Ask the grumpies: worth fighting insurance company?

L asks:

My employer switched health insurance companies/networks recently and a service that used to cost $75 with the old network’s discounts now costs $175 with the new network, apparently there is no discounted price. It’s the exact same service and a month apart, so it’s not like prices went up in the meantime. I told the benefits department at my company this and they gave me a bunch of bullcrap about how the new network is supposed to save us money and unfortunately my case is one where it costs more than twice as much. There’s a distribution list and I asked and there are other people seeing similar increases in service costs.

While I can absorb this, it is rather annoying and I now have the high deductible plan, so it is 100% my cost. I did finally get the bill in the mail from the provider and sure enough, it is $175 like the insurance company’s website said it would be. Do you think that I can call the provider and try to negotiate my own discount since there was such a large discrepancy between back to back visits? I really wish my employer would do something like this since we as individuals have no pull with the insurance company, but they have enough employees that they probably would…

Sigh.

Thanks!

Well, the only time we’ve ever had luck negotiating with an insurance company is when we’ve been in the right. And even then it has sometimes taken multiple phone calls. Still, it’s always worth a shot, if you think your time is worth it– you can report back to us.

What do our readers think? Have you ever had any success negotiating with an insurance company? Any thoughts for L?

Ask the grumpies: 457 vs 403(b)

Viola asks:

I have access to both a 403b and a 457 retirement account at my new employment university (along with a mandatory retirement plant that I cannot increase or decrease my contributions to). I think that you contribute to both these types of accounts because you are super-awesome savers, but if I’m just going to do one, which should I do? A little background: the mandatory plan will take 5.5% of my yearly salary, and the uni will contribute 10% of my yearly salary to that plan as well. I can contribute whatever I want to the 403b or 457, but will not get a match. I’m 33 years old, and only started contributing to a retirement account about two years ago (~15%/year), because I have been financially idiotic for most of my life.

Well, gee.  There’s not a straight-out answer here.  It’s going to depend a lot on the characteristics of the two plans.  Most likely, it won’t matter too much which you choose, but here are some things to think about.

1.  What are your investment options for the 403(b) vs the 457?  Is Vanguard a choice for either?  In terms of investment options you want two things:

A.  Low fees
B.  The ability to have a diversified portfolio

The return that you get is going to depend a lot on these two options.  In my university, there are a lot of choices for the 403(b), but only one option for the 457.  We like the options in the 403(b) a little bit better, so that’s the way we’ve gone.  The fees were tough to compare between the two types of plans, but that should be changing soon with legislation to make comparisons clearer.  (I had to do some math to figure out what the step-function flat dollar fees for the 457 plan translated to compared to the straight percent for the 403(b).  At the amounts we were investing, the fees were about the same.)

2.  When do you plan on drawing down for retirement, and do you plan on leaving state employment, and if you do plan on leaving state employment, would you need to access that money?

The 403(b) has larger early withdrawal penalties, and if you leave state employment, you can roll it over into an IRA, but you pay a penalty to directly access that money.  With the 457 plan, you don’t have that penalty (note:  you can still roll over into an IRA upon leaving your job).  There are a few other small differences if you are older or need hardship withdrawals.  Also note that you can actually save in BOTH, if you have enough extra money floating around.

So if you want to make it more difficult to tap into your retirement money before you hit retirement age, go with the 403(b).  If you think you’ll need that money in case of job loss or leaving your job (or if worries about job loss are keeping you from contributing), then go with the 457.

Those seem to be the relevant points to consider to me.  What am I leaving out?  Has anybody in the Grumpy Nation made a decision between the two types of plans?

Ask the grumpies: A two-body problem solution?

Tenured rock star in the humanities (we picked this name for her) asks:

Here’s my advice question. It’s a big one but you guys seem smart about thinking through decisions rationally and I think you and your readership might have some valuable thoughts. My husband and I are trying to decide whether to move.  I am a recently-tenured assoc prof in a humanities discipline at a fancy private R1 university. I get paid well (for a humanities prof) and have modest research funds and a sweet teaching load.

My husband is the trailing spouse. He has been working as academic staff here in a job he does not like. His humanities field is insanely competitive (200+ applicants for every job; he has been a finalist 4 times). Meanwhile he has published a book with an extremely reputable academic press, published some articles, and started working in the field of digital humanities — doing his own new research project this way, teaching a class in it, and starting up a DH working group on campus. All of this on top of his fulltime academic staff job and with zero support from the school.

This year he was successful on the job market and got a TT offer from a second-tier, but very solid, public university in a neighboring state. It is too far to commute and this school is willing to bring me in with tenure as a spousal hire. We both like where we currently live [ed:  A major city] and my brother and sister-in-law live in the same town. Second-tier but solid school is in a less-cool but still entirely serviceable and incredibly affordable large city (apartment here — with 2 kids — and big house there, etc.). We will still have our yuppie necessities: whole foods, trader joes, farmer’s markets, CSAs, bike paths, a bunch of cultural institutions, etc.

