Last year Mom and I were cruising on Royal Caribbean, whose slogan could reasonably be “cheaper than staying home and a lot more organized.” This year it was Crystal from Lisbon to the Azores, Madeira, Canary Islands, Morocco, and back to Lisbon. Crystal Cruises is a higher-end operation, about $1,000 per day for two people in a balcony room, and therefore attracts a wealthier demographic.
Median age of a passenger was probably close to 70 years and median wealth was “sufficient to blow $20k+ for a little over two weeks, including airfare and maybe some hotel stays on either end.”
A common concern and source of disappointment for many of these financially successful 70-year-olds was the comparatively unsuccessful trajectories of now-adult children. The Son Also Rises: economics history with everyday applications says that we should expect a lot of correlation in success through multiple generations of a family, but the statistical phenomenon of regression to the mean is not revoked. So if the Crystal passenger had been the most successful member of his or her family, Gregory Clark’s research suggests a significant probability that the children of that passenger would achieve at closer to the mean level for the extended family. The still-married-to-their-original-sweethearts parents also fretted about how their children hadn’t been able to replicate that stability. The explanation for the divorce lawsuits and children raised by just one parent was generally a change in character quality. Young people had inferior characters compared to old people. Nobody mentioned the updates to U.S. family law as a possible reason why a 50-year-old American’s domestic life might have unfolded very differently from that of the 80-year-old parents. The mother of a physician, for example, talked about how a young woman had lied about being on birth control and was now harvesting child support from her son. She never looked at the question of whether or not the 1990 child support guidelines made this a rational economic strategy. Although both she and her son live in a state that provides for potentially infinite child support revenue, the choice of becoming a child support profiteer was seen as a sign of bad character, not evidence of economic rationality.
Most of the passengers were organized into apparently heterosexual cisgender couples. There was a bimodal distribution in age gap among the couples. The first marriages typically involved a gap of less than 5 years. For those men against whom a divorce lawsuit had been filed, the second marriage seemed to be to a woman roughly 10 years younger. “The wives are a lot better looking than the husbands,” said one first-time Crystal passenger.
The ship advertised an LGBT gathering one afternoon and it turned out to be 7 men with an average age of about 55 and all but one traveling in a couple. Our host was the cruise director, a former onboard dancer who had worked his way up in the Crystal career ladder. Readers will be proud of me, I hope, for refraining from pointing out the cruise line’s failure to welcome the transgendered with “all gender restroom” signs” (the public restrooms on the ship were divided simply into “men” and “women”).
[Are you skeptical that I would fit in at an LGBT event? Keep in mind that I was traveling with my mother, listening to Broadway show tunes every night, and looking forward to an Elton John tribute concert on the last night of the cruise.]
I also attended a semi-official “singles” gathering. Nine people showed up, all women. How did they get to be “single”? Most had been successful divorce plaintiffs 10-15 years earlier, which led one passenger to quip “That’s how they’re able to afford Crystal.” This was only partially correct. These plaintiffs had obtained alimony and/or child support orders sufficient to provide them with a luxury lifestyle at the time of their original lawsuit. However, their revenue from the discarded husband had not been adjusted to compensate for inflation in the price of comfortable downtown hotel rooms, three-star restaurants, etc. Therefore their alimony checks were not sufficient to fund a truly luxurious lifestyle by today’s standard. They had thus sought to supplement their alimony and/or child support profits by tapping into the spending power of rich boyfriends. Unfortunately, the guys who met their minimum income and wealth requirements were apparently falling short in terms of personality and age. Thus the singles gathering ended up being a round-table discussion of the shortcomings of these men and why the most recent romance had fizzled.
Not all of the single females on the ship had gained wealth through divorce. One lady of about 60 had been the higher-earning spouse. She got sued by her husband and had been paying him alimony. She was not looking for a new mate. Another had earned her fortune by founding and managing a couple of matchmaking services. The latest has men as the only paying clients because “women are too emotional; they complain that ‘I didn’t pay you to get rejected’ after unsuccessful dates.”
One of the more amusing conversations was between the expert matchmaker and a 40-something career woman who asked “Aren’t men looking for their intellectual equals?” and “Wouldn’t these successful men rather have a somewhat older woman with an education and a successful career than a younger woman with nothing but looks?” The answer was that her clients were essentially indifferent to a woman’s educational and career attainment; they wanted beauty and an agreeable personality. “The more successful the woman the harder it is to find a match for her,” said the expert. “There must be some guys out there who aren’t that shallow,” said the career gal. Of course that was my chance to interject “I haven’t met one.”
