After years of applying the KISS principle to software development I became curious whether others were applying the same philosophy to investing. Random searc

After years of applying the KISS principle to software development I became curious whether others were applying the same philosophy to investing. Random searches for "suckless" and "investing" converged upon softpanorama.org's investing articles. The articles, while rambling and poorly formatted, were both skeptical and simplicity-oriented - a sort of Unix approach to the problem of investing. As a 401k investor, this article in particular resonated with me: http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Financial_skeptic/Protecting_your_401K/Protecting_401K_from_yourself/naive_siegelism.shtml http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Financial_skeptic/Prote... I studied the writings for several days and began to question my retirement plan's fees, limited fund selection, as well as my 100%-stock-because-I'm-young approach to investing. Eventually I worked with my company to institute a brokerage window, began holding ETFs rather than mutual funds, and set up a Harry Browne portfolio. While this allocation's performance has been good historically ( http://www.crawlingroad.com/blog/2008/12/22/permanent-portfolio-historical-returns/ http://www.crawlingroad.com/blog/2008/12/22/permanent-portfo... ), 2013's gold tumble has negatively affected returns. Still, cutting out middle men and better knowing what is held is a relief. Softpanorama.org may convince others to review their finances, or at least give Ksh and Tcl/Tk another try.