Tag / finance

by Nathan Coumbe

Same job, different pay

I saw a job posting’s salary description the other day that gave me pause.

The salary was dependent on three things:

  1. The number of courses taught (yeah, that makes sense. More work = more pay)
  2. The type of courses taught (More advanced courses = more difficulty = more pay. Also makes sense)
  3. The educational level held by the instructor…

That third item is the one that gave me pause. Here’s why:

If two people are doing the exact same type of work at the exact same level of quality, why should one with a higher-level degree be paid more than the person with a lower-level degree?

You might say, “Well, they went to school longer. They have more education. They’re more qualified.”

So what? Does that degree automatically mean that the person is more skilled at the job? No, not at all. 1

More education does not automatically confer a higher level of qualification or suitability for a job. The skill of the person, and nothing else, does that.

If the person with the higher degree actually delivers more or better work than the other, then I understand receiving more pay. They are arguably more valuable. But that has nothing to do with the degree and everything to do with the output of the worker.

Additional education might enable that higher quality, but then again, it might not. There are countless MBA graduates out there who are suitable for little more than responding to email or working in middle management. They would flounder trying to run a small business.

Perhaps changing the nature of the work in question would make this make more sense:

Let’s say Person A has a master’s degree in burger-flipping, and Person B has a bachelor’s degree in burger-flipping. But both workers flip the same number of burgers each hour at the same level of quality expected of anyone on the line.

Should Person A be paid more money simply because they got a master’s degree in the subject? I would argue no, because the quality of the output and the nature of the work are the same.

You might think I’m stretching this a bit, but I’m not. It’s the work that matters, the output, the results.

A person’s demonstrable skill determines their qualifications, not a piece of paper. That paper is often a false proxy for genuine qualification, a stand-in for real value.

But we buy into it because we’ve been trained to believe that more is better, higher is better. We must stop this.

We have to start measuring the proper targets and rewarding the right things appropriately.

  1. I’m aware that teachers are paid at different salary levels based on their educational levels (e.g., a master’s degree earns more income than a bachelor’s degree. However, just because that’s the case doesn’t make it right.

    Teachers should not be paid based on how much schooling they received, but on how good they are at schooling others. If someone with a master’s degree is educating students in a way that they outscore everyone else, then I can understand paying that teacher more (and she should share her secrets with everyone else so they can level up their students and make more money too!).

    Also, teachers should simply be paid substantially more than they currently earn, but that’s a topic for another day… ↩︎
by Nathan Coumbe

How much is enough?

I asked myself this question a few days ago and elaborated on it in my journal. Specifically, I was asking myself, “How much money do I need to make to feel like I am making enough?”

Honestly, making more money right now would not bring me any more happiness. It’s not money that my conscience is crying out to gain: it is meaning, purpose, the ability to use my God-given talents and strengths to serve and help other people.

The income I make now is actually more than enough to satisfy my needs at this moment. So why am I not doing something that fills my cup?

Have you ever asked yourself what enough is? If you made $40,000 a year, could you live on that if it meant you were doing something you cared about so much and so thoroughly enjoyed you couldn’t dream of doing anything else?

My answer is yes. Yours may be different. At a certain point, making more money is just making more money. Studies tend to cap the increase in happiness that comes from money at about $75,000.

So what goal, idea, or passion is the quest for more money preventing you from pursuing?

Are you, perhaps, an artist who wants to paint? A musician who wants to play and teach? Or are you, like me, a teacher who simply wants to teach?

Ask yourself this question: could you, honestly, make a living knowing the starting or average income that job in your head receives? Could you survive, or even thrive, if it meant you were doing what you felt passionately called to do?

The irony is most of the time when you quit pursuing money and start pursuing passion in the service of others, more money than you imagined comes into your life.

How much is enough? Could you make it doing what you love?

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by Nathan Coumbe

Stop telling people to avoid the arts

How many of us have told someone that she should choose a real major, one that is applicable in today’s job market, rather than pursue something creative like art, music, or literature?

(RAISES HAND)

Why do we do this? It is well-meaning enough, I suppose: we don’t want them to struggle financially, we don’t want them to fail, we don’t want them to get hurt because it is so hard to live as an artist…

Let’s just stop, shall we?

What if the person to whom you gave this advice is actually quite talented as a writer? What if she has spent so much of her free time drawing, painting, and sculpting that she has become a fantastic artist? Do you really feel comfortable telling her that she should go get her MBA, work in middle management, collect her benefits, get the 401(k) match, and just worry about “all that artsy stuff” in her off hours, because she can’t make real money in the arts? Why is that good advice (especially when that last claim is bogus)?

Handle Money. Fail often.

Why don’t we teach her instead? Let’s make sure that we are teaching our children how to handle their finances, how to live on a budget, spend less than they make, save money, make money, and how to avoid debt at all cost (this is the real reason so many of us starve these days). We should most definitely teach her not to go $100,000 in student loan debt for her MFA in painting, but that does not mean we should tell her not to pursue her passion – those are not the same thing.

At the same time, we should also be teaching her to fail and fail often. Have her start trying to sell her art online. That doesn’t work? Should we tell her that she should quit and go get a real job? No! You don’t tell a child to stop trying to ride a bike because she fell off and scraped her knee; you tell her to get up and encourage her to try again.

Do the same thing with your creative child or friend. Encourage her start teaching other people what it is that she knows. She can make online videos of her work so that others can see it and her ideas will spread. Find whatever avenue works for her.

Encourage

There has never been a better time to be an artist than today – the market is wide open, the possibilities are limitless. You can be an artist in anything at which you are talented; it does not have to be a traditional “art”. Let’s focus on teaching our family and friends the right skills they need to survive and thrive – let’s teach creativity, leadership, personal finance, marketing and storytelling. Then let’s send them forth to pursue that which they most truly enjoy.

If we can teach them to handle money well, and to learn and grow from failure, they will all be fine.

We will all be just fine.