is that I didn’t have more to give away.” (or, we should all be Bogleheads)
A version of this post first appeared on ClarusMoney.com in January 2019, when Jack Bogle had just passed away.
Since we are not that far away from Christmas, the above quote from John Bogle puts me in mind of one of the last lines of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol:
“May that be truly said of us, and all of us.”
-Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
When Jack Bogle, the founder of the giant Vanguard Group, died in 2019 at 89, he was not just mourned by his wife, six children, and many grandchildren.
Bogle was celebrated and honored widely for what he did for personal finance and the world of investing.
It is nearly impossible to overestimate his influence on finance, but his impact on normal, non-Wall Street people like you and me, who want to be smart about money.
Here are just a few reasons we should all be “Bogleheads” (more on that term below):
John Bogle essentially invented the index fund.
An index fund allows people to invest in many stocks at once without having to pay large fees to a “fund manager” who actively bought and sold stocks within a fund.
Bogle created the first mutual fund tied to an index in 1975. It actually wasn’t successful at first, but eventually it gained traction, and now there are dozens of index funds offered by firms like Vanguard (created by Bogle), Schwab, and Fidelity.
An index fund essentially buys all of the stocks in a particular market, or particular area. Ideally, the fee to invest in such a fund is low, and usually much lower than a managed fund.
He helped regular people invest in the stock market.
Bogle was fond of saying that in investing, “You get what you don’t pay for.”
What that means is if you’re not paying a “superstar” fund manager to buy and sell stocks in a fund, you get to keep that money.
He created the Vanguard Group to do just that through low-cost index funds. And he structured Vanguard to be owned, rather than by him, by its mutual funds, who were owned by the millions of us who hold Vanguard funds.
Warren Buffet told the Wall Street Journal in 2009: “If all investors had heeded his ideas, they would be hundreds of billions of dollars better off than they are now.”
He wasn’t only motivated by making money.
Bogle made a lot of money, but his fortune totaled less than $100 million, considered “small change” in the world of money management.
If Vanguard had been owned by him and his family, he would be worth billions, but that wasn’t his primary motivation.
From a New York Times article about him:
“But that’s the point, of course. He built something bigger than personal wealth: a reasonable way for great masses of people to get a more equitable share of the world’s financial pie.”
He was personally very charitable.
Accounts say that he gave half his salary to charities.
From the New York Times obituary:
“My only regret about money,” he said in 2012, “is that I don’t have more to give away.”
This is what I find most admirable about him. He clearly had enough for his extended family to be comfortable and secure, and beyond that, he wanted to help those less fortunate.
He was a “financial philosopher” with a huge influence.
Bogle influenced countless people, both in and out of the financial services industry, to take a bigger role in their own money lives. And many of those people are grateful.
There is a term that is used to call people who subscribe to his investing theory of index funds: Bogleheads (now a registered trademark!). Boglehead volunteers run an entire Internet forum, to share his investing ideas and strategies.
The group has conventions, Facebook pages, outreach, and a recently-started podcast that featured in its first episode an interview with John Bogle.
What is your perspective on John Bogle? Do you agree that his impact cannot be overestimated?
