Sound Investing

As Paul turned 83 last week, he recorded this podcast in his studio office surrounded by piles of articles and notes for future recordings and a good deal of gratitude. He says this may be his favorite podcast he's ever made. He starts with the two biggest paydays of his life. The first was December 31, 2012, the day he sold his part of the firm he'd started in 1983 and walked into retirement with...

In this special office-hours session, Albert and I answer the questions teachers have been sending in across our four NGPF classroom sessions — more than 500 educators strong. We move fast and cover a lot of ground: 1. How a young person can open a first investment account (and why $1 is all it takes to start at Fidelity) 02:36 2. My favorite books on saving, investing and index funds 10:58 3. The...

WATCH THE VIDEO This is the fourth of five presentations I recorded for Next Gen Personal Finance (NGPF.org) and am sharing with Sound Investing listeners. I titled this one “The $5 Million Payoff for a Financially Literate High School Graduate” — but I could have called it the $42 million payoff, and by the end you’ll see the math that makes it believable. I walk through the single biggest decisi...

Harry Markowitz called diversification "the only free lunch in finance." In this session, part of Paul's series for Next Gen Personal Finance educators, Paul Merriman explains what that means in practice, and why a well-diversified portfolio can help investors stay the course through good markets and bad. Paul covers the history and math behind diversification, from Don Quixote's "don't put all yo...

Watch the video here. This is the second of five presentations Paul recorded for Next Generation Personal Finance (NGPF.org), whose free curriculum reaches some 150,000 teachers. The sessions weren't open to the public, but NGPF has allowed Paul to share each one with Sound Investing listeners. The subject is index funds, and Paul starts where the story starts: John Bogle, 1976, and a fund lau...

WATCH THE VIDEO Want to build a multi-million-dollar retirement portfolio without gambling on single stocks? This is the first session of the four-part series I recorded for the teachers of Next Gen Personal Finance — and I’m sharing it here with you. In it, I break down the timeless principles, the math and the market history every long-term investor needs to know. WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS EPISO...

Paul opens with news of a new opportunity to reach young investors: a five-part series for Next Generation Personal Finance (NGPF.org), available to some 150,000 teachers who use NGPF's free curriculum. Topics include the math and history of investing, the case for index funds, the inside story on diversification, the $5 million payoff for a financially literate high school graduate, and a teacher...

WATCH THE VIDEO It was a pleasure to be invited back on System Trader with Jack Lempart. Here is a list of the main topics we covered: CHAPTERS 0:53 • My own biggest mistake 3:15 • Why “the stock market is a casino” is exactly backwards 6:48 • “I don’t have enough money to start” — what $100 a month actually becomes 9:33 • A $20 bet with my 13-year-old grandson 13:04 • How much intelligence does s...

Paul and Chris reflect on Paul’s recent discussion with Rick Ferri. Paul adds information he wished he’d included, and Chris reacts to Paul and Rick’s positions. Together, they discuss the behavioral, trust, and performance benefits and trade-offs of seeking meaningful diversification by adding Small-Cap Value to a portfolio. CHAPTERS 00:00:00 – Intro 00:02:50 – Chris...

Watch the video here. Paul sits down with Rick Ferri — not for a debate, but for the kind of honest conversation two people can only have after spending their careers chasing the same goal from different directions. Rick makes the case against tilting: the small cap premium largely disappeared once the research went public around 1980, and he believes value stopped working around 2006. Paul counte...

This Friday I'm sitting down with my friend Rick Ferri for a debate that I think matters a great deal, even though — or maybe because — Rick and I agree on almost everything. We both believe in diversification, low costs, index funds, ignoring predictions, and staying the course. Where we part ways is what happens after that. Rick's case is that you should simply own the whole market. A total stoc...

Paul returns from three days at the Garrett Planning Network retreat with a lesson that has almost nothing to do with investments — and everything to do with getting your money's worth from professional advice. Garrett advisors work by the hour, a business model Paul believes eliminates the conflicts of interest built into assets-under-management relationships. For $1,000 to $8,000, he's con...

Paul discusses his upcoming trip to Minneapolis to address almost 100 hourly financial planners at the Garrett Planning Network annual retreat — then shows, in real time, how he uses AI alongside the Truth Tellers. This example is prompted by a Ben Felix video arguing that most people save without knowing their real “why.” Paul asked ChatGPT to explore the question and shares the...

