Welcome to the Bogleheads chapter series. This episode was hosted by the pre and early retirement life stage chapter and recorded November 8th, 2023. The session features a Q&A and open discussion with our guest, Sylvia Auten. Bogleheads are investors who follow John Bogle's philosophy for attaining financial independence. This recording is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as personalized investment advice.

Sylvia, thanks so much for being here. It gives us a great pleasure to have you be the guest speaker. I'll turn it over to you shortly. I'll reiterate what Jim said and I'll elaborate on it a little without stealing your thunder, Sylvia. Just for folks who aren't familiar, you were not involved with personal investing.

Your husband handled much of it. And following his passing, you were faced with having to learn what to do and how to handle your situation. And so if you would, we're excited to hear about your journey. Thank you very much. And thank you so much for having me here and giving me an opportunity to talk about my experiences.

First, I would like to thank Mel Lindauer and Taylor Laramore because all along they have been so kind and so helpful. Before beginning, I would also like to talk about something I've come to believe. And my belief has been based on talking to many people, teaching a course for many years now, to retirees who are just beginning to invest and then reading more than I ever thought I would do.

And what my belief is, is that there are many, many, many people who are afraid to invest. They don't feel comfortable. They don't understand about investing. I think they were like me, and I'm hoping that what I can share will help them feel more comfortable, find joy in investing.

And behind me there, I have a white swan, and that stands for sleep well at night. And that's what I hope people will be able to do, is to sleep well at night. Sylvia, if I can just interrupt for a second, thanks. I just want to, for folks not familiar, mention that Mel Lindauer is on this call, and it's an honor to have him here as one of the founders of the Bogleheads, and as you mentioned, Taylor Laramore as well.

Yes. Well, thank you for that. When I think about my journey, I think about three stages. The first stage I call no, no, heck no. The second stage I think of as, well, I will try and learn a little. And the third stage I think of as hello, Jack Bogle.

So let me start with the first stage of my journey. I didn't start to invest until after I retired, and well after I retired. I asked myself, why didn't I start earlier? Maybe like you, you were influenced by your childhood. My parents were young adults when they encountered the Great Depression.

My father lost his job. They had hard times. The stock market crash came, and my mother said, never invest in anything but government bonds. They will always return your money, and you won't lose a penny. I didn't know any better, and so that's what I thought was the way to invest.

Then when I married, my husband Dave, it turned out, was an enthusiastic market investor. And I had great confidence in him. When we were young, we had almost no money, and he would invest in penny stocks. Penny stocks, as the name implies, are very low cost and usually very, very risky.

He invested in stocks, gold mines in the Philippines. That to me sounded risky, but again, we had very little money. He went on to invest in commodities, corn, pork bellies, and I knew so little about the market that I thought we could actually have bushels of corn if a bet went wrong.

Then he went on to invest in precious metals and tech stocks. That was plan A in our house. He did that. I did other things. I had no plan B. And then he died suddenly, and there I was. In Ireland, there's a headstone which says, "Death leaves a heartache.

No one can heal. Love leaves a memory no one can steal." So for a long time, I had heartaches and memories, and I had to do all those things that some of you might do if you lose a loved one. And like Scarlett O'Hara, I said, "I'll think about investing tomorrow." Of course, tomorrow came, and I still didn't know what to do with the funds we had.

We did have a friend, though, who had really done very well in his career and was doing well in the market. He said to me, "I have a financial advisor. He's a great young man. He will take you as a client." And I told him to look out after you.

Wow, I felt really comforted that somebody was going to do that for me. So I went with this young man and put funds there. And very congenial, large practice, well-known in the Washington area. He put me into mutual funds with fairly high loads. I didn't know anything. I didn't really know how to ask.

But here's where a little turn in my journey came. I did want to be a good steward. I didn't want to lose whatever money we had, and I wanted to know a little bit about why he was doing what he was doing. So when I would ask a question about an asset, I'd get in the mail a quarterly report on that asset, which often had little print and much, much data.

It wasn't what I wanted. It didn't make me feel any more comfortable, but it was my fault. I didn't know how to ask. Then my brother-in-law had a relative, and that relative was investing with a young man in the Chicagoland area. He was in a very tony suburb, lots of clients.

And my brother-in-law said, "Just talk to him." So I did. Another very nice young man. And he said, "You know, you are paying double. You're paying the mutual fund companies, and you're paying your manager, whereas I will invest directly in stocks and bonds, and you will only pay once." Well, that sounded good to me.

That sounded logical. So I switched. Now I'm going to pause for a moment because I know now for many people, switching is very hard. Lots of articles have been written on how hard it is to switch, but I did switch. And after a while, that same little niggling thought came, "Do I really know why this financial advisor is doing what he's doing?" So I asked again some questions, and I said, "I don't want the quarterly reports." He said, "Okay." He said, "I've got a book for you." Well, when I looked at the book, what it turned out to be was a book he was using for one of his levels of financial certification.

It was very dense, lots of numbers, lots of charts. I took a deep breath, and I said, "Sylvia, you're not asking the right questions. You're not getting to where you want to be with learning." And it was at that time, then I said, "Give yourself permission just to do a little learning.

You don't have to be like Dave, but just do a little." So that kind of ended the first part of my journey. And I thought, "I'll do three things. I will talk to friends and neighbors. I will go to the library and look up books, and I'll get on the internet." You know, when you talk to people, there have been three taboo subjects.

One is sex, one is religion, and one is politics. I really think finance could be added in as a fourth subject. I never asked people what amount of money they had. I just wanted to know what their rationale is. Why do they invest the way they did? We have a few friends who really were very good.

They were very smart, but they were like Dave. They put a lot of time and energy into their investing. Another man worked for a large oil company. He said it was well-run, and that's why he invested there. But, you know, others, whether they invested on their own or with financial advisors, I didn't get much sense that they understood what they were doing.

One of my friends said, "I get this report every quarter, and my advisor says, 'Ask me questions.'" I never do, because I don't know what questions to ask. Another friend said, "I have this rubber stamp, and I say to my advisor, 'Please do the right thing by me, and I will rubber stamp it.'" I came away thinking, I'm not sure I'm getting much from this, but I do know there are a lot of people out there who may have some of the issues that I do.

