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What If You Go To Harvard And End Up A Nobody?

Updated: 04/10/2021 by Financial Samurai 211 Comments

Harvard University consistently is ranked one of the top universities in the world. But what if you go to Harvard University and still end up a nobody? When I say nobody, I’m just talking about being an average person working an average job. Not someone still living in mom’s garage playing video games all day at age 40.

A happy life is all about managing expectations. If you matriculate at Harvard, whether for undergrad or graduate school, great things are expected of you. And if you don’t do great things, are you a disappointment? Many would say so.

Education has been on my mind a lot lately after my son got into preschool this fall. If he likes the school, it goes through the 8th grade. Is it worth spending tens of thousands a year for the next nine years? I’m not so sure!

In addition, I was a high school tennis coach for three years observing how the kids went through the pressure of trying to get into a good university. I sometimes wondered whether their grind was all worth it. Supposedly my high school is one of the best in the city, yet not every graduate goes to a university like Harvard. In fact, most attend regular schools any high schooler could have gotten into.



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How To Get Into A Great Preschool Or Private Grade School

Published: 03/12/2021 by Financial Samurai 48 Comments

Are you a parent worried about getting your kid into a great preschool or private grade school? Ever wonder about the preschool or private grade school interview process? Or how about what type of interview questions they will ask and what type of kids get in?

After three years of navigating the preschool admissions process gauntlet, this article will address how to get into a great preschool or private grade school.

There are plenty of good preschools and private grade schools. Therefore, thankfully, you won’t have to stress out as much about the process because admissions is easier. However, if you’re going to spend the time and application money applying, then you might as well apply to the best ones as well. After all, if your child gets in, the tuition is roughly the same.



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Should I Get A Ph.D.? Not Sure If It’s Worth The Time, Money, And Effort

Updated: 02/19/2021 by Financial Samurai 158 Comments

Right before negotiating my severance in 2012, I wondered whether I should get a Ph.D. After 13 years in the private sector, I thought it would be nice to switch things up. Besides, if I got my Ph.D., I could demand people call me doctor, just like how our incoming First Lady demands to be called Dr. Jill Biden!

It is absolutely fine to request people address you as doctor if you have a Ph.D. or Ed.D.. Whether people comply with your request is another matter. Only around four percent of Americans have obtained a Ph.D. Therefore, people who have gone through the rigorous process of getting a Ph.D. deserve respect.

I’d like to think that if I got a Ph.D., I would play it cool and tell people, “Just call me Sam.” After all, I’m not only a believer in stealth wealth, but stealth education as well.

For a better life, it’s better to pretend you are dumber than you really are. Otherwise, people are going to expect a lot from you. They may ask you a lot of questions and constantly challenge you as well.

Time is our most precious asset. The dumber you appear, the more time you will have to do as you wish. Trust me on this. I have all the time in the world and it still doesn’t feel like enough!

Here was my thought process about getting a Ph.D. way back when. I’ll go through the pros and cons of getting a Ph.D. From there, you can make your own decision on whether it’s worth getting this degree or not.



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How To Overcome Poor Grades And Get A Job

Updated: 03/12/2021 by Financial Samurai 32 Comments

Let’s say you got poor grades in high school or college. You partied too much or were simply disinterested or unfocused. Let me share with you how to overcome poor grades and get a job. Poor grades doesn’t doom you to a “C-student” or worse lifestyle.

But let’s first be honest. A lot of people still don’t believe there’s a high correlation between good grades and work life success.  Could it be that those who poo poo good grades as unnecessary are the ones who didn’t get good grades themselves? 

Let’s imagine for the next couple seconds poor grades are poor indicators of success, even though for the first 22 years of your life, they are used in every aspect of progress.  Now that you’ve had your couple seconds, let’s snap back to reality.

Here you are, about to graduate college with a mediocre “B” average and you’re getting shot down during interviews left and right, assuming you are getting any. 

