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Entertaining the Idea of Higher Education
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Buehler
Posted 3/12/2019 09:52 (#7375400 - in reply to #7375066)
Subject: RE: Entertaining the Idea of Higher Education



Scott City KS
chadlit - 3/12/2019 06:24

Anybody else thinking about furthering their education? Earning a bachelors, masters or doctoral degree and using it to provide a better life for their family? This farming deal (losing money every year or breakeven at best) is tiresome.

Running numbers every year shows a decent profit with above average yields, but if we have a crop failure its a no go. MPCI coverage is a joke. Taxes/bank numbers show how challenging it can be to overcome asset depreciation. Like my FIL says, the 80's are going to be nothing compared to whats going to happen this time around.

Enough ramblings. Going back to my initial thought of furthering ones education to provide a better life for the family...anybody do this and regret it or anybody currently doing this? If so, how do you manage to get all the farm work done and still find the needed time to study?


I don't know how serious this question is, but here is my answer.

Don't if you're not going to quit farming. If you want to learn something else, there are free or super cheap auditable courses through coursera or whatever. They're not great, but they do cover the material.

I graduated high school in 2002. That was Dad's worst years economically. Worse than the 80s (he didn't have a ton of debt in the 80s, but he says he lost more money in the late 90s/early 2000s.) Quite frankly there was no place for my hindquarters out here in 2002, so I bounced and went to college. I went to a small state college not known for it's business school, but was accredited by the AACSB. Got my BS in Management and MBA. Nothing to do with Ag. I have the paper and nobody can take it away, that's true, but here I am on the farm.

I stayed off the farm through the 2008 debacle and came back in late 2009. Yeah, things aren't great in some aspects, but if I'm being honest, I have done better than I was expecting by a fair shake and frankly I find it difficult to imagine myself off the farm. I always thought if this noise didn't work out, I could pull the 'chute and go do something else - I'm not married to the farm. Now, almost a decade later, this is my baby and I can't see myself doing anything else.

Structurally, a degree does not necessarily equate to a good job off the farm. Sometimes it does, but a lot of the bigger companies that have the better benefits and upward opportunity want practical experience. Like if you want to be a financial analyst, they're going to want a degree in business, and 5 years in finance. And there were a lot of jobs out there when I exited the job market that the experience was far more important than the education. And as you move up the ladder, experience becomes more and more important. Now, there is no denying you have definite experience from the farm, but I have no idea if you can convince decision makers that it is better than some corporate drone.

Working in the private sector is different. Yes, there are fewer hours, more benefits, sometimes fewer headaches. Really though, the headaches are just relocated a lot of the time. I have no idea what industry you'd be looking at, but on the whole, there are very few jobs on the planet that there isn't structural conflict that puts you at odds with a boss, someone elses boss, or whatever. Customers, if you have to deal with them, suck. I help my accountant during tax season, so I still get to see a lot of those aspects, and she's great to work part time for. And doing taxes is a healthy reminder that this guy needs to see something real getting done. I need to see fields getting sprayed or whatever. I'm not made for work for the sake of work.

Maybe you don't care, but let me tell you what's helped me, mentally. I treat my business like a business. I started a legally separate entity, and treat it as such. I pay myself an hourly wage and keep all the personal crap out of the farm. That way it is far less intensive to see if the thing is making money and what I'm making. It also keeps me from bleeding the equity out of the farm with non-deductible cash flows. My personal balance sheet has grown significantly, mainly driven by equity gains in farming entity, but also by equity achieved through debt service on farmland. My default setting is, "Can't afford it, no money." But I am often surprised at the numbers. I'm still a basically-nothing tiny guy compared to some guys around, but I'm proud of where I am, because it's MINE. What I have out here was the direct effect of my efforts, not just added to the bottom line of some garbage department in a douchey corporation whose directors couldn't pick me out of a lineup.

tl;dr College degree does not automatically make you qualified for a good job, and working off the farm is far less rewarding than working for yourself.
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