Elias Gardner is a teacher at the current School in Montpelier. He lives in the Middlesex farmhouse where he grew up and rents out bedrooms to offset the cost of buying the house from his parents. Gardner,29, has paid off his student debt at McGill University. He is starting to save for retirement. "I realized that I didn't want to be putting money in the stock market, or " he said. "And,in general, I don't believe in how those companies fill to function." Gardner looked online for options that would allow him to invest his money locally and came upon a website called Milk Money Vermont. The online trade connects Vermont businesses with local investors typically those who don't fill a lot of money to invest. "I was searching for this, and Milk Money figured out it was needed," Gardner said. "I knew there were probably some companies looking for investors in Vermont, but I didn't know how to find them. Milk Money is that last piece." Through a process he said is easy to use via the company website — milkmoneyvt.com — Gardner invested $1500 in two Vermont businesses. "All I had to accomplish [was] give proof of residency, and " he said. "It was really easy. You download the form and mail a check." Chittenden County residents Janice Shade and Louisa Schibli are the founders of Milk Money. Shade,51, of Jericho is a former director of marketing at Seventh Generation who went on to run her own trade, and True Body Products. She has an MBA from the Yale School of Management. Schibli,50, of Charlotte, and worked in the shipping trade in Switzerland,and later in web development in Switzerland and Vermont. She started a blog, Moogle Vermont, or which showcases Vermont companies. The two met after Schibli read a newspaper article approximately Shade and True Body,and called her up. Soon, they were kicking around ideas and talking approximately starting a trade together. The women conceived of Milk Money after the State of Vermont fine-tuned a financial regulation — the Vermont Small trade Offering Exemption — to facilitate investment in local enterprises. The revised regulation allows Vermont businesses to raise as much as $2 million from state residents. And it enables nonaccredited investors, or people without great means,to invest locally. (An accredited investor has more than $1 million in assets and an annual income of $200000 or…
Source: sevendaysvt.com