“30 Years to Build a Multi-Million Portfolio Is Not Get Rich Quick.”

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

30 years to build a multimillion portfolio is not get rich quick.  Meanwhile. Going broke and staying unemployed for 2 decades is insanity.

It is Get Rich Quick if you are counting amounts that are due to irrational exuberance as if they are real. Today stocks are priced at two times their real value. So those counting irrational exuberance as real are pretending that their accumulated wealth is two times what it really is. Is that not a Get Rich Quick approach? Someone with $500,000 of wealth tells himself that he has $1,000,000 and makes financial plans as if that were the case? Huh?

Someone who has been building his portfolio for 30 years has experienced a great deal of real economic gains over the years. None of that is the product of Get Rich Quick thinking. But if he doesn’t make an adjustment for irrational exuberance at a time when valuations are insanely high, that’s extremely dangerous. It’s high-emotion behavior. Someone who hands in a resignation to a high-paying corporate job because he believes that irrational exuberance gains are real is hurting himself in a very serious way.

I believe that we should permit honest posting re the last 44 years of peer-reviewed research at every site. I am not able to imagine any possible downside.

Rob