Ridge14 said:

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jamaggie06 said:

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So, in four years of working, you're going to have 100k saved u?. In addition to retirement savings? Any current student loans?

As a fresh graduate, what kind of salary are you getting already?

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Not really all that tough or unbelievable IMO.

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You do realize that most people have less than $100K savings at retirement, right? Having that bankroll four years out of school is extremely impressive and not easy.

jamaggie06 said:

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So you know many mid-career folks who have done what you said, or just mainly the 23-25 year old crowd?

I mean, you can use those numbers, but, if you don't pay your mortgage for two years because you have no income... it doesn't matter what the NPV is. I get that it's a fixed operating cost. My point is, somehow, you have to come up with cash to cover those fixed operating costs for two years (unfortunately, I'm not like some companies and can't just fund myself from the equity markets in perpetuity). That's a bit different than paying those fixed operating costs with actual cash flow.

But again, I'm not trying to get into a pissing match. I looked at the full time program and I don't see anyway it's possible except for those very young and with very few if any financial and or familial commitments.

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I quit my job and went back to Rice for their full-time MBA program when I was 31. I had a wife and child at the time. My wife was a stay-at-home mother (still is) and stayed at home for the duration of my two-year program. We had saved all of her salary while she was still working (before we had a child) and lived off of my income alone. We lived off of that saved money and my internship money throughout the two-year program. We started out with about 30k in savings, I made about 20k over my MBA internship, and when I graduated we had about 1.5k left to our name (not including 401k, etc.) We made it work. I had to take on debt for books and tuition, but we did not take on debt for living expenses. My wife babysat another family's child and that brought in about 500-700/month which helped some.

There is an element of luck when you go back to grad school. There are some things that are completely out of your control. The economy into which you graduate? Completely out of your control. For me, going back to grad school was very beneficial. I more than doubled my $62k/year salary in my first year out of grad school. I paid off all of my undergrad and graduate student loans within 3 years of graduation. Over the course of the last 11 years, we've saved well over a million dollars and now have a net worth north of a million. We have no debt whatsoever save for my home, but we could pay that off right now if we chose to. We're not where we need to be financially just yet, but we're making very good progress.

My point is if you plan correctly and catch a little bit of luck, going back to grad school can still make plenty of good sense even for those over the age of 30, but for every success story like mine, there are more than one that didn't end as favorably; hence, the luck of which I wrote.