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

Are you the only one posting honestly?

I’m certainly not the only one who includes ANY honesty in his posts. But I think it would be fair to say that I have shown more of an unwillingness to post DIShonestly than anyone else working in this field.

Take Bill Bernstein. He said back in May of 2002 that you need to subtract two points from the safe withdrawal rate of 4 percent reported in the Buy-and-Hold studies for the effect of valuations when they are where they were at the top of the bubble. Subtract 2 from 4 and you get 2 — and that is indeed what the safe withdrawal rate was at that time. So Bernstein was engaging in a heroic level of honesty. Good for him.

But when he saw the controversy over my honest posting raging at the Bogleheads Forum, did he step forward and say anything? He did not. There were times when there was insanely abusive posting going on and he was in the room (we know because he posted on other topics) and yet he kept his mouth shut about the errors in the Buy-and-Hold studies. Huh? What the f?

There are millions of people who will be suffering failed retirements in days to come because of the 16-year cover-up of the errors in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies (I am assuming here that stocks may continue to perform in the future at least somewhat as they always have in the past). Bernstein has been heroically honest. He has also helped the cover-up continue by failing to speak up when it was his responsibility to do so.

I have not been 100 percent honest. I kept my mouth shut from May 1999 through May 2002 re the errors in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies. So I am 100 percent sympathetic to Bernstein’s situation (and, indeed, the situation of every person who works in this field today). But I certainly think it would be fair to say that I have gone farther than anyone else in publicly urging that we all pull together and bring a full and complete stop to the Campaign of Terror against our board and blog communities. I’ve got the scars all over my body to prove it! I mean, come on.

I am not the only one posting honestly. But as I have seen the damage that we all have suffered as a result of the dishonestly, I think it would be fair to say that I have been more open and strong in my calls for opening the entire internet to honest posting re the last 37 years of peer-reviewed research in this field than anyone else around. And it’s not a particularly close call!

Fair enough?

Rob

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 want to get along with others. We want to have friends. We want to be popular. We want to see people praising us and linking to us.”

Among the vast number of things that aren’t helping your cause, your smug, condescending attitude ranks right up there. You constantly present yourself as the one wise, rational, sensible person in a world where all the rest of us are frightened little rabbits.

But whatever helps you get through the day.

I don’t doubt that there are many people who feel that way, Anonymous. It is not my intent to make people feel that way.

I believe that we all have inclinations that make us frightened little rabbits. I played the role of frightened little rabbit myself for three years. I knew in May 1999 that Greaney got the number wrong in his study. I had studied safe withdrawal rates on my own before I ever visited his site. So the first thing that I looked for was the valuation adjustment. There was none there. For three years, I kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t until the morning of May 13, 2002, that I worked up the courage to ask my fellow community members: “Do you think we should be considering valuations when we calculate the safe withdrawal rate?” So it would be fair to refer to me as Frightened Little Rabbit #1, right?

Shiller is a frightened little rabbit, no? We discussed just yesterday how back in 1996 he was saying things very much in tune with what I say today and then his prediction didn’t work out and he became a frightened little rabbit and now he just tries to keep it zipped re the controversial stuff. This is the guy that I describe as the most important investing analyst ever to walk Planet Earth. And he’s a frightened little rabbit in the extreme! If Shiller would stop being such a frightened little rabbit, things would go a lot easier for me, no? I have to acknowledge that that is what he is if I am going to make any sense of what has gone down over the past 16 years.

We are all frightened little rabbits. That’s a core reality of stock investing. And we all possess a powerful Get Rich Quick urge within us. That’s a second core reality. It is these two core realities that make stocks a risky asset class. Wade Pfau and I showed in the peer-reviewed research that we co-authored that we can all reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent just by not being frightened little rabbits and by working to rein in that Get Rich Quick urge a bit. Pretty darn exciting stuff, right? But how many of the millions of middle-class investors living in the United States today and seeking to put together effective retirement plans even know about the amazing Bennett/Pfau research? It’s a small number. Because the editors of the New York Times are frightened little rabbits. Wade would love to be awarded the Nobel prize he very much deserves for the work he did with me on that study. But he sees that most of us are frightened little rabbits and he worries that that might be so of the editors of the New York Times too and so he keeps his mouth shut for the time-being.

