A Rich Life

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

“When I Was Checking In At the Hotel, J.D. Roth Was Sitting Nearby With A Group Of People Talking And He Called Out To Me”

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I discussed the reaction I received to my investing ideas at the Financial Bloggers Conference in a recent comment put to the Goon Central board. The comment was advanced on a thread titled Tweets on Defamatory Content:

Say, Rob, did you notice that people tended to not go out of their way to include you in conversations – in fact, they tended to edge away?

No.

There is indeed discomfort about the investing issue. People don’t say “I am going to write about that at my blog when I get home” or “Tell me exactly what happened, I want to know the complete story here” or “I am going to let all my friends know about this, this is important stuff.”

To that extent, the suggestion you put forward here represents reality. This topic causes 95 percent of the people who hear about it to feel intense discomfort. Some try to hide it. A small percentage act like out-and-out goons (I didn’t meet any like that at the conference, but it could be that they made an effort to stay away from me). Most remain low-key and do express shock re the obviously shocking stuff (death threats) but don’t ask the follow-up questions that you would expect to hear if they were letting in the significance to their own portfolios and to our economic system as a whole of the message they are hearing.

I of course acknowledge that this reaction is strange. It is also highly consistent. I am not describing a sometime thing. I am describing an almost-always thing.

But, no, people did not edge away in the way you describe. For example, when I was checking in at the hotel, J.D. Roth was sitting nearby with a group of people talking and he called out to me. He didn’t have to do that. He knows my views on investing. He called out and invited me over voluntarily.

So I sat with those people. Todd Tressider was one of them. He was in the process of writing his long piece on SWRs. So that got the discussion started on my favorite issue. As part of that discussion, I told two women bloggers in the group about the death threats, etc. Both expressed shock and then the discussion turned to other subjects (as part of the phenomenon described above). When it got to dinner time,  the two women bloggers and me and a man blogger agreed to go to dinner together (J.D. and Todd had gotten into conversations with other people). There was no attempt to exclude me or anything like that. Our conversation was warm and engaging.

I’ve exchanged e-mails with J.D. and with Todd in the months since. There HAVE been disagreements expressed in those conversations. But not hostility. I think there is less warmth than there would be if the disagreements were not present — they are afraid to get too close because that would require them to take a stronger position on the honestzzz posting matter than they feel prepared to take today. So there IS a distance that otherwise wouldn’t be there. But it would not be right to say that they are avoiding me. Todd has called me on the phone unsolicited two times. Would someone trying to avoid someone punch in that person’s number on the telephone? That makes no sense.

Is there distance? Yes.

Is there discomfort? Yes.

Are people experiencing confusion? Yes.

Are people uncertain how to proceed? Yes.

Are people running away from Rob Bennett, saying “he’s crazy” or “he’s dangerous”? No. Only the Goons are pretending to do that.

Actually, it’s beginning to play out the other way around. THe Normals are showing more indications that they are feeling discomfort in the presence of the Goons.

I had a Guest Blog at Consumerism Commentary the other day. You Goons almost always try to disrupt such super discussions. There were no Goon posts. My guess is that you tried and that your posts were deleted by the site owner. That’s what we need to see. That’s what we should have seen the first time you came forward with your ugliness at Motley Fool. If people are starting to react that way, we are very much traveling on the right track, albeit slowly as all get-out.

Rob

 

“I Cannot Post Dishonestly on SWRs…I Don’t Have Any Wiggle Room — It’s a Numerical Calculation”

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Yesterday’s blog entry provided the text of an e-mail sent to me on April 20, 2009, by J.D. Roth, owner of the Get Rich Slowly blog.

I responded by saying: “Thanks for your response and thanks for considering the idea. I’ll send you a possible Guest Blog Entry in the next day or two. You can of course decide on reading it whether it offers value to your readers or not.

I followed with a Guest Blog Entry entitled “We’re All Better Off as a Result of the Stock Crash.” I asked J.D. to “Please let me know what you think when you get a chance.”

I also sent an e-mail to Lazy Man saying: “J.D. wrote me a response suggesting (among other things) that I write a possible Guest Blog Entry for his site. I have submitted a possible Guest Blog Entry entitled “We’re All Better Off As A Result of the Stock Crash.” Perhaps that will end up helping spread the word a bit.”

