Would recommend staying as far away from healthcare as possible unless it is their passion and they don't care about being in perpetual debt and the risk of getting sued every 2 seconds.

dabo man said:

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I've got a 16 yo. I'd be totally cool if he wanted to get a two year degree and a trade/skill. He wants to go to Mizzou and live at home (after doing his first two years at a community college). I'll pay what I can, but I suspect he will have debt when he finishes.

I started at A&M Fall 1990. I believe tuition was $16 per hour. With my partial scholarship, A&M cost my parents less money than my Catholic high school had.

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My 2nd oldest is going to HVAC school. It's 10 months and they guarantee a job upon graduation. Hes going to graduate before his sister (26') and probably make more money than her

I also would say trade school, and eventually own your business. I do have another option though. Coating or welding inspector,

Ragnar Danneskjoldd said:

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FIDO*98* said:

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Skip A&M and become a Plumber, Electrician, Welder, HVAC. Take the $100,000 for college and use it to start a business after a few years of experience

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Ideally, your the one in the attic in August for the first 10 years of your career.

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don't rule out commercial..

Being in commercial myself, nearly all my MEP trades are commercial only, and there's plenty reasons why. Especially with much of it being new construction.

AgRad89 said:

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Kool said:

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Wouldn't recommend becoming an M.D. unless it was your absolute passion since you were a kid or something like that AND your Mommy and Daddy are going to foot sever hundred thousands of dollars in tuition bills. I feel blessed and fortunate that Kool Jr. has no such aspirations.

Depending on the regulations of the state you want to live in, however, being an Anaesthesia Assistant, Anaesthesia PA, or Certified Registered Nurse Anaesthetist would be a great job to aim towards.

Hang out in the O.R. scrolling through your phone, occasionally looking up at some monitors and adjusting knobs while the M.D. takes on all of the risk. What's not to love for an 18-year-old?

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This is true to some extent. Medicine is a long hard Road and unfortunately your path is left up to a lot of other people to get you from step to the step who may have personal reasons or DEI quotas to pick other people. You have to get admitted to medical school and then get admitted to residency which is difficult depending on your choice this day and age. I won't say we discouraged our kids from going into medicine but we sure didn't encourage them and they chose other paths. A certified nurse anesthetist does a lot more than stated above. My brother-in-law is one. They basically run the show while the anesthesiologist MD is either in another room or hanging out in the breakroom. Only comes in for issues or emergencies but that's the running joke with ER and anesthesia. 95% boredom, 5% panic.

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Of course. My description of what they do was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I still think it's a tremendous job if you want to be in healthcare, don't want to spend 8 plus years in training after finishing college, and want to have a job in high demand where you can largely dictate how many days per week you want to work.

HtownAg19 said:

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Southlake said:

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Join Navy as an Air Traffic Controller. Get out in 3 years and start at 120k for the FAA.

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Gotta be careful with that one. Money is there but you better be ok having to go live in the Bay Area and working Oakland Center or some other facility nobody wants to go to and getting stuck for years not being able to transfer out. Also lots of forced 6 day weeks. Government benefits though

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Yeah, then don't do that. $120k in the Bay Area is just barely scraping by. You'll be living in a rough neighborhood or in an RV.

H1b is just a dog whistle. L1 visa quota is the real one that will quietly be increased. Ever wonder why everyone from the Chenai office is a "manager" even if they have 2 years of experience? L1 is why.

FIDO*98* said:

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Skip A&M and become a Plumber, Electrician, Welder, HVAC. Take the $100,000 for college and use it to start a business after a few years of experience

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You need to know a lot more about the capabilities of the person before you recommend this track. If you're talking someone with an <1100 SAT, then yeah, it's a good discussion. If the person is a >1400 SAT, then absolutely not.

Don't cast off engineering yet. We have a lot of problems with H1bs and communication. They struggle to talk on the phone or in a meeting, or anytime they can't have chat gpt write the response for them. And Chatgpt still has issues. Clients don't want to interact with them. If you can get an engineering degree and speak fluent English, you're still valuable and more valuable than a H1b with better technical skills.

Captain of a ship or airplane.

Commercial insurance underwriting. I think a good chunk will get automated in my lifetime but underwriting large/complex accounts in a specified industry(construction, healthcare, O&G, etc.) is a really good gig for the right mindset.

Any business or economics degree will get your foot in the door. After that, it helps to know someone at the company.

AggieArchitect04 said:

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Cyber security is a booming profession. I think you can make 6 figures coming right out of school.

