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As a youth I didn’t have any driving ambition.  Not interested in working with my hands nor with my hands nor very good at it and no interesting hobbies that would lead to a career.  I was good with mathematics and generally good in school.  I stuck with math because it was precise and non-judgmental.  After excelling through grade school and high school, I was fairly good in college and barely succeeded in graduate school where I attained a Ph.D.  When I looked back at my thesis after a few years, I couldn’t understand it.

Without any direction, I floated into teaching at the college level.  For a given course, the first year it was work to prepare to teach, the second year was comfortable and the last year was boring.  Because teaching and office hours didn’t take up all my time I wrote a math book that no one wanted.  After four years I was ready to try something different that would pay more.  Someone told me that my math would translate to actuarial work, so I took the first two of what was then a ten exam series to become a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries or FSA.

At the time I was in Georgia.  My life insurance actuary job interviews were in New Hampshire, New York, one of the Carolinas (it’s been too long to remember) and Kentucky.  With more than one offer, I picked Kentucky.  The bad weather (including a tornado) and work led me to my favorite job in Denver.

In Denver I rapidly attained the aforementioned FSA, and learned my trade, something that didn’t happen in Kentucky.  Four years later the job became repetitious and I left for Los Angeles.  The Denver company fell apart over the shenanigans of its owners who ran several insurance companies poorly, so I wouldn’t have had a job there long anyway.

The Los Angeles company specialized in separating customers from their money by subterfuge and rewarding the purveyors of their product lavishly.  I left before it closed down completely.  The data guy there was later tried for extortion among other things.  His misdeeds were known while I was there and I was happy to see that he was caught and the company disappear.

Actuaries are something like specialized accountants.  They calculate insurance liabilities and policy values – premiums and cash values if any.

Wife and (now) editor, who had been working in Los Angeles as a pension actuary, got a job offer to go to the San Francisco Bay Area.  We decamped and I became a house husband / free lance insurance consultant.  For years I commuted by car to consult in LA, a horrifying and painful four hundred mile experience.  Without cruise control, my right knee hurt from pushing down on the accelerator for the six hour long drive.  Most of my self-unemployed time was spent creating software for actuaries and selling same.  That was an odd fit for someone who hates selling and who faked programming.  Things improved when I got a partner who did the not math parts of programming.

At age fifty-five I achieved my career goal – retirement.

Things to know about actuaries:

            If an answer comes out something round like 40,000 they might change it to 39,876 so it doesn’t look like an estimate.

            They have less personality than accountants.

            They can give you an answer which is accurate and totally useless.  An actuary on the ground asked by a balloonist where the balloonist was responded “Twenty meters over my head”.

            They know their work is so boring that they won’t try to tell people what they do beyond “We break down people by age and sex”.

Why become an actuary?  At least when I was one, the pay was good.  They may have been replaced by robots since then.  Leadership or any interpersonal skills are rarely required.  It doesn’t require getting dirty or sweaty.  The reasons for not becoming an actuary are too long to list.

Much of the above is true.

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