March Mortgage Update and does any of this really matter?

Mar 01 2012 Published by under Uncategorized

The first of each month or thereabouts, #1 updates the blog on her mortgage situation.  Why?  Because personal finance bloggers dig that sort of thing and were in favor of it.  Each mortgage update is followed by a contemplation on housing or family budgeting, sometimes personal, sometimes more general.  This month is the former.

Last month (February):

Balance: $109,293.86
Years left: 9.416666667
P = $776.50, I =$437.91, Escrow = 726.93

This month (March):

Balance: $107,953.41
Years left: 9.25
P = $781.78, I =$432.62, Escrow = 726.93

One months savings from this month’s prepayment:  ~$2.22.

So... got signals that DH's tenure case is not very good.  He is unlikely to be tenured.  He considered withdrawing his packet, but apparently if he does that then he's out of a job in May and we kind of need his salary for next year.

So what does this mean?

Well... we have some choices.

We can live on my salary alone.  We'll have to make some cuts, especially to our saving.  DH could then do something like long-distance consulting or just devote himself to pursuits that don't make money, like volunteer work or taking classes etc.  We're in a small town and the nearest city is pretty far away and doesn't really have the kind of industry he works in either.  He's also not particularly interested in going the administrative route at the uni.

We can go on the market again.  He doesn't want to work at a university, but I could get a different TT job in a city that has his industry.  Unfortunately there are only 3 cities that have his industry and only one of them is an area I could get a TT job at.  And that one place... it's in a part of the country I would prefer not to live.  (Sorry, I just don't like the East coast much!)

We can move out to California.  DH could work in industry in his field and make a big salary.  Sadly there are no think-tanks in the SF bay area in my field that are any good to work at (one of them has a reputation for being a horrible work environment, and the other is a 3 hour commute from anywhere DH would be likely to work).  The SLACs and CalStates are also unappealing, first because they would be unlikely to hire me (I have pedigree from the wrong coast!), and second because their pays are low and their teaching loads very high.  So really that leaves trying to get a soft money position at one of the big named schools in the area (since although awesome, I am not awesome enough to get a TT job at a top 10 school... I'm also too far from graduation for their post-docs).  This would be a drop in prestige, but in theory I could build up my cv without heavy teaching and service obligations, and in an environment with amazingly good colleagues.  It would also be an increase in risk because soft money positions can have gaps in employment and widely varying salaries.

We could also move out to California and I could completely ditch my career.  Try to get a job at Google or someplace like that doing I don't know what.  Presumably that would also involve a large salary for me.

We don't want to be apart for any longer than 3 months.  We talked about maybe him doing a 6 month temporary position (sometimes industry does 3-12 month jobbers for professors) and we could live there over the summer and then he and DC could stay on and the baby/toddler and I could move back here.  But nothing longer than that.

Meanwhile we're getting older.

So here's the deal:

We could stay here and be perfectly safe.  Guaranteed employment for me.  Continue saving.  Pay off our house.  Have affordable daycare.  Pay for private school.  Etc. Etc.  We'd have to cut back some, but even without raises we're not doing too badly, even if I am underpaid.  It just doesn't cost much to live here.  I like my job.  I like my colleagues.  I know a lot of things about my situation are better than the average.

Alternatively, we could move to paradise and potentially make much more money.  But... small 3 bedroom houses start at 800K in the area we'd be looking at.  Rent starts around 3000/month (though if it is a same-gendered baby currently gestating we could probably make do with a 2br starting at 2500/mo).  School district suddenly becomes very important because private is so much more expensive.  (On the plus side, DC makes the age cutoff for California, so there wouldn't be any fight to keep hir accelerated in public.)  Buying a house, even with 20% down becomes a lot more risky... being potentially 200K underwater is a lot less scary than being potentially 800K underwater if a house can't be sold.  We'd need a very large emergency fund just to pay for the basics of housing and so on in case of a job loss.  There's the potential for great upside, but also risk we wouldn't have staying here.  And what if DH realizes he doesn't like working for industry as much as he would have liked determining his own hours in our small town?  I probably can't make a big enough salary to (comfortably though frugally) support a family in the SF bay area.

