Welcome to the May 2, 2011, edition of the Carnival of Passive Investing (#5), a monthly collection of the best and most intelligent Passive Investing strategy articles around the internet. Some people foolishly want to beat the market (want being the key word) but we just want to invest with it.
We have some exciting news to report about next month’s carnival. Rick Ferri, the author of numerous books on Passive Investing, will be selecting the winners of the May Carnival of Passive Investing (#6)!
The purpose of the carnival is two-fold:
- To provide a forum to showcase articles and research in passive investing strategies (i.e. investing in ETFs, index mutual funds, etc. in such a way that one avoids employing active stock picking). By investing with the market, we are able to beat 70-80% of investment “professionals.”
- To create a community of passive investment bloggers to connect and share expertise.
The theme for this month’s carnival is: Behavior Gap sketches by Carl Richards. You can take a look at all of Carl’s sketches (he is creating new ones all the time) here. I’ve selected a few of my favorites to add some color and fun and under-the-radar learning experiences to the April 2011 carnival. I like Carl’s work for several reasons. One is that he focuses on the emotional side of the stock investing project and I view mastering the emotional side as the key to long-term success.
Another is that his sketches communicate to us without words. There are too many words written about investing! Seriously, we have heard the words so many times that we tune a lot of them out. Sketches can hit us with a familiar point in a fresh way. That can be a mighty good thing if the sketch is the thing that finally permits an important insight to sink through our thick skulls!
Here are this month’s top three editor’s picks:
1) Jon Elder presents 12 Pillars of Boglehead Wisdom at Free Money Wisdom. John Bogle’s genius is that he keeps it simple. There’s lots of complicated investing advice available to us today. Too much! Most of what is presented to us is noise! The key to success is getting the fundamentals right. Bogle’s 12 Pillars are the core principles of Passive Investing. So you cannot go over them too many times. Hopefully, you reviewed these principles when you first became a Passive Investor. My bet is that if you read Jon’s article today, you will discover some new insight in the same words that will make more sense to you now that you are a few more years along in your investing journey. It’s better to read the stuff that really matters 10 times than to read 10 articles of far less power one time each. Read the 12 pillars and think carefully about what has happened over the past year that has made them ring even more true to you today than they have before.
Juicy Excerpt: I’m a Boglehead. What’s a Boglehead you ask? I’m glad you asked! I could get pretty detailed but it’s simply an investment philosophy. A Boglehead is against market timing, performance chasing, expensive mutual funds, and putting one’s eggs in a single basket. At the core of this philosophy is the term “long term.” I invest for my future, not for short term profits. The ultimate goal of a Boglehead is to mitigate risk, invest wisely, make a solid return and eventually retire early. It’s as simple as that.
2) Darwin presents Daytrading Is a Total Scam — Don’t Fall for the Pitch at Darwin’s Money. This article of course highlights why you became a Passive Investor in the first place: You don’t have time for the nonsense! There’s a reason why all the scam approaches never die: They appeal to the Get Rich Quick impulse lurking deep inside us. Read’s Darwin’s piece to remind yourself of why you sought the solace and common sense available through the Passive Investing approach.
Juicy Excerpt: I constantly hear radio spots for getting rich day-trading. The claims on the commercials are so outrageous, I can’t even believe the FTC allows it. If you listen to satellite radio at all, you’ll know exactly which ads I’m referring to; they play a repeating cycle virtually every commercial break.
3) FMF presents Index Funds: Not All Equal at Free Money Finance. This article is an except from Never Buy Another Stock Again: The Investing Portfolio That Will Preserve Your Wealth and Your Sanity.
