Two journalists who attended the 2022 Bogleheads Conference—Kiplinger’s Personal Finance senior associate editor Kim Clark and Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Zweig—both subsequently wrote about the meeting and the significant role that the Bogleheads community plays in many individual investors’ lives.
Kim’s feature, Bogleheads Stay the Course (online at Kiplinger.com and in the January 2023 issue of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine), discusses the history of the Bogleheads and quotes conference speakers including Jim Dahle, Allan Roth and Rick Ferri.
Kim also quotes a first-time conference attendee on how the Boglehead books and the forum led her to embrace simple, low-cost investing after decades in a “financial coma.” Describing her experience at the October 12-14 meeting outside Chicago, this attendee told Kim, “I fit right in—and I got validation that I am on the right path for me.”
Jason, who was a speaker at two of the conference sessions, also highlights the benefits of connection and confirmation in “Meet the Bogleheads,” in his October 26, 2022, Intelligent Investor email newsletter. Why would people from 38 states, plus Canada and Germany, gather for lectures about investing, taxes, retirement and other things they mostly already know, he asks. Because while investing is simple, it isn’t easy—in the face of distractions ranging from promotions for trading apps and easy credit to market fluctuations.
One conference attendee told Jason that being with her fellow Bogleheads “was like getting a booster shot: It upped my antibody level just a bit.” As Jason concludes, “The hills and valleys of the markets feel a lot less steep when you feel you have friends going alongside you.”
