Tag Archives: cost

Say no to the dress

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A popular reality TV show follows the struggles of young brides-to-be shopping for a wedding dress at a famous store, Kleinfeld’s. They’ve come to believe that this charming adornment will make their dream-wedding really perfect. There is some sort of idea that the perfect wedding is necessary (or desirable) to get you started on a perfect life. This is stated in various ways throughout the show with phrases like: “you deserve to be the princess,” or “you deserve your special day.”

Each woman brings a retinue to help her pick the gown, and to help advise her about what dress has the most pop, or looks best on her, or makes her look the most special. Often it’s someone in this retinue that will pay for the dress too, a father, uncle, or a close family member. The store caters to the retinue at lest at the beginning to get a commitment to the price, generally $5,000 to $10,000, but sometimes to “no limit on the price.” It then provides a dazzling variety of dresses and an old hand or two to guide the young lady to the right one. At first, the retinue chimes in, but eventually the retinue is detached, and the bride is made to embrace that it’s her special day, alone. Then, when the perfect dress is finally chosen (often at the high-end of the budget), the bride is asked: “are you ready to say yes to the dress?” She does, with tears, and everyone claps, especially the retinue. Often, there is a final shot of the beautiful bride at the beautiful wedding. It’s touching, but perhaps unnecessary. So here’s an alternate  thought: just say “no”. No to the expensive dress; no to the expensive cake (sorry, cake boss) and no to the fancy, big diamond. instead, throw a big fun wedding on the cheap, perhaps at a park in a rented gown; friends will get you through life, the big dress and big cake will not.

An expensive wedding didn’t keep John Kennedy faithful, nor did it help cement Elizabeth Taylors 7 husbands (two to Richard Burton). Just the opposite: a recent study on marriage stability showed that the higher priced the wedding, the more likely it is to end in divorce.

Marriage stability goes down as the wedding costs go up.

Marriage stability goes down as the wedding costs go up. If you dress costs $5,000, your wedding is unlikely to come in at less than $10k. From Francis and Mialon, “A diamond is forever and other Fairy Tales,” 2014. The average cost of a US wedding: $30,000.

The point of the wedding is to have a long, happy marriage, not a one day party, and expensive weddings appear to be counter-productive to stability. Things are worse for those who enter poor, backing up the observation that money stresses are among the main causes of marriage failure. This is not to say that you should not have a wedding party, but that spending should be watched especially if the couple isn’t that extraordinarily rich. The average, employed US 20-something earns about $26,000/year before taxes. That’s not bad money until you realize that the average US wedding costs over $30,000 not including dress, ring and honeymoon. There is a far lower chance of divorce for the couple with the $5-$10k wedding, and even lower if the couple can keep expenses in the 0-$5k range.

Give her a diamond ring, but the ideal cost is between $100 and $2000 (unless you're super rich)

Give her a ring, but the ideal cost is between $200 and $2000 unless you’re super rich.

Statistics suggest that spending on the diamond doesn’t help either, unless it’s a very expensive stone — and that, perhaps, is because the very expensive stone is only bought by the very rich groom. Still, even for the 1% who can afford it, the dress or stone should be considered a sunk cost, not an investment. You’ll never be able to resell that dress at all, and though you can resell a diamond it is virtually impossible to get even half your money back. This isn’t to say that you should not give a ring — without a ring the bride will feel cheated, but most grooms will be better served giving one in the $100-$2000 range.

It seems that having lots of people at the wedding is perhaps the single best thing you can do for marriage stability. On the other hand, this graph might show that the sort of person who has 200 good friends is the sort of person to remain happily married.

Having lots of people at the wedding is perhaps the single best thing you can do for marriage stability. On the other hand, this graph might show that the sort of person who has 200 good friends is the sort of person to remain happily married. ibid.