Juicy Excerpt: So, what, then, can investors do to help offset their risk and protect their portfolio from losses? The passivity argument helps keep costs low, but in a nowhere market, it’s not all that useful, and you’re going to need more from your investments as you should. There are a number of possibilities. Some of these are easy. Rebalancing on a yearly basis in one’s 401(k) allocation is a snap—particularly for those who can do so automatically when they enroll in their plan. Establishing a level at which one should sell assets, such as ETFs or other investments, after a certain percentage loss is a bit more difficult, but there are strategies that attempt to go this way to keep losses minimal. (Anyone who immediately exited hot tech funds after it lost 15 percent of its value in 2000 saved themselves a lot of pain. The downside? When there are occurrences like the May 6, 2010 “flash crash,” when popular stocks were suddenly traded briefly at a penny, a level that would have triggered sales for many investors.) Keeping a bit of money in Treasury securities that track rising inflation can help guard some of the portfolio against losses. Other strategies, which will be discussed, involve putting a cap on the losses one will tolerate before shares in index funds or ETFs are sold and allocating funds among a number of different asset classes, more than you’re used to doing in the past. Some of these ideas have their own pitfalls, and there are still plenty trying to come up with a better mousetrap that will solve everyone’s problems with a simple formula. No such formula exists.
Asset Allocation
TFB presents S&P 500 + Extended Market = Total US Stock Marketposted at The Finance Buff, saying “I’d like to move some of my money to this new fund to make my 401k holdings mimic the entire U.S. stock market.”
ETFs
Tom Drake presents Canadian Index ETFs – XIU vs XIC at Canadian Finance Blog, saying “I believe XIC is worth the extra 0.08% MER as it provides much more diversification, including some exposure to small cap stocks.”
Financial Planning
Philip presents Traditional and Roth IRA Income Limits at PT Money: Personal Finance, saying “There are limits (based on your income) that might affect your ability to use one of these accounts (IRAs) to your fullest advantage. Let’s look at each one closely.”
Outlaw presents The Pitfalls of Excess Contributions to Your Retirement Accounts at Outlaw Finance, saying: “Having various retirement plans to pick from gives a person versatility while planning for retirement, however it might also make it easier to make simple errors like going above the total annual contribution limits.”
Investing
Jacob presents My Current Asset Allocation and Net Worth Growth at My Personal Finance Journey , saying “Overall, the 1st quarter of 2011 has gone very well.”
Mutual Funds
Pat S presents Target Date Funds: Are They Right for You? at Compounding Returns, saying “The idea behind these funds is that you choose a date that is close to your expected retirement date, and the fund management automatically adjusts your portfolio allocation as you near retirement.”
Personal Finance
Kevin McKee presents How To Invest When You Are Clueless at Thousandaire, saying “She knew to put the money in her Roth IRA, but she had no idea what to invest in.”
James Nara presents 5 Rules to Help You Manage Your Money Savings at The Secret to Be Happy and Feel Fulfilled, saying “I will help you deal with your first savings in a very systematic way by providing you with 5 rules that you can follow without changing too much of your life style.”
That’s it for this month’s edition of the Carnival of Passive Investing. Bloggers, be sure to submit your passive investing posts for April’s carnival, which will be hosted at The College Investor!
Drip Guy says
I assume you are writing a rebuttal to each and every one of those articles, as well as haranguing the host of the “Passive Investing Carnival” for even hosting such a wicked thing, since Passive Investing will lead to millions of failed retirements, etc, etc, right?
Don’t rest on your laurels, Farmer Hocus!
Plumb!!!!
Rob says
No, that’s not even close to the way I intend to play it, Drip Guy.
As you know, I believe that Passive Investors are the smartest investors around. I have learned hugely important things from too many of them to count. It was John Bogle who taught me that the Old School SWR studies get the numbers wildly wrong. I view the second chapter of Bill Bernstein’s book as the best short explanation of why we all need to move to Valuation-Informed Indexing that I have yet seen. I am grateful to all of the thousands of my fellow community members who have posted at places like Bogleheads and Vanguard Diehards for the help they have offered me in development of the five unique calculators now at my web site and of the 200 RobCasts and of the three weekly columns and all that sort of thing.
Will the mistakes made by the Buy-and-Holders likely lead to millions of failed retirements? They will. It is the numbers that tell us that so it would be pointless to lie about the matter. Should the mistakes be fixed? Obviously. I will continue to argue at every venue that will have me that those mistakes should be corrected by the close of business today (whatever day it happens to be at the time I put forward the words). No one has worked this matter harder than I have, Drip Guy, and I think it will be safe to say that there will be few if any working it as hard as me in days to come.
