Entry 12 - Hopeful Expected Life Earnings

- For this particular entry, I required of myself the construction of a spreadsheet wherein my life earnings would be explained and shown.  To do this and to figure out how much money I could expect upon entering my retirement and final honeymoon phase in life, I first decided upon when I wished to retire from my job - wherever that may be, whether it is in the grassy tundras of Iceland or the rocky waterfalls of Norway.  Since I decided I would be finished with my undergraduate education at UC Berkeley by the age of 23, and since I had filled out a tax form for the age of 23, I knew that retirement would be however many years after this marker I would willing to work for humanity and the environment.  After much thought, I decided 39 years would reasonably arrive me at my final destination, and so by adding 39 to 23, I calculated the age at which I would retire to be 62.  May it be heard though, that I shall not sit on a couch after this point of no return until the time I return to my place in the stars; instead, life will take me to even more places, and this time, I get to enjoy them and the fruits of my labor - fruits that will hopefully come to change society for the better.  After calculating the amount of years that would serve to accumulate monetary savings to be 39 years, I applied this amount to how much my salary as a Senior Environmental Scientist for the Department of Fish and Wildlife would afford me.

This picture is one I secretly snapped in Navirolli's classroom  and is one that reminds me what education, especially the higher education I wish to achieve later in my life, truly means in regards to living: it allows one a degree that equals better pay and more opportunity to make a change in the world

This snap is of a steak dinner my family and I partook in, respecting the cow that gave its life for this nourishment and creation of a memory I shall cherish for years to come; the picture reminds me of the advances and raises while at work I must take advantage of in order to make substantial living

This last remaining slice of homemade key lime pie, made proudly by my mother,  acts as solace to the stomach tired from digesting a meal or two in the same way retirement acts as a retreat from and award for laboring in a profession, mine being that of a Senior Environmental Scientist 

When calculating my total salary for 39 years working as a wildlife biologist, I took into consideration the percentage one such person can expect his or her salary to rise for each year working in his or her profession.  After scouring the internet, I found out how us wildlife biologists can predict to earn 1.9% more of a salary with each progressing year, each year making us more experienced stewards of this Earth.  With this knowledge, I multiplied each year’s salary by 0.019 (the decimal and more workable version of the percentage 1.9), and added the amount of money I arrived at to that year’s salary so that found out how much I made in that year in a more realistic fashion - age is equivalent to more benefits.  I then took this updated year’s pay to the next year’s starting salary and applied the same steps to this amount for the next year so that a raise was awarded to me each and every year that passed me by at my job.  In this way, I virtually earned a whopping total salary, after 39 year’s worth of work, of $3,969,135.22.  Since a percentage is exponentially raising my salary with each year gone and invested into, a graph mapping my proposed salary for the course of 39 years would follow the behavior of an exponential function, wherein my salary would earn my a curve of money shooting up into the likes of many digits. It is important to keep in mind that I attempted the aforementioned calculations based on the assumption that I would have an originating starting annual salary of $68,308.14, this amount being an averaged amount between the listed starting and highest possible salaries for the job of Environmental Scientist.

This is a graph I concocted on my computer serves to display my projected increase in the amount I earn from my job in San Diego on an annual basis; as one can see, this graph is exponential, meaning each point is doubled the one that came before it, resulting is a steep, unsteady slope

This is the pay scale for one working in the field of wildlife biology, showing what he or she has the ability to monetarily earn; the viewer should notice how the scale is split into intervals, which I found the average of and used to calculate the average raise a wildlife biologist can expect if he or she has a degree in a higher level of education

This is a picture of a house close to my heart and very being, one that has been there for me at all times and it is for this reason that I cannot reveal its identity (one can only make a hypothesis on the matter); it reminds me of what a wildlife biologist is capable of doing: analyzing the society, not the manmade one, which we humans call home

