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| Saturday, March 31, 2007 |
| Michael Milken -- A Medical Research Innovator? |
Ever since I read Den of Thieves two years ago, I thought that people like Mike Milken would be despised everywhere, by Wall Street, by the media, by the general public -- He traded on insider information, he accumulated enough market power to inflate the junk bond prices, and many middle class who followed were left with worthless papers; he fostered corporate raids and destroyed many business. How can the public tolerate such a person?
I was so naive! My first surprise came from Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street . Obviously, Michael Lewis did not think Milken as a criminal when he wrote "Liar's Poker". And in some sense, Michael Lewis thought that Milken spotted a good financial innovation opportunity (junk bond) that Solomon Brothers missed.
My second surprise came when I was listening to the radio. The radio broadcasted an ad for Wharton economic summit , where Milken is listed as the number one keynote speaker, even ahead of the finance professor Jeremy Siegel. I can't help to look for the ads and see how they advertise the "junk bond king". And to my surprise again, now he is "The Man Who Changed Medicine"! And obviously, his name is what attracts people to come to the summit.
Obviously, he has many followers, particularly from Wall Street. Everyone can have his/her own take on Milken's past. I am fine with that. But from what time he has become a Medical Research Innovator ? By giving some money to some medical research center to get tax deduction? This will be an interesting path to be a medical research innovator :)
And what's more interesting is that he will team up with Professor Jeremy Siegel, the author of The Future for Investors: Why the Tried and the True Triumph Over the Bold and the New . He "is a buy-and-hold kind of guy who predicts that an unprecedented wave of discovery and innovation will fuel economic growth in the U.S. and provide superior returns for investors who are patient." What is his take on Milken's junk bonds?
Should be an interesting speech (at least to me). But $499 a ticket, plus travel expense... no way for a deal hunter like me.Labels: Commentary, Reading |
posted by Jacqui @ 6:59 PM | Add to del.icio.us
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| Friday, March 30, 2007 |
| A Fresh PhD's Career Decision Tree |
Given that Yannick and I stayed in graduate school for such a long time, we made many friends who got PhD's in various fields--economics, business, engineering, science… Some went for academic career and are already titled professors; some are still struggling for their tenure; some went to industry and become millionaires from IPOs; some got laid off and came back to school. And those fresh ones, seeing footsteps from their senior fellows, feel confused. They seek help, from advisors and professors, from fellow PhD students, from friends, from families. And the truth is: the more people they ask, the more information they gather, the more difficult the decision becomes.
After our discussion with mOOm about the value of a graduate degree and seeing the struggle many of our friends are facing, I decided to draw a decision tree to help people go through the process. This is, by no means, a replacement for advice from an academic advisor, or your career development help center. This is just my little game to find out whether what I learned in textbook can really find some use in real life.
I am not an engineering and science major, but I find PhDs in engineering and science often face a more complicated choices. They can choose to do a post-doctoral fellowship, just like residency for MD. People from economics or business school normally do not have to go through this. So I decided to draw a decision tree for Sisi, a fresh PhD from science and engineering.
Sisi got her PhD in applied math from a top school. As a fresh PhD, Sisi does have some options, and that’s exactly what she and her family are struggling with.
(1) She can get an assistant professor position in a 2nd or 3rd tier university right now, which pays about $60-80k.
(2) She can work in the industry, which pays six figures right away.
(3) She can wait for another year or two as a post-doc fellow, and shoot for a faculty position in a1st tier university.
Here is a very Simplified version of a pseudo-decision-tree.
Two main reasons make this tree "pseudo". First, Sisi is struggling with assigning probabilities to each branch. What’s the probability of getting unemployed in 2 years? Sisi had a friend who joined a very big and profitable company 2 years ago, and come back to school now due to company re-structure. What's probability of building a successful business of her own? Go to any bar in Silicon valley any day, Sisi will find 1/2 of people there dreaming of building another google, or at least a youtube. But we had only one Google, one youtube. Sisi believes that she has a technical edge to build his own business, but how can she assign a probability on this?
Second, Sisi puts only monetary value in stead of utility on each node. What makes this decision even more complicated is that Sisi and her family assign different utility to each outcome. Sisi’s husband wants her to go to a 2nd -3rd tier schools, so she can has less pressure and get a baby soon. He also puts higher utility on going to industry, since he has the same dream as a valley girl and wants Sisi to join him.
