Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:
Why didn’t you do this work? It shows you don’t really know your subject matter.
I don’t possess any expertise on any of the technical stuff, that is certainly fair to say.
Please recall that, when I came to the Retire Early board at the Motley Fool site, I NEVER posted on investing. I only posted on how to save money. I saw that as being more up my alley because overcoming the resistance to saving money that holds most people back is an emotional thing. That’s my area of expertise — how emotions affect personal finance decsions.
I got into investing reluctantly. I tried for a long time to avoid it. But in the end you can’t do that. Once you save a lot of money for the purpose of achieving a higher level of fianncial freedom, you have to do something with it. So I was forced to look at these issues whether they possessed immediate appeal to me or not.
What I learned is that stock investing is a super, super, super emotional project. I love what the Buy-and-Holders did. They developed a model for stock investing that is rooted in research. I believe that’s the answer. People need to be able to think clearly and using research asa guide permts you to do that. The other thing that the Buy-and-Holders did that I absolutely love is that they kept things simple. I have no problem with people who enjoy researching companies picking individual stocks. But that sort of thing is not right for the average person, in my assessment. I like Bogle’s stuff. It is research-based and it is super simple. I criticize Buy-and-Hold in strong terms all the time. But I am a Buy-and-Holder at heart.
The reason why I criticize Buy-and-Hold as it is practiced today is that they made a mistake and have refused to correct it for the 41 years since the research revealed it. You have to correct your mistakes when they are discovered! Hioly moly! All that Valuation-Informed Indexing is is Buy-and-Hold with the idea that the market is efficient removed. Had the Buy-and-Holders had Shiller’s research available to them when they were developing their model, we would all be Valuatiion-Informed Indexers today. They never would have come to believe that market timing is not always 100 percent required if all the research had been available back in the 1960s.
The market timing question is an emotions question. So that one is right up my alley. The Buy-and-Holders wanted to help investors from making emotional choices. Which is a third thing that I absolutely love about them. That’s the key thing. They were 100 percent right about the most important goal, in my assessment. Their problem was their belief (this was an assumption, not a finding) that the market is efficient/rational. If the market were efficient, market timing would serve no purpose. If the market were efficient, Buy-and-Hold would be the ideal strategy.
But it’s not. That’s what Shiller showed. Stock investing is a highly emotional endeavor. Investors have to engage in market timing to keep investor emotion from getting so out of control that it craters the entire economy. This is 70 percent of the stock investing story. So long as most investors practice market timing you can never have a bull market. Which means that you can never have a bear market. Which means that you probably will never experience an economic crisis. Shiller’s research merited the Nobel prize he was awarded. Our discovered that martet timing is always required is the most important advance ever in our understanding of how the market works. Now we just need to work up the courage to point out the error everywhere and get millions of people up to speed on how stock investing really works.
I am never going to be a technical guy. I don’t have much to contribute re technical questions. My job is to open every site on the internet to honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research. The resistance to honest posting is EMOTIONAL. There is no rational case for a Ban on Honest Posting. The resistance is 100 percent emotional. We can all start living richer and fuller and better lives starting today is we just work up the courage to say those three magic words “I” and “Was” and “Wrong.” The leverage in doing that is off the charts.
Once every site has been opened to honest posting, I intend to back out of the discussions. Let the technical people do their thing, you know? But in order for the tehnical people to do any good work, they need to feel safe saying what they honesrtly believe. That’s the big hurdle that we all face. That’s a purely emotional thing, there’s nothing even a tiny bit technical about it. It’s the Get Rich Quick urge gone wild. People have been led to believe that the wildly inflated numbers on their portfolio statement are real and they don’t want to give up that illusion, the peer-reviewed resear be damned.
