I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams • Hacker News Board

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#411

Post by everdev » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 3:10 AM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #407

everdev wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The S&P typically returns 10% YoY. 7% per year is the historical average adjusted for inflation: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average...

You can't perfectly time your retirement to match the S&P 500 average. That's the reason your portfolio shifts to bonds as you get older. It's the reason everyone quotes 7 & 8% as reasonable long-term returns for your retirement portfolio.

Right, but if for each of the past 100 years you tracked people who put money in the stock market and held it for 45 years and averaged each of their returns you'd get a 7% YoY return after adjusting for inflation.

Some would end up lower but some would end up higher.

Nothing is guaranteed, but neither is a job.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#412

Post by Grakel » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 3:26 AM UTC

swiley wrote: post #285

Grakel wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theatre Professor here. Do not let your kids go to school for acting. Oh, he or she is perfect looking and incredibly talented? Great, they don't need a degree in acting. Go to school in New York, Chicago, or LA, and audition between classes in a real degree. Now if they want to study design and tech, go nuts. The amount of work out there is incredible, there is just so much content being consumed.

I kind of regret doing CS instead of music. Maybe if I had done something more art focused the competition wouldn't have been so bad and I'd probably still have a girlfriend, which is more important to me personally than money.

The competition in the arts is incredible. But with your CS degree you could still do music on the side? Whatever you do, you have to live outside of work and put work into your relationships.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#413

Post by jki275 » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 3:33 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #236

jki275 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I served in the military for twenty three years. My sample size is thousands of times yours. The odds are very low.

> The odds are very low. The odds are very high for post-9/11 veterans (and higher the more of their period of service is post-9/11 within that group), who are more likely to have been deployed and seen combat than veterans of earlier eras (both because of optempo and organizational changes that have increased the teeth to tail ratio of uniformed services as support functions have been moved to contracted support.) T…

I'm still waiting to see the studies that the odds are "very high" that us veterans have PTSD. Not holding my breath here, but you've made the claim based on your anecdotes and a claim that "ample actual studies exist", so I'd like to see it.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#414

Post by beatgammit » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 3:43 AM UTC

m11a wrote: post #213

everdev wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a 4-year college, but earned almost all of my money from self-taught programming and design skills. It's hard to justify the ROI on college. At $25k/year for a low-tier college, you'll spend $100k (if you don't need loans). If you take that $100k and put it in the market (avg. 7% annual returns) with 0 contributions for 45 years, you could spend every penny you make and retire at 63 with $2.1M. At more expe…

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 a…

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.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#415

Post by lsc » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 3:55 AM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #346

lsc wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some of my kids seem like they enjoy academics, but others do not. I'll be pushing the latter toward trade school. Average IBEW (electrical union) pay is about $20/hr for an apprentice and $33 for a journeyman. $40,000 to $66,000 with ZERO DEBT right out the gate is nothing to ignore (and that pay can easily double -- especially in your younger years -- if you're willing to travel and put in those extra hours). It s…

You co-authored a reasonably successful book teaching people how to use a complicated piece of software. You may not have any formal schooling past high school but you’re wildly unrepresentative of the “uneducated”.

I think That was actually an example of the benefits one can gain by being around people who are smarter and better educated than you are. That book would not have been intelligible without my smarter and better educated co author.

I mean, I do think I am rather a lot smarter than average, but everything is relative, and I believe I have accomplished so much more because I seek out situations where I am surrounded by people I think are better than I am on those scales.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#416

Post by elil17 » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 3:55 AM UTC

thanatropism wrote: post #146

elil17 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show them the website of the American Visionary Art Museum. It’s a museum for art made by people who never went to art school. It’s filled with stories of people who had rich lives as artists alongside other careers. You don’t need art school to be an artist. http://www.avam.org/

The museum might be cool but that website is badly designed enough to testify against this idea of being a self-taught artist.

The museum is actually run by a mime (who did have formal training)!

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#417

Post by icedchai » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 3:57 AM UTC

beatgammit wrote: post #414

m11a wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

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…

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.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#418

Post by bfuller » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 4:45 AM UTC

honkycat wrote: post #98

hajile wrote: post #71

And here we have once again why the government shouldn't be subsidizing student loans and shouldn't exclude them from bankruptcy. We need to quit incentivizing sub-prime loans. Unlike the housing crash where the houses retained most of their value and could be sold later, you can't sell your degree to pay back the money. If you're getting a necessary degree, it's very uncommon to default on your loan because you'll b…

I think this trade school obsession is foolish. Everyone cargo-cults it as "pragmatic" without actually analyzing what the jobs entail and what you can actually expect to make. Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without. You EARN that pay in the trades, and being an electrician is dangerous. The work is hard on your body. A lot of electricians end up on disability. I wasn't very academic growin…

Not every position is physically demanding or dangerous. Its quite easy to move into different fields and positions that are not physically demanding and just require a little bit of critical thinking or smart work. This idea that every trade job is dangerous or will leave you disabled is insane.

If you don't like being an electrician, you could move over into HVAC and make twice as much since you have an electrician's license. I feel your view is rather narrow.

With trades you have the ability of taking a 2 week intensive program and getting hired for $20/hr right out of school. Its a way better deal than some liberal arts education that gets you deep into debt and qualifies you to be a barista.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#419

Post by 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 4:53 AM UTC

icedchai wrote: post #410

m11a wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Engineering is one of the few fields where this is true. For the vast majority of college degrees this is not true.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#420

Post by JamesBarney » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 4:54 AM UTC

fzeroracer wrote: post #300

rayiner wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Looks like a major redistribution of wealth, from taxpayers to educational institutions. :-/ This is my surprised face. This is my beef with free college. It's a huge amount of public money going to benefit people who don't need it, all for an extremely tenuous promise of upward mobility. Kids growing up in real urban poverty aren't going to college, tuition-free or not. The hurdles keeping them from upward mobilit…

I mean, you're essentially arguing that people like me (people that grew up in deep poverty) wouldn't benefit from a college degree, but here I am. A software engineer because I was able to afford college through benefits and grants that made it near-free. I didn't go to a top tier college. I went to the local community college and used that to go to the local University to get a degree in CS. Well, here I am. Are yo…

I don't think that's what he's arguing. I think he believes there are some people who

- grew up in deep poverty

- graduated highschool with the grades/SATs to get into a STEM program

- didn't get enough grants/loans to go to college

- would have gone to college had it been free

- and would have graduated with a worthwhile degree had they gone

but they're outnumbered by their peers who wouldn't benefit from free college, but would still have to pay extra taxes, or receive less in benefits to fund a bunch of upper/middle class kids art pursuing history degrees.