LATEST POSTS FROM THE BLOG

• A Graduate Student’s Balanced Money Formula
  Grad students frequently wonder how much they should spend on various expenses or even how much they should be saving. The Balanced Money Formula (BMF) answers this question for the average American, […]
• How to Prioritize Financial Goals When You Can’t Do It All
  As graduate students, we can be overwhelmed easily by everything our stipends are ‘supposed to’ accomplish for us. If you read any personal finance material (including mine!), you will […]
• How to Combat Lifestyle Inflation When You Exit Grad School
  Lifestyle inflation is one of the great personal finance sins that just about everyone falls into at one point in time or another. However, as a graduate student you have the opportunity to […]
• Heading to a Conference? Tack on a Vacation, Too.
  The opportunity for travel is one of academia’s most attractive perks. In just about any field, you can attend conferences and establish collaborations with far-flung colleagues. Certain fields also […]
• How to Financially Navigate an Unfunded Summer
  One of the most frustrating aspects of graduate school is that your income may fluctuate with each term. In some fields and at some universities, you might change roles not just each academic year […]
• Can and Should You Refinance Your Student Loans During Grad School?
  One of the most talked-about topics within personal finance in the last several years is student loan refinancing. Student loan refinancing is taking out a new private student loan and using it to […]
• The Power of Percentage-Based Budgeting for a Career-Building PhD
  I would imagine that most workers in the US don’t experience large income jumps after they start working full-time. They will receive periodic raises and perhaps some small jumps if they change […]
• Give Yourself a Raise: Prepare Your Own Food Even with a Busy Schedule
  Grad students and postdocs typically spend a significant portion of their income on groceries and restaurant food; these budget categories are often targeted by trainees who want to cut back on their […]
• How to Start Investing with Just Five Dollars per Month
  In the last several years, we’ve seen an explosion of “fintech,” aka financial technology. One of those new areas is “microinvesting;” there’s never been a better […]
• Don’t Make These Investing Mistakes
  Just as useful as knowing what to do with respect to investing is knowing what not to do. In fact, some of the core investing principles that I teach involve pitfalls to avoid: don’t pay high […]