While your wedding should be cheap, or at least affordable, it should not be small. It turns out that having lots of friends and family in attendance correlates strongly with having a long, stable marriage. I’m not sure if this is entirely cause and effect: perhaps those with lots of friends and family are giving and stable than those without. Still, it strikes me that friendships are good for every couple, and very worth maintaining. These are people who will be there for advice, or just be there when things get rocky. Give them a good party, and don’t drive them away by sending a message that a large gift is expected. If you get married on the cheap, it’s likely your guests will feel more comfortable showing up in business clothes with simple affordable gifts. Most bridesmaids are happier if they don’t have to buy a big expensive dress.

Honeymoons help malaise stability too.

Honeymoons help marriage stability too. ibid.

Robert E. Buxbaum, July 12, 2015. My 3 children are all entering marriageable age — and PhD age (I wrote a post comparing a wedding to a PhD.) The above are my thoughts before being hornswoggled into buying $5,000 worth of taffeta. They are also suggestive of the sort of work to get a PhD. Another good spending investment, I think, is to go on a honeymoon. I didn’t, and though we didn’t get divorced, in retrospect it seems like a good idea. I plan to finally go on a honeymoon for our 25th anniversary. Let’s toast (with Geritol) to finding the right mate. Good luck.

Is college worth no cost?

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While a college degree gives most graduates a salary benefit over high school graduates, a study by the Bureau of Labor statistics indicates that the benefits disappear if you graduate in the bottom 25% of your class. Worse yet, if you don’t graduate at all you can end up losing salary money, especially if you go into low-paying fields like child development or physical sciences.

Salary benefits of a college degree are largely absent if you graduate in the bottom 25% of your class.

The average college graduate earns significantly more than a high school grad, but not if you attend a pricy school, or graduate in the bottom 1/4 of your class, or have the wrong major.

Most people realize there is a great earnings difference depending on your field of study with graduates in engineering and medicine doing fairly well financially and even top graduates in child development or athletic sciences barely able to justify the college and opportunity costs (worse if they go to an expensive college), but what isn’t always realized is that not all those who enter these fields graduate. For them there is a steep loss when the four (or more) years of lost income are considered.

risk premium in wages

If you don’t graduate or get only an AA or 2 year degree the increase in wages is minimal, and you lose time working and whatever your costs of education. The loss is particularly high if you study social science fields at an expensive college, and don’t graduate, or if you graduate in the bottom of your class.

A report from the New York Federal Reserve finds that the highest pay major is petroleum engineering, mid-career salary $176,300/yr, and the bottom is child development, mid-career salary $36,400/yr (click to check on your major). I’m not sure most students or advisors are aware of the steep salary difference, or that college can have a salary down-side if one picks the wrong major, or does not complete the degree. In terms of earnings, you might be better off avoiding even a free college degree in these areas unless you’re fairly sure you’ll complete the degree, or you really want to work in these fields.

Top earning majors Fed Reserve and Majors that pay you back.

Top earning majors: Majors that pay.

Of course college can provide more than money: knowledge, for instance, and learning: the ability to reason better. But these benefits are likely lost if you don’t work at it, or don’t go in a field you love. They can also come to those who study hard in self-taught reading. In either case, it is the work habits that will make you grow as a person, and leave you more employable. Tough colleges add a lot by exposure to new people and new ways of thinking about great books, and by forced experience in writing essays — but these benefits too are work-dependent and college dependent. If you work hard understanding a great book it will show. If you didn’t work at it, or only exposed yourself to easier fare, that too will show.

As students don’t like criticism, and as good criticism is hard to give — and harder to give well, many less-demanding colleges ,give little or no critical feedback, especially for disadvantaged students. This disadvantages them even more as criticism is an important part of learning. If all you get is a positive experience, a nice campus, and a dramatic graduation, this is not learning. Nor is it necessarily worth 4-5 years of your life.

As a comic take on the high time-cost of a liberal arts education, “Father” Guido Sarduchi, of Saturday Night LIve, describes his “5 minute college experience.” To a surprising extent, it provides everything you’ll remember of 4 year college experience in 5 minutes, including math, history, political science, and language (Spanish).For those who are not sure they will complete a liberal arts education, Father Sarduchi’s 5 minutes may be a better investment than a free 4 years in community college.

Robert. E. Buxbaum. January 21-22, 2015. My sense is that the better part of education is what you get when you don’t get what you want.