[I asked how it was possible to operate a matchmaking operation for truly affluent men. Instead of incurring the risk of not getting picked for a marriage and walking away with nothing, why wouldn’t some women try to get pregnant on the first date and then harvest child support? The matchmaker was intimately familiar with California family law, its unlimited child support guidelines, and the challenge of reaching the 10-year marriage bar in order to collect alimony: “That’s why all of the women dating or married to Hollywood stars try to get pregnant as soon as possible.” Her staff tries to screen out women with mercenary motives via interviews and research into the family background. The goal is to find women who want to get married and stay married, but certainly some of the women labeled “family-oriented” by the professionals have turned out to be more cash- and litigation-oriented. The service guarantees introductions, not a litigation-free long run.]
The worlds of business and real estate have so much volatility that they generate a lot of rich old guys and there were a handful of three-generation groups on the ship, each one funded by a patriarch. The adult children couldn’t imagine being richer than their parents and a few of them, after seeing me and my 83-year-old mother together, said “it is so nice of your mom to take you on this trip” (i.e., they assumed that mom was funding our adventure).
[Separately, you might ask if the extra cost for Crystal is worth it compared to Royal Caribbean. The Indonesian-owned and LA-managed (through this month by CEO Edie Rodriguez; going forward by Tom Wolber) Crystal is an impressive operation, but so is Royal Caribbean. For me the main difference is that Royal Caribbean is like a floating city while Crystal is a small town. On the 2,500-passenger Serenade of the Seas we would run into people we knew a few times per day, but we were typically surrounded by strangers. On the 900-passenger Crystal Symphony we were almost always in a room with someone we’d met before.]
> Although both she and her son live in a state that provides for potentially infinite child support revenue, the choice of becoming a child support profiteer was seen as a sign of bad character, not evidence of economic rationality.
I never understand why you (typically, and herein) write as though bad character and individual economic rationality are somehow opposites. They are two different axes of behavior.
Is so wonderful that your mother goes with you. I would love to hear her take on your adventure.
as Philip’s sister who received regular email updates from Mom, I can assure Rajeev that Mom felt very well cared-for, especially as Philip only chose the cruise mode for her benefit, … [moderator removed some personal family material]
Ouch, now I feel a bit of guilt, since my father took me along to his trip to Yellowstone several weeks ago! Getting to the levels of success that he achieved in the US has been out of my reach here in Europe. I doubt I will ever achieve as much. My only excuse is that I did a PhD and postdoc. And also that here in Europe the monetary compensation for promotions doesn’t really match the big jumps you would get in the US – so given the amount of extra responsibility and work, it looks more like a substantial drop in quality of life when you calculate it all out.I could come back, bur I rather stick with my ~45 days of paid holiday… of which I can use to visit my parents! 😀
“The answer was that her clients were essentially indifferent to a woman’s educational and career attainment; they wanted beauty and an agreeable personality.”
This has been the case for millennia, regardless of what feminism teaches women.
I’m constantly amazed by the women I talk to and hear of, who parrot the same lines about what men should find attractive. Part of it is projection, which (generally) women do more than men – “that’s what I find attractive in the opposite sex, so that’s what they should find attractive too”.
GermanL,,
“… it looks more like a substantial drop in quality of life when you calculate it all out. I could come back, bur I rather stick with my ~45 days of paid holiday…”
Here in the ole USA (or should it be ole Europe 🙂 ) positions of power rarely result in long vacations or complete weekends, at least in most of private sector. Does your statement mean that you are not striving for promossions in Germany or that in Germany middle (or senior) managers can take 45 days off each year? Do they have to work on weekends?
On separate note I can see how this works well in manufacturing with well defined routine operations but with weeknds 45 days of paid holidays amounts to 1/2 year off. I.e. every other day off. Hope it does not result in frequent ‘recall what we do’ mondays in the office or the lab.
I speak with many who have decades long marriages to the first companion of their youth. They are grievously disappointed that their children do not stay married the way they did. Ordinarily, they talk about their sons, discarded by their daughters in law for the money. I hear how devastating it was for their son to come back to his parents’ home to live and their son’s perpetual inability to ever move on with his life and repartner or live on his own again. When I know the daughter in law’s life, I hear about the ups and down of her leisurely subsequent romantic pursuits without the worry of bills to be paid or the fetters of jobs to hold onto.
