• Skip to content
  • Skip to footer

Personal Finance for PhDs

Live a financially balanced life - no Real Job required

Main navigation

  • Blog
  • Podcast
  • Tax Center
  • PhD Home Loans
  • Work with Emily
  • About Emily Roberts

Budgeting

This PhD Student Budgets Manually and Dynamically

May 29, 2023 by Meryem Ok Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Ariel Floro, a second-year PhD student at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in northern California. Ariel details her budget, from the mechanics of her system to the emotional benefits she experiences. Ariel started budgeting after finishing her bachelor’s while she worked as a research associate, and she was able to adapt that system to still work for her with a lower income in a higher cost of living area. Ariel explains why she believes budgeting is an essential activity for every graduate student.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

  • Emily’s E-mail Address
  • PF for PhDs S14E11 Show Notes
  • Budgeting Apps
    • Mint
    • EveryDollar
  • PF for PhDs Season 15 Contribution Sign-Up
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List (Access Advice Document)
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub (Show Notes)
Image for PF for PhDs S14E11: This PhD Student Budgets Manually and Dynamically

Teaser

00:00:00:00 Ariel: It just gives more control and power overall and not being so, not feeling like we’re like completely powerless to, you know, grad students just make this and that’s just how it is. And I’m poor and I can’t really do anything. And I know it is really hard to live on the income that we have now, but it gives us some control back and some power so that we can really set ourselves up well financially in the future.

Introduction

00:00:27:20 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 14, Episode 11, and today my guest is Ariel Floro, a second-year PhD student at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in northern California. Ariel details her budget, from the mechanics of her system to the emotional benefits she experiences. Ariel started budgeting after finishing her bachelor’s while she worked as a research associate, and she was able to adapt that system to still work for her with a lower income in a higher cost of living area. Ariel concludes by explaining why she believes budgeting is an essential activity for every graduate student.

00:01:29:22 Emily: If you’ve been getting value from this podcast, would you please do me a favor? This is a perfect time of year to recommend me and my work to a potential host or sponsor at your university or alma mater. In case you didn’t know, I offer numerous personal finance seminars and workshops on topics like financial goals, investing, budgeting, and debt repayment, all tailored for graduate students, postdocs, and/or prospective graduate students. These are in addition to my tax workshops. If you think that you and your peers would benefit from my teaching in the upcoming academic year, please recommend me to your graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office. My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. These recommendations help me get my foot in the door with new clients or remind past clients of the need for this material. If you choose to recommend me over email, please cc me, emily@PFforPhDs.com, so that I can pick up the conversation. I really rely on these types of recommendations and appreciate them so much. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s14e11/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Ariel Floro.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

00:03:04:12 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today Ariel Floro. She is going to speak with us about her budgeting journey during graduate school and prior and all the things that she’s learned and how much budgeting has benefited her. So, Ariel, I’m really pleased to have you on the podcast today. Would you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

00:03:21:09 Ariel: Yeah, thank you so much for having me here. So, as you mentioned, my name is Ariel. I’m currently a second-year PhD student at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, which is in NorCal up in Novato in the Bay Area. And it is a joint program with the University of Southern California.

00:03:41:07 Emily: Alright. I can already see that it’s going to be a very interesting conversation because obviously, budgeting is especially challenging in a high-cost-of-living area. So, actually, let’s get some groundwork out of the way first. Do you mind sharing how much your stipend is?

00:03:56:24 Ariel: Yeah, our stipend is $38K per year, which actually just recently got moved up.

00:04:01:21 Emily: Okay, nice. So, we’ll be talking a little bit about, I guess, last year. What was it like prior to being bumped up?

00:04:07:15 Ariel: It was $34K last year.

Budgeting: Peace of Mind

00:04:09:01 Emily: Okay. So, 34 up to 38, sounds decent, but again, very high cost of living area. So, I’m really curious about your strategies here. So high level first, what benefits have you enjoyed in your life thanks to your budgeting practice?

00:04:25:19 Ariel: The first thing that comes to mind and I think is really the key one, is just peace of mind amongst many different fields. So, the main thing knowing that because it’s such a low income, knowing that I’m not spending more than I actually have, because that just like really terrifies me. And along with that, just giving myself the freedom to enjoy time with friends, like going out to eat or do other fun things.

00:04:49:00 Ariel: And so that I know that if I budgeted a certain amount of money for that, then I have the freedom to really just not stress out about it and enjoy it and not like freak out or like, “Oh, I shouldn’t be doing that,” or feel guilty in any way. That’s the main one. I would say the second one is just planning for saving more or like financial goals, and just know that even though again, because it’s kind of like a low income at this moment, I’m still setting myself up well for later, even if it’s just investing a little bit of money or saving a bit of money, like any bit helps and kind of helps to build that habit.

00:05:22:07 Emily: So, it sounds like in your case, a lot of times people have this like kind of avoidant behavior with their finances, like it stresses them out, so they don’t want to look at it. But it sounds like you’re like me, which is that it was it was stressful not to know. And so, it’s easier to look and make the plan and execute the plan as best you can. Is that right?

00:05:41:12 Ariel: Yeah, definitely.

00:05:42:19 Emily: So, how did you get started with budgeting? Did this start in graduate school or were you budgeting in at any point prior to that?

00:05:49:22 Ariel: Yeah, the minute I graduated from undergrad, I worked as a research associate for two years and between, and once I knew that I was having a steady income, I knew I had to budget the first dollar that came into my bank account. And so, I have kind of been planning, you know, since that time and really built up the more efficient process that I have on budgeting now.

00:06:12:23 Ariel: I also saw it as once I knew I was going to go to graduate school while I was working as an RA, I took even more power over my budget at that time and said, okay, I’m making more as an RA right now than I would be as a graduate student. So, I’m going to make sure I know the ins and outs of my entire budget so that when I do move to that lower income, I know where I can cut costs where I want to, you know, what I can sacrifice and this and that.

Gap Years Working as an RA

00:06:40:16 Emily: Give us a few more details about that time you spent as an RA. Like, where were you? You said you’re making more, but how much more?

00:06:48:16 Ariel: Yeah, I was at UCLA working as an RA, and I think starting I made about $40K and then it jumped up to maybe a little over 45. But at the end I was making a good amount. Yeah, so that was all in L.A. and I was just planning out. Rent there is still more expensive. But you know, there are a lot of areas around L.A. that you can find cheaper places. And so, I had a roommate, we lived in a two-bedroom, two-bathroom place, which is a really good spot.

00:07:19:13 Emily: Okay. So, it sounds like your experience going from being an RA to a graduate student, your income is going down a bit. Your cost of living is probably jumping up a bit, but not huge shifts in either of those directions. So probably a lot of what you learned as an RA, that is to say with your budgeting as an RA, was able to apply. Do you want to tell us any more details about you know, you said you kind of took more control of your tightening up and then how you did that transition into graduate school with your budget?

00:07:46:24 Ariel: Yeah, I think I was definitely the main thing is I like to go out to eat a lot with friends and I’m sure a lot of people do. So, I realized that that was probably the first thing I was going to cut down was just eating out and food and being more intentional about cooking meals and like looking at prices and not just like, “What am I going to cook today?” and then just buying things off of the shelves. The other interesting thing about my program is that because we’re at the Buck Institute and USC, we actually spend our first semester at the Buck Institute, and then we have to move to USC for the second semester. This is all within the first year. And so that was another cost that my cohort and I had to think about is moving here and there and then having to do short term leases. So, I would say also the way that I budgeted this past year is different than now because I had to keep in mind just having money to move and my rent actually was even higher because it was a short-term lease.

00:08:42:10 Emily: Yeah, that’s a big financial challenge to throw at a first-year graduate student of living in two different places. And then I understand, so it was like you were living in the L.A. area, then you moved up to Northern California, then you moved back to the L.A. area. Now you’re back in Northern California. Okay. So, at least you had some familiarity with those areas.

Mechanics of Budgeting

00:09:01:04 Emily: Let’s talk more about kind of like the mechanics of how you budget. Like, do you use software? Do you use your own spreadsheets? How often are you looking at or touching the budget?

00:09:11:12 Ariel: Right now, I use an app on my phone, and I know there’s some there’s one called Mint that I’ve tried to use and it doesn’t really work that well for me. I actually use an app called EveryDollar, and I’ve used that since the beginning where they have every line item, you know rent and food for groceries, you can even add certain funds in there maybe if you’re saving up for something. And so normally, like in the beginning, I kind of took a couple of months to figure out what I was spending each month on certain things and realizing I probably spent more on eating out than I thought I did and other things like that. And so, then I kind of started to regulate and now it’s a lot faster where I just kind of copy last month’s budget and I go through and make minor changes. If I maybe have a friend’s birthday or something that I have to buy a gift.

00:09:59:18 Ariel: And the other thing that I really like about the app on my phone is that some of them can connect directly to your bank accounts or your transactions can go directly into them. But the app that I use, I actually don’t have that software for that just because it’s an extra fee for it. But I do have my bank account app on my phone, and anytime I use my debit card that’ll show up as a transaction, as a notification in my phone. And so, I kind of see those notifications build up as like a to-do list to enter into my budget later. So, I end up probably looking at it at least I once every couple of days, maybe once a day even.

00:10:36:24 Emily: Okay, so two things I want to follow up in there. So, one, budgeting, I mean, we’ve been using term budgeting, but I really think of budgeting as two different actions. So, one is budgeting, which is telling your money what to do in the future and the other is tracking, which is making sure that your money did what you told it to do. And that’s like the accountability portion of it. So, you just mentioned both of those, right? So, on the budgeting front, you are creating a unique budget for every single month. It’s based on, you know, roughly templated from what you did last month. But you’re making those individual tweaks for what’s going on in this current month, is that right?

00:11:10:03 Ariel: Yes.

Manual Tracking of Spending

00:11:10:24 Emily: And then the tracking component of it, like you, I’m a little bit familiar with every dollar, so you can pay a fee to have your transactions automatically down a little, but you choose not to. You are manually tracking. And what I love about that is, of course, it does take some time and it takes, again, accountability with yourself to stay on top of it, like you just mentioned, your system of notifications, but it keeps you very, very intimate with your numbers. There’s no like escaping, facing up what you did with your money as long as you are keeping up with the tracking. So, I think that works really, it’s not for everybody, but I think that works really, really well for some people. Can you maybe give us an example of how the manual tracking specifically has helped you? Like in behavior change, for example?

00:11:54:24 Ariel: Yeah, I mean, even just if I stop at a Starbucks or something and get a coffee and then I have to put that into my budget. And since the interface is very easy to look at, sometimes I just kind of end up scrolling through the rest and, you know, I might say, “Oh, okay, I actually only have like $40 left for eating out and it’s only like halfway through the month or something like that.” Then I can kind of keep track and keep an eye out and like, how far into the month I am and versus how much I’ve earmarked for all of the things that I budgeted for.

00:12:29:00 Emily: So, you mentioned that you started with this budgeting practice the minute you graduated from college and had this regular, you know, salary coming in. What was it that inspired you to start budgeting at that point, and maybe why not earlier?

00:12:44:21 Ariel: Yeah, I think my dad was a big influence and wanted to set me up well financially, where even going back to like the 2008 recession, I remember when our house had to go on a short sale. I mean, it was I just always style. My dad really stressed with money and so he was always, especially after that point and kind of getting a hold of his finances, he was always very intentional, telling me, like, I want you to do this. I want you to you know, when you have a steady income, you should start budgeting and kind of encouraging me to do a lot of that. And it made a lot of sense to me. So, I do attribute my dad to helping me a lot in that way.

00:13:19:03 Ariel: Before then, I didn’t really budget that hard because in undergrad I would get some income here and there. Maybe if I was teaching a private lesson for like a hobby or other things like that and I was just so used to saving anyway, it was I would just dump them into my savings. And then if I wanted to go out to eat, and I didn’t go out that often, right? Because college is just so busy, I kind of just knew, I just kept tabs on how much I had in my savings. So, it felt a lot easier once I was getting a steady income. I could say I’m making X amount of dollars per month and I’m going to designate each dollar in that to a certain point. So, I know exactly where my money’s going each month. And I felt like it gave me a lot more control over my finances and again, gave me the peace of mind to know that I’m doing okay.

Looking Ahead

00:14:06:18 Emily: Yeah, that makes sense. Do you think there’s ever a time in the future when you wouldn’t budget or would change the mechanics of how you budget?

00:14:15:24 Ariel: I do see a possibility where, if your income goes up significantly and the way you live your lifestyle stays about the same, you might have that flexibility where, you know, no matter how much you know, if you’re spending and living your normal lifestyle in your normal ways, that you’re always going to have enough in savings. I think that might be a way like a situation where you wouldn’t have to budget. But then I would still think that with the extra money there, you know, there’s a lot of potential other than just dumping it into savings. You know, you can put that into investing. You’d be giving it away to charity. So, I don’t know, I would say maybe rarely at this point, but I wouldn’t know for sure.

00:14:56:19 Emily: Yeah. You’re actually describing kind of the point that I am with my like budget right now, which is the way that I budgeted when I was in graduate school and for a few years afterwards is not necessarily serving me now with a higher income, but also different kinds of goals than I had before. So, it’s like, how do I have the income that I have, meet the goals that I want to meet, not overspend, but also feel more like relaxed about how much to spend and how to balance all that together. And we’re recording this in December 2022. So, like, I’m literally thinking about this of like for the new year, like how do I adjust my budgeting system so it works more with the current realities that I’m living in rather than, you know, kind of a holdover from what I was doing before? So anyway, just a little food for my thoughts there.

Commercial

00:15:42:01 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. We’re doing something special for season 15 of this podcast, and as a loyal listener, I know you’re going to want to be involved. Season 15 will be a chance to share your financial experiences, even if you don’t want to give a full episode interview or want to remain anonymous. We’re going to publish compilation episodes around certain themes, and each episode will feature at least a half dozen different contributors.

00:16:12:05 Emily: If you are interested in contributing, check out PFforPhDs.com/season15/. That’s the digits 1 5. On that page, you’ll find a list of the proposed themes and how many volunteers I’ve identified for each episode. Your next step is to email me at emily@PFforPhDs.com to let me know which episode you’d like to contribute to or if you have another idea for the list. Once I’m confident that we have enough contributions for an episode to be created, I’ll give the volunteers specific prompts and directions to create their submissions. I hope you will choose to participate in this unique season! I can’t do it without you, so please get in touch! Now back to the interview.

Expected, Irregular Expenses

00:17:06:24 Emily: So, let’s get back to some more like kind of mechanics of budgeting. So, I wanted to know how you handle large irregular expenses. So, by that I mean maybe something that costs maybe a couple hundred, few hundred dollars that comes up very occasionally. And I’m always curious about this because I know irregular expenses are a really tough challenge for graduate students or anyone living on a tight income. So, how do you handle those? I mean, I know you already mentioned adjusting your budget, but let’s say for a really large one, how would you do that?

00:17:33:10 Ariel: Yeah, I think the main, so one of the points that came to mind is that you know, there’s large irregular expenses that might be unexpected and there’s those that are expected. And so, under the expected category would be things like I have a car, so car maintenance is something that’s, you know, large and irregular. I think since I’ve started budgeting, I have that as a fund where I put some money into a fund designated specifically as car maintenance. And then whenever that comes up, I know I have that fund. And I realized probably about this year that I’d put a lot more money in it that I may have needed to. And so that actually gave me a little bit of leeway for other irregular expenses, maybe like, like the current thing right now that I know is coming up is that I might want to buy a pair of skis which can be like a couple of hundred dollars or more.

00:18:20:21 Ariel: And so, if it’s something like that, then I can spend the past few months prior saying, okay, I’m going to put X amount into this fund. And then of course that might have to come out of some other aspect of my budget and just, you know, it’s only just for those three months and then I’ll have the amount needed for the item and then I can purchase that. And then other times maybe if I just, at the end of the month, I will go through my budget. And because some of the times what you actually planned isn’t going to be exactly what I end up planning, or what I end up actually spending. So, I might find that, oh, I didn’t spend as much on gas as I had expected to. I can put the excess there and to just general savings and I’m sure something might come up. But I do like having a good amount, like maybe like a little bit more in liquid savings in cash I have on hand just because I know things can come up here and there.

00:19:12:20 Emily: So, when you say, you know, moving money into general savings or moving in to a certain fund, is this like different bank accounts or is this maybe within your budgeting app, you’re like allocating things differently?

00:19:23:03 Ariel: This is within the budgeting app, so it’s all within my bank account. But just in terms of my like where I’m mentally earmarking them, that’s how that goes. And I also do have some investment accounts. And so, then if I know I want to put more into investing than I actually have to like deposit that into that account.

