Roll Call for the Retirement Class of 2015!

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Miriam2
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Re: Roll Call for the Retirement Class of 2015!

Post by Miriam2 »

Mountebank wrote: 1 December 2015. Mountebank
Congratulations on your retirement, Mountebank, and welcome to this Awesome Retirement Class! We added you to the list :D
What have you been up to for the last 3 years?
Mountebank
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Re: Roll Call for the Retirement Class of 2015!

Post by Mountebank »

Thank you Victoria F and Miriam 2 for welcoming me to this distinguished class. After 45 years of flying, including 24 Navy and 35 airline (overlapping during many years in the Naval Reserve) I'm now firmly on the ground at age 67. My claim to fame is investing shortly after its creation in the Vanguard Index Trust, 500 Portfolio, perhaps the late 1970's; I've been investing with Jack Bogle ever since. I've attended two Bogleheads conferences, look forward, to many more, and will attend my local chapter gathering soon. I am still financing one high school student and two college students so my financial considerations are different from many Bogleheads of my age.
Kind regards,
Mountebank
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Miriam2
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Re: Roll Call for the Retirement Class of 2015!

Post by Miriam2 »

Mountebank wrote: Wed Nov 07, 2018 6:39 pm Thank you Victoria F and Miriam 2 for welcoming me to this distinguished class. After 45 years of flying, including 24 Navy and 35 airline (overlapping during many years in the Naval Reserve) I'm now firmly on the ground at age 67. My claim to fame is investing shortly after its creation in the Vanguard Index Trust, 500 Portfolio, perhaps the late 1970's; I've been investing with Jack Bogle ever since. I've attended two Bogleheads conferences, look forward, to many more, and will attend my local chapter gathering soon. I am still financing one high school student and two college students so my financial considerations are different from many Bogleheads of my age.
Kind regards,
Mountebank
My goodness Mountebank! You're right, that was around August 31, 1976, when you first invested in the Vanguard First Index Investment Trust!

I'm sure others are as curious as I am - what drew you to this fund? How did you feel about jumping onto Bogle's Folly? 8-)
This Day in Market History: Vanguard Launches First Index Fund for US Retail Investors

What Happened?
On this day (Aug. 31, 1976) 42 years ago, Vanguard launched the first retail index mutual fund.

Where The Market Was
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 973.74 and the S&P 500 traded at 102.91. Today, the Dow is trading at 25,986.92 and the S&P 500 is trading at 2,901.13.

What Else Was Going On In The World?
In 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak formed Apple, Inc. The hit Sylvester Stallone movie “Rocky” was released. The average cost of a new house was $43,400.

Birth Of The Retail Index Fund
Back in August 1976, Vanguard founder John Bogle launched the Vanguard First Index Investment Trust, the first U.S. index fund available to retail investors. Bogle created the passive fund to simply track the performance of the S&P 500 and minimize investor fees.

At the time of its launch, the fund’s $11.3 million in assets was well short of Bogle’s $150-million goal, but its popularity quickly skyrocketed. The fund’s assets grew at a compound annual rate of 53 percent during its first 20 years.

Today, the fund is called the Vanguard 500 Index Fund Investor Shares, and stock traders can access it via its ETF form, the Vanguard 500 Index Fund VOO ETF. . . .

https://www.benzinga.com/general/educat ... fund-for-u
Mountebank - Thank goodness you're now retired with your feet firmly on the ground - take a peek and see what you earned over that time :D
Now let me show you something. I asked Michael Batnick to run a performance calculation of the Vanguard 500 fund since inception. We come up with a 10.86% annual return, and a cumulative total return of 6,091%! That number is f***ing bonkers. Not bad for a “dumb” product that holds all the losers along with the winners.

Check this out:
Image
vanguard 500 since inception
Happy anniversary.

https://thereformedbroker.com/2016/08/3 ... -turns-40/
:D
Mountebank
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Re: Roll Call for the Retirement Class of 2015!

