Common Sense on Mutual Funds, Updated 10th Anniversary Edition

The financial industry has promoted the idea that if you want to have a secure retirement, you should seek their expertise and have them manage the complex world of money for you. I beg to differ.I like to share something simple that has worked for me all these years. I want my financial strategy to provide me four things. 1. Set it and forget it 2. tax advantage 3. hedge against inflation 4. cashflow.Here is what I suggest if you want to accomplish all of these four things.Establish a Roth IRA from Vanguard Group and buy the ETF VOO. Fund it monthly automatically or manually. Fund it to the maximum allowed each year for every year you are working. This can also be where you put your 12 months emergency fund if you need to withdraw for emergencies, because there is no penalty when you withdraw up to your contributions.Next, establish a brokerage account, and fund it monthly, yearly, as long as you are working. You can set it up where each month the brokerage account pulls some funding amount from your checking/savings account to buy ETF from your brokerage. This account is taxable. You can simple buy VOO, and do a buy and hold strategy and reinvest the dividends.Next, buy single family rental property or multi-family apartments. This type of investment allows you to take advantage of the tax laws in real estate investments and is also a hedge against inflation. The depreciation that you take on hides the amount of income that you generate from such properties, thereby, you not having to pay any taxes on the profits.To free yourself from any work in real estate, hire a property manager for the single family rental. To free yourself from any work in multi-family apartments, invest as a passive investor where you only provide the funding for the investment and don't have to do all the work in operations and management of the asset.You get monthly financial reports and each quarter period you get a dividend sent to your bank account.Next thing is optional or you do it because you love it. Have some other source of income if you want to work or earn from wages. Whether it be from a regular W2 job, or from other types of employment: entrepreneur, independent contractor, YouTuber, or the gig economy.By having a strategy that provides all four legs of a table, you have set up an excellent foundation that frees you up to pursue your life's fulfilling activities, you don't have to work for your money if you don't want to. Let your investments grow it for you.People say that investing is complex and confusing and that you need to hire a financial advisor to help you on investing your money for a comfortable retirement. After reading this book, I found that much of what you hear from the financial industry is wrong and is designed to confuse the retail investor.The truth of the matter is that investing your money is not complex and that you do not need a financial advisor. If you listen and follow the advice from much of the professional investor class about where you should put your money, you would be making them rich at your expense.John Bogle exposes the smokescreen behind the financial industry's practices claiming to manage your money all the while they make big bucks from skimming from your assets that you hand over to them to collect.Bogle provides his investment theories and the evidence to back them up. It is what most others in the industry has long kept silent and a secret. The truth to investing is that it is not a secret anymore. The shell game has been exposed. With the secret out in the sunshine, it is no better time to do it yourself, it is not complex, and don't listen to the advise of professional portfolio managers who are out to take your money while pretending to have your back. The professionals make money off your back, and you can do better without them.Go with Bogle's folly, read the book, and follow the wisdom in it, and you will do better than 96% of all funds managed by the portfolio managers.