00:19:43:07 Emily: Okay. But you are operating for all of your cash out of a single account. A single checking account.

00:19:48:13 Ariel: Yes.

Money Mindset of a Saver

00:19:49:18 Emily: What stops you, psychologically, from spending how you didn’t allocate? That was always my temptation and the reason that I don’t use a single account for everything is that I would really be tempted to move things around.

00:20:04:04 Ariel: I think I also have just been a saver since I was little. If I would get like $20 for Christmas, I was like, “Oh, I’m going to save this all so when I get older, I’m going to have a lot of money and be financially stable.” I have with my bank, I have like a checking and savings, and technically my savings I have what my emergency fund and the checking I have right now, it’s just the remainder of my cash. But I think just because I am naturally such a saver, I do kind of get like a, I guess I don’t know if it’s a reward or reward thing when I see a bigger number in my account, but it just makes me feel safer. So, I put more towards savings and not just spending it.

00:20:44:11 Emily: And you also mentioned a moment ago about like if you come in sort of under budget in some categories, you said gas specifically. So, for your variable expense categories like gas, are you usually coming in under budget? Like have you set a generous enough budget that that’s a typical thing that you spend less? Or if not, what do you do in situations where you have overspent the budget?

00:21:06:01 Ariel: Most of the time, I put in roughly about the amount like, I’ve tightened my budget now to where I spend the amount that I plan to. There might be some instances where if I’m expecting to spend say $200, if I maybe carpool with friends to an event that we’re going to and they’re nice enough to not or they don’t ask for gas money or I tend to drive back home because I’m from L.A., so I tend to drive home a lot. And so, I know I’m going to be spending more on gas in those times. And again, that’s just a thing that if I know I’m driving to L.A., then I’ll add it in more money into the gas budget the beginning of that month. But most of the time, I think they stay pretty closely. I mean, if I come under budget on some categories together, that might come up to maybe 100 bucks, but that’s still like 100 bucks more I can put in the savings versus not really planning for that before.

00:22:05:22 Emily: So, it sounds like you’re keeping like you have a dynamic budget, from month to month you do. In the course of the month, do you also update what you budgeted for that current month?

00:22:15:21 Ariel: Yeah, I think there’s times where that could happen. I think that like one of the examples is maybe if I know I want to go out with friends and do another thing or if there’s a concert or something, and then I’m like, “Oh, I really want to go to this concert,” I would take out from my eating out budget to spend more on going out to a concert, for example like that. So, it is very, very dynamic and I think that’s super easy to do being a single person and just having me on the app. So, I really, again, I really appreciate the mobility of having the app on my phone and just deciding wherever and whatever I want. As long as it’s within the monthly income, I still know that I’m still planning where everything is going.

Unexpected, Irregular Expenses

00:22:57:21 Emily: Gotcha. And when I was starting to ask you about irregular expenses, you mentioned four expected irregular expenses. That’s a system that I called targeted savings. What about for unexpected irregular expenses? Are there any unexpected irregular expenses in your life, or do you expect everything?

00:23:14:05 Ariel: I think maybe some unexpected might be medical or something. And I know I always have an emergency fund on hand for that. I just again, I’m such a saver and I’m kind of in a transition period right now because I moved. And so, I do have a heftier amount of cash in my checking than I probably normally would. But for unexpected ones, I could always dip into the emergency fund and take that out. If it was like an E.R. visit, for example, but then the next month would have to be really hunkering down and replenishing the emergency fund back up to what it was before. Then I can go back and do fun things and all that.

00:23:54:01 Emily: Yeah, I think that system makes a lot of sense. And like the way that I sort of define an emergency is an unexpected but necessary expense. It can’t be discretionary, and you should try to anticipate everything that you reasonably can. Yes. If you get into like some sort of major accident or unforeseen illness, of course those things can happen. You may not have prepared for that. I mean, that’s why we have insurance for, right? So like insurance then accessing your emergency fund, that really makes sense. But yeah, under sort of my like system, you would you would anticipate everything like you would really spend some time brainstorming like the things that could happen and setting up either targeted savings or like you, just a general dynamic, flexible budget that will help you meet those expenses when they do come up. And then if something is truly necessary and truly unexpected, hey, that’s what your emergency fund is there for. And like you said multiple times so far, like it gives you peace of mind to have this money in your savings, in your checking, to know that you know you’re spending within your budget and so forth, living within your means.

Regular Expenses: Housing, Transportation, and Food

00:24:54:00 Emily: Zooming out a little bit more like high-level speaking about your budget, how did you set your large regular expenses like housing, transportation, food? How did you set those up so that you are able to live within the stipend provided?

00:25:11:13 Ariel: Yeah, I think even from, so again, going back to once I graduated and started as an RA, even those months prior, it was my dad and I kind of just he was helping me form what a budget is. And so, we were saying, well, you know what would rent be? I’m going to estimate this and maybe get an idea of if it was me going into an RA position, I would get an idea of what RA’s normally make and the rent that was in the area or some of the areas that I wanted to live in and just kind of do like a mock budge then and get an idea. And so, once I had had that, it was actually pretty similar because I set a rent estimate that ended up being pretty much exactly to what I ended up spending for that. And so, that was pretty easy to transition into. And now coming into this program, like the first short-term lease that I had to take for moving up here, I just did the same thing. I kind of mock budgeted on my app and I put in, “Okay, I’m probably going to spend this amount on rent. How is that going to look? Where am going to have to cut? Can I even afford this?” And it really was just kind of trial and error through the app and me taking time and sitting down and manually doing it.

00:26:22:03 Ariel: Because I know that a lot of the general advice for how much you should be spending on rent based on your income is always like, I feel like doesn’t really apply to PhD students because you spend way more. But I was just making the mock budget and when I had moved back to L.A. for that short-term lease, it was also kind of tricky because then instead of renting a place, I did like an Airbnb, and that meant that utilities and everything were included. Plus, it was for a four-month period of time versus sometimes you have to be locked into like a six-month lease. And so, with that one, I kind of had to budget long-term, but it was still amongst the same principles of just trial and error, trying it and seeing if I could do it, where would I have to cut? Is this okay? And this and that.

00:27:08:14 Emily: Let’s put aside the short-term leases because that’s obviously, it’s a big challenge, but it’s a little bit like unique to your situation. Let’s take the example of when you moved back to start, what I presume is you’re now on a year-long lease, right? Currently?

00:27:21:13 Ariel: Right now, my situation’s a little interesting. I came back. I’m actually living with my boyfriend’s parents because of some personal things with him moving back. And so, we had just signed a lease. We’re signing on to a one-year lease now. So, now I’ll be on a 1-year lease.

00:27:38:22 Emily: Okay, so in this process that you’re currently in of figuring out your housing expense for the upcoming year, locked in for a year, how are you like researching the market? I mean, obviously, you’ve lived here prior as well, so like that gives you some insight, but how are you figuring out like what’s reasonable, what is attainable for you to spend on rent in this area so that you can build as your budgeting model?

00:28:00:20 Ariel: I think just getting an idea of if you go on any of the apartment’s websites and saying what the average, you know, one or two-bedroom or three-bedroom places depending on roommates and stuff, I’m getting an idea of that. I also like when I was originally in L.A., I paid about $1200 a month for rent and I was pretty comfortable with that at that time. And even though I’m at a lower income now and knowing that it’s higher cost of living here than it was when I was in L.A., I ran the numbers again and know that looking at that, that if I do $1200, I could still be pretty good with that and feel okay.

00:28:40:16 Ariel: It’s still super tricky to find that around here. And so, my boyfriend and I actually had spent a lot of time kind of like researching like when is rent really low and rent prices are really low in winter. And so, we’re really, really grateful to have his parents nearby and letting us live with them to figure that out. But I think about like around here, I have a friend who has a one-bedroom for $1600. I have three friends that are paying, like two of them are paying $1100 and the other one’s paying $1400. And so, kind of those seemed pretty similar around to the $1200 range that I had thought. And I just realized, you know, if I did end up having to go higher like $1300, that’s just something I have to figure out. Because I really do want like my own room, if I was going to live with roommates and other things I would have to consider and just realize like a lot of things like that.

00:29:34:02 Emily: Yeah, that makes sense. I love that you mentioned that you actually know how much your peers and friends spend on rent. It’s a topic of conversation that is not as taboo among graduate students as it may be at other times in your life to kind of like share that information. So, I’m really happy about that.

Why is Budgeting Essential for Grad Students?

00:29:47:20 Emily: So, kind of to wrap up here, why do you think that budgeting is essential for graduate students?

00:29:54:10 Ariel: I think as I mentioned before, the number one thing is just that we have such a low income anyways, and it’s really vital knowing where all your dollars are going and you don’t run any risk of overspending. Like I know somebody in my program who is like, “Yeah, I kind of just put my card and see what happens.” And hearing that really just did kind of terrify me. And so, you don’t want to accidentally go into debt or you’re just more intentional. It’s more about the overspending that I think really like scares me a bit. And I think that alone is like the biggest goal to come out of a PhD without any debt.

00:30:32:09 Ariel: I was also actually pre-med and I didn’t want to go $200,000 into debt and so if that’s really one of the big things that I went into a PhD, I think that’s a good goal to have. And you’re still able to fulfill some financial goals, even though it might not be as high of a degree as you want to. It still really helps you to facilitate that and just gives more control and power overall and not being so, not feeling like we’re like completely powerless to, you know, grad students just make this and that’s just how it is. And I’m poor and I can’t really do anything. And I know it is really hard to live on the income that we have now, but it gives us some control back and some power so that we can really set ourselves up well financially in the future. Even if it’s not putting, you know, $300 into savings every single month, if it’s just building a habit of saving or building a habit of investing or building habits of this, this, and this, that’s really going to help you financially.

00:31:26:13 Emily: I love those points. Thank you so much for articulating that. I also think that budgeting is a really powerful and essential tool and especially because of not only like sort of the tangible benefits that we’ve talked about of having control of where your money is going and awareness and so forth, but also the intangible ones that just help you sleep better at night and everything.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

00:31:45:03 Emily: So, I’m so thankful that you volunteered to come on the podcast to talk about this subject in detail, Ariel. And I want to finish up here with the question that I ask of all of my guests, which is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be something that we’ve talked about already or it could be something completely new.

00:32:01:12 Ariel: Yeah, I would say my best advice, I mean, I’m also an early-career PhD, is having to do with investing. And I would say it’s best to start investing monthly, even if it’s something that seems kind of small and you’re wondering, is this even worth it? Again, it’s still just building that habit and building that, you know, like muscle memory and plus one is bigger than zero. So, I think anything is good. And I’ve heard some people, like a lot of people say a bunch of different things, like, “No, you should just save a lot.” And maybe it’s different for, you might be in a different situation. But I find that even just starting to invest at this time will help you get the habit once you graduate.

00:32:43:13 Emily: And to add on to that, I mean, the habit formation alone is a great reason to start investing or start budgeting or start doing other kinds of financial practices. But specifically with respect to investing, I think it’s really powerful just to get your systems like off the ground. Like with investing, you have to make a bunch of decisions, like especially with an individual retirement arrangement or an IRA, you have to decide which brokerage firm you’re going to house it at, you have to decide what funds you want to invest in. So those are like big, like they don’t have to take necessarily that much time to make those decisions, but the decisions have to be made and it’s really easy to procrastinate them. And so, if you aren’t, you know, determined to start your investing now, it could be something you end up putting off for years just because of the annoyance of like starting this system, right?

00:33:27:01 Emily: So, not only the habits but just getting like your account set up is like a great thing to do and it’ll facilitate, you know, continuing to invest going forward. Yeah, really easily. So, I’m really glad you brought that up. And I think you also want to give some advice about those two years you spent as an RA, right?

00:33:43:14 Ariel: Yeah. Those two years that I took in between undergrad and grad school were some of the best, like really was probably one of the best decisions that I’ve ever made. I was pre-med, I graduated and was a little bit unsure if I wanted to do a PhD because I was kind of not wanting to do med school at that point. And I thought, you know, what’s the rush? Let me work. I like research. Let me work in research and just figure things out. And just realistically, in terms of a PhD, it helped me figure out what I wanted to research for a PhD, what I wanted to get out of it, why I’m even doing it. But even after that, just taking the designated time for working and kind of settling into a bit of adult life and gaining an income, I really learned a lot and matured a lot mentally, emotionally, and as we’ve talked about financially.

00:34:35:07 Ariel: And so, I think those two years were really key for me to set myself out well for the rest of my time in grad school. And I can’t imagine like going straight from undergrad into grad school. I feel like that would be a complete whirlwind. So, that’s another thing I like to tell a lot of friends thinking about whether they want to take gap years or not, I think that’s like a really good time to kind of just figure things out on your own and plan out, you know, everything across the board or just, you know, just figuring out what you want to do.

00:35:02:17 Emily: And I know we already talked about you like starting your practice of budgeting that period of time, but were you also able to come into graduate school with some savings? 

00:35:12:11 Ariel: Yeah, I saved good chunk just because again, the habit. So, I think going into graduate school, I would save just general savings monthly however much I wanted to. I hadn’t invested at that point because I knew I wanted a little bit more of like a safety net coming into grad school to have on hand.

00:35:32:03 Emily: Yeah, that makes so much sense. And it’s, Ooh, it’s a lot easier to build that emergency fund when you are making a little bit more rather than, you know, having to build it up once you start graduate school. Of course, there’s no time like the present. So, start if you haven’t started already with that emergency fund, but it’s really giving yourself a leg up to have done it when you had a higher income before. So, that sounds awesome. Ariel, it was such a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much for volunteering to come on the podcast!

00:35:55:22 Ariel: Yeah, thank you so much. This was really great!

Outtro

00:36:02:23 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

Budgeting for the First Year of Grad School Even with Financial Anxiety

April 17, 2023 by Meryem Ok Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Georga-Kay Whyte, a first-year graduate student in history at Brown. Georga-Kay is a first-generation college student from Jamaica who grew up with financial insecurity, which spurred her to set a high bar for the financial support she expected from her graduate program. Georga-Kay was just as forward-thinking as she evaluated her housing and transportation options for her first year at Brown to set them at a reasonable level for her stipend. However, once she started living the grad student life, she realized she was overspending, especially on groceries and Amazon. She shares how she worked through her financial anxiety to confront her spending and start to budget. Finally, Georga-Kay details her financial goals for her 20% savings rate going forward. This episode is a must-listen for anyone with an upcoming career transition or move, especially if it’s your first!

Links Mentioned in the Episode

  • PF for PhDs Tax Center
  • PF for PhDs S14E8 Show Notes
  • PhD Stipends
  • PF for PhDs: Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School (Workshop)
  • Rocket Money (App)
  • Mint (App)
  • The Financial Confessions (Podcast)
  • Her First $100K (Podcast)
  • I Will Teach You To Be Rich (Book by Ramit Sethi)
  • You Are a Badass at Making Money (Book by Jen Sincero)
  • Georga-Kay Whyte’s Website
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List (Access Advice Document)
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub (Show Notes)
Image for S14E8: Budgeting for the First Year of Grad School Even with Financial Anxiety

Teaser

00:00 Georga-Kay: There’s so much like financial literacy that we don’t have as graduate students because it isn’t prioritized. And so, the best way to sort of break that barrier is to talk to other people who are in similar situations. And that’s how it’s helped me to approach a lot of the things that I do now and how I think about creating a budget or how I think about my lifestyle. So, I highly recommend just reaching out to your community and starting those conversations. It helps a lot.

Introduction

00:31 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 14, Episode 8, and today my guest is Georga-Kay Whyte, a first-year graduate student in history at Brown. Georga-Kay is a first-generation college student from Jamaica who grew up with financial insecurity, which spurred her to set a high bar for the financial support she expected from her graduate program. Georga-Kay was just as forward-thinking as she evaluated her housing and transportation options for her first year at Brown to set them at a reasonable level for her stipend.

01:28 Emily: However, once she started living the grad student life, she realized she was overspending, especially on groceries and Amazon. She shares how she worked through her financial anxiety to confront her spending and start to budget. Finally, Georga-Kay details her financial goals for her 20% savings rate going forward. This episode is a must-listen for anyone with an upcoming career transition or move, especially if it’s your first! If you’re listening to this episode the day it’s released, you know that tomorrow is the filing and payment deadline for your 2022 tax return as well as the payment deadline for your quarter 1 2023 estimated tax. If you haven’t yet cracked the code for your grad student or postdoc taxes, there’s still time to receive my help! Go to PFforPhDs.com/tax/ and sign up straight away for the appropriate workshop for you. The workshops are asynchronous, so upon registration you’ll have immediate access to all the video modules with transcripts, worksheets and/or spreadsheets, and recordings of previous Q&A calls. Best of luck finishing up! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s14e8/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Georga-Kay Whyte.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:04 Emily: I’m so excited to have on the podcast with me today, Georga-Kay Whyte. She’s a first-year graduate student at Brown, and our subject today is budgeting and what she’s learned as a first-year graduate student about that topic. So Georga-Kay, would you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

03:20 Georga-Kay: Yes! First, thank you for having me. My name’s Georga-Kay, I’m a first-year history PhD student at Brown University. I study 20th century African American labor history and I’m actually first-gen Jamaican. My parents are immigrants. We all migrated to the U.S. And so, I sort of like had to figure out not only personal finances in terms of like living in a new country but also personal finances because like I didn’t grow up with a lot of personal finance talk in my family. So yeah, that’s just like my background.

