Scraping By on $250K/Year

[Hamlet]

I think it is very easy for people to spend any amount of money they make if they don't make some effort to control their spending.

I'm pretty sure that there is currently someone looking to buy a 300-foot yacht that they can barely afford because they don't want to fall too far behind Larry Ellison's 400+ foot one.

The guys who always amaze me are the CEO types that end up broke because they borrowed against their company stock instead of selling it.

Double down, baby! Double down!

Don't think the article was written to try to illicit sympathy. Interesting that a few have taken it that way. But each to his own. It was "just an article"...showing how easy it is to spend the $250k as a couple . That is all it was...IMHO

 

[Hamlet]

That is my comic book budget. It is really the one area that I require a budget for. Everything else, I just spend what I need/want to without much worry that I will spend too much, but if I didn't keep to some budget with comic books it would get to be a problem.

With most collectibles, there is really no limit to what you can spend if you want to.

You're my hero.

 

[photoguy]

The paper is crap. It's self-published (where 'self' is the academic group an U of Wisconsin the author is part of). As far as I'm concerned anything claiming to be SCIENCE that wasn't published in a peer reviewed journal isn't worth the paper it was written on.

The sample graphed is U of Wisc. graduates and their siblings, so it's not representative. I can't find anything about sample size or response rate (of those asked for info, what % responded) Other relations in the study between intelligence and occupation do have large and representative samples.

The IQ test used, the Henmon Nelson test, seems to exist on Google almost entirely in relation to this study or what it's mean and SD are. Furthermore, Mensa doesn't list it as one of the standardized IQ tests. Sounds like a U of Wisconsin in-house project.

The occupation categories are so broad to be meaningless, unless the intent was to show low correlation between intelligence and occupation. The definition of the occupation groups is not stated in the graphs, instead one is referred to an appendix. Seems like another in-house substitution where national standards exist. We'll never know, as the pdf contains no appendices.

A lot of papers are published as working papers or tech reports while they work their way through the journal review process (publicatoin process can take several years). They often end up as journal paper somewhere else and often with a different title -- not sure if this is the case for this paper but given that the lead author is a prof. of sociology at U. Wisconsin (fellow ASA, member NAS) I would tend to give him the benefit of the doubt.

The sample being from U. Wisc. is fine. All we are trying to do is get a sanity check on the ranges of what IQs are possible within a given profession. If you know of a larger study, please post it I'd be interested in seeing it. In the regression they are using n = about 4500.

I'd be more concerned about whether the admissions process to university (some of the data seems to be from the late 70s) is still similar now. For example, med school is highly competitive and it is a top choice for high academically achieving minorities such as asians. There may not have been this much competition 30 years ago.

I don't consider Mensa an authoritative source but a quick search on google shows that mensa does recognize it: American Mensa | Qualifying Test Scores

 

[LOL!]

Instead of $250K/year, how about $250K nest egg and retiring?

Instead of $250K/year, how about $250K nest egg and retiring?
Is $250,000 in savings enough to retire? | Prism Money | Analysis & Opinion | Reuters.com

I'm sure this probably deserves its own thread.

 

[Westernskies]

Instead of $250K/year, how about $250K nest egg and retiring?
Is $250,000 in savings enough to retire? | Prism Money | Analysis & Opinion | Reuters.com

I'm sure this probably deserves its own thread......

....Though some will be probably be insulted by the mere premise of a 250K nest egg.

 

[haha]

....Though some will be probably be insulted by the mere premise of a 250K nest egg.

Yes; insults are felt acutely around here.

Ha