I don’t say that we are all frightened little rabbits because I want to hurt the feelings of my Buy-and-Hold friends, Anonymous. I say it because there is now 37 years of peer-reviewed research showing that this is what they need to hear to make sense of stock investing and to invest effectively for the long run. None of this is personal. I want people to be able to invest more effectively so that they can retire earlier. There’s no way to do that without pointing out that all the humans possess a Get Rich Quick urge and have an inclination to be frightened little rabbits at times. I don’t do it to hurt their feelings. I do it because I believe that it is something they need to know.

I 100 percent respect the right of any who don’t want to hear my message to just tune it out. But I know from long experience that there is a large number who very, very, very much want to hear the message and I believe strongly that they have every right to hear it. If you would just tune it out when it bothers you, all our troubles would go away. You would get what you wanted (freedom from having to hear how you can sometimes be a frightened little rabbit) and those who want to hear the message would get what they want. That’s the answer.

I do believe that you can be a frightened little rabbit at times. I get that it hurts for you to hear that. I believe it all the same. I don’t say that I am any different. I say that I have been a frightened little rabbit at times too. I say that every human has that inclination. I mean no offence. But if you take offence, I think the best thing for you to do would be just to tune out the message that you find offensive while permitting those who have expressed a desire to be able to hear it to make their own decisions about what messages to listen to.

I wish you all the best that this life has to offer a person, my sometimes frightened little rabbit friend.

Rob

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 willing to give anything a shot for a period of time (1-3 years). But spending 16 years of my time with $0 earnings is beyond any level of reason.

I was rereading yesterday’s posts this morning and I saw this one and I thought that I should make a point that I did not bring out in my original response.

In an objective sense I agree with this point. If you described to me some hypothetical scenario where a fellow waited for 16 years for things to turn around re some matter, I would be inclined to agree with what you are saying here, Anonymous. I would say “maybe waiting one year for a turn-around makes sense, perhaps two years, three years is pushing it. Not 16 freakin’ years!” So I get the point.

I sometimes ask myself: “If you knew how things were going to play out, would you have put forward that famous post from the morning of May 13, 2002?” Given the positive stuff we have seen over the past 16 years, the answer is obviously “yes, a thousand times yes!” There’s been a mountain of amazingly positive stuff. But given the negative stuff and given that the positive stuff has not to this day generated any cold hard cash for the Bennett family, an argument can be made that the negative stuff outweighs the positive stuff. The positive stuff outweighs the negative stuff when you take a global perspective — the advance that we all achieve with the shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing permits us all to live far richer (in every sense of the word) lives. But we all live our lives mostly in the hard-cash personal realm, not in the all-you-need-is-love global society-wide realm. As you note, the penalties that I have faced in the personal realm for my “crime” of posting honestly re safe withdrawal rates have been pretty darn severe. So has it really been worth it? Can I really make that claim with a confident, calm feeling?

There’s a reason why I often use the catch-phrase “I love my country — that’s the bottom line here.” There’s a motto they use in the marines — God, Country, Family. I don’t consider myself a particularly brave person. If I were asked to risk my life in a military battle, I would be afraid. I like to think that I would overcome my fears and do my duty. But I know I would be afraid. That’s the way I was made. I don’t see how it benefits me or anyone else for me to lie about that.

I have more courage to fight battles in the intellectual/emotional realm where these investing strategy battles have been fought. I have taken lots of hits standing up to you Buy-and-Holders. Lots and lots and lots of hits. And I have been a little bit afraid at times. But not nearly as afraid as I would have been were the battles being fought in the physical realm. I possess a lot more courage in the intellectual and emotional realms. I believe in God. I believe that things happen to us in this life for a reason. I believe that I was placed in circumstances in which my courage would be tested in realms in which I am capable of standing up to the test because God knows that I at least potentially possess what it takes to pass the tests in those realms.