I went to the library, and I cannot tell you why I didn't find Jack Bogle's book, but I found a number of books, again, that were very difficult for me in terms of what I wanted. I found the book on dummies. I'm sure I learned something there. But what surprised me was when I went on the internet.

The site that I remember the most now is Morningstar. Then I found the Bogleheads, and found it was just tremendously helpful, but I hadn't come to them when I was on Morningstar. Now I think the time I was on Morningstar was somewhat like the Wild West. There were probably a dozen forums.

There was a forum on stocks, another on bonds, closed-end funds, mutual funds, probably one on Schwab, maybe TIAA, TIAA-CREF, and Vanguard. And what I decided to do, three things. I would lurk, I would listen, and I would learn, and you know it was fun. And I think the more times that learning is fun, the more that I at least do it.

Some of the people on these forums, which people would post their ideas, questions, and so on, some of these people I think were brilliant investors, and I could listen and get some ideas. Some I think were charlatans and really didn't know what they were talking about. And some would just throw a monkey wrench into conversations.

There were virtual fistfights on some of these sites, and some people would be banned. So it was kind of fun just to listen in. Here's what surprised me though when I got onto the Vanguard site. In my mind there was this old codger, I say that now at my age kind of with a smile, and I say it very fondly.

His screen name was Limo Man, he was in the Chicago area, and he owned limousine services. He was such a good man, I think he probably had very little formal education, but what a street smart man he was. And he was into Vanguard, into balanced funds. Balanced funds meaning a fund that has stocks and bonds.

And when someone asked what should I do, how should I invest, he would give them this advice. He'd say, look at Wellesley and Wellington, those were two bedrock funds in Vanguard. Wellesley had more bonds, 60%, and Wellington had more stock, 60%. He said, look at them and make some decisions, put whatever money you want there, keep out a little.

If you think you're a smart stock picker, pick your stocks and then watch and see who does better, the professionals at Vanguard, Wellington and Wellesley or you. If you are better than you can continue with your picks, if not, then you've got your money safeguarded. Well, that sounded good to me, and that opened the door for me to look more at Vanguard.

And that's when I found out about Jack Bogle and his philosophy of passive investing index funds by the entire stock market. And it was a revelation to me. I could see my mother investing only in bonds. My husband being really a great person who did all of this hard work on picking stocks.

But for me, the sweet spot was passive investing, where I could sleep well at night, and I did not have to worry about which stocks to pick. Now, I convinced myself of that not only because of the work Jack Bogle did, but I want to introduce Warren Buffett that most of you have heard of, the Oracle of Omaha.

It was a number of years ago that he put out his now famous bet. The bet was a million dollars, and it was for 10 years. He said he believed that passive investing, investing in an index fund, total market, would outperform hedge fund managers. Now, I don't know that much about hedge fund managers, but I tend to think of them as uber stock pickers.

They are very good. They have a secret sauce, and they even add something additional. So they really are top. And he said, whoever won over that 10-year period, the money would go to a charity of that person's choice. Now, as I remember the story, it wasn't even halfway over, or maybe halfway over, when it became clear that Warren Buffett's passive investing was going to be the winner.

"Wow," I said to myself. And that's the way it turned out, a lot more details, some fun stuff. But the girls club of Omaha, Nebraska was a million dollars richer because of his bet. The second thing I wanted to say that impressed me was Warren Buffett's first wife died, and his second wife has a trust set up by him.

Warren Buffett manages the Berkshire Hathaway stock. When he dies, and she's alive, the Berkshire Hathaway stock will be in that trust for a while, and then his executors are to cash it out, and guess what? Put it in passive index funds, the total market, S&P 500, 90% and 10% in government bonds.

If this great stock picker feels that his wife, who I'm assuming is ordinary, like the rest of us in terms of picking, if that person should have her money in passive investing, well, that sounds good for me. And then I read that starting in the mid-1920s to today, the S&P 500 has on average returned 10% a year.

So go up, go down, go up, go down, but 10%, I never thought I would make 10%. But by passive investing, as Jack Bogle said, I would get my fair share. That gave me great joy, and I could sleep well at night. So that kind of ends the second part of my journey where I solidified my belief in why this is so good for so many of us, especially people who think that they're intimidated by the market, they don't want to do numbers, this is a wonderful way to go.

Now part three was, hello, Jack Bogle. It turned out that I joined a retirement institute. There was a man called Bernard Osher, and he left funds across the nation for retirees to go to their local university and set up a chapter of lifelong learning. These chapters are all over the country.

We teach one another skills we have. I've joined the one at George Mason University, which is excellent. And it had so many good classes, but I want to tell about two and how they influence me. One is a financial forum, again, no one asks how much money you have.

But there are people who, like Dave, are very interested in investing, and they talk about it. And you can sit, and I learned, I listened, and I learned, and I just picked up good information that made me feel more comfortable. There are also writing classes, and they're led by really wonderful people.

The people attending want to help you. And in retirement, I thought, well, I'd like to write maybe a memoir about my travels, my family, things I want to write to grandchildren. But as I was going through this learning experience, I did a little writing, and people in the class were helpful.

I often tore my writing apart, but they were very helpful in having me see what people would want to know. And I learned from them. So when I was doing that, to go back to the forum, a man in the forum said, we're looking for someone to teach a class to beginners who are retired.

And he said, many cases, a husband and wife, the husband died, he's been doing the investing, and his wife is lost. And this man said, there have been occasions where women have lost parts of their funds. I could really sympathize with it, and said, I'd be happy to teach.

I've been teaching now many years. I usually teach with a financial advisor, so people can see, here's independent investing, here's investing with an advisor. But as I was teaching, a thought came to me. I've been listening to the experts. But you know, if I had a shoulder that needed surgery, I'd certainly want to find the expert, the best doctor I could find, and learn all about that doctor.

But I'd love to talk to his patients. Was the surgery as good? Do they have complications? Were they worried? Did he reassure them? I want to talk to some of those people. And I thought the same about investing. Was what I learned what other people learned? Did they have other ideas?