Post by Mountebank »

Thanks, Miriam 2, for posting the graph. I have been most fortunate to have invested at the beginning of the index fund revolution. I actually switched to the Total Stock Mkt Index Fund when it was created. My journey started with Venita VanCaspel's book The Power of Money Dynamics, which I encountered in the early 1970's. (There is a thread from 2011 about her on the forum.) Learning about mutual funds, I determined to invest in low-load or no-load funds, which lead me to Vanguard. (I suffered through unfortunate digressions enroute, however: high-load, high-cost Oppenheimer funds, even for a time with an advisor who placed a management fee on top of the Oppenheimer fees in order to rebalance those funds quarterly in a vain attempt to beat the market, oil and gas and real estate limited partnerships which not only took all my investments but generated phantom income for which I paid income tax, and some other poor investments as well. ) After reading my first of many of Jack Bogle's books I've been investing with him ever since. I am one who can say "I live in the house Jack built." I now have the three-fund portfolio, 70% stock, and of that stock portion, 20% international--reflecting the advice and wisdom of those forum members much more sage than am I.
I
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Taylor Larimore
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Re: Roll Call for the Retirement Class of 2015!

Post by Taylor Larimore »

Mountebank wrote: Tue Nov 13, 2018 11:34 am Thanks, Miriam 2, for posting the graph. I have been most fortunate to have invested at the beginning of the index fund revolution. I actually switched to the Total Stock Mkt Index Fund when it was created. My journey started with Venita VanCaspel's book The Power of Money Dynamics, which I encountered in the early 1970's. (There is a thread from 2011 about her on the forum.) Learning about mutual funds, I determined to invest in low-load or no-load funds, which lead me to Vanguard. (I suffered through unfortunate digressions enroute, however: high-load, high-cost Oppenheimer funds, even for a time with an advisor who placed a management fee on top of the Oppenheimer fees in order to rebalance those funds quarterly in a vain attempt to beat the market, oil and gas and real estate limited partnerships which not only took all my investments but generated phantom income for which I paid income tax, and some other poor investments as well. ) After reading my first of many of Jack Bogle's books I've been investing with him ever since. I am one who can say "I live in the house Jack built." I now have the three-fund portfolio, 70% stock, and of that stock portion, 20% international--reflecting the advice and wisdom of those forum members much more sage than am I.
Mountebank:

Our history of investing is similar, "unfortunate digressions enroute." We also arrived at the same conclusion: The Three-Fund Portfolio.

We both agree: "I live in the house Jack built."

Thank you, Jack!!

Best wishes.
Taylor
"Simplicity is the master key to financial success." -- Jack Bogle
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Miriam2
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Re: Roll Call for the Retirement Class of 2015!

Post by Miriam2 »

Taylor Larimore wrote:
Mountebank wrote: Tue Nov 13, 2018 11:34 am Thanks, Miriam 2, for posting the graph. I have been most fortunate to have invested at the beginning of the index fund revolution. I actually switched to the Total Stock Mkt Index Fund when it was created. My journey started with Venita VanCaspel's book The Power of Money Dynamics, which I encountered in the early 1970's. (There is a thread from 2011 about her on the forum.) Learning about mutual funds, I determined to invest in low-load or no-load funds, which lead me to Vanguard. (I suffered through unfortunate digressions enroute, however: high-load, high-cost Oppenheimer funds, even for a time with an advisor who placed a management fee on top of the Oppenheimer fees in order to rebalance those funds quarterly in a vain attempt to beat the market, oil and gas and real estate limited partnerships which not only took all my investments but generated phantom income for which I paid income tax, and some other poor investments as well. ) After reading my first of many of Jack Bogle's books I've been investing with him ever since. I am one who can say "I live in the house Jack built." I now have the three-fund portfolio, 70% stock, and of that stock portion, 20% international--reflecting the advice and wisdom of those forum members much more sage than am I.
Mountebank:

Our history of investing is similar, "unfortunate digressions enroute." We also arrived at the same conclusion: The Three-Fund Portfolio.

We both agree: "I live in the house Jack built."

Thank you, Jack!!

Best wishes.
Taylor
Thank you Taylor for your nice words :happy Mountebank is probably one of the forum's earliest Jack Bogle readers and Vanguard investors, having invested in the Vanguard First Index Investment Trust (Bogle's Folly) before it was even called the Vanguard S&P 500 Fund 8-)
Mountebank
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Re: Roll Call for the Retirement Class of 2015!

Post by Mountebank »

Taylor: I am remiss not to have honored you as well as Jack Bogle in my post about my investing history. Thank you for so clearly explaining the virtues of the thee-fund portfolio. I live in the house Jack built, and I maintain it thanks to Taylor Larimore and his wise counsel.
Kind regards,
Mountebank
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