New financial data highlights generational rifts

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A group of think tanks, lead by the Pew Charitable Trusts, found that for the first time, men in their 30s are earning less than their parents. For the first time ever, this generation will not be more well-off financially than their parents. What should we make of this new finding? Does this mean the American Dream is no longer attainable?

Probably not. Because this statistic is just a magnified section of a much larger picture — of the great generational shift taking place in America since Generation X became adults.

The shift is in the definition of the American Dream. Our dream is about time, not money. No generation wants to live with financial instability. And we are no exception. But finances alone do not define someone’s American Dream. Especially when our dream is about how we spend our time.

Those who are magnifying a different part of the picture of this generational shift will tell you that what defines it is the inability of corporate American to keep generation Y from quitting their jobs.

The best of Generation X and Y are slow to move into the work force and quick to leave it. According to the department of labor, people in their 20s change jobs, on average, every two years. And Generation X is shifting in and out of the workplace in order to spend more time with kids. It’s costing companies a lot of money, and they’re paying millions of dollars a year in consulting fees to figure out how to decrease turnover.

There are many reasons for high turnover, but the most fundamental one is that baby boomers have set up a work place that uses financial bribes to get people to give up their time: Work sixty hours a week and we’ll pay you six figures. Generation Y will not have this. To hold out money as a carrot is insulting to a generation raised to think personal development is the holy grail of time spent well.

Baby boomers are also baffled by women who grow large careers in their 20s and then dump them in order to spend time with kids. Newsflash: Generation X values their family more than their money. Our American Dream is not about buying a big house, our dream is about keeping a family together. You can tell a lot about values by the terms that are coined. When baby boomers were raising kids they invented the term latchkey kid and yuppie we invented the terms shared care and stay-at-home-dad. The divorce rate for baby boomers was higher than any other generation. We can afford to have less money because most of us don’t need to fund two separate households.

The positive psychology movement has taken a large hold among those in generation X and Y. We are convinced that money does not buy happiness, and this conviction is rooted in hard science. More than 150 universities offer courses in positive psychology. It’s the most popular class among Harvard undergrads.

Our dreams are tied to time. So it’s no surprise that many of the most popular blogs offer tips for time management. And topics like productivity are favorites among hipsters who know that “getting things done” (GTD in blog-speak) is the key to having a fulfilling life. And believe me, GTD doesn’t take money, it takes massive respect for one’s time.

The new American dream is that we will have fulfilling work that leaves plenty of time for the other things in life we love. In this respect, Generation X is doing better than our parents: We are spending more time with our kids, and we are keeping our marriages together more than twice as effectively as our parents did. And Generation Y is doing better than their parents, too: They refuse to waste their time on meaningless entry level work because they value their time and their ability to grow more than that.

The new American dream is about time. It’s not a race to earn the most to buy the biggest. It’s a dream of personal growth and quality relationships. And, despite the declarations coming from Pew about unreachable dreams, our dream is not about accumulating money to do what we love at the end. We are hell-bent on doing what we love the whole way. That’s our dream, and we’re doing it better than the baby boomers ever did.

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Twentysomething: Paychecks are boring

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By Ryan Healy — Unless you are a professional athlete or working on Wall Street, an entry-level salary is not very exciting. When you couple this with the fact that the average college student graduates with tens of thousands in student loan and credit card debt and the cost of renting a place in any major city is an absolute rip off, a paycheck does not go very far. If I am paying an arm and a leg just to have a roof over my head and pay back an education that wasn’t exactly optional, how can I possibly save any decent amount of money? Realistically, I can’t. But that is alright.

If I stay in the corporate world, the paychecks will keep coming, I will pay down debt, I will pay my rent and I will spend the majority of the rest on food, entertainment and happy hours. The remainder will go to savings. One thing I will not waste my money on is “stuff.” Nothing bothers me more than seeing people living in houses above their means and driving cars they can’t afford.