We are going to have to give up the illusion if we want to move forward (and we need to move forward if we want to save our economic and political systems from collapse). Coming to terms with the realities of what the recent research teaches us is an emotional project. I believe that I have something to contribute in that area. So that’s the work I do. I want the technical people to be able to do honest work and for us to get there as a nation of people we need to come to terms with the tsunami of emotions that the Buy-and-Holders stirred up with their mistaken belief that market timing (price discipline!) is not always 100 percent required when buyng stocks.
I hope that that helps at leaat a tiny bit.
Rob
Rob says: “You have to correct your mistakes when they are discovered! Hioly moly! ”
Yet Rob also says: “ I don’t possess any expertise on any of the technical stuff, that is certainly fair to say.”
You can’t make claims about other people making mistakes when you lack expertise in technical matters and can’t do the math. It is like pretending to be a doctor when you never went to medical school.
If you see someone fall down a flight of stairs and can tell from how painful it is for them to move their arm that they have a broken arm, do you say to yourself “oh, well, I am not a doctor, I will just ignore this matter and go about my business.” You might not be able to set the arm in a sling and all that sort of thing because you don’t have the training. But you have enough awareness to know that something must be done.
I don’t need to possess a Ph.D, in Economics to see that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. I can take five minutes to check the study and determine that.
And when I watch 20 years pass without him correcting the study, I know that something is seriously wrong. An error like that should be corrected in 24 hours. There were people at the Motley Fool board who used that study to plan their retirement. I was there, Anonymous.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
How do you know they broke their arm? It could be a sprain or dislocation. Once again, you proven that expertise is needed.
The point is that you don’t just do nothing if you see there’s a problem.
I’m all for getting experts involved. I spent 16 months co-authoring peer-reviewed research with Wade Pfau. Back off the criminal stuff and Wade will be glad to help you out. You say that you want to get experts involved but, when they get involved, you threaten to destroy their careers if they dare to “cross” you by stating honestly that they believe that the Greaney study is “dangerous.”
We could get thousands of experts involved if you would drop the abusive stuff, especially the criminal stuff. The experts would love to be able to help us out. But they naturally don’t want to see their careers destroyed. It’s the intimidation stuff that has been holding us back for 20 years now.
Rob
You can’t say there is a problem if you lack expertise. You can’t say there is anything criminal when there is no direct evidence. You can’t just make it up and expect people to believe you. You can’t be broke and tell people you know what you are talking about when it comes to investing.
I believe that the Greaney study lacks a valuation adjustment. If I don’t say anything, I am letting down my fellow community members. Not this boy, you know?
Does Greaney possess expertise? If I don’t possess the expertise needed to note that his retirement study lacks a valuation adjustment, does he possess the expertise needed to claim that a 4 percent withdrawal is “100 percent safe” regarless of the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins? If he didn’t make the false claim, I wouldn’t feel a need to point out the error.
Rob
Like I said, you don’t know what you are talking about. But it is not just me saying this, many others have. Take, for example, what Wade Pfau said:
“ And the further reality is that if I *did* lack personal integrity, I could have made this all stop just by saying the meaningless sentence you want so desperately to hear: “I think the errors in the traditional safe withdrawal rate studies must be corrected by using Rob’s analytically valid method.”
But I don’t believe that. I do not believe you have offered a valid correction to the safe withdrawal rate question. And I believe that retirement income strategies go much further than the question of a safe withdrawal rate. And so that is why I’ve had to endure your ongoing harassment for months on end now.
Usually I can figure out the Rob-logic behind what you are thinking, but I really don’t know how you think you come out of this whole episode looking like the good guy. I guess it is because you think you are saving my soul and putting me back on the path of righteousness, or something, huh? If only you had the power to do a little bit of self reflection…”
And there were sixteen months in which Wade and I worked together on an almost daily basis on a research project that he was so excited about that it was keeping him up at night in which he said many, many, many things to the opposite effect. Intimidation tactics work if nothing is done about them. This all comes down to whether or not as a nation of people we elect to do something about the intimidation tactics advanced by the sorts of individuals who have put up posts in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney.
