Because his funds and time are limited.
Because his funds and time are limited.[/quote]
I was responding to CFi…I meant study and travel later. A degree doesn’t mean he can’t travel later.
Because his funds and time are limited.[/quote]
I was responding to CFi…I meant study and travel later. A degree doesn’t mean he can’t travel later.[/quote]
No reason why he can’t. If the degree is something done out of interest or quest for knowledge, then that may be the better choice. If it’s just so someone can earn more money though, I’d say travel would be better - if someone wants to make money, they’d be better to be their own boss. 
It’s a trade off, like anything.
I know several people, including close family members, who regret not saving properly, and are forced to work in their old age when they’d rather be retired like many of their friends. I have other family members who did save, and are now enjoying their retirement. Two of these people did not start traveling until they were in their 60s, they’re now in their 80s, and they still travel on a fairly regular basis. And of course there are other ways to enjoy one’s retirement besides traveling.
In other threads, various posters have said they have no savings and no idea how they will ever retire. But hey, they get to go surfing or river tracing every day, so it’s all good, right? Again, it’s a trade off. They’re having fun now, and more power to them, but it may not be so much fun to literally work until they die, or until they are too old and weak to make it to the office/classroom.[/quote]
Of course, then it’s the government’s fault, or it’s some rich guy’s fault (a rich guy who saved when he was younger and lived a frugal life) that such people can’t enjoy a comfortable retirement or even retire at all. Come on dude, get with the programme!
That is a favorite topic among students in business school, many of whom want to become entrepreneurs. In fact, being your own boss doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll make more money than those who work for someone else. Most small business owners cut themselves modest salaries, only a select few make big bucks.
An extra 500,000 NT?
I’d throw one hell of a party…
That is a favorite topic among students in business school, many of whom want to become entrepreneurs. In fact, being your own boss doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll make more money than those who work for someone else. Most small business owners cut themselves modest salaries, only a select few make big bucks.[/quote]
I do believe I read an article recently that showed most millionaires in the US were small business owners, and generally had no formal business education / qualifications.
I’m sure that’s true. It’s got nothing to do with the fact that most small business owners in the US are not millionaires. Your opinion seems to be that if a person wants more money, the best option is to forget education and open a business. I don’t believe that’s particularly sound advice. 
Of course, we’re talking about an MA in TESOL here, not medical school. But then, we’re also talking about one year of travel versus one year of full time study. Not a lifetime of travel versus a lifetime of work. My advice remains to get the degree first, then if desired save up and go traveling. That’s entirely manageable, given the long breaks afforded by the teaching profession. I just prefer to get work out of the way first. To paraphrase Hobbes (the one from the Bill Watterson cartoon, not the eminent Forumosan), getting chores out of the way makes fun more fun.
If I had (half) a million dollars, I’d do two chicks at the same time.
Scomargo! I’ve never seen that side of you! 
I’m sure that’s true. It’s got nothing to do with the fact that most small business owners in the US are not millionaires. Your opinion seems to be that if a person wants more money, the best option is to forget education and open a business. I don’t believe that’s particularly sound advice. [/quote]
I’m not saying education should be neglected, but an advanced degree in business is not necessary for most people to open a business. Once you’ve spent the 3 or 4 years getting your Bachelors to give you the necessary grounding in your field, experience and connections is going to count a whole lot more, possible coupled with a basic short course in the necessary rules and regulations for your local area. Advanced and post grad degrees are most useful and necessary where research and specialist skills are involved (sciences, medicine, psych etc) or done purely out of personal interest. Unless one wants to be a corporate slave that is.
How long is a break for a teacher? I wouldn’t have thought it long enough to do much more than get a glimpse of a place and take a photo in front of a famous monument. Do teachers regularly get to take 3, 6, 12 months off to be able to properly travel? You can’t really get any sense of place and culture in two weeks - in some places it can take that long just to figure things out.
cfimages: I think he’s talking about survivor bias. You can’t just look at all the millionaires who run/ran businesses. You need to look at the number of business owners who grind out an average living. You also need to look at the number who go bankrupt. For every Microsoft or Apple there were hundreds of IT startups that went nowhere, for instance.