With the pregnancy I just want to nest.  Thankfully I don't have to worry about this decision for real for another year, and will presumably no longer be gestating at that point.  The future is an exciting but scary place.

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Thoughts on Spouses and Careers

Feb 27 2012 Published by under Uncategorized

Get Rich Slowly did an article about a woman who is a self-proclaimed "sugar-momma."

The person in the post is to be commended... she's doing what she wants to be doing in the career of her choice and building experience and credentials, and she's also supporting her DH allowing him to fill his career goals through more education. This situation sounds like it is going to work out.

One thing I would caution for women in general is not to sacrifice their own career goals for their husband’s education. As an academic, I know plenty of couples where the woman worked at what she considered to be a temporary job to put her husband through school, but rather than return the favor later (as implicitly promised), they got divorced. Sacrificing one’s own ambitions puts a lot of stress on the marriage, no matter which spouse is doing the sacrificing.

Apparently that situation is not limited to academics. Plenty of folks in the comments chimed in about other situations of both sexes when one sacrificed and then they divorced. I doubt that most couples going into that kind of a situation are planning to use their spouses for easy living followed by trading in for a younger model. However, resentment (or guilt) can build when one member of the couple feels like he or she is sacrificing for the other. On top of that, school changes people. While one is working at a dead-end job, the other is becoming a different person.

Even though it may take more loans and definitely less spending, why can't both people pursue their goals at the same time?

Sometimes that kind of joint pursuit is not possible (for example, if one member of the couple cannot get a visa in a foreign country). But oftentimes the joint pursuit really is possible, except that both people have to sacrifice some not just one sacrificing a lot. Is it better for both to sacrifice, even if the total sacrifice is bigger (imagine a world with no fancy cheese)? Or is it better for only one person to take all the sacrifice?

What do you all think? Did you make sacrifices for your partner? Did your partner sacrifice for you? Or were you on your own in the pursuit of education and career?

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Pondering productivity, and trying to hack it

Feb 21 2012 Published by under Uncategorized

What is your ideal self? (In California, we were allowed to ask this type of question.)

The me that I want to be is more productive than the me that I am. The real me, the true me, the me that I want to be... she's organized, she gets things done, even if she's had bad luck. She's also had good luck. She needs to keep moving forward and take advantage of the opportunities she's had and has, and work to create more opportunities for her in the future. Even if doing so makes a subset of senior people think she's bigger than her britches. (If she were male, they wouldn't dream of thinking that-- she never hears people complain when men make their own opportunities, only when women do. She has not yet had the courage to ask folks to check their bias when she hears these stories.)

We've had several posts about hacking our productivity in the past. Obviously it is a work in progress.

Virginia Valian has an incredible paper called Solving a Work Problem that I keep coming back to. If you have ever had writer's block, do yourself a favor and click the link for a PDF, seriously. One thing she says in it is that "people are not wrong about their true selves" (p. 101). So if you think that you really are a scientist or a writer, in spite of the fact that you're not getting as much done as you want, you still are that thing. We are always attempting to be more productive over here.

Here's some strategies we're trying to use:

I wrote myself a syllabus last semester -- for my writing. Just like my regular syllabi, it had a list of dates throughout the semester and what should be done by then. I put course outcomes on the front page and a list of recommended readings, as well as expectations for myself. I stole this idea from a fellow junior faculty member and I think it is brilliant! Here's a little excerpt:

Office hours: writing will take place Monday evenings for at least 30 minutes,
Tuesdays all day (along with research) for at least a total of two hours,
Thursdays from 1 to 3pm, and Fridays from 1:30 to 4pm at [Coffee Shop].
Exceptions: travel; Thanksgiving break
On Sundays, all work of any kind must be completed by 11pm.
Class Days/Times: Lab meetings are Wednesdays from 2-3pm and I must be prepared for them. Group accountability meetings will take place (TBA)

Course Objectives:
By the end of the semester, have R. project done and S. paper under review. Continue work on 2 – 3 other projects. Have projects in all stages of pipeline, from conceptualization to under-review. Keep track of all tasks completed for annual report and binder. Abide by timeline and complete tasks on schedule, or revise schedule.

