A Rich Life

The Old Ideas on Saving & Investing Don't Work -- Here's What Does

“I Believe That the New Internet Communications Medium Has the Potential to Change the World in a Very Positive Way. But It Certainly Has Not Yet Lived Up to its Potential. I Pray That as a People We Will Figure Out How to Make More Effective Use of It.”

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Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent on November 14, 2018, to Fred Bauer:

Fred:

My name is Rob Bennett. I read your article at National Review titled Social Media Have Been Captured by Elitists, Demagogues and Mobs. The topic is dear to my heart. I believe that the new internet communications medium has the potential to change the world in a very positive way. But it certainly has not yet lived up to its potential. I pray that as a people we will figure out how to make more effective use of it.
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I want to share with you the story that I have been working on for 16 years. This story is very much the product of the new communications medium. It shows both the very best of it and the very worst of it. It’s an amazing story.
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My best and warmest wishes to you.
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Rob

 

 

“The Topic Is a Bit Far Afield From the Sorts of Things You Usually Write. But It Is My View That This Issue Affects Everyone Alive Today and Should Be of Interest to People of All Political Persuasions. I Know That That Sounds Biased (This Is My Baby) But I Really Do Believe It.”

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Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent to Pema Levy, a reporter at MotherJones.com who wrote an article titled Rachel Mitchell’s Former Colleague Slams Her Kavanaugh Memo As “Absolutely Disengenious.”

Pema:

My name is Rob Bennett. I happened to come across an article of yours (“Rachell Mitchell’s Former Colleague Slams Her Kavenuagh Memo as “Absolutely Disengenious”). I read the article because it addresses the point from the Kavenaugh hearings that I found most compelling — that Ford said at one time that the attacks happened when she was in her late teens, which is a lot different from age 15 and which would have put her in college at the time. I cannot say that I am entirely convinced by your take. I agree that someone might not possess good recall of the date or perhaps even the year of an attack years later. But it seems to me that the difference between being 15 and being 18 when attacked sexually is so big that it would be remembered with some clarity. However, I was glad to see that someone made the case for the other side as it always helps to hear takes from both sides to work things out in one’s mind. Thanks for taking up that issue.
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I am a journalist too and I wanted to share with you an article that I have written called “Buy-and-Hold Is Dangerous.” The topic is a bit far afield from the sorts of things you usually write. But it is my view that this issue affects everyone alive today and should be of interest to people of all political persuasions. I know that that sounds biased (this is my baby) but I really do believe it. Anyway, I fully understand if you choose not to add one more (long!) item to your reading list. But if by some chance it pulls you in, that would be super groovy.
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My best wishes to you. Keep up the good fight!
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Rob

“Bull Markets Are Liars Markets. The Honest Thing to Do Would Be to Price Stocks at Their Proper Value. But As a Society We Have Elected to Price Them at Two Times Fair Value. Because There Is a Temporary Benefit to Be Had by Doing So. We All Get to Pretend That We Are Closer to Retirement Than We Would Be If We Priced Stocks Properly. So We Tell Ourselves a Lie That Makes Us Happy for a Time.”

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

In short, they are all liars and onlyRob Bennett is the one person in this world that is telling the truth. Got it.

It certainly is true that there have been a lot of lies that have been told on the Buy-and-Hold side. And it certainly is true that I have put a lot of effort into the project of telling the truth re these matters. I believe that a failed retirement is a serious life setback. And I have formed friendships with a lot of the people in our communities. So I do feel an obligation to be honest with them re these matters. I haven’t lived up to that 100 percent. From May 1999 through May 2002, I didn’t point out the error in Greaney’s study. I wasn’t dishonest in a direct way. But I wouldn’t call that completely honest behavior. I held back on something that I knew people needed to know about. I don’t say that I am some perfect person. But I definitely say that I have made a major effort to be honest re these matters under very difficult circumstances.

And I think that in fairness we should note that a lot of the “liars” have made efforts from time to time get the truth out. I mentioned above that Bernstein pointed out that the Buy-and-Hold studies were off by two full percentage points at the top of the bubble. I think it would be fair to say that that was his conscience talking. He would LIKE to be more honest. And Pfau said that the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies were “dangerous.” Again, that was his conscience talking. Even today, after he was threatened and flipped, we see Pfau trying to be honest. He was asked at his Reddit Ask Me Anything session whether he thought that a 4 percent withdrawal was safe for a retirement starting today. He said “no.” He didn’t go into detail. He didn’t say that he thought that the studies that get the numbers wildly wrong should be corrected. He didn’t argue that we should open every discussion board and blog on the internet to honest posting, as I often do. So he wasn’t being entirely honest. But he certainly wasn’t being entirely dishonest either. I think it would be fair to say that this is a case where we have to take the good with the bad.

How much honesty do you think we would see in other fields of human endeavors if we made the penalty for being honest as high as we make it in the investment advice field? Do you think that the tobacco companies ever would have come up with the idea on their own to put cancer warnings on their packages if they hadn’t been required to by people outside their industry that demanded it? I don’t. I think that, if we had left it entirely to the industry to police itself, the tobacco industry would still be running advertisements telling people that one of the benefits of smoking is that it leads to good health — it relaxes you, you know? All people that work in a field want to make money by doing that work. That’s just a reality of human life. Sometimes, we need to have an outsider put some pressure on us to do the right thing. I bet that a lot of people who work in the tobacco field are happy that they are required by law to warn people buying their product that it may give them cancer. Most people want to do the right thing. But when there are huge financial rewards for doing the wrong thing, most of us are capable of being compromised. We need to work as a society to create conditions where people at least feel comfortable being somewhat honest re the most important stuff despite the pressures to turn a quick buck that otherwise might cause them not to live up to the standards that they would prefer to live up to.

I think that people in this field are like people in most other fields. They would LIKE to be honest. But this is a money field. And, where there is money involved, there are going to be pressures to be dishonest. That’s just the way it is. We have published rules at every site protecting those of us who want to do honest work from the sorts of individuals who have posted in “defense” of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney, do we not? That’s an indication that we would like to see honesty. We all had to check the “I Agree” button re those rules, right? So we all at one time expressed a desire to permit honesty. Even Lindauer and Greaney at one time expressed that desire. We have laws making financial fraud a felony. Shiller was able to get his book published. Shiller was awarded a Nobel prize. I have had thousands of my fellow community members express a desire that I and all others be permitted to post honestly re these matters. There are lots and lots and lots of indicators that as a society we would like to see more honesty in evidence in discussions of safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics.

