John Clifton ‘Jack’ Bogle is the founder of the mutual fund company ‘Vanguard Group’. This American businessman and investor is also the author of Common Sense on Mutual Funds: New Imperatives for the Intelligent Investor, which is regarded as a classic guide for investors and hence became the group’s best-selling book of investment guides.
Though he is a retired CEO of Vanguard Group, he hasn’t given up working, and even at 87, he actively participates in annual conferences. His net worth is $80 million.
Childhood:—
Jack Bogle was born on eight May 1929, in Montclair, New Jersey. His family had to sell their house because of the stock market crash in 1929 and lost all their inheritance. Bogle and his other twin brother had to begin operating at a very tender age.
Bogle laboured at an ice cream parlour and also started delivering newspapers at the age of ten. His father slowly fell into a deep depression and took to extreme alcoholism, which resulted in his parents’ divorce. Bogle stayed with his mom.
Early Life:—-
Jack Bogle was admitted to Blair Academy, a renowned private school. His mom couldn’t afford the fees, but Jack’s maternal uncle arranged for a scholarship. Bogle justified the scholarship by being the best at academics and athletics. Bogle graduated from Blair Academy in 1947 and joined Princeton University for further education.
He selected economics as his major. Bogle could pull off University with the assistance of the scholarship and by doing other student jobs. He had a solid dedication to excel in academics and do extensive in the professional world to pay back to his mom and brothers, who sacrificed their school to teach him.
Bogle was interested in exploring the mutual fund world and as a result, he chose to look at the mutual fund industry for his thesis, which he needed to do within the final year. He earned A+ in his thesis.
Career:—-
Bogle embarked on his career with The Wellington Fund on 5 July 1951. Initially, he performed administrative duties directly under Walter L. Morgan and got promoted to assistant manager in 1955. He challenged Wellington management to change the strategy of focussing on a single fund and did his best to prove his point.
He succeeded and the new fund came as a turning point in his career. Later, he became chairman of Wellington. As a chairman, he approved a very unwise merger for which he got fired as the company had to suffer a great loss. However, from that one big mistake, Bogle got to learn a lot. He applied all his learnings in his own company, the Vanguard Company, which he started in 1974.
Bogle successfully turned his company into a giant one with his acute acumen and understanding of investments and mutual funds. In 1999, Fortune Magazine named Bogle as one of the four investments giants of the twentieth century.
Books:—-
Bogle has written several books which are now a reference point for the investors. Some of his best-selling books are Bogle on Mutual Funds: New Perspectives for the Intelligent Investor; The Vanguard Experiment: John Bogle’s Quest to Transform the Mutual Fund Industry; Common Sense on Mutual Funds: New Imperatives for the Intelligent Investor; The Clash of the Cultures: Investment vs. Speculation, etc.
Personal Life:— Bogle and his wife Eve now live in Bryn Mawr in Pennsylvania. They have six children.
Achievements:—- Bogle has been awarded for his excellent contribution to investment many times. He is the recipient of the Woodrow Wilson Award from Princeton University for “distinguished achievement in the Nation’s Service”. In 2004, Time magazine named him as one of the “World’s 100 most powerful and influential people”.