When a man dies for his country as a soldier on the battlefield, no one says “oh, he is a fool, he gave up too much, he hurt his family.” People praise the fellow, they say he is a hero. God presented me with this other way of demonstrating my love for my country. He said: “Oh, you flatter yourself that you love your country and you are willing to make sacrifices for it, let’s see you stand up to these internet Goons, let’s see whether you mean what you say when you encourage your boys to be real men or whether you are just a hypocrite pumping out more hot air.” God (Evolution/Life/Fate/Circumstances/Whatever) placed me in a position where I could help millions of people by putting myself and my family through some temporary (16 years!) strain or where I could just decide that there is no reason why I should stick my neck out anymore than my heroes Jack Bogle and Robert Shiller have stuck theirs out and let our economic system go down because there was no one brave enough to stand up to the relentless hate of the Lindauerheads and the Greaney Goons.

I stood in the line of fire. I never flinched. I am proud of it. No apologies.

God will judge me when I die. That’s what I believe. I believe in my heart that I have passed the test. But I don’t want to be presumptive about it. I still ask myself the question every day. I still pray that, if I have gotten something wrong somewhere that God gives me the grace to see it and fix it before too much more time passes through the hourglass. But I sincerely believe that I have DEMONSTRATED my love for my country (and for my family too — my boys are going to have to live in the economic system that we are all creating with our actions today) with unwillingness to post dishonestly re the numbers that many of my friends are using to plan their retirements. I don’t just express my love for my country with words. I was there with my honest posts when it became clear to me that some honest posts were needed if this economic and political system of ours was going to continue to work in the future as well as it has worked in the past.

God help me, you know? It’s a big responsibility. It’s scary to be a human. We all have consciences. We know with a good bit of confidence what is right. But we don’t get to see the last page of the story in advance. So it’s always a little bit scary making the best of things with our limited brains and our limited understandings as each stage of the process plays out before us. God protect me. God give me guidance. God give me strength.

God help us all. God help you Goons. You Goons have that human thing going on somewhere deep inside no matter how much you endeavor to cover it up. Or so Rob Bennett sincerely believes, you know?

Take good care, my dear Goon friend. There’s a better place on the other side of The Big Black Mountain. Or so I heard in a story once. That sounded to me to be more or less on the mark.

Yowsa!

Rob

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

“My guess is that Shiller’s rationalization is that he can do more good saying things the way he does because at least he gets the message out”

What good is getting a message out if it’s the wrong message? MY guess is that your guess is pure speculation based on nothing more than wishful thinking. And that Shiller is saying exactly what he means. You would have us believe that Shiller will come out after the crash and say “I knew this would happen, I just didn’t want to be unpopular. But I’m telling the truth now. Really.”

What Shiller is saying is not the wrong message to the 10 percent of the population that has changed its investing behavior because of what he says. Take somebody like Microlepsis at the Bogleheads Forum. He was influenced by Shiller’s work. And he was an amazing poster. There were times when they took polls to see who the most popular posters were and Microlepsis was always at the top. Microlepsis helped lots of people. He was a goldmine of good information for all of us.

When the Linduaerheads took over, Microlespsis was banned. So none of us get the benefit of his thinking any more. I hate that. I want to change that. That’s what this is all about.

Some people tell me “oh, if you had just kept your mouth shut about the errors in the safe withdrawal rate studies, the Bogleheads Forum would still be at Morningstar and Microlepsis would still be posting and we would all be better off. I don’t see it that way. I agree that it would be good if we were still hearing from Micolepsis. But I want us all to be able to post honestly re safe withdrawal rates and scores of other critically important investment-related topics. So I cannot play it the Microlepsis way, which is essentially the Shiller way.

I want Shiller (and thousands of others) to speak out more clearly and more firmly and more boldly. There are lots of people who try to be kinda sorta honest to a limited extent and get away with it. I want more. I want to provide millions of people access to honest and accurate safe withdrawal rate studies. I want to bring the economic crisis to a full and complete stop. I want people to be able to retire many years sooner while taking on only a fraction of the risk that they were taking on in the days before we opened the entire internet to honest posting.