Lazy Man responded with these words:

“Yeah, I was cc’d on the response.  I think he’s got some valid points. I hope you take away much more than the “I should submit a guest blog entry to him.”  To me that was the least important of the 5 or 6 things that he mentioned.”

I responded to Lazy Man with these words:

“I think I probably stated my views on most of the other points he raised in comments put forward at the Money Blog Network forum. My strong hunch is that it won’t help for me to go through any of that again.

“Please do let me know if you ever have questions or thoughts about ways that I could help out. My rule is to respond to all in a spirit of charity to the greatest extent possible given the circumstances that apply. I cannot post dishonestly on safe withdrawal rates. That’s out, for obvious reasons. Anything short of that works, so far as I’m concerned. That’s always been the rub and on that one I don’t have any wiggle room. It’s a numerical calculation.”

I did not receive a response from J.D. about the Guest Blog Entry.

“Right Now, Rob, You Are Your Own Worst Enemy in This Matter”

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Set forth below is the text of an e-mail sent to me on April 20, 2009, by J.D. Roth, owner of the Get Rich Slowly blog, in response to my e-mail to him described in an earlier blog entry and the subsequent e-mail by the owner of the Lazy Man and Money blog and my response to it.

Hi, Rob.

Thanks for writing.

I’ve actually been following your discussion over at the MBN forums, but I haven’t participated because I have nothing meaningful to add. I understand that this is something about which you feel strongly, and I admire your devotion and persistence. I wish you well in your crusade. HOWEVER, there are many many things wrong with conventional financial advice, and the debate over the safe withdrawal rate is but one small example. I’m not willing to focus on this at the exclusion of other topics.

From my experience, most reasonable financial advisers arleady understand that the 4% withdrawal rate is not set in stone. They use it as a guideline. Why? Because, in general, it WORKS in order to provide guidance for clients. But every reputable source I’ve read makes it clear that the safe withdrawal rate does indeed vary depending on economic conditions. Some authors may use 4% when speaking broadly, but if they do a detailed examination, they always include caveats. I do this myself.

That said, I have some other thoughts and comments:

1. You wrote: “The owners of personal finance blogs should organize to prevent Goon posters from destroying our property and from intimidating our readership.” To be honest, this seems unnecessary to me. I’ve been writing about personal finance for three years, and though I have to deal with an occasional nut and occasional hostility, I’ve seen no evidence on GRS (or anywhere else, for that matter) of “Goon posters” intimidating readership. If you’re feeling threatened by Goon posters and nobody else is, ask yourself why this might be the case.

2. You wrote: “This shows that the core premise of the Passive Investing model — that allocation changes are not needed in response to big price changes — does not hold water.” I don’t agree with you. For one thing, passive investing requires periodic rebalancing, so there *is* a response to big price changes. For another, I don’t think that the safe-withdrawal rate question has anything to do with passive investing. You may as well argue that it shows that the core premise of active investing doesn’t hold water. Both arguments are equally incorrect.

3. Your approach to this is damaging your objective. You mean well, I know, but as others have pointed out, you come across as crazy. I’m not joking. If you want to be taken seriously, then write SHORT persuasive articles that address this subject. In the thread that Lazy Man locked, you are writing enormous epistles belaboring even minor points. You’re flooding people with words. Even if some, like me, might be inclined to agree with you, we have difficulty taking you seriously because you take offense at the slightest provocation, and you seem hell-bent on this crusade. You are tilting at windmills.

My number one recommendation for you is this: Write less. Write fewer posts/articles, and when you do write, make them shorter. This will increase your credibility immeasurably. If you want to get the word out on this subject, write a SHORT article that makes your point WITHOUT loaded terms like “goon squad” and “old school”, etc. Submit it to a pfblogger. (Hell, you could even submit it to me.) If the blogger rejects it, don’t take offense. Listen to why they rejected it.

Right now, Rob, you are your own worst enemy in this matter. *YOU* are what is causing people not to listen. People in the MBN thread tried to tell you this, but you ignored them. Until you are able to come to terms with this, you’re going to continue to struggle to be heard. And that’s a shame. I think you have something worth hearing.

