This page sets forth links to articles referring to Rob Bennett’s book Passion Saving: The Path to Plentiful Free Time and Soul-Satisfying Work, to his daily Financial Freedom Blog, to the rise of The New School of Safe Withdrawal Rate Analysis (founded and led by Rob), and to Rob’s other writings on the Passion Saving approach to money management.
Greenhorn Vallley View, Saving With Passion
Juicy Excerpt: Before you realized what was happening, you’d have so many spending categories permanently funded that your need for current income would go down. Now think of the possibilities. Retire early! Do volunteer work! Do work that you’re passionate about, even though the current income isn’t as much as you formerly would have needed.
WorldTalkRadio.com, Passion Saving: Pay Off Your Mortgage (March 12, 2007 Edition of the “Just Do the Math” Program)
Juicy Excerpt: You also feel liberated from conventional thinking.
Note: This program examines the article at the PassionSaving.com site entitled “Ten Reasons for Paying Off the Mortgage.” The purpose of the program is to promote a mortgage product. I have not examined the mortgage product, and am not able to comment on it.
St. Paul Pioneer Press, Time-Shifting Technology Puts the Viewer Back in Control (link no longer available)Juicy Excerpt: Netflix, meanwhile, is a treasure trove of old shows on rent-by-mail DVDs. This is how Rob Bennett of Purcellville, Va., introduced his two sons to the wonders of “The Honeymooners,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “The Twilight Zone.” It’s how he time-shifts TV that “was, in some cases, recorded nearly 50 years ago.”
SmartMoney.com, Sometimes Grad School Can Be a Big Financial Mistake
Juicy Excerpt: “They go to grad school to find themselves,” Bennett says. Ultimately, they find themselves thousands of dollars in debt.
Norm Goldman, Interview With Rob
Juicy Excerpt: If you start out by telling the people you are trying to persuade that they are dumb or that they lack willpower, you’ve lost them at the start line. That’s not the way to go. It’s your job as a money advisor to find out why people are doing things that seem dumb. That’s the job. Don’t blame the dogs if they cannot stand the smell of your dog food, you know? Try some different ingredients.
BookPleasures.com, Review of Passion Saving
Juicy Excerpt: His advice is sound and he has a great deal more “horse sense” than many of the so-called “experts” in the field of money management. Money management books are often dull and uninspiring. However, Bennett avoids this with a snappy, entertaining prose style bolstered by sound and level-headed advice.
The Wall Street Journal,
How to Survive Retirement — Even If You’re Short on Savings
Juicy Excerpt: You might limit your initial portfolio withdrawal rate to just 3% or 4%, equal to $3,000 or $4,000 for every $100,000 saved. This is well below the 5% and 6% withdrawal rates that used to be advocated and reflects, in part, a concern about today’s lofty stock valuations and low after-inflation bond yields.
Investor’s Business Daily, Solutions for Resolutions
Juicy Excerpt: “It is the small positive feedback obtained from small successes . . that provides the encouragement needed to stick to the resolution long enough for the desired behavior to become a habit,” Bennett said.
The Island Packet, Still Keeping Those Resolutions?
Juicy Excerpt: “A resolution to cut out one can of soda normally consumed with lunch could work,” wrote Bennett, author of passionsaving.com. [Editor’s Note — Or so I hope, since cutting back to a single can of Mountain Dew at lunch is my resolution!]
Tesh.com, Don’t Fall for These Money Myths
Juicy Quote: If you save $200 a month to go on vacation, instead of borrowing it, that means you’ll get to take one extra trip every 4 years for NO extra cost! If you’d like to go further, check out the tips at PassionSaving.com.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Shopping Partners
Juicy Excerpt: “The key in selecting a shopping partner is finding someone who shares the same general life goals and who communicates well with you,” said Rob Bennett, author of the Financial Freedom blog at PassionSaving.com.
The New York Times, Remembering a Classic Investing Theory
Juicy Excerpt: They argued that P/E ratios should not be based on only one year’s worth of earnings. It is much better, they wrote in “Security Analysis,” to look at profits for “not less than five years, preferably seven or ten years.” This advice has been largely lost to history.Note: The P/E10 valuation assessment tool described in this article has been resurrected by John Walter Russell and Rob Bennett for use in The Stock-Return Predictor calculator available at this site.