We feel like, given the humanities job market, we may never again have the chance at two TT jobs (we have, after all, been trying for 6 years), so this is a huge opportunity. But I can’t quite decide how important it is to be at an R1 and have that status, versus having both of us welcomed and supported at this other less-prestigious place.  My husband’s current job is not only totally unenjoyable but is a career dead-end. We are trying to negotiate something better for him at R1, but it will not be and will never be a TT job b/c they just don’t play that way.

I’m currently grief-stricken because of health stuff going on with my Mom and I’m finding it incredibly hard to think clearly and to separate out reasonable fear of change/moving from that grief from trust-your-gut messages about what’s really right here.

Any thoughts from you and your readers?

This is a really tough decision, especially when you’re worried about family health matters.  Our sympathies with you and your mother.

Our first thought is that when top women in our fields (and it’s almost always women) make these moves, they generally get their top institution to allow them to try it out for a year first.  Your husband would then accept his job and you would essentially keep both jobs for a year.  Technically you would be on unpaid leave from the hot-shot job.  In a year you have a better idea of the differences between the two institutions and your own preferences.  This doesn’t always fly, but it seems to be how most of the academic couples we’ve seen changing institutions make the move.  It is very hard to give up tenure at a top school.  (Websites like Sabbaticalhomes.com can help you find temporary housing, often furnished so you don’t have to move your stuff.)

Let’s say that trying it out for a year isn’t in the cards.  From your email, we’re assuming that staying together is important, so we won’t discuss options that include living apart. For other couples, that might be a solution.  (And we’ve seen this work out too, eventually.)

The main worry leaving your awesome school is that you will get to the less good school and find out that one or both of you is miserable, or your DH doesn’t get tenure and there are fewer opportunities for him in the new town than there were in your old city.

If that happens, all is not lost, assuming that you are still awesome. Because awesome people can move again.

So you need to make sure that if you move, your new position allows you to remain awesome.

What does that mean? Well, what is the teaching load like? (Include things like number of classes, number of preps, size of classes, grading support etc.) How much sharing of ideas etc. can you do with your new department compared to what you did with your old department? What kind of resources are they giving you in terms of travel bursary, research support, etc. compared to what you had before? How are the salaries different? (And is your current department countering with a better salary for you?) The new place doesn’t have to be as amazing as the old place, but it does need to allow you to continue to be a productive and happy researcher. Get things in writing. Negotiate. Don’t just be grateful to be a spousal hire– they’re very lucky to be getting you and you need to protect yourself. You’re a tenured professor at a top school– keep that in mind!  (And no, you don’t have to be a jerk about it– you just have to politely explain why you need these things.)

One of us is at a school that has better resources than its ranking– she still has a higher teaching load than she would at a top school, but the other benefits keep her more productive than she would be at a less resource-rich school at the same rank (and it helps that the resource rich environment is attracting more colleagues in her specific field area). The other one of us is in a resource-poor environment and it’s difficult to even get travel funds. These things are important.  Teaching loads are very important.  If the new school is resource-rich, then you can mostly ignore the prestige question, but if the resources are less than abundant, then your career may be strongly negatively impacted.

I know several women who have made this kind of a move, and they’re all pretty happy. Of course, they’re also making huge salaries at the less-good universities and they have other kinds of sweetheart deals (running a center, being allowed to make new hires, etc.).  You can’t just look a the question in terms of :  one Tenured job at a fancy school vs. one Tenured/one TT job at a not as good school.  You have to look at the whole package.  (And given that you’re moving to a Public university, I am sure you’ve looked at the salary scale of people in the department that wants to hire you…)

If you do decide to stay put… I’m sure your DH knows this, but given that you live in a major city with several universities, he should be networking with folks in those departments… if they like him enough they might be convinced to write a job description for him one of these years.  You can also go on the market yourself to places that have good spousal hiring policies, though it sounds like you’ve been doing so.

Good luck with your decision and best wishes to your family!

#2 would like to add that I support everything above and those are great points.  Given everything you’ve said, I think you should definitely go for it, just do itte, as CPP would say (keeping in mind the options above about trying to take a year of leave, negotiating for more resources, etc.).  I think whatever you decide can work out well for you and your family.  hang in there.  #1 is more ambivalent… the resources available at the new place are important, as is the counter-offer given by the current place.  #2  adds:  time for lots and lots of negotiation with BOTH schools.  Play them against each other.  If DH can get a lectureship, then stay!  #1 says:  Yes, tenure isn’t everything, but being productive is.  Letterhead is also nice.

Grumpy Nation:  TRS needs your help!  What advice do you have for her?  What should she be thinking about in making her decision?

Ask the grumpies: When is a school good/awesome enough?

CG asks:

How do you know if your kid’s school is “good enough”? Should good enough even be the goal, or should you be shooting for awesome? Assume cost is not really an object.

Femmefrugality adds:

Along the same lines, does how good a kid’s school is play a relevant role after a certain point?  Where does parent involvement take over in the equation?

