Early-retirement wannabe

bigadaj

I'd disagree with you a tush on this one, may be your American origins showing but possibly just a difference in opinion.

Education should be useful but isn't solely about earning a high wage, historically the two have frequently been at odds. Examples are academic research paying very poorly and financial services including banking, accountancy etc being seen as trades with no specific academic route.

Not earning a high salary is not necessarily an indication of failure, if it were the world would be an even sadder place than it already is.

You have a right to spend your money as you see fit, but ironically the spread of higher education has actually had the effect of lowering social mobility, with many youngsters sadly seduced into studying mickey mouse courses at very poor institutions to only find that there is no useful work at he end.

atush

first of all elantan, you are behind the times. Students who started Uni this past september are payin 6.6% to be lowered to 6.2%. Far above your 1.5%.



Second Big, yes I had to pay for my education in the 80's when you didn't. but , I had a degree in Biology, and was a scientist. So made cr*p all. My neighbor a policeman made more. And he didn't (at the time) need a uni degree. But then again, i was dealing with aids before there was any treatment (high risk possible death sentence) but he was facing crack addicts with guns. You takes your chances and make your choices.

Pulling the ethnocentric card here isn't going to work. I know how the real world works and who is paid what. And paying 9K per year plus 6-10K living expenses on the never never at 6% plus isn't going to work unless you are going to be paid very low (and therefore we will pay your bad debt off) or be paid very high.


economics 101. which is something I took at uni, as US degrees don't allow 100% specialization and we MUST take classes and sit exams in other areas in order to get a more 'grounded' education.

In case you are interested, in addition to my BOS degree subject I had to take courses in art history, antropology, and french.

Marine_life

bigadaj wrote: »

Education should be useful but isn't solely about earning a high wage, historically the two have frequently been at odds. Examples are academic research paying very poorly and financial services including banking, accountancy etc being seen as trades with no specific academic route.

You're not 100% right there.

Certainly there are good routes in both banking and accountancy without qualifications but for the job I have done throughout my career you are going to need a professional qualification. Also if you want to work for one of the "nameplate" banks (Goldmans, Morgan stanley etc.) you're going to need a first class degree from a good university. Believe me they take the absolute cream.

bigadaj

Marine_life wrote: »

You're not 100% right there.

Certainly there are good routes in both banking and accountancy without qualifications but for the job I have done throughout my career you are going to need a professional qualification. Also if you want to work for one of the "nameplate" banks (Goldmans, Morgan stanley etc.) you're going to need a first class degree from a good university. Believe me they take the absolute cream.

Now yes, historically was never the case, more important to have a relative putting large amounts through the big city banks.

elantan

atush wrote: »

first of all elantan, you are behind the times. Students who started Uni this past september are payin 6.6% to be lowered to 6.2%. Far above your 1.5%.



Second Big, yes I had to pay for my education in the 80's when you didn't. but , I had a degree in Biology, and was a scientist. So made cr*p all. My neighbor a policeman made more. And he didn't (at the time) need a uni degree. But then again, i was dealing with aids before there was any treatment (high risk possible death sentence) but he was facing crack addicts with guns. You takes your chances and make your choices.

Pulling the ethnocentric card here isn't going to work. I know how the real world works and who is paid what. And paying 9K per year plus 6-10K living expenses on the never never at 6% plus isn't going to work unless you are going to be paid very low (and therefore we will pay your bad debt off) or be paid very high.Q


economics 101. which is something I took at uni, as US degrees don't allow 100% specialization and we MUST take classes and sit exams in other areas in order to get a more 'grounded' education.

In case you are interested, in addition to my BOS degree subject I had to take courses in art history, antropology, and french.

Obviously I am behind the times I graduated this year .. Allegedly ... So does my son he pays 1.5% as well ... But we are finishing our degrees ( well he is I sacked it) so no doubt the students taking up further education will pay more

It possibly helps that we live in Scotland as well


Yep according I this it's 1.5% still

http://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/university-tuition-fees/repaying-your-student-loan/if-you-come-from-scotland/.

Marine_life

ermine wrote: »

His mortgage also accrues interest Rationally, you'd need to take a 360 degree view of the whole financial situation across both you and your son's financial positions.