My solution to the world’s problems: better people

Most of the problems of the world are caused by people. Look at war, it’s caused by people; look at pollution, people; look at overeating, or welfare, or gun violence. You name it, the problem is people. My simple solution, then: better people. Immigration is a simple solution for a county that can do it selectively (take in the best, leave the rest); it’s worked for the US and it doesn’t have to beggar the third world. Education is another way to help, but we’re not quite sure what sort of education makes people better. “An uneducated man may steel from a boxcar, an educated one may steal the whole railroad.” Theodore Roosevelt is supposed to have quipped.

Those who claim they are uncommonly moral and good at teaching it have barely any proof that they are. American schools produce financially successful people, but not particularly moral ones; Europe’s approach is different, but there’s no indication they’ve done better at moral education. We look to the 18th century, or the Greeks, but they were no more moral than us, as best I can tell. The Taliban, the communists, or similar fundamentalists claim moral superiority over the west, but from my perspective, they look even worse. 

I notice that people learn morality from one another — that is each person acts like his neighbor. I also note that people tend to act better when they are involved, and feel part of whatever country, city or group they are in. Targeted immigration might bring in better people–honest, hard working, non-violent — and these people might help improve and motivate the locals. And even if we don’t improve by interaction, perhaps lazy Americans will ride on the backs of the hard-working immigrants. But it strikes me that the disconnect between world problems of high unemployment, world hunger, and lots of open, US jobs is a moral problem that could be solved by targeted love. Allowing some increased mobility from country to country and job to job (plus better preaching?). If you can move you are more-likely to find a job or place where you feel fulfilled, and you are likely to do better and more there. Even the countries and jobs that are left might benefit by being rid of their malcontents. And we don’t have to take everyone.

From "Hispanic-hope."

From “Hispanic-hope.”, an interesting combination of Bible-study and immigration morality.

Living in America is desirable for most people from most countries. Far more people want to live here than we can accept. As a result, we are in a position to target the bright, honest, hard-working Peoples from virtually any country. These folks are helpful to industry and to the US tax base as these immigrants tend to work out — or get deported. In the short-term they might displace Americans or depress salaries, but even that is not certain. There is no fixed slate of US jobs nor a fixed amount of work need. Yesterday’s job taker is tomorrow’s job creator. Our country is built on immigrants, and has not suffered from it. We should not take those who hate the US, or those who hate freedom, or have no skills, criminals and the sick. Nor should we give citizenship immediately. But that still leaves plenty who we’d want, and who want to be here. Th. Roosevelt said, “you can not take in too many of the right people, and even one of the wrong type is too many.” I suspect this is true.

I suspect we’d have 90+% odds picking good people from a crowd. The Immigration system does a good job now, and the great colleges have done better for years. The past is usually a great indicator. If someone is well, and has worked for years, or has been here in school; if they’ve managed to stay productive and out of trouble, he/she is a good candidate. A first step would be a work permit, and in a few years they can apply for permanent residence or citizenship. Many of the most successful people in America are either immigrants or descendents of immigrants. The founders of Google and Facebook; the builders and the shakers. These people have the ‘get-up and go.’ You can tell because they’ve gotten up and gone.

Dr. Robert Buxbaum, June 16, 2014. I’m a child of an immigrant, went to public school, got a PhD at Princeton, have built my own company, and have (so far) avoided arrest, imprisonment or serious scandal. With the help of my Canadian-immigrant wife, I’ve produced three Buxbaum clones, my biggest contribution to improving the US and the world.

An Aesthetic of Mechanical Strength

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Back when I taught materials science to chemical engineers, I used the following poem to teach my aesthetic for the strength target for product design:

The secret to design, as the parson explained, is that the weakest part must withstand the strain. And if that part is to withstand the test, then it must be made as strong as all the rest. (by R.E. Buxbaum, based on “The Wonderful, One-hoss Shay, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1858).

