Dual Income vs Single Income Families

The Census has data showing what percent of married couples have two incomes or just one income.

First of all lets look at all married couples:

This shows a fairly large minority of 17% of couples where neither spouse works.    This data does not exclude retired individuals so I assume the majority of those 17% are senior citizens.  

Now lets look at married couples who have children :

Since these are couples with children we can assume that almost all of them are not of retirement age.

Charging My Cell Phone Costs about 1¢ per month.

In Dec. of 2010 I decided to run a little experiment to see how much electricity my  cell phone charger used when it was plugged in but not charging the phone.   My original plan was to find out how much of the fabled 'vampire electricity' my phone charger used.  I plugged in the charger into a kill-a-watt meter which measures electric usage.    I left the charger plugged in over night and it had used 0.00 kWh of power.  But then I had to charge my phone.   I ended up plugging the phone into the charger and measuring how much power it takes to charge my phone as well as keep the charger plugged in 24/7 when the phone is not charging.  I figured I'd just leave the meter plugged in and get a longer term measure of how much electricity my charger uses.

What I measured:   I know for a fact that I charged my own phone and its mic.    But my wife also used the same plug in a little.   Altogether things that I measured are : Charging my cell phone, charging my bluetooth ear mic, charging my wife's phone some of the time, electric use from the chargers when plugged in and not charging, and maybe a little usage of the paper shredder that is near the charger in question.

This is not very scientific.

I have two pictures that show the kill-a-watt meter in use.   The first picture is from Dec. 20th and the second is from Jan. 2nd.   However the chargers were removed for about 4 days around Christmas when we were visiting family.   In total this then measures about 8 days of usage.   The first picture shows 0.03 and the second shows 0.06 so the difference is 0.03.   In the first 8 days the usage was 0.03 kWh.

Note I had to brighten the pictures a little so you could see the read out.  There isn't good lighting in the location where the meter is plugged in.

Dec 20th showing 0.03 : 

Jan 2nd showing 0.06 usage:

On Jan 14 the meter was still plugged in and it read 0.12 kWh total.   So in another 12 days there was another 0.06 in usage.

In 20 days total the usage is 0.09 kWh.   So an average day uses 0.0045 kWh.   
At that rate over a year the usage would average about 1.6425 kWh. 

Electricity averages around 10-11¢ per kWh.   So the cost to charge 1 phone and have the phone charger plugged in all year round is in the ballpark of  16-18¢ for a year.   But there were other things plugged in some of the time like my wife's phone and possibly even the paper shredder.  


I'm going to make a ballpark estimate that it is costing me about 1¢ per month to charge my cell phone.

Law School Is A Bad Investment

The New York Times article Is Law School a Losing Game? carried by Yahoo talks about a recent law school grad who hasn't landed permanent job and can't pay his $250,000 in loans.    Thats just one example of a law grad facing problems.   Below I list a a few very solid reasons why law school may be a very bad choice financially.

(note: if your LSAT is over 170 then you can probably ignore this article)

Law school is very expensive.

Tuition for law school can easily run $30,000 to $40,000 a year.   Plus you have living expenses on top of that.    The average amount borrowed is over $90,000 according to the ABA.    You also have to keep in mind that the government doesn't throw much if any 'free' grant money at people getting law degrees.   If there are any scholarships for lawyers then they are likely to be highly competitive.   I would expect to pay most of the bill for law school out of your own pocket.

There are too many new law grads for the jobs available.  

The NYT article says that "About 43,000 J.D.'s were handed out in 2009".  The ABA has similar data dating back a few years showing over 40,000 grads for each of the most recent 5 years.   Thats a lot of new grads coming out of law school each  year.    O*net says that there will be a projected 240,400 job openings in the field from 2008 to 2018.   Thats about 24,000 jobs per year on average.    Notice a big problem?    Theres 43,000 new grads in a year and projection of 24,000 job openings per year.    Thats almost twice as many new law grads looking for work as the number of job openings.


Many Lawyer Jobs don't Pay big Bucks

I'm sure we all know that lawyers make big bucks right?   We see them on TV all the time and they all drive luxury sports cars and wear expensive clothes.    Many lawyers do make very high wages.    The BLS says that  "In May 2008, the median annual wages of all wage-and-salaried lawyers were $110,590." and that "The middle half of the occupation earned between $74,980 and $163,320."     So half of the experienced lawyers make under $110k and 1/4 of experienced lawyers make under $75k.    New lawyers hired out of law school make less of course.   The median wage for new lawyers 9 months after graduation was $68,500 and for the new lawyers working in government they made $50,000 median.


If you add that all up then :   You work hard in school for 3 years and pile up $100,000 in debt.   Then you graduate and find a job market with only enough jobs for 50% of the grads.   You then end up with a one in 4 chance of making under $75k.    Doesn't sound very good to me.

Bottom Line:   A career in law is not a lucrative money ticket and you should seriously think twice before you pursue the field or you may end up underemployed with a giant student loan debt.

Best of blog posts for week of January 14th

Doughroller writes a Scottrade Review – Online Discount Broker
they also give us Six Great Ways To Introduce Kids to Stock Investing

Wisebread suggests the idea of : Nanny Sharing: Lowering the Cost of Personal Childcare

Plus some interesting items from outside personal blogs:

Top 15 Oddball Job Interview Questions off Business Journal


This article on Jim Cramer from someone who has worked with him 10 Things I Learned Working With Jim Cramer

An interesting 'what if' scenario if Apple had joined the Dow in stead of Cisco : CSCO vs. AAPL = 1,000 DJIA Points