@Anon,
Many companies in Germany offer 30 paid days of holiday (amounts to 6 weeks), this is above the mandatory 25 days. Then if you factor in the ~12 public holidays per year, and in addition, consider the “Brückentage” (or Bridge days) that are also taken when a public holiday falls on a Thursday or a Tuesday (this happens 2-3 times a year), then it easily can reach 45 days paid leave per year (!). I’ve heard recently that Merck in Germany has been offering scientists 8 weeks of vacation (40 days) in some departments. Amazing.
At my current pay bracket, it would be stupid to go up on more level to Director (ie. group leader of 5-15 subordinates). A lab head (1-5 subordinates) would see a pay increase of only a bump from $105k to $120k. Directors still get the 30 days, but there is more pressure to work on weekends/nights to deliver if the deadlines approach. I still see them take their full 30 days and public holidays though. I think what is more unattractive for me is the small bump in pay for the extra headaches of increased management.
I guess if you count it with all weekends, then it’s about 38% of the year. Mind you, weekends in general make up 29% of the year (Americans still take weekends off, right? I know the Chinese don’t). But filling a span of work weeks with paid time off in one big chunk, it amounts to 9 weeks, or two months + 2 days, or 63 days total (about 17% of the year).
Either way, my opinion is there are many ways to make more money, but time is spent can never be bought. I’ve seen German boomers retire with 6 months of paid leave stored (25 years * 5 days stored per year) in their employee accounts. I never understood that (other than the economics – the stored days are worth more in the future!), because who knows if you will have time/youth/energy/health to enjoy it when you reach 65. I would rather take that time now while I’m young and can enjoy it.
Second account is more credible, GermanL. 6 weeks of paid leave is still good but not dramatically better then US 2 to 6 weeks, 4 weeks off being a regular benefit with large employers. In addition, US has about 8 holiday days off during year, sometimes 10 + several sick days off per year . I guess that the bump of less than 15% is before taxes? Even if margianl tax rate is 30 % that if invested and accumulated over 10 to 20 years it could make a difference, it sure does not make much difference in immediate spending power. But you are right, time is a preccious commodity in modern society. But people are healthier nowdays and live longer, many work in their 70th, could use more $$$.
Regarding accumulating vacations, privete sector in the US usually does not allow this
Yes, the bump is before taxes, hence even less attractive after taxes. Also, company labor union rules make it that you don’t get the increase in salary immediately upon promotion – you get ‘developed’ into the median of the salary band over several years (in other words, you get 4% raise every year until you hit the middle range of your pay band). As an American it makes no sense, but the Germans just shrug and accept it.
Yes, people are healthier and live longer, but I have seen too many people not make it to 65 in good health. I hear people keep saying they will work until they die. Really? To be honest, I don’t see many men sticking around work past the age of 67.
My hope is to retire early at around 60. I am socking away as much as I can to achieve that.
GermanL, my male grandaprents worked till 70th, and they were suffering from
WWII wounds and generically had hard lives till mid-age. That was in place where retirement age was 55 to 60 depending on occupation. One did die just few years after retirement and he worked after sufferring hert attack in his late 60th, the other lived OK for over 10 years after retirement with no help from socialized medicine. And I do see more and more software development contractors working past their retirement age. Back when I did applied work I had seen many older applied mathematicians and engineers, and some of them are still working. Of course you never know, accidents and diseases happen, but it is safer to plan for longer term.
Thanks for the anecdotes. Interesting to compare notes. I have noticed that those individuals who do work into their 70s and 80s are usually ones that own their own businesses (and have relatives to help take over some functions). Although I seriously doubt they are working at a full-time capacity as say, someone in their 40s.
Let’s hope for a healthy and enjoyable old age to the both of us!
Six years ago, I reduced my work hours by taking every Friday of without pay – a 20% pay reduction. Every weekend is a 3-day weekend! Considering payroll and income taxes, I end up losing about six hours of pay per week. I hope to be able to continue to do this until retirement at, say, age 58 to 60, but I suspect my employer may force me back to a five day work week – not because they desperately need me five days per week but, rather, due of envious coworker mutterings.
Not surprisingly, my career and wage growth have completely stalled. And, due to a couple of layoffs and blown opportunities, the “Great Recession,” crushing competition, and my own risk aversion, my salary today is exactly what it was in 1998 when I started a Top-40 MBA program. Oh well; nevertheless, due to a couple of serendipitous real estate investments, I became a millionaire before age 50.