A Collection of Mean Comments – Part 2

Achieving More Notoriety

Once again Freedom 35 Blog has become the subject of debates and discussions across several online news sites and public message boards. 🙂

This humble little blog is becoming more popular than ever! I’ve found some of these online remarks and wanted to share them with my regular readers here. Below is a collection of mean comments about me and this blog from forums and discussion boards around the web.

15-12-freedom35-around-the-world-popular-online-remarks

Sweet butter crumpets! Well guess what, internet? Now it’s my turn to respond!

Where to even begin? Well first of all, let me just start by pointing out how surprisingly refreshing it is to hear all these unique viewpoints. 😀 As a novice investor who still has a lot to learn I genuinely appreciate any helpful feedback I can get. I don’t know any of these commentators, but I’m sure they’re all friendly people in real life.

But with that said, I can also take a hint. I think the general gist from these comments is clear: If interest rates go up then I’m screwed. 🙁

I would have to agree. I have always been complacent about cheap credit in the past. But I must face reality. I have a mortgage and some other debt obligations so I can’t just ignore interest rate risk anymore.

That is why I have recently taken steps to appropriately address this risk. 🙂 In October I wrote about borrowing $4,000 to purchase Royal Bank shares at $71 per share. Banks are in the business of lending money and collecting interest, so they stand to gain when interest rates rise. Once my Royal Bank shares increase in value I can use the returns to pay down my debts. It’s the perfect plan. I believe this new $4,000 investment will adequately hedge against the looming cost of any possible interest rate increase in the near future. 😉 I really appreciate the concern from all those commentators. After accepting and acting on their constructive feedback I feel much better about my financial situation now.

It’s important that we learn from our mistakes and move on with greater knowledge and experience. We should make decisions based on solid facts, sound reasoning, and undeniable evidence! Don’t let emotions get in the way of investment choices. 🙂 Money is a very personal subject, so do not take any of my opinions or suggestions as sound financial advice.

Thank you everyone, for reading and sharing! Putting together these comment compilations from other websites is always a ton of fun! If you want to read more internet remarks about this blog check out Part 1 from last year.

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Random Useless Fact:

This was how the opening crawl of Star Wars was filmed back in 1980.

15-12-star-wars-crawl-filmed-empire

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Dividend Growth Investor
12/14/2015 8:19 am

Congratulations on achieving notoriety. I would love it if Reddit users talked about how much they hate my site – including linking to it in their discussions.

I will admit too that your method of investing is a little riskier for my own personal likelihood. Perhaps it may be reasonable to start paying off those margin loans using the dividends you receive.

The thing of course is that most of your debt consists of your home mortgage and the mortgage on your land. Assuming that those are long-term and fixed interest rates, you should do fine over time.

PS Most of the people who write hateful comments are those who have failed at investing. There is a blogger called Michael James on Money, who consistently writes against my site. The problem is that this person spent 15 years of their life investing, yet never really made a profit doing so. The reason why he is so hateful is because he wants to take his frustrations of being a failure himself onto others. I would assume most of those internet commenters are talking against you because they feel like failures in their lives.

Ben Reynolds
12/14/2015 8:31 am

Most people don’t know that Buffett (and the lesser known Shelby Davis) used a leverage ratio of about 1.3x to 1.5x to add to their returns. I don’t personally use debt to finance my investing, but there’s an argument to be made for using cheap credit to compound your wealth – if done conservatively. Long Term Capital Management (and a lot of other hedge funds) is a great example of over-use of leverage.

Vanessa
Vanessa
12/14/2015 9:56 am

Ugh! Don’t even bother with what people say about you! The internet, even our little corner of the PF world is so catty and can be so cruel.

Anonymous
Anonymous
12/14/2015 11:32 am

It seems people are pattern matching ‘guy uses lots of leverage and emojis’, and peg you as a fool, without looking past the surface puns and image memes to see the hard-nosed investing strategy at work here. It makes you look less serious, but I guess that’s just how you roll. 🙂 I know that you realize your methods are suited and limited to young people with high risk tolerance, and only while we’re in this historically low interest rate environment. You’ve spelled it out in previous posts, that when circumstances change, your allocations and methods are going to change as well. The risk is in executing that re balancing, especially if your hand is forced by things happening very suddenly (ie interest rate shock or rapid inflation).

As an aside, I’m impressed by how you respond to your critics, especially certain commenters here. There’s a difference between objecting to certain arguments, and then being a contrarian about every little thing just for the sake of it.

Olivia
Olivia
12/14/2015 12:14 pm

You just proved how above all of this you are by your response and I’m very impressed. I could learn a lot from you.

And for the record, your emoticons and bad puns are awesome 🙂

beth
beth
12/14/2015 3:32 pm

“Dumb white young people”? Do people invest differently based on their race? That was just crazy.

MB
MB
12/14/2015 6:13 pm

I’ve followed your blog since I started contributing to my first RRSP 5 years ago. Knowing not even what an RRSP was back then, to having over $130,000 net worth today, I found that your blog complimented my independent learning very well. Maybe your blog is not for every investor out there, but I’ve gained a lot from reading your posts. I think your blog is most beneficial for the beginner – intermediate investor and those just not knowing where to start with the investment world.

Keep up the good work. Negative posts like those just drive interest and traffic directly to your blog. Let the haters hate, and then use your advertisement revenue to pay down your bad debt.

Anon
Anon
12/14/2015 8:01 pm

I view those responses in a different light.