By no stretch of the imagination does it follow that I am ever going to feel less in the way of gratitude or affection or respect for the thousands of Passive Investors who have helped me along the way. It is the Passive Investors who came up with the idea of looking to the historical stock-return data for guidance on how to invest in stocks. It is the Passive Investors who advocate rooting your strategies in the academic research as a means of avoiding the trap of letting your emotions take over your thinking. It is the Passive Investors who preach the merits of indexing and who argue so effectively for tuning out the short-term noise and focusing on long-term results. I mean, come on.
I look forward to the day when every Passive Investor alive on Planet Earth is advocating Valuation-Informed Indexing in a spirit of learning and helpfulness and warmth and love. What the heck is the possible downside? That’s the question to which I have never been able to get a straight answer.
We all benefit from learning the realities of stock investing, Drip Guy. Even you! Please think it over and help us all to get to the other side of The Big Black Mountain. That’s when the real fireworks (the good kind!) begin! The hand of friendship is extended to you, old buddy.
Rob
Drip Guy says
Heard back from the Trinity profs. yet?
Rob says
I have not.
If I hear something, I will be reporting it at the blog.
Rob
Jon | Free Money Wisdom says
Thanks for the add! I’ll link this on FB and Twitter 🙂
Rob says
Thanks much for the contribution, Jon.
I’m going to get something up at Twitter too.
Be sure to take another shot at it next month, when Rick Ferri will be sitting in the hot seat!
Rob
Jacob @ My Personal Finance Journey says
Thanks so much for hosting this month’s carnival, Rob! I’m really enjoying reading all of the selected articles.
A big congrats to the three winning blogs – Free Money Widom, FMF, and Darwin’s Money!
Jacob @ My Personal Finance Journey says
Also – @ Rob’s response to Dripguy. I think this is very wonderfully stated. I think that Valuation-informed investing and passive investing share more of a “common ancestry” than it might appear at first. For me personally, passive investing is what I currently advocate, only because I haven’t been able to put the time in to a detailed study between VII and passive investing. It’s on my list of things to do though.
arty says
Rob,
Love the drawings.
While words are necessary, we can get desensitized to even the best written words if they become common, or worse, dogmatic. The drawings are like Lascaux Cave presentations on investing, and he has a decisive graphic sensibility, somewhat like architectural sketches I’ve seen. I’m all about respecting the power of emotions in investing. Nice piece.
Arty
Rob says
I think that Valuation-informed investing and passive investing share more of a “common ancestry” than it might appear at first.
Bless you for saying that, Jacob.
There are roughly 10 huge insights that have John Bogle’s name on them. Of the 10, 9 of them are the driving insights of the Valuation-Informed Indexing approach. The only one re which there is a difference is the matter of whether long-term timing works or not. And even here the differences are certainly not stark. Bogle was asked in an interview what he thinks of Valuation-Informed Indexing and he said that he could see how it could work! That’s not quite an endorsement. But it is certainly not a condemnation.
People who have different viewpoints are not our enemies. It is from people with different viewpoints that we learn. People with different viewpoints challenge us to think harder and thereby to sharpen our thinking.
I love Buy-and-Holders and I want to be friends with them. All Buy-and-Holders are welcomed to post at this site anytime and to agree with me or disagree with me as they please. I of course am flattered when they agree with me. But the odds are probably better that I will expand my knowledge when they question me and challenge me and express differences with me.
People need to read Bogle’s books more carefully. There is a passage in one of his books in which Bogle says that he wants to be challenged when it appears that he may have gotten something wrong. And I think it can fairly be said that the distinctive characteristic of Bogle’s investing philosophy is humility. Any investor who has come to believe that he knows it all is very much on the wrong track. It’s not just Rob Bennett who believes that. I think it would be a fair interpretation of Bogle’s writings to say that John Bogle believes that.
So let’s stop fighting!
And get back to Learning Together!
Rob
arty says
Love the Drip Guy posts.
