A Rich Life

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

Has anyone else ever agreed with you by publicly saying you have earned $500 million?

When I go for a job, they tell me that my labor is worth a certain dollar amount. I might feel that I should be paid more, but that is irrelevant. The value of anything is based on what someone says they will pay you.

So, has anyone agreed with you on the $500 million?

No one has ever told me that they think that I have $500 million coming to me. I once was speaking to my brother Steven and I casually observed that “I expect to make millions from this.” He said: “everyone knows that you’re not going to make millions.” Steven loves me. So that was not goonishnesss. That was his sincere take.

The $500 million thing is not something that I came up with on my own. You Goons pressed me into that. You never try to make the case that Greaney really did include a valuation adjustment in his retirement study (I wonder why). You always argue that there’s no money to be made pointing out the far-reaching implications of Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) research findings. You say: “Oh, how many people do you have posting here?” Or: “How many sites are linking to yours?” Or whatever. I want sites linking to me. I want people posting here. So I felt that I needed to address that.

The point that you were making was that research-based strategies are not popular, that only Get Rich Quick (Buy-and-Hold) strategies are popular. I obviously want to see that change. So I had to ask myself — What is it going to take to make it happen? This is not the only area in which something that is bad for people is more popular than something that is good for people. There was a time when the companies that make cigarettes used to advertise their health benefits: “Live a Long Life, Smoke a Ciggie and Relax!” Now you don’t see that. Doctors became alarmed when they saw research showing that smoking causes cancer and they worked up the courage to blow the whistle on the demonstrably false claims. Then it all changed. Today you hear people promoting products and services that help people stop smoking. That’s what we need to see happen in the investment advice field. We need the idea of AVOIDING the Get Rich Quick impulse to become more popular and the idea of giving in to it entirely to become less popular. How will it happen? We need to not just permit honest posting but to reward it. When there are rewards for posting honestly rather than penalties, we are going to see more and more honest posting.

The rewards can’t go just to me. It makes sense that I would see very big rewards being that I have been working this hard for over 17 years now. But we want people like Wade Pfau to be rewarded too. Wade had visions of being awarded a Nobel prize for the research that he co-authored with me. He also had fears of seeing his career destroyed by you Goons. What if Jack Bogle had spoken up and said “this is amazing work, this is worthy of a Nobel prize, I wish that Lindauer individual would knock off the funny business.” Had Bogle said that, Wade would not have flipped. He would have persisted. Millions of people would have learned about our research, It would have been written up on the front page of the New York Times. Prices wouldn’t be where they are today. We all would be living better lives.

Wade earned that comment from Bogle. And that comment would have changed the world in a very big and a very positive way. You don’t defeat a group of internet Goons by appeasing them. You defeat a group of internet Goons by EXPOSING them. And that statement by Bogle would have exposed you Goons. He wouldn’t have even had to have said that he thought that Buy-and-Hold was bad or that Valuation-Informed Indexing is good. All that we needed to hear him say is that the Bennett/Pfau paper was exciting stuff, that everyone on the planet needed to learn about it and consider its findings. We need to as a society reward research-based investment advice as much as we do Get Rich Quick stuff, if not more. That’s the key to everything.

We send a message as a society when we determine how much money an activity will earn the individual performing that activity. You Goons are right that it says something that I have not made a dime with this stuff for 17 years. The statement that we make as a society when that happens is that: “Valuation-Informed Indexing is not worth much.” That’s a bad statement. Greaney got the numbers wildly wrong in his retirement study. He hurt lots of people. We should want to help those people. We should as a society want to send the message that: “Valuation-Informed Indexing is awesome.” We can send that statement by awarding $500 million to Rob Bennett in compensation for his amazing work of the past 17 years. That sort of payment would change everything.

I obviously earned that money. Shiller predicted the 2008 economic crisis. His research shows us how to avoid such crises in the future (teach every investor alive on the planet the importance of market timing). Anyone who says that it would not be worth $500 million for us to avoid the next economic crisis is not thinking straight. It’s worth a whole big bunch more than that. If my compensation for my work of the past 17 years is going to be determined by the value I have added to the world by doing it, the number is going to be a lot bigger than $500 million. I offered to settle for that amount because I want to get the ugliness behind us and I think that the public announcement of a settlement would help us get there.

