“The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have.”

— Epictetus

In This Edition

›From Paul: My 83rd Birthday

›Truth Teller: Ben Carlson’s “15 Year Stock Market Returns”

›This Week’s Podcast: The Two Biggest Paydays of My Life

From Paul

My 83rd Birthday: Who Really Deserves the Congratulations?

On October 18, I celebrated my 83rd birthday. But the celebration started three days earlier, and I had no idea what was coming.

It turns out that Margie Baxley, who helped create our website in 2012 and has maintained it ever since, had quietly slipped a little birthday announcement into our October 15 newsletter.

I immediately smelled a rat when the birthday wishes started arriving. And they kept coming. Through October 18, my inbox was filled with messages from readers wishing me a happy birthday.

Margie, you got me!

But what I didn’t expect was what came along with those birthday wishes. Many readers took the opportunity to tell me how our work had changed their financial lives. Some talked about enjoying a more comfortable retirement. Others described achieving much higher investment returns than they had experienced before discovering our Foundation. Still others spoke about something that may be even more important than higher returns: greater confidence in their financial future.

Messages like these and many more were very touching. One reader wrote:

“You changed my daughters’ lives, and mine.”

The writer went on to explain that what they learned about investing had helped make it possible to pay for one daughter’s college education and provide financial security for another daughter who has a disability. Another wrote:

“It changed my investing life and allowed me to retire early and with way more than enough.”

And a third shared:

“I feel lucky to have found you and passing this on to my daughters.”

At 83, I can’t imagine receiving a better birthday present.

But who really deserves the congratulations?

I appreciate every kind word. But I want to set the record straight. If our work helped you become a more successful investor, you deserve most of the credit.

We may have helped you understand the evidence. We may have shown you the historical returns of different portfolios. We may have encouraged you to diversify, reduce expenses, invest in index funds and avoid the temptation to predict the market. But we didn’t do the hard part.

You did. You earned the money. You saved it instead of spending it. You made the decision to invest. You accepted the uncertainty of the stock market. And when the market frightened millions of investors into selling, you had to decide whether to stay the course.

We could explain why patience mattered. Only you could practice it.

The courage we tend to forget

And I suspect many of you have forgotten just how difficult that was. Today, we can look back at market declines and see them as temporary interruptions in a long-term upward trend. But that’s not how they felt when we were living through them.

Remember 2008 and 2009? Major financial institutions were failing. Retirement accounts were losing enormous amounts of money. The headlines were frightening, and nobody could tell us when the damage would end.

Remember March 2020? A worldwide pandemic was threatening our health, our jobs, our businesses and our financial security. The stock market seemed to be falling faster than we could comprehend.

In those moments, every natural fight-or-flight instinct was telling us to seek safety. And for investors, safety often seemed to mean selling stocks.

But many of you resisted that instinct. You didn’t know when the market would recover. You didn’t know whether things would get worse before they got better. You simply trusted the evidence, your financial plan and the lessons of history. You stayed the course when staying the course was frightening.

That’s an extraordinary accomplishment. And it’s one reason I believe the greatest investment returns aren’t earned simply by choosing the right funds. They’re earned by people who can live with those funds when almost everything around them is telling them to do something else.

We may have helped you understand why staying invested made sense. But you were the ones who had to live through the fear.

As I’ve been reflecting on your messages, one thought keeps coming back to me: History shows us the rewards of staying the course. It rarely shows us the courage required along the way.

That’s why I want to turn your birthday wishes around and offer my congratulations to you.

Don’t forget the millions who never invested

Many readers compared their present financial situation with what they were doing before they discovered our work. That’s understandable. And if you’ve benefited from lower expenses, broader diversification, better asset allocation or greater discipline, those improvements are worth celebrating.

But I want you to consider another comparison. Think about the millions of people who never invested in the stock market at all. Some couldn’t afford to invest. Others never received the financial education that might have helped them get started. Still others were so frightened by the possibility of losses that they kept their long-term savings out of equities.

Whatever the reason, they missed some or all of the extraordinary wealth-building opportunities that patient stock-market investors have enjoyed.

You made a different choice. You trusted the market—not because you knew what would happen next, but because you understood the long-term case for owning productive businesses. And you stayed invested through uncertainty. That’s an accomplishment worth recognizing.

The people behind the Foundation

There’s another group that deserves a share of your birthday congratulations. I may be the person you hear on the podcast or see in a video, but the work of the Merriman Financial Education Foundation is a team effort.

Chris Pedersen has spent years helping develop and explain practical investment strategies, including ways to simplify portfolio construction without abandoning the principles we believe matter.

Daryl Bahls has made enormous contributions to the historical tables, analysis and evidence that allow us to show investors what different decisions have meant over time.

