 The best double majors for math degrees, that's what we're going to be talking about today. This was a highly requested video. I get these questions all the time. Shane, should I double major in this and that? And so I decided to make an entire series on this. But before we get into that, let's go ahead and gently tap the like button in order to defeat the evil YouTube algorithm. On this channel, we talk about personal finance, college degrees, careers and opportunities that are going to lead you to success. And we also go over how you can avoid some of the common financial traps that so many people fall for. Now, if you're new here and you haven't done it already, which about 80% of you haven't, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and ring the notification bell so that you never miss out. So there are a lot of degrees out there that wouldn't really make sense for you to double major in. They don't go together all that well, and it probably would just be kind of a waste of time for you to take both of those sets of classes at once. However, there are some exceptions here. There's some degrees that go together really well. Now, when it comes to math related degrees, in my opinion, they do combine well with a lot of other types of degrees. So for instance, you could double major in mathematics and economics, and they make around $59,000 a year starting out in 103,000 in mid-career pay, whereas economics makes around $58,000 a year starting out in 109,000 in mid-career pay. So one career path that you could go down is you could become an economist, of course, and they make around $105,000 a year. It is growing at 14%, which is much faster than average. However, usually you're going to have to get a master's level degree in order to get a job as an economist. Now, economics is definitely one of the better, you know, social science, liberal arts types of degrees. However, one of the weaknesses, especially depending on what program you go to, is some of them are not very good when it comes to teaching you the math side of things. So it might be a good idea for you to either take extra classes in, minor in, or double major in mathematics. Statistics might be another one that would be a good idea for you to double major in as well. Now, I will say here that a mathematics degree is going to be pretty difficult on its own. So for a lot of people, double majoring in mathematics and economics would probably be a little bit too much and I wouldn't recommend doing it. However, if you look into it and you figure that there's a career path that you want to go down that this would actually make sense, this could be a really good option for you. And when I did the video on the degrees that create the most millionaires, economics did actually come in at number three on the list. I think the reason for this is because if you graduate with an economics degree, first of all, you're probably going to be making a lot better investment decisions. And most importantly, you're probably going to start investing at an earlier age. Most people don't start investing until they're in their 30s, a lot of the time, even in their 40s. And so if you start investing in your early 20s, you're way ahead of the curve. I've done videos on this before, but if you just invest $10 to $15 a day into your Roth IRA until retirement, you will easily become a millionaire. Now, on top of that, a lot of the time people who study economics are going to tend to be a little bit entrepreneurial and start their own business. And if you are able to start a successful business, you'll probably make quite a bit more than somebody who just has a salary job. Next on the list, we're going to be talking about mathematics degrees combined with technology degrees. So a really cool example here would be computer science and mathematics. With a computer science degree, you would expect to make around $70,000 a year starting out and $116,000 in mid career pay. Whereas with a mathematics degree, you would expect to make around $59,000 a year starting out and $103,000 in mid career pay. Now, one career path you might go down is becoming a computer and information research scientist, also known as a data scientist, and they make around $122,000 a year. There's 32,000 jobs and it's growing at a ridiculous 15% which is much faster than average. Now, mathematics is a pretty good degree on its own. It's definitely viable. However, one of the problems that you commonly see people running into is it's a little bit too theoretical and hard to apply those mathematics skills to real life. It's not something like engineering where sure you're learning a lot of math and stuff like that, but they're teaching you how you can apply that to real life very easily. Now, of course, this is going to differ depending on what program you're in, what college you go to, etc, but a lot of mathematics majors actually end up going into the technology industry and working as software developers. And of course, their mathematics skills would be more advanced than someone who just got a computer science degree. And so they would be able to bring something unique to the table. Now, Zip Recruiter did this skills index that I talk about a lot in my videos. And if you look at the skills index, which basically just rates skills on how valuable they are on the market, AKA how much businesses are willing to pay people who have these skills from one to 100, you'll see that the top of the list is basically just littered with technology related skills, software engineering, programming, software deployment, application development, web services skills. And I know that it's pretty much a meme at this point that I mentioned computer science at least once every single video, but there's a reason for that because the skills that you learn when you do computer science are extremely valuable on the market right now. Now, you're still going to have the same problem here where this is going to be very difficult for you to double major. And