Long Beach, CA – In the world of investing, a common divide persists: one folder for financial returns and another for personal values. But Steven Libman, founder of Investing With Purpose, contends that this separation is a costly mistake, both financially and ethically. Libman, who has spent 15 years building a multifamily real estate firm around a faith-driven approach, argues that stewardship is not just a category of finances—it is the whole picture.
The financial services industry, Libman says, deliberately sold investors on the idea that capital is morally neutral until it is used for charitable giving. This has led to a generation of investors who give generously from after-tax returns while their portfolios fund activities they have never examined. The tax conversation, similarly, has been siloed into an annual reckoning rather than a year-round planning tool. Most people discover what they owe in April, accept it as inevitable, and move on. The notion that tax strategy and values strategy could be part of the same proactive framework—structured in January, not reconciled in April—has rarely been presented.
“Stewardship isn’t a category of finances,” Libman explains. “It’s the whole thing. When we read the parable of the talents, the master doesn’t grade servants on one line item. He thinks about what they did with everything they were entrusted with. Your tax dollars are entrusted capital too.”
The dominant model in values-aligned investing has been the exclusion screen—a list of what not to own. Libman argues this is the lowest form of values alignment and the least useful starting point for investors who want their capital to build something. His reframe is simple: purpose-driven investing is not a screen you run at the end; it is the lens you build through from the beginning. That lens should cover every line item, including the tax line.
“What is your money building?” is the question Libman poses before anything else. Not what it is earning, but what it is going towards. The practical steps are sequenced deliberately: clarify core values, write them down, audit what you own, measure each holding against those values, and then ask whether your tax strategy is serving the same mission or undermining it. For investors who have never connected these dots, the entry point is an audit, not a liquidation. The goal is to create an honest picture of alignment and then make intentional moves.
“Purposed investing isn’t the screen you’re running at the end,” Libman says. “It’s the lens you’re building through from the beginning. And that lens should cover the tax line items too.”
The connection between tax strategy and values alignment is more direct than most investors realize. Capital retained through intelligent tax structuring—such as bonus depreciation, cost segregation, and K-1 carry-forwards—can be redeployed toward causes, communities, and investments that reflect the investor’s priorities. Capital handed to the government unnecessarily is capital that cannot.
Libman draws on a biblical precision argument: the obligation is to give Caesar exactly what Caesar is due, no more, no less. Overpaying taxes out of ignorance is not humility; it is poor stewardship. Every dollar that leaves unnecessarily is a dollar that cannot be reinvested, donated, or deployed toward the investor’s mission.
“You can’t manage well what you refuse to understand,” says Libman. “And the moment this all gets pulled under one owner, which is you, there’s no silo anymore. You become the silo.”
The investors who will navigate this cycle most effectively are not those who separate these conversations cleanly, but those who stop separating them entirely. For more on this philosophy, visit investingwithpurpose.org.
