I don't suppose it is the done thing to laugh ...

GDB2222

PasturesNew wrote: »

There comes a time when the age you'd be when you finished would mean it wasn't worthwhile. Ageism is illegal, but exists. And in the limited time available left in the workplace could one catch up with the loss of earnings during the duration at Uni.

The question is: at what age is it really not worth taking the risk that it would make a difference bearing in mind your age/location.

Surveys show that graduates earn more. For example: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6335189.stm

However, is this really true? Graduates tend to be cleverer than average, so there's a confounding factor there. So, the survey may just be showing that clever people earn more. Getting a degree requires at least some hard work, so the survey may just be showing that hard workers earn more. And so on.

All these surveys are essentially unscientific. In science, you can generally conduct experiments, altering one parameter to see what effect that has. In the social "sciences", that is not possible.

tintaja

PasturesNew wrote: »

There comes a time when the age you'd be when you finished would mean it wasn't worthwhile. Ageism is illegal, but exists. And in the limited time available left in the workplace could one catch up with the loss of earnings during the duration at Uni.

Would OU be an option? You can study in your own time, spread it over 6 years if needed, and i think if one earns below a certain level, they waive the fee.

mitchaa

The article has a few obvious glaring faults...

1) How does a joint income of £446k equal £1.5m at a lending rate of 8x? I make it roughly a 3.4x income multiplier, so nothing wrong with that

For 8x, their joint income would have to be ITRO of £187,500.

2) Their joint take home pay was £10,400.

Using www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk this equates to roughly a £95.5k salary each (Take home £5200ish) (£191k joint)

So their joint income was no-where near ITRO of £446k, it wasn't even half this amount.

If they were earning £446k, they would have a take home pay of around £23k pm so a £9k mortgage would have been more than affordable.

Badly written article

Or their basic salaries were £191k but with bonuses they made 100% more than this.

I suspect the bank should have delved a bit deeper into this 'guaranteed' bonus.

fc123

just to add to this thread from todays Standard.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23575009-details/I+never+believed+I+was+worth+my+$2.3+million+bonus/article.do

A bit 'Hey look, I'm still cleverer than thou....cos I knew it wouldn't last''.....but he didn't donate it to The Cats Protection league either.

From his position as managing director of one of the largest trading desks in Canary Wharf, Michael Sharp has witnessed the impact of the City's rampant bonus culture first hand. "I have watched people come into the City being normal and humble," he says. "When they get their first million-dollar bonus, you tell them they have been lucky, that it has been an exceptional year, that it will never happen again, and they listen to you.
"But after three years of ever-escalating multi-million dollar bonuses, most bankers become arrogant and start to believe they are getting paid because they are smart, because they are worth it."

But, he says, all this did was to encourage bankers to trade in instruments that many of them could not even really understand themselves. As this practice took hold, it became easier and easier to make money ... while the good times were rolling.
"The past seven years saw a brain drain of the most talented traders and risk managers to hedge funds, leaving banks with a bunch of good communicators who were asked to simply sell products that would earn the bank fees.
"To make matters worse, trading in complex illiquid instruments like mortgage-backed securities and exotic derivatives whose risk was not easily measurable became the norm.

I can't really comment on Hedge Funds, but some of them seem to be having a harder time of it now, just from what I have read.

Us ''at the bottom of the pond'' just have a hard time all of the time instead.

ad9898_3

posh*spice wrote: »

I read about a woman in the US who was given a loan for 180% the value of a property, with a rate that (after the teaser rate) she couldn't afford - the mortgage was for 30 years....she was 80:eek: Go figure:o

Ahhh, well this proves Gordon right, the reason these poor folk got 8x salary is because 'it started in America':rolleyes: . I think I have these catchphrases in the right chronological order

1) 'getting on with the job'
2) 'good position to weather the storm'
3) 'global financial problem'
4) 'global'
5) 'global'
6) 'global' <sigh>
7) '.......which started in America'
8) and last but not least .......... 'global', or did I already mention that

posh*spice

PasturesNew wrote: »

There comes a time when the age you'd be when you finished would mean it wasn't worthwhile. Ageism is illegal, but exists. And in the limited time available left in the workplace could one catch up with the loss of earnings during the duration at Uni.

The question is: at what age is it really not worth taking the risk that it would make a difference bearing in mind your age/location.

My Mum just finished a degree - she's 67!:D

baby_boomer

Doesn't do to laugh?

This thread has been cracking me up for days :rotfl:

I don't automatically do SchadenFreude to losers from the housing market, but this couple make a deserving exception.

IveSeenTheLight

PasturesNew wrote: »

When I finish working and retire, that will be equivalent to my entire life's earnings. Jesus!

Are you sure it's that little?
Starting work at say 20 and retiring early at 60 is still 40 years work.
£446 k / 40 = £11.15K per year

IveSeenTheLight

tintaja wrote: »

Would OU be an option? You can study in your own time, spread it over 6 years if needed, and i think if one earns below a certain level, they waive the fee.

OU is a wonderful organisation.
I gained many a qualification and good courses completed from the OU.
I personally would value an OU degree higher than a conventional one (I know I have a veted interest) as it shows a desire to achieve even while holding down a fll time job.
I believe many employers also highly value OU degrees due to this as well as a sense of self development mentality by the individual

WTF?_2

PasturesNew wrote: »

At their age they can start again.
If they still have jobs.
In any case, if you earn £250k/year, I'd imagine it'd be difficult to earn less than £75k doing something.

You'd think that but I reckon a lot of highly paid people (or just well paid) are about to find out that a job with a nice level of pay is not something that they can expect by right.

This mad credit bubble that we have just experienced meant that just about everything (property, stocks, commodities, retail) could make money ... meaning lots of money floating around to overpay people or even maintain people in completely pointless positions.

We've all benefited from the bubble. I look at my earnings over the last decade and in no way are they justifiable when you see how little a highly productive worker or farmer in China or India gets. We really have been all living well above our means (collectively, as a society) and this sudden contraction of credit/cash is the market's way of bringing things more into balance.