then some schools and some programs are going to make that much easier for you. And then some of them are going to be like, what the heck are you trying to do here? So you do want to keep that in mind, of course, but this one can be a pretty good option in the right situation. Number three on the list is going to be a mathematics degree plus a science degree. So this is one that I got asked about before, would it be a good idea for you to get a double major in physics and mathematics? Well, a physics degree, you would make around $62,000 a year starting out and 113,000 in mid career pay. Whereas with a mathematics degree, you'd make around $59,000 a year starting out and 103,000 in mid career pay. Now, I think the reason that the physics degree ranks a little bit better on here is just because it's a little bit more practical. Again, sometimes with mathematics, it can be a little more theoretical and focus on stuff that's hard for you to apply to the real world. Whereas physics is basically the science and mathematics of the real world. Now, one career path you might go down is becoming a physicist, of course, and they make around $122,000 a year. There's 20,000 jobs available and it's growing at 7%, which is faster than average. However, you're generally going to have to get a doctoral level degree in order to become a physicist. Now, one thing I would say here is not only would this be very difficult, physics might actually be the most difficult major out there. And then when you combine that with math, which is probably top, you know, 20 most difficult majors, it's going to be very hard for you to double major in these. However, there are some geniuses out there that could probably do it very easily. With that being said, it would also be somewhat redundant as well. You'd probably learn a lot of the same skills doing a physics degree as you would doing a math degree. So there might be a very specific career path where this double major would make sense. But for the most part, for most people watching this video, it probably wouldn't be the best option. Now, one thing I will say about mathematics skills in general is they're probably some of the most valuable out there. They're up there with technology and business skills when it comes to, you know, the things that really do help you get paid really well on the market. And on top of that, I think mathematics related skills are pretty much future proof. They're probably not going to be automated. For instance, physicists have about a 10% chance of being automated. And to be honest with you, I think that's on the high side, it's probably more like a 0.01% chance. And even if on the off chance, you became a physicist and it was automated somehow, which I don't see how that would even be possible. The skills that you learn as a physicist or a mathematician would be pretty easily transferable into all different types of jobs. Next one on the list, number four is going to be a mathematics degree plus another mathematics degree. So a great example of this one would be double majoring in mathematics and statistics. With this double major, you would expect to make around $59,000 a year starting out and $110,000 in mid-career pay. Now, if you went down the career path of becoming a mathematician or a statistician, you'd make around $92,000 a year. There's 45,000 jobs available and it's growing at an absolutely ridiculous 33%, which is much, much faster than average. Now, according to BLS math occupations in general are growing at around 27% over the next 10 years, which is almost 10 times higher than average. I believe the only other type of occupation that's growing faster is health related careers. And then math related occupations have a median annual income of $90,000 a year, which is over double the median annual wage of all occupations in general. So I think you guys get the idea here. Math as a skill, math as an occupation, math as a degree is highly valued. The only problem is that sometimes the skills that you learn can be a little bit theoretical, and so getting your first job might be a little bit difficult, but once you get your foot in the door, you get some work experience, it'll probably be much easier for you to get your second and third and fourth, et cetera. However, a lot of the time companies have the philosophy of basically just hiring the smartest people and then teaching them how to do the job later on. You see this is very common in the technology industry, as well as finance, for instance. So even if you don't end up going into a mathematics related occupation where you're just purely doing mathematics, a lot of the time you'll be able to get hired into another type of job that has some math in it, but it's really the reason they're hiring you is because they think you're really smart and they think you're also probably really hardworking. And speaking of hardworking, math does consistently come in as one of the most difficult degrees out there and mathematics related degrees in general are pretty difficult. So for instance, on this list, mathematics came in as the 13th most difficult degree and statistics was the 17th most difficult. Next on the list is going to be my favorite combination of all, which is going to be a mathematics degree and a business degree. Now, there's honestly so many different possibilities here and it's such a good combination that they've pretty much just made a bunch of dual degrees. So you really don't even need a double major a lot of the time because there's already dual degrees that exist. So one example of that would be a quantitative business analysis degree where you start off making around $67,000 a year and mid-career pay is $136,000. Now, business degrees in general, in my opinion, make the best double majors for a few different reasons. First of all, business degrees are extremely flexible and they're useful just about no matter what career path you go down. So for instance, just about every company out there in every industry and all kinds