A Fount Of Hard-Earned Wisdom: In Memory Of Regarded Solutions
A little over a year ago, Alan Saltzman – known here as Regarded Solutions – was triumphantly returning to Seeking Alpha after a lengthy period battling and recovering from cancer. He was eager to share his investing wisdom with the world again, to reconnect with his many loyal readers and to reach new ones. He was also accustomed to having a dedicated editor – and as luck would have it, that person became me.
His first article back was memorable in particular for the beautiful comments section, filled with readers who were thrilled to see him back in the saddle, recuperating and writing again – especially given where the market was in March 2020. He wrote me an over-the-moon email after the reader feedback had begun rolling in, thrilled with the avalanche of warm replies and characteristically giving me far too much credit for my minuscule role in his return – while giving himself far too little credit for his own writing abilities:
I wanted to give you my heartfelt thank you for making my comeback article so successful.
The comments have been heartwarming and people still appreciate my less than scholarly writing!
It is a rough time for investors, and a calm word can soothe some souls I believe.
I am so happy and blessed to have you as my editor and I feel as if you've given me a new path to be relevant!
200 messages, 145 likes, 60 new followers.....wow imagine if it was even more heartfelt!
And he merrily plowed on month after month with his trademark "Let it fly!" when he submitted, generously doling out his clear-eyed, hard-earned investing and life lessons in a way only he could. Underlying his slow-and-steady approach to investing was his inspiring backstory – he didn't start investing until relatively late in life, and was entirely self-taught, yet got himself to a stupefyingly impressive place in that amount of time. All he wanted with his SA articles was to teach as many people as possible how they, too, could build that kind of financial security. He shared his frank perspective, as well, on how he got out of the market when his life and health could no longer accommodate the stress or the high-stakes decision-making (which he first discussed back in 2018, when he'd initially made that difficult call).
In that time I had the honor of getting to know this bighearted, down-to-earth man – Alan would often share news of how he was doing in his ongoing treatments, how happily baffled everyone was at the disappearance of the cancer, how much he loved and was proud of his family, and how much he cherished writing for SA. Every time he updated me on his health, the news seemed to get better and better, even though he still had to go for rounds of maintenance chemo that he always seemed to brush off as just another thing to deal with. He'd actually apologize if he couldn't get an article to me in a given week because of chemo, although just as often he still managed to submit despite being in the midst of another round, depending on how he felt.
That's because it wasn't work to him. Sharing his insights with his "Seeking Alpha family," as he often called his readers, energized him and gave him a lot of joy – especially during the COVID lockdowns, which he had to take especially seriously given his health. He often talked about how his SA articles kept him busy and were one of his few outlets – one of the few ways he still had of staying relevant even as he was stuck indoors, retired, with a still-looming threat of cancer. He also had a fierce competitive streak – one that anyone would recognize if they saw him tussle with naysayers in the comments – and it meant he had a laser-like focus on consistently getting fresh articles out to readers, on how much engagement those articles got and how many people they reached.
Not so long ago we had a long, rambling phone call, officially arranged so we could talk more directly on what direction he might go in with his articles, how to amp up their reach, and how to evolve on SA generally. He ultimately decided he'd go back to basics – back to the portfolio strategy pieces he began with 10 years and over 1,000 articles ago, when no one else on SA was doing it. Yet once we hashed that out, he turned the conversation to what wisdom he could offer as someone who had far more life experience than myself, a self-made guy who loved his family fiercely, who always lived on his own terms and who had staved off stage 4 cancer. In particular, he had a great deal to impart on how to think about the future and on staying focused on what matters – which, to him, always came back to family and finding happiness in your life. The other thing that sticks out is how funny he was – his sense of humor permeated the entire call, no matter what we were discussing. I still go back to that conversation often in my mind, and have a feeling it's one I'll continue to revisit for a long time to come. I'm heartbroken there won't be any more.
When he texted me in February to let me know his cancer had come back, he reported it with his characteristic mix of realism and – somehow, at the same time – stalwart optimism. I clung on to that hopefulness, especially when he still forged ahead and worked up two more articles after that point, then emailed me some time later with a "HIYA" subject line and an excited update that he was working on yet another new one – all this in the midst of chemo treatments that he'd told me were not going down well, even at small doses. When a week or two then passed with no follow-up, I began to worry and tried getting in touch with him, to no avail. Next thing I knew, I got the awful news that he had passed away – news I'm still processing.
More than anything, I'm grateful I was able to get to know Alan in any capacity, for any length of time. He often talked about "the time I've got left" and using it well while he still had it, but I never allowed myself to confront what that might truly mean in reality. He did – bluntly. And it seemed to solidify in him his no-nonsense, cut-through-the-BS perspective that allowed him to always remember what's worth living for.
For more on Alan, see Brad Thomas' moving tribute to his longtime friend and mentor.
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