I am not foolish enough to believe a paycheck will ever make me rich. The only reason I get excited about a 3% raise is because of what it represents; my hard work. The increase in money is barely noticeable and will disappear into my 3% lifestyle increase. Sure, I could invest that 3% in stocks, mutual funds or better yet an IRA, but what exactly am I saving for?

It’s a forgone conclusion that I will never retire, and anyone my age who believes they will, is mistaken. First of all, by the time I have children to send off to college, the average tuition will probably be around $100,000 a year. If I have “2.5 kids” that is $1 million dollars out of my pocket (or more realistically out of loans). Even if I deprive myself of vacations, entertainment and fun to save throughout my twenties, I can’t possibly save enough money to retire.

I can’t imagine what I would do if I ever did retire. Sure you may be thinking that I’m barely out of college and wouldn’t be saying this if I had been working for 10 or 20 years. But this is exactly why I am so desperate to find meaning and happiness out of work, rather than just a paycheck.

I guess if the end goal is riding off into the sunset and retiring, then you can put up with a boring, well paid job for 30 years (I guess). This is not my end goal. I would rather find fulfillment in a job that gives me flexible hours and is accommodating to my lifestyle.

Of course, if I am lucky enough to make it to my golden years, I will cut back on the amount I work and supplement my smaller income with the earnings from the smart investments I made along the way. But I certainly won’t be moving south to sit around and do nothing for the last ten years of my life.

The way I see it my life will turn out one of two ways.

1. I will get lucky somewhere along the way and strike it rich. I will pay for my kids’ education, I will buy a moderate house and moderate cars and I will make smart investments for the future. I will use the money to make a difference in one way or another. I will be happy.

2. I will find meaningful, fulfilling jobs with decent salaries or start a mildly successful business. My kids will take out loans for their education, I will buy a moderate house and moderate cars and I will continue to work and invest a reasonable amount. I will donate my time rather than my money to make a difference in one way or another. I will be happy.

Before you assume I am a naïve kid, who needs some financial education, keep in mind, I have a degree in accounting and finance and I regularly read financial books, magazines, newspapers and blogs. Despite all of this, I have come to the conclusion that life is too short to spend worrying about how much money is in my bank account. I will not chase a paycheck.

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You don’t need to love risk-taking to start your own business

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A lot of people who would like to start a business think the task is too daunting. But following a passion is not as high risk as you may think. Conventional wisdom about entrepreneurs being big risk takers and living on the edge is not all that realistic. In fact, there are ways to minimize the financial risk and emotional drama of going after your dreams. And, most of the skills you need to be an entrepreneur, you can teach yourself.

Alex Shear founded the production company Projectile Arts, in order to produce the documentary, “Kokoyakyu: High School Baseball.” The topic of baseball appealed to Shear, in part, because of the risks involved. “There is so much failure” in baseball, says Shear. He wanted to know how players deal with it. In the meantime, he had to deal with those same issues himself, starting a business to make the documentary.

Like many people, Shear is not a fan of huge risk: “I didn’t know what I was getting into. If I knew I was going to have to move twice, sell my car, and go broke,” I probably wouldn’t have done it. “You need to be stubborn and thickheaded and not think things through all the way,” advises Shear.

In a case like this, Saras Sarasvathy , professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, told me that she asks her students to look inside themselves: “Why do you want to open a restaurant? Is it because you love to cook? Then you can have a catering business out of your home. Is it because you have a great location? What else can you put at that location that would be more likely to succeed?”

Have basic skills in the field you are choosing. Sarasvathy uses the analogy of cooking a meal to describe the entrepreneurial way of thinking. Some people have a list of ingredients on a recipe and follow its steps exactly. Other people walk into a kitchen, see what ingredients are on hand, and whip something up. If you want to start your own business, you should be a person comfortable with no recipe. “But,” Sarasvathy cautions, “you need to know how to cook.” Both types of people probably will come up with good meals if they have cooking skills, and both will come up with bad meals if they don’t

Not knowing exactly what you will create is OK. Sarasvathy told me: “Entrepreneurs don’t believe in planning because they don’t want to be in a future that is predictable. If you want to create something new, then the future is unpredictable. If you can predict what will happen, there is no room for creativity.” This also leaves room for genuine partnerships, which you will need.