If we elect to apply the same laws that apply in every field other than the investment advice field in the investment advice field as well, I am confident that in not too long a time we will be able as a nation of people to bury the smelly Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold garbage 30 feets in the ground, where it can do no further harm to humans and other living things. I believe that the ocean of human suffering that we will see with the arrival of the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis will be enough to get enough of us involved to start the ball rolling in a very positive direction.
But we will have to wait a bit to find out for sure, you know? I naturally wish you all the best of luck with it, in any event.
Rob
Wade has told a much different story than you have. But that isn’t new. Everyone else has seen the same thing. You take everyone’s words and twist them around to try and fit your narrative. People grow tired of it and decide to ignore you. No one is scared or intimidated. It is just something you make up as a cover and that is why you have never offered up proof. It doesn’t exist.
Okay, Anonymous.
I do wish you all the best that this life had to offer a person regardless of what investment strategy you elect to follow, in any event.
Rob
My strategy has worked just fine. How about your strategy? Being broke doesn’t seem to be the way to go, in my humble opinion.
I believe that being honest is the way to go, Anonymous. I believe that being honest re how stock investing works and helping others to feel safe being so will lead to great financial compensation somewhere down the line. But that’s not my primary motivation for choosing rhe course that I have chosen. My primary motivation is that I care about the people who I have come to know on the various discussion boards and blogs.
I care about them enough that I want them to know that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site lacks an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. People need to know that. There were people at the Motley Fool board who used the Greaney study for help in putting together their retirement plan.
If we all were thinking clearly, no one would ever have suffered any negative financial consequences for telling the truth about stock investing as revealed by the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. I think it would be fair to say that we are not all 100 percent capable of thinking clearly about this subject at all times. That was Shiller’s core finding. There’s a reason why the title of his book is “IRRATIONAL Exuberance.” The only way to make stock investing more rational is to encourage market timing/price discipline. So I try to do my part to do that.
Unfortunately, we didn’t always know how important market timing is. Shiller didn’t publish his Nobel-prize-winning research until 1981 and the Buy-and-Hold strategy was developed in the 1960s. Given the 41-year cover-up, it drives some of the Buy-and-Holders bonkers when someone comes along and posts honestly re what the research shows. So be it, you know? I love the Buy-and-Holders. I believe that they will all feel better about themselves once honest posting is permitted (and encouraged!) at every board and blog on the internet, without a single exception. So I continue to urge us as a nation of people to achieve that advance.
My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.
Rob
I think the results say otherwise. Your broke.
So your plan was to go broke and get divorced. Got it.
I think the results say otherwise. Your broke.
And in 20 years no one has been able to show that the retirement study posted at John Greaney’s web site contains an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. Both things are so, Anonymous.
That shows us that the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge that resides within all of us is a very strong and powerful force. It also shows that we should all be working together to rein it in. That’s the primary purpose of investment advice — to rein in the Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge.
That’s my sincere take re these terribly important matters, in any event.
Rob
So your plan was to go broke and get divorced. Got it.
That wasn’t even a tiny bit my plan.
When I saw the reaction among some Buy-and-Holders to my post pointing out the error in the Greaney retirement study, I knew that I had stumbled only something very, very important. If following a pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategy causes people to go so totally bonkers, we all should be doing everything in our power to protect our fellow humans from that dangerous Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold urge, no? So I developed a new plan — to do what I could to show people how dangerous Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold always turns out to be in the long run.
For Buy-and-Hold to work, investors would have to be 100 percent rational in their investment choices. The behavior of you Goons showed that Shiller is right — stock investing is in reality a highly emotional endeavor. Instead of prohibiting discussion of the emotional behavior of investors, we should be focusing on it, encouraging everybody to help us develop strategies for overcoming it, strategies for keeping irrational exuberance under control.
Going pure Get Rich Quick ain’t the answer, Anonymous. I am sure.