I get what Shiller is doing. I don’t endorse it. I urge him to speak out more clearly. But I get why he plays it the way he does. Maybe he is right, you know? I don’t think so. But I could be wrong. I sure believe that he has done a huge amount of good playing it his way. I can’t say different re that much. There would be no Valuation-Informed Indexing if not for Shiller’s willingness to put his neck on the line more than anyone else alive on Planet Earth has put his neck on the line re these matters. That’s no small thing.

I think that after the crash Shiller will probably say that he was worried that something like what happened might happen but that he didn’t focus on it too much because he was not sure and he did not want to upset people. And given all the good that he has done, I think that a lot of people will accept that. It may be that there will be some who will not accept it. That worries me. I will be urging people to accept it. But I cannot say whether my urgings will win the day or not. That one is not my call.

We are all in this together. Why don’t we all make clear to Shiller that we will impose no penalties for him speaking out clearly? We all play a role in this, each and every one of us. And we all will obtain the benefits that will follow from us making it together to the other side of The Big Black Mountain. And we all will suffer the negative consequences of further delays. Rather than single out Shiller or anyone else, I see it as the constructive route to just do what we are capable of ourselves to push things a tiny notch in the right direction. So that’s what I try to do each day when I wake up and come downstairs to see what appears on my laptop screen to kick off the new day.

Does all of that not make at least a reasonable amount of good sense?

Rob

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

If what you are doing is not working, perhaps you should try a different path.

I am not capable of posting dishonestly re the numbers that my friends are using to plan their retirements, Anonymous. It’s just not in me.

For good or for ill, I think it would be fair to say that I am stuck for life on the path that I walked onto on the morning of May 13, 2002.

Please don’t think that I am complaining. I believe that the opportunities that have become available to me by walking this path are enormous, just breath-taking. I believe that I have opportunities that I will be cashing in on in days to come that will make me one of the richest people in the world. I obviously don’t want to appear to be whining about that.

My point is that I would be stuck on this path even if I knew with certainty that it would never put a dollar in my wallet. I cannot post dishonestly re this stuff. When I was planning my early retirement, I worked it hard. I wanted to get the numbers right. That was very important to me. So it is just impossible for me to imagine how I could ever deliberately post dishonestly re the numbers being used by others. I could make mistakes. We all are capable of making mistakes. Even that scares me. But the thought of DELIBERATELY putting forward retirement-planning numbers that I know with certainty are wrong just doesn’t compute for me. It is not even possible for me to imagine circumstances where that could ever change.

I once told a friend of mine that I would die for Valuation-Informed Indexing if it came to that. He laughed. He said “That’s the kind of investing strategy that I need to learn more about — the kind that the guy who came up with it is willing to die for.” I thought that was funny. I got the joke. And I don’t mean to be morbid by talking about dying. I certainly don’t believe that I am going to have to die over this stuff. The point is just that there is no circumstance in which I could ever post dishonestly re safe withdrawal rates. If it came to it, I would prefer death to doing that. So obviously I am going to accept any other penalty that is imposed on me for my unwillingness to engage in fraud re these matters.

Say that you got hit by a car and were stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. That would be very bad news, right? That’s not something that you are expecting to see happen and it would be a major setback. But life would still be worth living, right? There are people who can only get around in wheelchairs who live very rich lives. They are not happy to be in wheelchairs but they are thrilled to be alive and they make the most of it.

That’s how I look at the situation that I am in. It is my sincere belief that I will be making millions on the other side of the Big Black Mountain. I am just waiting for the first person to come up to me and exclaim “You are so lucky to have been the person to discover this!” I am going to punch that person in the nose, you know? I swear. But I do believe that, when people look back at these days, they will be thinking how lucky I was to get there first and to have so few competitors and all that sort of thing. What good fortune!