When you make the price of honesty high enough, you get less of it, Again, that’s just a reality. Wade should not have been placed in circumstances in which he would have to give up his livelihood as his price for being honest. Lindauer and Greaney and those who posted in “defense” of them should have been removed from our communities when they first went off the rails. And of course that should have been done for the benefit of Lindauer and Greaney as well as for the benefit of all the rest of us. If we had banned Lindauer and Greaney, they wouldn’t be looking ahead to prison terms today. Was it not an act of dishonesty for the site administrators to fail to remove them when they first were asked to do so? It sure seems to me that it was. They chose not to act honestly because there were a few dollars to be made by letting these popular posters continue to engage in their acts of intimidation. That certainly wasn’t honest. But the fact that we have rules at every board prohibiting their behavior shows that we at least as a people DESIRE honesty.

Bull markets are liar’s markets, you know? That’s what it all comes down to. That’s what Shiller really showed with his Nobel-prize-winning research. Stocks are today priced at two times their fair value. Is it not a lie to price stocks at two times their fair value? It sure seems so to me. The honest thing to do would be to price stocks at their proper value. Buy as a society we have elected to price them at two times fair value. Because there is a temporary benefit to be had by doing so. We all get to pretend that we are closer to retirement than we would be if we priced stocks properly. So we tell ourselves a lie that makes us happy for a time. That’s the entire story here.

If you want to look at the dark side, you could say that we are bigger liars than any group of investors who ever came before us because we have kept prices higher longer than than any earlier group of investors. We are the biggest liars that ever walked Planet Earth!

That’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is that we are the people (through Shiller) who discovered The Big Lie of stock investing, that whatever price we assign to stocks is the right price merely because we assigned it and we are a perfectly rational people incapable of telling lies to ourselves. We are the people who awarded Shiller a Nobel prize, are we not? So maybe we are not the worst liars who ever lived, we are the people who celebrated a man for exposing The Big Lie of stock investing and for helping us all to protect ourselves from its negative effects. Both things are true, you know? Humans are liars and humans often engage in efforts to stop lying. We have both pro-lying and anti-lying instincts within us. There has never been a group of humans who told no lies and there has never been a group of humans who did not make any efforts to restrain lies.

The claim that the safe withdrawal rate is always 4 percent is a lie, Anonymous. I am sure of that much. If you want to say that at one time it was more a mistake than a lie, I am fine with that. That’s what I think. But it is more than a mistake today. People who are making honest mistakes do not advance death threats and demands for unjustified board bannings and thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. I think that Greaney knew on some level of consciousness that there were problems with his study before I even advanced my famous post of the morning of May 13, 2002. That’s why he was so defensive. That’s why he immediately went into freak-out mode. And that’s why a lot of his friends did the same. And that’s why a lot of people who didn’t even think of themselves as friends of Greaney but merely as people who believed that Buy-and-Hold is a good strategy did the same. Lots of people sensed the lie at the root of all this before it was even exposed.

The good news is that as a society we are on our way to exposing the lie. I wish that the process had been completed a lot more quickly. But I guess that it takes whatever time it takes. After the next crash, we are all going to be feeling the pain brought on by our participation in this Big Lie in a very deep and intense way. Are we going to decide to give up the lie at that time? I think we are. And I will be happy to do whatever I can to help us come to terms with what we have done to ourselves by buying into this horrible Get Rich Quick lie that has over the years caused so much human misery. When we see lies told on our boards and blogs, we are seeing why stock prices are so high today. Do you get that? I am trying to tell the truth about stock investing and a lot of people are telling lies about me because they don’t want the truth about stock investing being told. They want those high prices to remain in place! They like thinking that they are closer to retirement than they really are!

It’s a circle. Tell the truth about safe withdrawal rates and people can plan their retirements more effectively. But do people even want that? If people really wanted that, they never would have priced stocks at two times fair value in the first place! People LIKE lies about stock investing, just as people once liked being told lies about how smoking is the key to good health because it relaxes you. A lot of lies survive for a long time because people like them. That’s the story here.

The smoking lie has been reined in a good bit over recent decades. I think that’s because of the research that was done showing that smoking causes cancer. The industry tried to stop the story of that research being told but they ultimately failed because there was just too much good to be done for too many people by the truth getting out. I think that’s what we are going to see in the investing advice field. The lie that the stock price is always right has survived for a long time. Shiller called it “one of the most remarkable errors in the history of economics.” It think it would be fair to refer to it as one of the most remarkable LIES in the history of economics. It’s a lie that we like to tell ourselves because it satisfies the Get Rich Quick urge that resides within us all. We believe this stuff because we like to believe this stuff. We are weak and imperfect humans.

But humans are not only weakness and imperfection. We are capable of engaging in research projects that expose the lies that we tell ourselves. We now have 37 years of research exposing the lie at the core of the Buy-and-Hold project. And I think that, when we see in flesh-and-blood terms what the Buy-and-Hold Lie has done to us all, we are going to begin taking that 37 years of peer-reviewed research seriously at all of our boards and blogs. We are as a society in the process of taking down The Great Buy-and-Hold Lie and we are today very, very close. We are one stock crash away, in my assessment.

I could be wrong. I would be lying to you if I told you otherwise, But that’s what all of the evidence that has appeared before me over the past 16 years tell me. The lie at the core of the Buy-and-Hold project (the lie that investors are purely rational and always price stocks properly) is well on its way to being exposed. But it survives today. And so everyone who works in this field feels pressure to pretend that he or she believes in it, at least to a small degree. Show no respect for The Big Lie and you threaten all of the powerful and wealthy and well-connected people who make a good living telling it to millions.

