Why I spent $40,000 to build my own MBA

Don’t pay tuition. Buy yourself time.

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Ten years ago, I considered going to business school. But I made a calculation that made me decide to do otherwise.

I considered going to business school because I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I saw my roommate go through the process of applying for schools, and — since I was newly unemployed, I figured it could be a good next step. The idea of learning all of the elements of business one-by-one was appealing.

I looked at my Ameritrade account, and I had about $130,000 in stocks. I felt very lucky. I didn’t have any debt, and I had bought GOOG and AAPL sometime around 2004.

I still don’t know what a good business school costs, but I figured it would cost me all of my money, plus two years of my life. Three, if you counted a year of applying to schools.

I also figured that business school would be a great idea if I wanted to work up the ranks at Procter & Gamble, or be a consultant. I knew I didn’t want to do that, though.

I thought back to the reason I had this nice financial padding in the first place. In 2002, when I was living in my hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, everyone was house crazy. My boss would come up…