Get help in a partner. Finding a business to launch is a soul-searching venture, because you have to be passionate about your choice. But “part of your search for passion should be a search to know your skill set. Ask your parents, mentors, and friends. Then try to match skills you have with your passions and fill in what you need,” said Andrew Zacharakis, professor at Babson College. Most feelings of risk come from doing things you have not done before, so surrounding yourself with people who complement your skills can minimize risk.

Relax. The point of entrepreneurship is to have fun doing something you’re passionate about. But a small-business owner’s mind can race constantly. Learn to control this and business will feel less risky.

Jim Fannin is a success coach whose clients include more than twenty Major League Baseball players. He told me that research has shown that wildly successful people have 1,000 fewer thoughts a day than others, which allows the successful people to have exceptional focus on their goals.

Shear says he tried to focus on his next step instead of looking at the whole project, which would have been overwhelming. “If you think too much about the big picture it can paralyze you — mess you up in the moment.”

Fannin agrees. There are so many things you can worry about, so “I tell people to go on a mental diet,” says Fannin. “Cut out thoughts that won’t make you better because they hold you down.”

You need a sense of peace to perform well. Fannin says that just taking deeper breaths will slow your thinking and help your focus.

Stay optimistic. People who have big success have optimism. The key is to manage your thinking. When something bad happens, “learn from it and move on.” If you let yourself replay bad situations, you will get used to seeing your life that way.

Seventy-five percent of people report that negative thinking goes away if you look toward the sky. So for those would-be entrepreneurs trying to fend off negative thinking, Fannin says: “Chin up.”

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Use money to buy time

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Time is more important than money. You think that you know this, but you probably don’t act on it as much as you could. If you spend your time buying material things then you are using up the one thing that can make you happy (time) on things that definitely don’t make you happy (stuff).

In terms of happiness, time matters a lot more than money. The most important factors of happiness — the quality and intensity of your relationships, how often you have sex, how much sleep you get — all come from an investment in time rather than money. (For those of you who think money buys sex, stop yourself: “It's true that money impacts which person you marry,” says professor of economics David Blanchflower, “but money doesn't impact the amount of sex you have.”)

So if you’re considering taking a job that requires long hours so that you can make a load of money, don’t do it. Authors of the book Your Money or Your Life, Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, present a fresh way to think about this tradeoff:

“Try turning around the old maxim ‘time is money’ and look at it this way: ‘We pay for money with our time.’ Those hours on the job (or our partner’s hours on the job) are what bring money into our lives. Money, by definition, is simply something for which we choose to trade hours of our life — what we’ll call ‘life energy.’ While money has no intrinsic reality, our life energy does — at least to us. It is precious because it is limited and irretrievable, and because our choices about how we use it express the meaning and purpose of our time here on earth.”

This way of thinking gives you a more concrete way to value your time. And, once you start thinking this way, you can see the astounding ways that people undervalue their own time.

While you’re thinking about what is worth giving up your time for, take a look at the research about materialism; fantasizing from your cubicle about the grand purchases you will make actually makes when you finish work will actually make you UNhappy.

“Seeing the BMW may make you feel unhappy, but psychological studies show that obtaining the BMW would not make you happy,” says Gregg Easterbrook, psychologist and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institute. And the more emphasis one puts on materialism the more likely that person is to be depressed and anxious. So look, it’s a wild goose chase with the stuff — you will never buy the thing that’ll set you on the happiness track.

Most people, when looking back on their lives, wish they had done things that cost time, not money. The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, has conducted long-term research about terminally ill patients. The findings: “It is much more common for people to regret not the things they did, but that there were so many things they didn't have the time to do.” So consider seriously the idea of making more time for yourself by agreeing to earn less money. And if you have to work a lot, use your money to buy time — takeout food, a cleaning service, a personal assistant.