That’s my take, Anonymous All Get Rich Quick thinking is a lie. The Buy-and-Hold Lie is hurting us terribly. We are in the process of exposing it but we are not quite there yet. Until we get there, those who work in this field feel pressured to tell lies that they would prefer not to tell. Once they see The Big Lie is going down, things will change quickly. That will probably be in the days following the next price crash, when it will no longer be 37 years of peer-reviewed research telling us that Buy-and-Hold is a Big Lie but flesh-and-blood realities being reported in the newspaper every morning. Even Bogle will not be able to live with the results of The Big Lie when he sees them with his own eyes. And, when Bogle flips, everybody flips.

Not this boy, you know? I was once a Buy-and-Holder. I once told myself lies (we all do that, everyday) and so I didn’t know what I know today. I know today that I don’t want to be part of it. I am grateful for all the good that the Buy-and-Holders have done and I love them as people, But I cannot tell lies to my friends about the numbers that they are using to plan their retirements. That’s not me.

I believe that there will come a say when you will declare that it is not you either. But we will just have to wait to see how it all plays out to know for sure.

I naturally wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, in any event.

Liar Rob (I’d Be Telling Yet Another Lie If I Said Otherwise, No?)

“All of the People Who You Refer to Would LOVE to Give Their Honest Take on Every Question. Read Your Own Comments at This Blog If You Want to Know Why They Don’t Do It Today. You Point Out Over and Over That I Can Not Make a Living in This Field Because I Posted Honestly re the Safe Withdrawal Rate Issue. That’s Why Other People Don’t Do the Same. Stop Punishing Honest Work and You Will Get More of It.”

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

We are all to believe that MMM, Wade Pfau, Jack Bogle, William Bernstein, John Greaney, Michael Kitces and Scott Burns are all scared to tell the whole story. They are all part of a mass cover up. Only Rob Bennett has been the one to tell the whole truth.

All of the evidence is available to you, Anonymous.

Bill Bernstein said in a book published in 2002 that the 4 percent number was off by 2 percentage points when stocks were priced at their highs. But he didn’t say that the studies that said that the safe withdrawal rate is always 4 percent needed to be corrected. Huh?

Wade Pfau said that the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies are “dangerous.” But he hasn’t insisted that they be corrected either. Huh?

Jack Bogle endorsed Valuation-Informed Indexing in one interview. He said: “Big moves out of stocks should not be done at all. But strategic asset allocation can be done at very rare times, maybe six times in an investor’s lifetime, three times when the market is stupidly high and three times when stupidly low.” That’s what I say. But he only said it one time. Most of the time he says that timing doesn’t work and fails to distinguish short-term timing from long-term timing. Huh?

Greaney said that people should not overstate the safe withdrawal rate, that they should not give wrong numbers. But when he learned that the numbers in his own study are wildly off the mark, he didn’t correct them. Huh?

Kitces said that low valuations can bring the safe withdrawal rate up higher than 4 percent but that high valuations do not bring it down lower than 4 percent. Huh?

Burns wrote about my work on safe withdrawal rates in his column but failed to name me. He referred to those of us who believe that the safe withdrawal rate changes when valuations change as a “New School” but then criticized me for using that term. Huh?

Lots of people have told different bits of the truth. Much of what I have done is just to report what other people have discovered. The difference is that those other people flip back and forth from positions that make sense today to positions that no longer make sense now that Shiller has published his “revolutionary” (his word) research findings. I try to remain consistent. I don’t flip back and forth. That makes people who do flip back and forth look bad. So I am disappeared.

Shiller’s 1981 research findings did not bring on a small change in our understanding of how stock investing works. He discredited the foundation stone on which the entire Buy-and-Hold Model was built. So he changed everything. As a society we have not yet come to terms with what he did. We need to come to terms with it. We have to stop pretending that we can duck the hundreds of questions that his research brought to the table. We have to talk about where our knowledge of how stock investing works stands today. We need to engage in serious and honest and frank interactions re hundreds of questions that we once thought were settled but no longer are. This stuff is important. We need to get it right.

I don’t know it all. I don’t say that I do. My stuff is just the product of a person who believes that Shiller’s research is legitimate research and who explores every question that comes up with that belief in mind. I need to hear feedback from all the people you mention and from lots of other people so that I can do better work. And all those others need the same. We all need to stop pretending that we know it all and get about the business of trying to learn as much as we can as quickly as we can.

All of the people who you refer to would LOVE to give their honest take on every question. Read your own comments at this blog if you want to know why they don’t do it today. You point out over and over and over again that I can not make a living in this field because I posted honestly re the safe withdrawal rate issue. That’s why other people don’t do the same. Other people want to be able to make a living. Stop punishing honest work and you will get more of it. There’s no mystery re that particular aspect of the question. Stop punishing people who are trying to help you and more people will try to help you.

The difference between Buy-and-Hold and Valuation-Informed Indexing is that Fama says that stock price changes are caused by economic developments and Shiller says that they are caused by investor emotion. That makes all the difference in the world. Stock prices went up by 126 percent from 1996 through 1999. If Fama was right, that huge jump was amazingly good news. If it was economic developments that caused that huge price jump, our economy must have been going gangbusters at that time and that is obviously a good thing. If Shiller is right that only a small portion of those gains came from economic growth and the vast majority just came from a temporary emotional flight of fancy, then we hurt ourselves very seriously in those years. We told people that those gains were real and they made plans for the future based on their belief that that was so when it was not. People cannot engage in effective financial planning if they have no idea how much they have in savings.

Shiller changed the world. And the world has not yet caught up. That’s the story here. I was still a Buy-and-Holder on the morning of May 13, 2002. All that I was concerned about at that time was the safe withdrawal rate. But when I saw the insanely emotional reaction to my safe withdrawal rate post, I knew that Shiller was right. So I stopped writing about Buy-and-Hold and from that point forward I wrote only things rooted in a belief that valuations affect long-term returns. Since I have been doing that for 16 years now, I have explored things that no one else had explored. It’s not that I am smarter. It’s that I have been doing it longer.

We did not know everything that there is to know about how stock investing works in 1981. Part of the scientific process is learning new things and then correcting your old understandings as new information comes in. That learning process was cut off. I think it is because this is so important an issue that the people who unintentionally got things wrong couldn’t bear to acknowledge it even to themselves. The conditions were perfect for cognitive dissonance. But they are aware on some level of consciousness that Shiller’s work is saying something important and new and so they have become insanely defensive about these matters. So the learning process that should have been going on for 37 years has been proceeding very slowly.