However, as a female who window-shops designer clothing from time to time, Sisi puts higher utility on "brand names". Practically speaking, option-3 is the least ‘economical one. Doing a post-doc costs another 2-3 years with minimum pay. After that, if she gets to a 1st tier university, the pay is generally lower than 2nd tier university. Top universities always have higher bargaining power, in accepting students, in recruiting faculty. However, how many 1st tier universities can you find? Supply and demand determine the price. If Sisi wants to get the brand equity of 1st tier universities, Sisi has to pay the premium. Sisi is ready to pay for it, her husband is still hesitating.
And as a female, Sisi puts higher utility on security (on this part, Sisi is not alone ). Getting tenure in whatever university will give Sisi's family low but guaranteed income and legal status. As immigrants without a green card, Sisi’s first priority is: Security! Security!! Security!!!
Still, the problem of assigning probability remains. I know that many fresh PhDs are facing Sisi's decision tree. In fact, many friends of ours are on the same boat right now. Assigning these probabilities requires experience, across time, across people. I hope that senior readers who have experienced all these can help Sisi fill in the probability in the tree. If we can get a large sample, the law of large number will work for us.
TIA!Labels: Career, Green Card, PhD |
| posted by Jacqui @ 2:54 PM | Add to del.icio.us
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| Thursday, March 29, 2007 |
| Emergency fund? How much? |
Moom started his Asset Allocation Series. So I guess it is not surprising for him to write about Emergency Fund (EF), and introduced us to English Major Money's (EMM) post. This was also our first time to participate in Carnival with a post on getting more tax returns for international students. I happened to find a controversial post by "Broke Now, Rick Later" (BNRL) in the Carnival. So I will share my thoughts here.
First, no emergency fund needed? I have to say that I admire BNRL's courage. For a single-income household with 2 kids and a mortgage to pay, he has extremely low liquidity of $282. And he was advocating NO emergency fund needed. Make no mistake, he is stacking away 20% of his income in retirement savings, which is unlikely to be ready available for emergency. So he is trading his emergency fund as extra investments in retirement account. Before reading his post, I thought there were few people as described in moom's comment. Now I think that there might be quite a few.
BNRL has 50% income to cover monthly necessities and 20% for retirement account. Considering tax withholdings and other expenses, the remaining 30% is unlikely to have any significant portion left. BNRL argued that you can always count on 0% APR installment payment combined with a delay in payment to pull the cash you need from either your salary or disability income. However, he maybe forgot that sometimes, "when it rains, it pours". What if there were two or three unexpected on his list on going at the same time?
Second, how much emergency fund do you need? I stand by the standard recommendation of 3-6 month expense and suggest everyone to look at his/her own situation like EMM did. The amount will depend on both your needs and your risk attitude.
Needs (expenses): take a look at the monthly necessary expense. For renters like Jacqui and I, ours is less than 20% of our gross income. Two months' salary gets us covered for a year.
Risk attitude (or personal preference): remember, everyone get unlucky some day in life. That's why we're paying for health and car insurance. I am very conservative, thus, may want to insure for situations of very small probability, say three or four unfortunate incidents happening at the same time; you may be more optimistic and want to just insure up to two. However, you really do not want to have no or poor preparations for them as they do happen.
Last, I think having an EF is one necessary step for anyone to get started on investment and retirement savings. I will share my experience later.Labels: insurance, Investment, personal finance, Retirement |
| posted by Yannick @ 2:45 PM | Add to del.icio.us
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| Wednesday, March 28, 2007 |
| Cooking skills and personal finance. |
Just read my money blog (MMB) expenses. As a housewife, the first thing I noticed is grocery spending. MMB's budget for grocery is $300, dining out is $250. Last year, our budget for grocery was a poor $250. I hit budget several times, which made me very unhappy. I consider myself a deal shopper, which is one of the attributes of a "good" housewife (my definition). When MS Money showed that I always hit budget for grocery shopping, I felt… hurt!!!
So I negotiated with Yannick to increase the grocery budget to $300 this year. I know this is a little like "cheating", but at that time, psychologically, I really need it.
Now, reading MMB, I just found a new solution to solve the budget problem. Our dining out expense is almost zero! I am attributing this to my successful grocery shopping --- I do not just shop for deals, I shop for deals of good quality products. I feed Yannick with premium food from organic food store, so he does not want to dine out any more!