The hardest part of investing isn't choosing funds — it's building a set of beliefs strong enough to keep you disciplined when the market, the news, and your own emotions all conspire to pull you off course. In this episode, Paul sets aside the usual fine-tuning tables and turns to one of his favorite books, Ben Carlson's Risk and Reward. Table by table, Ben makes the same point in a dozen d...

A longtime listener wrote in after watching a Ben Felix video making the point that factor investing may not beat the S&P 500 by the end of an investor’s lifetime — and could even do worse. His question was simple: is factor investing really worth the effort? Paul’s answer turned out to be two answers, so he’s splitting it into two episodes. This week is about the think...

Paul returns from a two-week Baltic cruise refreshed and ready to dig into the numbers. He opens with a 12-month performance review of the recommended portfolios at Avantis, DFA and Vanguard — Avantis averaged 31.1% across the 10 equity asset classes in the Ultimate Buy and Hold, versus 27.7% at DFA and 26% at Vanguard — and explains why the non-traditional index funds keep outperforming tradition...

I joined my longtime friend Tom Cock for a special edition of Talking Real Money — a wide-ranging conversation about the evolution of indexing, the proposed changes to the S&P 500, and why investors should understand both the strengths and limitations of traditional index funds. I explain why firms like Dimensional Fund Advisors and Avantis Investors use a more flexible, evidence-based approac...

Paul Merriman joins host Roben Farzad on Full Disclosure for a rare conversation alongside Ben Carlson, director of institutional asset management at Ritholtz Wealth and author of the new book Risk and Reward: How to Handle Market Volatility and Build Long-Term Wealth . Roben called it a “truth teller tandem” — the first time these two have sat down together — and the result is an hour of warm, ca...

I recently sat down with Steve Chen on his Boldin Your Money podcast for a wide-ranging conversation about evidence-based investing — and why it matters more than ever in a world of speculation, hype, and constant financial noise. We covered my early days as a stockbroker in the 1960s, the psychology that trips investors up in downturns, how low-cost index funds transformed personal finance, facto...

Paul and Chris answer 10 listener questions in one hour — covering asset allocation, investor behavior, funds, indexes, and fund management. They also dig into Daryl Bahls' hot-off-the-press alternative portfolio analysis. CHAPTERS 00:00 — Intro 01:11 — Funds vs. their indexes 06:04 — Which asset can I drop? 10:50 — Buy and hold for a lifetime? 16:04 — Tracking errors 20:24 — How many years to...

In Session 3 of the 2026 Bainbridge Community Foundation Spring Financial Education Series, Paul sits down with Mike Piper — CPA, Personal Financial Specialist, and the voice behind the Oblivious Investor blog and the free Open Social Security calculator — for one of the warmest, most practical conversations of the series. Mike has a rare gift: taking the topics that intimidate most investors and...

In the final episode of the 2026 Boot Camp series, Paul Merriman sits down with Chris Pedersen and Daryl Bahls to tackle the last fork in the road every investor faces: how to and how much automation to use. After all the boot camp decisions — stocks versus bonds, which equity asset classes, how much fixed income, how to handle contributions and withdrawals — the final question is how...

In this interview from the 2026 Bainbridge Community Foundation Annual Financial Education Series, Paul sits down with Bill Bernstein — neurologist, financial historian, and author of The Four Pillars of Investing and If You Can — for a wide-ranging conversation drawn from 50-plus years of investing experience. Bill explains why you're only rewarded for taking risk in well-regulated markets (and w...

Chris and Paul explain what target-date funds are and do, and how to augment them with some small-cap value to get the broad diversification benefits of the other Sound Investing portfolios. They describe several approaches and tools investors can use to determine what might be best for them. CHAPTERS 00:00 Intro 03:03 Target-Date Funds 07:00 Glide Paths 15:17 TDF Backtesting 19:55 TDF Weaknesses...

Paul sits down with Chris Pedersen and Daryl Bahls for the first Q&A session in months — and this one is built around the questions readers and listeners ask most often. Chris and Daryl share what they're working on next (Best-in-Class ETF updates, Target Date Fund work, telltale charts, risk-adjusted return analysis), Paul talks about a smarter way to use AI for the questions outside our...