As much as all of us at Hill Investment Group feel like family to one another, there are times when our actual family members must come first. On that note, it is with regret but considerable affection that we wish Dyanna Jones well as she leaves the HIG team to dedicate more time to her family.

Dyanna asked us to let you know she will miss everyone here at HIG, especially the many friends she quickly made among our Houston office clients and guests. If you would like to convey your own best wishes to Dyanna, please let me know, and I will be sure to pass them on.

While it will difficult to replace Dyanna’s warmth, we are now seeking a new executive assistant for our Houston office. If you know of anyone who might be a good fit for the role, we welcome your referral.

Back in February, Rick Hill posted his reflections on why he’s not yet retired from his lengthy career as a financial professional. “Why am I still here?” he asked. “Because I am still in a great place!”

I, for one, am glad he is still here. We may tease him about his white hair, but from my first encounter with Rick in 2012 (which I still remember vividly – we talked about my alma mater Trinity University and San Antonio), he has shaped many of my own personal and professional values. Had Rick instead opted for spending every day on the golf course, I’d be poorer for it – this much I know.

I’m not the only young buck who has been inspired by Rick, the mentor. Check out this recent post: “This Lesson I Learned from a 75-Year-Old Man Might Earn You a Career.” It’s about Rick, written by one of our past summer interns, Dominic Vaiana. In sharing a few of his own takeaways from his internship with us, Dominic wrote that Rick “oozes wisdom and has a contagious energy that people half his age do not.”

I hope that 20-somethings will be saying the same about me when I’m 75 and still working at Hill Investment Group. That sounds more rewarding than any day on the links.

Who invented the index fund? Most investors would guess it was Vanguard founder John Bogle. Bogle did launch the first publicly available index fund in 1976. After being derided as “Bogle’s folly,” it went on to become today’s Vanguard 500 Index Fund, a name nearly synonymous with indexing.

So it may come as a surprise to learn that Bogle did not actually invent the index fund. That credit goes to three gentlemen who created the first institutional index funds in the early 1970s: Dimensional Fund Advisor board member John “Mac” McQuown, co-founder and Executive Chairman David Booth, and co-founder Rex Sinquefield.

In this brief video, Booth reflects on the evolution of indexing and evidence-based investing, which led to Dimensional’s own value-added approach. “The basic idea of indexing has been an overwhelming success,” says Booth, but “Dimensional built the firm on the idea that we could do better.”