Now here’s an unfortunate truth: I do not have time to devote to a long, rambling discussion on this subject with you by e-mail (or any other source). I have work to do. I’m perfectly willing to exchange short e-mails on this subject, but if you respond with long epistles, they will likely be ignored — not out of any malicious intent on my part, but because I simply don’t have time to deal with it. I barely have time to get the things done that need doing without adding this to my plate. Hell, I just spent 30 minutes writing this reply when I should have been researching bonds for my afternoon post.

Thanks!

–j.d.

“We Don’t Want to Know What Works, We Want to Hear What Makes Us Feel Good, Accurate Or Not”

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Yesterday’s blog entry set forth the text of an e-mail sent to J.D. Roth, owner of the Get Rich Slowly blog (with a copy to me) by the owner of the Lazy Man and Money blog. Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent to both J.D. and Lazy Man in response to Lazy Man’s e-mail.

J.D. and Lazy Man:

I certainly understand that you do not endorse all my investing ideas, Lazy Man. I presume that J.D. does not either. That is of course fine and what we all should expect to be the case.

I don’t understand why you didn’t expect me to follow through on the suggestion. I thought it was a great practical and constructive idea for how to address the problem.

I of course understand that J.D. would need to check things out carefully before stating anything publicly and that that might take some time. I do believe that there is a lot of good that could come of it both for him and for many others. But of course only he can say whether he can open up some time for this. I will of course help out in any way that I am able to.

It’s fair to say that I believe that I have uncovered an “injustice in the investing community.” But it really goes well beyond that.

The reality is that a large number of us seven years ago discovered errors in the calculation of the numbers that millions of people use to plan their retirements and that these errors have not been corrected to this day. And a popular personal finance columnist (Scott Burns) says that the reason is that we really don’t want to know what works, we only want to hear what makes us feel good whether it is accurate or not. If that is so, that turns the conventional ideas on investing on their heads. The primary conventional idea is that the market is efficient because most of us are engaging in the rational pursuit of our own self interests. If the reality is that we do not even want to know what works, investing is a largely emotional rather than an entirely rational pursuit. If most investors were not even trying to get things right during the Passive Investing Era, that would explain the huge price crash (something that took many Passives by surprise).

My view is that both the Get Rich Slowly blog AND the Money Blog Network are great places to spread the word both about the accurate retirement planning numbers AND about the tactics that have been used to block discussion of them for seven years now. We have all been affected by the economic crisis. I think we all should be doing what we can to come to an understanding of what caused it and what we need to do to avoid additional crashes in the days ahead. There is certainly huge interest in these questions among our readers.

Again, thanks for any help that either of you can provide in helping people to become better informed about the realities. Please let me know of anything that I can do to help out.

Rob

“A Site With the Popularity of Yours Could Put This Injustice Out There & Maybe Help You Both Out”

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Monday’s blog entry set forth the text of an e-mail that I sent to J.D. Roth, owner of the Get Rich Slowly blog, on April 20, 2009. I copied the owner of the Lazy Man and Money blog as he was involved in the discussions at the Money Blog Network forums described in the e-mail and he had been the person who suggested that I contact J.D. Set forth below is the text of the e-mail that Lazy Man sent to J.D. (copying me) after receiving his copy of my e-mail to J.D.

Sorry to involve you in this J.D.  I didn’t expect Rob to take me literally.  I do not necessarily endorse his ideas.  I haven’t had the time to pour over the math to see if what he’s saying holds water or not.

I do know he’s very convinced he has uncovered a huge injustice in the investing community.  He says that some goons have been trying to stop him wherever he posts. If there’s truth to what he’s saying, a site with the popularity of yours could put this injustice out there and maybe help you both out.

As you can tell from the thread in the MBN Forums, it got way out of hand (you’ve probably even tried to read some of it).  It’s not that I’m against Rob’s ideas… as I’ve said before I don’t know if they hold water or not… it’s just that the MBN Forums is not the place to discuss such matters.  The Get Rich Slowly forums (http://www.getrichslowly.org/forum/) is probably the more appropriate place.