From the employer’s perspective, they can interview from any number of schools, each with a plethora of “A” students. Therefore, why bother with you despite a good-looking resume? 

Your stubborn self still holds on to the belief that grades don’t matter, because you know you’re going to be a star some day.



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The Rapid Depreciation Of A Harvard Education: How Private School Grads Can Still Save Themselves

Updated: 02/07/2021 by Financial Samurai 86 Comments

If you’re thinking about applying to Harvard or the likes, don’t. There’s a rapid depreciation of a Harvard education that is going on right now. The people are revolting against the rich and connecting, especially when so many people are suffering during the pandemic.

When I was applying to colleges in 1994, I thought only extremely smart or talented people attended Harvard. I had heard stories about the rich buying their kids’ ways into Harvard, but I was unaware of the details until the bribery scandal.

As a public school kid with an OK SAT score, a 3.6 GPA, and unspectacular extracurricular activities (tennis team captain vs. eradicating malaria in a small village in West Africa), I decided to save myself hundreds of dollars in application fees and apply to mostly local state schools like UVA, Mary Washington, and William & Mary instead. Paying less than $3,000 a year in in-state tuition even back then felt like a steal.

Life After Public School

After graduating from William & Mary, I got a job in the international equities department at Goldman Sachs in NYC. That’s where I got to interview hundreds of Ivy League and other elite private institution graduates as part of Goldman’s consensus-driven interview process where even grunts get to interview candidates.

We ended up rejecting over 95% of the candidates due to poor fit. It wasn’t that they were not smart, because they were. We only wanted people we could sit next to for 12-14 hours a day. It obviously helped if they had an international background, spoke multiple languages, and had a passion for equities. But we were mostly looking for great teammates.

Rejecting the majority of elite private college graduates made me realize they are no different from you and me. For the next 13 years, I’d compete with these folks on the ruthless battlegrounds of finance and smash them to bits most of the time because of my hunger. 

Coming from a non-target public school background with middle-class parents, I wasn’t going to squander my opportunity for financial independence.

Today, I am a small business owner with business owning friends. Recently, some of us have noted a growing negativity towards alumni of elite private schools. This is a problem (or a solution) for parents who plan to spend lots of money starting in grade school in the hopes their kid will attend a school like Harvard. This is also a potential problem for private university alumni who might unfairly be judged by the masses.

If you are one of these alumni, don’t be upset about the trend against the 1%. Instead, read with an open mind and pay attention as your future or your kids’ future might depend on it.

This article will address:

1) Why there is a growing negative perception about private university graduates

2) What we’ve learned from the Harvard / Asian-American discrimination lawsuit

3) What you can do to fight back against the negative perception



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The Case Against Meritocracy In School Admissions: Lowell HS Example

Updated: 02/09/2021 by Financial Samurai 53 Comments

Most people believe in meritocracy. If you work harder than your peers, you should get more reward. But as we all know, none of us are born with the same circumstances. For example, it may be harder for a poor kid from a single-parent household to compete against a rich kid with two parents and endless resources.

Given this uneven playing field, the San Francisco Unified School District decided to implement a lottery admissions system years ago for elementary, middle, and high school.

It didn’t matter if your neighborhood public school was a block away from your home. For the purposes of diversification and equality, your kid might only get accepted to a school 30 minutes across town.

Unfortunately, socioeconomic and racial diversity didn’t happen. Instead, wealthier families ended up sending their kids to private school, where the majority of students are white.



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How Student Loan Forgiveness Can Cost You A Fortune

Updated: 03/21/2021 by Financial Samurai 48 Comments

After publishing my post on actions to take in a rising LIBOR environment, it dawned on me that besides refinancing your adjustable rate mortgage, you should also consider refinancing your student loans as well, if you have any. It feels like a lifetime ago, but I used to have ~$40,000 in business school loans that were paid off in 2008. Student loan forgiveness can actually cost you a fortune. 