03:51 Emily: Okay, so you get the multiple first-gen labels, right? Like you get first-generation American, I don’t know about first-generation college, necessarily.

03:58 Georga-Kay: I am first-gen in college as well. <Laugh>, first-gen graduate student, first-gen everything.

04:02 Emily: First-gen grad student, we got it all. Okay, that’s wonderful! And what age did you come to the U.S.?

04:08 Georga-Kay: I came to the U.S. actually right before I turned 18. So, I was pretty, yeah I was, I was much older.

04:13 Emily: Very new.

04:14 Georga-Kay: Very new to the U.S., yes.

04:16 Emily: Yes. And where did you go to college?

04:18 Georga-Kay: I went to college at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. It’s a small women’s liberal arts school.

Money Mindset at the Start of Grad School

04:24 Emily: Yeah. Okay. So, wow. Okay, this first question that we have, what was the state of your finances and your financial background and money mindset coming into graduate school? So really we’re talking about what you grew up with in Jamaica, and then also just that short time you had in college. Yeah. So what was going on both in your finances and your like money mindset by the time you entered graduate school?

04:47 Georga-Kay: Yeah, so I grew up, I would say like relatively low income. In Jamaica, like I would be considered mostly like middle-class but in the larger scheme of things I grew up with a lot of financial insecurities. So, I had like an anxious sort of relationship with money from like childhood. And so, once I was coming into grad school I was super anxious about it because I had just started like looking online and seeing like the discourse around grad school and grad students being like they’re underpaid and they’re not like happy with their financial situation. And coming from someone who’s first-generation, I didn’t have a lot of financial safety nets. Like I just know that if anything, I’d have to figure it out on my own. And so yeah, definitely once I was like deciding to go to graduate school, this was before I found out about like what schools I’d be going to when I was thinking about like applying, I was like, “Oh my god, is this going to be the worst financial decision of my life to do this right at this time?” Because I came straight from undergrad, so I didn’t have a lot of time to like build up savings and stuff like that. But I really knew that I was passionate about the topic so I was like, I’m going to do this, hopefully it works out. Hopefully I can get a stipend that’s like livable. And that was my number one concern. I wanted a stipend that I wouldn’t be in a financially precarious situation just because I’ve already experienced so much like financial turbulence that I wanted some sort of safety net.

Role of Finances in School Selection

06:04 Emily: Absolutely. That makes so much sense. So, I want to talk a little bit more about maybe application and admissions process. You, I mean as anyone would be, were very nervous seeing the discourse currently going on, rightly so, about how difficult graduate school is financially. And all the unionization movements and so forth. So like, tell me about like the schools that you chose to apply to, were finances on your mind? Let’s talk about that. Like the selection process of where to apply.

06:31 Georga-Kay: Yeah, so I was super selective about the schools that I applied to, and I sort of feel like I was really naive in a way, but it worked out right <laugh>? I was like I’m going to apply to mostly private schools because they tend to have higher stipends, unfortunately. I started looking, I actually used, I forget what the platform is called, but they publish stipends for students. I think you might know what it’s called.

07:01 Emily: Is it PhDstipends.com?

07:03 Georga-Kay: Yes. Is that a website that you run?

07:05 Emily: That’s mine, yeah.

07:06 Georga-Kay: Yes. Okay, okay. Yes. So, thank you for that because I actually used that website a lot. So I looked at the PhD Stipends and I was really serious about, “Okay like is this a stipend that’s livable?” And then I would go ahead and like look at the livability calculator to see like, “Okay, is this going to work?” And I ruthlessly took schools off my list if they weren’t in that like situation of like they had a decent stipend for the area. So even if the stipend on its face was like, you know, almost $40K and the livability like it’s in New York, it’s like okay that’s still not going to work. So I was very serious about that, and I ended up applying to nine programs. And those nine programs I felt like had really strong stipends and they had other benefits like health insurance and stuff like that that I was looking at, too.

07:52 Emily: So, you’re the first I think interviewee I’ve had on the podcast who answered that question in that way. Because a lot of people I talk to, of course by the time they get into admission season they’re thinking about the financial offers and so forth. But to back that up into application season, I mean this is actually what I teach in my workshop for prospective graduate students: Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School, is it starts way back the summer before you apply even earlier than that, understanding the funding models, just like, I mean you said you were naive, but that is a very advanced strategy that you’re applying. So that’s awesome. Yeah to really think through like why bother applying to a place that you are pretty confident already is not going to support you sufficiently? And so to just, if you have programs that you know, make your list, that’s great. You don’t need to bother with the other ones who aren’t. If this is a priority for you, which it was for you. It’s not necessarily going to be a priority for everybody, but for you it was. So, I love that process.

08:48 Georga-Kay: It was really just my financial situation, like coming in with so much student loans. Like I felt a lot of guilt over the amount of student loans I had, and I knew I didn’t want to get any more student loans in graduate school. And so I was like, I need to find a situation that’s going to work out. And the reason why I say naive, just because talking to people about like the admissions chances in graduate school. So I was like, okay, I’m going to be selective but these schools are going to have higher competition. Because they do like, they have high stipends and people know about them and stuff like that. So that’s why I was like, okay, well hopefully I get it <laugh>, you know?

Considering Other Factors

09:19 Emily: Yeah. But applying to nine schools, that’s a pretty good number. I think that’ll give you a lot of chance. Anyway, it has worked out. So let’s talk about admission season. I don’t know how much you want to share about how many offers you got, but like, you know, did your expectations bear out? And the offers that you did get, yes, they were decent stipends? And then maybe you could share how much more finances, if at all, played in the decision of where to go or if you’d already done that filter early on, maybe it didn’t really have to.

09:46 Georga-Kay: Yeah, so I got three admissions out of the nine that I applied to. I got admitted to Penn, Brown, and Maryland. University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, and University of Maryland. And those offers were pretty good offers honestly. Especially looking at like the averages for stipends. So, I got $38,000 from Penn and then I got $45 from Brown. And I think Maryland offered like $32. I don’t remember specifically, because I knew almost immediately that Maryland had the lowest stipend. So I was just mainly considering Penn and Brown. And yeah, those were like comparable in some sense. Obviously like there’s still a discrepancy there between the amount that I got from Penn and the amount I got from Brown. It was actually a hard decision for me because the programs were both equally great, but then also the cost of living was relative. And I knew that like if I wanted to, I could have probably negotiated with Penn, which I didn’t end up doing, but I definitely still considered finances when I was thinking about it. But it was like close enough where I felt like, “Okay, well what else do I want from graduate school?”

10:51 Emily: Based on how you’ve talked about your thought process so far, and I’m pretty sure I know the answer to this question, but were you only considering your first-year stipend and like the source of the funding? Or were you also looking forward to like, were you being funded for five years or were there guarantees or you know, was it a TAship versus a fellowship? Like did you factor all that stuff into?

11:12 Georga-Kay: I factored everything in. When I got my offers, I reached out to the like DGAs of each department and I was like, okay, explain to me how this works <laugh>? I was just like, I wanted all my bases covered. So I talked to both schools and I was like reading through the offers and sort of seeing, okay, like first year, they were very similar. So it was like first year would be fellowship and then you would TA for some years and then you’d go back on fellowship. And both schools offered like five to six years of funding. Brown guaranteed six years, Penn basically they’re like, you basically will get six years but we’re guaranteeing five. And so, I knew that like throughout the program I would be funded for the entirety of it.

11:53 Emily: I’m so glad that you shared that as well. This is another thing that I encourage in my workshop is following up with the directors of graduate studies or maybe the admin in the department to like explain to you anything that’s not really clear, or maybe they’re only talking about the first year but they’re not talking about subsequent years. Like they’re recruiting you, okay? They want to convince you to make good on that offer that they just made you and convince you to come there. And so they should have pretty solid answers to these questions. And they might say, like Penn did, “Okay, you know, we’re not officially going to guarantee that sixth year, but you know, in nine cases out of 10, like we do find funding for you know, that sixth year or whatever.” Like they should be able to give you those really well-thought-out answers to those questions. So I’m so glad that you went through that process as well of really investigating.

Financial Expectations in Grad School

12:35 Emily: And you chose Brown, and that’s where you are now. So, let’s kind of talk I guess about now that you knew the stipend, you knew that maybe had some degree of confidence that the precarity was not going to be as much of an issue for you. What were your expectations then about how your finances would look in graduate school once you had that offer in hand?

12:56 Georga-Kay: Yeah, once I had the offer, I sort of felt a lot more secure just because like I feel like $45,000 is like a relatively, it’s not like anything crazy, but it’s average enough where it’s like, okay, in Providence I could live on that. And I think I could save on that, which was like a big deal because I know that like a lot of times in graduate school people talk about not even being able to save. And I wanted to be able to save and like achieve other financial goals. So, once I got that offer in hand, I started to think about, okay, well now what do I want to do? Like I know I’m going to make this much money. How much do I want to spend on rent? Do I want to keep like my costs low? You know, how much am I willing to compromise for the next few years–because I’m in my early twenties–to sort of set myself up for a good financial foundation?

13:39 Georga-Kay: And so those were just sort of all the questions that I had in my head. And then also, I started to think about like the realities of graduate school and what in cost that would incur as well. So, I like when I was going through my stipend and sort of backtracking a little bit, going through my offer, I would see that, oh I had like research funds and these funds, but I didn’t know until I sat down with the DGS and asked about it. I was like, “Is this money that would be like deposited into my account?” And they’re like, “No, it’s reimbursements.” And I was like, “Oh okay.” So then I had to learn about this whole reimbursement thing. So I was like, I have to actually have to have a safety net, like some sort of savings because if I want to pay for something I have to pay for it first before I get the money back. And so I started to think about that and just, yeah, just a lot of wheels turning now that I know that okay this is how much I’m going to make, how can I make this work in order to like pay for my day-to-day living expenses?

Housing and Rent

14:29 Emily: And one other thing, again, I’m talking about this workshop so much because this is the process you just went through. One other thing I talk about in this workshop is about the big decisions you need to make in your budget that happen probably before you even arrive at graduate school, right? You mentioned housing, so like did you commit to a lease for example, in advance of moving? Or is that something you were able to arrange once you got there? It’s very different, you know, different housing markets.

14:50 Georga-Kay: Yeah, so housing for me was one of the biggest things that I thought about because it was going to be my first time paying rent because I came from undergrad where I was like paying tuition and that would like cover, you know, my expenses. So, I wasn’t paying anything monthly. So moving to Providence and then also having to pay for moving expenses. I knew that like housing was going to be a big deal and I knew that it would probably be my biggest expense. And I had to make a decision about whether I wanted to live with roommates or I wanted to live alone and what does that mean? So I decided to live alone. I’m currently in graduate housing and the housing is somewhat subsidized. I don’t know if they say it’s subsidized on their website, but it’s like a lower cost of living apartment than I typically would be able to find in Providence, essentially.

15:32 Georga-Kay: And that was great. I started that <laugh>, luckily I started the process early so I was able to sort of like compare housing situations. I looked at the average cost if I wanted to live with a roommate in a house or if I wanted to live in a studio. I currently live in a studio and my rent is like, I feel like it’s on the high end of what I would want to spend, but I knew that I would appreciate that more having that sense of like security and that sense of not having to worry about if I have a roommate that maybe I don’t mesh with or you know, like there’s things that you have to think about lifestyle stuff. So I was like, okay, I know that I’m willing to pay a little bit more to live alone and keep my other costs low.

16:10 Emily: What I love about this model, I mean you’ve listened to the podcast, you know, I’m always like roommates, roommates, good idea. But what you did was you worked with your numbers and you knew that it was feasible, especially making that you know, decision to go with the on-campus option and so forth. I’m curious now we’re recording this in March, 2023, if you’ve already made a decision for housing next year? Or like are you going to keep the same situation? Do you think you’re going to do something different?

16:34 Georga-Kay: Yeah so I’m definitely, unfortunately the housing at Brown, they only guarantee it for two years. So I’m going to keep those two years. So I’m going to keep going until next year because I really love the area that I live in. I love my apartment, and so I feel like I really lucked out with housing. So, I’ll keep it and I probably will have to move after my second year since it’s not guaranteed and that it’s a really high interest area. Like a lot of students want to live here. So, I feel like after the second year I’ll be more comfortable in the area I can find somewhere else.

17:02 Emily: Yeah, and you might have met someone you really like enough to live with <laugh>.

17:06 Georga-Kay: That is true.

17:07 Emily: So, a roommate might be more feasible.

17:08 Georga-Kay: I’ve also considered that. Yes, I’ve thought about that too.

Transportation and Other Expenses

17:10 Emily: Yeah. So, we’ve already talked about kind of what I call the biggest rock in your budget, which is housing. And I’d like to know about your transportation choice. Like do you own a car or do you think it’s necessary? What is your choice there?

17:24 Georga-Kay: So, I decided to actually sell my car <laugh>. I sold my car before. When I was living in Atlanta, I bought a car used and it was a great car. It carried me to my like last two years of undergrad. But then I was like, I’m moving to the northeast. The transportation here seems a little bit easier. There’s a lot of public transit and there’s also trains and stuff. So, I talked to graduate students and they said that it would be fine to live without a car. So I was like, I’m going to use that money to move. And now I currently don’t have one and I rely on public transit, walking, and Brown has a university shuttle that’s actually really, really good and I’m able to basically spend like less than $50 a month on transportation costs.

18:06 Emily: Love that. Whenever it’s possible to live car-free, especially if when you’re pairing that with the campus housing, it’s like, I’m sure it’s really convenient and everything, you can just, not eliminate entirely, but dramatically reduce the costs associated with transit by getting rid of your car. Ugh, I have a car but I’m such a like anti-car person. <Laugh>, I live in Southern California.

18:26 Georga-Kay: No, I love living in a walkable city and that’s something I considered too. I was like, I wanted to, I knew that like if I’m going to be paying a little bit higher rent then at least if I don’t pay transportation, it kind of evens out.

18:37 Emily: Yeah, absolutely. So, we’ve talked about these major, major components of your budget, the housing and the transportation. And so I’m curious like how you formulated the rest of your budget, maybe more with the other smaller fixed expenses and other variable expenses? And then kind of what you’ve learned through living with that budget for the last, you know, six, seven months?

18:55 Georga-Kay: Really the things that I thought about was rent and transportation and then the rest of it was just sort of like I was going to do trial and error. So I was like, I don’t know what’s a reasonable grocery bill? I don’t know how much I should expect to, you know, spend, I also have a pet. And so that’s also a part of my budget. So I was like, I don’t know how much I’m going to be spending for vet bills. And so, I really just was like, okay, like this is less than half of my, like my total living expenses is less than half of my stipend. And so I was like, whatever the rest is, I’ll play around with the numbers. So when I originally started, I realized I was overspending because I just sort of didn’t want to look at it to be honest.

19:32 Georga-Kay: I was like, I’m going to take care of the big stuff. And because of my financial anxiety, I sort of had a lot of avoidance about money, especially when I just moved because I was like, “Oh my god, like am I going to, you know, completely throw off my budget or something like that?” So I was like, okay, I have this wiggle room essentially and we’ll figure it out. And so I started just shopping without caring. And then once I started looking back at my budget, which is something that I’m really happy I did, I started actually looking at my money. I was like, oh, maybe I’m spending a little bit too much on groceries. Like, and talking to other graduate students as well. I’ll get to this later, but talking to other graduate students and realizing, oh this is like an average cost for, you know, a meal for a single person, like a grocery bill for a single person, or this is the average cost for electricity or something like that. So I at first was avoidant, but then I started slowly having those conversations, started slowly thinking about it and then I started actually setting price markers like, oh I want to spend $300 on groceries. Oh, I want to spend this much on electricity. And then actually going in and doing those numbers and keeping track of that.

20:38 Emily: I think this process that you’ve gone through is so relatable. Absolutely. You don’t know how much you’re going to be spending on all these little variable expenses that aren’t like a contract that you’re entering into.

20:48 Georga-Kay: Yes, <laugh>.

