Set forth below is the text of a comment that recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Thanks for confirming that 4% has always worked. Meanwhile VII has never worked.
To show that something survived is not the same thing as showing that it is 100 percent safe. To show that something barely survived on a tiny number of occasions actually shows that it is not safe at all, that there is a very good chance that it will fail on the next occasions on which it is tried. People acknowledge these realities in every field of human endeavor outside of the investment advice field. There should be a 100 percent consensus today that it is an urgent piece of business for us as a nation to figure out why these realities are not acknowledged in the investment advice field as well.
Human rationality is a plus. It helps us make our way through life, We should give ourselves permission to make use of human rationality in the investment advice field. It’s not just about saying whatever it takes to turn a quick buck. It can’t be. The level of success that people achieve with their stock investments affects the extent to which they achieve their life goals. This stuff matters. It affects people’s lives.
My sincere take.
Rob
“ We should give ourselves permission to make use of human rationality in the investment advice field. ”
We’re you being rational when you quit your job, despite having an underfunded retirement account, while support a wife and two young children? Was that the safe thing to do?
Yes. I spent a lot of time developing my plan and I made sure that it was super safe. What we have seen is unprecedented in U.S. history. We have 40 years of peer-reviewed research showing that valuations affect long-term returns and that therefore there is precisely zero chance that the safe withdrawal rate could be calculated without taking valuations into consideration. Thousands of people have praised me in the most effusive terms imaginable, including a number of highly respected experts. The only thing that has held me back is the criminal behavior of a gang of internet goons. Huh?
The people of the United States will overcome you Goons eventually. I believe that it will happen in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis. Then I will be rewarded financially for the work that I have done. There is no way that any rational person could have anticipated what we have seen. The 20-year cover-up of the error in the Greaney retirement study is the biggest act of financial fraud in the history of the United States. And no person with even a tiny bit of a heart could fail to do everything in his power to bring this massive act of financial fraud to an end. I mean. come on.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
“I spent a lot of time developing my plan and I made sure that it was super safe. ”
What was the withdrawal rate for your plan?
It wasn’t a conventional retirement plan. The idea was to retire only from corporate employment. By moving to independent journalism, I could earn much more after retirement than I ever did in the years when I was working for someone else. All of that worked famously. The only problem was the criminal behavior of you Goons.
And of course with a $500 million settlement payment I will even end up being compensated for a portion of the losses that I suffered as a result of the criminal behavior.
Rob
How was that plan safe? You did not have an established independent journalism business that was supporting you. The plan you published in 2002 did not have this included, nor did it include your $500 million fantasy.
I had built the Retire Early board into the most exciting discussion board community on the internet, Anonymous. My “Secrets of Retiring Early” report was the #1 best-selling report in the history of the Soapbox.com site. Tom Gardner wrote a rave review of the report on the home page of the Motley Fool site. Motley Fool hired me to teach its online retirement planning course. Even Greaney got into the act. He wrote an introduction to the board, telling newcomers that they should read my stuff first because it was “seminal.”
We were changing the world with that board until Greaney unleashed his Goon Squad on us. On the day when I advanced my famous post pointing out the error in his retirement study, there were dozens of people thanking me for starting the most important discussion in the history of the board. Can you imagine where we would have been in a short time if Greaney had permitted the discussions to go forward? I was intending to take the debate to every investing site on the internet. We would have gotten all of the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies corrected and would have gotten front-page articles in all of the major newspapers. With a national debate, we could have gotten the CAPE value down and avoided the 2008 economic crisis, Which was the starting point for a lot of the political frictions that we are seeing today. People get upset when they see their retirement accounts destroyed.
If all that isn’t worth a bare minimum of $500 million I have a hard time imaging what would be. Do you think that people in this field want to give discredited advice on how to invest? I sure don’t have that feeling. Everyone I have spoken with outside of you Goons has indicated that he or she would very much like to be doing good work, they are just scared about what will happen to them and their families if they try it. There’s an easy way to test the idea. Try cutting back on the intimidation garbage and see what happens. I am highly confident that we would see some amazing things begin to happen if we went down that road.
We should have the same laws applying in the investing advice field that apply in every other field of human endeavor in the United States, Anonymous. That’s my sincere take, in any event.
My best wishes to you and yours.
Rob
“ I had built the Retire Early board into the most exciting discussion board community on the internet, Anonymous.”
“ If all that isn’t worth a bare minimum of $500 million I have a hard time imaging what would be.”
It is not hard to determine value. You look at income flow and you also look at how much someone is willing to pay you for what you have (just like knowing how much your house is worth). You haven’t been generating an income, we don’t see any materials you have for sale and I haven’t seen anyone willing to pay you for your services.
There’s value in avoiding another Buy-and-Hold Crisis, Anonymous. If there’s no value in getting the mistake that the Buy-and-Holders made in the 1960s corrected, then why do we send people to schools to get Ph.D.s before we let them publish peer-reviewed research in this field? The purpose of the schooling is so that they can get things right. It’s not just about turning a quick buck. One of the aims of peer-reviewed research is to get things right, which in some cases translates into correcting errors made at earlier times. There’s HUGE value in that.
I believe that there will be lots of people who will see the value in getting things right in the days following the next price crash. But we’ll see, you know? I wish you the best of luck with it regardless of what investment strategy you elect to follow, in any event.
Rob
We all can make claims that we think our ideas are worth something. It doesn’t really mean a think until someone else says it has value to them and they give you money in exchange for what you have to offer.
Back to the point, how is your plan safe?
Everyone alive in the United States needs to know how to invest effectively and a significant percentage is willing to pay something to learn what the Wall Street Con Men are trying to keep from them. If 100 million people pay me $50 each, that’s $5,000 million, or 5 billion. That’s pretty darn freakin’ safe. My feeble brain is not able to imagine anything safer.
The risk here is that the next price crash could put us all under. That’s the one that keeps me awake at night. But it’s not like I am going to do any better under that scenario if I were willing to say that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site contains a valuation adjustment. If we all go under, at least I will be able to say that I gave my best shot to getting things turned around. It won’t make me happy if that’s the way things go. But I will take a tiny bit of satisfaction in knowing that I did everything in my power to help out the country that I love.
Make sense?
Rob
“ If 100 million people pay me $50 each, that’s $5,000 million, or 5 billion. That’s pretty darn freakin’ safe. My feeble brain is not able to imagine anything safer.”
We can all make that claim. How many are willing to pay you even one dollar? It is like the lottery player that says he will obviously win the lottery and won’t have to worry about retirement, yet the odds are so low, it is laughable.
If you didn’t believe that there were a lot of people willing to pay me a lot of money to tell them the realities of stock investing as shown in the past 40 years of peer-reviewed research, you never would have engaged in a single criminal act. Your own behavior over the past 20 years shows that you no more believe that Greaney included a valuation adjustment in his retirement study than I do. I mean, come on.
Rob
What criminal acts? You have yet to back up that claim? You said you have had thousands of people supporting you. How many of those people have ever been willing to pay you?
You keep making claim after claim, but you never have supporting evidence.
If you want supporting evidence, take a look at the Greaney retirement study. It is available on the internet. It either contains a valuation adjustment or it does not.
I say that it does not.
Rob
“ If you want supporting evidence, take a look at the Greaney retirement study. It is available on the internet. It either contains a valuation adjustment or it does not.”
So you don’t really have any evidence as you misrepresent the Greaney work. Got it.
I wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, Anonymous.
Rob
“ I wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, Anonymous.”
I wish the best for your long suffering wife that has to put up with your delusions and lack of support.
Fair enough.