This is actually about my husband. As the title says, he has two exams under his belt. He dropped out of a P.h.D. Math program that he was working as a T.A. within around May 2014. Been applying for 6 months to various teaching as well as actuarial positions.
He now works at UPS doing hard labor with teenagers for $10/hour.
He's gotten exactly one interview and they chose someone else. Part of the problem is that he is ethically against working for the Federal government (fine with State), non-accredited colleges, or the Health insurance actuarial field, which I am guessing severely limits what remains as options.
I was playing with :
http://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement?income=50000&initialBalance=0&expenses=20000&annualPct=5&withdrawalRate=4from the MMM blog. Here I was thinking that he and I needed both of us to double our current incomes
(from 60k to 120k+) to become FI in 13 years
(because I'd have to get a degree that takes 5 years and pay off his 28k of school loans.) And then we input the numbers for him getting a Actuarial job even at 50k a year and it tells me the number is 13.4 years. And I'm like really? Not that I love my current job but if the effort and time has me coming out even, I don't know why I'd bother on improving upon my own career
(at 48k-52k a year working crazy variable partime hours.)I feel like he is somehow unemployable with a Master's degree and two Actuarial exams. This doesn't compute in my brain.
Advice?
Edit ADDAnd I will put this in a reply below. But felt incoming people would benefit from it's placement here.
AS a TA, he was earning a 20k salary. UPS ends up being barely 10k a year, but this particular branch covers tuition to a good local University. This means he can take the MFE class free or near free, moving him forward toward his goal of being a well paid actuary. Also, upon his initial interview with UPS, they recognized that he was over qualified and stated that there were positions within UPS that were more geared towards his qualifications. But that 9/10 of those positions were "Internal Applications Only" so he would have to already be an Employee at UPS to ever hear of them. He's only been there three months, and no internal positions have appeared thus far, but UPS usually has a good retention rate of professional employees s we didn't expect something to appear immediately. I want to add that we're not counting on a position to appear, so we're using the schooling benefits to open up options elsewhere.
Furthermore, regarding his avoidance of certain employers;he does not think "all corporations are evil" and is willing to work for more companies than not. He's not willing to volunteer for war either, just to earn an income, and I mean this in a pleasant commentary
bemused way; why would Mustachians, who essentially want to work so they can afford "Fuck you" money tell him to go work for an industry he doesn't believe in just to get to that point?
Edit add 2:we have no children and are no where close to the point of welfare. Detailed income/expenses found here:
http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/reader-case-study-debt-free-and-financially-independent-in-15-years-(or-less)/msg438647/#msg438647