We all want the same things, Anonymous. We all want to know the truth about how stock investing works.

We know how to handle things. We need to handle things in the investing advice realm in the same manner as we handle things in every other field of human endeavor. We need to let people say what they believe and not punish them if they say something new. New can be good. We should be skeptical of new ideas to be sure. Skepticism is good. But we should not go to the point of threatening to kill people just because they advance new ideas that are rooted in peer-reviewed research that was awarded a Nobel prize. Those ideas have enough behind them that we should permit discussion of them.

As the new ideas are discussed, they will come to seem less strange. We will over time come to accept the new paradigm. Some of the new ideas will probably be rejected. That’s of course fine. But some of them will also probably be accepted. That’s also of course fine. We will only be able to separate the good stuff from the bad stuff once we permit honest posting by every single person willing to contribute in a positive way to our discussions, Buy-and-Holders and Valuation-Informed Indexers alike.

That’s my sincere take, in any event.

My best wishes.

Whole Truth (I Hope!) Rob

“Greaney’s Study Was a CONSERVATIVE Study in the Eyes of Most Stock Investors of the Time. He Was Not Telling People That the Safe Withdrawal Rate Was Higher Than Other People Were Saying, He Was Telling People That It Was LOWER.”

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

Hey Rob, I saw a pretty good segment on PBS about early retirement. Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyF40JydVNU&feature=youtu.be

I’m not sure what your motive is in putting the link here. The Retire Early movement is of course dear to my heart. Seeing this stuff discussed in mainstream places (I saw articles on Mr. Money Mustache in the New York Times and in the New Yorker not too long ago) brings to mind those exciting days at the Motley Fool board where there were fewer people who knew about this stuff. It’s very exciting stuff. You certainly won’t hear different from me.

We need to be honest about it. You can’t get away from that, Sensible. There’s no way. If you are not honest, you are not helping people, you are hurting them. If you are dishonest, you will ultimately make the entire Retire Early movement look bad. The whole thing falls apart if it is rooted in dishonesty.

I was kinda, sorta dishonest for a long time — three years. I loved helping people on the saving side and people loved me in turn because all of this Retire Early stuff is very exciting and I was helping them with that. I never talked about investing in those days. Greaney would push his safe withdrawal rate study every day and people loved it and I would keep my mouth shut about the errors that I knew were in it. I was a snake, no? That’s pretty darn low behavior. I am making friends with these people and encouraging them to hand in resignations from high-paying jobs long before they were in circumstances that would permit them to do so safely and I didn’t say anything. Huh? What the f?

I had to rationalize my behavior, of course. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I didn’t do that. That rationalization that I came up with was a pretty darn good one. Before Greaney’s study came along, lots of people were using the 7 percent withdrawal rate that was recommended by Peter Lynch. Greaney’s study was a CONSERVATIVE study in the eyes of most stock investors of the time. He was not telling people that the safe withdrawal rate was higher than other people were saying, he was telling people that it was LOWER. That’s a fact. I don’t think that Greaney would deny that one. The true safe withdrawal rate was somewhere between 2 percent and 3 percent during most of this time-period. So the number in Greaney’s study was a lot closer to reality than most other information sources available to people at the time. I told myself that the net effect of the study was a positive. I persuaded myself that it was okay to keep my mouth shut.

Was I right? Today, I don’t think so. It is a betrayal of the Retire Early movement to know that the numbers that people are using to plan their retirements are wrong and to not say anything about it. Mr. Money Mustache is a leader of the movement today. I had dinner with him at one of the Financial Blogger Conferences and we talked about all this stuff. He doesn’t disagree with me re safe withdrawal rates. His response to all that I told him was to say something along the lines of “no good deed goes unpunished” (that’s a paraphrase, I don’t have certain recall of the precise words he used).

If Mr. Money Mustache thought that he could get away with telling people the truth about safe withdrawal rates, he would do it. He’s like Wade Pfau and Bill Bernstein and Scott Burns and Michael Kitces and Jack Bogle and lots and lots and lots of others. He knows that as a general rule it is better to be honest when talking about financial matters. But he also knows that telling the truth about what the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research teaches us about stock investing is very, very, very dicey stuff at a time when prices are where they are today. So he keeps his mouth shut for now.

How about after the next crash? There are going to be lots of early retirees facing very dire financial futures in the days after the next price crash. Will that mean that the idea of early retirement was always fantasy stuff, as its critics have always maintained? It won’t mean that, in my view. It will just mean that we should have permitted honest posting at all of our boards. Turning our boards into corrupt enterprises was a mistake. If you are going to permit discussion of safe withdrawal rates, you should permit HONEST discussion of safe withdrawal rates. Otherwise, the entire thing becomes a scam.

The Retire Early movement is a scam today. Not by intention. But I am 100 percent confident that, after large numners of the people who have retired early in recent years suffer failed retirements because of the lies that they were told re safe withdrawal rates, there will be many people saying that the entire movement was a scam from the first day. And most people who hear about it and don’t bother to study the matter in depth will be inclined to agree with them. If it weren’t a scam, you wouldn’t have seen the death threats and the threats of career destruction and all the rest.

I believe in the Retire Early movement. I would like to see everyone alive exposed to the ideas that drive the movement. Financial freedom is a wonderful thing. It is great to live at a time when the prospect of financial freedom is available to most middle-class people. It’s an amazing movement and it thrills me that more people are discovering it.

But I very much think that it has to be rooted in honesty. I think that we are hurting people in very, very, very serious ways with the dishonest, fraudulent side of the project. I don’t think there’s a place for that. If we were all thinking clearly about these matters, I think we would have universal agreement re that one. I think that one of the reasons why we see such violent reactions from the Buy-and-Holders when we try to talk about the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research is that they appreciate themselves how important is it to be honest when calculating the numbers used to plan a retirement.

I went crazy on the day when I discovered Greaney’s web site. It was one of the best days of my life. i had been hoping to find such a resource for a long time. One of the things that excited me about it was that he put a lot of focus on the calculation of the safe withdrawal rate. I think he did that because he knew how important it was to be rational rather than emotional when planning an early retirement. Greaney and I have a lot more common ground than most people (including Greaney himself, to be sure) realize.

