Most Common Killers of Wealth

[rocketpj]

[Fellow Canadian here.]

I think half of $200,000 or $150,000 or $120,000 is still a LOT of money to play with. I don't see why one person is paid $150k to do an important job, and another is paid $50k to do an equally important job.

Supply and demand.

Teaching is an important job but there are also hundreds of thousands of people who want to be teachers, thus the price for a teacher's labor is driven down.

Actually no.  BC is currently facing a shortage of teachers because they made the mistake of thinking there is an unlimited labour pool of people wanting a stressful job for poor pay requiring one or two degrees to do, in a 'market' of absurd housing prices.

Turns out that there are not hundreds of thousands of qualified teachers lining up to be treated terribly.

[mm1970]

I read a comment on a FB thread about millennials and youngsters these days being "lazy" and "uninvolved".  "I mean, look at things like Rotary, Masons, etc. where people used to volunteer time, and raise money to help other people."  It was along the vein of how millennials want free things, and how great it "used to be" when people raised money in churches and other philanthropic groups to help those in need.  I just said "I know plenty of millennials and younger people who are involved.  But in different things.  They volunteer time and donate money to political parties, the environment, the local elementary school - esp if they are parents."  I mean, most that I know just aren't into the whole Rotary thing.

Yup, there's been a shift in how Millennials volunteer from the older, monolithic organizations, to more of a dispersed network of organizations. Actual volunteering rates are 15.8 to 33.4% in the demographic.

Doing a PhD, from what I hear, never pays for itself. You do (usually) make more with BS/MS, but you  never make up the lost income of your grad school years (and God forbid you pay for it).

Doing a PhD is very complicated to assess. The vast majority of PhD programs are funded and include a stipend so they are effectively (very) low paid jobs. From a purely monetary standpoint, a PhD in a high demand field for consultants can earn you a lot of money and the PhD can be seen as the "price of admission" (kind of like an MD or JD). However, in low demand or over-saturated fields (e.g., English, Biology, etc) you would have been better off leaving with a Masters. However, most people that get PhDs are extremely interested in doing research and the like so in someways it's almost like a lifestyle choice which means it cannot be assessed along purely monetary lines.

Also depends on the industry too, and the company. Certain companies and industries really like PhDs.  The PhD has really helped my husband's income compared to mine (I have a master's).  We are almost the same age.  Being a woman is a much larger differentiating factor on our income than our degrees, however.

[Goldielocks]

Kids. Not because they cost alot of money, which they do... more because they demand energy and time. In our case it means it only makes sense for one of us to be working until school ages... which is obviously not ideal for savings rate.

This is why making as much progress as possible before ze children is obviously really helpful.  They are awesome though =].

I was thinking of ways we "sabbotage" our retirement saving and money goals, and I , too, came up with kids.  Not the having them, or raising them, but the strange things we let ourselves as parents believe we need to do so that they will get the "best possible start"... etc.

It is very easy to justify saving 10% and spending everything else so that the kids have the best opportunities in life.   
I was sucked into this for a couple of years, so I escaped early.  Others?  Private school, expensive tutors or after school activities, clothes, living in a good school district when the "not good" one is actually pretty great and safe, saving $100k so they can go to an out of state private college, buying another car, it all adds up and so many parents rationalize it as "need" not a "want".

And then the exhausted parents are paying for household help and take out to just "get by", and buying love with fancy presents and vacations because they can't be there enough for kids during the week.  (Guilt spending)

.....
Hmmm,  maybe setting up a lack of boundaries with family about spending money, and the whole "guilt money" should be listed here, not just kids.....

[Goldielocks]

[Fellow Canadian here.]

I think half of $200,000 or $150,000 or $120,000 is still a LOT of money to play with. I don't see why one person is paid $150k to do an important job, and another is paid $50k to do an equally important job.

Supply and demand.

Teaching is an important job but there are also hundreds of thousands of people who want to be teachers, thus the price for a teacher's labor is driven down.

Actually no.  BC is currently facing a shortage of teachers because they made the mistake of thinking there is an unlimited labour pool of people wanting a stressful job for poor pay requiring one or two degrees to do, in a 'market' of absurd housing prices.

Turns out that there are not hundreds of thousands of qualified teachers lining up to be treated terribly.

Working conditions are bad (like a big hospital machine or other government), but the pay?  Starting pay is not great, for certain, but a 10 year teacher in BC is usually making the same as a 10+ year professional engineer, not including the value of the pension benefits that the engineer doesn't usually get..  Teachers do "max out" of salary range a lot earlier than engineers, but not the overall horror story for compensation (just work conditions)

[rocketpj]

[Fellow Canadian here.]

I think half of $200,000 or $150,000 or $120,000 is still a LOT of money to play with. I don't see why one person is paid $150k to do an important job, and another is paid $50k to do an equally important job.

Supply and demand.

Teaching is an important job but there are also hundreds of thousands of people who want to be teachers, thus the price for a teacher's labor is driven down.

Actually no.  BC is currently facing a shortage of teachers because they made the mistake of thinking there is an unlimited labour pool of people wanting a stressful job for poor pay requiring one or two degrees to do, in a 'market' of absurd housing prices.

Turns out that there are not hundreds of thousands of qualified teachers lining up to be treated terribly.

Working conditions are bad (like a big hospital machine or other government), but the pay?  Starting pay is not great, for certain, but a 10 year teacher in BC is usually making the same as a 10+ year professional engineer, not including the value of the pension benefits that the engineer doesn't usually get..  Teachers do "max out" of salary range a lot earlier than engineers, but not the overall horror story for compensation (just work conditions)

Work conditions are huge.