Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the Goon Central board:
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Rob, something totally revolutionary could still be seen as an incomplete solution to any and every situation!
I say that permitting honest posting on safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics is the FIRST step, not the last step, Drip Guy. I think it would be fair to say that the peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau (Ph.D., Princeton) is the most important research published in this field in the past 30 years. Reducing the risk of stock investing by 70 percent is a very big deal. I fully expect that there will be follow-up studies to that study for decades to come. That’s what makes it Nobel-prize quality. It is the research upon which all future research in this field will be rooted. The scores of amazing insights that we have developed together over the first 11 years of our discussions are the beginning point, not the end point. The shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is the biggest advance in the history of personal finance and there’s nothing else in even a remotely close second place. It doesn’t follow that there will not be many important advances to come. I believe there will be. It’s the announcement of your prison sentence that gets things going. That announcement will go viral. And there will not be one person advocating GRQ after we all see where it leads. After your prison sentence is announced, Jack will give his “I Was Wrong” speed and the rest of us will all be off to the races. Do you see? Rob |
The facts of the last 12 years expose you as a liar and someone who is driven for revenge based on hate. Get help, Rob.
That makes sense, Anonymous.
Hang in there, man.
Rob
Test Post.
WSJ, Weekend May 24-25, “Calculating Your Retirement”
? Q1. Bill Sholar, What is his current involvement with FireCalc-EarlyRetirement?
? Q2. Mr Bennett, What is your relationship to Motley Fool (I read banned??) and a couple of others?
? Q3. I am not used to your interface. Do you have a forum or are comments made on each Rant & Rave.
If you email your answers And reply where ever, it would be helpful.
thx.
I sent the words below to Pete as an e-mail:
Pete:
I am responding to your questions below, which I received as a comment at the “A Rich Life” blog.
1) Bill and I posted together at the Retire Early discussion board at Motley Fool a good number of
years back (1999, 2000). We were friends. He wrote an endorsement for my book on saving that
appears on the back cover.
In 2002, I pointed out the errors in John Greaney’s safe withdrawal rate study (it does not contain an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins). This led to a raging controversy that continues until this day. Bill Sholar had developed the FIRECalc calculator based on Greaney’s study. I pointed out at the Early Retirement Forum that, since the Greaney study was wrong, FIRECalc also was wrong. Bill was somewhat hostile but not nearly to the extent that Greaney was. Bill set up a separate section of his forum at which those who believed that valuations affect long-term return could congregate. Greaney’s Goons threatened to burn the
entire site to the ground. Bill relented and banned honest posting on the SWR question at his site as well.
Bill later sold the Early Retirement Forum. It is under different ownership today. My guess is that he gave up control of FIRECalc as part of the sale, but I do not know any of the details of the arrangement he has with the current owners.
2) My relationship with Motley Fool is odd. We are on friendly terms but, yes, I am banned.
Motley Fool started a new blogging service a year or two ago and invited me to participate.
I think the ban just remains in place because it was once imposed and never lifted. I was
a very popular poster at Motley Fool at the time I was there, probably the most popular poster
at the site. I had the #1 selling report at its Soapbox.com service and Tom Gardner, the co-founder,
wrote a blurb for my saving book. Motley Fool asked me to be one of the instructors for its on-line
retirement course.
They had not wanted to ban me at the time I was banned. After I put up the post pointing out the
errors in Greaney’s study, the Retire Early board was divided. There were hundreds of posters who
thought the discussion I had started was the best one ever held at that board. But there was a group
of Greaney Goons that was willing to burn the board to the ground rather than permit the discussion. The latter group prevailed. As the posts from this group became increasingly abusive, all of the good posters left the board. Eventually, things got so bad that nothing else was being discussed and Motley Fool banned me to restore order (I asked that they ban Greaney, but they refused to do so). They haven’t discussed early retirement strategies there for years. Now they just discuss politics and things like that.
Altogether, I am banned at about 15 sites. Morningstar. Boglehead Forum. The Oblivious Investor Blog. Motley Fool. Index Universe. Early Retirement Forum. Monevator Blog. There are some others. Always for the same reason. I have never put forward a single abusive post.
3) There are no rants or raves at my site. I find that question insulting.
I don’t have a forum. If you like, you may offer comments at each blog entry.
Thanks for your interest.
Rob