“Personal Finance Bloggers Should Organize to Prevent Goons From Intimidating Our Readership”

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Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that I sent to J.D. Roth, owner of the Get Rich Slowly blog, on April 20, 2009:

J.D.:

This is Rob Bennett. You may recall that not too long ago you wrote a blog entry about an article at my site on Unconventional Saving Strategies. Some ways back you wrote about a profile of my Retire Early plan written up by Liz Weston.

The author of the Lazy Man and Money blog suggested in a thread at the Money Bloggers Network that I ask your help in a matter being discussed there that has become a bit contentious. Here is the thread:

[this thread has been deleted from the forum]

The background is that I was an extremely popular poster at the Motley Fool site for a number of years. I was the lead person in building up a Retire Early discussion board that had become the most popular board at the site. I discovered through personal research analytical errors in the Old School Safe-Withdrawal-Rate (SWR) studies (these are the studies that most financial planners use to help us plan our retirements). My posts on this topic prompted a huge positive response among my fellow community members.

But John Greaney was also a popular poster at this forum (he founded it and he had a web site on the topic of early retirement for many years before mine went up). John had published one of the Old School studies at his web site (www.RetireEarlyHomePage.com) and he did not want people discussing the errors made in the study. John and his Goon Squad have for the past seven years devoted huge amounts of time and effort to destroying discussion boards and blogs discussing these matters or related matters, using a host of extremely abusive posting practices to do so. I argue in the thread that the owners of personal finance blogs should organize to prevent Goon posters from destroying our property and from intimidating our readership.

Lazy Man said that he does not personally understand the SWR topic (many do not, of course) and suggested that I contact you to see if you would be willing to look into the matter and to help others come to a better-informed understanding of it. I of course think this is a great idea in the event that you are willing to take some time to help us all out.

The problem with the Old School studies is that they do not contain an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. They say that the SWR is always 4 percent. Studies using an analytically valid methodology (one that adjusts for the effect of the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins) report that the SWR can drop to 2 percent at times of high valuations and can rise to 9 percent at times of low valuations. It is not a stable number, but one that varies (this shows that the core premise of the Passive Investing model — that allocation changes are not needed in response to big price changes — does not hold water).

Several big-name experts have announced agreement with my findings. William Bernstein has said that anyone giving thought to using one of the Old School studies would be well-advised to “FuhGedDaBouDit!” Larry Swedroe has described the Old School studies as “Garbage-In, Garbage-Out research. Michael Kitces has linked to my New School calculator at his web site, saying that he views it as a great tool. Ed Easterling has pointed out that millions of retirees will need to take jobs as greeters at WalMart in the days ahead because of the demonstrably false claims made in the Old School studies and the failure of so many to publicize them once we learned of them. Scott Burns has said that I have added a new level to our understanding of safe withdrawal rates but explained that the conventional media does not want to report on our findings because “it is information that most people do not want to hear” (Scott said this before the huge stock crash).

Here is a link to the New School SWR calculator that I make available at my web site:

http://www.passionsaving.com/retirement-calculator.html

If you scroll down that page, you will find links to a number of articles providing further background on the New School research and on the need to warn people about the analytical errors in the Old School studies. If you want to check the research backing up the New School findings, please check out the web site of my partner in development of the calculator, John Walter Russell:

http://www.early-retirement-planning-insights.com/index.html

I would be grateful if you would be willing to take on this task. I think that you could help a lot of blog owners understand some important things about how stock investing really works by doing so. All of the investing materials at my site (there are now four unique calculators, over 100 articles, and close to 100 podcasts) are the work product of investigations into the realities that began after I learned about the errors in the Old School studies and the reluctance that many feel to acknowledging those errors.

Lazy Man has locked the thread linked to above. He has said that he will be discussing the idea of having it taken down altogether with the other owners of the site. An earlier thread called “Problems With the Conventional Investing Advice” was taken down at an earlier time after attracting lots of good comments from a good number of community members (as well as two abusive posts by the Greaney Goons). I have copied Lazy Man on this e-mail as your decision might influence the decision of the owners of the Money Blog Network site on whether or not to permit people there to discuss the matter.

