on your way to san jose

So, I've been away at a conference since Saturday and am just getting back into work. Today I also had a meeting with a program head about further education. Its something my boss has suggested before --its not uncommon for folks around here to have multiple masters degrees. This afternoon a doctorate was brought up as something else to consider though. And I kind of am.
Of course, the thing is, there is only so much time in any given day. Right now my days move pretty smoothly. If my time isn't mostly my own, I still have enough time to myself that I manage to do things I like to do (like run) as well as things I need to do (this category might also occasionally include running, I'll admit).
This past weekend at the conference, things were different. I was a co-chair on the planning comittee and so for the weekend my time was entirely divided between conference duties and trying to get something out of attending the conference. I managed to go running once: at 5:30 am Sunday morning. I had visions of doing this each day of the conference, but having planning committee meetings after the events of the day had finished meant I wasn't getting back to my own hotel room until 11 or later--which made it rather difficult to get up at the crack of dawn no matter how much better I thought I would feel post-run.
When I got home yesterday I carried everything inside and got straight into my running gear and headed out for what turned out to be a pretty short trot: just the little 3 mile loop I've been doing since we moved into the neighborhood. Not bad, I'll take it over no run at all, but I am feeling a need to expand my horizons. I need to get in something a little longer, and soon I think.
Which makes me wonder if adding school of any kind to my life might be more of a detraction than anything else. I mean, a doctorate could be cool. Potentially. even a second masters probably is in no way a bad idea in the long term. But in the near term, what sort of things will I have to give up / ration to get there?
Right now I'm contributing 16% of my pre-tax income to retirement, with a 100% employer match of the first 8%(which is super cool. The sad part is my salary is puny enough that 24% of it doesn't come close to hitting the max amount the government sets for contributions each year). I don't think I could do that and pay for another degree, so I would probably drop back to 8% right off the bat, and feel badly about it because I am doing so much more right now. I read this post over at GRS and the comments that go with it, and it seems like kind of a no brainer to me that at any given point it is going to make more sense to save a little than to save nothing. But even better than saving a little is saving all you can. Provided it doesn't hurt you in your current situation. Which means that since I have been contributing so much for the last 4 years, maybe it is okay to consider dropping it down a bit to do something else--really that was kind of always the plan I guess, to get to a certain point and be able to cut back in my retirement savings area-- I just thought that something else might be several more years away and be more likely to be a child's education than my own. heh.
And there is this weird law of diminishing returns in Academia that says that it might not actually be worth it to get a doctorate at all. Which is possibly because Academia is so self serving in some ways (my meeting this afternoon also talked about how there are some very qualified adjuncts who could be teaching in this particular doctoral program, if they would just get their own doctorates--to continue to adjunct and get paid basically peanuts--because you can't have someone with an MS teaching in a doctoral program, that just wouldn't be right). So while I am considering it and thinking how nicely my name might sound with a Dr in front of it, I am in no way sold on the idea that I've got to have a doctorate to stay in this field or move up in my work. Sure it might help, but my life is pretty okay right now, you know? Maybe considering is enough. Considering and continuing to save to my fullest possible extent so that if I have options later on I'll be in a better position to take advantage of them.