And so I did a search, and I couldn't find anything. Now, my not finding anything may have been, you know, just my not doing it. Bill Bernstein, for example, had showed me an article about how women can be better investors than men. I don't think I would have found that without him.

So I thought, well, maybe there's something out there. I knew a little bit about the Beardstown ladies, but that wasn't quite it. And sometimes there's a financial advisor who will have a couple of little paragraphs about clients. But I wanted to know more. So I thought, I know the person who will know, and that is Jack Bogle.

So I wrote to him. It turned out that he had been ill, was no longer the CEO of Vanguard, but had an office on the campus with staff. And people also tell me that he was very kind in writing to people, writing back to them. So I have on his stationery, a little handwritten note that said, of course, something like this, of course, women can be as good an investor as men.

And he said, I know of no one, no ordinary person who has written about her experiences. You may be the first. Now, sometimes being the first is not all that good. I mean, why wouldn't someone have written about this was in my mind. And especially since I was in these classes of memoir, I mean, I knew that memoir today is a very popular genre.

I mean, there are memoirs of people who come to this country may, you know, make it's fantastically good. They write about it. Someone who's been an Olympic star, they write about it. Someone who's overcome some dreaded background or dreaded disease, and they write about it. So I wasn't sure why no one had written, but I had written blogs.

I would write blogs for the family on travel, etc. So I decided I would write a blog about why I learned what I did, and why Jack Bogle's investment advice made so much sense to me. There are 24 posts, it's free on the web. It's called "Grandma's Investing for Beginners." When I was a little halfway through, Jack Bogle died.

So two of the posts really are about him, and I picked some of the quotes he had. They were really very, very good for me to read again. I made a copy of that blog, and I sent it to his wife, Eve. And she, like him, must be a very wonderful woman.

She sent me a note saying that this was good to see and was good to hear. After that, someone recommended that I do a YouTube video. So I've done one. I did not want to continue to be doing that. So there's one free YouTube video on the web. It's called "Grandma Sylvia's Investing for Beginners." And then I decided I was going to start my own little adventure in reaching out to people.

So I had business cards made. And when I would go to a restaurant or have some service, I would say to a young person, do you invest? Do you want to invest? What do you know about investing? I have something here that could help you. And most of them would take them.

Sometimes I'd meet somebody who would say, oh, I was a day trader. Wow. But I loved meeting the young people, and I said, the only thing I ask is, if you make a million dollars, let me know. And I put my email down. So this part of the journey is not finished.

I'm trying to figure out how all of us who are adherents of the Bogle philosophy can reach out to younger people, because many of them have no defined benefit plans. Many of them are in the gig economy. So what can all of us do to help reach young people so that they could have better lives?

Thank you. Great. Thank you. That was great, Sylvia. So I'll touch on a few things, and then we'll cover some questions. Great to hear you not just speak about Jack Bogle, but also Warren Buffett, who himself honored Jack Bogle at the 2017 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting. And further, he's famously said and put in his annual report that Jack did more for the individual investor than anyone else that Warren's ever known.

So nice to hear you add to that. So I'll jump into some questions that were submitted in advance via the RSVP for this event. So these are from Bogleheads, and they're often wide-ranging. You mentioned connecting with early investors or the younger folks. The one question I'll ask you is, what do you think is the best thing beginner investors late in life should start with to get their investing life going?

I think it's never too late. As I said, I started well after I retired. I think part of it is to give yourself permission to learn and to feel comfortable. I believe it's the feelings people have, that level of comfort that is so important, especially when the bad times come, and they always do, as we know, that you feel that you can ride them out.

You can stay the course, as Jack Bogle would say. So give yourself time to learn. Now, one of the things that I really liked my brother-in-law did was to ask different sources to create portfolios for him. He had a financial advisor, has a financial advisor, so he knew what assets he had in this portfolio, but he went to three banks and he told them the kind of investor he was.

They will always ask if you are conservative, if you are more risk taker, and in each case with no cost, they would create a portfolio for him. You could do that at Schwab. You could go to Vanguard, anywhere, and collect what different experts say that might be good for you.

And then what I think is a good idea, but other people may have other ideas, you put each of these portfolios into a Morningstar spreadsheet. We say past performance does not indicate future performance, but you would see something about each of these and you could start your learning. I would also say to people, go to the Boglehead website, talk about your concerns, find out what others say, and go slowly, don't make big decisions, and keep going until you feel comfortable and can sleep well at night.

Okay. Fantastic. Thank you. Similarly, this question submitted from our Boglehead audience, what advice do you have for the lesser or non-financially interested spouse or partner who resists getting more involved? And I'll expand on the question. I think in the Bogleheads community, a lot of people are the beacon for personal finance sounding board.

And within our social circles, there are many well-educated, super smart people, but they're often not interested in personal finance. So how do you navigate that? And usually I'm going to say it's the woman, my experience has been, and that was me certainly, who is not as interested, but it could be either party.

I think that what's important is to have a discussion because the disinterested or less interested person, as you said, they're very smart people. And I say, anyone who can drive a car, follow a recipe, raise children, have a career, do any of these things. Sometimes they don't know how easy it is to invest.

The other thing that is important is I believe we all want to be good stewards of our money. And I think that this idea of a plan B, knowing a little so that should you have to become involved, you can be the good steward for yourself, for the spouse who is no longer there, for your family, you do not want to be taken care of.

And my motto now that I tell people of the elevator speech is that investing is as easy as buying a cup of coffee and as wonderful as winning the lottery. So know it's easy and take a little time to learn. Okay. Fantastic. So let's build on that a little.

How did you specifically go from underconfident to, I mean, you went on this journey where you learned a ton and you were able to find high quality, high integrity sources to learn. What do you say to the folks who for whatever reason are convinced that they're not capable of learning, even though they're smart in many other areas of their life, how did you overcome this lack of confidence and go on to the mastery that ended up, I mean, you teach courses and you wrote a book.

Well, I've always had some degree of confidence in myself. I didn't have it in this area, but I love people. I like to talk to people. I like to learn and I like to ask questions. If you feel that you have impediments where you're not as able to reach out, then I think do whatever you can in little ways.