Financial Discussions with Other Grad Students

20:49 Emily: When you first get to a new city and you have a new lifestyle different than the one you had before. So it definitely makes sense to just kind of work it as you go. And really, I’m actually very impressed you’re talking about having financial anxiety around this just six months ago and six months later you’re coming on a financial podcast? Like that’s a lot of progress in a short period of time. So I’m very impressed. How did you start having these conversations with other graduate students? Like, did you just come out and say, what’d you spend on groceries last month? Or like, what was it?

21:15 Georga-Kay: No <laugh>, no it wasn’t like that. I feel like I just started getting closer to the people in my program, but also just to people that I’ve met through school. And I like to think I’m a pretty forthcoming person. So if like we’re talking and everyone’s like, how’s your week been? And it’s like, you know, if there’s something on my mind, especially now that I feel like I have a close relationship with some of the people in my program I’ll mention like, “Oh my god, like I feel like I’m overspending on groceries,” which is literally something I did. I was like, I feel like I’m overspending on groceries, but I don’t know. And then all of a sudden everyone starts chiming in, like, oh, I think I spend this much. And then we all start comparing. We’re like, oh. And so I sort of like, I guess instigated the conversation, but now I feel like there’s so much more financial transparency between us all, like within my history cohort and we’ll share things now where it’s like, okay, do you guys think this is a reasonable amount to spend for this or something? And yeah, so I just feel like luckily I’ve always been open to sharing and I feel like sharing invites other people to share.

22:09 Emily: Absolutely. What you did there was like, you were a little bit vulnerable, you said, oh I have a little weakness or like something I’m unsure about, can you help me?

22:19 Georga-Kay: Yes.

22:19 Emily: And you like invited that feedback. And that allows the other person to like be the expert for a second, because they’re the expert in their own budget, right?

22:25 Georga-Kay: Yeah.

22:25 Emily: So like then they can help you and everybody feels good about it and like, oh man, that’s a wonderful like sort of pattern that you have established. I think that’s going to help you so much throughout your time in graduate school. I remember for example, not necessarily about groceries, but like just asking other people how much they spend in rent. Like, oh I really like your place. Like do you mind me asking because this is what I spend and like how much do you have? And that was a way that I found like a really great deal on housing. My friend was like, you wouldn’t believe it. I only pay such and such for this great place. You know? And so just having that, those open conversations, I feel like it’s easier among people who are all paid the same <laugh>, which I suspect probably everyone in your cohort is more or less like being paid the same, at least at the moment, right?

23:05 Georga-Kay: Yeah, we’re all paid the same. I do have an additional fellowship just a little bit, but yeah, we’re relatively all on like similar pay scale. And I also with the rent thing, like that was also a thing that we talked about was like, okay, well this is how much I pay for rent. This is how much we all pay for rent. And having those conversations, like especially for someone I think because I’m first-gen and I’m also like the youngest in my program that I’m like the baby and I’m like, I want to ask because like you guys have had a few more years of like, people have been in master’s programs, so I know like I feel like accepting that like I’m still figuring it out and not having any sort of pride about it of being like, oh I’m not going to share because you know, maybe someone will judge me. Just being like, hey, like you know, I’m figuring out and you’ve had some experience like what is your take on this? As you said, like they’re the expert in their budget and so people like to help in that way.

Commercial

23:55 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! You’ve heard me mention several times during this interview how Georga-Kay perfectly lived out the principles and strategies I teach in my year-long asynchronous workshop, Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School. If you would like to take a deep dive with me into financial tutorials designed for prospective and rising graduate students, please check out PFforPhDs.com/setyourselfup/. The workshop modules that relate to the topics in this interview are:

  • Stipends vs. Cost of Living
  • Decipher and Compare Offer Letters
  • Right-Size Your Necessary Expenses
  • Prepare for Your Start-Up Expenses

To learn more about these modules and the structure of the workshop, visit PFforPhDs.com/setyourselfup/. I hope to see you inside the workshop and to help you set yourself up for financial success in graduate school the way Georga-Kay has! Now back to the interview.

Tracking and Budgeting

24:53 Emily: Okay, so you’re on the ground, you’re figuring things out, you’re using your cohort to kind of bounce ideas off of. I love that. Tell me about your actual practice of budging. Because you said at first you didn’t want to look at the numbers, but does that mean that you were actually tracking? Like there were numbers there that you were avoiding looking at? Like practically, what was happening with those numbers?

25:14 Georga-Kay: Yeah, so once I moved, I sort of had a little nest egg to move because I knew that I would need that money. Luckily, we did get a transitional amount. We got $2,200 so I knew I was going to get that as well. So I had like a number in my head, okay, this is how much I’ll need to move. And once I paid for my moving costs, there’s a lot of things I didn’t think about. So like how much furniture costs, buying a trashcan, buying a trashcan is so expensive. Like all of these little things I’ve never paid for before. And I quickly went over budget and had to put some of those things on a card. And that was the first time I’ve ever done that, which is like put expenses that I couldn’t afford on a card, and that gave me a lot of financial anxiety as well.

25:52 Georga-Kay: And so once I did that I was like, I don’t want to look at this, I don’t want to know how much I have to spend because some of this stuff was like necessary expenses and I knew that once I started getting like regular stipends I could like then start thinking about it more critically. But in the first like month or two I was just like, I knew I was spending and I knew I wasn’t overspending, but I was definitely spending very close to like the borders of my budget I guess. My budget being the amount that I know that I make per month, that’s sort of like what I had in my head is like this is how much you make, this is how much you have to spend on your actual, like as you said, like the things I have to spend like contractually.

26:30 Georga-Kay: But everything else I was like okay, I’m going to spend and hope I don’t go over. And so I wasn’t looking at it. I wasn’t looking at it. I was just spending and not looking. And then after I would say about October, I downloaded Rocket Money, which is this app, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it, but it’s just like, it’s sort of like a Mint. If anyone’s familiar with Mint and they do like roundups, essentially. They tell you this is how much you spent on restaurants, this is how much you spent on Ubers this month and whatever. And so that was my first step into like, okay, what am I actually spending per category here? And then I saw the numbers, I was like, oh God, you know? And once I saw those numbers and I didn’t have to do a lot for it, I feel like that also is like something I would recommend if you’re scared about it and you don’t want to actually sit down, like go line by line, having some sort of like app that does it for you. It’s just like all I had to do was open, put my bank account in, open it and then just be like, okay, what is here? And so I looked at it and I was like, this is how much I’m spending per category. And then I started to think about changes that I might want to make in the future.

Frugal Measures

27:30 Emily: Yeah. Can you give some examples of what those changes were having realized that you were, your spending was a little bit too high? Like what were some, I would probably call it frugality, but what were some frugal like measures you started taking?

27:42 Georga-Kay: Yeah, so the spending that I saw was like mainly Amazon, which is <laugh>. I feel like people can relate to that. I was overspending on Amazon because I was constantly being like, oh I need to get this for my apartment because I had just moved and I realized, oh I don’t have like you know, I really want a toaster or something like that. Things that I didn’t need in the moment. And so I was like spending this much on Amazon, but I was doing it like in singular expenses, so I was never tracking how much I was actually spending and I wasn’t thinking about the cash flow of like, maybe I should wait a week or two until I get my next stipend to pay for this as opposed to like buying everything at once. And so I was just like not paying attention to it.

28:20 Georga-Kay: So once I saw it I was like, oh, I’m spending like $500 on Amazon, that’s like so much money. And then I was like, okay, I need to plan out what are the essential things that I need right now for my apartment since I just moved. Everything else will have to wait. And then also I looked at groceries, which I’ve mentioned a few times before and I was like, oh, I’m spending this much on groceries. I was spending like over $350 on groceries and I’m a single person and I wasn’t even eating that much. And I was like, that seems like a lot of money to me. And so I asked people and people were like, oh, like I actually spend like $300 or a little bit less than that on groceries. And then I realized it was because I was shopping at the more expensive grocery store. And I didn’t know, because I didn’t like shop around. I was like, this is the closest grocery store to me, so that’s what I’m going to go to. But literally if I just went in a like one that’s like a little bit further away, I found cheaper groceries and so I was able to get the same amount of groceries for a little bit less. And so yeah, those were the things that I realized once I looked at the numbers.

29:13 Emily: This is so relatable to me personally. And also I think the audience generally just, yeah, it’s a transitional time when you’re starting grad school and you don’t know the place to shop yet. And you do need, well need is a relative word. You want to have some things for your new place. And so it sounds like it was a combination of like finding some more frugal tactics to apply, and then also just really the proactive aspect of budgeting. You know, you were doing the reactive, the retrospective aspect, which is like looking at where your money had gone. And then you started adding in the, okay, well I only have, you know, available this amount of money for you know, discretionary Amazon purchases so I’ve got to keep it to that limit and anything else will have to wait for the next pay cycle and you know, we refill the coffers. Is there anything else that you’d like to add about that practice of budgeting?

30:02 Georga-Kay: I would say once I started doing like the automated where it was like the app was tracking it for me, then I actually sat down and like made an actual budget. Like I was like okay, this is how much, not like what the thing is telling me that I should spend based on my previous expenses, but based on my goals, like my savings goals, how much should I reasonably spend? And then that actually made me cut back a little bit more because I was like, oh, if I want to save up an emergency fund, then I can’t be spending this much on you know, eating out or something.

Resources for Budgeting

30:31 Emily: Yeah, I want to get back to those financial goals in just a minute, but before we do, so you said that you had some resources that you’d like to share about, you know, how you’ve learned about budgeting, how you’re practicing budgeting. You mentioned, I’m going to say Rocket Mortgage, that’s like the ads that I hear for them, but Rocket Money, is that the name of the budgeting app?

30:49 Georga-Kay: Yes, Rocket Money is the one that I started with. I’ve actually, in college I tried to use Mint because everyone was like, oh, Mint is a great app and I think it is a great app, but I quickly realized the interface just wasn’t like super user-friendly to me it was just, it was a little bit clunky. So I stopped using that and mainly also because I was just scared to budget at that point as well. It’s taken me a while to get into proactively looking at my money. And so Rocket Money has helped me to do that because it’s been like a really simple interface and once I put in my stuff it just sort of gave me all the numbers that I wanted to look at. And I would say also a lot of personal finance podcasts, which obviously this one I listened to, which I think is really, really helpful because there are just some things as an academic that like other podcasts will be like, oh you need to focus on, you know, negotiating for a raise or things like that.

31:37 Georga-Kay: And it’s like, okay, that’s not super practical to the life I’m going to be living for the next few years. But in terms of podcasts, I love The Financial Confessions. I feel like it talks a lot about like the social life of money, like money with friends and money and relationships, which I think helps a lot. I also like the Her First $100K podcast, which is like, I feel like that’s a pretty popular one, but it’s like Women in Money and thinking about how we perceive money, which is a lot of these podcasts are actually thinking about like how we think about money, how we use money on a daily basis. And then books. I love books I feel like as academics, like of course like my first sort of introduction to finance was through books. So I Will Teach You To Be Rich, which is a very popular one.

32:19 Georga-Kay: But also Jen Sincero’s, How to Be a Badass With Money [You Are a Badass at Making Money]. I think that’s the title of the book.

32:26 Emily: Yeah, I’ve read that as well.

32:27 Georga-Kay: That one really, yeah, that one is really good. I know people have mixed opinions on it, but the reason why I personally enjoyed it is because it’s sort of like allowed me to think about the ways that I talk about money to myself in ways that I didn’t really think about before. Because as I mentioned a lot that I’ve had anxieties around money and so I would just sort of be like, oh, like in college, like I’m so broke or I’m so this and like a lot of negative money talk and I’ve stopped doing that and I think having done that for a few years now and sort of reframed the way that I think about myself and my relationship with money has allowed me to make these like larger steps towards being like more financially competent.

33:02 Emily: Yeah, I noticed in those books that you listed, there are a lot of money psychology, like aspects there. It’s not, and that’s the hard part, right? Like the hard part is not necessarily the math <laugh>, like it’s not like the addition, subtraction, multiplication. It’s not the facts of like, okay, do I have access to an IRA or not? I mean I talk about that because it’s a little wonky, but like once you know, you know. The psychology part of it is the one that you need to work on over a time and it’s like you’re never really done with it <laugh>. You’re always evolving to like a new level with it. So, I like that you mentioned those like for that reason specifically. Yeah, any other resources that you’d like to add to your list?

33:41 Georga-Kay: I would say, I don’t know if this really counts as a resource, but what I mentioned previously, which is talk to graduate students. Like talk to graduate students, preferably graduate students are in a similar department to you or in a similar field to you because then you can get like ideas about, you know, the decisions that you can make that might help you in the future. Like just like daily living expenses. As you said, like maybe talking to them about apartments you might find a great deal or something. So I found that actually some of the best like resources have been like the other students in my department and students at Brown.

34:14 Emily: What I love about that suggestion is just that you’re going to get the most relevant information from the other people who are living that similar life to you. Like for me, like I work on a national level, so I do not get to be an expert in every single different state in every single different city. And so, sometimes when I go to speak at certain universities, I ask the people who are living it, like for their suggestions, like I can say some things that work generally, but like they’re going to know like the exact, like you mentioned earlier, the right grocery store to go to for like this specific thing. Like oh this farmer’s market is really wonderful for blah blah blah, whatever. Or like, oh, have you heard about this city-specific subsidized resource? Things like that. Like that is not what you’re going to get from from books and and national podcasts and so forth.

34:57 Emily: It’s really, you have to get it from the people who are living through it with you. So it’s an amazing resource. I’m so glad that you’ve been tapping into it. I hope people listening to this episode will follow that model as well.

Financial Goals

35:08 Emily: Okay, so I want to turn now to talking about the future. We’ve talked about how diligent and thorough you’ve been with like investigating your finances and becoming more comfortable with them in the past. But now I’m wondering like have you set some financial goals for the rest of your time in graduate school?

35:26 Georga-Kay: Yeah, so my biggest goal is to save three to six months of expenses so that I can have just like a little cushion if I need to so that I don’t end up incurring more debt in the future. I would love to be able to, you know, occasionally be able to go back home, go to Jamaica, go visit extended family or even having a pet. Like I am scared that if something happens and I need to cover like a really big vet bill, I don’t want to have to put that on a card. So my immediate immediate goal is to save three to six months of living expenses. And then my second goal is really a way to like manage my financial anxiety, which is just to automate a lot of the big picture stuff that I know that I want. So, automatically like saving 20% of my income.

36:09 Georga-Kay: And then also once I’ve done that, moving on to automating retirement and investment. So, that’s something I see as more like a building sort of building block sort of goal where I’ll be working on that for the next year or two of just slightly changing things within my account so that the money goes where I need it to go. My third goal is to increase my income, which is not something I hear a lot of graduate students talk about and I get why. But I really do feel like especially for me, I want to be able to help with family stuff and just feel more secure. And so I feel like the best way to do that is to increase my income. And the way that I sort of see myself doing that is through additional teaching responsibilities. So, I can teach in the summers and I can also do like proctorships that pay a little bit more and those will pay up to like $10,000 more per year. So, that’s just a small way that I can increase my income so that I can have a little bit more flexibility.

37:01 Emily: So, with your first two goals of building up that emergency fund and then you know, starting to invest and starting to save for like other types of goals as well, you mentioned a 20% figure. So, I’m wondering are you currently saving 20% and is that going towards your emergency fund? Or is 20% something you’re like working up to over time?

37:22 Georga-Kay: Yeah so I’m currently saving 20%. I have my account set up where once I get my stipend, it automatically takes off that 20%. I am not going to lie, I’ve had to dip into it a couple times. Mainly for my dog. She’s had some stomach issues and so I just had to pay a huge vet bill. But I will continue to save that as much as I can and do that 20% minimum. And in the future, I would actually like it to be more, but for now I feel like 20% is a good amount to save.

37:52 Emily: Definitely don’t feel any guilt about spending on emergencies. I mean that’s what it is when you have like a medical situation, whether it’s yourself, your family member, your pet, if it has to be done, it has to be done. That’s what, I mean you’re saving the emergency fund, that’s what the emergency fund is for, so you’re saving it and yeah, you spend down but you still have the 20% savings rate and it’ll, you know, not every month is going to have, you know, one where you have a big expense like that. So, that’s awesome. That’s an amazing savings rate for a graduate student. So, just congratulations to you and I’m really excited for, you know, when the emergency fund is filled and when the other, you know, cash savings goals are filled and you get to turn to investing, it’s going to be so exciting.