Those are my thoughts, Sensible. I couldn’t love the movement more. If I were to agree to post dishonestly re safe withdrawal rates, that would ruin it for me. I would feel that I was destroying people’s lives rather than helping them. That changes it, you know? That changes things in a fundamental way. I wish everybody in the movement the best of luck. I hope they make it through. But for me to put up posts, I would need to be permitted to do so honestly. I think that has to be a bottom-line condition. Again, I think that every single person in the movement would agree with that if he or she were capable of thinking clearly re these matters. The Get Rich Quick impulse messes with our brains. The Get Rich Quick impulse is the enemy of Retire Early dreams, in my assessment.

My best wishes to you, in any event.

Retire Early Advocate (From Way, Way Back!) Rob

I’ll add one more thought. I don’t recall Greaney criticizing Lynch for getting the numbers wrong. It may be that he did so, I just don’t recall it. But I do remember him criticizing community members who tried to argue for withdrawal rates a lot higher than 4 percent. I remember that happening on several occasions. So I think it would be fair to say that there is at least a piece of Greaney’s brain that accepts the idea that prudence is called for when putting together a Retire Early plan. He warned people of the dangers when OTHERS got the numbers wrong, he just wasn’t able to turn that critical eye to his own study. His pride of authorship blinded him to the human misery he was causing by relentlessly pushing numbers that are wildly off the mark according to the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research in this field.

So Greaney is not all bad. He is a mix of good and bad, like most of us, His focus on safe withdrawal rates was right on and his methodology was a big improvement over the one used by Peter Lynch just a few years before. But his Campaign of Terror against the thousands of us who expressed a desire to post honestly re these matters was truly bad stuff. I don’t think that anyone has ever done more long-term harm to the Retire Early movement than John Greaney. We all played a role in what happened because we all tolerated his behavior to some degree or another (that includes me). But I think it would be fair to say that there is no human being who ever walked Planet Earth who caused even a tiny fraction of the number of failed retirements as did our friend John Greaney. And I think that that’s a very, very, very sad reality that we all need to come to terms with, I am ashamed of the role that I played in making that reality a reality. If I had it to do over, I would have begun posting honestly on the first day.

Brings back memories!

Ashamed (But Committed to Doing Better in the Future) Rob

 

“The Errors in the Buy-and-Hold Model Are Very, Very, Very Simple and Obvious Ones. We Suffer From Cognitive Dissonance re These Errors Because the Errors Are So Simple and Obvious That We Assume That We Must Be Wrong to Even Think That They Are Errors; If They Were, Surely These Hot Shot Experts Would Have Discovered Them a Long Time Ago.”

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

“I put up a post pointing out the error in Greanry’s retirement study on the morning of May 13, 2002. The study has not been corrected as of today. Today’s date is November 1, 2018.

You say that my points have been addressed. But the study has not been corrected. Does that reality not tell a tale? People used that study to plan retirements.”

Noted expert, Wade Pfau, has already explained how you were wrong. To this day, you have not apologized. This is long over due.

I deleted this one when it appeared last night on grounds that it is a time-waster and an insult to the intelligence of my readers, However, after sleeping on it, I have had second thoughts and restored it on grounds that it gives me an opportunity to fit in the rant posted below.

The reference here is to something that Wade said when he was threatened by you Goons and flipped to the dark side so that his career would not be destroyed. Wade told me on numerous occasions (the texts of his e-mail appear at this blog under the “Wade Pfau” category) that he agrees with me on the subject of safe withdrawal rates. He has referred to the (uncorrected to this day) Buy-and-Hold retirement studies as “dangerous.” That says it.

When Wade was trying to come up with some explanation for his flip, I believe that he had Greaney help him with the wording because the explanation that he put forward was too lame for his own brain to have come up with. It was something that Greaney has said on earlier occasions. So I am pretty darn sure that that is where it came from.

The explanation offered was that Wade went back to the thread where my famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002, appeared and saw that Greaney had a post on it in which he said something to the effect of: “If you don’t think that 4 percent is safe, just take a lower withdrawal rate.” Wade said that those words solved the entire problem. That is of course not so.

The point of friction is: Are people who believe that the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research in this field is legitimate research permitted to post their honest views at every discussion board and blog on the internet? I say that they are. Greaney says that they are not (they may believe that the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies are in error but they may not let their fellow community members know what they believe and why). At the time he was flipping, Wade pretended to believe what Greaney believes.

The research showing that the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies are in error (that it is not possible to calculate the safe withdrawal rate accurately without taking the effect of valuations into consideration since valuations affect long-term returns) was published in 1981. About 10 percent of the population today appreciates the problems with the Buy-and-Hold strategy. All of us who believe that the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research is in error should want to get that percentage up. I certainly do. It doesn’t help get that percentage up for me to use a different withdrawal rate than the one recommended by Greaney in my own retirement plan and to fail to tell my fellow community members that I am doing that and why I am doing that.

The question that people should be asking themselves re this entire matter is — Why the heck did it take 21 years for someone to see that it is not possible to calculate the safe withdrawal rate without taking valuations into consideration? It’s OBVIOUSLY not possible to do that. In a sensible world, my post of May 13, 2002, would have been greeted with a yawn, not a nuclear explosion. What’s that all about?

We are all under a spell, I wrote that in a post from yesterday afternoon. We are all under a spell. The name given to that spell in the psychology literature is “cognitive dissonance.” We suffer from cognitive dissonance because we don’t question the Buy-and-Hold stuff, we don’t point out that the emperor is wearing no clothes, we don’t take note of the parts that make no sense and ask the “experts” pushing this strategy on us to please explain. The errors in the Buy-and-Hold Model are very, very, very simple and obvious ones. We suffer from cognitive dissonance re these errors because the errors are so simple and obvious that we assume that we must be wrong to even think that they are errors; if they were, surely these hot shot experts would have discovered them a long time ago.