Don't set high benchmarks. Do little things, get some supporting people around who can show how to do this, how much fun it is. And I used to tell people it's like winning the lottery because you'd hear this chink, chink, chink of money coming in from your assets. You need a supportive group, I think, if you feel that you really can't do it.

But I want to emphasize this is not math. This is not statistics. This is a philosophy of simplicity. I hope that helps. That certainly helps. So how did you resist the very human inclusion that higher fees or that more expensive and more complicated is better? Let me see if I can find this.

I have some of Jack Bogle's quotes here. And I'm going to show you this one because I think it was a good one. I listened to Jack Bogle. He said the grim irony of investing then is that we investors as a group not only do not get what we pay for, we get precisely what we do not pay for.

So if we pay for nothing, we get everything. Excellent. That definitely nails the point. Something else you mentioned in terms of being a woman and learning, I think maybe this generation is different, but certainly earlier generations, there may have been a norm to the man handling the finances. And there's been a lot written about the differences for women investing versus men investing.

And in your book, you mention you now believe that becoming a good investor is no different for women than for men. Can you elaborate on how you came to that realization? Yes. I think multiple ways. One, when I talked to a number of men, I realized that they didn't have a clue either.

And that they may have been, you know, reticent to say anything like that. But we had a friend who went with a financial advisor, I don't know if I mentioned that. And when I asked, he said, I, you know, my money's coming in, and they have a great Christmas party.

That was kind of his idea. But I think reading about women, and today you are right, that I believe younger women may have a different worldview in general. But I've talked to a number of young women. And part of it is, they're still a lack of interest. And some of it is not the determination to save even a little so that they can get started.

I don't know the answer. But I do think that women can be very good investors. It's been shown, and as I say, Bill Bernstein had this great article, because women tend to be a little more conservative. So they're not as apt to do some risky things. I think if we can just get young people to know how easy it is, and not be in debt, that they can have very good lives, financially.

Fantastic. Another question submitted via the RSVP, given the investing knowledge you now have, what would you have done differently, if anything, during this journey? And I'll add to that question, a lot of people say, yeah, I learned that lesson the hard way. Can you share some lessons you learned the hard way along your journey?

Well, I wish there had been a magic wand, and I had known about the Bogle passive investing. I mean, it's been around for decades. I am neither pro nor con financial advisors. As I said, 95% of my friends have financial advisors. But I think the industry is not set up so that the passive investing is easy to do.

Although now, this revolution has changed and all the big houses are going to passive investing one way or the other. I made, so you could call that a mistake. I think another mistake is I shied away from anything my husband was doing, because he was doing all these charts, and he would listen to Louis Rukeyser.

I don't know if any of you remember him. Rukeyser was enormously clever and funny, and he did a program called Washington Week. And you would have- Wall Street Week in Review. Wall Street Week in Review. That's right. And he would have these experts. One would say, "Buy this bank stock." The other would say, "Sell this bank stock." And I thought, you know, if the experts don't agree, you know, I'm not going to do this.

But maybe if I had worked with Dave and come at it from a different direction, maybe we both would have come up with ways of operating, and it would have been fun for both of us. I think fun and joy in what you're doing is really important. As to my mistakes, well, one of my mistakes, and again, I do not blame anyone but myself.

One of my mistakes, I believe, was being sold, not buying, but being sold an annuity in an IRA. Now, IRAs mean that your funds are tax-deferred. And so the benefit of an annuity is not the same as if it was in a taxable account. I think the reason that happened was I was so conservative.

But when you look into annuities, they are very complex instruments. In fact, I think it was Richard Thaler, the economist, who said even for economists, annuities are difficult. And I had one with all sorts of riders that would... I think I was paying like maybe over 6% for the fees.

Now, I want to make sure that people know I'm not against annuities. If you have no defined benefit, annuities are great for many people. But that was a mistake I made and I didn't know better. And unfortunately, the industry is set up that there's nice commissions to people who sell them.

So it's kind of a two-edged sword. That was one of my mistakes. Okay. Thanks for sharing. Something, another question submitted from the Bogleheads. This may be too personal. Feel free to say so if it is, but it's a very Boglehead question. Could you share with us your current asset allocation and how and why you chose that allocation?

I think I mentioned earlier that when I first started, I would have one or two shares of a stock because I had free trades. So I had stocks. I never went into bonds. Bonds are much more difficult, I think, for the average person. But I had closed-end bonds. I had master limited partnerships, the kind of oil things.

I had all sorts of odd, I think now, stocks. And once I decided I was going to go toward the simple investing, I have been selling off, sometimes at a loss, sometimes at a gain, but trying to simplify my portfolio from 60 plus to maybe I have a dozen or so more assets in my portfolio.

I still like the Wellington, which is a balanced fund, and that's probably the only asset I have that has bonds. Everything else is in the stock market, either as Vanguard mutual funds or Vanguard ETFs. I don't know if I'll ever change, but I went with Vanguard, and it's simple for me to buy within that company.

I'm moving more now towards the total stock market, but because of capital gains and other things, I don't and can't just liquefy what I did have. So I am more into VTI, which is the total stock market, index fund, or VOO, which is the S&P 500. I have some prime cap, and if any of you have that, you know that it's a good performing mutual fund.

I think it's been closed for a while, but if it opens, I like that. I've had some stock for a long time like Costco. I like Costco, and when I was looking for dividends, Costco was always good because from time to time, they'd give a big dividend, and it would surprise you, and I kind of like the joy of that.

I'm sorry. I'm going to interject here. Do you think high level, you have a sense of what percent equities, cash, and bonds you are that you'd want to share? My bonds must be low. My equities must be high. I haven't looked at it recently. My cash, because I've been drawing down for some other expenses, was high and is getting lower, but I do want to make a point about that, and that is if you are an investor and you need your funds, for example, if you don't have a defined benefit plan, I think your portfolio would look different.

If you need fewer of those funds, and you're saving for children or grandchildren, then you might have much more stock than bonds. I tell you, it surprises me that I have more stocks, a higher percentage of stocks when I never would have done that initially. Does that help? Sure.