Getting rich doesn’t even require earning a lot of money. That helps, of course, but what you do with the money you have is equally as important. It’s possible to amass a small fortune on an average income if you handle that money well. Understanding the time value of money and things such as the Rule of 72 are very important. In this respect, getting an education and earning an average or above average salary is more of a sure thing than starting a business (which has much fatter tails, statistically speaking – and you could end up in either tail, so it’s far more risky a proposition).
You could equally apply the same kind of reasoning to employees who grind out a living always struggling.
I’m not sure you can just look at failed business or startups though - they say it takes an average of 6-7 attempts at business to achieve success. A failed startup just puts you one step closer to the successful attempt.
Even handling the money well is a risky proposition. There were a lot of people who invested wisely, got sound financial advice, did all the “right” things to be on track to retire at 50, and lost so much in 2008-9 that they’ll now be lucky to retire at 65. And the thing is, they all thought they were safe from that. More than a few of them are now looking at all the time they dedicated to it with regret and wishing they’d done something with their time and money.
Unless and until there is some serious government regulation that works to prevent that sort of thing happening again, it’s all just a crap shoot. As long as unrestrained greed is encouraged and rewarded, and equality and fairness is looked down upon, the whole thing is a house of cards. Why play?
You could equally apply the same kind of reasoning to employees who grind out a living always struggling.
I’m not sure you can just look at failed business or startups though - they say it takes an average of 6-7 attempts at business to achieve success. A failed startup just puts you one step closer to the successful attempt.[/quote]
It’s not the same thing. You have to look at the height of the curve and the size of the tails. Even if you average out the outcomes, in the case of an employee, the tails are very thin, and the curve is very big. That means that there’s a high probability of being mediocre and very small probabilities of either making a lot of money or little to no money (or even losing money – you don’t go bankrupt being an employee because if the business goes under, you might lose your job, but you don’t owe the bank money).
In the case of the business owner, the curve is a lot flatter and has fatter tails. This means that you’re far more likely to have an outcome other than mediocrity.
Even handling the money well is a risky proposition. There were a lot of people who invested wisely, got sound financial advice, did all the “right” things to be on track to retire at 50, and lost so much in 2008-9 that they’ll now be lucky to retire at 65. And the thing is, they all thought they were safe from that. More than a few of them are now looking at all the time they dedicated to it with regret and wishing they’d done something with their time and money.[/quote]
This is untrue. They were not investing wisely, getting sound financial advice or doing the “right” things. They were being extremely risky. There were people speaking out against a lot of what was happening prior to the crash. If they’d listened to such people, such as Warren Buffett, then they would have been okay.
Here’s a long term chart of Berkshire Hathaway:
Berkshire Hathaway has returned 20% per year (compounded) for decades. That is a pretty good idea and not just because of the return. If those people had bothered to do a little research themselves and had tried to understand the thinking behind what Buffett does, they might have kept their shirts. Instead, they got caught up in irrational exuberence.
Investing in sub-prime mortgages? Hoping that people with no jobs, low income jobs, poor credit ratings, etc. will be able to repay loans? Yeah, that sounds like a winner!
I’m sick of hearing people getting off scot-free for being a bunch of meatheads. Actually, it’s not even that they’re meatheads. It’s that they are/were too lazy to do even the most minor amount of research into what they are/were throwing their money at.
What are you talking about exactly? How are you going to stop people from making stupid decisions in life? If we’re going to go down that route, then we essentially turn a huge percentage of the adult population into giant three year olds. No handling money. No driving. No choosing what food they eat. No voting. Giant three year olds. Also, just who would you have making those decisions for them? A benevolent dictator? Because if the people need to be protected from their own irrationality in individual actions, what makes you think that collectively they’ll behave any more rationally? It’s the notion that people are a bunch of idiots at an individual level, but become geniuses in tandem. That’s completely illogical.
