Hi, my name is Bryce. My blog is called Save and Conquer. The “Save” part is pretty obvious for a personal finance blog. The “Conquer” part means winning financial independence regardless of the onslaught of misinformation from the professional financial establishment, who mostly want to profit off investors ignorance.

Day in and day out, we are bombarded with misinformation from the mass media. Just listen to CNBC for a few hours and you’ll know what I mean.

Investing Whiplash

I used to listen to all this drivel back in the 1980s and 1990s. During the Internet bubble, we were told we were in a new economy and piddly things like earnings didn’t matter anymore. It was the era of day-traders. People were making lots of money. For two years running (1997 and 1998) I made a 100% return in my retirement account. I did not listen to Greenspan talk about irrational exuberance. There was money to be made.

As the decade drew to a close, we were all afraid of the Y2K software bug, which turned out to be a non-event. Some code here and there was patched, and everyone was good to go.

Then, late in 2000 the market fell. I had a day where I took a $100k paper loss. I told myself it was all on paper and I’d get it back. Just keep betting on the new technology. During 2000-2002, my investable assets went from a high of $860k to a low of $140k. I got out of the market in 2002 after deciding I didn’t know anything about investing. Getting out at the bottom of the internet bubble recession only served to prove that point.

I also decided I needed to learn how to invest and stop gambling with our retirement savings. I began reading books on saving and investing. I started to learn how asset allocation and diversification were important. I eventually stumbled upon the Bogleheads and learned that low-cost passive index funds consistently beat the majority of active managers.

The keys to successful investing I learned are:

1) Invest early and often

2) Set an asset allocation that has the proper risk for your situation and ability to take risk

3) Diversify,

4) Never try to time the market

5) Use index funds, keep costs low

6) Minimize taxes,

7) Keep it simple

8) Stay the course. This worked very well for us through the Great Recession and the bull market afterward.

Our Simple Plan

I use my blog to pass this information on. My wife and I plan to retire in 9 years, so I also write about getting ready to retire and how we may manage during retirement. I have made several good acquaintances in the Yakezie network and hope to expand that in the near future.

I wish everyone luck in their financial and personal endeavors.

Note from Sam: This concludes the Yakezie Member Class for 1H2014. The next class will be open for application sometime after Labor Day, Sept 1, 2014. Blog on!