Happy 50th!

Last weekend, my wife and I returned to our former southeastern PA home town.  The occasion was a series of events with family and good friends, many former colleagues of mine.  On Friday night we had a happy reunion with a group that made up a wine making team, beginning in 2012, and continuing until Covid shut us down.  Most of the team is now retired, and much of the talk was about retirement, pensions, Medicare, grandkids, travel, and how much fun it was to get together again.

The next day we drove from southern NJ to attend a life celebration for Chris – a good friend, colleague, and wine team member.  He passed away at in January from a glioblastoma at 63.  Many of the attendees were former colleagues, most now retired. Again, the occasion was marked with lots of discussions of grandkids, travel, old work war stories, and retirement.

After the celebration, we drove to Maryland’s eastern shore to spend a few days with my wife’s nursing school roommate. Her family has had a second home on the Sassafras river for more than 60 years. She lost her husband a few years back. Since then she has used me as a sounding board for her retirement plan. She’s a great friend and I’m happy to help in any way.

What triggered the idea for this article was an offhand comment about one of the most important events in the history of personal finance, an event that likely impacted most of the friends and family I saw this past weekend. We were discussing family weddings with my brother-in-law and sister in law. They had celebrated their 50^th anniversary earlier this year. My sister-in-law-recalled that her cousin was not able to attend their wedding because he had a critical event at work that prevented him from being there.  And that event is the theme of this article.

My brother-in-law and sister in law were married on January 10, 1976. The critical event that prevented her cousin from attending the wedding was the initial registration of the First Index Investment Trust. This was the very first index mutual fund available to individual investors.  In 1981 it was renamed the Vanguard 500 Index Fund. Her cousin had been recruited away from Fidelity by Jack Bogle to help create the IT infrastructure for the index fund.  Fifty years later, he is still a project manager for Vanguard.

The fund was officially launched to investors on August 31, 1976. A corresponding ETF, VOO, became available on September 9, 2010.  Depending on your data source, VOO is the largest ETF in the world.

It occurred to me that the majority of the family, friends, and former colleagues I saw this past weekend benefited greatly from the creation of the Vanguard 500 Index Fund, and index funds in general. I worked for decades a few miles from the Vanguard headquarters in Malvern, PA. Some of the earliest financial conversations I recall with colleagues were about the 500 Index fund.

This summer we will celebrate America’s Semiquincentennial birthday. But I’ve also put a reminder on my calendar for August 31, 2026, to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the creation of something that has helped to provide so many of us a secure financial future.