I do agree with some of what he has said over time re: Rob. Still, he keeps returning to explain to Rob, and others, how irrational Rob’s behavior is. It’s hysterical that Drip Guy can’t keep himself from re-engaging the “madness”. I’m only a few years old in all this, so I’m guessing these two have some “common ancestry” together as Jacob suggests.
Lot’s of good energy here lately.
Rob says
The drawings are like Lascaux Cave presentations on investing, and he has a decisive graphic sensibility, somewhat like architectural sketches I’ve seen.
I learned about Carl from a thought-provoking (and controversial — the two often go together) Guest Blog Entry that he wrote at Get Rich Slowly. My favorite thing about the internet is how one thing can connect to another and then to another and another.
I don’t agree with everything that J.D. Roth says. But I have enough respect for the work he does that I read his blog as often as I can. J.D. finds my investing views a little too far “out there,” but Carl RIchards’ views (which are closer to mine than to J.D.’s but not as far out as mine) are close enough to J.D.s that J.D. feels comfortable running a guest blog by Carl. So I end up getting exposed to a new way of thinking that I would not have come across otherwise.
Then I go to Carl’s blog and we hit it off and I end up learning more. Then maybe I share Carl’s thinking with you or Jacob or whoever and you mix it up with your own take and that over time takes us all to some entirely new place. Things just get better and better as the world’s knowledge of what works grows larger and larger.
When you come to possess an appreciation of how great this process of forming connections with lots of different ways of thinking can be, it pains you to see things that cause people to break those links. That part of life on the internet saddens me greatly. I hope that, as the internet matures, we will be seeing less and less of that sort of thing and more of the great positive and life-affirming power of this exciting new communications medium.
As always, thanks for stopping in. You have consistently been a big help to those who congregate here to learn about what works in stock investing strategies, Arty. This wouldn’t be the same place without your contributions.
Rob
Rob says
Love the Drip Guy posts.
I love some of them, Arty.
I don’t love the ones where he threatens people and engages in defamation and and death threats and all this sort of thing.
It is my intent to bring lawsuits against Drip Guy and others who have engaged in these tactics. How do you think it makes me feel to know that I will be bringing lawsuits against people who at one time I thought of as fellow community members, Arty? Something like that should never happen. It’s sick. It’s twisted.
And in fairness Drip Guy is not solely responsible for this dark reality. If Drip Guy’s friends had taken him aside and told him in no uncertain terms that there were some forms of behavior that would absolutely not be tolerated, I believe that Drip Guy would have reined in his behavior. I believe that the same is so of most of the other Internet Sewer Rats. The few for whom it is not so we are obviously all better off without.
The good we do, we do as a community.
And the bad we do, we do as a community.
We all need to think about what sort of a community it is we want to be on a going-forward basis. We cannot wave a magic wand in the air and obtain a “Do Over” of the past nine years. But we can work together to see that the next nine years turn out to be a very, very different experience for every single community member.
Love is the answer Arty. That’s the bottom line. That’s one re which the hippies really were very much on the right track, in my humble assessment.
Rob
Rob says
It’s hysterical that Drip Guy can’t keep himself from re-engaging the “madness”.
It’s not so hysterical for the many community members who either have already or soon will be experiencing very serious financial losses because of the behavior of Drip Guy and the other Goons, Arty. When a board prohibits honest posting, it loses its integrity. Integrity matters.
We talk about money issues in the Retire Early and Indexing discussion-board communities. There are responsibilities that come into play when that is the case.
We all like to have a good time. Differences of opinion are a plus. Good-natured joking around should be encouraged. Some of the stuff we have seen put forward by Drip Guy could not in two millions years be characterized by any reasonable person as good-natured joking around.
You don’t help us bring things to a life-affirming resolution when you pretend that you don’t see the problem with threats of physical violence against young children or with efforts to destroy someone’s business or get someone fired from a job or to pressure a reporter to say things he does not believe or to burn a discussion board to the ground because the community that meets there has expressed a desire to learn about a subject that you do not want people learning about.