of different occupations are hiring people that have business degrees. If you get a business degree and you think you're going to become like a financial analyst, for instance, and then, you know, a few years down the line, you decide, I don't really want to be a financial analyst, it's very easy for you to switch career paths and go into something else. And this is why they make such good combinations with other types of degrees. Getting a business degree can be really synergistic pretty much combined with almost any other type of degree. So one career path you might go down if you combined a business degree with a mathematics degree is you might become a computer network architect and they make around $112,000 a year. There's 160,000 jobs available and it's growing at 5% which is faster than average. But there's honestly so many different options that you can do with both of these types of degrees because math can be used in just about any industry out there and then business can also be used in just about any industry or any business or any skill or any type of occupation as well. So the combination of these two degrees is extremely flexible and it will probably serve you no matter what career path you go down. You know, there's that old saying, you make plans and God laughs. And you know, there's the other saying it's like the best laid plans of mice and men. Everyone can make a good plan and I definitely urge that you do that. But realistically a lot of the time your plans are not going to work out exactly as you envision them. And so it's nice to be able to have a degree that's extremely flexible so you can pretty much use it no matter what career path you decide to go down. And then the last reason why I think business related degrees make such a good combination with other types of degrees and I know I'm probably going to get some angry comments down below for this, but business related degrees are not going to be as objectively difficult as a lot of the ones on this list. I know everybody has their own strengths and I know, you know, everything's subjective, but realistically business related degrees are not going to be as hard as engineering or mathematics or health degrees or technology degrees. You know, when I went to college, I lived in a scholarship hall that had 50 guys and I'm telling you all the math majors, the engineering majors, etc had a very difficult time. They were pretty much studying all the time, whereas a lot of the business majors had a much better time that seemed like they were always partying or doing something fun. So business kind of is what you make of it. You could probably go to college for four years and learn absolutely nothing. So you want to make sure that you're actually learning what you're, you know, supposed to be learning in school. But at the same time, I think it's realistic for you to consider double majoring in a business degree just because it's not going to be nearly as difficult as some of the other ones. Now, because of the fact that they're for the most part a little bit easier than other types of degrees, a lot of people tend to bag on them. But I've talked about this in other videos quite a bit. Business degrees, when you look at the numbers tend to do extremely well. Not only when it comes to salary, but if you look at regret, for instance, business degrees are the second least regretted type of degree. Only about 15% of people who get business degrees regret them. And the reason for that is because they're too general. Mathematics related degrees, on the other hand, are actually regretted the least. Only about 12% of the time. And the reason for that regret is because they're too stressful. So this is a really great combination pretty much no matter what way you look at it. And number five on the list would be a mathematics degree plus any degree that you're interested in. Math degrees for the most part are going to be really good on their own. They might be a little bit too theoretical, again, depending on what classes you're taking and what program you're going to. In that case, you would probably want to get extra work experience, you know, do internships, maybe do a side project and make sure that you're networking, et cetera. But for the most part, you're probably not going to have that hard of a time finding a job if you get a mathematics degree. In terms of how much money you earn over a lifetime, math related degrees do come in second on the list behind engineering, and they earn around $3.1 million over a lifetime. The average for all majors and all occupations is around $2.4 million. So that's quite a bit higher than average. And you can see that if you get a math degree, you can go into just about any type of profession and you'll still earn pretty decent money. So one test that I like to do is to go to a site like monster.com and then type in the degree name in order to see how many of the job listings have that as a keyword. So for instance, when you type in computer science degree, you see that 141,000 job listings pop up that have that in the description. And when you type in something like anthropology degree, which is kind of not one of the better degrees out there, unfortunately, only about 829 job listings pop up. When you type in mathematics degree, around 68,000 job listings pop up. That's much, much higher than average. This isn't a perfect test by any means, but it's a good sign that there's a lot of jobs out there that would like to hire someone who has a math degree. So let's say that you're extremely interested in a degree like anthropology, for instance, where you're probably not going to be able to find a job as an anthropologist, but it's something that you're really passionate about, so you want to learn about it. You could maybe consider double majoring in anthropology, as well as mathematics, and then you could take a lot of the anthropology classes on the side while you're getting your mathematics degree. Although the anthropology degree probably isn't