For those of us who are relatively new, who is "intercst"? Is he/she the same poster as "hokus" (spelled phonetically)?
Oh dear Lord, no.
"intercst" is a fellow by the name of John Greaney. He retired at the age of 38, started and maintains the
The Retire Early Home Page. website, and developed the original Excel spreadsheet upon which FIREcalc, a retire early calculator, is based. He was an engineer in his professional life who invested a lot in common stocks, particularly technology and pharmaceuticals. He also was the unofficial leader of the REHP ("Retire Early Home Page", a reference to his website) board on the Motley Fool message boards for a long time. Last I heard he was single and living in Texas.
"*****" is another fellow by the name of Rob Bennett. In my opinion, a nice enough guy, but he does tend to post really long, rambling posts which some think tend to say a lot without meaning anything. He also, I believe, "retired early" with a wife and two (?) young kids, but some of his retirement was supposed to be funded by a part time job as a personal finance writer / author. Sometimes it is hard to get Rob to answer a straightforward question. Many think *****' plan for early retirement is not well thought out.
Anyway, ***** was a poster at the Motley Fool, and then at intercst's website message boards, and I think he was even a poster here for a while. ***** has been banned or ostracized from many message boards.
***** is a bit of a troll. Intercst seems to have taken pleasure in poking fun at ***** for the past several years. For whom that is a moral victory it is a tossup, in my opinion.
2Cor521
Edit: As you can see, if you spell his screen name correctly, this board's software turns it into a series of asterisks. The correct spelling of his name (backwards) is sucoh.