And then another question submitted from the group via the RSVP function. Given all that you've been through financially, do you find yourself today tinkering with your portfolio to try to earn a greater return? Very, very little. I do go to Morningstar, and I have my portfolio on Morningstar. During these bad months and the bad year, I'm like an ostrich, and I stick my head in the sand, and I don't want to know how much I have lost, but it's been getting better, and so I will do a look-see on Morningstar, and there are some things that are still performing less well than VTI, the total stock market.

So I look at those and say, "Do you really want to keep them?" People get attached to things. I had Cody there for a while. I don't have that anymore. So in that sense, yes, I am tinkering, and I'm trying to get it down to a very simple portfolio.

If I were to go to Vanguard today with cash, I think I would probably have no more than three assets, but right now I probably have a dozen. Okay. Thanks for sharing. So another quote I enjoyed from your book was, "There's another thing I learned about investors. They're happy to tell you about their big win, but seem to forget their losses." Can you tell us a bit about that realization and why it's important?

I believe we're all subject to the kind of glow that winning entails, and if someone says, "I made a killing in X, Y, or Z," we kind of look up to that person, think that they maybe know more, and it may be true that that was a good investment, but it may be true that there were eight or nine investments which were terrible investments.

And so when I say people tend to talk about the things that they did well and kind of shy away from the problems they had, to me that means whenever anyone does talk about it in a forum, I want to look carefully. I've only made a few mistakes in taking surface information and acting on it.

I try not to do that anymore. Okay. So maybe building on that, can you share some of the challenges you initially faced when you took control of your finances? Well, I had to move my money out of where the second advisor was, and that was difficult. It turns out that I wanted to put my monies into these passive funds, which had in Vanguard very low fees.

But this young man was willing to do it, but his company still wanted to charge me 1% of assets under management. And I said, "That doesn't make sense. These are passive investments. There really is no management as such." But that was a company rule, and so that was a difficulty, and there were several phone calls that went back and forth until we realized it just wasn't going to work out.

Got it. So I'm also curious, Sylvia, if you'll share more personally how you stay active, how you stay engaged, how you maintain your health, both physically and cognitively. I think people would be very interested in hearing from you. Well, I'm in my 80s, and I'm creaky. I have a wonderful sister and brother-in-law, and my husband and I visit them, and we try to be active because they're younger and they're active.

I have a wonderful daughter and son-in-law, and they're active, and I have a little grandson, and so part of me tells me that I have to be active. This is not a plug for Apple, but my Apple Watch tells me every day what I've done in terms of exercise, because my husband is 90, and I feel we need to do both things.

We have a gym membership. We go three times a week to different trainers, one for strength, one for more flexibility, someone who comes to the house. I'm thinking that the more we can do to stay physically active, the better, and of course, lifelong has always been I could lose another pound.

That's funny. I want to remind folks, I've been semi-monitoring the chat, and folks should feel free to submit questions via the chat, and we'll turn it over to live questions as well, so feel free to raise your hand if you'd rather not put questions in the chat for Sylvia.

In the absence of other questions, I'll continue, but happy to turn it over to chat questions or audience questions when we have questions. Another quote from your book, Sylvia, "Good advice isn't cheap, neither is bad advice." Can you tell us more about that? Well, each chapter of the book has an epigram, something that I hoped would spark interest in the chapter.

What you read was the epigram for the chapter on financial advisors. There's a chapter on financial advisors and a chapter on financial planners. I think Jason Zwieg from the Wall Street Journal had some good articles about the difference and the importance of the difference between the two, but I was looking for an epigram that was neutral or positive about financial advisors.

And again, this could be me, but I could find nothing that was giving a positive, that I could use as a positive quote, so I made up one, and here I've got this little, this one. It said, "Good advice isn't cheap, neither is bad advice," because when you're given bad advice and you don't know it, you are wasting time and money.

And it may not be deliberately bad, it may not be someone who is malicious, it may just not be right for you, and you are the person who has to make that decision. You're the one who has to know, "Is this advice the right advice for me?" So that's how it came up.

Okay, fantastic. You also write a bit about tuning out the noise. I think there's more information than ever, and it's ever-increasing, and it's hard to escape it sometimes if you're just naturally immersed in it. Can you talk about how you have been able to tune out the noise? Well, I love the computer, I love the internet, but I'm not into television that much.

I'm more into headline news, and so I ask myself when I read a headline, "Is that something that I want to know, need to know, and will it help me in some way?" I think because I'm not that much into watching television or listening to a lot of news programs, that that's been a big help for me.

And just knowing that, you know, Jack Bogle's words about noise, just knowing that there is so much out there and you need to be on guard, I think that's a good safeguard. Okay, excellent. Another quote, "Of all my mistakes, my biggest mistake was that I didn't start investing sooner." So I think in our own lives, whether Bogleheads – I think the Bogleheads community, I know it's wide-ranging.

There are many mature and informed investors, but there are also new arrivals kind of early in their journey, but even outside of the Bogleheads community, our social circle often has young people who say they don't have enough to invest, not realizing the power of time and compounding. So when you said you learned that you could have or should have started investing sooner, can you elaborate on how to better connect with folks who are hesitant to start for whatever reason, including they may think they don't have enough to start?

Yes, let me first say that I was just talking to a young woman when I was getting tires and I was asking her about investing, and she said, "I've got $11,000 in debt." Well, I think we all know that you must pay your debt down first, but if you have a strategy for how you are looking at your life, how you're prioritizing what you do, what's important for short-term needs and gratifications, and what's important for long-term, then I think with that kind of an analysis, you can make the decisions.

And my mother would always save a penny or two there. And I tell the story that in 10 years, she was always able to buy a new car for my dad by saving a penny or two here and there. Now, we also know that there are people who have two jobs and they still are not able to save.

And that's a problem that I think we maybe as a society have to address. But I believe with many people, it's a decision-making, and if they can become convinced how much better their lives will be, I think they can make that change. Okay. Excellent. Thanks for sharing. Changing topics, what advice would you give to someone who suddenly finds themselves responsible for their family's financial affairs?

