OK, here is an actual response to the topic / thread at hand, "Why You Participate"?:
I've work hard all my life, from university to my professional career. I always 'paid myself first' as I was taught, and have been very debt adverse. I only debt I ever had was for our first house, which I paid off in 6 years. Even university I saved for and got enough programming work during university that I had no debt from my education.
I was so focused on work and family, and was fortunate enough to make a good income, that I never really worried about how my investments were doing. I always assumed that the 'financial planners' I had were looking out for my best interests and actively ensuring that my $ was making good $. My net worth grew every year, so hey, that is good right? I know most will read this and think that it is crazy; it is crazy, but it is my history.
Then the crash of last year happenned, and it made me take the time to see what my 'advisers' had been doing with my money. Even pre-crash my investments never came close to matching the common indexes. What I realized is that at least the advisors I had were much more interested in how much $ they could make from my $, than my $ itself. My net worth was growing because of me saving more, not because of returns from our existing portfolio.
Because of the crash, and the fact that I am (overly) idealistic, my wife and I agreed that we would dump our advsers, sell / move everything, and put together our own portfolio that we managed ourselves.
Much of our portfolio today is based on reading financial blogs and forums like this one and MDJ, and the articles and books suggested by them. Now I hope that we will have reasonable gains from our investements while we also continue to work hard to have income to continue to contribute to our portfolio. We are not looking to make huge % returns; we are looking to make enough from our investments so we can become financially independent.
I am still very new at this do it yourself investing thing, and will likely make some more mistakes, but at least they will be mistakes I made myself and not ones made by someone because they have a conflict of interest by definition (bank financial advisers that is).
So I participate to:
1) Try to learn more and always be open so that I do not form perminant assumptions because I 'think' I know something as fact or because I think it is the way it 'should work'.
2) Pass along the mistakes I have made before so maybe someone else won't.
3) Pass along our successes as they come too.
4) Help spread the opinions of some of the people I admire, like the creator of MDJ: for example that wealth is not just based on making money but also saving it too.
Here's to the future, kind of appropriate for a New Years day posting....
Happy New Years.