“I Think It Would Be Fair to Say That God or the Universe or Evolution or the Fates Understood That Someone Needed to Do This Extremely Important Work Before the Next Buy-and-Hold Crisis Hit and That I Was the One Elected to Do It. So I Am Not Happy With the Stuff That Caused Anguish but I Accept It as My Fate to Have That Awful Stuff Directed At Me as Part of a Bigger Story in Which Our Nation Achieves a Huge Economic Advance.”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:

“A failed retirement is a serious life setback.”

“Yes, it is very, very, very painful that I am broke and divorced.”

Would you consider your current situation a failed retirement?

No.

My Retire Early plan worked like a dream. The plan is described in my book “Passion Saving; The Path to Plentiful Free Time and Soul-Satisfying Work.” The idea was to save enough so that I could leave corporate employment and shift to more fulfilling work that probably would not produce as much income in the short term but that would in all likelihood produce much more in the long run. I never could have developed the Valuation-Informed Indedxing concept had I not first develpped the Passion Saving concept.

The abusive and criminal behavior of you Goons has blocked me from earning an income for 20 years. But, assuming that I obtain a $500 million settlement in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, I will be insanely well off financially. That won’t make up for the divorce and the other emotional pains that I have experienced. But our system does not really have a good way of compensating people for those sorts of pains. It is easier to compensate for financial losses.

I wouldn’t have chosen this path if I had known all that was coming. No rational person could have anticipated what was coming — never before in U.S. history have we seen a story like this play out. So I don’t say that I am ahead of the game in an overall sense even after receicing the $500 million settlement payment. But I will be in super fine financial shape after receiving the settlement. And I think it would be fair to say that God or the Universe or Evolution or the Fates understood that someone needed to do this extremely important work before the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis hit and that I was the one elected to do it. So I am not happy with the stuff that caused anguish but I accept it as my fate to have that awful stuff directed at me as part of a bigger story in which our nation achieves a huge economic advance.

My retirement was not from all work. It was only from corporate work. I love work. I just wanted to be able to direct my hours to more fulfilling work. I have achieved that goal 500 times over. I am not able to imagine how there could be any work more fulfilling than thr work that I am doing today, opening tje entire internet to honest posting re the last 41 years of peer-reviewed research. We will all be living better and fuller and richer lives in the days following the next Buy-and-Hold Crisis, as horrible as that event will be. I am amazed and humbled to have been able to play the role that I have played in helping us all to get to a better place. I have experineced enough fulfillment to cover 50 lifetimes.

I of course didn;t and don’t like any of the ugly stuff. But the good stuff has been 20 times more good than the bad stuff has been bad. Solzhenitsyn said of the years he spent in the Soviet prison system, which brought on his conversion to Christianity, “Bless you, prison!” My variation on that is: Bless you, Goons!” I couldn’t have done it without you!

My best wishes.

Rob