Well, I should have said early on, of course, I'm not a financial advisor and I can only rely on my own sense of what I would do. But I don't know what it means when they are responsible for their financial affairs. Does that mean helping them take their resources and learn how to manage it?

Does that mean paying their bills? I think we would have to go in more detail to what that actually means. It's always important to me to help family. Family is very important. But it's also important to keep yourself financially intact and not do things which will jeopardize your own standing.

If someone through no fault of their own has terrible medical bills, then how do you work with that person to get the resources to get what they need? May not be a perfect solution, but you should also think of safeguarding your own financial well-being. If the situation was because of bad decision-making, then even more so to be a resource, to be a help, but to draw a line somewhere about what you can and cannot do.

Great. Thanks. Jim, I see a question in the chat that is definitely worth asking. Do you want to take it or shall I read it? Why don't you just take it? Okay. Sylvia, from the chat, this is as a grandmother too, I currently have five grandchildren between the ages of 18 and 23.

Any suggestions on how to introduce the idea of investing with them? First of all, congratulations on having five grandchildren of that age. I think that's wonderful. It might be their personalities too, and talking with each individually, I think is how I might approach it. I don't know the books that are out now for teenagers and young adults, but I do think that giving young adults some sense of what could be in their future if they made small changes in their lives and how they could be enriched.

It doesn't take long to come up with some numbers and use the compound interest formula to show how a person, when they're that age, could become a millionaire if they invested wisely, especially with low fees. I guess I would also hope that as a grandmother, you might be modeling some of those behaviors so they could say, "Wow, my grandmother does this," and look at her success.

If you have enthusiasm for it, that conveys a lot. Okay, fantastic. Something else. I want to reiterate for the crowd. Feel free to raise your hand via Zoom if you want to ask a live question or continue to put questions into the chat. In the absence of additional questions, Sylvia, can you elaborate on how you discerned good sources, like high-integrity, high-quality sources to learn from, given there's so much out there now?

Well, that's a wonderful question. There are many - let me give you a couple of examples. There are many YouTube videos, and there are many blogs, and I've looked at a fair number and the landscape changes. I think if you have a few guiding principles like the Bogleheads have in terms of low cost, low expenses, that that will help as you look at sites.

I guess that I'm always suspect when something seems too good to be true. I think the best thing is to step back and think about it for a while, but not get so involved in so many sites or so much reading that it kind of overpowers you. I'm not sure that I'm answering what the person has in mind.

I just found some YouTube sites not very good, but on the other hand, I came across some that were great, and maybe it's an internal sense you gather after a while, but just don't make decisions based on some recommendations that may not have enough background information for you. Okay, that's helpful.

Something else you wrote about stay invested rather than jumping in and out of the market. How do you resist the very human temptation? I think Bogleheads largely know the fundamentals of trying to not time the market, but this very human, oh, the market is at its peak or you want to wait till it's dropped.

How did you separate the emotional side of the intellectual knowledge we learn, but our human tendencies fight against that sometimes? Yes, I think my biggest strategy is that I tune out. It may be this idea of the ostrich with her head in the sand, but also I have a defined benefit of pension.

I think I can hold my breath and I think I can believe Jack Bogle and Warren Buffett and believe in the long term. Warren Buffett is very strong on America and that things over time will continue to be good. I think if you have that faith and you know that your income from a pension, for example, is there every month, I think you can look at these scary times a little different.

If I was solely dependent on my investments, I might have a different perspective. I might be much more concerned about the ups and downs and in fact, for some people, I do believe that they, because of their situation, might be better not being in the market. They should be in government bonds or annuities where there is a standard that they can count on.

For me, I tend to tune out. I won't listen to things when things are going bad and I'll get on with other parts of my life. Okay, makes sense. Something else you wrote about, you had to overcome your mother's advice to never lose a penny. You've also written that to make money in the market, you have to be willing to take certain risks.

Can you elaborate on that because it's a conceptual change within yourself and I think a lot of people struggle with that. Yes. Again, I think it's very dependent on your situation. If it's going to have a big impact on your quality of learning, quality of living, if you lose a penny or two, then that's very different than if you can wait out the storms.

It took me so long, as I say, it was well into retirement because of that advice, which was very good advice from her perspective, but then I saw how Dave invested. When I listened to so many people and heard what Jack Bogle had to say and believe Warren Buffett had to say, I think it was a gradual, emotional feeling, not only cognitive thinking about it, but an emotional feeling that I did not have to be so super worried.

Once you've gone through one bad stretch and you see that the market has come back, wow, you may have lost 10%, but then the next year it comes back, I think you have hope. Now, if we ever got into a stretch, as has happened around the world, where it's five years or more, I mean, that might test me.

Okay. Great. Speaking of testing you, there are some people who I think are born Bogleheads. They would be frugal and conscientious investors versus some people who are born spenders. What did you have to fight against your own natural tendencies to adopt versus what came very naturally to you as you learned, say, Boglehead philosophy?

Are we talking about spending or saving? Under that umbrella in broadly personal finance, let's say you learned some things and once they crystallized, they came naturally to you because they aligned with your tendencies. But a lot of folks have different tendencies and saving and investing may not be as natural to them, but it's not out of reach either.

What were some examples that you had to do either mental gymnastics for, or you had to fight against your natural tendencies to achieve what you knew was good for you? Well, I'll go back to my mother and I think her stories of how you can have a very good life.

We never had a lot. We never went out to restaurants, but we traveled all over the country, camping. We had music lessons. We had a lot of things, but she was a wonderful budget person. And so I think that when you call it a natural tendency, I think that I saw that you can have a very good life without spending a lot of money.

And let me interject that today there's this movement fired. I think it's financial independence, retire early, and people are making decisions. Maybe they did not have modeling. Maybe it didn't come natural to them, but they decided that they wanted to be free of jobs, free of worry at an earlier age, and they made decisions that would allow them to do that.

