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.
MSN Money, How Early Retirees Insure Their Health
Juicy Excerpt: The Bennett family of Purcellville, Va., has a $10,000 deductible as well as a higher monthly premium: $700. The policy includes maternity benefits, which some high-deductible policies don’t, and the coverage came in handy during Mary Bennett’s pregnancy with her younger son, now 5, when complications required her hospitalization.
Lindauerheads Investment Forum, Why No Love for Valuation-Informed Indexing?
Juicy Excerpt: I’ve been further looking at Bennett’s site and it certainly is an interesting read for anyone who hasn’t looked at it. You’ve got to love that he gives “twenty criticisms” of his own approach and “ten weaknesses” with himself as a money advisor….If he’s a self-described “egomaniac” and a “numbers dunce,” I’m not sure he’s the one to be taking the non-stationary correlations from the Shiller paper and reifying them in the form of a retirement simulator. Still, if Shiller’s mostly right and if the behavioral finance people who say people can’t really stomach “stocks for the long term” are mostly right, then i think there’s definitely something to be said for the basic strategy.
The Digerati Life, Deconstructing Market Timing Strategies
Juicy Excerpt: Market timing appears to have various flavors and not all timing approaches may lead to investment underperformance. I say this, while citing this piece about market timing [these words link to the article “Market Timing — What Works and What Does Not,” which appears at the “Valuation-Informed Indexing” section of the PassionSaving.com site), which attempts to describe different approaches that fall under the timing umbrella.
Motley Fool Investing Analysis Clubs, New Calculator Predicts Poor Long-Term Growth
Juicy Quote: It sounds like Bennett and Russell have put lots of time into the research behind this calculator, so it will be interesting to see if they are right…. Move the P/E slider to about 6 and watch your possible returns grow! As you say, it’s an interesting tool.
Andrey’s Blog, Financial Freedom (Link No Longer Available)
Juicy Excerpt: I like this “down to the earth” blog about gaining financial freedom https://www.passionsaving.com/index.html. Simple tips for regular people.
NoNiche Internet Magazine, How I Became Addicted to Not Watching Television [Link No Longer Available]
Juicy Excerpt: My encouraging word is that it is not only television that is addictive. Running is addictive. Reading is addictive. Conversation with friends is addictive. Planning a start-up business is addictive.
West Coast Wiccan Blog, The Need for Greenary of All Kinds (Link No Longer Available)
Juicy Excerpt: It seems to be a truism that pagans are always broke (and therefore I fit right in!)…. I came across an interesting website which I think may help: https://www.passionsaving.com/ The theory of it, that you need to plan your debt reduction and saving and so forth according to exciting goals rather than boring, distant ones, seems to tie right into the conclusion I had already reached when I decided to have a five-year plan of emigrating to England – and doing it debt-free.
ExpertRetirementPlanning.com, Free Expert Resource — The Retirement Risk Evaluator
Juicy Excerpt: You should check out The Retirement Risk Evaluator, an innovative “new school” retirement calculator. The Retirement Risk Evaluator is the very first retirement calculator to take valuation under consideration.
Monster.com, Take Time to Think About Work
Juicy Excerpt: “Many of us have our only quiet time when we’re heading off to sleep,” says Rob Bennett, author of Passion Saving: The Path to Plentiful Free Time and Soul-Satisfying Work.
Bankrate.com, Working Life Goes On for Serial Retirees
Juicy Excerpt: “Now I’m at the point where I only have to make $12,000 a year or so to pay my bills and that covers food, utilities and other day-to-day expenses,” he says.
New Jersey Star-Ledger, Big Buying Sends Dow to Highest Level Ever
Juicy Excerpt: “Investors should lower the amount of their wealth they devote to stocks because the downside is an ocean of pain,’ said Rob Bennett, who writes a financial blog for PassionSaving.com.
Northwest Indiana Times, Tax Refund Burning a Hole in Your Pocket?
Juicy Excerpt: Though paying off old debts may not be as much fun in the short-term, it means “you will be positioned to earn solid, long-term returns and will not have the deadweight of interest payments on old loans holding you down” in the future, Bennett said.
Woman’s World, 10 Ways to Recapture Your Childhood Spirit (Issue dated April 3, 2007)
Juicy Excerpt: “Listen to records that were important to you as a child,” says Rob Bennett, author of Passion Saving: “They will remind you that you are the same person.”
PRWeb.com, Calculator Smashes Safe Withdrawal Rate Myths
Juicy Excerpt: Juicy Excerpt: “The idea that a 4 percent withdrawal is safe for retirements beginning at all valuation levels is a dangerous fantasy,” said Bennett.
Christian Science Monitor, When a Layoff is the Reward for Experience
Juicy Excerpt: “The problem is that pay increases are given partly for merit and partly in response to pressures to satisfy employees who want to feel they are moving forward in their careers over time, says Rob Bennett, publisher of a personal-finance website, PassionSaving.com.
The Get New Rich blog notes that “today’s economy is drastically different from the economy of the past few decades” and uses insights developed at www.PassionSaving.com to develop “10 New Money Management Techniques” that make sense for The New Economy.
The Bogleheads wiki statement on safe withdrawal rates dances about the Retire Early/Indexing Communty findings that the Old School studies are analytically invalid, hinting at the dangers of using these studies to plan a retirement but failing to put forward an explicit warning re their inaccuracies or to provide links to the New School findings. The wiki statement says: “Unfortunately, the term “Safe Withdrawal Rate” is necessarily an ambiguous term. This is because initial methods utilized historical data to statically determine what would have been safe given the actual results that past portfolios would have generated with the variables given. The next logical step, of course, was to use that information to predict future SWRs. Either use is technically correct, but one should always be sure to be clear whether the use is in reference to past or projected SWRs, so that unnecessary argument can be prevented.”
I post a guest blog entry at the Generatiion X Finance blog entitled Price Drops Are Good for Young Investors in the Stock Market. I say: “The reason why price drops make many of today’s investors anxious is that we were told so often during the huge bull that stocks are always the best investment for the long run and most of us are wildly overinvested in stocks today as a result. The answer is to learn how valuations affect long-term stock returns, to lower our stock allocations to more reasonable levels.”
I post a Letter to the Editor at the www.Early-Retirement-Planning-Insights.com site entitled Dividend Theory vs. Dividend Reality. I say: “I’m always interested in discovering how it comes to be that people believe things that are not so because those discoveries often point to fundamental analytical errors and corrections of fundamental analytical errors often generate big pay-offs.”
I post a Letter to the Editor at the www.Early-Retirement-Planning-Insights.com site entitled Refusing to See the Obvious. I say: “Is there information public as to whether securities firms ever make contributions that could in some way influence the types of questions studied or the types of methodologies employed? ”