We make so many lists. Crossing things off is motivating for both of us. We drink coffee.

We (Nicoleandmaggie) are allies for each other. We know each other from real life and have read each other's writing for years. We share our online to-do lists and question each other: "Have you started that report yet?" We report what we've done that day and what we're doing next. This is a regular part of our daily chats about everything under the sun that we IM each other every day, which is also how our blog began.

One of us installed leech block. Sadly our IT situation is such that some days it works and some days it doesn't. It's a bit like being a pigeon in a Skinner box being randomly given treats when I hit the button. (At home it always works.)

We strongly disagree that people who are productive and organized are unhappy. Nobody should have to apologize for being awesome, even awesome people. And I agree with Virginia Valian-- if the you that you want to be is more productive than the you that you currently are... then don't listen to people who tell you that productive people are all miserable. You know you.

We continue to work through these issues each semester. Do you have tips for us? Pretty please? What do you do to help yourself be productive?

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Lifetime Earnings Gaps, by Sex and Race/Ethnicity

Aug 10 2011 Published by under Uncategorized

Dolores R. and Andrew S. let us know about the report “The College Payoff: Education, Occupations, Lifetime Earnings,” by researchers at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, based on 2007-2009 American Community Survey data (via Feministing and Kay Steiger). Not surprisingly, higher education significantly increases lifetime earnings of U.S. workers:

But education doesn’t pay off equally for all groups. Women, not surprisingly, make less at every level of education than men do; in fact, their median lifetime earnings are generally on par with men a couple of rungs down the educational ladder:

Ah, but, you might think, women are more likely to take time out of the workforce than men, so perhaps that accounts for the difference. But the gaps calculated here are only for full-time, year-round workers and do not include periods out of the workforce — that is, this is the “best-case scenario” in terms of comparing gender earnings, and yet women still make about 25% less than men at the same educational level. When they include workers taking time out of the workforce, the pay gap would be significantly larger. The far right column in this table shows how much less women make compared to men based on the “typical” work pattern for workers in each educational category:

The benefits of education also vary by race and ethnicity, with non-Hispanic Whites generally making more at each educational level than all other groups, though Asians outearn them at the highest levels:

Though the authors don’t include a table showing the gap if you include workers who do not work full-time year-round throughout their careers, they state that as with gender, the gap widens significantly, since non-Whites are more likely to experience periods without work.

So does education pay? Undoubtedly, for all groups. But due to factors such as occupational segregation (especially by gender) and discrimination in the workplace, the return on an educational investment is clearly a lot higher for some than others.

Also see related posts on the gender gap in science and tech jobs, racial differences in job loss during the recession, unemployment among Black and White college grads, and trends in job segregation by sex.

Cross-posted at Sociological Images.

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Luxury and the Consumption of Labor

Aug 09 2011 Published by under Uncategorized

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College in Los Angeles. She blogs every day at Sociological Images.

I came across this fascinating poster advertising tea at The Coffee Bean in Irvine. The ad features tea leaves balled up into small tea “pearls” and spilled into a person’s palm (text and analysis below):

Text:

Three minutes to fragrant perfection.

It takes a full day to hand-roll 17 ounces of our Jasmine Dragon Pearl Green Tea. But in just three minutes you can watch these aromatic pearls unfurl gracefully into one of the world’s most soothing and delicious teas.

This ad suggests that others’ toil should enhance one’s experience of pleasure. The fact that it takes a significant amount of human labor to “hand-roll” tea leaves into balls — an action that is in no way asserted to change the taste of the tea — is supposed to make the tea more appealing and not less. We are supposed to enjoy not just the visual, but the fact that others worked hard to produce it for us. A whole day of their labor for just three minutes of curly goodness.

This is a rather stunning value pervading U.S. culture. Luxury may be defined not only as pleasure, or as the consumption of the scarce, but as the “unfurling” of others’ hard work. What could be more luxurious than the casual-and-fleeting enjoyment of the hard-and-long labor of others?

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