We need to combine love and honesty in the proper proportions. If you want to say that Drip Guy has made some positive contributions, you will get no argument from me. If you want to say that he has not done great harm to many fine and good people who took time out of their days to help us all out with their generous contributions, you get the back of my hand re that one, Arty.
I care about all my fellow community members. I care about Drip Guy. But I do not care only about Drip Guy. The thousands who have expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted have rights. The thousands who have expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted matter.
Rob
Rob says
I’m only a few years old in all this, so I’m guessing these two have some “common ancestry” together as Jacob suggests.
It’s not that complicated, Arty.
I am the person who discovered the analytical errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies. On the day before I put up the May 13, 2002, post reporting what I knew (which I learned via a careful reading of John Bogle’s book!), I was the most popular poster at the Motley Fool site. Starting on the morning of that post, I have had the most vicious smear campaign in the history of the internet (by a factor of 50) directed at me. That’s not an accident, Arty. It is the post telling people the realities of safe withdrawal rates that brought on the massive smear campaign (led by an individual who wrote one of the discredited studies and by an individual who cited one of the discredited studies in his book).
Those trying to come to terms with what the Campaign of Terror against our board communities is all about need to review this article:
http://www.passionsaving.com/investing-discussion-boards.html
Those 101 comments expressing a desire that honest posting on SWRs and many other important investment-related topics be permitted at our boards and blogs are not Rob Bennett’s words. Those words were put forward by 101 of my fellow community members.
I don’t do anything without thinking about what those people want for our boards, Arty. I don’t cut side deals. I don’t betray my friends. That ain’t never gonna happen. That one is non-negotiable. That sort of thing is not my particular cup of tea. Re that sort of thing, I kindly ask that you try to find somebody else. I don’t need the business quite [i]that[/i] bad.
Yes, I extend the hand of friendship to all the Goons. But I don’t betray my earlier friends to make new ones. To bring this matter to a good and positive and constructive and life-affirming resolution, we need to take into consideration the interests of the community as a whole. We should not act with any malice whatsoever toward the Goons. But we cannot act with indifference to the thousands of kind and generous and smart people who built the boards that the Goons destroyed or compromised in their fury. There has to be some balance.
My take is that we should be honest up to the point where being so requires us to be unloving and we should be loving up to the point where being so requires us to be dishonest.
Every board has rules that were written to reflect our community norms. We should turn to them for guidance. Those rules are what we are as a people. Those rules are the one thing re which we are all in 100 percent agreement (because no one is permitted to post until he agrees to follow the posting rules of the board to which he is being granted access). If we seek to become true to our better selves, we will begin enforcing the rules that we all agreed to follow when we signed up at the various boards.
This is my sincere take re this highly important matter.
Rob
Rob says
Lot’s of good energy here lately.
Yes.
And not just here.
There’s been lots of good energy at lots of places lately.
It’s a reality of human life that sometimes we need to feel that something is at risk to really live life to the fullest. During the Get Rich Quick years, things were coming too easy and we dismissed the idea that there would ever again be anything for us to learn or that the reality principle would ever again interfere with our fantasy lives. We have now reached a point where we are beginning to entertain the idea that there is at least a possibility that we were not thinking 100 percent clearly when we came to believe those things.
It’s part of a natural cycle. You work hard, you get good results. You become fat, dumb and happy, you get bad results. You start working hard again. You begin getting good results again.
We are today standing on the threshold of the biggest surge of economic growth ever seen in our history. If we are smart, we will acknowledge that it didn’t come from nowhere. It came from the work we did when we became afraid and hurt and uncertain and thereby open to new ideas.
We have not just lived through the first out-of-control bull market ever seen in history. And we are not today living through the first economic crisis brought on by an out-of-control bull market. We will recover from the bull market of the 1990s just as we recovered from all of the earlier ones: By coming to see that that sort of thing ain’t real. The only money that counts is real money. Pretend Money does us more harm than good.
Anyway, I do agree that we are seeing positive signs in lots of places, Arty. Let’s all pray that the forward movement continues and accelerates!
More! Bigger! Faster! Bolder!
What the heck is the downside?