I presented this argument to Yannick immediately, and got an instant budget re-allocation approval-- we will allocate $100 out of our $150 dining out budget to my grocery shopping! Now, I will always spend below budget. "Exceed expectation", that's the review I want to get for my work!
My next mission--improve my cooking skills. I heard that many famous chefs actually used very common ingredients -- such as Heinz ketchup, Morton salt…Why can't I? Someday, I want to hear Yannick saying: "I would rather have Jacqui's cabbage soup than Arby's roasted beef burger" (he sometimes indicates that he wants to go to Wendy's, but dismissed by me for "health" reasons. :-)
Improving cooking is one of the most rewarding investments a housewife can make: it keeps the family stay at home, it keeps the family healthy, it keeps the family money in the investment account grow... it keeps the whole family happy!Labels: budgeting, Commentary, personal finance, shopping |
| posted by Jacqui @ 6:17 PM | Add to del.icio.us
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| Sunday, March 25, 2007 |
| What investments to hold in your IRA? |
I wrote a post to recommend Roth IRA earlier. Another article The Best Investments for Your IRA let me recall a class I took.
I took a PhD level tax class cross-listed in the finance department two years ago. I've forgotten most things learned in the class, since it's pretty theoretical. However, sometimes the professor discussed some very practical questions at the request of the students. Think finance or economics PhD students are all financially savvy? Some students didn't know what IRA was and asked this question to the professor.
There is no absolute answer. The common wisdom is to hold bonds and CDs in tax sheltered account since dividends and interests are usually not deferrable and taxed as ordinary income's higher marginal rate. On the other hand, a buy-and-hold strategy for stock investments could defer the capital gain from price appreciation almost forever, which is much more tax efficient (same effect as a 401K type of tax deferment without employer matching). As a famous example, Warren Buffet argues that dividend is much worse to a shareholder than stock price appreciation, thus Berkshire Hathaway does not distribute any dividends despite being one the most profitable companies in the world.
However, some people argue that stocks should be kept in tax sheltered account because the expected annualized return for stocks is much higher than savings and bonds over the long term (>20 years). Given same contributions, stocks grow much faster. Therefore, this strategy gives more assets the tax benefit. This strategy makes even better sense for Roth IRA, since its future earning is tax-free, not tax deferred.
Assuming you have a portfolio of $10,000 bonds and $10,000 stocks, with a marginal tax bracket of 33% (including both Federal and state income tax). The long term annualized return of bonds and stocks are 6% and 9% respectively. Compare strategy 1 of holding bonds in Roth, and stocks in regular account, and strategy 2 the opposite, what's the outcome in 30 years? To simplify, let's assume a passive stock investment using a highly tax-efficient ETF on market index, with 0.5% taxed on capital gain and dividends annually. Capital gains and dividends are reinvested.
Strategy 1 = 10000*1.06^30+10000*((1.085^30-1)*0.67+1) = 57.4K+80.7K=138.1K
Strategy 2 = 10000*1.09^30+10000*1.04^30 = 132.6K+32.4K = 165.1K
So keeping stocks in Roth IRA will win (Strategy 2). There are a few caveats on this conclusion:
This conclusion relies upon the 3% difference in annualized return between stocks and bonds. If as some authors have argued in their books that the future rates of return of stocks and bonds are about the same at 6-7%, you should hold bonds in Roth, and use a buy-and-hold strategy to defer taxes on capital gains from stock price appreciations.
The stock investment strategy is also critical. If we assume that the difference in the rates of return of the two are not that large, however, if you really trade your stocks frequently, then it's still advantageous to keep your stocks in Roth.
I also learned both in class and from my experience how tax policy exerted distortion in your trading decision. I had hold stocks just to get the long-term capital-gain tax rate even though the market condition for that stock had turned south. If you want pure undistorted trading decision for yourself, hold stocks in Roth. On the other hand, you lose the leverage on claiming loss on your trades as well.
I hold stocks in my Roth and have done some trading. I really love the tax-free capital gains. Roth IRA is really a very powerful tool for us to catch up.
I only discussed bonds versus stocks. People have used IRA holding to buy futures, options, land contracts etc., which enable them to have larger leverage and gain larger tax-free earnings. However, if you are old enough to believe no free lunch, you will probably want to think about the risk carefully before shooting for the "big gain"?.