Gosh, the answer to this question is going to be so different for different people.  All we (#1′s family) know is our kid, and hir unique needs.  Not only are the kids’ needs important, but family preferences could also be important.  Some families, for reasons we cannot comprehend are really interested in making sure their kids have the best competitive sports opportunities.  Some want to make sure they get training in the fine arts.

Some folks have the ability to supplement sub-par school environments at home.  Some kids have a better ability to weather or entirely avoid things like bullying.  In these cases, the school environment may be less important than for other kids.  Other kids may be more sensitive or “too different” or really want to be “followers” and a bad school environment can have a more permanent negative effect.  Here bad schools can lead to dropping out, under-age pregnancy, drug-use, emotional scarring, and so on.

Awesome teachers have had profound effects on kids from all walks of life.  In an ideal world, we’d easily be able to shoot for “awesome”.  Sadly that’s not so easy, and we may have to go for satisficing at a reasonably low level, or even making-do and supplementing.

Our kid is highly gifted and incredibly sensitive.  We really want to avoid hir having the K-8 experiences that we, ourselves, had.  In addition, ze tends to get into trouble when bored.  So we had to look outside the norm.  In some ways we’re satisficing– we’d certainly love for DC’s school not to be undergoing financial difficulties and we’d really love our time and money back.  But, for us it is worth it.

Awesome is really hard to find.  In the small town in which I grew up, there were a few awesome teachers, but there were no awesome schools.  There was the public school, there was the Catholic school, and there were a small number of scary fundamentalist Christian schools.  My parents bought in the second best school district (which had some of the first best teachers) and supplemented with tons of outside enrichment activities.  Getting through the school day was AWFUL most years.  I still bear scars from middle school.  (so does #2)  We don’t want that for our children.  And it’s hard to predict if the schools will be “good enough” in any place that we move to.  In our current situation we have a couple of private school options at least until 6th grade (assuming no big changes), but who knows what the future will hold.

How do we know our school is “good enough”?  I don’t know how we well would tell a priori.  But we tried.  With our specific needs in mind, we visited and observed different private schools.  DC1 needs mental stimulation and possibly differentiation.  Ze needs to not be bullied.  So we watched for signs of the kids being bored.  The kids misbehaving because they were bored.  How the kids interacted with each other.  We asked the teachers what they would do about DC1′s specific needs.  We crossed off our list the school that said they’d work on hir cutting skills all year because that was the only part of the K curriculum that ze hadn’t already mastered.  (Oddly, DC1 got high praise for hir above-average cutting skills in K the following year, even though we didn’t hothouse those.)

How we know now:  1.  DC1 loves to go to school.  Ze does not come home crying.  2.  Ze is not bouncing off the walls after school (most days anyway– we can always tell when there’s been a sub).  3.  Ze neither receives 100%s nor low scores on hir classwork.  Steady grades mostly in the 90s and the occasional in the 80s on classwork seem to indicate it’s at a good level for hir.  4.  Ze isn’t socially isolated– ze talks about hir friends and recess and after school.  Hir best friend cracks us up.  For extra bonus points, DC1 doesn’t seem to have learned that only girls or only boys do X, and the only comments we’ve heard about race and ethnicity seem to be things ze’s gotten from lessons on black history month or in Spanish class or Religious studies.  (And the school does have a diverse student body.)  5.  Ze tells us all about the super cool stuff ze is learning.  And it’s super cool!

In exchange for all this, we pay thousands of dollars each year, donate a bunch, and spend a ton of time with the school trying to help them with their financial situation.  We do think it’s worth it, but at some point it may no longer be.  Or we may move and we won’t be able to afford the much higher private tuition in cities or the private and public schools may both be anti-acceleration.  We’ll have to figure something new out then.  But CG said to assume cost isn’t an object and I’m getting off topic with my own concerns.

Ok, onto Femmefrugality.  The answer to this question is:  We don’t know!  We know that preschool interventions seem to give more bang for their buck than later interventions.  But later interventions still matter.  We know that high quality schools do a lot more for low SES kids than they do for high SES kids, and that high SES kids are less harmed by low quality schools than low SES kids are.  We know that peer groups at school are important, but we’re not really sure how important they are (it seems to depend on a lot of stuff).  We know that schooling is important for many special needs kids, including gifted kids, and that they will be at a higher risk of dropout in an environment that does not suit their needs.  But we have no idea what the line is where schooling starts being more important than parenting (including the parent’s abilities to supplement, not just the parent’s desires) or vice versa.  Ginormous open research question with a lot of papers but no bottom line yet.

Update on FemmeFrugality’s question:  Just went to a talk on how a teacher’s value added affects testscores, college attendance, teen pregnancy, and income.  Good teachers matter!

Grumpy nation, how important is it to you that schooling be awesome or good enough?  How do you know what awesome or good enough is?  Do you have additional feedback for CG and Femmefrugality?

Ask the Grumpies: Should I get a PhD in Accounting?

TH asks:

I’m 31 and in my junior year of college, majoring in accounting. I started back to school part-time ten years after dropping out in my first semester to move across the country for Loooooove… a couple years into school I wound up divorcing and am finishing up on my own with a great deal of emotional support from far-flung friends and family.