38:25 Emily: And I love this idea of, you know, of course increasing income as a graduate student but also that you’ve thought through what your options are. And sometimes like it seems like you identified in your case there are opportunities even at your university that you can sort of easily pivot to and just add on to the responsibilities that you know you’ll have in the moment that’ll allow for that additional income. And I like that because you know, side hustling is sometimes frowned upon, sometimes disallowed, but when it’s an opportunity that comes through your university, it’s like oh you’ve kind of already like been approved for this because it’s something they offer to you, you know? So it doesn’t have to be like hidden or you know, anything like that.

39:00 Georga-Kay: Yeah, and that’s something I thought about. I’m very much a work smarter not harder person. And so I was like I keep my, now we’ve gotten like emails about like, oh if you want to teach in the summer, I’m actually going to be teaching this summer. And that’s an additional $4,000. So I was like, actually this is great. Like if I teach every summer or if I try to, then I can make a couple thousand dollars and then if I take on like an extra TA assignment, I can make another couple thousand dollars and that’s like money that I can put towards savings because right now I feel like pretty good in my base living expenses that I don’t need to like, you know, upgrade apartments or anything like that. So, it’s like all that money can go towards my larger goals.

39:39 Emily: Yeah, and you’ve just identified another great strategy there, which is base your, you know, your typical budget, your contractual living expenses, your necessary expenses around the minimum amount of money you can expect to be taking in the course of the year so that you know, anything you’ve taken above that could be used for savings, or also other discretionary purchases. Like you mentioned, you know, going like back home to Jamaica, and so like that maybe you could do an extra trip, you know, and still have money to put like into savings as well. So, I love that balance and it’s a great strategy for pretty much any stage of life, not just graduate school.

Best Financial Advice for a Fellow Early-Career PhD

40:09 Emily: Well, Georga-Kay, this has been such an amazing interview. I’m definitely going to be pointing to it for all the prospective graduate students as a model for how to handle this. And even especially, you know, even like your self-awareness around the money anxiety and so forth and how you, you know, faced it and like trying to work through it and everything. Again, super relatable I think to so many people. So, I’d like to finish up here with the final question that I ask all of my guests, which is, what is your best piece of financial advice for a fellow early-career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve already touched on in the interview or it could be something completely new.

40:41 Georga-Kay: Okay, so I have two, but I’ll make it quick. I would say the first one is one that I’ve mentioned a few times, which is that you should talk to the people around you. Like I would say not even just graduate students but also if there are any postdocs in your department or even early-career faculty. I have just like had such great conversations, and it might be hard at first to sort of like bring things up, but I feel like you don’t even have to ask about specific numbers, but just how people make it work in graduate school because there’s so much like financial literacy that we don’t have as graduate students because it isn’t prioritized. And so the best way to sort of break that barrier is to talk to other people who are in similar situations. And that’s how it’s helped me to approach a lot of the things that I do now in how I think about creating a budget or how I think about my lifestyle.

41:28 Georga-Kay: So, highly recommend just reaching out to your community and starting those conversations. It helps a lot. I would also say the second thing is to look at your money <laugh>. I think that’s harder than it seems especially for people who maybe struggle with being scared about what they’ll see, but it really, really helps because you don’t even have to make any changes. Like I just start looking at it and like being cognizant of like, okay, this is how much I’m spending. And I feel like that automatically leads to you making some slightly different decisions.

41:59 Emily: I agree. Totally, totally agree. It could just be you don’t even have to do, like you sort of went very quickly from the looking at the numbers to the starting to budget stage. But even staying at that, like I’m just looking, I’m not intentionally making any changes, but as you said, it kind of works in the background of your mind and you’ll automatically most likely start to make at least a couple of changes and you don’t have to be too like forceful with yourself about it, just having that awareness. So that is great advice. Thank you so much for sharing and Georga-Kay it’s been an absolute pleasure. I’m so glad that you volunteered to come on the podcast and you know, I hope you’ll come back in a couple of years for an update.

42:31 Georga-Kay: Thank you! I’ll be back anytime you want me <laugh>.

42:35 Emily: Okay, lovely. Thank you so much!

42:37 Georga-Kay: Thank you for having me!

Outtro

42:43 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

How This Outdoorsy Graduate Student Budgets Her Money and Time for Hobbies

October 24, 2022 by Meryem Ok 2 Comments

In this episode, Emily interviews Selena Cho, a second-year graduate student at the University of Utah who receives the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Selena shares her budget breakdown, through which her values and the joy she experiences in using her money in this way shine. Selena has right-sized her housing, transportation, and food spending so that they are fairly low but still meet both her needs and wants. By intentionally choosing a university in a medium cost-of-living city and maintaining moderate expenses, Selena has plenty of room in her budget for investing, eating out, and entertainment, which in her case means biking, skiing, camping, and other outdoor pursuits. Don’t miss Selena’s final advice about cultivating happiness during graduate school.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

  • Selena’s LinkedIn
  • PF for PhDs S13E5 Show Notes
  • Emily’s E-mail
  • PF for PhDs: Speaking (Seminars/Workshops)
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List (Access Advice Document)
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub (Show Notes)
S13E5 Image for How This Outdoorsy Graduate Student Budgets Her Money and Time for Hobbies

Teaser

00:00 Selena: We recently discussed the stipends at Utah in the department, and I would say the rough estimate for the stipend is around $22 to $24K for other students. And like having that in my head, I also made sure to like kind of live within those means as well because like, you know, the GRFP is only for three years. So, therefore, like if you know my PhD takes, you know, four or five years, I have to probably live on that stipend so I made sure to live within those means.

Introduction

00:40 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and the founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 13, Episode 5, and today my guest is Selena Cho, a second-year graduate student at the University of Utah who receives the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Selena shares her budget breakdown, through which her values and the joy she experiences in using her money in this way shine. Selena has right-sized her housing, transportation, and food spending so that they are fairly low but still meet both her needs and wants. By intentionally choosing a university in a medium-cost-of-living city and maintaining moderate expenses, Selena has plenty of room in her budget for investing, eating out, and entertainment, which in her case means biking, skiing, camping, and other outdoor pursuits. Don’t miss Selena’s final advice about cultivating happiness during graduate school.

02:02 Emily: I’d like to give you an update on how things are going for Personal Finance for PhDs and myself as the owner and sole employee. This year, I’ve had some aha moments about how I want to spend my time in the business, and I’ve taken steps to restructure so that I’m spending more time doing things that really energize and inspire me and less time doing things that are not so fun or draining. First, I decided to continue shifting how I deliver my financial education. This shift started a few years ago as an experiment, but I’m now confident that it is the right direction for me. Pre-pandemic I was doing mostly live in-person seminars, which then switched in 2020 to live remote webinars. I realized that what I find most fun and rewarding in the business is interacting with you all, the PhDs and PhDs-to-be, through answering questions and facilitating discussions and the like. That’s why I do this interview-based podcast as opposed to another form of content. I also love creating educational materials, for example my slide decks and scripts, but in terms of actually presenting them, I only like it. Overall, I really enjoy giving live seminars and webinars, but it’s because of the interaction component, not the presenting component.

02:09 Emily: So, the shift is that I’m offering much of my content now in a pre-recorded format paired with live Q&A and discussion sessions. My experiment years ago was with a pre-recorded tax workshop, and I now offer my two tax workshops exclusively in this format, which I believe serves both me and the participants really well. In 2021, I also created a series of four deep-dive pre-recorded workshops for graduate students and postdocs on financial goal-setting, increasing cash flow, investing, and repaying debt. This year, I’m creating a year-long workshop series for prospective PhD students. Through this format, I get to spend my time largely on creating and updating the materials and interacting with the people who have already viewed or read through them, and I get to skip the middle part of presenting. I find this super enjoyable and am either nudging or requiring my university clients to move in this direction with me, depending on the content.

04:21 Emily: Second, I decided I want to return to working in person—selectively. I didn’t do any in-person work from the start of the pandemic through spring 2022, but in the past several months, I attended two conferences in person and facilitated two in-person discussion and Q&A sessions for the aforementioned deep-dive workshops. I had the best, best time at every single one of those events. They were so life-giving. It sounds cheesy but it’s true! I love my work, and I did not realize how much I had missed talking with people face-to-face for work. I now see that I’m definitely experiencing Zoom fatigue, specifically when it comes to giving webinars. On the other hand, I like not traveling and being at home with my family. So, I don’t want to return to the kind of travel I did pre-pandemic, and I don’t need to sustain or grow the business because I have all these pre-recorded offerings like I just discussed. So, my conclusion is that I would like to start back up with in-person seminars and workshops, but I’m going to be selective about the kinds of events I agree to and make sure that it’s going to be really fun for me to participate in. Conferences would definitely qualify. Ideally, like I had a chance to do with the discussion and Q&A sessions I just mentioned and will again next month with my workshop Hack Your Budget, the events would involve more interaction and less presenting.

05:47 Emily: I’ll wrap this up now with a heartfelt thank you to all of you who have recommended me as a speaker or recommended my tax workshops to your graduate schools, postdoc offices, grad student associations, etc. Finding the appropriate sponsors for this educational content and convincing them that it’s an in-demand topic is something that I could never do on my own. Thank you so much for planting those seeds. It’s the work that I do with universities, etc. that funds the whole business, including this podcast and the other free content I make available. If you would like to see it continue, and I hope you do, please consider making such a recommendation today. Thank you again, and that’s it for this update. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s13e5/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Selena Cho.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

06:50 Emily: I am delighted to have joining us on the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast today Selena Cho. We are doing a budget breakdown today. So, we are going to hear how Selena manages her budget as a second-year graduate student at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. So, Selena, welcome to the podcast. Will you please introduce yourself a little further for the listeners?

07:09 Selena: Thanks for having me, Emily. Well, hello everyone. I’m Selena Cho. I’m currently a second-year PhD student studying mechanical engineering at the University of Utah. I did my undergrad at UMass Amherst in mechanical engineering, and I’m actually in a transition phase where I’m switching labs.

Income and Household

07:27 Emily: We’re here to talk about your finances in Salt Lake City. So, please tell us more about your income and who’s in your household and those kinds of details.

07:38 Selena: So, I currently live in Salt Lake City. I’m originally from Boston. I grew up there all my life. And currently, I’m funded by the NSF GRFP. So, that’s $34K a year. And right now I live with my boyfriend and two other roommates in a four-bed, two-bath. The total rent is $2,500, and Sam and I are paying $600 each because we’re sharing a room.

08:06 Emily: Okay. Sorry, let me get this straight. You have four bedrooms and four people, but you are sharing a room.

08:12 Selena: Yes.

08:12 Emily: So, who has the extra bedroom? What’s going on there?

08:14 Selena: So the extra room is our gear room <laugh>.

08:18 Emily: Okay.

08:19 Selena: So, I guess I explain my hobbies yet. So, the household here we ski, we rock climb, we mountain bike, we cycle, we play tennis. Anything you can name, we do it. So, we also camp a lot too, meaning we have a lot of gear, which we have our fourth room dedicated to all of our gear. Yeah, <laugh>.

08:45 Emily: So, it sounds like you and your boyfriend and these other two roommates all share this like certain kind of lifestyle that apparently requires a lot of equipment that fills an extra bedroom and the garage in the house and so forth, all the storage. But in any case, your share of all this rent comes down to $600 per month. So, that’s what’s going into your budget, which seems like a pretty manageable amount of money, right? On that $34K GRFP stipend, right?

09:10 Selena: For sure. It’s actually the most expensive place I lived so far in Salt Lake City. But I would say the average rent in Salt Lake is around six to $800. I think that’s pretty fair, especially if you have roommates and stuff. Previous places I lived in were like $525 and like $435, and I think those were kind of like outliers in terms of rent because they were quite low. And originally, this place was listed for $2100, meaning it was going to be like $525 per tenant. But the landlord increased it actually to $2,800 and then we’re like wow, that’s a $700 increase. And we talked it down to $2,500, which was more manageable, especially on a graduate stipend.

Furniture Flipping Side Hustle

10:03 Emily: Wow. It’s good to know actually that negotiation is still possible even in an era of rapidly rising rents. Okay. So that is great. Is there anything else you want to add about, you know, your income or anything like that?

10:18 Selena: Sam and I like to pick up random furniture off the streets or wherever we find on KSL or Marketplace, and then we like to just sand it down and like make it pretty and then list it and resell it for, I don’t know, whatever price. So recently, we found a free teak table with eight chairs, an outdoor table setting, and we just like sanded it down, put some teak oil on it, and then we like resold it for $250, which was fun. <Laugh>.

10:52 Emily: Alright. So you have a little sort of monetized hobby, side hustle kind of situation. How much would you say that brings in on average on like a monthly basis?

11:02 Selena: Safe to say like around like $200, I think, a month at least. Because we also just like find random things and sell random things. And I guess that like really fluctuates. But the thing is we don’t really depend on it at all. It’s just more of like, oh now we have a little extra money to, I don’t know, go out to eat or something like that.

Financial Goals

11:22 Emily: Yeah, that sounds great. Well, let’s dive into your financial goals. So, we’ll talk about your expenses in a moment, but right now I want to know more like yeah, what are you doing overall to improve your personal financial situation? What kind of goals do you have going on?

11:37 Selena: So, I contribute to a Roth. So, I max it out. I think this year is $6,000, and I’ve been doing that for the past three years I think. So, I started in my undergrad, and my parents also started a life insurance for me. And so, I contribute that every month like a hundred dollars for a total of $1,200 a year. So, those are like my financial goals right now. I wish I had access to like a 401(k) where I can contribute but I don’t.

12:09 Emily: Well, I mean the $500 per month that’s going into the Roth IRA is already an awesome goal, awesome investing rate. So congratulations on your commitment to that. Do you do that regularly? $500 per month?

12:22 Selena: Pretty regularly. I think like if I can put in more that month, I will. Like I think early on in the year I just wasn’t spending that much money, therefore I was just like, guess I’ll just contribute to my Roth IRA this year. Because like I have, you know, a rainy day fund where I have enough in my savings where I can probably live off for a year. And then I also have like my checking account that has more than enough for me to live on with a year. And honestly I think I’m just like saving a little bit too much, and I should probably just contribute more to more of my investment accounts. Because I do have like your regular individual taxable accounts too.

13:04 Emily: Yeah, I was just going to say that would be a great next step if you wanted to invest beyond, you know, the amount in the Roth IRA, that a taxable brokerage account would be perfect. And you’re already there. So that’s great, it’s there if you ever want to to use it. Yeah, that’s one of the things that I teach in this framework that I use. I have like an eight-step financial framework that I teach, especially during my seminars. And one of the reasons I give ranges around like how much cash to have on hand is kind of for what you just mentioned, like sometimes it’s possible even as a graduate student to have too much cash on hand. Too much in the sense that it could then, you know, be used toward another purpose like repaying debt or used towards investments or something like that. And so, some people, because they don’t have a defined goal around that, they just keep accumulating and then it’s like well at some point it’s not really serving you to have that much cash. So, it sounds like you’re kind of at that like tipping point right there.

13:52 Selena: Yeah, I also recently paid off my car. So, after graduating, one of my quote graduation gifts that I got was a car where I supposedly share 50/50 with my parents, but it turned out to be 75 me, 25 my parents. So I recently was like, I have so much cash on hand right now. Literally why am I not paying it off? So I did, which is fun because I’m planning on selling that car to get another car that fits my lifestyle. So, like right now, the car that I bought was $18K, and right now even by a dealer’s party or whatever I can at least get $20-21K. So, Private Party on Kelley Blue Book right now is between 23 to 26. And my car is really low miles right now and I’m just planning on reselling it because I can make a lot of money off of it and planning on getting a vehicle that’s currently costing around $12-14K. So, that’s like my current, I guess financial goal is me selling off this car and buying a vehicle that suits my life better.

Income Tax

15:12 Emily: Yeah, I mean I love that on all fronts. Like, you know, tailoring the possessions that you have to the life that you actually want and of course selling a car in this like weird market where it happens to be that you can sell it for more than you bought it for. Wow. Who would’ve ever expected that? But that’s awesome all around. Okay, I know you have one other, what I would call kind of a financial goal, which is to handle your income tax because you’re on the GRF stipend. So, can you talk about how you do that?

15:40 Selena: Oh, so I think you had like a free Excel sheet that calculated your income tax. So I just used that and I just trusted it and hoped it worked. And the IRA isn’t coming after me right now, so I guess I did it right. So I think based on the sheet I believe it’s like around, I say set aside about $200 a month for the income tax. And that’s something I just automatically do. I didn’t set up like a new checking account just for that because I personally don’t need it because I know that $200 is there and I know I’m not going to touch it. And that’s just me, personally.

16:23 Emily: So, it sounds like it goes in with your other sort of general savings that you mentioned earlier. Yeah. But you’re just sure to put aside an additional $200 every time you get paid.

16:32 Selena: Yep.