Any questions and comments?Labels: Asset Allocation, Investment, IRA, personal finance, Portfolio, Retirement, Tax |
| posted by Yannick @ 4:31 PM | Add to del.icio.us
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| Friday, March 23, 2007 |
| Win a free 2006 TaxCut Premium with e-file by sharing your tax filing experience |
Our dear readers:
Thank you for visiting our blog. Yannick and I shared our tax filing experience on various topics such as filing as a non-resident alien or resident alien, claiming tax treaty benefits after becoming a resident alien for international students, an unpleasant experience with encrypted pdf tax forms, contributing to a 2006 Roth IRA and most recently how to deal with incomes from two states as a double-income couple.
Now here is the fun part. Someone from TaxCut came across my last post and thought my sharing was good. He has kindly given me a free coupon code to download a copy of TaxCut Premium (Federal + State + efile) , retail value of $64.99. I have no use of it and will give it away to one lucky reader through a lottery.
Here is how to enter the lottery:
You can either
1. Comment on this post and leave your email and nickname to enter the lottery for one chance to win,
or better yet, 2. share your tax filing method (manual, TaxCut, Turbo Tax, Turbo Tax+Quicken, or TaxCut+MS Money like us) to double your chance to win,
or the best, 3. share with us your experience briefly on how well the approach works for three times your chance to win.
You can enter the lottery before Noon Sunday (03/25) PT and the winner will be announced by Sunday night.
How to decide the winner:
Each entry will be assigned to 1, 2 or 3 unique numbers sequentially starting from 0. I will use a random number generator to generate a winner from the above numbers.
We were really satisfied with the TaxCut interview process and how seamless it generated 1040, Schedule A, B, Ds after pulling data out of MS Money. We are curious about how well the other approaches work.
Questions and comments? Good luck!!!Labels: Bargain, federal tax, Freebie, income tax, state tax, Tax, TaxCut, Technology |
| posted by Jacqui @ 10:50 AM | Add to del.icio.us
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| Thursday, March 22, 2007 |
| Tax returns with incomes from two states, file jointly or separately? |
I finished our tax return last weekend, which was much more time-consuming than I had expected. For 2006, Jacqui and I need to file income taxes with two states because both us graduated and moved. Jacqui had income from her job in the current state, while my full year income was from the previous state.
Starting from Federal tax return, we needed 1040 because we had over $1,500.00 in interest and capital gains respectively, and a tax treaty benefit to claim. I used TaxCut to extract our financial transactions and categorized spending from our Microsoft Money account. It filled in 1040, lacking the tax treaty benefit; automatically produced Schedule B, D and schedule D-1 with short term capital gain and long term CG separated, which was very slick. I downloaded 1040 etc. and fill in the forms electronically in Acrobat Reader to claim a treaty benefit which TaxCut does not include. So the 1040 in TaxCut was not usable directly, but the Schedule B and D were. I knew what change I need to make on 1040, thus, I was able to reference the TaxCut 1040 often to make sure I wasn't missing any deductions. We did not have a mortgage to pay, therefore Schedule A was empty.
Getting into State tax returns, I was first surprised to see the states claim tax on both in-state income and out-of-state income for state residents; and in-state income for non-residents. To be concrete, the first state is a community property state (Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, or Wisconsin) which claims all my income derived in the state and half of Jacqui's income as taxable as long as we were the residents of that state. The 2nd state is better in the sense that it will claim Jacqui's 100% income as taxable while my income as taxable only if I am a resident of the state.
Generally speaking, married filing jointly shows less Federal tax compared to filing separately. On the other hand, filing separately would allow us to claim resident status in two states separately, which minimizes our state taxes. However, you cannot mix and match. You need to have the same state filing status as the Federal filing status. Filing separately disqualifies us as a couple from Roth IRA contributions (AGI > 10000), which we already made in early 2006. We could withdraw our IRA contributions and pay taxes on capital gains before this April 16th; however that will be quite a hassle. For the reasons I stated before, I do not want to lose this tax benefit.
