Buzz Updates

Published in August 4th, 2008

1) The Tight-Fisted Miser writes a review of my book Passion Saving: The Path to Plentiful Free Time and Soul-Satisfying Work. The blog author writes: “This book is more about motivation than nuts and bolts…. The main focus of this book is changing how you think about money and savings.”

2) Katy Marquardt writes about the split-off of the Bogleheads community from the Vanguard Diehards community at her U.S. News and World Report blog. I argue in a comment that: “The internet discussion board is an important communications medium of the future. We learn things on discussion boards that we cannot learn through books or magazine articles or speeches. The magic is that we get to see how real live people apply the theories they learned about in books and magazine articles and speeches.”

3) I write a guest blog entry for the plonkee money blog entitled Saving 10 Percent Is Death. I say: “Telling people to save 10 percent places a ceiling on their saving efforts as often as it places a floor on them. The save-10-percent advice encourages a way of thinking about saving in which people see it as something that must be forced, something that is boring, something that requires self-denial.”

4) I post a Letter to the Editor at the www.Early-Retirement-Planning-Insights.com site entitled Year 10 Choices. I say: “Should allocation shifts be made only after PE/10 changes have been “confirmed” by holding at the new level for a specified amount of time? Or should the shifts be lagging shifts, completed only after the actual PE/10 has moved a little further in the same direction as the change that prompts the allocation change according to the numbers?”

5) I post a Letter to the Editor at the www.Early-Retirement-Planning-Insights.com sit entitled The Story Behind the Numbers. I say: “The idea that investors make allocation decisions with the thought of what is going to happen in 30 years uppermost in their minds is a myth. It is a myth without foundation in facts or experience or reason. It is a nonsense assumption.”

Today’s Passion: Newsradio KEX did a 15-minute segment on the Passion Saving concept for its Sunday Morning Update program that provides a good overview of the ideas explored in the book.