Rob
“ That wasn’t even a tiny bit my plan.”
In other words, your plan failed. Thanks for finally admitting what we have been telling you.
Things didn’t go as I expected, Anonymous.
In some ways, they went worse, in some ways they went better.
It was my belief on the morning of May 13, 2002, that the entire intrnet was open to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research in this field. Today I know that there is not a single large site at which I can speak honestly about the error in the Greaney retirement study (it lacks a valuations adjustment) and the other Buy-and-Hold retirement studies. So I was wrong about that. Things went bad in that regard.
The other side of the story is that I have learneed over the past 20 years how great the desire is both among investors and among experts in the field to open every site on the internet to honest posting re the peer-reviewed research. We already have about 10 percent of the population that believes that Robert Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns uis legitimate research. I am highly confident that, once we are successful in getting one lsrge site opened to honest posting, it will not be long before we turn that 10 percent into 20 percent and then the 20 percent into 40 percent and then the 40 percent into 80. At that point, we will all be livjng better and richer and fuller lives and there won’t be one person who will have any desire to see us return to the Buy-and-Hold days (with the possible exception of a few of our Goon friends).
Things are not perfect today. That’s for sure. That’s the greatest understatement of all times.
But things are very, very, very promising. That’s also a huge understatement. That’s also true.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
I don’t see a single person supporting one thing you say. You control this site and yet you can’t get anyone to come on here in your support. It is a ghost town.
It’s a ghost town here today, Anonymous. That’s a fact.
There will be thousands of people posting here on a daily basis once we have opened every site on the internet to honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. You Goons implicitly acknowledge that when you fight so hard. If you believed that Buy-and-Hold could prevail in civil and reasoned debate, you would want to see every site opened to honest posting. Your behavior tells the tale of what is going on here.
It’s a terrible national tragedy that we did not open every site to honest posting on the afternoon of May 13, 2002, as I proposed at the time. I have a funny feeling that the quickest path to getting there is not for all of use who believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research to live in fear of what you Goons will do to us if we post honestly. I do what I can. I can do no more and I can do no less. I believe that we will all make it the other side of The Big Black Mountain in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, when we will all be able to see up close and personal what happens when we discourage market timing and let irrational exuberance get totally out of control.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
Yes, these thousands of people want to follow you and go broke just like you………….
If Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick were a real thing, no one would have to go broke for pointing out the error at the core of it (the “idea” that market timing/price discipline is not required for every investor). If Buy-and-Hold were a real thing, the Buy-and-Holders would welcome challenges to their thinking. If the challenge prevailed, they would learn about a better way to invest their retirement money. If the challenge failed as the result of civil and reasoned debate, their confidence in their strategy would be strengthened. There is no possible downside to permitting honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed reserarch at every site.
The downside in the eyes of you Goons is that you don’t see any way that you can defend the pure Get Rich Quick approach in civil and reasoned debate and you can’t stand the idea of having to acknowledge having made a mistake back in the years before Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research revealed the realities. I believe that the best approach to take when you have discovered that you made a mistake is to acknowledge the mistake quickly and put it behind you. The longer you delay acknowleding the mistake, the more lives you destroy and worse you come to feel about yourself (and the longer is the prison sentence handed out to you after prices inevtiably collapse).
No one should want to see those who work up the courage to post honestly re these matters to go broke. We should all want them to achieve great financial success. The more successful the honest posters are, the more of them we will see and the better informed we all will become re how stock investing works in the real world. Honest posting rules!
My sincere take.
Rob
That’s you excuse for going broke? It had nothing to do with you being unemployed for over 20 years? It had nothing to do with you getting out of stocks over 20 years ago? You think everyone else, including your wife and priest, were wrong for trying to get you to go out and get a job? You somehow want to blame some mysterious group of goons for all of this?
100 percent.