Think of all the time you spend planning how you spend your money — balancing your checkbook, preparing taxes, reading financial advice. Spend at least that much time and energy planning how you will spend your hours. People know that if they don’t pay tons of attention to how they spend their money then they’ll never be rich. But think about this: If you don’t pay tons of attention to how you spend your time, you’ll never be happy.

Hat tip: Occupational Adventure

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My financial history, and stop whining about your job

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I tell people all the time to change their job if they don’t like it, and people tell me this is totally impractical advice. A lot of people write to me to say that my advice only applies to rich people. Or they tell me that single parents, families living paycheck to paycheck, people in debt, cannot use my advice.

I think these people are in denial. Of course, there are exceptions, but usually these people are really saying that the things they have in their current standard of living are more important than being happy in their job. That’s fine. But don’t complain that the advice doesn’t apply to you. It does. You choose to have an expensive lifestyle instead.

I want to tell you a short history of my financial life. It is so unstable that when I told my brothers that I was writing for Yahoo Finance, they thought it was a joke. And then they got concerned for me that Yahoo would find out the real me, and I’d lose my job.

My bank account looked very good when I was running my own companies. They were well funded, and I extracted a large salary from investors — on top of equity — because it used to be okay to do that. The year my husband and I moved to New York City, I earned more than $200,000.

I had never lived in New York City before. But I had seen photos of John and Carolyn Kennedy coming out of their Tribeca loft, and I figured that’s where I would live with my husband. It was a harsh reality when I discovered that our combined income would need to be in the millions in order to have a loft in Tribeca. So we moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn that was so small that I had to buy storage for all my books. And just about everything else, too.

Then the World Trade Center fell. I was there, and my being there changed me and my husband. We both realized we wanted kids right away, and we wanted to change careers: Bye-bye big paychecks.

My husband started volunteering at human rights organizations. I became a freelance writer and had a poverty-level income for New York City. Then we had a baby. I want to tell you that we lived off our savings for a while, but we didn’t. It lasted about nine months in New York City.

That’s when we realized we had to totally shift our lifestyle to accommodate our work choices. We made big decisions. We stopped being friends with people who couldn’t stop ordering $70 bottles of wine at dinner. We didn’t go to the beach because we didn’t have a car to get there, and besides, beach passes were too expensive.

Soon, we found ourselves making almost every decision based on money, and we didn’t want to live that way. So after a lot of research, we moved out of New York City. We moved to Madison, Wisconsin. I write a lot about how we chose Madison, but the bottom line is that we looked for the city with the lowest cost of living that we could be happy in. (Other runners-up, in case you’re interested: Minneapolis, Portland (Oregon), and Austin.)

Once we got to Madison, things changed. Money was not nearly such a big issue. We became more flexible, we have more freedom in our decision making. I’m not going to tell you that Madison is a bastion of culture and innovation. It’s not. But if you want to live in a bastion of culture and innovation, it’ll cost you. In personal flexibility.

If you want personal stability, flexibility to find fulfilling work, and meaningful personal relationships, that’s about as much as you can ask for in life. That’s a lot. All the other stuff is secondary. Great if you can get it, but not as important as this stuff. I am not positive, but I have a feeling that I do not need to live in a major city in order to get these three things.

If you want to have the ability to change careers and quit jobs you don’t like and try out new things, then you might need to make huge life decisions to accommodate that. I have friends in San Francisco who had only one kid so they could afford to keep their low-paying jobs. This is a big decision. I have friends who are moving from the center of Portland to the boondocks of Portland so they can afford for one of them to be a stay-at-home parent.

I’m not saying you have to live in rural Alabama or forgo having kids. I’m saying you need to be an adult, and realize that adults make big decisions. Things don’t just happen to you. You have power to decide what your life will be like.

And if you set your life up so you can’t change jobs, take personal responsibility for that. It didn’t just happen to you. You are making decisions about that.

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Deductive reasoning for the modern taxpayer

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It’s tax time, and every year I think to myself that I should be deducting everything. Really. All my income comes from freelance writing, and since there’s almost nothing in my life that I don’t write about, maybe I can deduct everything.