As the state income taxes do not amount that much compared to federal taxes, my strategy is to file tax return jointly, but try to minimize state taxes. The solution is to establish the domicile for both of us (permanent legal address) in the new state with lower income tax rates as soon as possible (since Jacqui moved there), so that Jacqui's job income (higher than my PhD student stipend) will be taxed only in the new state. Of course, as I moved to the current state, my income in the 2nd half of the year become taxable in the current state as well. However, I found a schedule to claim a tax credit for the tax rate paid and the previous state. Most states have similar schedules for you to claim credits on taxes paid to other state governments, however, usually the lower-rate states give credits only up to an allowance computed using lower-rates. So you could avoid being double-taxed, but will still be taxed at higher rate if unlucky.Labels: federal tax, income tax, IRA, Money, Roth, state tax, Tax, TaxCut |
| posted by Yannick @ 1:41 PM | Add to del.icio.us
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| Wednesday, March 21, 2007 |
| Do we want to play Liar's Poker? Notes 1 |
I found two books listed most frequently as favorite books among PF bloggers -- Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street and A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing, Ninth Edition . I felt a bit embarrassed that I did not know these two books, though I had thought about getting a job in Wall Street. I decided to make up my ignorance.
I finally got the two books one month after I placed holds on them. By then Yannick and I got very busy with our work. So we decided to optimize our times -- each read one and exchange reviews.
Yannick likes numbers, so he got the "Random Walk". I am more fiction or biographic type, so I picked "Liar's Poker".
The first thing that struck me was the author's comments on "economics". He noted that, although most arrivals on Wall Street studied economics, the knowledge was never used - actually, any academic knowledge was frowned on by traders. Economics is not really a science, but rather a means by which investment bankers find potential candidates to hire.
This sounds like Michael Spence's model of job market signaling. I always considere it a drawback in signaling game -- Education is useless other than being a signal to the potential employer. Now Liar's Poker confirmed this assumption with a real life example. I guess that this was one of the very few cases where the assumptions of an economics model hold true in reality. Unfortunately, instead of increasing my confidence in my economics education, it makes me even more disillusioned with the economics knowledge I got from PhD classes.
On the other hand, the book gave us a relief. As the book says, most millionaire traders started their trading business in their early 20's. We had some sort of regret that we missed the opportunity to be there. Given that I have so many friends working in investment banking, I can't (or do not want to) believe that the life in Wall Street is like the "jungle"? the book described. However, I doubt that the way the IB sales traders and people make money has changed much. They consider it a success by deceiving the less-informed public and ripping off their clients. I do not think that Yannick will ever be able to do this. So this may not be the road for us anyway.
The book also talked about Michael Milken's junk bond empire. It is interesting to see a different view on Michael Milken from Den of ThievesLabels: Career, Economics, Investment, Reading |
| posted by Jacqui @ 2:36 PM | Add to del.icio.us
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| Monday, March 19, 2007 |
| Roth IRA, a must-have tax benefit for graduate students and young professionals! |
One common enemy on wealth accumulation for busy young fellows is not to start now. A few years ago, I started to work on my financial plan. The first thing I realized was how much I had missed by not using Roth IRA.
IRA is the abbreviation for individual retirement account. There are two types of IRA, traditional IRA and Roth IRA, sharing the same annual quota ($4000 for 2006) set by the Congress. For a traditional IRA account, you take a tax deduction up front for the money you put into the account, the contributions and earnings are not taxed until its distribution after retirement, which is called tax deferment. For a Roth IRA account, you put in after-tax money as contributions, your contributions and earnings grow tax-free even when it is distributed after your retirement.
For young professionals and poor graduate students, Roth IRA is better for the following reasons:
1. You will be likely in a higher tax bracket at your retirement compared to your tax brackets now. Most graduate students on a stipend are in the tax bracket of 15%. Compared to a 25% plus tax bracket with a real salary, Roth IRA is a big saving. Also, if you are an optimist believing in brighter future and higher earnings down the road, or if you are a pessimist believing in increasing Federal tax rates, you should contribute to Roth IRA instead of traditional IRA. Of course, if you are extremely pessimistic and worried about the Congress removing the tax benefits of existing Roth IRA in the future, you probably should store up gold and avoid investing.
2. It is more flexible. You can have early withdraws any time up to the total contributions without penalty. Of course, you won't be able to put them back in later. So it's NOT recommended. However, it was really attractive to me when I started as I was considering graduation and buying a house after getting a job.
3. No mandatory age-based distribution schedule like other tax-deferred retirement accounts. This allows you to manage your income stream after retirement, and enable you to pass all the dough to your descendants even.
4. You contribute more with Roth. Because the quota is applied on your after-tax contributions, $4000 in a Roth IRA is really worth more than the pre-tax $4000 in a traditional IRA. Therefore, it's very attractive to a late-starter who is trying to catch up with the retirement contributions.