going to help you too much when it comes to getting your first job, some of the soft skills that you learn like critical thinking, communication and formulating an argument might be extremely useful to you in the future. And I think that a lot of these degrees in the social sciences and the liberal arts do teach you valuable skills. It's just that unfortunately they're not valued on the market, meaning companies don't necessarily want to hire people who have these skills, but that doesn't mean that it's not still going to be very valuable for you to know these skills in real life. For instance, I think all the time that I spent studying history has helped me to be as successful as I am today, which I'm not very successful, but it's helped me to get to this point. It might not have directly helped me. There wasn't, you know, somebody who's like, Oh, you study history. Let me give you a job. Let me give you a million dollars. But indirectly it helped me quite a bit. But honestly, I think the next one on the list might be good for most people, which would be to consider maybe just not double majoring. The truth is math is good enough on its own and you probably don't need to double major in a different type of degree in order to make yourself look good enough to get a job. Depending on what program you go to, double majoring can be extremely difficult. And, you know, some people might have trouble getting their math degree done in four years. So if you double major, maybe you end up spending five or six years in school. To me, that's definitely not worth it. I think you should try to get through school, get your bachelor's and four years max. Much better for you would be to come up with a plan and figure out what goals you have, you know, what career paths that you might want to go down and then talk to people who are in those career paths, reverse engineer the steps and figure out what steps you need to take in order to get there. Doing this will make it very, very clear to you exactly what types of activities that you should be doing in order to secure a job after you graduate. I know a lot of people put down in the comments, Shane, should I triple major in this and this and this? And realistically, it's probably not going to increase your chances of getting a job all that much. Much more likely is when you talk to people who are in these different careers, they're going to tell you that the most important thing you should do is to learn skills, get real life work experience by either getting a job or interning. And then also another important thing is for you to network. But of course, that's going to be completely different depending on what degree you're going for and what career path you're trying to get into. For instance, if you're a computer science major, it's a good idea for you to do some projects on the side so that you can show people and interviews what your skills are and what languages you know and frameworks you know, et cetera. Now, of course, there's probably going to be a few exceptions here. Maybe you talk to somebody in the career path that you're going down and they tell you, hey, no, that's a great idea. You should definitely get a math degree and a business degree combined or maybe a math degree and a computer science degree. Then in that case, definitely go for it. But most of the time, I think you're kind of going to be wasting your time a little bit. I remember when I was back in undergraduate and I was going down the health track, there would be these people who would join like 10 different organizations and they thought that that was going to help them get a job. So they'd have like 10 different positions, they'd be like a treasurer and one organization and a vice president and another one, and then like a liaison and another one. And to be honest with you, they wouldn't do a very good job in any one of the positions just because they had like 10 different positions. So how could they? And so I saw people doing this and I was like, okay, I got to do it as well. And so I joined a bunch of different organizations and got a bunch of leadership positions. And realistically, most of the leadership positions didn't help me at all. I could have just joined one or two organizations, done a really good job with the leadership positions. And that would have been just as impressive as me joining 10 different organizations. 99% of the time when business managers and hiring managers see that you have like 20 different positions on your resume or your CV, they're not going to be all that impressed. And for the most part, the same thing is going to be true when it comes to double majoring. Now, of course, there's always going to be a few exceptions here and there, like I said, but for the most part, you really want to make sure to do your research so that you're not wasting your time. Don't waste a bunch of time getting a bunch of leadership positions like I did that you don't actually need. With that being said, there's a super exciting project that I've been working on. My goal is to basically make the best list of college degrees ranked in the most important areas, things like salary, job satisfaction, demand, et cetera. And right now, as of posting this video, I have version 1.1 posted down in my Patreon. This is an opportunity for you to get early access to it. I'm hoping that I can finish it within the next six months to a year, but I really want to make sure that I do this right. I actually did hire someone to help me create it just because of the fact that I needed somebody to bounce ideas off of. But yeah, I'm super excited about that. And I'm also going to be putting other things down in my Patreon like my stock investment portfolio as well. If you haven't done it already, go ahead and gently tap the like button, hit that subscribe button. Only about 18% of you have what the heck is going on with that. Ring the notification bell, of course, so that you never miss out. 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