If I can help with any questions, please just let me know. Thanks for the great work you do with your blog and thanks for giving some consideration to the idea of looking into the SWR matter.

Rob

“It Makes Me Feel Better to Hear You Say That”

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Friday’s blog entry set forth the text of an e-mail that I sent to J.D. Roth, the owner of the Get Rich Slowly blog, on May 21, 2009.

While we were exchanging e-mails re my mental illness or lack thereof, we were also exchanging e-mails aimed at solving the problem that gave rise to the discussion — the fact that my comments were not appearing at J.D.’s blog. After the e-mail set forth in Friday’s blog entry, J.D. was able to get a comment of mine to appear properly. In response to his e-mail letting me know this, I sent him the following words:

J.D.:

Thanks.

I’ll try to find a blog entry to comment on in real time tomorrow and see if I can get that to work.

I posted several responses to your comment at my blog. They contain some strong (but I think fair and hopefully helpful) words. Please let me know if they inspire thoughts in you that might help us bring this matter to a positive and constructive resolution.

I am having a very hard time figuring out where you are coming from re all this. I am trying hard.

Rob

I followed that up the following morning with this one:

J.D.:

I reread the e-mails and comments from last night in an attempt to develop a solution that is more satisfying to you while not causing me to feel that I have “doctored” an old post (my view is that words that have been said should remain said and that statements giving false impressions should be corrected through the addition of new words rather than through the subtraction of old ones).

I have added the following language (all in bold) to the end of the paragraph in question:

“[Note (added May 22): Subsequent events have shown that J.D. did NOT block my comments — the posting problem turned out to have been caused by a technical problem afterall]

I hope that helps a tiny bit.

Rob

J.D. responded by saying: “I think this should work fine. And I think this is a reasonable compromise: to add words in the appropriate spots… Thanks!”

I wrote back saying: “It makes me feel better to hear you say that. I also want to express my gratitude to you for your handling of the comments on Bill’s thread. Given the way that it’s been handled, I believe that people holding all points of view feel safe offering their sincere thoughts.”

And everybody lived happily ever after.

Kinda, sorta.

“Reasonable People Are Not Going to Believe That You Are Concerned About My Mental Health, J.D.”

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Yesterday’s blog entry contained the text of an e-mail that I sent to J.D. Roth, owner of the Get Rich Slowly blog, on May 21, 2009. Set forth below are the texts of J.D.’s response to that e-mail and then my reply.

Rob,

You continue to ignore my requests to take down the defamatory remarks. Why is this? I’m asking politely, and it’s a reasonable request. You’ve obviously read the e-mail that I sent you about the problem, yet you choose to not even address it. This is a very real concern for me. It is not a trivial matter.

I don’t want updates or link to future posts. I want the words removed. They are false. They damage my character and my reputation without merit. Please remove them immediately.

–j.d.

J.D.:

I have not ignored you. I have done everything in my power to help you out.

My sense is that you don’t want to “be involved” in the Campaign of Terror matter. I don’t want to “be involved” in it either. All I have ever wanted to do was to post my honest views on investing on the internet. The Goons “involved” me against my will. They involved thousands of others too.

Now they have done the same with you.

You obviously fear what they will do to you if you do your job as a blog owner and alert people to the problem. I am of course sympathetic. But the fact remains that for so long as a ban on honest posting remains in place anyone who writes about investing is affected by it. A ban on honest posting on matters of such importance affect the environment in which you write, J.D. That’s just the reality here. I don’t like it either.

It’s the reality all the same.

You are not writing what you would be writing if you did not fear the Goons. So your work has been affected, whether you like it or not.

You are part of the story because the Goons made you part of the story (they have made everyone who writes about investing part of the story), not because I made you part of the story.

I have an obligation to my readers to tell the story that is taking place (and that is causing them great financial devastation) as clearly and honestly and fully and fairly as possible. That’s my job.

I can assure you that I am happy to do anything in my power (short of posting dishonestly) to help you out. That’s all fine. You are asking me to cross a line that I cannot cross.

Reasonable people are not going to believe that you are concerned about my mental health, J.D. You know that. I know that.  That’s the sort of tactic that I have seen a lot of the Goons employ. Look where it has gotten them. In every case, I reached out and tried to help. I extended the hand of kindness and tried to persuade them that this was not the path to walk. Money questions are serious questions. People who take these questions seriously simply do not behave in this way.