After years of thinking I should do this but not really doing it, I finally took action. I talked about my deduction plan with Anne-Marie Fisher, director of tax services for CBIZ.

Here’s a transcript of our conversation:

Me: “I spent a lot of money on expensive eye cream so that I looked good for my Yahoo! photo. Can I deduct that?”

Anne: “They don’t like cosmetics or clothing that they say you could use outside of your article.”

Me: “But I wouldn’t have had to look that good if I didn’t take the photo.”

Anne: “But you looked good after the photo. The IRS is really tough on things that help your appearance.”

Me: “What if the cream made me look bad?”

Anne: “That’s a very aggressive position.” (This is tax-preparer speak for “No! Don’t do it!”)

Me: “OK. Forget the cream. What about moving. I wrote a lot about how I moved from New York City to Madison, Wisconsin.”

Anne: “That’s a fine deduction. Just document that you did if for a job.”

Me: “But I didn’t. I can work anywhere. I did it because I was going to die if I had to live in a 500-square-foot apartment for one more minute.”

Anne: “Do you have more business opportunities in Madison?”

Me: “Well, there are a lot of writers in New York City and very few in Madison, so I’m more unique being from Madison and editors like unique.”

Anne: “That’s good.”

Me: “I write a lot about how you’ll have more career opportunities if you keep your rent low. The new American Dream is about having a lot of time, not owning a house. Can I deduct my rent?”

Anne: “That’s very creative.” (That’s CPA-speak for “You’re out of your mind.”)

Me: “Here’s something I did. I went through all my expenses last year looking for some that are big and don’t seem to be deductible. I saw that my son’s violin lessons are really expensive. And you know, violin teaches self-discipline, and self-discipline is important for workplace success. I could write that. Then could I deduct the lessons?”

Anne: “He’s still getting a lot of benefit from the lessons, though.”

Me: “What if I write that he hates them?”

Anne: “Well, if he hates violin and you put him in the classes specifically to write your column, maybe you could prove that he was really upset by you taking pictures of him.”

Me: [Silence. Obvious disappointment.]

Anne [in a perky, helpful voice]: “How about meals. Do you deduct those?”

Me: “Of course. But what about my brother? He guest blogs on my blog. Can I deduct meals with him?”

Anne: “Sure. As a way to thank him.”

Me: “What about the plane flight?”

Anne: “To go see him? Well, things like this are always worth asking about. It’s like gambling. Some people just never want the IRS to talk to them.”

A Roll of the Dice

At this point I decide I’m a gambler, so I call another CPA. Larry Rice, director of strategic consulting at Rodman & Rodman. I cut right to the chase:

Me: “What can I write in my column about toys so that I can deduct the toys I buy for my kids?”

Larry: “Maybe if you had a regular feature where you review toys. But you’d have to throw them out. If you kept them, the IRS would assume your kids got personal enjoyment from them.”

Me: “Could I throw them out later?”

Larry: “No, that wouldn’t work because there was personal enjoyment. The IRS lets you deduct only 50 percent of meals, for example, because while they’re for business, you still get personal enjoyment.”

Me: “Can I deduct 100 percent of the meals I had with people I hate?”

Larry: [Pause.] “When you deal with your taxes, you’re presumed guilty until proven innocent. You need to prove why you have the right to take the deduction.”

Me: “OK. How about the coffee shop I write in. I’m there every day and I don’t have a home office. Can I deduct my lattes?”

Larry: “The IRS has a term — ‘ordinary and necessary.’ You have to show that what you’re doing is ordinary and necessary for your business.”

Me: “OK, there’s an article about how my generation loves to work out of coffee shops and many of us don’t have home offices. We just have a backpack. So how about I send this to the IRS and tell them it’s a new day and they have to get with the program and large latte bills are ordinary and necessary for writers?”

Larry: “Maybe you could do it if you met with people related to your business regularly. The IRS publishes a 30-page book to help people determine if their home office deduction is legal, and it has very tight requirements.”

Me: [Long, dejected silence.]