I am doing the most important work being done in the United States today. We have millions of people who need to know how stock investing works. So long as honest posting re the past 41 years of peer-reviewed research is prohibited at every site, we can’t learn what we need to learn and we will continue to experience these horrible Buy-and-Hold crises that destroy so many lives.
Any job that I took would be a step down from what I have been doing for the past 20 years. Opening the entire internet to honest posting is a job of supreme importance. And this is a highly lucrative field. Given the importance of opening every site to honest posting, I would obviously have been compensated far in excess of $500 million if it had not been for the abusive and criminal behavior of you Goons. We will as a society make a statement about the value of the work that I have been doing when I am awarded that amount or more in settlement of my legal claims.
There’s no other job that I could do that would pay me even a tiny fraction of that amount. To take other employment would take me away from my highest and best use. Opening the entire internet to honest posting re the past 41 years of peer-reviewed research is the work that adds the most value and the compensation paid for various forms of work is genrally tied to the value added by that works and by how hard it is to find people who can add that value. There is not one else offering to do this extremely valuable work. So I think it would be fair to say that the compensation that I will receive for doing it will be in the stratosphere once every site is opened to honest posting and we can as a nation of people all speak clearly and openly about how much the 41-year cover-up has hurt as a nation of people.
Does all of that not make perfect sense?
Rob
You haven’t done any work, Rob. There is nothing to support your expectation of being paid even one dime in return for your internet blathering.
The world determines your value, not you and the world has determined that your hocomania is worthless.
Do you think it would have been better if I had kept it zipped re the error in the Greaney retirement study?
Rob
“ We will as a society make a statement about the value of the work that I have been doing when I am awarded that amount or more in settlement of my legal claims.”
What claims? You have never filed a single lawsuit? What damages? You quit your job and had zero income? Who do you expect to a settlement?
We are not part of your little fantasy.
To the opposite, every single person has told you that you should get a job. If you followed that advice, you wouldn’t be broke.
Do you think it would have been better if I had kept it zipped re the error in the Greaney retirement study? There were people at the Motley Fool board who thought that the Greaney study was legitimate research and who used the study as guidance in plannng their retirements. Some of those people had become friends of mine over the years.
Rob
There you go ignoring the questions by repeating more lies.
You could have stayed married. All you needed to do was get any job. But No. That was unacceptable. You LOVE sitting on your lazy butt, above all else. Deep down, you know that is wrong. So to soothe yourself, you’ll keep repeating those same old insane bullshit lies, until doomsday.
A life utterly train-wrecked, for nothing. Sad. Catastrophically unproductive. Galactically stupid.
Okay, Anonymous.
I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, regardless of what investment strategy you elect to follow.
Rob
Okay dude(s), whatever Rob’s issues are, at least he’s not cruel. Leave the guy in peace already.
The Buy-and-Hold goon squads should leave all of us who believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research in peace, To Anonymous. We are all on the same side. We all want to same things. We advance as a community on our understanding of how stock investing works by permitting (and encouraging!) all community members to express their sincere thoughts. There is not one academic model for understanding how stock investing works in the year 2022, there are two. We should expect people believing in both of the two models to be contributing at all of our discussion boards and blogs.
Rob
Refusing to get a job and not supporting your wife is not cruel? Calling people criminals is not cruel? Telling people they are going to prison is not cruel? Calling Jack Bogle a con-man is not cruel?
Sorry, but you need to think about that a bit.
We have to solve the problem, Anonymous. We have 41 years of peer-reviewed research that as a nation of people we have not given ourselves permission to talk about on the internet. And that 41 years of peer-reviewed research just happens to be the most important 41 years of peer-reviewed research in the history of the nation. If we don’t soon start talking about that research at every site, we are going to experience another Buy-and-Hold Crisis and we know from history that a Buy-and-Hold Crisis usually brings on an ocean of misery for our fellow humans. Solving this problem is not optional. It is 100 percent imperative.
