I founded the Financial Freedom Community in December 1999 to serve as a means for middle-class workers to learn how to overcome paycheck dependence. Links to the ten discussion boards comprising the community are set forth below, along with short descriptions of the nature of the content found at the various boards.
Financial Freedom Community Board #1 —
The Motley Fool Board (the First Financial Freedom Community Board)
I first went public with descriptions of the Passion Saving approach to money management with posts that I put to this board in December 1999. For the following year, this was the most exciting board on Planet Internet.
It will cost you some money (about $30 per year) to view the Motley Fool boards, but it is well worth it to be able to tap into the insights offered by the smart, generous, and kind souls who populated this board community during its Golden Age. Those wonderful threads can be found in the Post Archives of this board for December 1999 through January 2001. These threads are the model I look to when aiming to steer our community in a positive direction for today and for years to come. The Post Archives of the Golden Age of the Motley Fool board show the new internet discussion-board communications medium at its very best.
The board has in recent years been overrun with abusive posters and off-topic posting.
Financial Freedom Community Board #2 —
The Early Retirement Forum
This is our most rockin’ board today.
This board is owned by Bill Sholar, who got his start in our community as one of the many fine posters at the Motley Fool board during its Golden Age. Sholar is publisher of the FIRECalc retirement calculator, which employs a discredited conventional-methodology safe-withdrawal-rate analytical framework. He has implicitly acknowledged the analytical errors he made in FIRECalc in posts put to the board, but has not been willing to correct the errors in the calculator itself and has instead elected to ban honest and informed posting on the safe withdrawal rate topic at his board. That decision has of course compromised the integrity of the discussions (especially investing discussions) held here in a serious way.
All that said, this a highly active board in which a good diversity of viewpoints is represented. If you have a desire to participate in ongoing discussions of how to win financial freedom early in life rather than just to view archives of good threads generated in an earlier day, this is probably the best board for you.
Financial Freedom Community Board #3 —
The FIRE (Financially Independent/Retired Early) Board at NoFeeBoards.com
This board had a Golden Age of its own during the first six months of 2003. A number of the best posters from the Motley Fool board formed this board as a means of escaping the abusive posting that ruined (not permanently, I hope!) the Motley Fool board. The FIRE board was never as well-populated, but because the posters were the cream of the crop from the Motley Fool board, the discussions held here were as a rule even better-informed and better-focused.
This board also was eventually overtaken by abusive posters. It is as quiet and spooky as a graveyard today.
Financial Freedom Community Board #4 —
The Safe Withdrawal Rate Research Group
This board took up only investing questions and it was never well-populated. But it offered the most exciting content ever put to a Financial Freedom Community discussion board.
John Walter Russell (now owner of the Early-Retirement-Planning-Insights.com site) published his safe withdrawal rate research here as it was being developed. So SWR Research Group participants saw investment strategy history being written before their eyes in real time. I doubt that there has ever been another internet discussion board at which original research of the significance of the Russell research was presented for community consideration on a post-by-post, insight-by-insight basis. Exciting stuff indeed.
The board was shut down in early 2005 at the insistence of supporters of John Greaney, owner of the RetireEarlyHomePage.com site and publisher of a discredited conventional-methodology safe withdrawal rate study (the REHP study). The archives can be viewed by following the link set forth above and downloading the material from Russell’s Yahoo! briefcase.
Financial Freedom Community Board #5 —
The Vanguard Diehards Board
Strictly speaking, this is not a Financial Freedom Community board. This is a board set up for the discussion of index fund investing. However, in recent months there have been several good threads here on topics of interest to the Financial Freedom Community, including discussions of the new Valuation-Informed Indexing approach to investing (please see the section of this web site that goes by that name for background).
This board community has two important connections to our community.
One, it was Vanguard Founder John Bogle’s writings on the effects of changes in stock valuations that helped me see in the mid-90s the grave flaws in the conventional-methodology safe withdrawal rate studies. It was the discussions of those flaws held in our community during The Great Safe Withdrawal Rate Debate that led to our development of the Valuation-Informed Indexing approach to investing and of The New Buy-and-Hold Investing Paradigm (please see the section of this web site that goes by that name for background).
The second connection is that William Bernstein occasionally posts at the Vanguard Diehards board. Bernstein was the first well-known investing analyst to dare to discuss publicly the flaws of the conventional-methodology safe withdrawal rate studies. His identification of the true safe withdrawal rate on Page 234 and the powerful insights set forth in Chapter Two of his book The Four Pillars of Investing were key to the development of both the Valuation-Informed Indexing investing approach and The New Buy-and-Hold Investing Paradigm. Bernstein both confirmed and expanded on his earlier SWR claims in the recent threads.
Financial Freedom Community Board #6 —
The Raddr-Pages.com Board
“Raddr”, the owner of this board, is one of three researchers who have developed analytically valid approaches to determining safe withdrawal rates (the others are John Walter Russell and William Bernstein). He was one of the first posters in our community to publicly point out the grave flaws of the REHP study (the study published by John Greaney at the RetireEarlyHomePage.com site), dismissing it as “bogus research.” He was severely criticized for expresssing this viewpoint at the time, but was vindicated by the in-depth examination of the historical stock-return data that took place during The Great Safe Withdrawal Rate Debate.
This board is not nearly as well-populated as the Early Retirement Forum, and the range of topics discussed is narrower. Still, the posters in this community usually generate one or two solid threads per week. If you have the time available to you to do so, it is worth checking out.
Financial Freedom Community Board #7 —
The RetireEarlyHomePage.com Board
Not recommended.
Financial Freedom Community Board #8 —
The Passion Saving Board at the Motley Fool Site
There were some fine threads developed in the early days of this board. It is not active today. There is nothing essential in the post archives.
Financial Freedom Community Board #9 —
The FIRE WannaBees Board at the Motley Fool Site
I have never had time available to study this board at all closely. It appears from a quick review to have a good bit of useful material posted to it.
Financial Freedom Community Board #10 —
The Moving Out of the Fast Lane Board at the Motley Fool Site
The same words that apply to the FIRE WannaBees board apply to this one as well. If you have some time available to do so, please check it out and let me know what you think.
Welcome to the Monkey House! — er, I mean, the Community!