But if it doesn’t happen that way, at least I gave it my best shot. At least I never sold out my fellow community members. If I never earn a dime, you could compare that to me being trapped in a wheel-chair for the rest of my life. It’s not something that I want to see happen. But I would still be thrilled to be alive even if I never earned another dime, you know? Worse things have happened to people in this big old goofy world of ours. If people have lived through worse and maintained their good cheer, it seems to me that I should be able to do the same with this smaller bit of bad fortune. And of course if I receive that $500 million settlement check, all the better, right? If I can hold up to never earning another dime, I can surely hold up to having to figure out how to invest $500 million without it causing me to go into too high a tax bracket.

If you come up with any ideas that put me on a different path and that don’t require me to cross to the wrong side of the felony line, please let me know. I am very much in the market for those sorts of ideas! But nothing on the wrong side of the felony line gets two seconds consideration from this boy. That’s just not the way that I am wired, Anonymous. I am a non-felony-committing fool any way you look at it. I am not offering any apologies. I am happy that I am a non-felony-committing fool. I like it that I am that, $500 million settlement payment or no $500 million settlement payment. But that is certainly what I am in any event. I have certainly never sensed even the slightest inclination in me to reverse myself on that particular call.

I hope that helps a small bit. I love all my FinCon friends and I 100 percent believe that we will all be able to form tighter bonds in the days following the next price crash, when all the resistance to talking over the far-reaching implications of the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research will melt away into nothingness. But we are just going to have to wait a bit to see how things play out following the crash to know for absolutely certain.

My best and warmest wishes to you, my long-time Buy-and-Hold friend.

Rob

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

Yes, you’re great at imagining. Not so great at actually doing. When is the last time you posted at any other blog?

I don’t recall. It’s been a long time.

But I certainly expect to be doing so in future days.

After the next crash, I am certain that I will be posting at lots of places. It will be a lot easier then. Emotions will have turned. I will not then be up against the emotional resistance that I have been up against for the past 15 years.

Would it be a good idea to do more posting at other blogs BEFORE the crash? I think it would be a good idea. But it’s hard. There’s an emotional toll that has to be paid for telling people what the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research tells us about how stock investing works in the real world.

Do you see anybody else doing it? Can you point to anyone else who has done as much of it as I did in earlier years?

There’s a reason why no one else goes there. It’s hard work. Taking constant emotional hits is the hardest kind of work there is.

I am proud that I have done as much of that kind of work as I have. I want to do more. I believe that I can do a lot of good by doing more. But I am not inclined to get down on myself for not doing more when I have already done more than anyone else out there. I am not super-human. I am made of flesh and blood like everyone else. I need to push myself as hard as it is reasonable to push myself but no harder. Pushing myself too hard would just make things worse. It would lead to me doing less of this kind of work instead of more.

These are my sincere thoughts re these terribly important matters, in any event.

My best wishes to you.

Rob

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

Uh huh. None of those names you just dropped will correspond with you. Not a one. Some of them used to. But not anymore. Why do you think that is? Before your knee jerk reaction (Goon intimidation) I’ll tell you the real reason:

“we are going to experience the biggest social catastrophe in U.S. history.”

You believe you personally have it within your power to affect that outcome. Which makes you a nut.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

— Margaret Mead

Rob

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:

Rob,

Here is the difference between you and everyone else. The investment community reads the words Shiller says and believe that those are his opinions. You read what he says and then interpret it to fit your agenda.

My agenda is to open every investing site on the internet to honest posting re the last 36 years of peer-reviewed research in this field, Sammy. The Buy-and-Holders are good people and smart people. They came up with an investing strategy that they believe in and millions are grateful for their efforts. We have all learned many important things by listening to our Buy-and-Hold friends. All that is good.

Things turn sour when some Buy-and-Holders (not all, some) engage in abusive posting practices to block those of us who do not believe in Buy-and-Hold but instead believe in the 36 years of peer-reviewed research showing that valuations affect long-term returns from sharing on the internet our honest thoughts on how stock investing works. I have thoughts and I want to share them. I have had thousands of my fe llow community members express a desire to hear them. My views have been endorsed by some of the biggest names in the field. What’s the problem here?