What do you mean by equality and fairness? That people are all forced to make the same decisions? I don’t personally see that as fair to people who were prudent because I don’t see that anyone was forced to choose a risky investment that they didn’t understand. Again, you’re making excuses for their own laziness.
Again, here’s a newsflash for you. Warren Buffett didn’t get burnt in the IT bubble a decade ago. Do you know why? Because he follows one (of several) very simple rules: if he doesn’t understand it, he doesn’t put money in it. If it’s good enough for him to admit that he doesn’t understand something, and therefore, is extremely cautious about it, then it’s good enough for anyone else.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]
Even handling the money well is a risky proposition. There were a lot of people who invested wisely, got sound financial advice, did all the “right” things to be on track to retire at 50, and lost so much in 2008-9 that they’ll now be lucky to retire at 65. And the thing is, they all thought they were safe from that. More than a few of them are now looking at all the time they dedicated to it with regret and wishing they’d done something with their time and money.[/quote]
This is untrue. They were not investing wisely, getting sound financial advice or doing the “right” things. They were being extremely risky. There were people speaking out against a lot of what was happening prior to the crash. If they’d listened to such people, such as Warren Buffett, then they would have been okay.
Here’s a long term chart of Berkshire Hathaway:
Berkshire Hathaway has returned 20% per year (compounded) for decades. That is a pretty good idea and not just because of the return. If those people had bothered to do a little research themselves and had tried to understand the thinking behind what Buffett does, they might have kept their shirts. Instead, they got caught up in irrational exuberence.
Investing in sub-prime mortgages? Hoping that people with no jobs, low income jobs, poor credit ratings, etc. will be able to repay loans? Yeah, that sounds like a winner!
I’m sick of hearing people getting off scot-free for being a bunch of meatheads. Actually, it’s not even that they’re meatheads. It’s that they are/were too lazy to do even the most minor amount of research into what they are/were throwing their money at.[/quote]
They didn’t chase quick riches and risky propositions. They followed advice of financial experts. They went to financial planners and said “I want to invest my money for the future, what do I do?” And they took the advice given That’s why there are financial planners - to give people advice. Most people don’t have the time to do all the research and gain all the knowledge themselves, that’s why we have experts. You don’t expect people to spend months or years researching an illness to self diagnose? You go to the expert, ie a doctor. Same with law, or psychology, or dentistry or finance. No different.
What are you talking about exactly? How are you going to stop people from making stupid decisions in life? If we’re going to go down that route, then we essentially turn a huge percentage of the adult population into giant three year olds. No handling money. No driving. No choosing what food they eat. No voting. Giant three year olds. Also, just who would you have making those decisions for them? A benevolent dictator? Because if the people need to be protected from their own irrationality in individual actions, what makes you think that collectively they’ll behave any more rationally? It’s the notion that people are a bunch of idiots at an individual level, but become geniuses in tandem. That’s completely illogical.
What do you mean by equality and fairness? That people are all forced to make the same decisions? I don’t personally see that as fair to people who were prudent because I don’t see that anyone was forced to choose a risky investment that they didn’t understand. Again, you’re making excuses for their own laziness.
Again, here’s a newsflash for you. Warren Buffett didn’t get burnt in the IT bubble a decade ago. Do you know why? Because he follows one (of several) very simple rules: if he doesn’t understand it, he doesn’t put money in it. If it’s good enough for him to admit that he doesn’t understand something, and therefore, is extremely cautious about it, then it’s good enough for anyone else.[/quote]
No one from Wall St went to prison. Not only that, a lot of the people that caused the crisis received multi million dollar bonus payouts. Hold them to account. May them pay for their actions. Make it illegal to profit off the misery of others. Reward ethical behavior and hold those that engage in it up as role models. It’s inexcusable in an advanced country for anyone to receive million dollar plus bonuses while you have people living homeless on the streets. Place an upper limit on salary / bonus packages, or raise taxes on income / investments over a certain amount. Offer tax breaks for ordinary workers not the rich. Take the profit incentive out of essential services such as healthcare, education and staple food. Simple solutions that would create a much more equitable society. Start rewarding the people who are working towards those causes.
