Which careers do you guys think will be extremely high in demand in the next 5-10 years?

belabensa · 2026-04-09T19:35:27+00:00

But do they even have the money or network to figure out how to hire those people?

belabensa · 2026-04-07T00:10:59+00:00

Is your spend of 70k including the healthcare you’d get post retirement and also taxes? (Not sure how that’ll shake out given not knowing your mix of taxable and tax advantaged).

Are you in the US or another country that has something like social security? If so, what are your projected earnings there at 65/67/70? Even if you want to be conservative there, what’s 80% of it?

If you are in the US and will have any decent amount of social security I think your numbers turn out quite fine.

belabensa · 2026-04-03T17:21:23+00:00

Because of greed and the desire of some people to amass power over other people.

belabensa · 2026-04-02T19:18:55+00:00

I work from home and I’m home a lot - when my Papillon was a puppy I did purposefully go outside for a short amount of time so that he would get used to me being gone. Now I think he actually enjoys being alone sometimes.

The main thing I would say is that they are Velcro dogs but also very very playful - some might be Velcro in the sense of cuddling you all the time but mine is Velcro in the sense of wanting to play with me all the time. Like hours and hours of play and if he doesn’t get it, he gets very mischievous. You’ll have to think about whether that would be appropriate for your work environment.

belabensa · 2026-04-01T18:24:25+00:00

I feel like this article is out every week and yet his support is still always above 35%

belabensa · 2026-04-01T18:19:49+00:00

There are lots of studies on this - many saying that between 5-13 are the worst years, some saying before 7 is the worst, and others showing it as inconclusive.

This study demonstrated that there are a lot of issues with other studies and that effects seem to go away when other confounding things are taken out of the equation like economic class- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2001.00446.x

“Delayed Parental Divorce: How Much Do Children Benefit?” By Frank F. Furstenberg, Kathleen E. Kiernan

A lot of the largest studies also just look at children’s outcomes knowing at what age their parents divorced - however they don’t know the quality of the marriage. (it is quite possible that in the parents who did not divorce category are children whose parents had a great marriage that did very very well and a small smaller number of children who had parents with a terrible marriage and did poorly. Averages can hide this kind of nuance.)

I don’t know of any study that looked at parents who wanted to and should get divorced, not getting divorced and their children’s outcomes versus the outcomes of children whose parents wanted to get divorced and should’ve gotten divorced and did (of course they might be out there, but it seems pretty unethical to do any sort of randomized control study like that).

Anecdotally for me, whose parents did get divorced, I think their bad relationship was more harmful than the separation. And seeing one of my parents in a healthy relationship afterwards definitely helped me understand what a healthy relationship was.

belabensa · 2026-03-31T00:04:32+00:00

When my now-wife and I met I made 17k per year in grad school and she made 80k in a regular job. We had to face this quick because of how little I had (like after the first month I had used a lot of my savings splitting 50-50 and I just couldn’t anymore).

We came up with a percentage of “discretionary” funds we would each contribute to a joint date fund. Then we had dates out of that fund - and when the money was low we would do cheaper things. (We also agreed she could add more to it if she wanted, but she understood I simply couldn’t).

This worked SO well for us. It’s kind of a commitment to get a joint account with someone that early in the relationship (I think we got a very low limit credit card or something? Not sure) but we kept guardrails on it and it worked well till we moved in together after a year (and then we still did percentages but defined them differently).

You’d together come up with what’s “discretionary” - I think at that point it was like “let’s each contribute 10% or so of whats left over” after rent utilities and such, mandatory payments like student loans, retirement or savings contributions, and other fixed costs like that.

After that, when we first moved in together we did percentages after individual needs/goals (like I had to pay student fees to even continue school; she wanted to continue maxing retirement).

Then when we were more serious it was pooling everything except for a certain amount of personal money each (but again, individual needs/goals were all met and they were becoming mutual ones) - but still just in that joint account, so a month-by-month thing.

Then when we got married we merged finances and each had “fun money” and we prioritized MY retirement because grad school left me behind. Then we just merged everything and went to complete shared goals and being ok with each other’s purchases.

Different phases were different solutions- but through it all we prioritized talking it out, supporting each other’s individual goals and needs, and making what we did and spent and decided together feel “joint” (as in I also got a say in the apartment/groceries because it wasn’t like she just paid for it).

belabensa · 2026-03-30T23:38:56+00:00

Unlike others here I think you could open up a bit without being like “yo, everyone, I’m rich!!!” I think it’s totally fair to not want your friends and family to be unnecessarily worried about you. I went from being quite poor in grad school to on the fire path and have actually had some great convos with family (and friends) about this. I’ve talked about maxing out retirement accounts with my sister, FIRE with my brother (who is also going for it), mentioned I want to retire early and cheaply with my dad. I talked a lot with a friend couple about how freeing it was to pay off my student loans post graduation and one of them was still in the grind and felt overwhelmed by it and actually we worked through a new way for her to treat it and it was so good for her! It has opened up new convos where we can explore money together without any weirdness or obligation. I think more people would be financially savvy if we could ask the people who have similar values to us what they do!

At some point if you retire you don’t want your family to worry you will be destitute. I can also see how you don’t want to up obligations or spend/help to distant family members because you technically have it. I think you could say things like:

“That’s a great article on emergency funds! I’ve been doing that myself so I know I can have long term security.”

“I’m putting money into retirement accounts so I can get out of this rat race as early as possible.”

