Each year in August we publish a compendium of statistics about 401(k) plans administered at Vanguard. As the report covers over 3 million American participants, it often generates a lot of interest from the media, policymakers, consultants, and employers. (You’re …

I’m a list maker. I carry around various lists for different parts of my life, and add and delete as I work my way through the tasks. While much in my life has become digital, I always write these lists …

For 35 years I’ve carried a quotation in my wallet. More precisely, I’ve moved the quotation, clipped from a now-defunct newspaper, from wallet to wallet to wallet over the decades.

The quotation is from Willa Cather’s “O Pioneers”:

“There are …

I recently participated in a live webcast attended by a number of Vanguard retirement plan participants. The topic was retirement investing, and questions came fast and furious. We answered as many as we could in our allotted 30 minutes.

One …

There’s been lots of talk since late last year about the plusses and minuses of financial engineering, including a debate (see blogs by Felix Salmon and Tyler Cowen) about the overall merits of various modern financial innovations. While it’s …

We were vacationing last month in Scotland. At a small country hotel—on a misty Western isle—I mentioned to a group of guests that I conduct research at Vanguard on retirement issues. You guessed it: Suddenly the conversation shifted from the …

Of all the generally accepted investment concepts called into question by the recent market environment, it seems to me that rebalancing is pretty close to the top of the list.

During late 2008 and early 2009, rebalancing your portfolio to …