The errors are real. It is not possible for any market to function without the exercise of price discipline and there has never been any reason to believe that the stock market is different than every other market in this regard. It is ESSENTIAL that investors exercise price discipline when buying stocks. Shiller has described the intellectual leap from the finding that short-term price changes are unpredictable to the Buy-and-Hold belief that the market sets prices properly as “one of the most remarkable errors in the history of economics.” That’s it. That’s the story of our 16-year saga. The entire Buy-and-Hold thing has just been one long mistake going back to the first day. Our problem is that the mistake has been covered up for so long that the Buy-and-Holders cannot today bear to acknowledge that the whole thing has been a big mistake and so they become violently abusive when someone points out the mistake.

I cannot solve that problem by taking note of the error in Greaney’s study, using a different withdrawal rate in my own planning and then then not saying anything to my fellow community members taken in by Greaney’s false claims. If I want to help my fellow community members (which is what we all should be trying to do when we post on a discussion board), I need to point out the freakin’ mistake to them. That’s the thing that Greaney doesn’t like. That’s the thing that he wants to block. That’s the thing that causes him to advance death threats and demands for unjustified board bannings and thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs. That’s the story here. Are we going to let the mistake destroy even more lives? Or are we going to speak up and incur Greaney’s wrath?

I say that we need to speak up. I want to see every investment discussion board and blog on the internet opened to honest posting on the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. I don’t want there to be a single exception. If we were to permit a single exception, that would hurt us all, So why do it? Why not just permit honest posting? Let the Buy-and-Holders say what they believe, let the Valuation-Informed Indexers say what they believe and let all the people listening in decide after hearing both sides how they are going to play it.

If people CHOOSE to use the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies after hearing both sides, that’s on them. I obviously think they would be making a mistake to do that. But it’s their money and so it’s their call. Perhaps I am the one who is wrong. I am not going to tell anyone else what to do with his or her money. But if people choose to follow the Buy-and-Hold numbers only because the Buy-and-Holders blocked their ability to hear about the errors in the Buy-and-Hold studies, that’s fraud. Boards that do not permit both sides to be heard are corrupt enterprises. People who block posting about Valuation-Informed Indexing can be held liable in civil lawsuits after they cause investors to suffer financial losses in the next price crash. In extreme cases, they could be prosecuted criminally for engaging in acts of financial fraud. Not this boy, you know? No way, no how.

That’s the rant. That’s the rant that I have been advancing for 16 years now. I love my Buy-and-Hold friends. I love my Wall Street Con Man friends. I even love my freakin’ Goon friends. But I don’t love failed retirements. I don’t love financial fraud. I don’t love civil lawsuits, I sure don’t love criminal prosecutions. So I speak up in OPPOSITION to that sort of stuff. Over and over and over and over and over.

I would be joined by every single person alive in the United States today if only Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research showing that valuations affect long-term returns had only been published last week. We’re all in the same boat. We all want to invest effectively. We all want to avoid failed retirements. The problem that we face is that 37-year cover-up. Those who participated in that cover-up are embarrassed about it and don’t want people to find out. So they engage in all sorts of crazy behavior to block Valuation-Informed Indexers from speaking honestly about what the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research in this field teaches us. And so far their efforts have “succeeded” in making life worse for each and every one of us, including themselves to be sure.

I say “no” to all that. I say that the same ethical standards that apply in every other field of human endeavor should apply in the investment advice field as well. I say that, if the only way that you can think of to “defend” Buy-and-Hold is to engage in criminally abusive behavior, you should be looking for a new investing strategy to defend. If you can defend Buy-and-Hold WITHOUT engaging in criminally abusive behavior, by all means have at it. Millions of good and smart people believe in Buy-and-Hold with their hearts and minds and souls. When they make their case in a civil and reasonable way, they help all of us to come to a better understanding of these matters. So that stuff is pure gold and we should all welcome it. But we should all adopt a zero tolerance policy towards the sorts of stuff that we have seen advanced by those posting in support of Mel Lindauer and John Greaney.

No death threats. Death threats have no place in investing discussions. No demands for unjustified board bannings. Unjustified board bannings have no place in investing discussions. No thousands of acts of defamation. Thousands of acts of defamation have no place in investing discussions. No threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs, Threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs have no place in investing discussions. My sincere take. No apologies whatsoever.

Rant completed (for now — but sure to be extended in coming days).

Best wishes, etc., etc.

Rob the Friendly Ranter

“I Think It Would Be Fair to Say That We All Are Living Under a Sort of Spell. The Name Given to This Sort of Spell in the Psychology Literature Is “Cognitive Dissonance.”

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

Do you see?

How often does a person who smokes three packs of cigarettes a day need to hear the message that smoking causes cancer? Until he freakin’ gets it. ”

This is advice you need to take. Every one of your points have been addressed hundreds of times and you choose to twist it around, lie about it or ignore it. Repeating your lines has not helped and continuing to do so, will similarly fail. HOW OFTEN DO YOU NEED TO HEAR THIS UNTIL YOU FINALLY GET IT.

I put up a post pointing out the error in Greanry’s retirement study on the morning of May 13, 2002. The study has not been corrected as of today. Today’s date is November 1, 2018.

You say that my points have been addressed. But the study has not been corrected. Does that reality not tell a tale? People used that study to plan retirements.

I think it would be fair to say that we all are living under a sort of spell. The name given to this sort of spell in the psychology literature is “cognitive dissonance.” If Greaney were thinking clearly, he would have corrected the study a long time ago. If Bogle were thinking clearly, he would have insisted that Greaney correct the study a long time ago. Getting the numbers wrong in a study that people use to plan their retirements is a big deal

I love Jack Bogle, I would like to be working with him. It pains me that some see us as being on “different sides.” I think it would be fair to say that Bogle himself feels this way given that he did not respond to my three e-mails to him. That shouldn’t be. And of course I love John Greaney too. I would like to be working with him too. It pains me that he sees us as being on “different sides.” And the same is true re hundreds of others.

You say that my points have been addressed. But the study has not been corrected. The last time I checked, people were still recommending use of it to plan retirements. The points have not been addressed. The actions that need to be taken have not been taken.

