4 ms·

What if you don't plan to start your life at 63? I'm not planning for retirement. 63 is a long way off. There's a lot of life between now and then, indeed the

by m11a 7y ago

What if you don't plan to start your life at 63? I'm not planning for retirement. 63 is a long way off. There's a lot of life between now and then, indeed the majority of my life is between now and then. These kinds of "responsible financial actions" are a bit silly imho. Invest in yourself now, and spend your time well now. College pays for itself, if you spent $100k on a decent degree I guarantee you'll earn that amount ten times over in any decent career. Aside from that, it's an experience, and that's worth some money in itself.

jschwartzi 7y ago
The difficulty is in landing in a decent career out of college. People have this fantasy that all you have to do is get X degree and go apply at X Y and Z corporation to land a job getting paid 6 figures for the rest of your life. And that's probably true if your X is from an Ivy League school or a massive state school with hyper-competitive admission to the program. And what you're paying for at that point is access to the elite so that you can hopefully ride their coattails into a good job. If you end up going to a 2nd or 3rd tier school it's basically a wash whether you end up anywhere good. And it's even worse if you don't get X degree, but instead have a degree that doesn't make it through the word filters. And you can't fuck anything up or make any mistakes in your entire academic career. You have to network aggressively. Many of my cohort ended up working as electricians, and one of them manages the line at a brewery. College was pretty useless for nearly all of us, and our lives probably would have been improved by not getting the degree, because at least that way we wouldn't be under the tens of thousands of dollars in debt. We were mostly mediocre. But we were smart and we knew how to figure things out. That doesn't really matter to most employers, who just want you to know a specific field right out of the gate so they don't have to bother training you. I lucked out, by the way. I managed to find a job in 2009 clerking in a warehouse at a technology sales company, and it was only because I knew someone who worked there as a service technician. His moving up created openings that I would be able to use to move into increasingly technical roles. And after 4 years there I was making about $44,000/yr., doubling my starting salary as a clerk. The real benefit for me was networking with my current boss. Because if I hadn't met him then I'd probably still be working long hours for little pay. So I would strongly urge anyone who isn't in the top 10% to strongly reconsider taking your advice. $100,000 is a huge amount of money and would have been a crippling amount of debt for me. As it was, the $20,000 I graduated with after working two and sometimes three jobs was hard to cope with until I lucked out.
- m11a 7y ago
  I think my comment took it as a given that if you're spending $100k you'll use every single real opportunity you can get in college and make the most out of your $100k. There's plenty of people that 'made it' from a local not-so-competitive state school. America remains the land of opportunity. But, unless you go to an Ivy or your parents are rich, you shouldn't expect it to come to you. You can do things in America that you simply cannot in Europe. You mentioned a few way of doing college right in your own response. Wouldn't the correct response be to use your time in college wisely and not slack or "just make it through" but to make the most of it, rather than to skip college altogether just because it's going to be harder than having your life handed to you on a platter if you went to an Ivy? ---- 2nd point I'd make is if you're in Europe student debt doesn't matter. Tuition is almost always free/cheap, government pays for tuition and living for your time as a student, and gives very favourable terms to repay (e.g. in the UK you don't pay anything if you earn under £25k/yr, then you pay 7% of amount earned above that, debt is wiped clean after 30 yrs if any remains). It doesn't show up on your credit record or affect mortgages etc. I'd describe America more as a country that rewards the ambitious (with perhaps some drops of luck) and the rich. If you're neither then the system is made to entrap you. Europe is easily better for general life, but it isn't great for ambitious people.
hellisothers 7y ago
Not planning for retirement in that you’re not even putting funds into a 401k or other retirement account? I get it if you’re strapped for cash but it sounds like you have the funds to save. This isn’t clever, it’s irresponsible especially given that just putting a little money away now literally pays dividends later.
- m11a 7y ago
  I don't mean not putting in a 401k. The comment I was replying to was implying throwing $100k into a savings account is a good idea because you'll have a couple million when you're 63. I do not advocate throwing $100k into savings for retirement at 18. There's a difference between reasonable financial responsibility (401k, match pension contributions w/ employer, etc) and spending all your young years worrying about being prepared for retirement. Enjoy the life you have. Be financially responsible, but don't over-do it, is what I'm trying to say.
  - hellisothers 7y ago
    Ah great, I agree, there is a balance to strike
  - icedchai 7y ago
    Go to college. Get an engineering or other high paying job. Save and invest. You'll have a couple of million by early 40's, maybe late 30's if you're lucky.
    - 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
      Engineering is one of the few fields where this is true. For the vast majority of college degrees this is not true.
beatgammit 7y ago
I really don't understand what you're talking about. The OP is saying that you wouldn't need to care about retirement at all if you invest instead of going to college, and if you can teach yourself a valuable skill like programming, you could likely get most of the benefits of going to college. The question is, will a degree give you a better return than putting the money in the market? Maybe a degree would get you a better job, but you get a later start. Students just aren't taught to figure this sort of stuff out before going to college and getting into debt. College just isn't the right fit for many people and it often just puts them behind.
- icedchai 7y ago
  Where do they get that 100K to invest from? Most people won't have rich parents to give them the 100K to invest. This means you have to get a job and save up. With college, you have student loans. For most people, if you go to college, you can get to 2M a lot faster than you can by investing 100K and waiting around for 40+ years.