Yet there were people making counter claims and giving different sorts of advice. Did they listen to people such as Niall Ferguson, Nouriel Roubini, Nassim Nicholas Taleb or Kyle Bass, for instance? Or, did they listen to the giant elephant in the room, whom I keep mentioning again and again, Warren Buffett? He’s hardly a small player, and even if you haven’t heard of the others, I’m sure you’ve heard of him. He’s one of the richest men in the world. I’d find out what he has to say on different investing matters.
You don’t have to do all the research yourself. What you need to do is do enough research (probably only six to twelve months’ worth of casual reading) to be able to find out if your expert knows what he’s doing. Actually, that’s not even the issue. What you need to be able to do is find out to what extent your interests and those of the person providing the advice/investment intersect. I would say there’s a real potential for a gross conflict of interest between getting advice from someone and buying an investment product from them. You need to be able to ask very pointed questions.
A few years ago, I had a whole lot of money invested through a financial planner. I wasn’t sure of a couple of things, so I began reading up on them. I began discussing them with others. I formulated a list of questions to ask my financial planner. I asked him those questions. I was unhappy about how he explained his thought/investing process to me, and I also didn’t feel our interests aligned. I got rid of him. Later, I was introduced to someone else who had been recommended to me by a friend who knows a lot more about investing than I do and who thought the other guy and I might be on the same page. I asked that guy the same questions (plus a whole lot more at that point). I was satisfied with his explanation of his thought/investing process and I felt our interests aligned. Now I have my money with him.
Note the really important parts there, I’ve underlined them. It was necessary for me to get off my own arse and educate myself to a certain extent before being able to come to those conclusions though. Notice also that at no point have I discussed returns.
I am in no way disagreeing with you here. I would go one step further and make them pay the money back. They shouldn’t have been allowed to get huge golden parachutes after running companies into the ground. The current incentive schemes in many companies are really screwed up, but more on that below.
What exactly does that mean? You mean like medieval usury laws? What about insurance companies? Are you aware of the history of economics in the West from the Renaissance onwards? You do realise, right, that the creation of bond markets in Italy in the Renaissance allowed not only the rulers of those city states to grow wealthier, but also the general citizens of those places to enjoy higher living standards than in other parts of Europe? You do realise that part of what allowed the Netherlands to become incredibly powerful in the seventeenth century was the creation of the world’s first stock exchange, and was why they were able to give England a serious run for their money in naval/trade battles at the time? Also, you do realise that a large part of England’s climb to power was to do with William III (of Orange, a Dutchman) becoming King of England and shifting the centre of banking in Europe away from the Netherlands to England?
There will often be winners and losers, but in trying to restrict that, you restrict the ability for capital to be directed towards ventures that, on average, improve people and societies en masse.
Who would reward the ethical behaviour? Here’s a simple concept. Read about the management in a company, see if you like their thought/investing/management processes, and see if you think their incentives and yours are aligned. There it is again. If it looks like a manager has skin in the game (i.e. if you go down, he goes down), then that’s probably a good bet. If it looks like he can run a company into the ground and then walk away with a huge compensation package, then that’s probably a company to avoid like the plague. Is that really so difficult for people to figure out? Again, note that at no point have I talked about the returns the company makes.
If someone is smart and prudent with his money and others aren’t, I think it’s inexcusable to penalise the former by redistributing what he has made to those who haven’t been smart or prudent. We obviously have a very different world view where you think the stupid, rash, lazy and irresponsible should be rewarded.
That’s for shareholders to decide and shareholders only. Someone without a share in a company is risking nothing of their own and should therefore have no say in that company.