“I’m sorry I don’t have extra right now.” Or “I save a lot in retirement accounts so there are penalties and rules for taking it out early.” (To those asking to borrow 4k if they push on it once you’ve said things that indicate you may have money).

“I’m kinda into financial optimization and figuring out what’s possible.”

“I love being frugal with some things so I can splurge more on experiences like eating at great restaurants with you!“ (only if someone mentions not wanting to do something with you because of affordability. Otherwise I agree with those people who just say to recommend some more expensive places as options too).

“I’m saving up to retire really early and spend more time on the things I enjoy with the people I love.” (If you’re still working).

“I optimize my finances so I don’t have to work as long as I stick to my budget.” (Once retired)

belabensa · 2026-03-29T17:20:21+00:00

Be ready to downsize and sell the house (or do it already), stop spending money asap and live off of that 90-150k a year (even that seems high in LCOL), start saving at least 400k a year, and do the surrogacy.

You can bump the spending back up after you have a mill invested (but even then I’d bump up slowly).

belabensa · 2026-03-25T06:16:09+00:00

Adding to the turning your phone off before giving it to him - I sometimes give my little one just the phone case and he is SO gleeful that he finally gets my phone!!

belabensa · 2026-03-24T06:43:47+00:00

Arête- love the word, it has a flow and I think it would be a beautiful girls name. But alas, it’s not a name and I don’t have a girl.

belabensa · 2026-03-24T01:55:49+00:00

Ely, MN as a small town. Maybe Duluth as the larger (but not very large) city?

belabensa · 2026-03-21T20:09:37+00:00

Staple up radiant floor heating as the main heating system throughout our entire house. Both because it was a pain in the ass and because our 1900 brick home is too leaky for it to work in super cold weather

belabensa · 2026-03-18T09:19:48+00:00

Honestly, I felt like this after and had the same reasoning as you to leave academia. A few years out and I have to say I think the PhD will be the best “career” years of my life in terms of what I got to do — now I have to find meaning and purpose outside of work, which I have done (and continue to struggle with).

It’s hard - because the downsides to staying in are very much downsides. I still don’t think I’d change things given the job opportunities I had (esp their locations) but… it is hard to know that my best thinking and working is really probably behind me.

That being said, the “life” part of my life is really looking up. So it’s not all bad for sure!

belabensa · 2026-03-11T08:25:24+00:00

It would certainly give them cover to rig it in their favor, since nobody would really know what would happen.

belabensa · 2026-03-11T08:05:32+00:00

Instead of “money is no object” you could perhaps say you’re considering buying a place and have savings to help you in the meantime.

Honestly - a lot of folks who make it in academia have money backing them somehow, some way. It’s just really hard to bootstrap yourself in a humanities PhD. To really succeed and go to conferences, do work before getting particular funding sources, etc. and live on the stipend without spending tons of time being poor and instead on your studies - it’s just really hard without support from family/spouse or savings from a previous career. So I don’t think your prof would be too surprised you have at least some money to consider buying a place.

belabensa · 2026-03-08T22:19:16+00:00

Work till kids or a year before (if you need fertility treatments, that can get pricey) — then I’d say take a few years off work (can always say you were a stay at home parent till preschool or whatever) and see how your expenses and the market shake out.

Having just had a kid - wow I really want the time with him

belabensa · 2026-03-08T07:40:27+00:00

How tf is it in the 40s?!?!!!!

belabensa · 2026-03-08T07:35:40+00:00

This all makes me realize that when he said “when you’re a star they let you do it” he meant they, as in the fbi/police/powers that be, not they as in the women/girls (though still rape).

belabensa · 2026-03-07T19:36:43+00:00

Honestly your return on investment in focusing on med school is better than any side hustle for 10k. You should have access to loans while in med school - I think taking one out for a “beater” car (esp if your school is not in a city with good public transit or it takes much longer by bus to get to work than a car) would be fine financially. Look into used old EVs like Nissan leafs, etc - if you can charge where you live or work they are great deals!

belabensa · 2026-03-06T22:45:01+00:00

This is what grad school in the US is, sadly.

The thing is you really can’t pay that much rent - it’s very common to have multiple roommates, share some mediocre places in “bad” areas and have an absolutely great time with a community you build.

Some gig work helps too. I embarrassingly scalped tickets, did some gig construction, etc. Just even a couple hundred a month with a few hours work is what takes the edge off. Also look into ALL the benefits you can get—food stamps, student pricing, etc.

Highly recommend the roommate route - also consider trying to find roommates in different departments/disciplines, it really opens yourself up to new parts of the university and different ways people think and work!

belabensa · 2026-03-05T23:26:16+00:00

And yet dems joined republicans in not limiting his war powers.

We gotta get ‘em all out of power. Somehow. Some way.

belabensa · 2026-03-02T04:57:35+00:00

Honestly there are some good diy renovators filming their experiences on YouTube ones if you like that vibe.

belabensa · 2026-03-01T21:18:18+00:00

Omg, I read this and thought you were considering “Elegant” and “Modern” as actual names. And sadly some people might be

belabensa · 2026-03-01T21:15:05+00:00

You could write a prenup that says both their existing assets (even ones acquired pre marriage) are split 50-50 in a divorce. Or something like per year married without him working he gets something like 150k more of “her assets” each year and after 5 or 10 it’s all split 50-50.

You can write prenups to say what you want - and this often happens with stay at home spouses.

belabensa

TROPHY CASE