A New Hope

Larry gives me a good idea. He says that IRS agents receive audit guides that tell them what deductions they should expect from a person in a given field, such as 10 percent of a writer’s income is spent on travel.

So I can get one of those guides, and at least make sure I hit the top levels in all those areas. It’s a new approach, and I have new hope.

Finally, a note to my mom: Please don’t call me to say the IRS is going to read this column and come after me. I know you’re going to worry. But you don’t need to. In fact, now that I’ve written about you worrying, the next time I have lunch with you and you worry about me, I think I’ll deduct it.

 

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Financial freedom is outdated; try optimism instead

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I am sick of advice about how to achieve financial freedom. Freedom from what? I have asked some people, who I will not link to, since I’m dissing them, and the most common answer is that they want to be able to make decisions about their life based on what they want, not on what they can afford.

HELLO???? Can everyone standing in line to buy a Lear Jet please get a reality check? You do not need a plane to be happy, you need a plane to go visit the people who make you happy. A jet is not an expression of financial freedom. It’s an expression of your decision to not live near the people who mean the most to you.

I think the root of the idea of “financial freedom” means freedom from having to do a job you don’t like. But this thinking comes from the baby boomers who felt compelled to climb ladders doing jobs that destroyed their personal life.

Today we don’t do that. Many people of ladder-climbing age today don’t believe it’s worth the trouble. Today you can hold out to get a job you love at the beginning of your career. Financial freedom is not a prerequisite.

Financial freedom is becoming an outdated goal for today’s workers. Jim Buckmaster, chief executive of Craigslist, mystified Wall St. analysts when he explained that he’s not interested in building a megacompany, and he just wants to maintain Craigslist as a company that gives people what they need (via the tweney review).

But I think most people are not so much mystified as just plain grateful for the down-to-earth attitude at Craigslist. And plenty of research shows that the people at Craigslist have the right attitude; it’s futile to make money a career goal since you’ll never feel like you have enough.

You know what really determines our happiness levels? Not money, but how optimistic we are and how often we have monogamous sex. Money cannot solve big problems, like cancer or world hunger or happiness. Money solves small problems, like, can you have a big wedding, can you go on a good trip. Small problems are what people talk about when they talk about “I can help you get financial freedom.”

But why spend your life figuring out how to get rid of small problems with money? You can work hard to make yourself a more optimistic person, and then you will be able to overcome most small problems. So let’s stop talking about financial freedom and start talking about learned optimism.

Optimism is the ability to see the world in a positive light. Optimists are happier people, and there is no reason why everyone shouldn’t attempt to think more optimistically. Don’t tell me a happy outlook will squash your creativity. Part of creative production is the manic optimistic self-confidence that what you are thinking of is a great idea.

How does this relate to careers? Once you make the switch to thinking like an optimist you will have real freedom — freedom to do what will be fulfilling and accommodate your personal life instead of what will make you rich.

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Taking good care of a family is relative

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In response to my musings about what it means to be a blogger who is just a blogger, Alexandra Levit sent me an article about bloggers who support themselves blogging. I read it twice. Then I started checking out all the blogs, trying to uncover the secret of the million-dollar blog.

Here is what I uncovered: Heather B (who is truly a wonderful writer) is cited in the article as “bringing in enough money to allow her family to live comfortably.” But it turns out that she and her husband recently participated in a study where they get injected with whooping cough so that they can get $50 and a free tetnaus shot.

I know that everyone has a different idea of living comfortably. But I happen to know the guy who wrote the article for Business 2.0 — he’s my old editor. And I’m certain that he would not be comfortable in the whooping cough study.

This reminds me of something I hate: Articles about women that focus on the dual acheivment of doing well at work and with kids. We never hear from the kids. We never see the inner workings of the household. What does it mean to do a great job with kids? It’s all relative. All self-reported. It’s all BS.

In fact, I did a followup on one of these stories. I looked up an article from Working Mother from a few years back — one of those articles about “How I successfully balance home and work.” I called the woman to find out how things are going with her business and her three school-age sons. I interviewed her and her teenage son.