Reasonable people are not going to believe that you see no problem in people failing to correct retirement studies for seven years after they learn of the errors in them. Reasonable people are not going to believe that you see genuine merit in the decision at the Money Bloggers Network to take down the two threads that dealt with this issue after numerous community members there showed great interest in the learning experience they were enjoying (this was especially so with the thread dealing with substantive matters rather than abusive posting problems). Reasonable people are not going to believe that you did not see merit in the Guest Blog Entry that I sent you showing people that the stock crash was a good thing for many of us (the negative emotion that was caused by the stock crash is obviously a big contributing factor to the economic crisis and a blog entry that helps to dispel those negative emotions is obviously one of the most important blog entries you could publish this year).

I am always going to give you the same answers. I am always going to remain enthused to work with you in any way possible to help you (and your readers and any experts with whom you have connections) out. However, I am not going to myself post dishonestly to achieve this result. It is obviously not reasonable for you to expect that.

I have agreed to post your words explaining what happened. I will do that. If you have concerns about how people are going to interpret your words and your actions, I of course understand. if you give me anything to work with, I will bend over backwards to help you out. There are obviously limits to what I can do.

The games help no one. Absolutely no one.

Rob

“I Would Want to Disassociate Myself from that Behavior in Every Way Possible”

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I posted in yesterday’s blog entry an e-mail sent to me on May 21, 2009, by J.D. Roth, owner of the Get Rich Slowly blog. Set forth below is the text of my response e-mail, sent that same evening.

J.D.:

I will post the words from your earlier e-mail (the entire thing) as next Thursday’s blog entry (I have items already in line for the days until then, but, if it is a big deal to you to have the words of your e-mail appear sooner, please let me know and I can move things around.

I will also provide a link at the old blog entry to the one that contains the words of your e-mail.

I think it makes sense to post your second e-mail (the one below) as well. The mental health claim is certainly part of the story. If you give me permission, I will run the full text of this one as well. If you do not, I will summarize this one in the blog entry in which I run the full text of the earlier one.

I am of course sorry to hear about your mother.

I certainly agree that the story of the Campaign of Terror that has been waged against the Retire Early and Indexing discussion board communities for seven years now (and against a number of blogs in recent months) is an amazing one. You’ll get no argument from me re that one. I’ve made a living as a reporter for over 25 years now and I have never seen anything else like it. Holy moly!

I am grateful to you for at least being able to say that my message is “interesting.” I of course understand that it is not your particular message. I don’t believe that that at all justifies you in not writing about the FACTS of the matter. If there were other Rational Investors who were engaging in the behavior that some  Passive Investing dogmatists have been engaging in, I would want to disassociate myself from that behavior in every way possible. Such behavior would not necessarily cause me to change my investing beliefs (I think it might give me pause to reconsider some of them). But I certainly hope that I would recognize the need to report about the behavior and about the damage it has done to numerous discussion-board communities and blogs. The behavior is a story of its own and it is one that reflects poorly on the Passive Investing approach. As you note, the behavior is extraordinary. All Passive Investing advocates should be asking themselves what it is about this investing philosophy that gives rise to such behavior and why it is that so many Passive Investing advocates have failed to speak up against it for so long.

I’ll give you a concrete example of why you should be writing about the Campaign of Terror against the Retire Early and Indexing discussion-board communities even though you do not personally endorse the Rational Investing model. The Bogleheads.org forum has banned posting on The Retirement RIsk Evaluator, the only New School SWR calculator available on the internet. Questions about SWRs and retirement planning are common at that board. There are obviously many in that community who would have great interest in being able to see analytically valid retirement-planning numbers. You should be writing about the ban and about the damage it has done to aspiring retirees and urging a lifting of the ban.

