Open thread, Jan. 12 - Jan. 18, 2015

Gondolinian

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Hey, Math PhD candidate here (graduating this May).

Long-term, my career goals are to retire early (I've felt comfortable enough on what I live on as a student that the MrMoneyMustache approach seems eminently doable)...

with the actual terminal values involved being enjoyment and lack of stress....

These are my goals, as well.

Teaching just sounds horrible to me.

It is pretty horrible. My university has a relatively teaching-heavy TA assignment, and it was kind of soul-crushing.

becoming a quant also seems like a bad choice what with having to get a PhD first.

Graduate school could serve the role of a holding pattern for you to figure out what it is you actually want to do. I think it's possible to become a quant or an actuary with a MSF or other master's degree. However, I don't recommend going into debt for graduate school, and as far as I know most graduate schools don't fund master's students.

There's a somewhat sneaky trick: One can apply for a PhD program, obtain a TA or RA, and then after the requirements of the Master's program you actually want are done, transfer to the Master's program and graduate out.

Of course that all requires some degree of teaching, probably, and afterwards you need to find a job making enough to balance out the cost of making a TA's salary for ~2 years.

The people I know who retired or are scheduled to retire the quickest do white-collar jobs in manufacturing or energy at very large corporations.

The people I know who do the least stressful jobs work either part-time in retail or have tenure of one kind or another. One is an epic-level computer programmer who gets so many job offers that he's able to choose the least restrictive.

Me, personally? After I defend I'm going to work for a small research lab.

Graduate school could serve the role of a holding pattern for you to figure out what it is you actually want to do. I think it's possible to become a quant or an actuary with a MSF or other master's degree.

Will they for a Masters in mathematics? Nearly everyone knows that a Masters in math means "I quit or failed out of my PhD program". This generally doesn't reflect well on you.

2Lumifer11y

Cops. [...] So, this looks to be a common aspiration, but it strikes me as woefully underspecified :-) A lot of retired people spend their day extending minor tasks to take a lot of time and spend the rest of it staring into the idiot box. Are all y'all quite sure you have enough internal motivation to do interesting, challenging things without any external stimuli? What will prevent you from vegging out and being utterly bored for the rest of your life? Oh, and a practical question (for the US people) -- once you retire at, say, 40, what are you going to use for health insurance and does your retirement planning cover the medical costs?

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