We don’t agree. That’s the problem from your end. If I am permitted to post my honest views, some people who now agree with you are going to lose confidence in Buy-and-Hold. I get that and I agree. But you know what? It could be that Buy-and-Hold will prevail if we permit people on both sides to post honestly. That will make Buy-and-Hold all the more popular down the road. And, in the event that Buy-and-Hold really is as dangerous as I think it is, it is of course to your benefit to find that out. And the only way that you are ever going to find it out is to permit me and the thousands of others who have grave doubts about the Buy-and-Hold strategy to express their honest views.

Shiller’s ideas cannot be reconciled with Bogle’s ideas. Bogle believes that the market is efficient. Shiller believes that valuations affect long-term returns. These are completely different premises on which to build investing strategies. Some (the majority) believe that Bogle is right. Some (the minority) believe that Shiller is right. That’s not a bad thing. I think it is kind of a cool thing. Because we disagree, we both have someone on the other side to challenge our thinking and keep us honest. It’s a good thing that we don’t all agree.

So that’s my agenda. I want us all working together. I say that the goal is to learn the truth about stock investing and that the means by which we get there is to show respect and tolerance for those with other views. I don’t agree with you on many investing issues. But I sure respect you. I sure like you. I sure enjoy learning from you. I think it would be just groovy if you could say the same back to me.

It’s to be expected that we are going to have somewhat different takes re what Shiller says. And re what Bogle says. And re thousands of other things. We have different perspectives. When some new information bit appears before us, we both send it through out respective filters, which are designed to protect our differing perspectives from feeling the pain that comes when they are challenged in too serious a way. So we hear the same words and I have one take on what those words signify and you have a somewhat different take. What of it? That’s how things work when two people have different viewpoints. There’s nothing bad about that. That’s normal. That’s healthy.

I have learned things from you, Sammy. You show up here every week and you harass me. You have been harassing me at one place or another for 15 years running now. I would be grateful if you would just kindly knock off the funny business. But, if I were put to the challenge, I could write a long post detailing all the things I have learned from my interactions with you. That’s the good side of all this. That’s the side that I would like to focus on. I think it is very cool that I have learned things from you despite all the complications. And I have a funny hunch that if you were being perfectly honest you would acknowledge that there have been one or two occasions over the 15 years in which you have learned something from me too. That warms my heart, you know? It makes me happy that I have helped my friend Sammy out on one or two occasions.

I do indeed interpret what Shiller and everyone else says to fit my agenda. That’s normal. That’s healthy. That’s good. I cannot help you or anyone else if I do not process information in the way that I was built to process information. So that’s what I do. You can take or leave any of the products of my agenda. That part is up to you. But please don’t ask me to stop producing material that follows from a belief in my agenda. I cannot produce anything that helps you or others unless I post what I sincerely believe. So I do that and I intend to continue doing that.

I do it all out of friendship for you, Sammy. Believe it or not, that’s the bottom-line reality here.

Rob

Set forth below is the text of a conversation that recently took place at the FinCon Community on Facebook:

Miranda Marquit: Also, I’m looking for a legit Boglehead. Any of you been (or still are) a Boglehead? Would like to know what it’s like to be on the “inside” as well as if there are some issues with being too fervent about it.

Doug Nordman: I’ve been a member of the Bogleheads forum since 2007, if that helps. I was also at the Vanguard Diehards forum with Morningstar when the first Bogleheads broke free to build a better forum. But I’ve never had any accounts with Vanguard or been to a Bogleheads’ meetup. Years ago I remember that Mike Piper had been to one.

The Bogleheads forum, like every forum, has its share of passionate zealots. It’s heavily moderated to stay on topic and avoid self-promotion, which its (remaining) members seem to prefer. Its wiki is also exceptional, and I’ve helped build out the military part of that.

It has a forum’s usual share of drama. It’s also produced several very good investing books and become a tremendous educational resource.

Tom Drake: Rob Bennett

Doug Nordman: Tom, I wouldn’t do that to Miranda.

