Which gives a better return on investment? A college degree, or putting money in the stock market?

@SusanInFlorida but the investor's ability to recover is not really as dependent upon the value of the company whose stock they buy, but the ability to sell the shares to someone else. Historically, "business cycles" always profuce a bear market at some point. It can take years to recover, so the person "losing" out might not live to see the recovery.

@samueltyler2 Avoid gold certificates of any kind.. They have been inflated like the $US. There are more certificates out there than gold in all the world..

@DogMan my grandfather was a staff sargent in the army. no college. after he left the service he worked in "materials handling", and founded small company that made him wealthy.

many people lack the entrepreneurial impulse today, and the sobriety.

@SusanInFlorida Thats awesome. I'm sure the military helped his undeniable work ethic.

I believe the military would help more young people than college.

@SusanInFlorida And that is exactly how my values differ. The "market place', 'tech and business' have their place, but they do not drive me or take any kind of priority. I need to earn enough to live comfortably and have a bit left over to share. Who needs more. The rest is a choice not a necessity.

@FreddieUK the beauty of western democracy and human rights is that people can pursue any course of study they want in college, without fear of someone saying "you don't need that. you don't need to earn more". everyone is free to explore different options.

@SusanInFlorida Spot on. That's exactly why we prefer it above all the other options of governance.

@GerOttman i guess any sort of success depends on a combination of luck and research/due diligence.

20 years ago i had a friend who was convinced he was going to get rich from purchasing and installing pay phones.

@SusanInFlorida well I suppose the payphone market is pretty wide open Not much compition...

@LeopoldBloom people go to college because the read (outdated) articles telling them their lifetime earnings will be 2-3X as much as someone with only a HS diploma. And because their high school guidance counsellor gives them an aptitude test which say's they'd make a good teacher, nurse, or restaurant manager.

@lpthehermit Good job Hermit, Sounds like my story. Everyone should go into the military. AND pay their mortgage off as early as possible. The paid off home is a sign of success.

We paid ours off in 15 years, then kept paying it to ourselves for 10 years when we used it to buy a
vacation home in Utah

@SusanInFlorida The benefit of Military service is not limited to the opportunity for education. So broadly speaking I am in favour of it. Although maybe not for the same reasons. I do note that there has been discussion regarded stripping back some GI benefits.😷

@whowasthatmaskedman i currently only know just one enlisted service member. an immigrant/naturalized citizen who enlisted in the air force for a non-combat role. he was trained as an air-conditioning tech (i'm not making this up) then sent to a US airbase in Saudi Arabia.

It's not clear if his airbase was the one Iran launched missiles at last month.

@SusanInFlorida Lets hope not. The thing is that there are a ton of non combat roles, particularly in the air force. Even before the days of high tech. My own father was in the RAF in Burma in WW2 running a field kitchen. Now I know Burma was a horrible place to be. But that had little to do with the dangers of the war.. Cooking was his trade before the war and all his life..😷

@SunshineGirl middle class income is completely dependent on how close you insist on living to the sea, or a tendy inner city neighborhood

@SusanInFlorida Even these areas require teachers and nurses. Being able to afford to live among the community you serve, rather than adding an unpaid three hour commute each day to an already demanding job, seems to me a reasonable ask rather than a luxury.

@SunshineGirl i read something interesting this afternoon. the "guideline" for affordable rent is 30% of your gross income.

so if an apartment costs $3,000, that requires $100,000 annual income, whether single or partnered

@whowasthatmaskedman
Of course you should disagree! Half of it was a joke... the half where I supported the American stock exchange as an investment vehicle was nothing more than a baited joke.

Not everyone has a business mind nor do they have the wherewithal to become a business owner, even if they had the capital behind them from old family money.

Some people are better suited to becoming employees who SERVE a corporation by offering their unique skillset to that corporate model, such as having a degree in business management to run someone else's business, or becoming being a Chartered Accountant for the business or a Business Attorney who handles all legal matters.

Some people who are financial wizards or business management wizards have no interest whatsoever in owning the business, but hold great interest in making the business grow because of their skillset. Despite being paid a finite salary, their primary ambition is to help grow someone else's business exponentially, thereby creating infinite wealth for the business owner herself.

Keep in mind that the business owner isn't the brains behind the success of a business, it's the professionals she hires who dedicated their lives and education standard to become extremely good at just ONE thing. When you get a whole bunch of professionals in the same room who are all extremely good at just ONE different thing each, you have a business management team in place despite not really having a clue what any of them are talking about when they get serious.

I attended university and earned my MBA. The reason I went to university was NOT to get a degree so that I could be well positioned to score a high paying job as an employee, my objective was to become a business owner who HIRES other people who are smarter than myself who actually know more about business than I do.

Having the lack of understanding that I couldn't do it ALL myself, is where I made my first and pretty much only tactical error in launching my business career. My lack of understanding was in thinking that I needed to get an MBA so that I could run and manage and keep track of my business.

What I learned about university degrees and MBAs in general, was than universities do not teach anyone how to start or how to run a business of any kind, not even a lemonade stand. They only teach people how to become good employees of an already-established business whom they work for.

In other words, a university education sets a person up to get a good job, by having the institutional credential of a university degree behind their name, but that's where it ends.

Getting an MBA was a total waste of time and money for someone like me who only wanted to be the business owner and operator, because I was not looking to score a good job and become a stellar employee, was was looking to start and run a highly successful business.

What I learned from my MBA program was that I knew as little about forensic accounting and business law after I graduated, as I knew after I had graduated from high school. Taking a business degree of any kind offered by a university does not make one a jack-of-all-Trades and knower over everything; it makes one a Master of ONE specific subject. Anyone who knows many things about business is master of none of them and is effectively useless to you as the business owner.

As a business owner today, what I learned many years ago after buying a higher education, was that I STILL did not have the skillset to do all the business 'things' that needed to be done to run a business because I did not possess enough of an education in professional Accounting or professional Business Law to pull it off myself.

Those two subjects just to name only two, are highly specialized of course and for me to suggest that I didn't need to hire a CA or a Business Attorney because I already had a business degree under my belt, was nothing but blind folly on my part.

The bottom line is, if you want to be a business owner, you HIRE professionals to run those specific departments mentioned; you don't ever attempt to do it yourself. That is why getting a degree in business is only a good idea IF you intend to become an employee of a company, not the owner of the company.

Having a business degree does not lend itself to providing for you with even a sufficient base-level of education to actually keep up with a Chartered Accountant in conversation, let alone a Business Attorney who attended Law School, both of course being highly skilled in their Trade in comparison to someone who graduates from university with an MBA in business management.

The only people who should get a university or college degree are those who intend to use that credential as a means to landing a better job while knowing in advance that they will only ever earn a finite salary working for someone else as their employee.

@swirlie A degree is necessary to get your resume read for many jobs.. And most people who go on to become business owners do so after learning from the mistakes of the bosses they worked for.😷

@jackjjackson That is kind of what I did, I didn't go to trade school, but rather OJT in construction.

I learned everything about my trade, from delivery to estimating and project management, then started
my own company 23 years ago. No college required, although I recommend getting a smart controller
with a college degree to handle the books.

In your line of work I’ve found over and over that smart controller is the contractors controller is his wife. @DogMan

@jackjjackson agree. there are still people apprenticing as plumbers and HVAC techs who save up and launch their own businesses. look at all the service companies that end in "xyz brothers"