this is *the* book to read on mutual funds. it's a hefty tome coming in at 600+ pages, but fear not. this book does not read like a dry financial report. bogle is opinionated and his writing flourishes with reminders of his personality amidst the endless but important charts and tables. to spice things up, bogle makes references to a wide variety of sources including shakespeare, thomas paine, scripture and even hegel! by the time you're done, you'll know *everything* you've ever wanted to know (and more) about the mutual fund industry, all straight from the founder of the vanguard group himself. for those afraid of the size of this book, perhaps check out bogle's "little book of common sense investing" instead and then come back to this book if you want more details.bogle's main message is that costs do matter and simplicity is the best way to avoid costs. the recommendation is to buy low cost broad-based index funds that will outperform the vast majority of actively managed mutual funds in the long run. notice by the definition of "average" that the average investor will get average market returns minus fees and taxes. notice the low cost broad-based index fund gets average market returns minus *minimized* fees and taxes. the index investor will thus outperform the average investor in actively managed mutual funds given all the extra costs associated with active management. also notice that the margin of victory from indexing will compound over the years and will lead to an even greater index fund performance in the long run. that's the gist of why indexing works. if you're not convinced, read bogle's book!even if you've already read some of the other great passive investing books espousing the virtues of indexing, you still owe it to yourself to read at least one of bogle's books. "common sense on mutual funds" is both readable as well as comprehensive, and would be a good addition to your library. burton malkiel, rick ferri, william bernstein, larry swedroe and others have all written excellent books on the subject as well, but they also hold differing opinions on the specifics, so read all of these authors! i was already convinced on indexing after first reading malkiel's book, but continued reading more on passive investing to work out all the details. these books as a whole help reinforce the main ideas while also exposing the reader to the authors' differences in perspectives, thus building confidence in the reader to think and succeed as an independent d.i.y. investor.of particular interest to me was the issue of small-cap value tilting. i was ambivalent on this practice, but bogle's book convinced me to *not* small-cap value tilt. readers who already know what small-cap value tilting is should feel free to skip to the next paragraph. now, for those unfamiliar with the terminology, stocks are divided according to size (small-cap, mid-cap, large-cap) as well as style (value, blend, growth). the size refers to the company's size as measured by its market capitalization, i.e. the number of shares multiplied by the price per share. the style is another way to partition stocks according to certain numbers such as price/book ratios and dividend yields; there's no agreed upon standard that's universally accepted for what constitutes a value/blend/growth stock. informally, you could think of value stocks as those that are not currently favored by the market for whatever reason. at the opposite extreme, growth stocks are "hot" stocks that scream potential. blend stocks are in between value and growth. given 3 sizes and 3 styles, there are thus 9 size-style combinations. according to research done by professors fama and french, small-cap value stocks significantly outperform the other 8 size-style combinations in the long run. the problem is, small-cap value stocks make up about 3% of the total stock market. small-cap value tilting means overloading on small-cap value stocks to try to capture the bonus identified in the fama/french research, but that also means underweighting 97% of the total market and potentially missing out if the other 8 size-style combinations outperform small-cap value. you see the dilemma.bogle's repeated message of simplicity, as well as his emphasis on reversion to the mean, ultimately convinced me to resist the temptation of small-cap value tilting. bogle's unwavering conviction in the simple serves as a necessary component in the chorus of voices, helping to guide your investment decisions, even on the more esoteric matters. and although the message of simplicity is easily stated, i am glad bogle wrote a comprehensive text because the details illustrating the majesty of simplicity is what finally settled the small-cap value tilting question for me.this book's huge size and scope definitely has its drawbacks, not the least of which is the sheer intimidation factor. nevertheless, i believe this book does serve a useful role in the catalog of passive investing, and bogle was the only one who could've written it.

Although I have investment experience , I really enjoyed book and have recommended it to folksthat don't have a clue when it comes investing in the stock market. But this book may be a bit too much for them.Instead it may be a more appropriate read to those with some investment experience.However, John Boggle really is a revolutionary when it comes deconstructing the myths of investing.And thats critical because the industry is designed to make investing confusing and complicated. Hence people thinki theyneed an investment advisor to guide them. Unless you have very complicated portfolio, index or passive investing in time, isa winning proposition when it comes to participating in an amazing wealth generating program.The fact of the matter is less 5% of all active money management manager beet the market. The question is.. if you don't know who the 5% of professional are who beat the market , you're going to spend time and money on people that can't beat index investing.Boggle is truly a visionary and had to take a lot of heat from the industry stating that his system of indexing is never going to build a portfolio large enough to make difference in one's financing future.Fortunately he has proven all of the naysayers wrong.You may have to read certain sections twice or so yet if you want to be in the stock market, you can pick upthe basic concepts and general terms to begin taking control of your financial future.