I suppose that you could say that a majority at the various boards has made a decision that there is no need to do anything about the studies. I think that would be fair to say. But those of us (and it is not just me, it is a minority but it is not just me) who believe that the study is in error have both a right and responsibility to point out the problems in it to people who will be inclined to make use of it to plan a retirement if we fail to do so. If those people elect to make use of the study despite what we say, that’s on them. But if we don’t at least make an effort to inform them so that they can make an intelligent choice, that’s on us.

How will this situation ever change if none of us insist on our right to post honestly? It’s been 37 years since Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) research. Are we going to wait to see how it feels to live through a Second Great Depression before we speak up? I can’t go for that. It’s too much human suffering. I couldn’t live with myself if I saw millions of retirement failures coming into play and did nothing to help. If you knew about the 911 attacks before they happened, would you feel comfortable saying “oh, it’s not my problem, too bad for all those people who will get killed.” I would like to think that, if I knew about the 911 attacks before they happened, I would have tried to do something to prevent the huge amount of human suffering before it took place. That’s how I feel about this other matter.

I know that you don’t want me to say anything. I get that much. I know that you have powerful people on your side. I get that too. And I know that the majority sides with you. But I feel that as a nation we have to come to terms with this problem. We have created a mess and we need to fix it. And there is no way to fix it other than for more of us to work up the courage to speak up.

You don’t get to decide for everyone. You get to decide for you, that’s all. If 10 percent of a community wants to hear about Shiller’s findings, that’s good enough for me. In time, I am confident that the 10 percent will become 20 percent and then in some more time 40 percent. That’s how our country works. Someone comes up with a new idea and then over time it grows and grows and grows. You are going against the fundamental beliefs of our country when you try to kill this idea in the crib. And I just don’t feel even a tiny bit comfortable going along with that given how much human suffering we are talking about here.

The advances have been amazing. Yes, you have had the power to stop them from helping as many people as they should be helping. But the advances have been flat-out amazing. I want to share those advances with millions of people. Each person gets to decide for himself or herself whether he will tap into the benefits of the new ideas. But if there are millions who decide that they want to do so, I want to be there for them. We have already seen thousands express an interest and that was under very difficult conditions. So I think it is entirely possible that we could bring it up to millions in time. We will have to see how it all plays out.

I believe that, when we get to the other side, you will thank me, Anonymous. Did you ever have that happen? You don’t want to see a particular movie and someone else does and you end up being dragged into it and then you love the darn thing. I think that is what will eventually happen here. You will come around in time. You’ll need to stop fighting it so hard for that to happen. But I believe it will happen eventually, If not prior to the crash, then afterwards.

Can you please say what you see as the downside to opening every site on the internet to honest posting re the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research? I don’t see any. I cannot even imagine any possibilities. How many times do you need to hear that to get that, you know?

I believe in letting all sides talk. I don’t believe in abusive stuff. But I believe in letting all sides who come to the table with non-abusive stuff to talk. You can say that people have rejected that idea in this particular case. But we still have published rules at all the sites that show respect for that idea. And we still have laws that respect that idea. That idea is who we are as a people. This other thing is a mistake that we have made in this particular field of human endeavor. And we need to be working together to overcome that mistake before it does us more harm.

That’s my sincere take, Anonymous. I have heard all of your responses and I have also heard the responses of the thousands who have said they love the idea of learning more about Valuation-Informed Indexing if only it could be done in a peaceful environment. I care about those people. I want to give those people what they want and I don’t think that you have a right under the published rules of the sites or under the laws of the United States to stand in the way, You can decide for you and then you need to let others decide for others.

That’s where I am coming from. I hope that helps a tiny bit.

Slow on the Uptake(When His Country’s Values Are in Question) Rob

“Thinking That It Will Go Away Is Like Thinking That Reminders of the Dangers of Smoking Are Going to Go Away or That Admonitions Against Cheating on Your Spouse Are Going to Go Away or That Recommendations Not to Drink and Drive Are Going to Go Away. These Are Basics of the Human Condition, As Is the Inclination That All Investors Feel Toward Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick Investing Strategies.”

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

I am not sure how you think you are providing new aspects. Everything you write, you have already repeated hundreds or thousands of times. People have already responded to your points long ago and over time have just grown tired of what you have to say. Look at how you continue to even repeat your nonsense of a post from 2002. That is SIXTEEN YEARS AGO.

Shiller published his research showing that valuations affect long-term returns in 2002. Every word that I have written over the past 16 years is just an expansion on those words. So are more words from me needed?

They are needed.

Take a look at Greaney’s site, Anonymous. He has not yet corrected the error in his retirement study that I pointed out on the morning of May 13, 2002. His death threats were not really a “response” to my post. They were an attempt at intimidation. The proper response would be to correct the darn study.

So, no, the message has not gotten through. So, yes, the point must be made again. And I of course am not just talking about Greaney. There are people who have authored similar studies. And there are people who have recommended Greaney’s study and similar studies. All of those people need to hear the message again and again. Until they get it. And respond appropriately.

Do you see?

How often does a person who smokes three packs of cigarettes a day need to hear the message that smoking causes cancer? Until he freakin’ gets it. It’s an important issue. It’s life or death. As is the matter of whether the market is efficient or valuations affect long-term returns. There will never come a day when we will have heard that message as often as we need to hear it. Say that a day came when there is 100 percent agreement that valuations affect long-term returns and that we must all practice long-term timing when buying stocks. Would the message no longer be needed? By no means! If we stopped repeating the message, we would just eventually fall back into our habit of following Get Rich Quick/Buy-and-Hold strategies. We all have that Get Rich Quick urge within us that has been making stock investing risky since the first market opened for business. We need to be ever vigilant lest it rise up again within us and destroy our retirement hopes once again as it has done so many times before. This powerful new understanding of how stock investing really works will never be old news.

Now —

If someone has been told that smoking causes cancer and has chosen to ignore the message, do I think that it would be a good idea to keep insisting that he listen to it? No. That’s obviously crazy. Similarly, I don’t see it as my job (or anyone else’s job) to convert all the Buy-and-Holders to Valuation-Informed Indexing. I see it as my job to invite them to follow a strategy that I view as far superior. But each person gets to decide which strategy he is going to follow. I am not going to pester someone who has rejected Valuation-Informed Indexing with repeated appeals that he reconsider. That would obviously be annoying and non-productive and inappropriate.

