who are the bogleheads®
and Should you become one?
by
Dale C. Maley
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Artephius Publishing on Smashwords
Who Are The Bogleheads and Should You Become One?
Copyright © 2012 by Dale C. Maley
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system. No part may be transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise). Exceptions to this must be with the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
“Bogleheads” is a registered Service Mark of The John C. Bogle Center for Financial Literacy.
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Table of Contents
History of the Online Forums
Boglehead Demographics
Financial Planning and Investment Methodology
Foundational Supporting Research
Retirement Planning Software
Boglehead Squabbles
Portfolio Help
Boglehead Books
Boglehead Publicity
Wiki
Boglehead Authors
Annual Meetings
Donations
Summary
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Warning-Disclaimer
This book is designed to provide information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher and author are not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, insurance, or other professional services. If legal or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
It is not the purpose of this manual to reprint all the information that is otherwise available to the author and/or publisher. The purpose is to complement, amplify, and supplement other texts. You are urged to read all the available material, learn as much as possible about investing and to tailor the information to your individual needs.
Every effort has been made to make this book as complete and as accurate as possible. However, there may be mistakes both typographical and in content. Therefore, this text should be used only as a general guide and not as the ultimate of investing information. Furthermore, this book contains information on investing only up to the printing date.
The purpose of this book is to educate and entertain. The author and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility with respect to any loss or damage caused by the information contained in this book.
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Foreword
Bogleheads are people who are very interested in investing. They meet and share their ideas about investing and personal finance on their online forum. Jack Bogle, founder of Vanguard, is one of their heroes. The typical Boglehead lives below their means so they can save and invest. They typically invest in low-cost Vanguard index funds in a well diversified portfolio. Over half of the Bogleheads are already millionaires. After reading this short story about the Bogleheads, you may decide to improve your own financial situation by joining their online forum.
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History of the Online Forums
Morningstar Diehards Forum
The Bogleheads group informally began in March 1998 when Morningstar established the Vanguard Diehards Forum to discuss Vanguard index funds. One of the first posters was Taylor Larimore. [1]
In 2001, the Vanguard Diehard Forum became the first Morningstar forum to have received 100,000 postings.
The Bogleheads Forum
In February of 2007, a new independent forum was created and named Bogleheads.org. The primary driver behind creation of the new forum was acute disruptions at Vanguard Diehards resulting from Morningstar's lax moderation policies. Technical obsolescence of the Morningstar boards was a secondary reason. [2]
In October of 2011, the Bogleheads.org web site was successfully upgraded to a new format. Bogleheads often run polls on various topices. The only major issue with the upgrade is that old poll results are not displayed correctly.
There are now over 25,000 registered Bogleheads Forum users who normally make a total of 500 to 1,000 posts each day.
Forbidden Topics
The Bogleheads is a moderated forum. There are several moderators who will delete posts or lock conversations so they can not continue. The moderation policy is described below:
Note: the Bogleheads forum is dedicated to the civil discussion of investing, personal finance, and consumer issues. Other topics - including politics and economic policy issues (e.g., health care and tax proposals) along with commercial solicitation and trolling - are NOT acceptable and may be edited or removed by our moderators.
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Boglehead Demographics
Polls
As a Boglehead forum member, you can create a poll on any topic that is of interest to you. Of course, you can not violate forum policies with the poll.
These polls allow insight into the demographics of Boglehead forum members. The poll results for polls done before the October 2011 forum upgrade are sometimes not shown correctly.
To gather demographic data for this short story, I used a combination of old and new poll results. I tried to correct the old poll results if possible. In many cases I had to use PDF copies of the polls that I made at the time of the original poll.
It should be noted that Boglehead polls typically do not yield statistically significant results. The polls are self-reporting versus randomly selected. The poll sample sizes are also too small to yield statistically significant results. These polls are just a rough indicator of the demographics of Bogleheads.
Age
A poll performed in 2007 showed Bogleheads have an average age of 48. [3] The median age was also 48. Since the average age is the same as the median age, it shows the ages are roughly normally distributed from young to old. The lowest age was 24 and the highest was 80. The standard deviation of this sample of 101 Bogleheads was 14.
Another poll was done in 2011. [4] It showed Bogleheads have an average age of 48. The median age was 50. The lowest age was 19 and the highest was 78. The standard deviation of this sample of 76 Bogleheads was 16.
Another poll was done in January of 2012. [37] The sample size was 216. It showed Bogleheads have an average age of 45. The median age was 45. The lowest age was 21 and the highest was 78.
This 2012 poll also had a relatively flat distribution between age groups.
Income
$60,000 to $80,000 is the most common salary range of Bogleheads. A histogram of income is a very flat histogram that is pretty even from under $40K to over $160K. [5].
Gender
The Bogleheads are not a male-only group. A 2011 poll showed Bogleheads are 78% male and 22% female. [6]
Occupation
A 2011 poll showed the occupations of Bogleheads. [7]
The top three occupations of Bogleheads are engineer, IT, or medical doctor.