Since I joined Corporate America I’ve had the supreme joy of being in charge of my own retirement. By the time I came along the age of the “pension plan” was fading fast in the rearview mirror of history. Suddenly we were all given the keys to the machine of our destiny and told “Here, take it and drive it around!”
Unfortunately some of us, myself especially, are intent on driving it off a cliff. I have been given near total control over a 401k retirement investment portfolio that will determine if I live like a pauper or a prince after I am forced out of work at age 65.
I’ve seen enough of the television commercials to know that it really is just a matter of what tropical island I want to live on after I retire, assuming I choose the right investments. Or more importantly, if I choose the best investment advisor. Of course the first doesn’t cost anything the second costs a goodly amount.
The brutal reality is that I am going to live in poverty upon retirement. No question about it. I will be eating the cheapest canned dog food I can force down my throat for sustenance. If I have a permanent home it will be in the most deplorable conditions imaginable. Which will fit well with the limited health care I’ll have access to. Hopefully it will be mercifully short.
Oh, yeah, and I’ll go from PhD research chemist to WalMart greeter. After I am decreed too old to be of use in technology I can be the slow-moving happy voice of welcome to a cheaper America!
I can’t wait!
But how did it come to this? Well, because I spent my 12 years learning science rather than business. If I had wanted a business degree I would have gotten one. When I started with one job after getting my PhD and finishing my postdocs I was informed that now I might want to consider getting an MBA. I had passed the first hurdle in being able to get a doctorate in the physical sciences, but now the real work was to begin and if I wanted to amount to something I’d have to get a Masters degree. Somehow that seemed backwards. But it was coming out of the mouth of a seasoned science professional.
Suddenly I realized I had been wasting my limited mental skills. I was trying to learn about DG, DS, z, and countless other physical measurements when I was supposed to be learning about P/E ratios and SEC 8K filings!
I was confused. I thought that learning science was important. It certainly took a long time! Take a look at the following pictures.
A scientific Calculator
A Financial Calculator
Notice anything different? Well there’s a lot fewer things on a “Financial” calculator. There’s less to do, right? Well sorta-kinda. The point I’d like to make here is that the functions are DIFFERENT. Just because I can do a bunch of the things on the “Scientific” calculator doesn’t mean I can do the stuff on the “Financial” calculator! But more importantly the people who can do stuff on the Financial Calculator can’t necessarily do the stuff on the Scientific Calculator.
Why is that? Is it because one is smarter than the other? NO. A thousand times NO. It means we are DIFFERENT PEOPLE. I don’t want to be the one calculating Depreciation on Capital. I want to be the one calculating the natural log of a function.
So why is it that now I’m tossed out into the big world to fend for my own financial future? Suddenly I am meaningless and what I do is meaningless.
At some point it became more important to be a business person than a scientist in an absolute sense.
“But Thredkil! You degenerate fool! If you don’t want to starve when you are old, I suggest you get off your duff and learn how to manage your investments!” you will say. To which I respond: “So, are you willing to go out and make your own paper? Are you aware of the various polymers and inorganic additives that make paper paper? Are you willing to find your own coal to run the powerplant so you aren’t cold at night?”
Why is it, in this country you can be “proud” of not understanding thermodynamics but considered a complete idiot if you don’t know where to invest your 401k funds?
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