I was appalled at how little time she spent with the son. And then he said he’d never want to be like his dad because his dad (Fortune 500 COO) was always at work. I couldn’t even bring myself to write about the family using their names because it was so bad. And the woman continues to believe that she’s doing a great job balancing work and family.

I put these topics in the same category: Reports about bloggers who live comfortably and women who do a good job at both work and home. It’s all subjective and relative and hearsay. Useless information.

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What to do in college to be successful in your career

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For those of you about to start another year at school, here’s a list of things to keep in mind: Twenty things to do in college to set yourself up for a great job when you graduate.

1. Get out of the library.
“You can have a degree and a huge GPA and not be ready for the workplace. A student should plan that college is four years of experience rather than 120 credits,” says William Coplin, professor at Syracuse University and author of the book, 10 Things Employers Want You to Learn in College. Many people recommend not hiring someone with a 4.0 because that student probably has little experience beyond schoolwork.

2. Start a business in your dorm room.
It’s relatively easy, and Google and Yahoo are dying to buy your business early, when it’s cheap. Besides, running a company in your room is better than washing dishes in the cafeteria. Note to those who play poker online until 4am: Gambling isn’t a business. It’s an addiction.

3. Don’t take on debt that is too limiting.
This is not a reference to online gambling, although it could be. This is about choosing a state school over a pricey private school. If that’s still too tough financially, then consider starting at a community college or look into online degrees vs traditional ones. Almost everyone agrees you can get a great education at an inexpensive school. So in many cases the debt from a private school is more career-limiting than the lack of brand name on your diploma.

4. Get involved on campus.
When it comes to career success, emotional intelligence — social skills to read and lead others —get you farther than knowledge or job competence, according to Tiziana Casciaro, professor at Harvard Business School. Julie Albert, a junior at Brandeis University, is the director of her a-cappella group and head of orientation this year. She hones her leadership skills outside the classroom, which is exactly the place to do it.

5. Avoid grad school in the humanities.
Survival rates in this field are very close to survival rates on the Titanic. One in five English PhD’s find stable university jobs, and the degree won’t help outside the university: “Schooling only gives you the capacity to stand behind a cash register,” says Thomas Benton, a columnist at the Chronicle of Higher Education (who has a degree in American Civilization from Harvard and a tenured teaching job.)

6. Skip the law-school track.
Lawyers are the most depressed of all professionals. Stress in itself does not make a job bad, says Alan Krueger, economist at Princeton University. Not having control over one’s work does make a bad job, though, and lawyers are always acting on behalf of someone else. Suicide is the leading cause of premature death among lawyers. (Evan Shaeffer has a great post on this topic.)

7. Play a sport in college.
People who play sports earn more money than couch potatoes, and women executives who played sports attribute much of their career success to their athletic experience, says Jennifer Cripsen, of Sweet Briar College. You don’t need to be great at sports, you just need to be part of a team.

8. Separate your expectations from those of your parents.
“Otherwise you wake up and realize you’re not living your own life,” says Alexandra Robbins, author of the popular new book The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids. (Note to parents: If you cringe as you read this list then you need to read this book.)

9. Try new things that you’re not good at.
“Ditch the superstar mentality that if you don’t reach the top, president, A+, editor in chief, then the efforts were worthless. It’s important to learn to enjoy things without getting recognition,” says Robbins.

10. Define success for yourself.
“Society defines success very narrowly. Rather than defining success as financial gain or accolades, define it in terms of individual interests and personal happiness,” says Robbins.

11. Make your job search a top priority.
A job does not fall in your lap, you have to chase it. Especially a good one. It’s a job to look for a job. Stay organized by using Excel spreadsheets or online tools to track your progress. And plan early. Goldman Sachs, for example, starts their information sessions in September.

12. Take a course in happiness.
Happiness studies is revolutionizing how we think of psychology, economics, and sociology. How to be happy is a science that 150 schools in the country teach. Preview: Learn to be more optimistic. This class will show you how.

