In my blog entry for June 22, 2006, I set forth the text of an e-mail that I sent to Wall Street Journal Columnist Jonathan Clements urging him not to put forward further endorsements of Bill Sholar’s “highly misleading” (William Bernstein’s phrase) FIRECalc retirement planning tool. The blog entry for June 23 set forth the text of a response e-mail by Clements defending FIRECalc from my criticisms. The blog entry for June 24 set forth the text of my response e-mail.
Set forth below is the text of some Financial Freedom Community reactions to the correspondence between Clements and me re my criticisms of the FIRECalc tool (Wanderer’s comment was not made in direct reference to the correspondence with Clements, but I included it as it was made in the same time-period as the other comments and addresses a topic raised frequently during The Great Safe Withdrawal Rate Debate, the long-running saga for which the Clements correspondence serves as the most recent chapter):
Arrete: “My guess is that they are laughing their buns off at the Wall Street Journal.”
Gurdison: “My guess is that Clements deleted the message before reaching the end of the first paragraph.”
GW: “Similar crank letters are commonly sent to scientists, usually describing ‘revolutionary’ ideas that the writer cannot get accepted because they are suppressed by the establishment.”
Ogrecat: “I have noticed that hocus [hocus is the screen-name that I use when posting on discussion boards] sounds a lot like the anti-evolution crowd.”
Mel Lindauer (co-author of The Bogleheads Guide to Investing): “I’ve had my fill of those long-winded posts that include distortions, unsubstantiated claims, misquotes and comments taken out of context.”
Yakers: “It looks like the best that can be done is for someone like Jason (a disruptive poster at the Vanguard Diehards board) to post a reference to the sites that explain Hocus, kind of like the web references that debunk Kiyosaki [the reference is to Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad], in each thread that Hocus posts in and leave it at that.”
Wanderer: “Hocus’ investing choices have had pretty good results over the last X years. My hat’s off to him.”
Krankor53: “The objective should be to achieve the flattest possible distribution of outcomes over the historical starting points. My preference would be to do this by using a lower allocation of stocks vs fixed.”
BigMoneyJim: “FIRECalc et al are historical simulations with no claims about the future.”
Brewer12345: “The response from Clements is priceless, especially where he points out that the safe withdrawal rate has to be substantially higher than 2.4% (the yield on TIPS), vs hosuc’s [this is how some Greaney defenders spell my screen-name in their posts] suggestion that it is presently 2.5%.”
John Walter Russell (publisher of the analytically valid safe withdrawal rate research at www.Early-Retirement-Planning-Insights.com): “FIRECalc does tell us what happened historically. The danger is how people use this information going forward.”
Daryll44: “I have heard many rip Rob (that’s a reference to me), but truthfully I don’t know what the counter argument is…. Is there a counter-argument?”
Earnabuck: “Greaney did his thing based upon historical market action. Yes, he stated that it was the past, but he proceeded to put out the number as relevant to today. Much discussion and planning were done based upon that number.”
Syke: “Maybe Earnabuck is hocus.”
ResNullius: “Threats are meaningless unless backed up with action.”
WorkWayLess: “Intercst [that’s John Greaney’s screen-name], this sounds like slander to me. IIRC [if I recall correctly], you never made any physical threats against him. Civil suit judgment = new income stream for Intercst?”
Daverx: “His site [Greaney’s www.RetireEarlyHomePage.com] is the best on the web.”
Gnobility: “John’s a’ight fyask me.” [The reference is to Greaney]
John Greaney (author of the conventional methodology study published at www.RetireEarlyHomePage.com): “The fact that you are willing to expose full-blown, first-person Hocomania to influential financial columnists certainly makes your debunking a lot easier.”
Tashina: “If you do a M* [Morningstar–home of the Vanguard Diehards board] search on the term FIRECalc, of the latest eight search results, two are from jwr [John Walter Russell] and three are from Hocus. One is even Hocus bringing up FIRECalc himself when someone asks for useful financial sites.”
Bill Sholar (Creator of FIRECalc and owner of the Early Retirement Forum): “Sorry Guest, you are banned from posting or sending personal messages on this forum…. Your IP address is on the abusive poster list.” (These words appear on my computer screen when I direct my internet browser to the Early Retirement Forum web site.)
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