I don’t like calling people criminals or pointing out that in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis they will be serving long prison sentences. It was reading John Bogle book that taught me abotu the error in Greanty’s retirement study. I thought the guy was the best. And I considered myseld a good friend of Greaney in the days before he went into freak-out mode (I don’t think that it was a coincidence that that happened about an hour after I put up my famous post pointing out the error in his retirement study). I certainly didn’t like causing disctress for my ex-wife.
I did lot of things to make all the people you refer to happy. With my ex, I told her that I would obtain full-time empoyment if she agreed to support me doing the stock investing work on nights and weekends. I praised Bogle to the skies all the time (while also of course pointing out thjat he was wrong in his frequent comments to the effect that market timing is not always 100 percent required for every stock investor). John Walter Russell and I invited Greaney to work with us to develop the first analytically valid safe-withdrawal-rate study. I think it would be fair to say that Greaney would be the king of the internet had he taken us up on that offer and we had never seen any of this awful, nasty stuff. I have advanced lots of initiatives in a spirit of kindness, not cruelty.
But, yes, there are lots of people who experience a good bit of pain when someone points out what the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research teaches is all about how stock investing works in the real world. It hurts to learn that your stock portfolio has a real value of perhaps half of what you were led to believe it was worth. It shakes people up to hear that and to see how strong the research-based case for Valuation-Informed Indexing really is. So, yes, there is a sense in which I have been “cruel.” Things that I have said have caused people to experience pain.
What do you propose? That we continue pushing the Buy-and-Hold fantasies and bring on yet another Buy-and-Hold Crisis with our “kind” behavior?
Looked at from one perspective, you could say that a doctor who cuts a patient open to remove a cancer is behaving in a cruel manner. It is not generally viewed as kind behavior to employ a sharpy instrument to cut into human flesh. The conctext in which the doctor does this needs to be taken into conisderation. So it is the stock investing realm.
I was present in the discussion held at the Motley Fool site at which John Greaney insisted on a daily basis that it was “100 percent safe” to use a 4 percent withdrawal in retirement plans that were being constructed at a time when the actual safw withdrawal rate was 1.6 percent. Was that cruel? In an objective sense, it was. Those people were counting on him to calculate and report the numbers accurately. But they were jumping up and down at his wildly inaccurqate reports. It made them happy for someone to telln them that they could retire many years sooner than what the peer-reviewed research indicated would be prudent. Is telling people pretty lies kind or cruel behavior?
I think it’s more cruel than kind. I was once a Buy-and-Holder because I liked it that people claimed that Buy-and-Hold was rooted in the peer-reviewed research. That’s the Buy-and-Hold that I believe in. From my perspective, it is the ban on honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research that is cruel. When the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, I want to be able to look people in the eye and tell them that I did everything in my power to have the ban on honest posting lifeted at every site on the internet.
It shakes people up to hear the truth about stock investing at a time when prices reside on the far side of la-la land. I get that loud and clear. But of course they are going to find out sooner or later that the Buy-and-Hold numbers are all fantasy numbers in any event. My sincere take is that it is kinder to tell them as early as possible so that they vcan make new plans for their future. I see nothing whatsoever kind in the Buy-and-Hold lie that the safe withdrawal rate is the same number at all valuation levels. Not this boy, you know? No freakin’ way, no freakin’ how.
Any kindness that I can extend to you that doesn’t require me to commit the felony of saying that I believe that the Greaney retirement study contains a valuation adjustment, I am in in three seconds and you won’t have to ask a second time. But, no, I am not going to say that Buy-and-Hiold as it exists today is a real thing or that market timing/price discipline is not always 100 percent required for every investor. The last 41 years of peer-reviewed research means something to me. Fron my way of looking at things, the truly crule thing is the 41-year cover-up of the most important research findings ever developed in the history of personal finance.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
Whoever called Rob “galactically stupid” was being cruel. Demi Moore didn’t like it either.
