you found us... now what?

hello:

mndiehards@comcast.net for even more details/info or to be added to our mailing list

thanks for your interest in the MN diehard group! i’ve received several emails asking about our group, so here’s some standard answers... apologies for the ‘generic nature’ of this reply.

there are no fees, dues, or investment money needed to become a MN diehard. just a desire to do it yourself investing to keep costs low, taxes manageable, and risk to be where you need it to be, done in a buy-and-hold, stay the course, non-market-timing manner. we don’t invest anything together as a group.

we’re a very informal group that gets together 4 times a year to discuss investing over a lunch at some metro restaurant, usually on a saturday at 12:00, for a few hours. most (but not all) use low-cost funds and ETFs, through vanguard or other brokerage firms. several of us also post and discuss finances at diehards.org, but that isn’t a prerequisite, either.

the only requirement is that we do not accept solicitations of any kind from brokers, financial planners, life insurance sellers, etc. and we are not a ‘stock pickers’ investment club. we discuss asset allocations, risk, rebalancing, % international, etc. feel free to review past agendas on our blog to see if these topics interest you. if they do, we’d love to have you join us.

part of the benefit of our current group size is that it’s relatively small at any given meeting, and relatively easy to find a private room for free somewhere. if we double our size, logistics may be more difficult... so, stay tuned, our next meeting will be sometime in march, most likely.

thanks again for your interest. feel free to visit our nationwide forum (diehards.org) or re-visit our MN blog, mndiehards.blogspot.com, or reply back if i haven’t answered your questions fully. the http://diehards.org/forum/ forum is free to register, and i find it to be the best, most professional, helpful site on the internet, regardless of your current investing knowledge (of course, i’m biased!). posting your current portfolio (in percentages only) on the board and asking for advice is some of the most powerful, useful outcome of diehard interaction, in my opinion. and reading as much as you can from the reading lists and the forums...

best regards,
jeff (aka ‘chuck D’ on the diehards)