There are three things that are going to cause Valuation-Informed Indexing to start spreading like wildfire. One is me being awarded a settlement of $500 million. I guaranty you that I will be the keynote speaker at the next FinCon event the year after I am awarded a settlement payment of $500 million. Everyone is going to want to know how I did it and how they can go about earning a similar amount. Two is you Goons being placed in prison cells, where you belong. No one is going to want to employ criminal tactics to promote Buy-and-Hold once you Goons have been placed in prison cells. So the day that that happens is the day that things start moving forward at a rapid pace. Three is us all seeing an article on the front page of the New York Times talking about all of the wonderful people who have endorsed Valuation-Informed Indexing and about the abusive tactics that the Buy-and-Holders have employed to keep discussion of it suppressed for 38 years. The intimidation stuff only works for so long as people feel that they are isolated in thinking that it might make sense to follow a research-based approach. No one is going to feel isolated ever again once this stuff has been written up on the front page of the New York Times.

The last words of my book are: “I offer no apologies. No apologies whatsoever.” Too often people who make the case for Valuation-Informed Indexing do so in a tentative way. There’s nothing to be apologetic about! Research-based strategies are wonderful. The reason why people are tentative is that they sense that posting honestly will enrage the Buy-and-Holders and we all want to do what we can not to offend others. That gives the Buy-and-Holders an edge. That’s what we do not want to do. We have the better approach, We should say so!

One thing that I can do is to say: “Yes, my work is worth a lot more than $500 million and I am happy to accept that amount as part of an effort to pull us all together and get us all working for the same life-affirming goal.” You Goons like to say that I engaged in “bad behavior” by pointing out the error in Greaney’s study. I see it very, very differently. I think that was wonderful behavior. I think that every last one of us should be doing all we can to make people aware of errors in retirement studies. I am proud of that famous post of May 13, 2002. Very proud of it.

No one has ever told me that I will be receiving a $500 million settlement payment. The way in which our society works in every field of human endeavor other than the investment advice field tells me that. In every other field we reward positive contributions and we penalize criminal stuff. We need to start following that policy in the investment advice field too. I think that we will start doing so in the days following the next price crash. I think that the people who have done good work to get us there will be rewarded handsomely at that time. My $500 million payment will send a very strong message to lots of people. Good for me for playing my part in sending that message, you know?

I only wish that I had had the courage to start posting honestly three years earlier, you know? Maybe if I had played it that way we would be talking about a $600 million settlement payment. Holy moly!

We should reward good work and we should discourage bad work. So says Rob Bennett. Opening every site on the internet to honest posting re the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research in this field is the most important public policy issue before our nation today. So we need to reward those who do what it takes to turn this in a positive direction. $500 million is nothing when you think of the benefits that will follow from permitting (and encouraging!) honest posting.

I earned every penny of that $500 million. And all of the people who hesitate to say so indirectly send that message by their silence. No one is going to be afraid to say it in the days following the next price crash. The trick is working up the courage to say it today when doing so would do a lot of good. People are afraid to stand up to you Goons. But I have a funny feeling that we will see some work up the courage to overcome that fear when they realize that there’s $500 million or some similar figure in play when they do so. Let’s show people that there can be rewards for doing honest work in this field as great as the rewards for pushing the smelly Get Rich Quick garbage.

Shiller would not have been awarded a Nobel prize if this stuff were not of immense importance, I mean, come on. A $500 million settlement makes the statement that needs to be made in very, very clear terms. Terms that no one listening in could possibly miss.

My sincere take.

Filthy Rich (Someday Soon!) 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:

The most recent blog post on Get Rich Slowly is very interesting

https://www.getrichslowly.org/how-to-change-careers/

After spending a decade as a pastor, I realized in May of 2018 that I was ready to make a drastic career change…into personal finance education.

