of Subscription

Creep in an A La Carte World

T

he last time Netflix asked me

“Are you still watching?” I

had to think really hard

about it. Was I still watch-

ing? Or at least enough to

make my $16-a-month pay-

ment worth it?

The subscription economy can be a won-

derful thing. We don’t have to pay for lots

of stuff we don’t want. The monthly price is

usually pretty low. And it gives us an incen-

tive to watch things that we might other-

wise avoid because they are too expensive

on a per-item basis.

But there’s a big downside as well, espe-

cially when it comes to the video world. It’s

called subscription creep.

It can happen fast. Maybe you’ll pay $16

for a Netflix account and $6 for a Hulu

subscription. A $13 click for Amazon Prime

here and a $15 one there for HBO Go. But

those prices you might not think twice

about in the moment can end up leaving

you with a $600 tab on video alone by

year’s end. It did for me.

A Netflix bill here, a Hulu bill

there, and pretty soon it’s a lot

of money. Time to start hopping.

YOUNG MONEY|KEVIN MCALLISTER

Choosing to reup a

subscription service for

video is often less about

what you do use and more

about what you could use.