So for me, I think I had that advantage of having the assurance that if you do save, you can use it later for things you want, but you don't have to spend a lot to be happy. Excellent. Well, I think you're preaching to the choir. So something else in terms of your learning journey after you had a good handle on the fundamentals and again, you went on to teach courses in it, obviously written a book, how incrementally did you add to that knowledge base?

Were you pursuing more complicated things or was there a sufficiency and contentedness that you weren't missing out on things that you didn't know? I don't believe I have pursued it more knowledge with great vigor. I will do some, but it tends to be more incidental and the things that I do, if they've confirmed what I think is the right thing to do, then I'm kind of even less likely to do it.

I have some other writing that I'm interested in doing. And so I can kind of leave this and let it perk along on its own. And that's one of the joys. That's why it's a sweet spot for me. I don't have to keep pulling the tree up by the roots to see how it's doing.

I don't have to keep looking at the pot if it's boiling. I just let it sit there and I go on with other things. Fantastic. So we're coming up to 9.20 Eastern, so an hour and 20 minutes. I'll again remind folks, feel free to submit questions in the chat or raise your hand if you'd like to ask a question of Sylvia directly.

In the absence of additional audience questions, Sylvia, in writing this book, what were some of the, apart from what you've mentioned already, what were some of the big ideas or main goals of sharing via the book, your goal in getting your message out there? I really wanted to address the emotional issue.

I think there's plenty out there of knowledge and facts, the cognitive, but I believe that so much in life is on the emotional side. How we feel about something, whether we feel competent, what are ... I used to say the tapes in our head. There are children who are raised and their parents give them so many good things.

Those children have self-reliance, they have resiliency. Other children may have different tapes in their heads because of what parents or others have said to them. I wanted to help erase some of those tapes in their heads. Now, I do say that I worked with a wonderful person, a writing coach.

I'm not a writer. This is my first real initiative. He would take my writing and say, "You want stories. You want to connect with people, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah." Then I worked with a wonderful editor. She kept saying, "Tapes in your head, that's too old. People won't understand tapes in your head.

Do sound bites." I think the book says sound bites, but to me, it is still tapes in our head. What is our self-talk? If we think that the market requires a great deal of expertise, if we think the market requires heavy-duty mathematics, if we think the market requires just certain innate abilities, then we're not going to go forward as easily.

That's what I wanted to stress. I wanted to stress that I had insecurities, but that today it is so easy and anyone can do it. I wanted women and men to say, "Oh, this is as easy as so many other things in life." It was really that emotional piece, and a bit about the joy when you find that you are able to look at the world in terms of companies, what they provide.

I think I mentioned some of Journey to Jamestown. When we were looking around, I found out about the Jamestown Company, which I had learned in school, but I never really realized the financial implications. Much of having some interest in investing perks your interest in some of the things going on in the world.

But today, now, what is going to happen with alternative energy? Are we going to find a time when it will be so beneficial to the world and to poor people to have solar energy? That's just a big area, and of course, it has implications for the stock market. I wanted to help people find that joy and to overcome personal fear.

Okay, great. Before I turn it over to Jim, Lady Geek, and even Mel as a guest speaker for any closing comments, I have another question for you, perhaps my last. It'll be, I'll say, a holistic lifestyle question. A lot of Bogleheads have been so successful at saving and investing and living a meaningful, thoughtful life, a fulfilling one, the way you described, you don't need to spend a lot of money to have a good life or to enjoy oneself.

A lot of Bogleheads are finding in their later years a challenge to spend money. What has brought you joy to spend on, or do you have this challenge of finding things to spend on to add joy to your life? Not joy from spending, but what have you found worthwhile to spend on?

Yes, I think like many people, when your major life responsibilities, your family, your career, when that is a finished part and you're on to this stage of life, whatever your age is, then this idea of spending, which is sometimes an anathema, we've got built in habits of what we think we should do, that it takes some learning, and that's why I think it's always good to be around people to see what they're doing, how they're learning.

What I find joy in is doing some small work with our universities in terms of trying to set up scholarships for young people, or to do things with the family where we can get together and maybe I can put in a little bit more of the assets and bring people together, where when families are scattered, sometimes we're not able to do it.

Also to think of some of the people in the family who are having harder lives and to provide them with some resources. So it's both close to home, and it's looking at the community, and in some ways this development of the book is not a money maker, but I'm hoping if it ever makes money that I can put it in scholarships and to look to the next generation, but I am also a selfish person in the sense that I still want to get out as much as I can to do things, so I think it's that balance where we are trying to look both at a fulfilling life for ourselves, but then what are the needs of our close family, our friends, and our community.

Wonderful. Great to hear your work for scholarships and the other things you mentioned. So again, we're approaching an hour and a half, and I think we're very grateful for what you shared, Sylvia. Mel, as a special guest attendee, do you want to share any comments? Well, I'd just like to say that I was glad to help Sylvia in any way I could on her book because I think it's needed, and we're all aiming for the same goal, and that's to help other people avoid the mistakes that we made and what we learned along the way, and I can tell you that I made every mistake.

Fortunately, I started very young and made all the mistakes when I was young and didn't have a lot of money, so it's great to see people like you doing what you can to help the people who need help, so thanks again for what you're doing, and thanks for appearing tonight.

Great. Thanks for those comments, Mel, and obviously, thanks for what you do, and I'm sorry, Sylvia, you may have had a response. Well, no, I think that it's people like Mel and Taylor, and I must say that Taylor and his wife were very helpful in reading some of what I had written, and when people are willing to give you their time, I think that's another resource we have.

It's not just money, but it is our time, and so how do we reach out to people and give our time to help them have good lives, and finance is certainly a part of it. Wonderful, and I see Miriam just joined. Hello, Miriam. Hi. And for Lady Geek, did you have any closing comments?

Well, Sylvia, I'd like to thank you for joining us tonight, and one of your goals was to educate people, and you did that, and the YouTube video will help educate many, many more people, so thank you again. Well, thank you for all you do. Yeah, from Lady Geek, yeah, just thank you.

I mean, it's already been said, but thank you for showing up. Thank you for the discussion. It was quite a different perspective, because people come in and they want to start talking about technical details. You just told your story, and I think that's quite different and quite interesting, so thanks.