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If Musk has his way, Vijay and Kumar will be doing that job.

The only jobs in America in the future is OnlyFans model and "influencer".

Ags4DaWin said:

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My SAT was 1560/1600

And I 100% would have been better off going the tradeschool track and would have preferred it.

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Wow that is amazing. My son got 1560 a few years ago as well. He is at a Top 5 CS school now.

I can see that in your posts which I enjoy. Keep posting.

Ags4DaWin said:

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Would recommend staying as far away from healthcare as possible unless it is their passion and they don't care about being in perpetual debt and the risk of getting sued every 2 seconds.

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I never understood this.
If you are a doc with a good specialization, you make good money. If you don't waste money, then why can't you get out of debt in a few years?

What is the average debt for a doc like? Can't they live within their means?

lancevance said:

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H1b is just a dog whistle. L1 visa quota is the real one that will quietly be increased. Ever wonder why everyone from the Chenai office is a "manager" even if they have 2 years of experience? L1 is why.

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You are right. The entire system is abused. Most degrees from Hyderabad are fake and just printed papers. Americans are such a naive lot. Decades of good life has made people soft.

I'm a CPA. I've told my kids not to go into accounting.

Absurd OT (without reasonable compensation, sometimes)
Often no or limited vacation during Spring Break, April, July, September, October, January, end of December.
Constantly changing tax law and deadlines
Farming out of work overseas and AI impacting the field

combat wombat said:

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I'm a CPA. I've told my kids not to go into accounting.

Absurd OT (without reasonable compensation, sometimes)
Often no or limited vacation during Spring Break, April, July, September, October, January, end of December.
Constantly changing tax law and deadlines
Farming out of work overseas and AI impacting the field

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Same here, but didn't really have to tell mine not to go into it. They saw the hours that it required and never wanted to go that route.

A friend of mine who is from another town, bought his practice about a year before I did (and sold his a year before I did). He and I were in a CPE seminar in the town where he practiced. He knew all of the CPA owners and many of the staff of those firms and, of course, I knew the same for the CPAs in my area (several small towns in close proximity). I asked him to look around the room and tell me if he knew of any children of the CPA owners were working in those firms and he said that as far as he knew only one was, but might not be any longer. None from my area (smaller sample size) did. That's despite being able to make just about as much money as you could ever want and living a pretty decent life. The downside is the time commitment.

TriAg2010 said:

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Ags4DaWin said:

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My SAT was 1560/1600

And I 100% would have been better off going the tradeschool track and would have preferred it.

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professionals out-earn trades over their lifetime. The rebuttal to this about "so and so owns this company and makes $Y hundred thousand dollars" are plainly outliers

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Another rebuttal could be that a trade not only pays a fraction of what a 4 year degree costs, but also starts making money earlier, which both could be invested so that's a big double dip in the plus column for a trade.

How much is $100k of tuition worth after about 40 years in the stock market? Because that's a very real decision a high school grad could make.

infinity ag said:

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Ags4DaWin said:

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Would recommend staying as far away from healthcare as possible unless it is their passion and they don't care about being in perpetual debt and the risk of getting sued every 2 seconds.

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I never understood this.
If you are a doc with a good specialization, you make good money. If you don't waste money, then why can't you get out of debt in a few years?

What is the average debt for a doc like? Can't they live within their means?

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I only had 80k because I went to A&M then UTHSCSA and my undergraduate was paid by my folks + honors scholarship. And this was in 1999.

And they can get out of debt if they live within their means for a few years pretty easily.

From Perplexity AI:
---------------------------------------------


The average debt of current medical students at graduation is approximately $241,600[1]. This figure includes total student loan debt, encompassing both medical school and pre-medical educational debt. For medical school debt alone, the average is slightly lower at $234,597[2].

## Breakdown by School Type

- Public medical school graduates: Average debt of $194,280 (allopathic) to $241,588 (osteopathic)[1]
- Private medical school graduates: Average debt of $227,839[3]

## Debt Distribution

- 73% of medical school graduates have educational debt[2]
- 31% of indebted graduates have pre-medical educational debt[2]
- 14.3% of graduates borrow $300,000 or more[4]
- 29.5% of graduates complete medical school without debt[4]

The average medical school debt has increased significantly over time, rising by 48.5% between 1998 and 2019[2]. This growth rate has outpaced inflation, with the debt increase for medical school graduates more than tripling the rate of inflation in the decade from 2000 to 2010[5].