I’ve always loved to write, so I wanted to first see if I could actually make money writing about personal finance. But I made a commitment to myself. In one year’s time, I was going to have a day job where I helped people learn how to handle their money wisely. The question was just in what capacity.

So I set a deadline for myself. If I hadn’t figured out a way by May 2019 to make enough money as a freelance writer to pay the bills, I would get certified as a teacher and apply to be an economics teacher at local high schools.

Fast forward twelve months. This past May I did quit my day job. In one year’s time, I was able to create a full-time income in a career that I previously had no experience in.

How did I do it? More importantly, how can you turn your dream job into a reality as quickly as possible?…

A very interesting and inspirational story

Most of the things that he says make sense, Evidence. I presume that your purpose in posting the link is to make the point that, since I have not made money with Valuation-Informed Indexing for 17 years now, I should move on. I obviously do not agree.

The rule that this guy is putting forward — make money in a reasonable amount of time — does not apply in my case. I would have agreed with that rule when I was starting out. It makes sense. But the situation that I am dealing with is exceptional. The peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau is the most important research published in this field in three decades. That is worth millions. And the only reason that I haven’t collected is that you Goons engaged in extortion to stop Wade from continuing to promote our research. And it worked!

What does that tell you? It tells you that there is a goldmine here. I have said that I expect to see a $500 million settlement payment in the days following the next price crash. Is that a big number? Obviously. It is a HUGE number. But it is not big in context. Shiller predicted the 2008 economic crisis. His research showed us how to avoid that economic crisis. The next price crash will bring on another economic crisis. Is it not worth a whole big bunch more than $500 million to avoid an economic crisis? It sure seems so to me. The fact that discussion of the far-reaching implications of Shiller’s research findings has been suppressed for 38 years makes the telling of the story of how that happened MORE VALUABLE than it would have been had none of the suppression taken place.

I didn’t ask you Goons to engage in any of the crazy stuff. I asked you to play it the other way. But you (and all the other Goons in the world — it is obviously not just you responsible for the 38-year cover-up) have made the telling of this story very, very, very valuable to everyone who lives in this country. We need to figure out a way to permit millions of investors to gain access to honest and accurate reports of how stock investing works. We simply must do that. It is not optional. It is 100 percent imperative. And I have the story. I have had a front-row seat to everything that has happened for the past 17 years.

If you didn’t think that it is a big deal to get the safe withdrawal rate right, you never would have engaged in any criminal acts. That’s the deal. You acknowledge that you see how important this stuff is with your abusive behavior. Well, I am not the kind of guy who sees $500 million sitting on the sidewalk and just walks by, concluding that “if there were really $500 million sitting on the sidewalk, someone else would have picked it up.” No one else has picked it up. Life would have gone a lot easier for me over the past 17 years if someone had done so. But the value of the work that I have done is greater because no one else has done it, Your criminally abusive behavior has kept me free of competition. So be it, you know?

Valuations affect long-term returns. All of the research available to us shows that. So the safe withdrawal rate cannot possibly be the same number at all valuation levels. We need to get the word out! We once thought that the market was efficient, we know now that that is not so, and we need to correct all of the mistakes we made back when we did not know what we needed to know to get this stuff right.

We are at a turning point in U.S. history. Buy-and-Hold/Get Rich Quick has been hurting investors for a long, long time. Until 1981, we just didn’t know any better. So it was just one of those things. But now we know better. So we need to move forward. But the 38-year cover-up has made it very, very, very hard to move forward. Everyone who works in this field has built a career around teaching the approach that doesn’t work and doesn’t want to admit having made a mistake. But we need to move forward. We need to admit our mistakes and start getting this stock investing stuff right. We have no choice.

I help everyone when I post honestly. Every person on the planet. I help you when I do that. You don’t see it. But I do. I hurt no one and I help everyone. In a very, very, very big way. That’s an amazing value proposition. There has never been a value proposition like this. I am going to do what I can. Partly for myself and my family. But also for my country. It’s good that I can help my country in such a big way while also helping myself in such a big way. It’s wonderful.