But we have to open every board and blog on the internet so that those who ARE interested in hearing the new message have a place to access it and ask questions about it and so on. That’s the key. Once all sites are open to honest posting re the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research, there’s no problem. Those who prefer Buy-and-Hold do their thing and those who prefer Valuation-Informed Indexing do their thing. That’s how we do it in this country re every subject other than stock investing and that’s how we need to do it re stock investing as well.

I think we do it different with stock investing because the new message comes as such a shock to our Buy-and-Hold friends. Most of us care a great deal about our life savings. The Buy-and-Holders are telling us that the full amount listed on our portfolio statement is real. The Valuation-Informed Indexers are saying that we need to divide that amount by two to know the true and lasting value of our portfolio when stocks are priced as they are today. That’s a darn alarming message to those who truly came to believe that Buy-and-Hold is the answer. It’s scary stuff. So a good number of our Buy-and-Hold friends have come to react in crazy ways.

We need to normalize our discussions. Had we all started talking about what Shiller showed back in 1981, when he showed it, my famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002, would not have come as a shock to anybody. What I was saying was so obvious. We know that valuations affect long-term returns. So we need to consider valuations when calculating the safe withdrawal rate. What a shocker!

But it was a shocker, wasn’t it? Why? Because we had not been talking about Shiller’s breakthrough research findings from 1981 through 2002. When I brought them up, the Buy-and-Holders among us went nuts. Shiller’s work was too strong for them to reject it. But they couldn’t imagine accepting that the safe withdrawal rate is not a constant but a variable. So we got this nutso stuff.

We need to move beyond the nutso stuff. When we move beyond it, I don’t think that everyone is going to become a Valuation-Informed Indexer. I think that lots of people will. But lots will remain Buy-and-Holders because that is what they will prefer, for whatever reason. And lots of others (probably the largest number) will choose some path between those two (that’s what lots of investors do today — after we open the internet to honest posting, they will still do that but in a better-informed way).

The idea that giving in to the Get Rich Quick impulse is a bad idea is going to be with us until the end of time. That’s the Valuation-Informed Indexing message. That’s Shiller’s breakthrough. That’s the whole story in a nutshell. We will never say it enough times because the Get Rich Quick urge is never going to go away and we are always going to need to be combating it. Thinking that it will go away is like thinking that reminders of the dangers of smoking are going to go away or that admonitions against cheating on your spouse are going to go away or that recommendations not to drink and drive are going to go away. These are basics of the human condition, as is the inclination that all investors feel toward Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick investing strategies.

The difference is that every reasonable person acknowledges today that it is bad to drink and drive while millions of good and smart people still view Buy-and-Hold as the perfect strategy. So we experience clashes when some fellow comes along and points out that the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies lack adjustments for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. We need to figure out as a society how to live together in peace in a way that permits us all to have access to the important realities discovered by Shiller’s research while not upsetting our Buy-and-Hold friends unduly. That’s the project facing us today. That’s the thing we need to work through together to get this process moving forward and to a better place.

The basic message will be repeated until the end of time. Why? because those darn humans have a tendency to forget the basics. If you want them to learn how to invest effectively, you need to remind them of the basics over and over and over again. Shiller’s finding that valuations affect long-term returns is the most important basic of all. We obviously have as a society lost site of it in recent years. If we hadn’t, we never could have gone to the valuation levels that apply today. But even after valuations drop to fair-value levels, we are going to need to be reminded of that important reality regularly or we will just forget it and start going through that darn boom/bust cycle all over again.

Make sense?

Repetitive (and Proud of It!) Rob

“I Think That, If We Regularly Engaged in Interactions in Which We Disagreed in a Respectful Way, We Would Over Time Come to Kid Around With Each Other and Become Good Friends Despite Our Differences on the Substantive Questions. I Think That Would Be Just Great. It Would Make Me Very Happy to See Things Play Out That Way.”

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

How about Mel Lindauer? Should he be featured?

He adds a lot to the discussion. So I would certainly be happy if we could all enjoy the positives that he brings to the table. But, as you know, he has not been willing to follow the published posting rules of the site. That’s a problem. That hurts us all. That has to be addressed. If that were addressed, then I would 100 percent support the idea of featuring Mel.

And you know what? My strong hunch is that Mel and I would become good friends over time. I don’t think that we would come to agree on all investing questions. But I think that, if we regularly engaged in interactions in which we disagreed in a respectful way, we would over time come to kid around with each other and become good friends despite our differences on the substantive questions. I think that would be just great. It would make me very happy to see things play out that way. I think it would be inspiring to all our fellow community members to see it play out that way. That’s how it should be, in my assessment.

Future Lindauer Pal Rob

“I Have Devoted Lots of Energies to Getting People Who Work in the Investing Realm Interested in This Story Without a Lot of Luck (the Attached Article Explains Why). So I Am Currently Sending the Article to People Who Might Not Be Obvious Candidates But Who At Least Might Be Less Poisoned By the Bias That Blocks the Obvious Candidates From Appreciating the Importance of the Story.”

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Set forth below is the text of the e-mail that I sent to Michael Flaherty when I sent him a copy of my article “Buy-and-Hold Is Dangerous”:

Michael:

My name is Rob Bennett. I read your article on “Fake News Turns 80” at the National Review site this morning. I knew about the War of the Worlds incident and even that it was hyped a bit but I was not aware that the motive for the hype was that newspapers felt threatened by the growing popularity of radio. Thanks for adding that information bit to my understanding of how the world around me operates.
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I have no reason to believe that you have a particular interest in the dangers of the Buy-and-Hold investment strategy, the news theme that has been the focus of my work efforts for the past 16 years. But “fake news” is a big part of the story and, since you have addressed that one from one angle, you never know. I have devoted lots of energies to getting people who work in the investing realm interested in this story without a lot of luck (the attached article explains why). So I am currently sending the article to people who might not be obvious candidates but who at least might be less poisoned by the bias that blocks the obvious candidates from appreciating the importance of the story.
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If it pulls you in, super. Please let me know if you have any questions or thoughts as to how I might proceed to get more people to pay attention. If not, I of course get it. We all have big piles of purportedly essential reading material on our nightstand.
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Please take good care.
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Rob