by m11a 7y ago

jschwartzi 7y ago

The difficulty is in landing in a decent career out of college. People have this fantasy that all you have to do is get X degree and go apply at X Y and Z corporation to land a job getting paid 6 figures for the rest of your life. And that's probably true if your X is from an Ivy League school or a massive state school with hyper-competitive admission to the program. And what you're paying for at that point is access to the elite so that you can hopefully ride their coattails into a good job. If you end up going to a 2nd or 3rd tier school it's basically a wash whether you end up anywhere good. And it's even worse if you don't get X degree, but instead have a degree that doesn't make it through the word filters. And you can't fuck anything up or make any mistakes in your entire academic career. You have to network aggressively. Many of my cohort ended up working as electricians, and one of them manages the line at a brewery. College was pretty useless for nearly all of us, and our lives probably would have been improved by not getting the degree, because at least that way we wouldn't be under the tens of thousands of dollars in debt. We were mostly mediocre. But we were smart and we knew how to figure things out. That doesn't really matter to most employers, who just want you to know a specific field right out of the gate so they don't have to bother training you. I lucked out, by the way. I managed to find a job in 2009 clerking in a warehouse at a technology sales company, and it was only because I knew someone who worked there as a service technician. His moving up created openings that I would be able to use to move into increasingly technical roles. And after 4 years there I was making about $44,000/yr., doubling my starting salary as a clerk. The real benefit for me was networking with my current boss. Because if I hadn't met him then I'd probably still be working long hours for little pay. So I would strongly urge anyone who isn't in the top 10% to strongly reconsider taking your advice. $100,000 is a huge amount of money and would have been a crippling amount of debt for me. As it was, the $20,000 I graduated with after working two and sometimes three jobs was hard to cope with until I lucked out.

m11a 7y ago
I think my comment took it as a given that if you're spending $100k you'll use every single real opportunity you can get in college and make the most out of your $100k. There's plenty of people that 'made it' from a local not-so-competitive state school. America remains the land of opportunity. But, unless you go to an Ivy or your parents are rich, you shouldn't expect it to come to you. You can do things in America that you simply cannot in Europe. You mentioned a few way of doing college right in your own response. Wouldn't the correct response be to use your time in college wisely and not slack or "just make it through" but to make the most of it, rather than to skip college altogether just because it's going to be harder than having your life handed to you on a platter if you went to an Ivy? ---- 2nd point I'd make is if you're in Europe student debt doesn't matter. Tuition is almost always free/cheap, government pays for tuition and living for your time as a student, and gives very favourable terms to repay (e.g. in the UK you don't pay anything if you earn under £25k/yr, then you pay 7% of amount earned above that, debt is wiped clean after 30 yrs if any remains). It doesn't show up on your credit record or affect mortgages etc. I'd describe America more as a country that rewards the ambitious (with perhaps some drops of luck) and the rich. If you're neither then the system is made to entrap you. Europe is easily better for general life, but it isn't great for ambitious people.

hellisothers 7y ago

Not planning for retirement in that you’re not even putting funds into a 401k or other retirement account? I get it if you’re strapped for cash but it sounds like you have the funds to save. This isn’t clever, it’s irresponsible especially given that just putting a little money away now literally pays dividends later.

m11a 7y ago
I don't mean not putting in a 401k. The comment I was replying to was implying throwing $100k into a savings account is a good idea because you'll have a couple million when you're 63. I do not advocate throwing $100k into savings for retirement at 18. There's a difference between reasonable financial responsibility (401k, match pension contributions w/ employer, etc) and spending all your young years worrying about being prepared for retirement. Enjoy the life you have. Be financially responsible, but don't over-do it, is what I'm trying to say.
- hellisothers 7y ago
  Ah great, I agree, there is a balance to strike
- icedchai 7y ago
  Go to college. Get an engineering or other high paying job. Save and invest. You'll have a couple of million by early 40's, maybe late 30's if you're lucky.
  - 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
    Engineering is one of the few fields where this is true. For the vast majority of college degrees this is not true.

beatgammit 7y ago

I really don't understand what you're talking about. The OP is saying that you wouldn't need to care about retirement at all if you invest instead of going to college, and if you can teach yourself a valuable skill like programming, you could likely get most of the benefits of going to college. The question is, will a degree give you a better return than putting the money in the market? Maybe a degree would get you a better job, but you get a later start. Students just aren't taught to figure this sort of stuff out before going to college and getting into debt. College just isn't the right fit for many people and it often just puts them behind.

icedchai 7y ago
Where do they get that 100K to invest from? Most people won't have rich parents to give them the 100K to invest. This means you have to get a job and save up. With college, you have student loans. For most people, if you go to college, you can get to 2M a lot faster than you can by investing 100K and waiting around for 40+ years.