Now say that you prefer the Old School studies. Does that mean that you should NOT post about the ban? I sure don’t see it that way. If you prefer the Old School studies, you should still favor discussion of the alternative to the Old School studies. There are two things that can happen as a result of the airing of a discussion of the problems with the Old School studies and of the merits or lack thereof of the New School calculator. It is of course theoretically possible that the discussions could end up affirming the merit of the Old School studies. That would obviously be a good development from the standpoint of an advocate of the Old School studies. The other possibility is that the discussions could show the benefit of the New School calculator. That could cause you to rethink your position, which is ALSO a good development in circumstances in which the advocates of the Old School studies are not able to make an effective case.

This is not a case in which you need to agree with the investing ideas being put forward to help your readers by drawing their attention to the abusive posting problem. The ban on honest posting on valuations-related topics is a PROCESS question. Bloggers on all sides of the substantive investing topics should be united in urging that discussion of all points of view be permitted in discussions of retirement planning. Blogs owners covering all sorts of non-money topics favor free speech as a general principle. Why should the owners of personal finance blogs be so different? I believe that, if anything, the need for free speech is greater in this area. When people are not permitted to hear both sides of the retirement planning story, they suffer concrete negative effects. This isn’t a case where not hearing both sides might cause someone to think that the Yankees rather than the Red Sox are going to win the World Series. This is a case where a ban on honest posting is likely going to cause people to suffer busted retirements. Not good.

Rob

“You Might Want to See Somebody — This is Paranoia”

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Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that J.D. Roth, the owner of the Get Rich Slowly blog, sent me on May 21, 2009. The background is that I was in the middle of an exciting discussion at J.D.’s blog with Bill Schultheis, the author of The New Coffeehouse Portfolio, when my comments stopped appearing. I made numerous tries to get the comments to appear and contacted J.D. by e-mail to ask for his help; those e-mails were ignored. I wrote at my blog that J.D. had banned me from commenting at his site. J.D. wrote to tell me that this was not so and I posted a correction. J.D. wrote to argue strongly that the correction was not sufficient and that I should remove the earlier comments altogether. I said that I did not feel comfortable removing words that had already been posted but that I would be happy to run a Guest Blog Entry in which J.D. could make the case for why he felt that I had handled the matter poorly.

Hi, Rob.

Thanks for the response.

I do not have time or interest in writing a guest post at your site. What I want is for you to remove the defamatory statements about me and Get Rich Slowly from your site. I’m not trying to be unreasonable, I’m not trying to pick a fight, I’m not trying to persecute you. I’m asking you, as a reasonable adult, to remove the false statements you have made about my actions. They have the potential to damage my reputation. And I’m asking you to do this now, in a nice way, instead of taking other steps. What you wrote crosses a line that ought not be crossed.

You are free to post my previous e-mail PROVIDED YOU POST THE ENTIRE THING AND NOT JUST EXCERPTS. I’m not sure that I have a “take” on anything other than the fact that you claim to have posted comments that have not appeared in my WordPress account to approve, and that you then took this as license for defamation.

Rob, I mentioned in a previous discussion that it seems to me that you might want to see somebody regarding mental health. I was not joking, and I was not trying to be mean. When I read what you write — “A gang of thugs now works virtually full-time posting abusively at discussion boards and blogs to insure that the millions of middle-class workers who need to learn about these issues before they lose more of their retirement money do not find out about them”, etc. — I hear the same sort of things my mother tells me. She struggles with mental health issues. Let me assure you that it is *HIGHLY* unlikely that there is a concerted full-time effort out there to thwart your attempts to share your ideas. This is paranoia, and it needs to be addressed.

Again, I’m not trying to make fun of you and I’m not trying to belittle your concerns. I’m merely suggesting that you might want to seek some help.

So, to summarize my past few messages:

1. I posted a test comment on the thread with problems. Please do the same.

2. Please remove the defamatory comments from this post: http://arichlife.passionsaving.com/2009/05/19/holy-toledo-this-is-great-stuff-the-new-coffeehouse-investor-author-bill-schultheis/

3. Please consider consulting a mental health professional.

4. I have neither time nor interest in contributing a guest post to A Rich Life.

Again, your message is interesting, and I’m glad you’re sharing it. However, it is not *my* message. You’re welcome to share it at Get Rich Slowly, but I’m not willing to pick it up as a crusade.

Please let me know when you’ve posted a test comment and when you’ve removed the defamatory info from your site.

–j.d.