16:32 Emily: Awesome. Well, we will link to that spreadsheet and the email series actually that it comes in in the show notes. So, if anyone else is interested in grabbing it, I’m glad it seems to have worked for you for last year. Hopefully, it was pretty accurate. Yeah. Okay, so we’ll link to that.

#1 Largest Expense: Rent & Utilities

16:48 Emily: Okay, let’s dive into your expenses, and we’ll just go one by one. So, starting with your largest monthly expense, what is that?

16:57 Selena: Largest is usually rent and utilities. So, currently, right now my rent is $600 and my utilities, which is just gas, electricity, and Wi-Fi is about $30 to $40 I think per month. So, let’s say right now my rent and utility is $650, so that’s my largest expense normally.

17:24 Emily: Now, you mentioned earlier that this is the most expensive place you’ve lived so far in Salt Lake City. Can you talk about that decision to spend more on rent than like you absolutely had to?

17:35 Selena: Yeah, so I think I wanted to live in a place that had, you know, more sunlight and just had more room for all my stuff and also living with friends. So, the people that live in my house right now, I ski with them and I bike with them and I climb with them. And basically, it was a place where we had more than enough space for everyone’s stuff and also have room for like a little workshop. So like for the little side hobby of like flipping furniture. So you know, we have like a whole garage where we have like a workbench and like all our tools and stuff. And for me like doing that makes me happy. Like doing all like the climbing, all the outdoor activities and hanging out with my friends makes me happy and flipping furniture makes me happy.

18:29 Selena: So, for me, I can justify paying slightly more because I think my quality of life increased. Compared to like when I was paying $435 for rent and I had like a window, but the thing is it was like under like a loft, therefore there’s no direct sunlight. So my room was dark all the time, therefore I didn’t really want to spend time in my room and I just like was over at my boyfriend’s house more, and basically I was just like paying money, paying rent for a space that I didn’t even live in, which was like in my eyes like a waste of money because I didn’t even use it.

19:08 Emily: Yeah. So, another kind of lifestyle decision, definitely this one takes a little bit more, but overall your rent is only just over 20% of your gross income. Of course that’s not taking into consideration your taxes, but that’s nowhere near, you know, the kinds of rent percentages that we see for graduate students in, you know, higher cost-of-living areas. So like yeah, even spending a little bit more, you’re still like well under the, you know, maximums that you sort of theoretically should be under to have a balanced budget. So, you’re totally free to spend more than that if you want to. It sounds great.

19:39 Selena: Yeah.

Commercial

19:42 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2022-2023 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/speaking/ or simply email me at emily@PFforPhDs.com to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

#2 Largest Expense: Groceries

21:05 Selena: I think like, I guess like moving on to my next expense, which is groceries. So, I cook all the time. I am a huge cook. I love cooking, and I love food because it was just like part of my family. We always ate well no matter what. And I was very, very like I only buy, you know, fresh produce. I never buy processed food. Because I just thought that I can make it myself. It’s so much more expensive to buy the box even though it’s more convenient. And I was like basically still saving a lot of money where I think my grocery bill per week was like, like $30 to $50 because I just knew how to buy groceries. Because like a lot of grocery stores, they would have like reduced bags of produce which was like a whole like, I don’t know, I would say like a five-pound bag of vegetables for like $1.25.

22:03 Selena: So, like I would buy that. And I have learned to spend a little bit more because that’s where I spend basically the most amount of money, next to my rent. And I’ve learned to, you know, like I go splurge at Costco a lot now because of it where I’m like, I deserve it because like I don’t spend money on anything else. So like why don’t I like eat better? Where I can, you know, like yeah I’ll buy salmon, I’ll buy a pack of salmon type of deal. And I used to like not even do that because I was like, oh you know, $20 is a bit too expensive for this. So like now I’ve just learned to spend a little bit more because I know I can afford it. Because previously I was just really like tight budgeting everything and I think, I wouldn’t say like I was like, you know, like sad about it but I think I wasn’t living my life as much.

23:06 Emily: I love another example of an area that you are, you know, you’ve sort of modulated how much you want to spend and found like a good balance for you right now. So, you mentioned I think that you were spending $30 to $50 a week on your like lower spending end. So like how much would you say you’re spending now?

23:21 Selena: I would say about $75. So, it’s not that big of an increase. So, $75 to like $100. The thing is I now split my groceries with my boyfriend. So, I would say normally groceries is between $300-400 per month.

23:43 Emily: Per person. Yeah.

23:44 Selena: No, no, no. Between the two of us.

23:46 Emily: Okay. Okay. So, your part is $150-200.

23:50 Selena: Yeah exactly. And I think because there’s like two of us, I feel like I’m like I can go buy more because there are two people, but the same time I’m really not expending, like it’s not a linear trend where like therefore you know, a second person means double the money. It really wasn’t. If anything, in some ways I save money because I’m able to like afford like expensive cuts of meats that I normally wouldn’t buy if it was myself.

Cooking and Meal Prepping

24:20 Emily: Interesting. I’m actually wondering how you fit in all this like cooking that you love to do with, you know, the work schedule obviously and then all the extracurriculars as well. How do you manage your time in that sense?

24:32 Selena: Well, I cook every night <laugh>. I don’t think I normally like schedule it, it’s just like a natural thing for me to do. It’s like it’s dinner time, therefore I’ll cook. So, when I go grocery shopping, I already have an idea of what I want to eat that week. And then usually all the ingredients that I get, I don’t like getting ingredients specifically for a recipe. I dislike doing that. I feel like you spend a lot more money when you do that. And I’ve learned to just work with what I have, because it’s not going to drastically change the taste of the dish at all. So, I’ve just like learned to get an idea on like what I want to eat. So let’s say like the week is like “Mexican week,” then like I know that I’m getting tomatoes, I’m getting avocados, I’m getting onions and stuff and all that stuff I can cut myself.

25:28 Selena: And that’s like stuff I can make a big bulk of, because I can make a whole big batch of beans, a whole big batch of pico. And then maybe at Costco, I buy the $4.99 rotisserie chicken, which is a steal. And I would get that and I would just basically break down the chicken myself and just like have it in the Tupperware all week. So then throughout the entire week, all I really need to do is just put my burrito bowl or my salad together, because I already have it pre-prepped. Or like, I like finding recipes I can make big bulk of, like Mediterranean. I can make a lot of chickpeas. I can roast chickpeas really fast. I can make all these like yogurt sauces like in you know, mason jars and stuff. And that’s stuff I can eat the entire week. So, I think it’s a lot of like buying stuff that you can easily maintain through the week. Like I would spend like an hour or two maybe on like a Sunday or whenever I buy groceries and break it down and then really all I need to do is just heat up stuff or maybe like make an additional salad where it just still feels fresh to eat.

26:46 Emily: I’m so glad I asked this question because when you were describing how you were eating earlier, I definitely was not picturing this. But it sounds like you are doing batch cooking, bulk prep and then your, you know, cooking or meal assembly each night is really just drawing on some of those ingredients you had prepped earlier in the week. So, it’s like a pretty fairly fast and easy like assembly at that point, which I think is great for coming home from work or whatever you’ve been doing that evening. So, that makes a ton of sense to me. Is there anything else you want to say about your grocery budget?

27:17 Selena: Don’t hardcore meal prep. I think my definition of meal prepping is making individual things that can be paired with other things. For instance, my chipotle yogurt sauce that I make. I can use it on a salad, I can use it as sauce on a burger, I can use it in a sandwich or anything. I like to make items that are very versatile and that I can change up what I’m eating so that it doesn’t feel like the same meal every dinner or lunch. I would say that’s my tip for people for meal prepping. It’s not have chicken, broccoli, and rice every single meal. It’s making stuff that can be used with other items is my advice.

28:11 Emily: Yeah, when I was sort of studying up on meal prepping a couple of years ago, that was a real insight that I got at that time, what you just articulated. I had first imagined meal prep as being what you just said, like actually assembling the same meal you’d eat like every day for a week. But instead, you can do the shift that you did, which is just assemble the components and then use the components in different ways. Like you said, salads or sandwiches or wraps or bowls or you know, whatever it might be. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Thank you.

#3 Largest Expense: Eating Out

28:40 Emily: So what is your third largest expense?

28:43 Selena: I would say eating out. So, I like to try different restaurants, and I keep that to like once a week type of deal. And I have a budget of probably I would say like $100-200 a month for eating out. Because I just grew up trying different restaurants, so that’s something I continue. And my partner and I, you know, enjoy doing it and exploring restaurants. And we didn’t want to be like hindered by the fact, you know, like, oh you shouldn’t eat out because it’s expensive. It’s like, I think the idea is that since we budget for it, we can spend money for this thing because we care. We, you know, enjoy it and that’s what we do. So, we budget about, you know, $100-200 a month to just eat out, try different restaurants, and not feel guilty about spending that money.

29:41 Emily: Yeah, I mean look at, you know, the elements we’ve mentioned so far. Like your income being what it is on the GRFP, your rent being reasonable, you have, you know, your car paid off, you cook almost all of your meals. So, spending, that’s only like $25 to $50 per person per meal if you’re only eating out once a week, which is like, yeah you’re trying like a pretty decent restaurant. Like that’s not convenience eating, that’s like a good like dining experience, right? So, I love this that, I don’t know, I’m just, every item I’m just like, oh wow, you’re really thoughtful about this and you really like tried to, you know, figure out what you want your lifestyle to be. This is great.

#4 Largest Expense: Gear

30:14 Emily: Okay, fourth expense then.

30:17 Selena: Gear. Gear like camping, ski passes, bike. So, I would say more these are kind of more one-time expenses. So, let’s say like, I think the most expensive thing I ever purchased was my bike, which was like $850. And you know, that’s a large amount of money to be spending on one item. But, you know, I’ve used that bike a lot to justify the purchase of that bike because it’s, you know, part of my lifestyle now that every weekend we go biking during the summer, or during the week we go for morning rides before work. And then in the winter it’s skiing season or snowboarding. I do both. So, a ski pass last year on the student discount from the U is $450 for the base icon pass and I’ve skied 25 days on it, so that’s like $18 a day for skiing, which is worth it in my head because I enjoy it very, very much.

31:23 Selena: And then coming out here I got, you know, a new pair of used skis for me. So I think, and I got a pair of good ski boots. I would say ski boots are probably the first purchase you should make that’s big for yourself, especially if you’re skiing because that’s the most important thing is ski boots, how comfortable they are. And it was like, should I buy like a cheap pair or should I buy a relatively good pair that fits me very well? And I decided on the latter, where I think I spent I think like $250 on it. But this pair of boots is going to last me for at least five to 10 years. So, that’s how I justified that cost. And then my skis, I got them for a hundred dollars used, and I can wax it myself and sharpen it myself.

32:17 Selena: So, I save another 50 to a hundred dollars there for tuning. This year, I think the ski pass I’m planning to get is like $750, which is very expensive for just, I know it’s only one mountain which is Alta. And it’s a lot of money, but we enjoyed skiing at Alta the most. So, why don’t we just only go to Alta compared to all the other places that we already visited and went for a few days? So, we decided to spend a little bit more so we can ski the place that we actually want to ski.

32:51 Emily: So, how much would you say that average like monthly/year category comes out to?

32:58 Selena: I would say about like $100-200 if it’s like spread out throughout the whole year. Because these purchases are kind of random at random times, because they’re not common occurrences.

Handling Irregular Expenses

33:11 Emily: Yeah. You mentioned when we were chatting before the interview started that you don’t use a system of targeted savings accounts, which is something I suggest for like a budgeting way to handle these like irregular expenses. So, why don’t you tell us how you do handle these irregular expenses?

33:28 Selena: I don’t think I personally plan for it. It’s more of like, because I already set aside money for my Roth and then like my savings, I’m good with my savings right now where I don’t feel like I need to contribute more. Because I already like set aside money for rent, groceries, Roth, and everything else. I know that I have this budget already that I can just spend money on. Because like I have the savings where I don’t touch it. That’s like my rain day fund. And then I have my checking account where it’s like more than enough for like really big purchases. And the checking account is the only account that I really touch throughout the whole month. And basically whatever is in that account, I can use because I already did everything beforehand.

34:23 Emily: I see. So, if I can express that in my own words, you know, you have your investing goals going on, you have your savings set, you have a need to draw down from savings that’s more like sort of emergency or like longer-term savings. And then you have your checking account, and just by glancing at your checking account, you can see how much money is sort of built up there. Because it sounds like you know, you’re living beneath your means in a sense of every single month you’re probably building up some buffer, more buffer in that checking account. And then occasionally you’ll have like these larger drawdowns if you have like a big purchase to make. But just by looking at the balance, you can see whether or not you have money available for a larger purchase. And you, it seems like, sort of naturally think about the course of a year.

35:03 Emily: You know, you mentioned earlier, oh you do these activities in summer, you do skiing and snowboarding in the winter, so you know you’re going to have some larger expenditures, maybe at the beginning of those seasons, but it’s something you can see coming. It sounds like a lot of this is coming intuitively to you or it’s something you’ve practiced very naturally for years. Whereas like I get very like analytical and like spreadsheety about this because I’m not like naturally that way. Like I would just spend money if it was available to me. So, I have to like hide it from myself to make sure I don’t spend it, right? Until the time comes when I do.

35:36 Selena: Mm-Hmm <Affirmative> that’s fair. And also, because I spend like the extra money for nicer items for my gear, these are one-time purchases for the next five to 10 years. So, like I would say last year was quite an expensive year for me because I bought a lot of new gear. I bought a bike, I bought skis, I bought boots and then like all the equipment, all the clothing that comes with it. But the thing is, I did not need to spend any of that this year because I already made that purchase. So like yeah, like sure I already saved on money, and the only thing I need to really buy now is just like ski passes, which are very expensive but it’s the only thing I need to buy. I don’t need to buy anything else.

36:21 Emily: Yeah. So really, that like, we called it a gear category earlier. I would actually just, leveling that up, it’s basically just entertainment. It’s just your flavor of entertainment, which is going to be buying ski passes and stuff like that. Because you really did the gear purchasing, you know, in the past as you just said. And going forward it’s just going to be like access to the, you know, places you want access to.

Note About Transportation

36:40 Emily: Well, this just sounds fantastic. Do you want to add a fifth expense this list, or do you want to stop there?

36:48 Selena: I don’t have any other expenses, maybe gas but <laugh>.

36:53 Emily: Well yeah, I was going to say we didn’t have any transportation expenses in this top, you know, four. So, would you put that at five, gas? Or like car insurance?

37:01 Selena: Not really, because I bike to work. So, and also, University of Utah, all the students and faculty have free access to the public transportation. So, whether it’s the bus or the TRAX system, which is like a train. And so, that’s free for all the students. And at all the places I lived in, I made sure that it was near public transportation. So, whether like I can walk to it or I can bike to a bus, which all the buses also have a bike rack on them, so I can just bike to the bus and then ride the bus to school and then I bike back home. So, because of that I don’t need to spend much money on gas besides like on weekend trips. And I would say like right now gas is like, what, $4.20 right here, I think? So, usually a tank is between like $40 to $60 for me. And I do that according to like my, you know, spreadsheets and stuff. I only do that once or twice a month. I have to say, I bike to school regardless of the rain or storm. Last year, I biked every single day to school or to work, whether it was snowing or not. Because I can always get to a bus at least.

38:25 Emily: So, it sounds like, I now see what you meant earlier when you said you were thinking of, you know, exchanging your car for one that better fits your lifestyle, because this is not a daily commute car, right? Or it is a daily commute car, but you don’t have a daily commute so you don’t need it for that purpose. You really want a car that’s going to fit your, as we were talking about earlier, the camping and the going up the mountains and so forth, all of that stuff. So actually, like the gas spending is almost really under that category that we talked about before under entertainment, because you’re using it for those weekend trips and everything and so, it’s access to the places you want access to for your entertainment purposes. Yeah.

38:58 Emily: Well, that sounds so great. Okay. Any other comments you want to make about your expenses?

39:05 Selena: So, we recently discussed the, like stipends at Utah in the department. And I would say like the rough estimate for the stipend is around $22-24K for other students. And like having that in my head, I also made sure to like kind of live within those means as well, because like, you know, the GRFP is only for three years, so therefore like if my PhD takes, you know, four or five years, I have to probably live on that stipend. So, I made sure to live within those means.

39:43 Emily: Yeah, that’s a great idea to make your fixed and larger expenses like your rent to fit within that lower stipend amount.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

39:51 Emily: Let’s go to the question that I conclude all of my interviews with, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be something that we’ve touched on already in the interview or it could be something completely new.