Rob
arty says
I think Dripguy has some portion of the truth. I think you have some portion of the truth. Given his consistently strong take on you, and that he is a bright guy, I don’t know why he returns. And I find some Voltaire-like humor in that and that alone.
I don’t think either of you have harmed anyone. I mean, really… I don’t see you as harmful, or him, and I also have never seen any of the proscriptions on “honest posting” you so frequently mention. I do see strong opinions on many topics—including valuations, safe withdrawal, and all that.
I suspect also that it is not a “life-affirming resolution” when you make claims about “love” and “honesty” and supposed violence against you and yours—and then tell me you’ll give me the “back of your hand”. In my experience, Rob, that sort of (Goon-like?) violence is generally less than helpful.
Rob says
Drip Guy does possess some portion of the truth, Arty. And so do you. And so do I.
But the truth that I possess is not represented on the boards that have banned honest posting. Drip Guy posts his truth at those boards. But readers of those boards don’t get to hear the other side of the story.
There’s obviously huge risk in that when the boards in question are money boards. If the boards told people up front that honest posting was prohibited, there would not be a problem. Then you could say “well, people know what they are getting into.” But that is not done today. The boards lead people to believe that they are permitting people with different viewpoints to participate. But those who post honestly on SWRs are banned. Huh?
Why are the threats that were made to kill my wife and children “supposed” violence in your mind? The mother of those children did not view those threats as only “supposed” violence. I think it would be safe to say that she is in a better position to comment on the matter than you.
Have you read the comments by the 101 community members expressing a desire that honest posting be permitted? I think it would be fair to describe your indifference to the desires of those people to retain their personal integrity when posting to our boards as a slap in their faces. I love those people. So I give you the back of my hand right back when you go down that path. I would feel disloyal to those people to do anything less.
Those people matter to me, Arty. End of sentence, end of paragraph, end of chapter, end of story.
If I were going to sell those people out, I would have done it a long, long, long, long time ago.
It’s not in me, my good friend. Extending the hand of friendship is one thing. Agreeing to post dishonestly on the numbers that my friends use to plan their retirements is something altogether different.
I do wish you the best in all your future endeavors regardless of any differences between us on this one particular, highly important point.
Rob
arty says
You believe there are all sorts of proscriptions on “honest posting” and I haven’t seen any evidence for that. Just my opinion from viewing the boards—and pertinent topics—mostly on my quarterly breaks.
If there are those that threatened you and yours, I hope you took steps to stop that.
You said you’d give me the “back of your hand” and manufactured an utterly BS reason to justify your violence against me. That’s sad, and there is no justification for your violence, especially if violence has been applied to you, as you’ve repeatedly said.
Tough guys are a problem for everyone, Rob. I’ve learned a bit more about you this go round. I’m very sad at what I’ve seen from you. In light of your behavior, perhaps Drip Guy has a far greater portion of the truth than I initially suspected.
Anyway, really good stuff on the investing drawings and valuations fronts—as always, both entertaining and informative!
Rob says
If there are those that threatened you and yours, I hope you took steps to stop that.
I did all that I could think of, Arty.
I contacted the Purcellville police. They put me in touch with a special Virginia Internet Crimes division. They have opened a file re this matter. I contacted my congressman Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA). He sent a letter to the FTC. I spoke with someone in the FBI. I of course notified all of the site administrators who had promised to protect me and all other community members from this sort of thing. Motley Fool said they thought that it would be ideal if Greaney would permit honest posting. I said that I agreed that that would be ideal. I also contacted the admins at Morningstar and at Early Retirement Forum and at the Get Rich Slowly Forum and a few other places. I have sent numerous e-mails to experts in the field, including three to John Bogle. I have contacted about half a dozen lawyers in preparation for the lawsuits.
Is there anything you can think of that I missed?
If there is, I would be grateful if you would let me know.
My view is that I have done all that any reasonable person could be expected to do, plus some more on top of that, plus even some more on top of that.
Rob
Rob says
You said you’d give me the “back of your hand” and manufactured an utterly BS reason to justify your violence against me. That’s sad, and there is no justification for your violence, especially if violence has been applied to you, as you’ve repeatedly said.