HR Magazine (link no longer available)
Juicy Excerpt: It can take three to seven years before the employee reaches a point at which he can do the job in his sleep. Now the employee must actively begin looking to move to a new challenge.
The Money Muse, Favorite Quotes from Passion Saving
Juicy Excerpt: Here is my favorite line from Rob’s book: “It’s spending that makes you rich!” Doesn’t it sound so counter productive? However, over the next two paragraphs Rob takes time to chat with you about the main reason for saving…that is, to spend money on things that add quality to your life. Lovely!
Albany Times-Union, The Name Game
Juicy Excerpt: Secret titles are not the product of a charitable mind, he says, and that’s when problems erupt.
I offer my comments on an article at the St. Petersburg Times entitled Jack Bogle Weighs In With the Bogleheads (Link No Longer Available). I observe that: “This board was created by a group of highly abusive posters who destroyed the Vanguard Diehards board because it permitted honest posting on Bogle’s views on the effect of valuations on long-term returns (some of Bogle’s views are highly controversial at times of high stock prices).” This prompts a number of “defenders” of Passive Investing to put forward abusive posts. One argues that: “Rob, there are 5,000 members at Bogleheads. They seem to be doing just fine, with many posts every day. Are the site owners really abusive or is this sour grapes on your part since your participation isn’t wanted?”
Money Magazine endorses the Bogleheads.com site, listing it as “one of the best 28 web sites” in its December 2007 issue. Reporter Pat Regnier ignores my e-mail offering to discuss my experiences at the board with him. In that e-mail (posted as the November 14, 2007 entry to the blog), I explained that: “One of the ‘leaders’ of the board (Mel Lindauer, co-author of The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing) took great offense to my posting on the valuations question and organized a long-running smear campaign against me and those who posted in support of me. This smear campaign grew so intense and ugly that the new Bogleheads board was formed as a means for community members who wanted to escape the ugliness to be able to do so.”
Jim Wiandt, Publisher of IndexUniverse.com, writes at his blog:
“What Is It With Guys Named Rob?
Longtime index agitator Rob Arnott has now been joined on these pages by a Vanguard Diehard agitator named Rob Bennett….” These words were at a later time removed from the article. The many comments critical of the ban on honest posting on valuations imposed by the “leaders” of the Bogleheads.com board were also removed from the comments section for the article that is the focus of the blog entry. Finally, the article that I wrote for IndexUniverse.com at Jim’s invitation (“A New Approach to Staying the Course”) was spiked. Jim observes that: “I’m actually excited that we will likely be pulled a bit in the Bogleheads’/Diehards’ direction.”
IndexUniverse.com sees over two dozen comments appear (many have since been removed) in response to an article entitled “The Long Road: Diehard II,” many criticizing it for ignoring the ban on honest posting on valuations that caused the destruction of the board (and a good number applauding this too). Pete Elm, a longtime contributor to the board, writes that: “Lindauer (the reference is to Mel Lindauer, co-author of The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing) threatened bodily harm to more than one poster on the Morningstar forum.” The comment is removed. JohnDCraig, another long-time poster (now banned) says: “What actually caused the M* forum decline, and that of other forums before it, was the amazing level of hocus bashing. Hocus’ activity seems to generate enormous cult followings of attackers…. People often want to psychoanalyze hocus, but they should instead try and psychoanalyze the cults…. There were no holds barred for this cult; any attacks and insults against hocus were fair game, and M* did nothing to stop these (now mainstream) attacks even though they did violate M* express policies.
I post a Letter to the Editor at .www.Early-Retirement-Planning-Insights.com entitled The Rule of 20-20. I say: “The usual advice is that a young person should not care too much about valuations because he has lots of time to recover from a big price drop. I question this idea. If the young person views the investing game as a lifetime game, he sees that time periods in which losses dominate are followed by time periods in which huge gains over short periods of time are possible. The young person’s big opportunity is that time period in which big gains are possible. He should be planning for that in the time when big losses are likely rather than comforting himself with talk that the losses aren’t so bad because he has time to recover.”