Rob Bennett: Miranda knows me. We are friends. I am friends with Tom as well. And it has always been my hope to be friends with all Bogleheads (including you, Doug). The fact that some of my Boglhead friends do not view me as a friend is an unfortunate and sad reality.

Tom Drake: Miranda is looking for any issues, so I thought Rob would be a good addition to her post.

Rob Bennett: If I were asked by Miranda or anyone else about the Bogleheads Forum, I would say that it is an amazing resource populated by lots of smart and good people that has unfortunately suppressed discussion of the far-reaching implications of the 36 years of peer-reviewed research in this field showing that valuations affect long-term returns. I greatly enjoyed the time that I spent at the forum and learned a lot from the experience and made lots of good friends. But I was not willing to say either that the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies contain valuation adjustments or that such adjustments are not needed to get the numbers right. So I am no longer permitted to post there. It is my belief that I am not the only one who lost out as a result of that decision. Everyone who participates at the board lost out on a great learning experience. We all learn more when we permit our beliefs to be challenged in civil and reasoned discussions.

 

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

So instead of an easy job that pays money, you took a hard job that pays nothing. For 15 years and counting.

That sounds, now what’s the word? Dumb.

Most people would call it dumb. I think it would be fair to say that that’s why you don’t see anybody else doing it.

I do love my country, Anonymous. Some would call that dumb too. But I do love my country. I don’t mean that I go carrying the flag around on anything like that. I mean that I love the idea of progress, I love the marketplace of ideas. That runs very, very deep with me. I think that’s why I was the one who couldn’t turn away from the opportunity even when I saw the brutality that was going to be directed at me if I didn’t.

I have a law degree and a Masters in Tax Law. I obtained both of those degrees with zero intention of becoming a lawyer. I always intended to become a journalist. But I didn’t want to be an ordinary journalist. I wanted to be able to say something that mattered. Getting the tax law degree meant that I could understand and write about the tax reform movement in a way that none of the other journalists covering it at the time could pull off. So I went to that extra time and expense even though I did not have the money to spare. It was important enough to me that the work I did count for something that I was driven to go the extra mile.

Some would say that that was dumb too. People say all kinds of things. It wasn’t dumb for me. We all get to live one life. And we all have only so much money. I would rather spend mine making myself the best tax journalist out there than going on nice vacations or whatever. So I did what I did.

My Retire Early dream was the same sort of thing. Some people try to retire early to escape work. I wanted to retire early to do more meaningful work. That is what motivated all of my saving efforts. Again, this goes very deep.

So here I am. Yes, there are people who will say I am dumb. They have to live their lives and I have to live mine. If I didn’t jump on the opportunity that was presented to me to change the world in an amazingly positive way, I would have regretted it for the rest of my life. So even today I don’t have any second thoughts. It’s just not in me to play it any other way. I am a child of the 60s. I see this as a 60s kind of thing to do. It’s idealistic. I am an idealistic sort of fellow.

For good or for ill, I am doing what I believe I was put on earth to do. It would have made my life easier if someone else had taken on the opportunity. But whatever it takes to walk way from it, I don’t have that thing inside me. I like to think that I would not walk away from a burning building if I heard a baby screaming inside it. And I cannot walk away from a situation I discover in which millions of middle-class people are looking for good information on how to plan their retirements and they are all being given information that is 36 years out of date. However things turn out, I will be able to go to sleep at night knowing that I did not walk past the burning building.

The part that you miss is that the fact that this job has not paid money for 15 years is what makes it so important that I take it on. If it paid a nice, steady wage, there would be people lined up to do the job. It’s very important work and, because it is such hard work and it does not pay a steady wage, there is no one else willing to accept the assignment. That makes it all the more critical that I accept it. If there were others taking it on, I could take a pass. Or, if it were not critically important work, I could take a pass. As things are, I cannot take a pass and live with the knowledge that I have done so.

I hope that helps you understand this particular aspect of the question a wee bit better, my long-time Buy-and-Hold friend.

Rob