Sometimes what you say does make a HUGE difference!

After my critical 3-star initial review in 2011, the author replied directly to me publically on Amazon:

Thank you for your excellent review, Stephen. I’m the book’s author, and I find your detailed review to be very helpful…what you liked and what you didn’t. With the final chapter, you’ve taught me to be much clearer with my writing. I have never used Valueline’s stock recommendations. But when I used to buy individual stocks, I used Valueline to find businesses with low debts, high returns on total capital, etc. But Valueline was a starting point, not an ending point. I never bought a stock based on their recommendations. Based on your detailed review, I can tell that you’re a careful reader….it was obviously me, who wasn’t the articulate writer, in this case.
As for the article you read about me selling individual stocks, recently, to invest in indexes, that’s true. But I have always invested in indexes. Roughly half of my account was indexed, and half of it was in individual stocks. Today, however, I see the light, and my personal account (as I mentioned in my book) is fully indexed.
I was also–based on your review–disappointed at how I communicated the relative futility of trying to beat indexes with individual stocks. I started and ended that chapter with a caveat: if you can’t keep yourself from buying some individual stocks, then do it with a small part of your portfolio…and keep in mind that you won’t likely beat the market.
Again, I probably wasn’t as clear as I should have been with that message. And I truly appreciate your feedback on that matter.

Thanks again Stephen,
Andrew Hallam

The author admitted that he should have been clearer! YEAH! I’ll say!

Here was the confusion: The author wrote with a straight face that readers could successfully predict individual stocks when all through the book, he championed index investing. The book had 9 Rules. While the first 8 devoted to frugal living, index investing, etc, Rule 9 change course 180 degrees and started talking about how to pick individual stocks. Rule 9 was totally different. The author was a Canadian teacher who retired early and I wanted my teacher colleagues here in the states to see that teachers can retire sooner than they think. But I was angry and disappointed with his individual stock picking crap in Rule 9. Yes! INDIVIDUAL STOCK PICKING! Hence, I gave the author only 3 stars.

John Bogle the father of index investing, and all of the index authors Andrew quoted and cited would never agree about individual stock picking as a good strategy. I still recommended the book but told readers to ignore Rule 9. Apparently other reviewers saw the same hypocrisy. Andrew and the publisher agreed with us!

In the 2nd Edition published in 2017, they dropped the old Rule 9 and replaced it with additional information that fits with the first 8 spot-on Rules.

I never know this until recently. Of course, I did not expect any further acknowledgment by the author or the publisher on the matter as they got the message that this needs to be fixed. A teacher on Facebook pointed out that in Edition 2 was different from Edition 1. I couldn’t believe it and checked it out. My colleague was right! So, I have changed my rating to 5 stars as the book is now consistent with John Bogle and all of the other authors the author quoted and cited, who championed the indexing strategy (Bernstein, Ricci, Samuelson, Swedroe, and Larimore).

Here is my updated 5-star review on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R236II4CAS7W6P/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1119356296 

This turn of events made my week even though we are still going through one of the worst times in American and world history, COVID 19 epidemic.

My 2nd quarter report on my portfolio performance during this volatile 2nd quarter will be published right after July 1st.

 

Steve’s Bio

Stephen A. Schullo, Ph.D. (UCLA ’96) taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) for 24 years and UCLA Extension teaching educational technology to student teachers. Steve wrote investment articles for the United Teacher-Los Angeles (UTLA) union newspaper for 13 years. He has been featured and quoted in many mainstream media articles about 403(b) plans, including the Los Angeles Times, NY Times, and U.S. News and World Report. He co-founded an investor self-help group 403bAware for teacher colleagues and wrote 7,500 posts in three investment forums since 1997. He testified at California State legislative hearings and honored with the “Unsung Hero” award by his teacher’s union for his retirement planning advocacy.

For the last 14 years, he serves as a volunteer on LAUSD’s Investment Advisory Committee as a “Member-at-Large” and former co-chair. The committee contains collective bargaining reps from the unions and monitors the district’s tax-deferred retirement plans, 457b/403b, of 55,000 former and current LAUSD employees, worth $2.8 billion in total assets.

He started this blog in 2012 to help all PreK-12 public school educators nationwide, especially his Los Angeles Unified School District colleagues. He belongs to a small national group of 403(b) advocates (mostly teachers) who want to bring closer attention to the 403(b). During the last 25 years, 40 newspaper articles have been published and each one says the same thing, TSAs (Tax Sheltered Annuities) are terrible 403(b) plans and the salesperson gets the benefit from lucrative commissions and high-costs. Nobody in educational leadership reads these articles NOR talk about the proper place for annuity products publically. We come together at 403bwise.com and 403bwise Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/349968819000560/ Come on over if you want to join us so we can help our colleagues avoid these self-conflicted and high-cost Tax-sheltered Annuities (TSAs).

Steve is the author of two books, Late Bloomer Millionaires and Fighting Powerful Interests: Educators Challenge Tax-sheltered Annuities and WIN!, a story of how a handful of LAUSD educators struggled for years to improve the 403(b) to no avail. But we never quit! We were instrumental in LAUSD’s implementation of the new 457(b) plan and earned a very rare, but very precious “Plan Design” award.

For a copy of both books, email Steve at steve.schullo@latebloomerwealth.com and he will happily email you both books, FREE with no obligation except to read them and get informed, in a pdf file format.