Tough guys are a problem for everyone, Rob. I’ve learned a bit more about you this go round. I’m very sad at what I’ve seen from you. In light of your behavior, perhaps Drip Guy has a far greater portion of the truth than I initially suspected.
Yeah, yeah.
Rob
Rob says
Anyway, really good stuff on the investing drawings and valuations fronts—as always, both entertaining and informative!
Thanks for saying so, Arty.
Rob
Drip Guy says
Rob wrote in a public forum, of which he is the sole purveyor and publisher, on May 2nd, 2011 at 3:10 pm:
“Drip Guy… threatens people and engages in defamation and and death threats…It is my intent to bring lawsuits against Drip Guy…”
1. You will immediately retract that willfully false, libelous, and personal reputation damaging statement.
2. I suggest you refer to a competent lawyer immediately, and to begin with, have him or her explain to you the difference between defamation, which of course I have never done to you, and libel, which you have just done to me. You might want to also put them on retainer, as well.
3. You continue to prove yourself to be a remarkably ignorant and carelessly untruthful person.
4. It seems clear that you are unable and/or unwilling to help yourself in many of your delusions. But even you must have some limt, some where, some ability to correct your many injuries. So, suffer under no delusion here, sir, I am in deep and rigorous earnest. There is a school of thought that sometimes when he wants to punish us, God gives us just what we ask for. Bearing that in mind, I suggest you consider how you, your actions, and your statements would hold up in deposition.
Please correct your insolent and ridiculous printed and published accusations regarding falsehoods you have invented out of whole cloth about me, immediately.
Rob says
I have many friends in all of the various communities and I view a failed retirement as a serious life setback, Drip Guy.
I am going to continue to post honestly re safe withdrawal rates and other important investment-related topics. We’ll see where that takes us.
Please take care, my old friend.
Rob
Drip Guy says
I view you publicly LYING and saying I threatened you with DEATH, as a whole lot more serious than your ten year jihad against sanity.
Robert Michael “Hocus” Bennett, you have publicly (and now repeatedly) libeled me with a most scurrilous and damaging complete falsehood, which you alone invented, then put to print, and then published in a public forum under your control and finally, willfully failed to retract when it was publicly brought to your attention.
Anyone reading this knows at least that much about you.
Therefore, the degree of credence you are afforded by anyone, on any topic, should be commensurate with that plain and unassailable (disgusting) fact.
Rob says
We heard you the first time, Drip Guy.
We also heard my response: I do not feel even a tiny bit comfortable posting dishonestly on the numbers that people use to plan their retirements. It’s just not my particular cup of tea. You’re going to have to try to find someone else.
Fair enough?
Rob
Drip Guy says
No, it is certainly NOT fair for you to publicly disparage me and then fail to substantiate or retract your outrageous allegations.
And of course, if you had any credibility, it would add insult to injury to have you pretend that *I* am being repetitive (‘we heard you first time’) when in fact, my replies are unique, and directly responsive to both the matters at hand, and to your own comment directly above my reply…
EVEN WHILE YOU YOURSELF SPEAK MOSTLY IN NON SEQUITURS AND RIDICULOUSLY TRANSPARENT ATTEMPTS AT MISDIRECTION.
Your response to my outrage at you unfairly maligning me regarding your lies about my issuing DEATH THREATS, is addressed by you only with some vague allusion as to what you intend to write on freakin’ SWRs?
Are you actually and completely inane at this point, Rob?
Seriously?
Rob says
my replies are unique
I hereby acknowledge that your replies are unique, Drip Guy.
I’m afraid that you got me re that one, my old friend.
Rob
Rob says
freakin’ SWRs
It’s freakin’ SWRs now, is it?
I can recall the day when the safe withdrawal rate concept was taken seriously not only by millions of middle-class investors but even by many of the people viewed as experts in the field.
Things change.
My advice to you is to try hard never to forget that because the historical record tells us that it is 100 percent the straight story.
Things change, Drip Guy. You’re going to have to learn how to cope with this reality.
That could be said of all the rest of us as well, to be sure. Wish us luck!
Rob