I was raised to be a good Christian wife and make lots of babies. I’m not doing any of that now except maybe the “good” part, and when I realized that my current program of schooling would end in a master’s degree, I was astonished. I was homeschooled all the way through high school, and while my parents assured me that I was smart enough to be anything I wanted, I wasn’t steered towards higher education in any way, although they’re both college grads and my dad is an MD.

Last year, a professor in one of my classes asked me if I’d considered a PhD in accountancy. I didn’t even know there was such a thing then, and certainly hadn’t considered it for myself. Circumstances being different then, I decided I wasn’t interested at the time but might consider it at a future date.

Circumstances have changed, and I got an e-mail from the same professor this weekend (he’s now teaching overseas, his gain and my loss) asking if I’d thought more about it. I hadn’t, but now I am.

You’re in academia. I don’t know anything about what that’s like. Do you have any thoughts or advice for me? I can do the coursework. I’m smart, and I can work hard. I’m carrying a full-time courseload, working about 30 hours a week as a self-employed editor of court transcripts, and my GPA just dipped from a 4.0 last semester. I ran some numbers today (average CPA salary, average accounting professor salary for new entrants) and financially it would put me ahead to get the PhD and work as a professor. There’s high demand right now.

Things I don’t know: If I’m going to hate being a professor. If there’s so much bureaucratic bullshit I’m going to want to drink myself to sleep every night. If I can learn to be a good teacher. If I can learn to talk for hours without losing my voice or coughing to death. If I can come up with subjects to research. If I can survive a PhD thesis defense. If adding five more years of school is going to destroy my chance to meet someone awesome who wants to have a family with me, and get that started.

I realized today that some of my reasons for brushing this off earlier are bogus – like being afraid that being visibly very schooled/”smart” will scare guys off because it intimidates them (my ex got more insecure the more I learned, which he didn’t need to be insecure about that). So that’s challenged me to reconsider.

Accounting professors are going to have a different experience than many of our humanities readers. You are absolutely right that the demand for accounting PhDs outstrips the supply. You would also most likely be looking at a 6 figure salary or close to one straight out of school. But I’m sure you’ve looked at the numbers and have a more accurate picture than I do. (Disclaimer: I haven’t looked at the numbers in a few years, and I don’t remember them exactly, just that they were up there with Pharmacy PhDs.) You’ve also noted that the accounting PhD takes less time than most humanities or science PhDs (on average, 5 years). Another nice thing to note is that it is not uncommon for people to start accounting phds later than their early 20s, which you tend to see in some other disciplines. You would not be out of place (not that that should bother you if you were!).

The number one thing you need to know about going into academia is whether or not you will enjoy doing research. I have to confess that I don’t have any idea what kind of research it is that accounting professors do. This year or next, see if you can do a research assistantship with an accounting professor, or even better, a guided research project of your own. If it turns out you don’t like doing research, you can still teach accounting with a masters degree, and adjuncting accounting classes pays more than adjuncting humanities classes does.

When you look at accounting programs, an important thing to ask is what the pass rate is– how many people get kicked out of the program or drop out. Some of the accounting PhD programs are pretty brutal and arbitrary in that respect.  Check to make sure they want you to succeed.  Talk to current students.

>If I’m going to hate being a professor.

Probably not. Especially if you can manage your time well, not stress out too much about tenure (and with a PhD in accounting, you should be able to find a job if you leave), and not stress out too much about teaching evals.  The only way to find this out might be to try grad school and try to get a handle on it; you could also try doing as many informational interviews as you can with professors and try to get their honest opinions about what it entails.  The good news is, they should all have office hours you can drop in to.

>If there’s so much bureaucratic bullshit I’m going to want to drink myself to sleep every night.

One nice and not so nice thing about accounting: Most likely you’re going to be in the business school. On the one hand, you’ll have fewer crazy colleagues than you might in some other fields. On the other hand, you’ll have colleagues who are business professors. How much do you like economists, marketing profs, etc.? You will also most likely have to wear suits, or at least business casual. Business schools generally have more resources than the rest of campus, you’ll be less resource-constrained, the rest of the campus will resent that slightly.  (And if not in the business school, then a subset of the economics department, though from what I understand accounting profs in econ dept are kind of second class citizens compared to accounting profs in business schools, but this may be because accounting profs in econ dept tend to be at SLAC and often do not have PhDs.) You’ll probably have the same bureaucratic BS more or less than you would have working at a mid-size to large company, depending on the kind of university you end up at. So non-trivial, but not more than you’d have in any big business.

>If I can learn to be a good teacher.
Yes. Another note: Business students are really obnoxious and entitled and whiny. However, I hear that accounting students are the least obnoxious group within business.  And other students are obnoxious and entitled and whiny too, so it’s not like you can escape that.  (But business students are especially bad.)

>If I can learn to talk for hours without losing my voice or coughing to death.
You won’t need to. Case studies!  But if you *need* to talk for some time, there are techniques you can learn.  (Relaxing your throat muscles!  Drinking lots of water!  Learning to project from the diaphragm!)

