When I look back at my college years, it often occurs to me that I probably should have tried graduating college early. I’ve always been a bit of an over-achiever. When I was in high school, I took every AP class that I could manage, ending up with 8 AP classes over the course of […]
Career
Thoughts About Career Paths And Taking Risks
For pretty much all of my life, I was taught the same basic script – study hard in school, get good grades, and get a good job. It’s something that pretty much all of us were taught to do from a young age. There’s nothing wrong with this script, and indeed, it’s the same advice […]
The Benefits Of Graduating During The Financial Crisis
The other day, I was listening to a Planet Money podcast about how the United States is nearing full employment and it got me thinking about how different the world is today compared to the world I graduated into a decade ago. To set the scene for you, I graduated from college back in 2009, […]
The College Admissions Scandal And The Lessons We Can Learn About Chasing Prestige
If you’ve been following the news, you’ve probably seen or read something about this whole college admissions scandal. In mid-March, the Department of Justice busted a bunch of rich and famous people in a nationwide scheme in which parents paid people to cheat on SAT or ACT exams and/or bribed school officials to help get […]
You Can’t Vs. Why Can’t You
One of the interesting things I’ve noticed is that when you start telling people to do things differently, a lot of people start coming out of the woodwork to tell you why whatever it is you’re telling people to do can’t be done. The reasoning varies slightly, but the end result always seems to be the […]
You Don’t Need To Start Your Career In Your 20s
One of the things I wish I had done differently was to not be in such a hurry to rush into a career. For some reason, when I was 22-years old, I felt like I had to figure out what I was supposed to do with my life right away, and that if I didn’t […]
What Am I So Afraid Of? A Reaffirmation To Myself
When I look back at my life, I think there’s one thing that has guided a lot of my decision-making – fear. It’s a powerful emotion, one that I think pushes many of us onto the paths that we find ourselves on – whether we know it or not. Of course, a healthy dose of […]
Lawyers, Doctors, and the Appeal of the Clear Career Path
I’m sometimes convinced that the reason a lot of people become doctors or lawyers is due to the fact that the path to those jobs is laid out pretty well. There’s sort of a blueprint you can follow – go to college, get good grades, do well on some standardized tests, and so forth, and […]
Fighting The Innate Urge To Chase Prestige
Part of the duties of my current day job involves going to a bunch of lawyer conferences. As a result, I’m often surrounded by really successful lawyers. These are lawyers who have done pretty much everything right in their legal careers – top grades, good law schools, big-name law firms. One thing they all definitely […]
Opportunity Cost And My Wife’s $500,000 Residency Program
This past weekend was a busy one in the Financial Panther household. My wife finally completed the last year of her dental residency and we had family come into town to celebrate the milestone. I even flew my mom in for the weekend (using points that I’ve accumulated over the past year, of course). My […]