My thought was, if my students had no idea what good mechanical design looked like, they’d never  be able to it well. I wanted them to realize that there is always a weakest part of any device or process for every type of failure. Good design accepts this and designs everything else around it. You make sure that the device will fail at a part of your choosing, when it fails, preferably one that you can repair easily and cheaply (a fuse, or a door hinge), and which doesn’t cause too much mayhem when it fails. Once this failure part is chosen and in place, I taught that the rest should be stronger, but there is no point in making any other part of that failure chain significantly stronger than the weakest link. Thus for example, once you’ve decided to use a fuse of a certain amperage, there is no point in making the rest of the wiring take more than 2-3 times the amperage of the fuse.

This is an aesthetic argument, of course, but it’s important for a person to know what good work looks like (to me, and perhaps to the student) — beyond just by compliments from the boss or grades from me. Some day, I’ll be gone, and the boss won’t be looking. There are other design issues too: If you don’t know what the failure point is, make a prototype and test it to failure, and if you don’t like what you see, remodel accordingly. If you like the point of failure but decide you really want to make the device stronger or more robust, be aware that this may involve strengthening that part only, or strengthening the entire chain of parts so they are as failure resistant as this part (the former is cheaper).

I also wanted to teach that there are many failure chains to look out for: many ways that things can wrong beyond breaking. Check for failure by fire, melting, explosion, smell, shock, rust, and even color change. Color change should not be ignored, BTW; there are many products that people won’t use as soon as they look bad (cars, for example). Make sure that each failure chain has it’s own known, chosen weak link. In a car, the paint on a car should fade, chip, or peel some (small) time before the metal underneath starts rusting or sagging (at least that’s my aesthetic). And in the DuPont gun-powder mill below, one wall should be weaker so that the walls should blow outward the right way (away from traffic).Be aware that human error is the most common failure mode: design to make things acceptably idiot-proof.

Dupont powder mills had a thinner wall and a stronger wall so that, if there were an explosion it would blow out towards the river. This mill has a second wall to protect workers. The thinner wall should be barely strong enough to stand up to wind and rain; the stronger walls should stand up to explosions that blow out the other wall.

Dupont powder mills had a thinner wall and a stronger wall so that, if there were an explosion, it would blow out ‘safely.’ This mill has a second wall to protect workers. The thinner wall must be strong enough to stand up to wind and rain; the stronger walls should stand up to all likely explosions.

Related to my aesthetic of mechanical strength, I tried to teach an aesthetic of cost, weight, appearance, and green: Choose materials that are cheaper, rather than more expensive; use less weight rather than more if both ways worked equally well. Use materials that look better if you’ve got the choice, and use recyclable materials. These all derive from the well-known axiom, omit needless stuff. Or, as William of Occam put it, “Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate.” As an aside, I’ve found that, when engineers use Latin, we look smart: “lingua bona lingua motua est.” (a good language is a dead language) — it’s the same with quoting 19th century poets, BTW: dead 19th century poets are far better than undead ones, but I digress.

Use of recyclable materials gets you out of lots of problems relative to materials that must be disposed of. E.g. if you use aluminum insulation (recyclable) instead of ceramic fiber, you will have an easier time getting rid of the scrap. As a result, you are not as likely to expose your workers (or you) to mesothelioma, or similar disease. You should not have to pay someone to haul away excess or damaged product; a scraper will oblige, and he may even pay you for it if you have enough. Recycling helps cash flow with decommissioning too, when money is tight. It’s better to find your $1 worth of scrap is now worth $2 instead of discovering that your $1 worth of garbage now costs $2 to haul away. By the way, most heat loss is from black body radiation, so aluminum foil may actually work better than ceramics of the same thermal conductivity.

Buildings can be recycled too. Buy them and sell them as needed. Shipping containers make for great lab buildings because they are cheap, strong, and movable. You can sell them off-site when you’re done. We have a shipping container lab building, and a shipping container storage building — both worth more now than when I bought them. They are also rather attractive with our advertising on them — attractive according to my design aesthetic. Here’s an insight into why chemical engineers earn more than chemists; and insight into the difference between mechanical engineering and civil engineering. Here’s an architecture aesthetic. Here’s one about the scientific method.

Robert E. Buxbaum, October 31, 2013