>If I can come up with subjects to research.
This is really important. Talk to professors about this starting now. Tell them you’re interested in research and ask for opportunities. Think about the big questions and the little questions in Accounting. Read papers. It may take a few years to figure out the answer to this question.

As much as you can, try to get research experience — sign up now for next semester.  Work for a professor.  Read articles and see if they get you excited.  For most PhDs, you simply must love research in order to make it through.  Try to find this out.

>If I can survive a PhD thesis defense.
Yes.

>If adding five more years of school is going to destroy my chance to meet someone awesome who wants to have a family with me, and get that started.
Lean in. Also go someplace with a good engineering school. Engineers are sexy.  If the person you meet isn’t down with you having an advanced degree, you don’t want them anyway.  Plenty of my friends had babies in grad school, or got married, or got divorced, bought a house, got a puppy.  You can make your life work.  [If you get a puppy though, make sure you have an equal partner in house-training.]

>I realized today that some of my reasons for brushing this off earlier are bogus – like being afraid that being visibly very schooled/”smart” will scare guys off because it intimidates them (my ex got more insecure the more I learned, which he didn’t need to be insecure about that). So that’s challenged me to reconsider.

Like I said, engineers! They love smart women. Any guy worth having does (at least any guy worth having if you’re a smart woman!).  We repeat:  if a man doesn’t want to be with a woman who has a higher degree than him, DTMFA!

And that brings us to the last point. Even with an accounting degree, you get very little choice about where you move to after you’re done. We’re living in places we wouldn’t choose if it weren’t for the job. There’s a limited number of professor jobs in any discipline each year and you have to have a certain amount of flexibility. If you absolutely have to live in a specific city, it’s unlikely you’ll get a TT job there. It’s possible, but not likely. If you are location dependent, see what kind of jobs you can get with a PhD in accounting in industry and/or government (depending on the location).

Good luck with this decision!

Readers, anything we forgot?

Ask the grumpies: Lower cost pampering substitutes

In Monday’s post, Debbie M brought up the point that if you figure out what it is you really want when you’re thinking about that Caribbean vacation or whatnot, you can often figure out a way to meet that need much less expensively.  (I believe this may be mentioned in YMoYL, but don’t quote me on that.)

She says:

And then there’s also strategizing about what makes you happy. If you want to feel pampered, do you need to visit a tropical island? Or would you be just as happy with an in-town spa or fancy hotel, a massage, a facial, or, in my case, fresh-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies and a good book? Basically, whenever you’re about to spend money (or time), you can try to back up and figure out what your real goal is and then try to brainstorm if there is any better way to achieve that goal.

That got into a conversation in the comments section:  what other ways can you pamper yourself at a lower cost?

Debbie M asks:

And maybe oilandgarlic can share a list of Frugal Substitutes! We can always use more of those!  And Flavia, I’d like to hear more examples you’ve found where you can convert more expensive indulgences into cheaper ones.

At grumpy rumblings we are big fans of buying whatever you want at the grocery store, thus saving money from unsatisfying meals out.  (Though we do eat meals out!)

We re-read things sometimes instead of buying new.  And, in general, reading about things is a nice substitute for inventing a fantasy travel device.

But I dunno… we’re not big Mani-pedi people, so it’s hard to think about what is a substitute for something else and when what we do we’re doing because it is better than something else.  We actually prefer staycations.

Donna Freedman had a recent post about having a pretend breakfast cafe with her nieces and nephews as the staff.

Grumpy readership, help Debbie M out– how have you converted expensive indulgences into cheaper ones?

Ask the Grumpies: Horsie help! (Calling Bogart…)

Linda is going to Scotland for 16 days and asks a bunch of stuff:

So here I am again getting excited about including some riding into my trip to Scotland. This will not be a riding-only vacation, but I’m hoping to include two to three half-day rides while I’m there. Physically I’m in decent shape and go to the gym regularly. I’ve already told my personal trainer about my plans and we’re including more core exercises and work on my inner and outer thighs. I’m also taking a spin class once a week to increase my aerobic conditioning because I know how much of a workout riding can be.

O yeah.  This is where I’d recommend starting lessons ASAP so you can see which muscles on you personally will hurt the most, and you can work on those in the gym.

What questions do I ask stables to find one that will help me be a competent rider for my trip?

Heck if I know!  I would tell them what you want, and ask if they can accommodate your goals in the time you have.  Ask about schedules, price, etc.  Ask them if you can work on a wide variety of techniques because out on the trail you won’t be *as* concerned about diagonals, etc., as you are about communication, control, and working over a variety of terrain.

While I’m sure I’ll have to do indoor and arena riding, I’m also looking for practical experience riding a horse on a trail with an English saddle. Is it naive of me to try to locate someplace that offers this option?

