Earlier this year, Sound Investing interviewed Vanguard founder John Bogle, who isn’t afraid to say what he thinks and who has always sided with individual investors over Wall Street. In an edited transcript of the interview, Bogle tells why he doesn’t think Wall Street is doing a good job for investors and what he thinks about Treasuries as a safety net against inflation.

Whenever you leave a job, whether it’s your choice or not, there are many details and changes competing for your attention, and it’s easy to overlook the disposition of your employer-sponsored retirement plan such as a 401(k), 403(b) or 457.

Right now real estate seems to be in the doghouse. Home prices are hurting, as are millions of mortgagees (to say nothing of investors) snared by the subprime real estate mess. After a series of stunningly great years, the Dow Jones Wilshire REIT Index lost 17.6 percent in 2007 and another 39.2 percent in 2008. 

Investors often ask us how to follow our model portfolio suggestions in conjunction with 401(k) and similar retirement plans that have limited options. This is a good question, one that’s easier to understand if you think of an analogy:  What if the issue were having a balanced diet instead of a balanced portfolio?

Retirees often ask us if they should consider their Social Security as part of their portfolios. It’s income, and it seems to many people as if Social Security should be in the fixed-income part of their asset allocation.  Though a lot of people take that view, we think this is a bad idea. For several reasons we discourage our clients from doing this.

Usually once or twice a year I get the urge to organize my filing cabinet, particularly to clean out the piles of paper that seem to accumulate in folders with labels like “pay stubs,” “insurance” and “retirement.”

The oldest rule of investing is simple: Don’t put your money into something you don’t understand. Because a cornerstone of my company’s advice is to invest in mutual funds, many people ask how they can really understand funds before investing in them.

Because the past is known and fixed, it’s relatively easy to calculate the outcomes of various choices that investors might have made. But sometimes this analysis is too simplistic for making useful choices that will apply to the future.