Now let's see how much you can accumulate with Roth IRA only. Assuming an annual contribution of $4,000.00 in 2006 and 2007, and $5000 afterwards (the limit will be increased to $5000 in 2008), you will see $1,049,385 in 2041 if the annualized rate of return is 9%. Assuming you start at the age of 30, more than 1 million dollars will be there for you at the age of 65 tax-free. After considering an annual inflation rate of 3%, it's still worth $544,822 of current dollars. Half a million in today's dollar is probably worth more than most people's equity in their house after they have paid off a thirty-year mortgage. Find a soul-mate and do it together? That will be even sweeter!
So if you haven't taken advantage of the Roth IRA, I highly recommend you to do it. The deadline for 2006 contributions is 04/16/2007. You've still got time!Labels: Investment, IRA, Planning, Retirement, Roth, Tax |
| posted by Yannick @ 3:07 PM | Add to del.icio.us
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| Friday, March 16, 2007 |
| Trouble deleting or canceling a print job in Windows? |
The glitch I had in printing was that I was unable to cancel a bad print job from the printing queue. It simply sat in front of the queue of print jobs without being printed or deleted. I am running Windows XP Professional, however, this experience may happen on all Windows operating systems.
The reason for this glitch is that the print manager was not able to delete the spooler file caching the print job. Therefore, the solution is to remove the print job manually.
1. Locate the print job under the print spooler directory. It's usually under
%SystemRoot%\SYSTEM32\SPOOL\PRINTERS
where %SystemRoot% is the installation directory of Windows OS.
2. You can find the files according to time stamp and size, and try to delete them, however, it usually doesn't work because there is a lock on these files by the "Print Spooler" service.
3. Click "Control Panel" -> "Administrative Tools" -> "Services" and find "Print Spooler". The "Status" column shows "Started". Right click the service to "Stop" it.
4. Leave the "Services" open and go back to the directory in Step 1 to delete those files.
5. Go back to the "Services" windows and right click the "Print Spooler" service to "Start" it again.
Now happy printing again!Labels: computer, How to, printing, Technology, trouble shooting, Windows, Windows XP |
| posted by Yannick @ 9:35 PM | Add to del.icio.us
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| Even More Unpleasant Tax Return Filing Experience |
I have been quiet for a while. The reason? Quite exhaustive travels, reading a good investment book and filing for tax returns.
Tonight I had been working on a state income tax return, whose tax forms were in encrypted PDF format. It means that you can only print it to a physical printer, but not save it with data filled in, which is really a pain in the neck. I could not file online because of some complicated issues. However, I would like to fill the data in the pdf files electronically since it's cleaner and I can also keep an electronic copy of my tax returns. I do not understand why they wanted to create even more trouble for poor people who need to file off-line! It's a well-known trade-off between convenience and security, however, I can not believe that people would create such unnecessary inconvenience for no gain in security at all!!!
I was a bit nervous because it was not easy to work back and forth between 7 forms (Federal plus State) and quite a few browser windows without making any mistakes. I was unlucky with my computers many times, thus, even I didn't close any window mistakenly, the applications and Windows may well crash when I was working.
After a whole night's hard work, I finally got to print them out before losing them despite a glitch in printing. Whew!Labels: Commentary, Tax |
| posted by Yannick @ 9:03 PM | Add to del.icio.us
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| Saturday, March 3, 2007 |
| Our Financial Goal - I |
We all have heard of the stories on how writing down your goals may help you achieve them. I don't know if it's true for others, but for someone forgetful like me, you bet it's going to help. Our immediate goal is to have enough income to relieve Jacqui from her job. And you know who is going to earn that income right? Probably not our future kids.
I am now in the job market for my first real job. I am good at math and coding and can try my luck in the financial industry. However, I really feel that my life is too short to waste in the quant's position. I believe in doing things I love. If I'm really good, money (not necessarily big money) will come, or I should be able to make a living.
That being said, I am now probably interested in too many career paths: entrepreneur, university professor, consulting, research scientist, and so on. I am interested in the quant job even, just not its life style. However, all the above are meaningless without a happy Jacqui. I want to have enough time at home to be with her, while at the same time, bring home enough income (good pay). Does such a job exist, with good pay and allowing a good life style?
If not, I probably will accept a lower pay, since both Jacqui and I are pretty frugal. More importantly, move to an inexpensive area and enjoy our life.Labels: Career, Goals, personal finance |
| posted by Yannick @ 2:13 PM | Add to del.icio.us
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