I don’t think it’s naive at all, because that’s what I do!  The place where I am does EVERYTHING in an English saddle:  dressage, trail riding, cross-country, jumping, games of skill, even the occasional barrel race.  We also ride outside in every weather (sometimes bareback), which I imagine is very beneficial to what you want to do.  I guess it depends where you are.  Where are you?  I guess my only advice is to call around.  Experiment with what length of stirrups feels good to you most of the time — for an English-trained horse and an English saddle of any type, you will want the stirrups a good deal shorter than Western riders use them.  You will want them short enough that you can stand up if you end up having to jump a ditch or something, but long enough that your legs are relaxed, and bent some-but-not-a-lot.  Ask your instructor.

Any recommendations on riding gear?

Never get on a horse without a helmet.

You can get one for $50 or maybe the place you’re going will have them to borrow.  You can also get helmet covers that are fleecy things that pull over the helmet and keep your ears warm when it’s nippy.  A ventilated helmet will be cooler in the heat.  Good fit is essential.  Ask someone who knows what they’re doing to help you fit one.

Always wear gloves.  If things get out of control and you have to really haul on a rein or a lead rope, the last thing you want to worry about is rope burn.  There are lightweight summer gloves (~$25?) if it’s going to be warm.  Plus, this saves you from sunburning your knuckles.

Wear sweat-proof sunblock and lots of it.  Tie your hair back so it doesn’t blow in your mouth when you need to concentrate.

While I can afford riding lessons now, I don’t have any equipment. I plan to also be doing a lot of hiking and walking

I think you should be able to borrow whatever you need, with the possible exception of footwear.  Ask around.

in Scotland, and since I am planning to pack light and carry it on the plane, I don’t want to bring hiking shoes *and* riding boots or any clothing that doesn’t have multiple purposes. I’ve been looking online and am hoping that a pair of boots like these could be dual purpose. (I likely won’t need a heavy lug sole for the type of hiking I’ll be doing.)

Gosh, I really don’t know.  Especially for English riding, good footwear is essential.  You’ll need a heel on your shoe or boot so that your foot can’t slip forward through the stirrup (you can break your ankle).  You also don’t want a lot of deep tread on it, because you want your foot to be able to slip backwards out of the stirrup if you fall off (if it doesn’t the horse will drag you along willy-nilly by your foot — very awful; or if you can’t get your foot out fast, the horse might fall on top of you).  If you have big ol’ Western stirrups, this is probably less important.  If you are riding bareback or with no stirrups you can wear whatever you want.

It’s probably down to your comfort level and instructor’s recommendation.  You can get ankle boots (search for paddock boots such as these  http://www.equestriancollections.com/storeitems.asp?department=Ladies&cc=136  )
which could double as daily-wear shoes, and optionally pair them with half-chaps.  I don’t know that the half-chaps are strictly necessary; I guess it depends on the pants you’re wearing.  Certainly paddock boots + half-chaps might be cheaper and more versatile than good field boots.

Personally, if I were going on a riding vacation, I’d bring my own tall boots, helmet, and gloves, because that is what i’m comfortable in, and I would borrow the rest of what I needed.  Maybe I’d actually borrow the helmet too, for space/packing reasons.  Again, it’s up to you.

Are half-chaps necessary when only doing a few days of riding here or there? A pair of gaiters or gaiter-like gear (which is what half-chaps sort of are) could come in handy under water-proof pants while I’m hiking so I’m thinking they may not be a waste of money. And I may need half-chaps for lessons, too. I expect there to be days when it will be wet so I’m already committed to buying and packing some water-proof hiking pants; hopefully I can also use them while riding if we’re out on a wet day.

If you take lessons somewhere, they probably have guidelines about this.

Do you do much riding outside in the wet? What do you recommend to wear when just getting into riding?

Layers.  Lots of layers.  Remember that cotton and wool are crap when wet.  I wear underarmour underwear (compression gear or heat gear) to wick away the sweat, and in the winter I put long underwear over all that.  Then come my riding tights, and then sometimes another pair of extra pants over that to stay warm and dry.  layers on top, too!  Bring extra socks!  A headband or bandanna is very useful.

Maybe I’m over-thinking the preparation for this particular trip, but I am hoping to include some horsey-type vacationing and leisure more regularly in my life. Any advice you can share — even if it is just suggested forums where I can ask more people for advice like this — will be very helpful.

I’m sure there are forums but I’m not on them so I don’t know.  Good luck, it sounds like so much fun!!

Can anybody fill in the missing gaps for Linda?

Ask the Grumpies: Should I stay or should I go now?

Pessimistic grad student sent a question to us, to Wandering Scientist, and to Isis-the-scientist.   We’re curious to see their responses!  (And we’ve bumped this week’s Google questions to next week– sorry!)

She asks:

I’m a female PhD student in a natural science.  I originally entered graduate school because I wanted to teach and conduct research.  I knew the job market wasn’t great, and that women still had mountains to climb, but it seemed scalable.  Now, the further along I get, the more insurmountable the challenges appear to be.