If Rob’s wife couldn’t make him see straight, no one can. Hard to see the point of trying.
What you are saying about my ex is so, To Anionymous. The possibility of my msrriange failing put more pressure on me to go along with the “idea” that the Greaney retirement study really does contain a valuation adjustment than anything else possibly could. It’s just not in me.
My best wishes to you.
Rob
Greaney had nothing to do with your marriage. You have already admitted your wife wanted you to get a job and you refused. The one that really needs support now is your wife. I just hope she has people around her that are there to give her what she needs.
I certainly wish her well. Ten times over.
Rob
“Whoever called Rob “galactically stupid” was being cruel. Demi Moore didn’t like it either.“
I don’t think Rob is stupid. In fact, he has clearly done all these things intentionally versus just plain stupidity. That actually makes it worse.
Thanks, Anonymous.
Um — I think.
Rob
“ I certainly wish her well. Ten times over.”
Don’t you think you need to do more than just “wish her well”? From a legal perspective, I guess you can just let her continue to suffer. From a moral perspective, you still owe her. A real man would do something about it. A real man would go out and get a job. A real man would beg for her forgiveness and then at least give her some financial assistance for whatever limited working years you have left.
A real man would post honestly re safe withdrawal rates.
My sincere take.
Rob
So what you are saying is that you will never go out and get a real job to help support her for all those years she dedicated to you. Oh, wait……….you promised to give her a bit of that $500 million windfall…….you might as well hand her a Lotto ticket and tell her that is her repayment for all those years. At least the Lotto ticket has better odds of a payoff versus your fantasy of a $500 million windfall.
We don’t agree, Anonymous.
But I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person regradless of what investment strategy you elect to follow.
Rob
Now that you are not married, you can go ahead and work during the day at a real job and then work on your book and internet surf on the nights and weekends. Nothing is holding you back now, right?
Nothing is holding me back. My assessment is that the priority should be finishing the book. I could see playing it the other way if I could save my marriage by doing that. But that’s no longer a possibility.
Rob
Not surprising. With every new scenario, work is just not an option for you. I am sure your book will be just as much of a hit as your YouTube campaign.
I can’t do it alone, Anonymous. If we are going to advance from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing, we need an entire nation of people working together to learn as much as possible about how stock investing works in the real world. There’s a mountain of evidence indicating that that is indeed what most of us want. Thousands of our fellow community members expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted. Shiller’s book became a best-seller. Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize. Wade Pfau devoted 16 months of his life to co-authoring research with me showing that “Yes, Virginia, Valuation-Informed Indexing works.” We all want the same thing and we have 41 years of peer-reviewed research showing us how stock investing really works in the real world. Why aren’t we discussing that research at every internet site?
We are afraid of you Goons. Death threats scare people. Acts of extortion scare people. Acts of defamation scare people. Will there ever be a day when enough of us get over our fear and open the internet to honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research so that we can all begin living richer and fuller and better lives than we ever imagined possible in the Buy-and-Hold days?
Will the next economic crisis caused by the relentless promotion of the pure Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold “strategy” (no market timing now!) do it?
I believe that the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis will indeed do it.
But we will have to wait a bit to find out for certain, you know?
I naturally wish you all the best of luck with it.
Rob
“ I can’t do it alone, Anonymous. If we are going to advance from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing, we need an entire nation of people working together to learn as much as possible about how stock investing works in the real world.”
No one wants to end up broke like you. You can go ahead and destroy your own life. What’s bad is you have dragged down your family with you. Why drag down others.
There should not be any negative consequences associated with pointing out an error in a retirement study. We should celebrate honest posting and thereby encourage more of it.
The more of us who capitulate to your Goons, the worse things get for all the rest of us. That’s the worst possible course of action.
Rob
We cannot encourage story telling as an excuse for laziness.
We cannot encourage story telling as an excuse for laziness.
Okay, Anonymous.
Rob