This guy would do the same thing if he fell into the circumstances in which I fell into. So would you. You will say “Oh, I would never do that.” But that’s just talk. You have never experienced what it is like to fall into an opportunity like this. How do you think it made me feel when Wade Pfau, a guy with a Ph.D. in Economics told me that he couldn’t sleep at night because he was so excited by all the stuff that he was learning from me? It made me feel good. That feeling helped me to see the magnitude of the opportunity open to me. I never studied stock investing. I shouldn’t be able to teach a Ph.D. in Economics anything about the subject. But I sure did. I just worked up the courage to post honestly on the morning of May 13, 2002, and followed the breadcrumbs where they led me.

And the Wade Pfau thing was far from an isolated experience. I had the same general experience dozens and dozens of times. Freakin’ Jack Bogle came within an inch of endorsing Valuation-Informed Indexing! I mean, come on. Freakin’ Jack Bogle learned from me. That just shouldn’t be able to happen. But it did. And how about Mel Lindauer? In ordinary circumstances, Mel Lindauer would be singing the praises of someone who taught Jack Bogle important stuff. But Mel cannot bring himself to sing my praises to this day. Huh? What the f?

Mel cannot sing my praises because he cannot bear to let in how big this is. If Shiller is right, then everything that Mel Lindauer says about stock investing in his book is wrong. He cannot bear to acknowledge that. I didn’t show that all his stuff is wrong because I wanted to hurt his feelings. I just want to help the people who are looking for good advice and none of the Buy-and-Hold stuff — which is rooted in a belief that the market is efficient — can possibly be right if it turns out that valuations affect long-term returns.

I believe that Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research is legitimate research. So I say that everything that Mel Lindauer says about the subject of stock investing is wrong. I am Mel’s best friend. If he had listened to all of the people at the Bogleheads Forum who asked that I be permitted to post honestly, Mel could have fixed his stuff years ago and he would be in a better place today.

If Shiller is right, the Buy-and-Holders need to fix their stuff. And there is a ton of money in telling the story of the 18-year cover-up. That cover-up affects every last one of us in a very serious way and we are going to see what that means in the days following the next price crash. Would you prefer that we just never learn? Are you crazy?

I want to see us all move forward. And I can’t say that I am too upset about the idea of making hundreds of millions of dollars helping us all to learn what we need to learn to move forward. $500 million for me for doing top-notch journalism work? I’ll take it, you know?

What does the guy who wrote that article say about committing multiple felonies because you learned that you got an important number wrong in a retirement study posted at your web site and you really, really, really don’t want to acknowledge the error? I have a funny feeling that he wouldn’t think that that is such a hot idea. I’d rather have a $500 million payday than a long prison sentence any day of the week. I mean, come on.

Those are my sincere thoughts re this terribly important matter, in any event.

I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors.

Dream-Job-Seeker 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 believe you make up a lot off stuff. I believe Shiller would think you have a screw loose. I believe you have wasted much of your adult life.

There’s an easy way to learn what Shiller thinks about me. Drop all the abusive stuff and invite him to participate in discussions at the Bogleheads Forum. Ask him during the first discussion whether he believes that the safe withdrawal rate is always the same number or whether he believes that it is a number that changes with changes in valuations.

We should all be talking about Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research at every discussion board and blog on the internet. We all should feel 100 percent free to post honestly in all of those discussions. That’s how we all learn. And we should all want to learn as much as we possibly can about the subject of stock investing.

I don”t think that I have wasted any time. Every abusive post that I see tells me that I am on to something important. Otherwise, we would not see such defensiveness. If the amount of effort put into supression of a discussion indicates how important it it to have that discussion, then I think it would be fair to say that there has never been a subject that we so much needed to discuss as the subject of the far-reaching implications of Shiller’s Nobel-prize-winning research.

We are as a nation on the threshold of discovering some very exciting stuff. It’s a horrible reality that we are going to need to live through another price crash to get there. But it takes what it takes. And the good here is 50 times as good as the bad here is bad. So we just have to hang in there and do our best to take things in a positive direction.

My sincere take.

Loose Screws (or Not?) Rob