I’m also frustrated that gender/ motherhood still seem to hold so much sway in career prospects:  women receive about half the PhDs, but rapidly drop off in the postdoc ranks and have a low representation in tenure track jobs (the well-referenced leaky pipeline).  Part of me wants to pursue academia and fight the good fight at a liberal arts college (not R01) type school and not contribute to that leaky pipeline.  The other part is more jaded—with such low job availability (and even if you land a job, terrible grant odds), it seems like the more realistic and practical option is to pursue a non-academic path—either after a postdoc, or just dispensing with the post-doc altogether—instead of 5+ years of frequent moves/ low job security/ lack of guaranteed retirement benefits/ maternity leave.  The other factor is that non-academic jobs may offer better ‘balance’, and be more portable.   I’m also trying to balance the desire to be close to my spouse—I draw the line at long term long distance, after doing it before—and my desire to have kids sooner rather than later.

Non-academic jobs for my skill set tend to involve government work (also less hiring these days) or non-profits—there isn’t really a traditional industry option in my area (without extensive retraining), otherwise I’d love to consider it.  I could potentially also look at teaching only (community college or non-tenure track lectureship) jobs if I avoided the adjuncting dead-end.

I’m conflicted.  I’ve planned to pursue academia since high school (!), with no deviations along the way.  Abandoning that career path feels like giving up on a dream.  I also don’t want to give up before I’ve really started, particularly with the ‘lean in’ mindset of Sheryl Sandberg and others.  However, I’ve met enough older, jaded post-docs, with no career prospects in sight (at a very highly ranked department) to make me wary of following their footsteps.

The most logical step is likely to reconsider my direction after a post-doc.  But, I’m finding that my pessimism is harming my enthusiasm for my work, and I’m wondering if that’s a sign I should strike out in a different direction sooner rather than later.

Well, we’re social scientists and the job market is better for us.  We have met folks with your exact same story (minus the being female part)… in graduate school to get a social science PhD after ditching natural science graduate school, and another with a degree in physics from a top school who was doing RA work for an economist after he graduated.  Several schools have masters programs in which they train scientists to become finance people who can work on Wall Street.

We might have a post up next week titled, “Academia is just a job”… it’s almost finished but we haven’t gotten around to finishing and queuing for the week.  But it is true.  Academia is just a job.  The PhD is a certificate that you need in order to do certain kinds of jobs or to get a certain salary scale (for instance, in gov’t work).

It is true that it’s a job that has nice perks, like flexibility, academic freedom, tenure, working with other PhDs, and so on.  But it also has downsides– you don’t get to choose where you live, lower salaries, the tenure clock can be harsh, you may not like those other PhDs you’re tenured with and see all the time, and so on.

Still it is just a job.   Even after we have tenure, we may not stay as professors forever.  The siren call of Northern California is always in the background, singing to us of its weather and food and natural beauty.  Not to mention all of our other friends from high school and a few from college.  (Oh, and also the $.  But that’s kind of balanced out by the cost of living.)

I really like academia, but when I started I said that I would not make any major sacrifices in my life just for the sake of a job.  Because I would feel bad both not getting tenure if I’d made those sacrifices and if I got tenure having made those sacrifices.  In each case I’d feel better off seeing if I could have done the same thing without the sacrifices.  That’s not the same as leaning in– I figured I’d try for both tenure and a family and if it didn’t happen, well, I’m a smart, educated, skilled, person whose abilities are worth far more in industry than they are in academia. And so long as I enjoy the journey, it doesn’t really matter if I make it to the prescribed destination.

I do not think that industry offers better hours than academia.  Both industry and academia will try to take as many hours as you let them take.  You have to set limits for yourself– at some point the job no longer becomes worth it if you kill yourself to do it.  Cloud also talks about how you start screwing stuff up if you work too many hours.

I’m also not sure that fixing the leaky pipeline for a field that has too many phds and not enough jobs for them is the best use of your woman-power.  There’s still plenty of trail-blazing to do outside of academia as well.

My advice… figure out what you want to be doing next year.  Are you interested in the projects you’ll be working on?  Do you have other opportunities you’d like to compare?  Think about several different 2-5 year plans.  Make your fertility decisions separate from your employment decisions (there are a few cases in which you would want to combine the decision, but not with most civilian employment).  Save up enough money that you have an “FU fund” to turn employment risks into calculated employment risks.

And remember, even if you’re in theoretical physics, you can always make a ton of money working in finance.  Yes, there’s retraining, but it isn’t as much as you think.  That PhD taught you how to learn.

Grumpy Nation, if you haven’t already given your wisdom elsewhere, how about sharing it here?

Ask the grumpies: Estimate someone else’s mortgage payments?

Grad School Cautionary Tale asks:

Husband and I are trying to save for a house. He is a prof and was on leave this year. For various reasons, we were unable to buy a house this year as we had planned. For the next academic year, we need a place while we look for a house to buy.

A colleague in his dept. is on sabbatical next year. We thought we could rent that place, agreed on rent and we would pay utilities. Turns out there is oil heat and utilities are an extra 500. In trying to negotiate with the colleague, I’m trying to figure out their mortgage payment without asking to try and find a reasonable amount to pay. I have, from public records, sale price, year bought and term of loan. Is this something that I can figure out/estimate w/o knowing interest rate/down payment?