During my time, there was no such thing as student loan forgiveness. Come hell or high water, you had to pay back what you owed with interest. You also couldn’t go straight to the corner office without paying your dues either. As our country has grown wealthier, softer, and more focused on instant gratification, student loan borrowers have pressured the government into giving them more options and it’s worked! 

Here are some various options borrowers have to repay their loans and how student loan forgiveness can actually end up costing a borrower more. I had no idea there were this many choices. I’m hoping by the time my kids go to college in 20 years, tuition will be free or highly subsidized, just like it is in Europe, Asia, Canada, and the rest of the world. It’s fun to have someone else pay!



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Is Private Grade School K-12 Worth It?

Updated: 01/30/2021 by Financial Samurai 181 Comments

Is private grade school worth it?

Are you wondering whether private grade school K-12 is worth it? I am since I have two young children. During the pandemic, where many small businesses have been crushed, many families have decided private grade school K-12 is not worth it. As a result, private school enrollment is down. Instead, parents have decided to homeschool, as my wife and I currently have done since March 2020.

When there is eventually herd immunity, I’m willing to spend money on the best education possible. Spending the most amount of time with our children before they become adults and providing a great education are the best gifts. But for now, w wait.

The problem with sending our kids to private grade school is a debate about fairness. Are we really going to live in a world where the rich continue to hoard their multi-generational fortunes while the rest just struggle to get by? Will the playing field continue to be so uneven that the middle class and poor must work twice as hard to get half as much?



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Edly Review: A Way To Invest In Income Sharing Agreements (ISAs)

Published: 09/17/2020 by Financial Samurai 21 Comments

Edly Income Sharing Agreement

An Income Sharing Agreement, or ISA, is an alternative way for students to pay for university. Traditionally, students take out loans and take all the risk. If a student graduates from college with no job or a low-paying job, a university isn’t going to make up the difference.

This asymmetric risk profile is one of the reasons why I’ve been imploring people to attend a more affordable college. If you’re not already rich or don’t receive free grant money due to your genius, please don’t overpay for college. Further, be smart about picking a major in high demand.

Unfortunately, with the overall student loan debt amount ballooning to ~$1.6 trillion in 2020, I don’t think many people are paying attention. Good thing there’s an alternative to taking out student loans in the form of an Income Sharing Agreement.

Instead of taking out a student loan at a potentially high interest rate, with an ISA, a student agrees to pay a fixed percentage of their earnings for a fixed number of months.

In a typical ISA, students would agree to pay a fixed percentage of their income once they are employed and are earning in excess of a specified threshold salary. This threshold is usually $30,000 – $40,000, depending on the ISA.

An ISA is quite different from student loans, which accrue interest during college and regardless if the student finds a job or not. Further, student loan payments generally have at most a 6-month moratorium after graduation before payments are due.

It seems to me the an ISA is a win for the student and a win for the investor. Therefore, I’ve invited Edly, an ISA investment platform to write a sponsored post and share further insights about this fast-growing asset class.



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Homeschooling And The Decision To Teach Our Own Children Or Not

Updated: 12/17/2020 by Financial Samurai 72 Comments

After months of sheltering-in-place, many parents are wondering whether it’s best to revert back to traditional schooling or continue homeschooling. We’ve been wondering the same thing. Homeschooling has really grown on us because we see the merits of more efficient and customized learning for our son.

Before we initially sent our son to preschool last year, we were torn. We couldn’t decide whether preschool was the best thing for our son or whether preschool was just an artificial construct created by society to enable parents to work more.

Given we both didn’t have day jobs, we felt a little bad sending our son to preschool. What if he came down with COVID-19 and gave it to his baby sister? We’d feel horrible.

We also wondered, if we sent him to preschool, what were we going to do all day after 2.5 years of spending every moment with him? Preschool felt like we were outsourcing our parental duties.



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