The Bogleheads' Guide to Retirement Planning Read Free

individual chapter authors are not professional writers. They are people just like you: skilled laborers, white-collar workers, teachers, entrepreneurs, small-business owners, and the like. The authors have no incentive in this not-for-profit endeavor except to make a difference—to help people who want to be helped by providing valuable information on a range of retirement planning topics. What has been written in these chapters has been learned through self-education, primarily by reading books, articles, and research and by participating on the Bogleheads.org forum. Most important, it is information gathered by the life experiences of many people. These authors are a part of a remarkable group of people who call themselves Bogleheads.

THE BOGLEHEADS
    Boglehead is the name adopted by individuals who follow the business and investing beliefs of an extraordinary man, John C. Bogle, founder and former CEO of the Vanguard Group of mutual funds. Jack, as he likes to be called, is credited with being the father of index mutual funds.
    In 1975, under Jack’s leadership, the newly formed Vanguard Group launched the very first publicly available index fund, the Vanguard First Investors Trust. The fund tracked the popular S&P 500 Index of mostly large U.S. common stocks. The fund was later renamed the Vanguard 500 Index Fund and eventually grew to become the largest mutual fund in history. The very low mutual fund expenses and sensible investment strategies of the Vanguard Group have allowed millions of individual investors to save billions of dollars in costs over the years, and that money saved is money earned.
    But Vanguard is not the whole story behind Jack Bogle. He is also a model of business integrity. He stands like a pillar of ethics in a world seemingly gone mad with Ponzi schemes and multimillion-dollar golden parachutes paid to failed CEOs. Jack is a reformer. He relentlessly offers a host of practical business advice through his writings and speeches in an attempt to restore integrity in corporate America and to protect small investors’ interests. For his efforts, John C. Bogle has been granted many honors, including inclusion in Time magazine’s “world’s 100 most powerful and influential people” and Fortune magazine’s “four Giants of the 20th Century” in the investment community.
    Jack Bogle has tens of thousands of followers, and many of them communicate with each other regularly. The main communication network for the Bogleheads is over the Internet on a dedicated web site, www.Bogleheads.org . Members of this free online community discuss topics ranging from mutual funds to complex investment strategies to who is the most famous guitarist of all time. On any given day, the forum hosts thousands of participants and visitors. Any person visiting Bogleheads.org may read the conversations, but you must register to participate in the discussions. That involves selecting a screen name and agreeing to follow certain ethical guidelines. Registration is free.
    Bogleheads.org evolved from the Morningstar Vanguard Diehards forum established in March 1998. Taylor Larimore posted the first of his more than 24,000 forum contributions on the Morningstar site in Conversation #1. Mel Lindauer was another pioneer whose investment and business experience soon made him a forum leader. As the Morningstar forum expanded over the years, it became necessary to create a stand-alone web site that had added functionality and oversight. Thus, Bogleheads.org was born. The web site is now the largest not-for-profit investment site on the Internet.
    A relatively new and exciting part of the Boglehead.org online community is the Bogleheads Wiki. It was a pioneering project by Barry Barnitz and a small group of forum members. The Wiki is an online encyclopedia of sorts that is a collection of content and Web page links designed to educate investors. The group quickly realized the valuable contribution they could make to both the