This news isn’t likely to change your life since their fees were already really low, but I still love to see Vanguard tightening the crank on leading the industry with low fees.

The financial services industry makes LOTS of money and that money is generally made by CHARGING YOU FEES. I think we all owe a great debt of gratitude to Jack Bogle the founder of Vanguard. He saw this industry who was charging unholy amounts of money for what really amounted to NOTHING. Mutual fund managers were all competing with each other, none of them able to magically beat the market in the zero sum game, then charging outrageous fees for their service. Instead of jumping on that bandwagon, Jack Bogle decided to introduce and popularize the index fund! He thought he could charge DRAMATICALLY less than the other fund managers by simply skipping the “stock picking” portion of their job, and having his index funds buy EVERY stock in proportion to their size.

He was originally mocked and largely a pariah of Wall Street. The others thought it was dumb to buy all the stocks and they didn’t like the idea of being undercut by 95% either. It’s taken about 50 years, but history has proved Bogle right. Studies point to OVERWHELMING evidence of index fund investing outperforming active (stock picking) type investing. And now more than half of invested funds sit in index funds rather than actively managed mutual funds.

One sad side note is that Jack Bogle passed away on January 16th, 2019, five days after my first post to this account. I hope I am doing him justice helping the individual investor by introducing them to the optimal way to invest: Buying and holding broad market, low cost index funds!

Thanks to @vanguardgroup for continuing his legacy and continuing to optimize investor returns by minimizing fees.

As always, reminding you to build wealth by following the two PFC rules: 1.) Live below your means and 2.) Invest early and often.

-Jeremy