Well, thank you, and this group is composed of so many, I'm going to say good-hearted, the old-fashioned words, good-hearted people who are there for others, and I feel privileged to be a part of it, and of course, Jack Bogle. One of the things, I didn't come up here, and I don't know if it would be timely, but I have in back of me a poster when I talked to Gus Sautter, who was one of Jack's close associates.

I guess he worked for Jack, and what happened when they were first introducing the idea and how much pushback they got, and so I keep that little poster there that exchange-traded funds are un-American. Index funds. Index funds, yeah. Right. Maybe elaborate on that, because out of context, it's not clear when that was or who put that out and why they did.

You want me to do that now? If you'd like. Sure. Well, I think it was Mel that got me in touch with Gus, and I had a long conversation with him, and he's retired, but I think he was the first global something or something at Vanguard, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this was in the 1970s when Jack had come out with passive investing, and of course, he was wanted at many, many places and conferences, and sometimes he would go, and sometimes he would send Gus.

Well, Gus went to one conference, and he was on the stage with a financial advisor, and that person was very good. I don't know if he was like a Peter Lynch, but he was one that kind of went beyond and always did well for his clients beating the S&P 500, and Gus said, "I still held my ground," even though they found this example, and then Gus went to another conference, and he was on the stage, and lo and behold, there was this same man who had beat the odds and beat the S&P 500.

Well, after about three or four times, Gus thought to himself, "They can't find another person who has beat the S&P," and then I think it was he who said that there was a company. I don't remember which one it was, but it was a financial company, financial services, and they put this poster out which said, "Help stamp out index funds.

They are un-American," and of course, today, we all know that Jack revolutionized the industry to now where all the big houses are following suit, so I just thought that was very funny. It is. It is, and Miriam, did you have any comments you wanted to share? I know you joined late, so feel free.

Thank you. Thank you for coming, Sylvia. I know that your book and portions of your book are in the Bogleheads Wiki under Taylor's Investing Gems, and in my post on the Bogleheads, I did quote you several times, and I really liked those quotes. The first one was, "The biggest impediment to my getting started was that I had no confidence in myself as an investor," and I see that even in young people, in people in college and just out of college, their first jobs, having no confidence as an investor, not just elderly people or not just people who have now for some reason have come in to be in charge of their family finances like you were.

It takes a while to get used to investing, and there's this feeling that it must be something special that only certain people know how to do it, and the average person cannot do it. It's nice for, well, Jack Bogle, of course, revolutionized that, and his books tell us, "Yes, you can do it," and the Bogleheads tell us, "Yes, you can do it." Well, Miriam, I think you were not here when I said that I now have this elevator speech when I meet young people, and I say to them, "It's as easy as buying a cup of coffee and as wonderful as winning the lottery.

You do not need to know any math. You don't need to know a lot of charts and spend time because Jack Bogle gave us a revolution in investing," and I tell them it's like the Copernican when I give a PowerPoint. I talk about the Copernican revolution where we used to think that the sun went around the earth, and it was very hard to dispel that notion, and today we have to dispel the notion that investing is difficult because it is not.

Well, you've made great contributions in spreading that message. We want to thank you for being a part of the Boglehead community, sharing what you have. Many thanks to the Boglehead community in how it empowers others and how it's not just educating oneself for oneself. There's very much of a paying it forward aspect.

People go on to help others well beyond after they themselves know what they need to know. Everything you've said, I shouldn't say everything, but so much of what you said aligns with the Boglehead community in a way that we're grateful. Absent any other comments? I do have one more comment, and that is even though investing can be easy in that you don't have to know lots of fancy investing terms, you don't need to know exactly how stocks work on the stock market, you don't need to know how to buy individual stocks and when to sell them, it is not necessarily easy in the sense that we always think, "If I did one more thing, if I did something different, I could probably have a better portfolio and make more money." The whole purpose is to make money, although really the purpose is also to invest it and save it for our retirement because young people won't have pensions, probably.

They have to create their own pension with their 401(k). How do you do that? You get this big list of all these mutual funds in your 401(k). How do you select the ones that you need and how do you select the ones you don't need or figure out which ones you don't need?

How many do you need? What are bonds? Do I need bonds? It is not necessarily, I would say, easy, but it is not difficult to learn. We have many Bogleheads who can explain in easy terms, very like Mike Piper in his investing make simple. It makes it very simple to understand it.

You can say, "Oh, okay, in my 401(k) I'm just going to select these three funds then," and then you watch it. Then you have to get over the idea that if I just added one more fund, I would be better off. Then the market goes up or down and then you say, "Well, then I'll change it and I'll add this fund and I'll take away that fund." It's also the problem of trying to recreate or tinker with, is what people will call it, their portfolio, trying to get a better return.

And that is hard. I agree with you, Miriam, although I'll go back to what Jack said. You buy three funds, the total stock, the total bond, and the total international, and you don't tinker. You don't keep adding and subtracting. Now maybe that's hard for everyone, but I love that idea of what he said.

I do like the idea of sleep well at night, not constantly be worrying about what decision you make. You get your fair share by doing simple investing. Indeed. I meant to share this earlier. There was a comment in the chat about your book, Sylvia. Someone wrote, "I found the appendices that explained various terms most valuable." So I wanted to make sure folks heard that comment.

That's good. I put them in just as more information and put in sections about some of the great leaders that we have. I cited Mellon Taylor's book. Jason Zweig had a really interesting book called The Devil's Dictionary, some of you know of it, and then about talk on the street.

What are these things? I mean, Dave never said, I mean, he always said, "Why is it that I'm supposed to sell my winners and buy my losers?" And then somebody else would say, "No, you buy your winners and sell your losers." Well, there's so much like that that if we don't understand it, it sounds confusing and we're just backing away, but once we understand, it is great.

Understood, yeah. So some of what you said hints at rebalancing, and I'll share Buffett has said he'd prefer to water the flowers and cut the weeds. So there are many takes on that topic. So absent any other comments, we can close. Sylvia, I want to reiterate everyone's gratitude and thank you again for being here and sharing what you did.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. (upbeat music)