Since I had inputed graduate education at UC San Diego into my budget, I wanted to see how getting a master’s degree or PhD in wildlife biology or a neighboring science would affect my income from my job, how higher education would make up for its initial monetary investment.  Basing my calculations off 39 years once again, I estimated how much once such degree would add to my yearly salary, this amount coming out to be $11,000.  With this in mind, I figured out the present value and future value of the degree.  The present value is in regards to how much something is valued at in the present without the inclusion of time while future value is how much that same something is valued at a future date, with the inclusion of time.  This concept can be especially helpful when seeing how much I would want to put down in a savings account if I am looking to have x amount in dollars after y amount of years if an interest rate r is applied.  For this calculation, I took into account the current inflation rate of the United States economy, this being measured at -0.1%, and used a formula for each type of value for the degree.  Since the degree cost me for the first four years I spent at UC San Diego studying to earn one, a negative value was plugged into the two formulas with a rate of 0.999 (1 added to the decimal form of -0.1%).  After the total present value and future value were found respectively, I added the future value - this being because the value that more accurately took into account time passed in the form of 39 years in relation to the inflation rate at hand - to the money I made from my 39 year old salary, this grand total coming out to $4,289,203.55 - my life earnings for 39 years. When I took this degree of mine into consideration, I assumed the tuition for going to UC San Diego would not change during the course of 4 years and that I would have not received financial aid in the form need-based and merit scholarships. Another assumption I accounted for was that the intervals between each payment category in wildlife biology was equal to each other, that each raise would measure an even $11,000.

This self-explanatory graph depicts the inflation rates of various years, including the one I used for figuring out what the future and present values of a mater's degree in the field I wish to major in as a function of the job I virtually have

Since I wanted the most bang out my buck, I put my life earnings into a savings account provided by Logix, at a low interest rate of 0.25% - no speculation on the stock market needed in my line of work -, for a total of 12 years.  In this way, I would have in my pocket, in a scenario where expenses are magically provided for by an unknown donor whose charge is wishful dreaming, a total of $4,419,663.78 12 years into my retirement (at the age of 74), this amount being arrived at through an interest rate formula.  To make sure this money is spent wisely, I would share the wealth a little to my human brethren and brethren of other species (supporting economies and ecosystems alike) and live by the motto: places to be, people to see!

These two pictures serve to act as a visual for the bank I wish to stock my savings into simply because my dad is an employee there; the bank is safe and stable, has the innovative name of Logix, and represents itself with a peek into the future: a robot with the color of an orange shake with whip cream

So that I could calculate my earnings, I formulated an equation that based its solution to the amount one imputed for variable t, this variable being the amount of years I would work until retiring.  This equation is composed of two parts, the first one being my total salary for my profession and the second one being the future value of working t years as an Environmental Scientist in the city of San Diego with a master’s degree or a PhD in the science on which the job is based.

This is an exponential equation I made to serve as a tool for calculating my total life earnings, minus savings gained from storing my money in a savings account as I went about doing in my spreadsheet; t is the variable I must input a number for so that I know how many years I must work in order to attain the given solution 

This piecewise graph is incomplete given the fact that I was unable to combine the two equations making it up; the first of the two mother graphs is the one calculating my exponential prediction of potential salary (red line) and the second is one illustrating a constant graph shooting almost vertically upwards (blue line) in the name of the future value of a master's degree that would add to my projected lifetime earnings

The intersection of the two graphs shown in the previous image; this is the point where the attempted piecewise graph  explained in the previous image and caption would continue after following the course of the red line

As explained in the aforementioned caption, the red line and equation with the capability of calculating my total income for t amount of years of working as a Senior Environmental Scientist with the expected rise in income this year as a rate of 1.9% (=1.019)

As explained in the aforementioned caption, the blue line and equation with the capability of calculating the future value of getting a master's degree and the affect this achievement has on my income (= an add-on of $11,000 to the salary earned each year)

→ Pasted here is a link to the spreadsheet on which my life earnings are detailed