I don’t think anyone should get a tax break. Actually, I don’t think there should be taxes at all and that it should be a user-pays system. Not really sure why anyone should be entitled to any of someone else’s money for free. I call that stealing. Taxation is theft. If I take money from your pocket and give it to someone else, it’s a crime. If the government does it, it’s somehow legitimate. Actually, I don’t even really give a shit these days. I’m beyond that ideology because I realise it’s unworkable. I just thought I’d throw that out there since you’re proposing some pretty radical ideas yourself (such as abolishing a profit incentive). Plus, I realise there’d have to be some crazy unintended consequences from that.
Firstly, what you consider essential might not be considered essential to others. How much healthcare, what sort, etc.? Likewise with education. Likewise with food.
Secondly, are they simple solutions? If food is really cheap, who would be a farmer? If you pay farmers a lot to overcome that, then where does that money come from? Why would someone do other jobs instead? Pretty soon, you’d have everyone wanting to be a farmer rather than something considered “undesirable” by you. What you constantly fail to recognise is that there is a continuum (or maybe several) between wanting to do a job for the love of the job at one end and wanting to do a job because someone throws a big wad of cold, hard cash in your hand at the other (again, probably fits better on two continua). You love your job. That’s fantastic. You just don’t get that plenty of people want the big wad of cold, hard cash and that’s what drives them in life. Do people really become proctologists because they love looking up people’s arses or saving the world or is it because they get some serious moola?
Again, who makes these decisions about what should or shouldn’t be rewarded? Some grand architect/benevolent dictator? Because you won’t get everyone to agree on what is good or right. So, you have to resort to disenfranchising at least a small segment of the population, if not almost all of the population. How well have such political systems worked historically? Wouldn’t such people rapidly accumulate wealth and power for themselves? Wouldn’t anyone with money seek those with power and engage in influencing the political process? Isn’t that the whole problem we currently have (that humans have always had and will always have) that money seeks, and buys, those with power? It’s easy to rail against how things currently are – and there’s lots that’s fucked up – but unless you have a real workable solution, not some pie in the sky lovefest, then everything you propose creates a slew of potentially worse unintended consequences.
Guy, you think too much. It’s actually pretty simple, could be decided by consensus / democratic means once some basic unbiased explanation is given, and has fuck all to do with some king who lived 400 years ago. All major religions and spiritual philosophies talk about it. It’s not that hard, but some have just been brainwashed into thinking otherwise. Deep down, everyone knows where the problems are and how to fix them.
cfimages: Deep down people don’t all know your answer. People disagree on this. That’s why people vote for different parties. That’s why countries pursue radically different policies in just about every different area they make policies. That’s why religions are all different on how to handle a whole lot of issues. Despite what you claim, there is not one human consensus, let alone yours.
What if the democratic consensus wasn’t something you liked? What voice do minorities have in a democracy anyway? Should the ideas of the majority simply be rammed down the throats of those who disagree? What of those who want to live life on different terms?
You would be no more than a mini-would-be tyrant trying to force his vision of utopia on others, with the undesirables (bankers, CEOs and so on) facing the firing squad, either in a literal or figurative sense. Maybe – and this is what you just don’t get – the rest of society doesn’t want someone else’s vision of the truth forced upon them.
Rude and insulting comments removed by moderator.
Thank you for protecting my delicate sensitivities…/S
Guy, people are generally good. No matter where they are from or what religion they follow. People all want peace and security. People are generally willing to help others out when necessary. They are values held globally. Take away the propaganda and general agreement isn’t impossible. Once the will is there, the details take care of themselves.
Is it so hard to make essential, healthy food such as whole grains and vegetables cheap and make high fat high sugar junk food and luxury foods higher priced and higher taxed? Of course not.
Is it so hard to redirect profits and shareholders bonuses of pharmaceutical companies into subsided distribution iif life saving medicines? Of course not.
And very few would be opposed. All it takes is will.