However, when you have paid your mortgage off later on this year it means you can lob what you were paying to your mortgage into your own pension without taking a lifestyle hit. That means you start to add to your savings the 40% tax on what's going in. That makes your savings a lot faster - it made a remarkable difference for me. You can take 25% of the value of your pension as a pension commencement lump sum under certain circumstances. Which could be a 40% bigger boost to your son's house deposit from the taxman - so what if he's paying interest on the student loan if he's paying less interest on the mortgage.

I'm also puzzled if you're Euroland based why on earth your son wants to study in expensive old Britain. Student fees seem a lot lower in other parts of Northern Europe, which would offer another saving opportunity!

Well..there are some good points in there.

We have been maxing our mortgage payment for the last two years together with a one off payment each year which means that last year we paid around €75,000 off our motgage :eek: the thing that keep motivating us is the fact that by paying off the mortgage early we will be saving about half a million in mortgage interest!

My idea on interest is to try and keep it all in the family so that whn the children want to buy a home we will pay and they can pay us the interest (why not - they will get it when we snuff it anyway!).

As to why my son wants to go back to the uk .....believe me we have tried to encourage him to think about Europe but he has a rose tinted view of the UK and ....well...it may not be 100% logical but we allowed his sister to go to uni in the UK so we have to do the same for both!

bigadaj

atush wrote: »

first of all elantan, you are behind the times. Students who started Uni this past september are payin 6.6% to be lowered to 6.2%. Far above your 1.5%.



Second Big, yes I had to pay for my education in the 80's when you didn't. but , I had a degree in Biology, and was a scientist. So made cr*p all. My neighbor a policeman made more. And he didn't (at the time) need a uni degree. But then again, i was dealing with aids before there was any treatment (high risk possible death sentence) but he was facing crack addicts with guns. You takes your chances and make your choices.

Pulling the ethnocentric card here isn't going to work. I know how the real world works and who is paid what. And paying 9K per year plus 6-10K living expenses on the never never at 6% plus isn't going to work unless you are going to be paid very low (and therefore we will pay your bad debt off) or be paid very high

economics 101. which is something I took at uni, as US degrees don't allow 100% specialization and we MUST take classes and sit exams in other areas in order to get a more 'grounded' education.

In case you are interested, in addition to my BOS degree subject I had to take courses in art history, antropology, and french.

Not sure about your first point, this seems to contradict your argument.

Ethnocentric isnt my point specifically, its primarily that Americans will typically have a more right wing view than the average Brit, and Brits will be slightly more right wing than most other Northern Europeans, etc

Again I am a Reasonable fan of specialisation, if your intelligent enough you will fill in many of the other areas yourself.

Surely the point here is that anyone would take a pragmatic approach based on the information available, if you want to do a worthwhile but lowly paid job that requires a degree then the debt route is sensible and potentially low risk. If you have rich parents then they are going to pay these things off anyway, either initially or down the line after taking the loan. I just don't think the current system is efficiently making the best use of the talents of our young people currently, if you are a thick rich kid then you are going to do better than a poor intelligent kid, or certainly relatively so compared with the case over the last few decades. Which was a conversation I had with a us postgrad whilst doing my degree in the eighties, though then there was obviously a starker differen e in the two systems then.

BeatTheSystem

mark88man wrote: »

No offence BTS but we guys in IT have met some right muppets in sales, management and bean counting (one of which I presume you are) pulling down far more money for far more silliness

Non taken, I would agree there are over paid egocentric types in sales, management and accounting too.

Always dangerous to assume, for the record I am an owner manager of a business and first and foremost an engineer, who for many years of my career was paid less than the types you mentioned, now I employ those types and make sure they work for the business and that the business is not solely for them. Our IT staff are actually excellent but there are many organisations whereby it is evident that IT have too much power, probably due to poor management.

BeatTheSystem

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Would be nice to achieve that consistantly. Unfortunately one doesn't.

7% each year constantly no, but 7% average per year over a long period then I would say yes.

BeatTheSystem

I had been thinking about the should I pay my kids uni fees or give them a house deposit question. Having read a bit of the millionaire next door and a bit more thinking I had come to the conclusion, bo11ocks to them; they are going to have to make their choices and pay for the consequences. The point being is that they will need something to motivate them, as having SFA is what motivated me. Of course I might have to change my tune if they are still living with me in their 30's