13. Take an acting course.
The best actors are actually being their most authentic selves, says Lindy Amos, of communications coaching firm TAI Resources. Amos teaches executives to communicate authentically so that people will listen and feel connected. You need to learn to do this, too, and you may as well start in college.

14. Learn to give a compliment.
The best compliments are specific, so “good job” is not good, writes Lisa Laskow Lahey, psychologist at Harvard and co-author of How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work. Practice on your professors. If you give a good compliment the recipient will think you’re smarter: Big payoff in college, but bigger payoff in the work world.

15. Use the career center.
These people are experts at positioning you in the workforce and their only job is to get you a job. How can you not love this place? If you find yourself thinking the people at your college’s career center are idiots, it’s probably a sign that you really, really don’t know what you’re doing.

16. Develop a strong sense of self by dissing colleges that reject you.
Happy people have “a more durable sense of self and aren’t as buffeted by outside events,” writes Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California-Riverside. When bad things happen, don’t take it personally. This is how the most successful business people bounce back quickly from setback.

17. Apply to Harvard as a transfer student.
Sure people have wild success after going to an Ivy League school but this success is no more grand than that of the people who applied and got rejected. People who apply to Ivy League schools seem to have similar high-self-confidence and ambition, even if they don’t get in, according to research by Krueger.

18. Get rid of your perfectionist streak.
It is rewarded in college, but it leads to insane job stress, and an inability to feel satisfied with your work. And for all of you still stuck on #6 about ditching the law school applications: The Utah Bar Journal says that lawyers are disproportionately perfectionists.

19. Work your way through college.
Getting involved in student organizations counts, and so does feeding children in Sierra Leone or sweeping floors in the chemistry building. Each experience you have can grow into something bigger. Albert was an orientation leader last year, and she turned that experience into a full-time summer job that morphed into a position managing 130 orientation leaders. A great bullet on the resume for a junior in college.

20. Make to do lists.
You can’t achieve dreams if you don’t have a plan to get there.

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Your family would be better off with a housewife (so would mine)

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Men should not marry women who have careers, according to an opinion piece at Forbes.com. The statistics are clear:

“Marrying these women is asking for trouble. If they quit their jobs and stay home with the kids, they will be unhappy (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2003). They will be unhappy if they make more money than you do (Social Forces, 2006). You will be unhappy if they make more money than you do (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2001). You will be more likely to fall ill (American Journal of Sociology). Even your house will be dirtier (Institute for Social Research).”

There is a response from a woman, who, big surprise, has a big career. But to me, she just sounds like she’s whining. And she’s definitely missing the point.

The point is that marriage and family work best when one person is taking care of them full time. Duh. Everything in the world is best off when it is cared for very carefully. I wish everyone would stop trying to deny this. It’s barking up the wrong tree.

There is little evidence that the role of housewife is any more frustrating than the role of housewife and careerist rolled into one. (I have done both roles and both are very difficult and not totally satisfying.)

The conclusion, that marriages and families work better with a full-time housewife, is hard to swallow but hard to deny. It’s just that not every woman wants to take care of a family and marriage full time, and even fewer men do. And increasingly few people want to give up almost all child-rearing responsibilities in order to be a single breadwinner. So this is a piece of advice that’s useful to only the small percentage of households in the world. But still, the advice is good.

Many people will say they’d rather face the challenges of a dual-career marriage than the challenge of a stay-at-home-spousedom. Fine. Just know the statistics are not in your favor.

Before I get accused of throwing stones from a glass house, let me come clean with the fact that my husband and I are constantly restructuring our work life in response to these statistics. Also, I believe that the woman being the primary caretaker of both family and marriage is BS, but I don’t see many marriages working any other way, even with two, powerhouse careers.

Please, do not send me emails about your perfect marriage because I don’t believe it. In my marriage we have tried everything, and everything is hard in its own way.

Meanwhile, it’s good advice to men to pick a woman who will be a full-time housewife, but I have some advice for women who are shopping for husbands: To find a partner who will support your choices both financially and emotionally and who will be around enough to participate as an equal parent, marry someone with a very large trust fund.

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