40:07 Selena: I think when you’re applying to schools, know your lifestyle. So for me, I, you know, got into schools that are, you know, in big cities, you know, like Washington, the Bay Area, Boston, and Philly. And all of those cities were just very high-cost living, rent-burdened, you know, places. And they didn’t have the outdoor access that I wanted. Because I know that I’m going to be, you know, going somewhere on the weekends I know that I will be. And I wanted the access to be there, whether it’s, you know, climbing or biking. And I didn’t, you know, want to live in a rent-burdened city. I wanted a city that, you know, fit my outdoor lifestyle. And Salt Lake was that city for me. Where, it’s getting pretty expensive, but it’s not nearly as expensive as, you know, Boston where I grew up in. And for Boston, like I needed to drive two hours up to New Hampshire if I wanted to go climb outside.

41:13 Selena: And then like, you know, all the ski mountains are, you know, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine, which are all at least a two-hour drive. And then in Salt Lake it’s a 30 to 40-minute drive with traffic up the mountains, and I have four resorts near me right now that are less than one hour away. So, there was that for me. And I think while like the lab and the project is very important, the most you spend your time on is you know, your life outside of the lab. And I think it’s very important to be happy outside. Because I know that I need to be active for me to be happy. And I think people need to take that into consideration when picking grad schools. Because I’ve seen many of my friends that are, you know, very sad in the cities because they can’t really do anything, or things that they want to like back in undergrad going outside and stuff. So, that’s what I recommend.

42:11 Emily: Obviously, you know that I love this advice so much of really as you said, knowing yourself, knowing your values. I think your, like joy in your lifestyle has come across so clearly as we’ve been talking through how you break down your budget. Because your budget does reflect what your values are and what you want to be spending your time and your energy on. Of course, work is part of that and you chose a great university to go to. But as you said, work is actually a relatively small <laugh> fraction of how we spend our time. And so, what you’re doing outside of that is going to have a huge impact on your quality of life. And so, I’m just so pleased to hear this advice from you, and I I hope that a lot of, you know, whoever is listening to this who’s a prospective graduate student will really take that to heart and think critically to themselves about what they want their life to look like in graduate school, and hopefully apply to some places that are going to be able to, you know, offer them that lifestyle.

43:06 Emily: And in your case, you’ve paired it of course with also having a fantastic fellowship that pays you, I’m assuming above, you know, what the base stipend would be in your department, and so forth. And so, you really got kind of the best of both worlds of having like a decently high stipend in an okay cost-of-living area and getting to do all these other fantastic things with your time. So, I’ve just been so pleased to hear about your lifestyle. So, thank you so much for volunteering to come on the podcast, and it’s really been just a joy to talk to you!

43:36 Selena: Thank you for having me! I enjoyed my time here.

Outtro

43:43 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

How This Grad Student Saves Nearly 40% of Her Stipend in a High Cost of Living Area

September 26, 2022 by Meryem Ok Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Janelle Coleen Dela Cueva, a rising second year graduate student in structural engineering at UCSD. Janelle breaks down her budget, including her largest four expenses and aggressive investing goals. Janelle’s gross stipend is approximately $2,500 per month, and she is able to save almost 40% of it due to subsidized university housing and strong habits that minimize her variable expenses. She still lives a comfortable life with weekly eating out, frequent international travel, and car ownership.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

  • Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School (PF for PhDs Workshop)
  • PF for PhDs S13E3 Show Notes
  • PF for PhDs S11E1: This Grad Student’s Defensive Financial Planning Paid Off During the Pandemic (Money Story with Maya Gosztyla)
  • PF for PhDs Speaking Engagements
  • Emily’s E-mail
  • PF for PhDs S2E9: How to Make Money without Working: Credit Card Rewards and 529s (Money Story with Seonwoo Lee)
  • PF for PhDs S7E8: This Grad Student Travels for Free by Churning Credit Cards (Money Story with Julie Chang)
  • Skyscanner
  • Skiplagged
  • Momondo
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List (Access Advice Document)
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub (Show Notes)
Image for S13E3: How This Grad Student Saves Nearly 40% of Her Stipend in a High Cost of Living Area

Teaser

00:00 Janelle: I have a week off this summer. So, I want to spend that in Costa Rica around August. And then in December, I hope to visit family in the Philippines and Thailand. So, I will be traveling there for December.

Introduction

00:26 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 13, Episode 3, and today my guest is Janelle Coleen Dela Cueva, a rising second-year graduate student in structural engineering at UCSD. Janelle breaks down her budget, including her largest four expenses and aggressive investing goals. Janelle’s gross stipend is approximately $2,500 per month, and she is able to save almost 40% of it due to subsidized university housing and strong habits that minimize her variable expenses. She still lives a comfortable life with weekly eating out, frequent international travel, and car ownership.

01:35 Emily: I have a new workshop available exclusively for prospective graduate students! It’s called Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School, and it comprises twelve modules that I will release throughout the 2023 application and admissions season. The modules that are available to join right now are:

  • Funding Models for Graduate School
  • Why and How to Apply for Fellowships
  • Your Financial Vision for Graduate School, and
  • Stipends vs. Cost of Living

Each module comes with a video on the subject matter, a private homework exercise to further explore the material, a reflection exercise that you share with me, and invitations to upcoming live discussion and Q&A calls with me. To read more about and purchase any of the currently available Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School modules, go to PFforPhDs.com/setyourselfup/. I know that this material is invaluable for prospective graduate students, so if you are in contact with any, please share the link with them! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s13e3/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Janelle Coleen Dela Cueva.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:02 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today. Janelle Coleen Dela Cueva. She is a rising second-year graduate student in structural engineering at the University of California in San Diego. I also live in the San Diego area, North County. So, this is a local conversation for me. And today we are doing a Budget Breakdown, which we have not done in a while. So, Janelle will share with us her top five expenses as well as her financial goals and so forth. So, I’m really going to enjoy this conversation. Janelle, will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

03:31 Janelle: Okay. So again, you know, my name is Janelle. I’m a rising second-year PhD student. I’m going to be doing that in the fall. Currently, my major is structural engineering with a focus on aerospace structures. I live in the San Diego La Jolla area in grad housing, and I have a roommate in my household. My income on a monthly basis is $2,510. And my position would be a GSR, so graduate student researcher.

Investment Goals

04:11 Emily: I was so impressed when you wrote in that you have major investment goals going on, as well as just managing your expenses, you know, in a high cost of living area on not the biggest stipend. Tell us about these investment goals that you have.

04:27 Janelle: Yes. Okay. So, for my investment goals, I have multiple goals, one of which is retirement. And that, you know, includes a Roth IRA and contributions to that monthly. And then a second goal would be to buy a house or maybe start a business. And so, I keep a separate investment fund for that specific goal.

04:51 Emily: Okay. So, you sort of have two locations for your assets. One is inside a Roth IRA, and one is in a taxable type investment account, just a normal investment account.

04:59 Janelle: Yes. A brokerage.

05:01 Emily: Yes. Let’s talk more about both of those. How much money are you putting towards that Roth IRA on a monthly or yearly basis?

05:08 Janelle: I am maxing out my Roth IRA at a $500 contribution every month.

05:14 Emily: Wow. So impressive. Something I never managed to do when I was in graduate school, even though the maximum was lower at that time, I was never able to max out. So, that is awesome. What inspired you to reach for that goal so early in life?

05:28 Janelle: I don’t know. I think I felt that everybody was working, and outside of a PhD, everybody was working in industry and I just felt this need to catch up as like a little bit of pressure to catch up with everybody. And so, I started saving a lot more money.

05:47 Emily: Okay. So, you’re kind of looking at your peers who didn’t take the grad school route and saying to yourself, okay, what can I do to sort of keep on track with what they’re doing?

05:56 Janelle: Yes.

05:56 Emily: Okay. That makes sense. And what about this other brokerage account? How much money are you contributing there? What are you investing in?

06:04 Janelle: For this other brokerage account, I invest around $423. It’s a very specific number, and the brokerage includes you know, dividend stocks and crypto.

06:19 Emily: Alright. What’s with the specific number? Is that just based on what you had in your budget, or is that tied to some other larger goal?

06:27 Janelle: This number is just what works in the budget. I just had some extra cash when I, you know, subtracted everything out.

Short-Term Financial Goals

06:35 Emily: Yeah. Well, that’s incredible. I mean, investing, going on, you know, close to a thousand dollars a month on a grad student stipend. Wow. We are going to find out in a moment how you’re doing that. Are there any other financial goals that you’re working on right now, or maybe financial goals that you’re not working on so that you can do these investment goals?

06:52 Janelle: I have two other financial goals that are short-term. So, I have an emergency fund, and I also have a vacation fund. And the vacation fund is about $200 a month. And the emergency fund, I stopped contributing because I reached my goal, but it was about three month’s worth of living expenses.

07:19 Emily: Yeah. Perfect. I know you’ve had some exposure in the past to my like eight-step like financial plan. It sounds like you’re working at least a few of those steps. I don’t know if you had that idea beforehand or you got it from me, but either way, I’m really happy that you are working that plan. So yeah, for now your emergency fund is full. If you have an emergency and have to deplete it a bit, that’ll become a goal again, it sounds like to, you know, contribute until it’s back up to that three-month level.

07:43 Janelle: Yes. And then once that occurs, it will eat away at the vacation fund. So, it’s either/or.

#1 Largest Expense: Rent

07:50 Emily: Gotcha. Okay. Well, I think we’re ready to talk about your top five largest expenses every month. So, let’s start with the largest one, the number one largest expense. What is that?

08:01 Janelle: My largest expense is rent.

08:03 Emily: Yeah, no surprise there.

08:05 Janelle: It’s really high <Laugh>.

08:06 Emily: How much are you spending on rent?

08:09 Janelle: The rent bill for my apartment is $1380, but I pay half of that at $690, because I found a roommate.

08:23 Emily: So, when you say roommate, like how big is your apartment? Is it a one-bedroom studio? Is it two bedrooms? How large are we talking?

08:30 Janelle: It’s a two-bedroom apartment with one restroom, but the restroom is in two rooms. So, one for showering and one for using the restroom.

08:40 Emily: Gotcha. Okay. So like a two-bedroom, one-bath situation. So, a pretty normal kind of thing to share with a single roommate. So, the way you phrased that, it sounded like this apartment is yours, but you have found someone to share it with, is that right?

08:55 Janelle: Yes. So, the entire lease is under my name and I got a two-bedroom because it had a lot of space, but I really looked for a roommate to cover the second or like half the rent.

09:10 Emily: Yeah, absolutely. And is your roommate another graduate student or someone else?

09:15 Janelle: My roommate is somebody else. She went to undergrad with me, so I knew her, but she doesn’t go to UCSD.

09:23 Emily: I always find it like, sort of interesting to investigate for me, like how graduate student housing works. Like who’s allowed to live there and so forth. It sounds like you, as the graduate student, then the lease is under your name, but you can, you know, sublease to whoever you like. Is that right?

09:38 Janelle: Yes.

60% Rent Hike at UCSD

09:38 Emily: Okay. Well, honestly though, a two-bedroom place for, I think you said $1380 a month is really not that bad. Like, I mean, how do you feel about that price?

09:50 Janelle: I feel that it’s not bad given the rising cost of rent in the area and just in California in general. I got really lucky with this rent because I signed up for it before UCSD got the 60% hike in rent.

10:12 Emily: Yes. We heard about this actually back in season 11, episode one with Maya Gosztyla, who is another UCSD graduate student. She also was saying that she had graduate student housing at a relatively low price, but she sort of told us as part of that interview, actually, I think, as a follow-up from the interview that this price hike was coming. So, can you give us an update on that? It sounds like you said you got in before the price hike, but what’s going on for other students?

10:38 Janelle: For other students, the price hiked a month after I signed my lease. So, I signed the lease for August, and the month after, September, the price hiked 50%. And it was because San Diego passed a rent control law, and that law went into effect this year in 2022. So, UCSD increased the rent by 60% just in time before this law went into effect.

11:08 Emily: I see. So, kind of on their side as the landlord, they’re seeing that in the future, their rent hikes are going to be limited. So they got all the rents up to market rate or closer to market rate in advance of that. So, sort of a perverse effect of that law, I would imagine.

11:23 Janelle: Yes. I wouldn’t say it was market rate for the apartments that they’re renting out, but on top of that, they are also increasing the rent to 3% every year, which is the maximum that they can increase rent every year from now on. And for my rent, it’s not into effect yet, but next month it will be going up to $1450, I think.

11:51 Emily: Gotcha. But you expect your rent, it sounds like is locked in with that 3% annual increase for as long as you stay in this current lease, right? As long as you stay with the apartment.

12:01 Janelle: Yes.

12:02 Emily: Okay. And do you have any plans? Like, do you, as of now plan to stay there for the rest of your PhD?

12:07 Janelle: Yes. I plan to stay here for the rest of my PhD, because the apartments outside of UCSD are much more expensive.

12:16 Emily: Yeah. So, I understand you have experience with this, right? Because you also went to undergrad at UCSD and you were not living in graduate housing as an undergraduate student. So, can you talk about what you were paying even, you know, a year or so ago?

12:28 Janelle: Yes. It’s less than, but the living situation is better. I paid $400 a month for my last apartment as an undergrad, but I shared the room with two other people, so it was a triple and then there was another room in that apartment with one person. So four of us lived in that apartment. One room was a triple, one was a single.

12:55 Emily: Wow. Okay. So, inexpensive, but definitely a trade-off there in terms of privacy and ability to concentrate and all of that stuff. So, yes. A better living situation for you now. Alright. So, it doesn’t sound like the strategy of getting in before price hike is replicable at this point. Unless you find, like your roommate has with you, a roommate who is locked in under this lower, like prior agreement. Other than that, all these new leases are going to be quite a bit more expensive.

13:23 Janelle: Yes. It was incredibly lucky.

#2 Largest Expense: Food

13:26 Emily: Yeah. Alright. What is your number two expense?

13:31 Janelle: My number two expense would be food. I aim to do $200 a month on food, groceries, and meal prepping, but I always go over that from eating out.

13:46 Emily: Okay. So $200 per month is like approximately your grocery cost. And then you have some additional costs for eating out on top of that.

13:54 Janelle: Yes.

13:54 Emily: Well, still, you know, that’s not terribly a lot of money for a single person. Can you tell us some of the strategies that you’re using around keeping that cost down?

14:05 Janelle: Yes. So, on a, you know, 2000 adult calorie diet, I try to shop, you know, as healthy as possible. So, produce is actually not that expensive. And then on Sundays, I meal prep enough meals for the entire week, and that level of like planning obviously helps me save a lot of money.

Meal Prepping Helps Save Money

14:34 Emily: Mm-Hmm <Affirmative>. How does it do that?

14:37 Janelle: So, when I meal prep ahead of time, it stops me from eating out all of a sudden, and eating out because I’m hungry and I don’t have food. So, it takes the convenience out of eating out. Or, you know, post-meeting or, you know, going to a restaurant near me. And this also helps with, you know, nutrition goals.

15:04 Emily: Yeah. Tell us a little bit more about like what you’re eating when you do these meal preps.

15:08 Janelle: I eat pasta and, you know, side of vegetables with some sort of protein, sometimes beef or chicken that I prepared in bulk.

15:23 Emily: Yeah. So, that’s like a lunch or a dinner. Do you take this food, I presume, you take this food to campus for lunches? What’s your like sort of rhythm of eating?

15:34 Janelle: Yeah. So, in the morning, I eat a bagel, so that’s breakfast, and I take a packed lunch to school and that’s lunch. And then in the evening, I do another packed meal prep at home. So, I can eat three meals a day. But this level of planning, it gets old when you eat the same thing over and over again. But what helps is that I try to plan out three different types of recipes on a Sunday and then just cook them all in bulk and then eat them throughout the week.

16:12 Emily: I see. So, like, even for instance, for your dinners, you have like, like three different dinners that you’re sort of rotating through? Or are you saying three different meals, like breakfast, lunch, and dinner?

16:22 Janelle: Yeah, for dinner, I have three different types of food that I cycle through. And then for lunch, I do the same thing just based on what I’m feeling. I have three different meals to choose from.

16:33 Emily: Gotcha. I’m always fascinated by this like meal prep process, which I’ve never like, sort of examined it, but I’ve never like fully devoted myself to it. So, I’m always really curious when other people are doing it successfully. So, thanks for those details.

Commercial

16:49 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2022-2023 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/speaking/ or simply email me at emily@PFforPhDs.com to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

#3 Largest Expense: Car

18:11 Emily: Okay. What is your number three expense?

18:15 Janelle: My third expense would probably be gas.

18:19 Emily: Yeah. So, let’s talk about your transportation situation. So, it sounds like you own a car.

18:23 Janelle: Yes.

18:24 Emily: Is it paid off?