Margie Baxley has been helping us reach investors since she helped create our website in 2012. She has kept it running and growing ever since—and apparently has added birthday surprises to her responsibilities. And Margie’s daughter, Reneé, helps bring our educational work to investors through social media.

I am enormously grateful to all four of them. The Foundation’s mission depends on people who care deeply about helping others make better financial decisions. They contribute talents I could never replace on my own.

The best birthday present

At 83, I spend more time thinking about what our work will mean in the future. Not simply whether our readers will have more money. But whether they’ll have more confidence, less financial anxiety, greater independence and more opportunities to help the people they love.

When someone tells me our work has helped a son or daughter start investing early, I think about the decades of compounding that young person may have ahead. When someone tells me they’re enjoying a retirement they once thought impossible, I think about the decisions they made—and the discipline it took to follow through. Those are the rewards that matter most to me.

So thank you for the birthday wishes. Thank you for trusting us enough to consider the evidence we share. But most of all, congratulations for taking responsibility for your own financial future.

You did the heavy lifting. We were fortunate enough to be part of your journey. And as always, our compensation is finding out that your financial life is getting better.

And one very special thank-you

There is one more person who deserves a very special thank-you: my wife, Zan. When I told Zan I wanted to retire, she believed me. I didn’t have much of a plan for retirement. Like so many things in life, what happened next wasn’t something either of us could have predicted. I did make her one promise: I would never work for money again.

Neither of us had any idea what was coming. Retirement gave me an opportunity I could never have imagined: the privilege of entering people’s lives and helping them learn how to invest in ways that might make their financial futures more productive, secure and fulfilling. What started as an opportunity to share what I’d learned became a mission that has brought me more satisfaction than I ever expected. And the rest, as they say, is history.

The good news is that I’ve kept my promise to Zan. I’ve never asked to be compensated for our Foundation’s educational work. The even better news is that Zan has been 100% supportive of that work, and of the countless hours I’ve devoted to it. Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, there have been a few occasions when she’s suggested that I might try acting a little more like someone who’s actually retired!

At 83, I can’t promise that I’ll suddenly become an expert at retirement. But I can promise Zan that I know how fortunate I am to have a partner who has supported not only my dreams, but also the unexpected mission that became such an important part of our lives.

Zan, thank you for believing in me, for putting up with my unusual definition of retirement, and for making it possible for me to spend these years doing work I love.

And don’t worry. I still have no plans to work for money again.

Truth Teller

A Birthday Gift from Ben Carlson

On October 18, the day I turned 83, one of my favorite Truth Tellers, Ben Carlson, published an article that couldn’t have been more appropriate for this occasion. It’s called “15 Year Stock Market Returns.”

Ben reports that, through September 2026, the S&P 500 produced the following annualized returns:

›10 years: 15.3%

›15 years: 15.7%

›20 years: 11.2%

›30 years: 10.3%

›40 years: 11.5%

›50 years: 11.9%

Those are remarkable numbers. Consider the 15-year return. At 15.7% annually, a hypothetical $10,000 investment growing at that rate for 15 years would become approximately $89,000 before taxes and investor-specific costs, assuming reinvestment and no additional contributions.

Of course, those results didn’t arrive smoothly. Investors experienced frightening declines, economic uncertainty, political turmoil and countless predictions that the good times were about to end. And Ben makes another important point: the recent 15-year returns have been substantially above the market’s long-term historical average. We shouldn’t assume the next 15 years will be equally rewarding.

That’s not a reason to abandon stocks. It’s a reason to build a financial plan that doesn’t depend on extraordinary returns continuing indefinitely.

I encourage you to read Ben’s article. I think it reinforces one of the most important lessons we teach: you don’t have to predict the market to benefit from it. But you do have to participate—and you have to be prepared for the periods when participation is anything but comfortable.

Read “15 Year Stock Market Returns” →

This Week’s Podcast

The Two Biggest Paydays of My Life

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 a promise to his wife that he’d never work for money again. The second happened in the last 48 hours, and not a dollar changed hands. He also has a word of caution for anyone who credits him for what their portfolio has done.

Then an epiphany. After reading a recent Adam Grossman piece in HumbleDollar, Paul began to question whether John Bogle’s “stay the course” really belongs as the number one rule for being a successful long-term investor. He took the question to ChatGPT, shares the whole conversation, and comes away with a new rule number one, plus a line he thinks an 18-year-old might still remember at 65.

The third topic is bonds. Paul has been reading a lot of negative commentary about them lately, so he goes back to Table B1 and walks through 56 years of history: how many losing years the S&P 500 had since 1970, how many the short-to-intermediate bond portfolio had, what the worst 12 months and worst 60 months looked like, and why he and his wife hold the mix they do at 83. He also explains why long-term bonds are not the answer, and what the numbers since 1928 say about the premium you get for their extra risk.

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All the best to you and your family,
Paul Merriman

From Paul Merriman

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