Citations:
[1] https://panaceafinancial.com/resources/what-is-the-average-medical-school-debt/
[2] https://educationdata.org/average-medical-school-debt
[3] https://www.bankrate.com/loans/student-loans/average-medical-school-debt/
[4] https://www.credible.com/statistics/average-student-loan-debt-for-medical-school
[5] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6179784/

Starting in the trades is lucrative if it leads into growing a decent business. But it is hard work until then, and not easy on the body if done for 40 years.

Air Traffic Control seems ripe with opportunity.
Airline pilot if you can make it happen.
Flight Dispatcher for airline (aka. pilot on the ground)

Contrary to what a couple on here have said, I have told my kids that getting an accounting degree, CPA license, Big 4 job, and then putting your head down and working hard is a great way to make a good career.

In some ways accounting is like a trade, it doesn't require a fancy name on the diploma. Plenty of millionaire Big 4 partners went to schools like Stephen F Austin or Middle Tennessee.

ec2004 said:

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Contrary to what a couple on here have said, I have told my kids that getting an accounting degree, CPA license, Big 4 job, and then putting your head down and working hard is a great way to make a good career.

In some ways accounting is like a trade, it doesn't require a fancy name on the diploma. Plenty of millionaire Big 4 partners went to schools like Stephen F Austin or Middle Tennessee.

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Those are outliers and happened in the 80s and maybe 90s. Not today.

The job market is crap today because of offshoring and importing obscene numbers of people here.

Having a good sized plumbing/HVAC company can certainly be a wealth generator. But creating one isn't easy. And with tons of small businesses, if you have the wrong last name, you'll be on the outside looking in.

infinity ag said:

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Ags4DaWin said:

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My SAT was 1560/1600

And I 100% would have been better off going the tradeschool track and would have preferred it.

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Wow that is amazing. My son got 1560 a few years ago as well. He is at a Top 5 CS school now.

I can see that in your posts which I enjoy. Keep posting.

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If your son likes the work, have him keep at it. Encourage him to take some career risks early - startups, smaller, growing companies, etc. Get into a higher mgmt role, with stock, etc you can make life changing $$$

ec2004 said:

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Contrary to what a couple on here have said, I have told my kids that getting an accounting degree, CPA license, Big 4 job, and then putting your head down and working hard is a great way to make a good career.

In some ways accounting is like a trade, it doesn't require a fancy name on the diploma. Plenty of millionaire Big 4 partners went to schools like Stephen F Austin or Middle Tennessee.

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my kids are only 9/10 so we haven't really discussed it yet, but I have no issue with my kids doing 4 year degree (will push for instate tuition.. which incidentally can be had in neighboring states to Colorado) assuming it's in engineering, accounting/finance, some sort of pre med/ pre law, architecture.. maybe a few others. Something that has a defined and identifiable career path and will be a good salary.

But just getting a business degree with no end game or career goal.. not paying 6 figures for that.

FIDO*98* said:

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Skip A&M and become a Plumber, Electrician, Welder, HVAC. Take the $100,000 for college and use it to start a business after a few years of experience

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This thread was over after the first response. I went to A&M, have a masters. I work in trades now representing various trades in their respective trade associations. The richest, most down to earth guys I know learned how to fix something or build something and then started a small business.

From what I've seen over the years, the majors that can truly transform your life are: finance, accounting and some engineering disciplines.

With that said, I personally feel that you are/are not born for those career paths. I tell my kids to study dermatology.

I know nothing...but obviously a lot depends on the kid and their goals and abilities.

I know a few people that did 4-8 years in the military, got on with the federal government (some in pretty cool jobs, some in mundane jobs), and retired at 55-57. They may not be 'rich', but they've never been lacking.

Known people that did 20+ in the military, retired around 40, then went to work part time mowing greens or selling guns at the local sporting goods store or something like that. Again, not 'rich', and if you're goal is a new $100k car every couple years, probably not the route. But as you get older...there's more people jealous of the 50 year old retired guy than the guy driving a cool car and wearing a different Rolex every day.


If I could map it out for 1998 me, I would do the following:
Join the Air Force, do my 6 years.
Max the GI Bill as much as possible.
Get an EE degree. 28-29 years old, and with half a brain, debt free w/a great degree and 6 years military service.
Put my degree and experience to work...figure out what route in the world of electricity or batteries or whatever I want to go...plan to have my own business by about 35-37. Bust my ass for 10-15 years, leave it in capable hands, profit.

Lots of variables obviously...like war and marriage and babies...but seems like a decent route.

Petroleum engineering or nuclear engineering. Energy is the foundation of all industry. That isn't changing any time soon.