The overwhelming majority of personal finance blogs are owned and operated by amateurs, that is, not financial sector professionals. Thus, all comments posted to blog entries are merely a form of amateur peer review of published material. Amateur begets amateur.

If you want to read intelligent and insightful comments and conversations, I suggest you visit blogs run by financial professionals (but be warned, they will surely be void of ‘smileys’).

The other matter is the truncated attention span of the Internet. The very nature of successful blogging requires new content as the prime driver, thus in-depth development of ideas derived from commentary at length simply does not exist.

Best to regard almost all amateur personal finance blogs as entertainment and value their content as such.

(Regarding your “kids” tweet….it’s neither selfish or unselfish…it’s merely fulfilling what our DNA (and ALL DNA) is programmed to do — procreate. It’s like asking what’s more selfish, walking or running?)

Financial independence
12/15/2015 10:38 am

Well it is a publicity, one way or another. Than one does need to start somewhere!

We have to fight for ourselves, is middle class is rapidly loosing ground: http://www.niterainbow.com/2015/12/the-us-middle-class-is-losing-ground.html

BeSmartRich
12/15/2015 2:02 pm

Hahahaha, I can’t stop laughing. Your blog is becoming more popular everyday! 🙂 Just wanted to let you know that I am a big fan of your emoticon and random facts. Not to mention, your honest and great insights of debts. Love it and love it!

Cheers,

BSR

PC
PC
12/15/2015 9:56 pm

Haters going to hate. Ignore the noise, just do your thing. You are on the right path to financial freedom. I know you’re real deal.

Joe Persicone
Joe Persicone
12/16/2015 4:53 am

Classy blog post freedom thirty five. Gotta love the doomers! Buddy you’re a true contrarian. Going against the grain. That’s rare. When you break it down – you’re just using debt to purchase income producing assets…….not a Lexus or Miele appliances. Even if the doomers are right and we’re in for some hurting, when the dust settles people like you will still end up ahead. I enjoy your blog and your opinions, even if I don’t agree with all of them.

Keep the blue side up.
Joe

Financial Samurai
12/18/2015 9:39 am

Fun stuff! How did you find out all those comments? Was there a pingback or something?

I assume nobody talks about me behind my back. 🙂

FB
FB
12/20/2015 8:57 pm

Hello Liquid,
I enjoy reading your blog and learned quite a bit on investing. Thank you for being open and sharing your experience.
Have you run a model to see what may happen to your strategy if interest rate rises? Let say interest goes by 1%, 2% etc. What would you sell first to keep debt at a minimum? Would you for example sell a farm and keep the other one?
Best wishes

Jess @ Best Credit Cards Canada
12/21/2015 5:41 pm

Wow, people are harsh especially when it is not to your (virtual) face. It seems to me like you are confident and know what you are doing and your honestly helps everyone else who is reading this along the way. Like anything, sometimes things work and sometimes they don’t. I really enjoy your blog!

Karen
12/27/2015 8:32 am

In the words of Taylor Swift…”Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate. I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake. Shake it off. Shake it off.” Or something like that. You know you’re popular when you have people criticizing you all over the world wide web. I wonder if any of these people are any good with investing or their own finances. All that time they’re spending dissing people who are doing well financially could seriously be put to better use.

Josh Daniels (@Trade4_Freedom)
12/28/2015 6:52 am

Hey Liquid!!

Haters gon’ hate mang. Listen, your doing an amazing job. And you top that off with amazing delivery through your blog. If people think what your doing is “risky” they would lose their minds if they seen my TFSA grow to over 100,000$ in just 15 months!

To achieve superior investment results, you have to hold non consensus views regarding value and risk, and they have to be accurate. In an otherwise efficient market you must have an unconventional method of thinking, Howard Marks calls it second level thinking. You can;t do the same thing others do and expect and expect to outperform.

Risk is just relative. If you have a conventional investing method that you think is low risk, think again. What I do is considered risky, and it is for the weekend investor. Most amateur investors emphasize stock picking, and put no thought on when to exit. Your sell/stop loss is more important than the stocks you pick. Study selling, to protect yourself from losing everything.

Keep writing liquid, you have real traders/investors that look forward to reading your blog. Good luck, see you on the other side of the rat race.

Another Perspective
Another Perspective
12/30/2015 11:16 am

Hi Liquid,

Been following your blog for almost a year now. The amount of leverage you use is beyond my risk tolerance, but that is all a personal preference! Most of those comments are just angry people who can vent on the internet.

Here’s a bit of caution for your strategy address the interest rate risk. If rates rise, the banks don’t necessarily make more money on their loans, because the cost of lending has gone up too (banks also borrow). However, there will be fewer people looking to borrow at higher interest rates, so banks will be getting less new business. Hard to know if the interest rate rise would be a positive or a negative overall for shareholders!

If you do want to mitigate your interest rate risk, you may need to look at some other options.

Cheers!

Fee
Fee
01/03/2016 4:28 am

Comparing you to a ‘Shoe shine boy’???…Oh my goodness, what an outdated, ignorant opinion. Do these people KNOW about the awards your refreshing and entertaining gem of a website has garnered?
I would be so proud if any of my children became a shoe shine boy/GIRL and displayed your ambition, entrepreneurship, research skills and sense of humour!
Stick with your friends, Liquid, and stay away from the Deep Dark Web!!!

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05/09/2016 6:06 am

[…] doesn’t matter very much. This is why I have a relatively high risk tolerance, even though some people don’t approve. It’s because I’m in my twenties and if I can get that higher rate of return on my […]

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03/25/2017 8:00 pm

[…] Here is part 2 of people’s remarks about this blog. […]