Poll: What was your (former) profession?

[SteveR]

Pharmaceutical manufacturing Quality Assurance management.

Not stingy....just selective.

 

[polloloco]

"Other" includes QA/QC in the food manufacturing industry.

 

[2B]

Actually, I have great respect for fee-only planners. It's those insurance people who masquerade as financial planners that get under my skin. My DW is a Customer Service person for a large insurer and she comes home daily with stories about people in their eighties and nineties who have been hoodwinked into buying annuities. And you know, it's not like I'm against annuities either. But people living off social security and a nest egg of just a couple of hundred dollars don't really have any reason to avoid taxes!

Believe it or not, I've got a personal friend who is trying to convince me to join his organization after i retire. He wants me to sell annuities of all things!!

Sounds like my FIL. At around 80, he sunk most of his liquid assets into two annuities paying a massive 3%. He said they were "tax free." They were actually tax deferred. Withdrawls had 5% penalty from one and 3% from the other. He needed cash and called the "advisor" to redeem money. The "advisor" took the money out of the 5% penalty annuity.

My FIL's income is about $55K per year from pensions and SS. He really needed the tax deferral.

I now rank buying an annuity in with the other symptoms of Alzheimer's and other cognitive disorders.

 

[calmloki]

: What do (did) you do for a living? Doctor/Nurse/Medical Tech 7 (6%)
Lawyer/Paralegal 9 (7.7%)
Business Owner 3 (2.6%)
Accountant/Financial Analyst 7 (6%)
Executive/MegaCorp Manager 10 (8.5%)
IT Professional 20 (17.1%)
Salesperson/Marketing Professional 2 (1.7%)
Financial Professional / Snake Oil Salesman 5 (4.3%)
Journalist/Writer 1 (0.9%)
Carpenter/Plumber/Electrician/Other Building Trades 0 (0%)
Engineer 32 (27.4%)
Other 16 (13.7%)
Military 4 (3.4%)
Blue Collar Employee 1 (0.9%)
Voting options

Total Voters: 117

Uhh - i dunno - as a landlord I sorta fit in most of those categorys in a 1/2 @ssed way. While strongly drawn to snake oil salesman for my apartment advertising language I think I'll settle for carpenter/plumber/electrician. I usually tell people I fix toilets for a living. Really gains one some elbow room in the Two Bunch Palms hotsprings....

 

[CompoundInterestFan]

Another engineer here (computer). Well, this is an online forum, after all.

I was going to suggest that perhaps our large numbers on this board indicate an increasing lack of stability in the industry, but then again, I don't believe stability can be found in very many professions anymore.

 

[Alan]

I knew there were a bunch of engineer/software/IT types hanging around here, but 43% of our little community? Holy Cow!

I ended up choosing IT on this poll but I was an engineer for most of my career before moving into IT and spend a lot of time still working with engineers who wonder why I moved over to the "dark side"

 

[genghis]

I'm a megacorp manager who was once an engineer. I chose the former, but associate more with the latter.....

 

[dsprik]

I'm a teacher and retiring at 54. Don't see a lot of teachers/educators. Is that because the can't retire early

Had to check "Other".

 

[DRiP Guy]

I'm a megacorp manager who was once an engineer. I chose the former, but associate more with the latter.....

What he said.

 

[JustCurious]

I'm a teacher and retiring at 54. Don't see a lot of teachers/educators. Is that because the can't retire early

They can, so long as they have some other source of income or funds besides teaching.

 

[ERD50]

I'm a teacher and retiring at 54. Don't see a lot of teachers/educators. Is that because the can't retire early

They can, so long as they have some other source of income or funds besides teaching.

I think it depends greatly on which school district they taught at. Some can afford it, many cannot.

I know several teachers that are retiring very comfortably at age 55. And this is after taking an extended European vacation every summer of their teaching career.


So, it depends. Careful with that broad brush, Eugene*.

-ERD50


* A Pink Floyd song reference.

 

[FinanceDude]

They can, so long as they have some other source of income or funds besides teaching.

Not really.....it's because the newest cars on anyone's block are owned by the teachers..........

Except the block where I GREW up, we had the OLDEST cars.....both parents were teachers..............

 

[Robert the Red]

(Applied) Mathematician, so I answered 'Other'. I might have checked 'Scientist' if it were there (although math isn't science, in the sense that science is knowledge about the real world, but math is knowledge about an inner world), but I ain't no injineeer.

 

[Life_is_Good]

IT Manager in Silicon Valley.

Funny thing is...... I would probably still be in the corporate rat race if the culture of the company didn't disintegrate into a sweat shop. When it did.... I looked hard at my financials and found that I could consider ER. Turns out a crappy work environment was the best thing to happen to me. 8)

 

[donheff]

Government exec -- HR 10 years, IT 10 years, so I chose Exec/Megacorp Mgr.