Double Journey

Methodology Annual pay for Bachelors graduates without higher degrees. Typical starting graduates have 3 years of experience; mid-career have 15.5 years. See full methodology for more.

While surfing around the internet, I found the above chart which describes which of the Ivy League Schools are the best if you take future potential salary into consideration.  It seems to be that the best school in terms of median salary straight out of college is my alma mater, Princeton.  The median starting salary for a Princeton Graduate is $66,500.  In terms of salary in Mid Career, Princeton is second with a median salary of $131,000.

What I find odd though is this is one of those things that really can’t tell you very much about what it is worth to attend an Ivy League school.  While it may sound great to end up with a salary of $130,000, getting into a school like Princeton or any other Ivy League school definitely cannot guarantee you that.  In fact there may in fact not be a causal effect here at all.  You have to remember, that many of the people who attend Ivy League schools got in there because they are smart and motivated.  It is not the university itself that made these people who they are.  So many of these people would have been successful no matter what.

But even more interesting is the methodology.  One of the pre-requisites to be included in this survey is that the individual not have an advanced degree.  Seriously, how big can this data set even be?  I had a lot of friends at Princeton.  I am seriously, and this is no joke, the only one of my friends that does not have an advanced degree.  Everyone has either an MBA, Law Degree, Medical Degree, or some sort of Masters or PHD.  I am unique in that I neither have an advanced degree nor do I plan to get one.

So do I think having a degree from an Ivy League school means a chance at a better future salary?  Only marginally.  Like I said, there are a lot of factors at play here that determine what someone will eventually make.  While the data is probably valid, Princeton graduates do earn a good living, there is very little that would convince me that attending Princeton was the cause of this.

I was asking a few people today at what salary do you consider someone to be making “a lot” of money.  I am not asking for any specific reason, I am just curious what people actually think is high salary wise.

The most common answer is “it depends”.  Most people want to qualify what they think is a lot of money.  You get responses like, “what is a lot for one person is not for another” or “it depends on what your expenses are”.  I get all of that but I am really want people to ignore all of that.  Just think of it from your perspective.  At what point, if you hear what someone makes, do you say to yourself, “That person makes a lot of money”.

For me, that number is around $250,000, right at the Obama definition.  But I get my view might be skewed.  What do you think?

Before people get worried, no, I  do not have to figure out this scenario.  I usually browse the top headlines available to the right just to see what’s going on in the world.  Often times something catches my eyes and I like to comment on it.  Today, there was an article about people who have had to learn to live after they have lost their six-figure jobs.  I am certain that all over the country, people are starting to learn to live with this reality.  A six figure job is a sort of status symbol.  It is for many, the pinnacle of achievement.  For most Americans, the belief is that your life will become much better and much easier if you can grab this brass ring.  People feel they have “made it” if they can do this, and they start living a much better lifestyle.

However, this is probably just a mirage for most people.  I can tell you from experience that your life does not just become magically better because you start making more money.  Many many people in the coming years are going to find themselves in this predicament because the jobs that are disappearing are not coming back.  There was definitely a bubble out there, and it will take years for us to recover.  Having been unemployed for months, many of these people have had to accept jobs that pay significantly less, often times as much as 70% less.  That requires a drastic change in lifestyle, or does it …

The article got me thinking what I would have to do if I all of a sudden lost my job and had to take a much lower paying job.  In these tough times, it is not out of the realm of possibility.  So how would my life change if I had to accept say a 50% pay cut?

Well not much.  This is because I control two sides of my financial equation.  I control both the income side and more importantly, I control the cost side.   If you count the income of my fiance now, I have about quadrupled my income in the last 8 years of my life.  Have I quadrupled the cost side?  Not even close.  I might have increased my total cost by about double, but that’s about it.  And that’s a double from the meager livings of a recent college grad.  I could in fact live the exact same lifestyle I do today, cutting no cost, and probably live that way almost indefinitely.  I could take my own income to zero (leaving the fiance’s there), and live off my savings for at least five years.  That’s without scaling back.

However, I could just as easily scale back.  The biggest cost is easily the apartment.  I am now on a month to month lease, so if I reduced that cost by about 40%, which I could easily do, and got rid of one of the cars, which would be no problem since we only use one now anyway and I do not have a job to drive to in this scenario, I think we could actually live quite comfortably for quite a long time.  After I got over the initial shock and fear of losing my job, I am sure I could even turn the whole thing into a positive as it would give me time to pursue other things I’m really interested in.

So why have I done this?  Who in their right mind would prepare so well for a disaster scenario that is (hopefully) unlikely to happen?  Well, it comes down to the fact that I am by my very nature conservative and not willing to put my own fate in the hands of others, namely my employer or the economy.  It is just upbringing really as I saw first hand my family go from upper middle-class to barely scraping by.  You should never believe that disaster is not just one accident or one pink slip away.

Wow, that was kind of a downer to bring in the new year huh?  OK, got to write something much more upbeat next.  Probably will not be posting until next week, but I hope everyone had a great New Year!