We are sort of stuck b/c at first colleague said ze didnt know what ze would do with the house while abroad. It is not a true rental in we would only be moving in our bed, have no storage space, and make no changes. We don’t want to be paying their phone and cable package though, and it seemed like we were doing each other a favor, (we house sit, pay some rent, live constrained for a year so we could save money, ze has someone they trust with their house/stuff, doesn’t have to move much). Now that i type it up, it sounds kinda crazy, but I think my original question of figuring out mortgage payment still stands.

Can you help with that?

Well, I think the best you could probably do would be to plug assumptions into online mortgage calculators and get a range.  Keep in mind that their mortgage payment is also likely to include property taxes and insurance.  I’d start by assuming that they put 20% down on whatever term mortgage you found and vary the interest rates.  You’ll end up with a range.

We have been on both sides of this furnished housing rental deal.  We paid fair rent for a furnished place for a year (we got a discount for asking and being a good risk, but paid extra for our cats, so it balanced out), and another family rented out our furnished house for that year and paid less than the going rate but still more than our mortgage.  (There was a glut of short-term professor rentals that year because of an overseas program– usually the short term rentals in our market go for a premium.)  I don’t think in either case we thought of it as doing a favor or having someone do us a favor.  There are still risks to having a family living in your house, just as there are risks to leaving it alone.

You can also see price ranges on sabbaticalhomes and academichomes.  Craigslist and whatever rental sites are used locally will tell you what unfurnished rentals go for in the area.  You can also contact a local realtor who specializes in rentals.

If you’re in the northeast, it isn’t unusual for a house to be oil heat.  Since the price did come as a shock, personally I’d just try asking for a discount off the rent because of it.  They may be willing to work with you.  People are often willing to come down in price for low-risk renters, regardless of ideas of fairness, especially for a short-term deal.  I’d suggest not even naming a number, but saying the cost of oil heat is a problem for you and letting them name a number– they may be willing to lower the rent by quite a bit.  (And if you don’t like their number, you can suggest a lower one.)  If you haven’t written up a contract yet, then feel free to walk away if you find something you like better.  (And do make sure you write up a contract eventually wherever you end up.)

Good luck!

Any wisdom to add, Grumpy Nation?

Ask the grumpies: Consulting fees

We’re bumping this week’s Google Questions for a recently emailed Ask the Grumpies.  Because we need your help to answer it.

Dr. Koshary asks:

Out of curiosity, has either of you had occasion to work out what your consulting fee would actually be?  I assume it’s nuts to throw the question over to whomever might hire me, and that I would need to have some figures and rationales worked out.  So far, all I’ve seen online about this is oriented toward sales consultants who would do that for a full-time living.  I look to you both for this sort of wisdom: how should full-time academics – and yes, I hear you, I shouldn’t re-focus my time and attention on this – calculate what their time is worth for consulting?  I have a private fantasy of saying my time is worth $1000 an hour, but I fear to tell that to almost anyone else.

This question relates to an earlier post of Dr. Koshary’s about a potential consulting situation.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a good response for Dr. Koshary.  One of us is pre-tenure and the other has only been tenured for a year, so neither has really cultivated any outside consulting opportunities.

#1 does occasionally do some side-work, but it’s always something that would look good on her cv or is doing a favor for someone who may be able to help her out later, so the money is nice but not the only reason.  She hasn’t done anything for a for-profit company.  #2 has reviewed textbooks and things like that, but she doesn’t negotiate her fee.

One important thing when determining your consulting rate is to think long and hard about what *you* think your time is worth.  In economics, we say, what is the marginal rate of your time?  That is, how much would they have to pay you to work another hour on their project.  That should be your minimum walk-away point.  (We often approximate this with a person’s hourly wage on their regular job, but that isn’t really accurate as generally regular jobs don’t let you work hourly and you have diminishing marginal utility etc.)   However, if you just give them that figure, you may be severely under-cutting yourself (as many academics seem to have a masochistic streak when it comes to how much to pay for work).

I don’t see why not to use the same methods to calculate hourly rates that you’ve been finding online that people use for their full-time jobs.  Obviously, you do not have the same kind of overhead and there will be less paperwork than someone running a consulting company.  But other than that, why would the  calculation be different?

Someone in my partner’s lab now does full-time consulting and each time he gets a new job, he asks for way more money than he did on the previous job and they always say yes without blinking.  He suspects he’s been undercharging from the get-go.  But eventually he’ll hit the right point.

In terms of numbers, doctors and lawyers will often charge in the hundreds of dollars range for an hour of billable time.  So 1K may be a bit much if you’re giving an hourly rate.  Presumably your rate is somewhere in there.

So, to summarize, we have no idea.  But perhaps the Grumpy Nation can help Dr. Koshary out.

Grumpy Nation, have you ever done consulting outside your main job?  How do you figure out how much to charge?  How do you know the value of your time?