18:25 Janelle: The car is paid off, so paying off the car is no longer an issue. So, this gas expense is $150 a month, or I guess not just gas, but car expenses is $150 a month. $70 goes towards the insurance, and the rest of it goes towards gas, but gas prices have been increasing a lot. So, I’ve been opting for you know, walking and taking the bus.

Why Own a Car?

19:00 Emily: Okay. But you do own a car. So like, let’s talk about that decision, like in the first place. Is it an option for you at all to not own a car, like maybe some of your peers do? Or like, why do you own a car?

19:13 Janelle: I own a car because my family lives in Los Angeles, and I think it’s really important for me to visit them, you know once every two weeks. Genuinely, I don’t need a car. And over time, I’ve really reflected on, maybe this is not a good expense to have because I can take the bus everywhere here in San Diego, and I can walk to school.

19:43 Emily: Hmm. Okay. So, it’s really just those trips to LA that are like the reason that you still own the car.

19:49 Janelle: Yes.

19:49 Emily: And the gas price, like the gas cost is like all for those trips.

19:53 Janelle: Yes. Yes. It’s all from those trips.

19:56 Emily: Yeah. I’m very familiar with this as well, because as I said, we live in North San Diego County and we have relatives in Orange County who we go to visit with some frequency. And we use our car for other things, but that’s one of the major reasons why we choose to have one. But like you, ours is paid off. The insurance cost is not very high. And so it’s like, oh, okay, well, yeah, you could, in your case, trade off the $150 per month car expense for maybe some increased costs of like public transit or however you’re going to be getting up to LA instead. Maybe that’s also public transit. But yeah, I don’t know. It seems like a small line item to me in the first place.

20:33 Janelle: Yes.

Alternatives to Car Ownership

20:33 Emily: Yeah. So, you feel good about the car ownership?

20:37 Janelle: Not necessarily. I think I could find a way to go to LA without the car. There’s a UCSD ride share Facebook group that I used to use in undergrad where it’s $20 a seat to LA and back to San Diego. And, you know, I feel that the car was a very frivolous expense.

21:00 Emily: Hmm. So, when did you acquire the car?

21:03 Janelle: I acquired it last year, around April.

21:10 Emily: So, April, 2021. So like, just before your graduation from college?

21:14 Janelle: Yes.

21:15 Emily: Okay. Interesting. Okay. Well, I’m glad it’s at least on your mind of like a debate, and good for other UCSD students or maybe other students in the San Diego area to know like, Hey, like you can set up your life. It’s okay to let go of a car if you really don’t need it. So, cool. Give us an update on whether you decide to keep it, or if you decide to sell it. I guess it’s a good time to be selling if you decide do that.

21:35 Janelle: It is. It is really good for a used car.

#4 Expense: Miscellaneous

21:37 Emily: Yeah. Okay. Well, what’s your number four expense?

21:42 Janelle: Yeah. My number four expense is just general necessities, clothing, and you know, recreation stuff. I put them all in the same line item, so clothing and going out to do activities are under the same item, which is $200.

22:04 Emily: So, that sort of general like spending money kind of line item, like as long as you keep, it’s all sort of discretionary in a sense that like you could spend it this month, you could spend it next month, but as long as you keep it within 200, like you’re good. You’re meeting your budget goals.

22:19 Janelle: Yes. That $200 encompasses like a lot of random things. As long as it’s like an item or it’s for recreation, for example, buying clothes or buying random medication at CVS. And it also includes, you know, let’s say I want to do a fun rec, going to the park to go rock climbing would probably also be in there.

22:46 Emily: Okay. Yeah. So, like pocket money sort of thing.

22:50 Janelle: Yes.

22:50 Emily: Yeah. That sounds great. And good on you for, you know, limiting yourself to this certain, I sort of think of it as like guilt-free money. Like as long as I stay within this boundary, I can spend it however I want. I don’t want to feel guilty about it at all. I like that, like budgeting sort of in that sense, when I first started doing that, giving myself permission to spend and not like overanalyze. Like, does this, you know, help me meet my goals or not, or whatever, whatever. I knew as long as I stayed within this boundary, I could like, feel good about any purchase that I wanted to make. So, I really like that kind of line item.

23:20 Janelle: Yes.

23:21 Emily: Alright. And your number five line item. What’s that?

23:24 Janelle: My number five line item, I think that’s it. I think it just goes savings, rent, vacation, groceries, transport, and recreation. There’s not a lot to fit in a $2,500 paycheck.

Vacation/Emergency Fund

23:38 Emily: True. Because we already got down to the miscellaneous spending. Well, let’s talk a little bit more about like that vacation fund. I think you said it was $200 a month, is that right?

23:47 Janelle: Yes. Yes. It’s $200 a month. And in a given year, it goes to like $2,500, honestly. Sometimes, it eats away at the emergency fund, which is a trade-off, but that vacation fund has let me travel to 10-plus countries by myself. It doesn’t seem like a lot, the $200 a month, but it can buy so much outside of California.

24:14 Emily: Yeah. So, going to 10 countries. Over how many years did you do that?

24:20 Janelle: Okay. So, I started at the end of my sophomore year. So, I guess from now maybe three, three and a half years.

24:29 Emily: Yeah. Okay. So, over three years, has the budget line item stayed at about $200 that whole time?

24:36 Janelle: Yes.

24:37 Emily: Okay, so we’re talking $7200, $7500 total, and you visited 10 countries.

24:44 Janelle: Yes.

24:45 Emily: How did you do that?

24:48 Janelle: Yeah, this is very difficult to say. I guess I plan it ahead of time with like a cost analysis, very comprehensive and all of the, you know, food every day, accommodation every night, and then plane tickets. But the cost of living outside of California, everywhere else in the world is a lot cheaper. So, if you think about it, if you’re spending $400 a month, you know, feeding yourself here in California. That goes a long way somewhere else. Where, for example, I stayed in Vietnam for I think two weeks, and per night, I stayed at a hostel. And even private rooms would be $10 a night, but a hostel where I shared the dorm with other people would be $3 a night. And then food every day was less than 10 bucks a day.

Travel Hacking

25:48 Emily: Yeah. Well, you still have the expense of getting there though. So like, are you doing travel hacking or are you paying cash for flights? How does that work?

25:56 Janelle: Oh, okay. I just started doing travel hacking. So, there’s this thing called credit training. If you keep up a good credit score, you can sign up for credit cards that give you cash rewards for traveling. And then once you obtain those rewards, you can cancel your credit card at the expense of your credit score. So, if you have any long-term goals like buying a house, obviously don’t credit churn your credit score. But given that credit churning that I started doing just this year to obtain a new credit card for traveling, after the period passed where the score deducted, I think around 20 to 30 points, I was still able to bring it up to 780 by keeping up monthly payments and being very responsible with that credit card and not, you know, spending credit that I don’t have in cash.

26:57 Emily: I love the strategy of travel hacking. We’ve had a couple of previous guests on the podcast, Seonwoo Lee and Julie Chang, and we’ll have those links in the show notes, who have talked about their systems in detail. Now, those were both pre-pandemic interviews, I think. Or I think Julie’s was like in the pandemic, but she was talking about like pre-pandemic strategies. I’m just like getting back into this myself, because we took a big pause from travel hacking. One, because the pandemic, and two, because we were buying a house and so we didn’t want to be messing around with our credit scores, but like since closing on the house, we’ve sort of been dipping our toe back into it. And it’s so fun. And I’m trying to think about like our, you know, 2023 and what trips we want to do then. Like, what’s coming up for you? Do you have any trips planned right now?

27:39 Janelle: Yes, I actually have, hopefully, I haven’t asked my boss yet <laugh> but my PI, I want to. I have a week off this summer, so I want to spend that in Costa Rica around August and then in December, I hope to visit family in the Philippines and Thailand. So, I will be traveling there for December. Another travel hack that I would like to add in. If you open Google incognito mode and then search up the flights through Skyscanner or the Skiplagged website or the Momondo website and compare all three, you can find generally the cheapest ticket. And so, the cheapest day to fly is Tuesday. It’s hundreds of dollars cheaper to fly on Tuesday than any other day. And then the cheapest day to buy the tickets are between 6:00 AM on Saturday to noon on Saturday.

28:42 Emily: Alright. I will be noting that and using that for my travel hacking endeavors going forward. It sounds like most of your travel is international, right? Because if your family is in like the LA area, it sounds like you’re probably not doing that much U.S. like travel, right?

28:57 Janelle: Oh yeah. It’s expensive to travel in the U.S. Whether it’s gas from driving to a road trip or whether it’s flying, the accommodation here is a hundred plus a night. It’s very difficult. I think it would be a lot cheaper to just go international.

Taxes and I Bonds

29:18 Emily: Hmm. Alright. Good to know. Yes. Okay. So, we’ve kind of come to the end of our like budget breakdown. It sounds like we covered your entire budget actually just with those top five plus the goals and so forth. But I wanted to ask you about one other thing, which was taxes. Because I think you mentioned when you said your income earlier, that’s like your gross income, like before taxes are taken out. So, how do you handle taxes on your stipend?

29:42 Janelle: For taxes on my stipend, I take out $127 every month and I put it aside and do my taxes when it’s due, I think this April and then, so I have a cash fund for the taxes ready. And so, you could put that cash fund in a high-interest account, so you can earn interest on it. And it’s not just sitting and getting eaten away by inflation. But another thing is that I put it on Gemini, GUSD stablecoin, which is a crypto that is one-to-one with the U.S. dollar, but it’s a 6.9% APR. So, I earn interest on all of my funds from taxes, vacation, stuff like that.

30:31 Emily: Hmm. Interesting. Yeah, I’ve been hearing more and more about the strategy, not something I have started doing myself, but obviously very enticing with that kind of interest rate. Not guaranteed though.

30:42 Janelle: Oh, another thing I could add is there are also I bonds for the U.S. government. Right now, between I think April to July, I’m not sure about those months. Don’t quote me on that, but there is a 9.6% APR for putting in like cash deposits on I bonds at a $10,000 maximum. But the issue with that is that you have to keep it there at least five years or get a three-month penalty removed. Yes.

31:14 Emily: Exactly. One of the reasons I’ve been hearing about I bonds for, I don’t know, half a year or so now at least, but yeah, but I haven’t done it because I’m a little nervous about the like, ah, well, all this, you know, saving is saving to spend for me. Like my cash is because I intend to spend it. So, how comfortable am I, you know, tying it up somewhere else. So, anyway, it’s a good question for each individual when you’re thinking about where to house your savings and how to get it to work for you a little bit.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

31:41 Emily: Alright, Janelle, thank you so much for this budget breakdown! It’s been really fascinating for me, especially being sort of close by. I want to conclude our interview with the same question that I ask of all my guests, which is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be something that we’ve already talked about in the interview, or it could be something completely new.

32:00 Janelle: Yes. My biggest advice would be to save whatever you can, and to put those savings somewhere where the money works for you. Where it’s not just getting eaten away by inflation, whether that be stocks or crypto or, you know, bonds, but definitely save what you can because that money is going to be useful, whether it’s for an emergency or if you want to, you know, change your life.

32:32 Emily: I love it. And the other sort of flip side of like having saved money, like having savings is great for what you just mentioned. You want to make a change or, you know, you have an emergency, whatever. It’s awesome to draw on that money. But the other side of it is the act of saving forces you to create margin in your life, like you’ve done, right? So like, you’re saving almost a thousand dollars a month for the sort of more long-term things. And you also have some short-term savings going on. So like, if you needed to pivot in the short-term and something happened, like you have some margin there to be able to eat into if necessary, if something came up. And so that, like, I just love, just like we need like time margin in our life. We also need financial margin in our life and energy margin and all the rest of it, which is so hard to maintain, but you’re doing a great job with your budget and it’s been really fascinating to chat with you about it and just congratulations on all the success. And I hope that, you know, you have it continued going forward as well.

33:27 Janelle: Okay. Thank you! It’s been really nice talking to you and getting to meet you in person and I, you know, listen to you in the car, driving back here, driving to LA.

33:39 Emily: That’s good to hear. I <laugh>, I love to talk with people who have listened to the podcast before. It’s kind of a kick for me to know that we already have a relationship that’s been established a little bit. So like, we can have conversations like this, which is really fun. So, thank you so much for volunteering!

33:54 Janelle: Thank you!

Outtro

33:59 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

How to Eat Well on a Grad Student Budget

June 28, 2021 by Meryem Ok

In this episode, Emily interviews Jen from the Budget Epicurean (formerly College-Approved Food) about her experience as a grad student. Jen finished a master’s and spent several years in a PhD program, but decided to leave before completing her dissertation. They discuss her reasons for leaving and the career she built and what role finances played in the decision. In the second half of the interview, Jen gives her best tips for eating well on a grad student budget, including curating go-to meals and ingredients, where to shop, how to track prices, and what kitchen appliances are the best bang for your buck.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

  • The Budget Epicurean (Jen’s Blog)
  • Budget Epicurean (Twitter)
  • Meal Prepping Has Benefitted This Prof’s Time, Money, Health, and Stress Level (Money Story with Dr. Brielle Harbin)
  • PF for PhDs Community
  • The Automatic Millionaire: A Powerful One-Step Plan to Live and Finish Rich (Book by David Bach)
  • Emily’s E-mail (for Book Giveaway Contest)
  • PF for PhDs: Podcast Hub
  • How Finances During Grad School Affected This PhD’s Career Path (Money Story with Dr. Scott Kennedy)
  • The Academic Society (Emily’s Affiliate Link)
  • Budget Bytes
  • PF for PhDs: Subscribe to Mailing List
grad student food

Teaser

00:00 Jen: I almost tripled my income within two years of leaving the program. It was very exciting to get those paychecks and say, oh wow, this is what real money feels like.

Introduction

00:17 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is Season 9, Episode 4, and today my guest is Jen from Budget Epicurean. Jen finished a master’s and spent several years in a PhD program but decided to leave before completing her dissertation. We discuss her reasons for leaving and the career she built, plus what role finances played in the decision. In the second half of the interview, Jen gives her best tips for eating well on a grad student budget, including curating go-to meals and ingredients, where to shop, how to track prices, and what kitchen appliances are the best bang for your buck. I have found through facilitating my workshop Hack Your Budget that early-career PhDs are highly interested in food spending. I poll the attendees about what budget category they most want to discuss, and food always comes out on top, plus the vast majority of the frugal tips submitted are related to food. I think this is because grocery spending is typically the largest variable expense category in a grad student or postdoc budget. It’s quite gratifying to try out a new frugal strategy and immediately see the effects on your spending. In fact, Season 4 Episode 13 with Dr. Brielle Harbin was devoted to the subject of meal planning, and I almost always interrogate my budget breakdown guests on their cooking and food shopping habits.

01:51 Emily: Keep in mind, though, that your frugal journey should not end or even necessarily start with food spending. I am a firm believer that you should re-evaluate your large, fixed expenses, such as housing and transportation, before any other categories. It may take a long time, a lot of research, and even some money up front to reduce your spending in one of those areas, but once you do make a reduction, that lower spending level is locked in indefinitely and requires no conscious action by you to maintain. That is the big advantage of reducing fixed expenses first. However, I also love the idea of using frugal strategies in the kitchen to start what I call a frugal stack, which is when you use variable expense reductions to leverage yourself into fixed expense reductions. If you would like to learn more about strategic frugality and frugal stacking, check out the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community. I taught these strategies as part of two monthly challenges held near the end of 2020. I also devoted a chapter of my ebook The Wealthy PhD to frugality; it discusses the philosophy of frugality and gets into really nitty-gritty strategies for each one of your budget categories. I hope you will join us this month inside the Personal Finance for PhDs Community PFforPhDs.community.

Book Giveaway Contest

03:30 Emily: Now onto the book giveaway contest! In June 2021 I’m giving away one copy of The Automatic Millionaire: A Powerful One-Step Plan to Live and Finish Rich by David Bach, which is the Personal Finance for PhDs Community Book Club selection for August 2021. Everyone who enters the contest during June will have a chance to win a copy of this book. If you would like to enter the giveaway contest, please rate and review this podcast on Apple Podcasts, take a screenshot of your review, and email it to me at emily at PFforPhDs dot com. I’ll choose a winner at the end of June from all the entries. You can find full instructions at PFforPhDs.com/podcast. The podcast received a review recently titled “Preparation and survival!” The review reads: “Excellent resource to get prepared for graduate education and to navigate it. I think the specifics of your personal situation and institution will always vary. So some things you take with a grain of salt, however, the biggest asset of the pod is the variety of people interviewed. People from different backgrounds and programs and the amount of topics covered. Most of these topics are discussed behind closed doors and in private, but this podcast makes you remember you’re not alone and there are way more people out there navigating difficult situations like you.” Thank you to this reviewer, and I fully agree that the strength of this podcast lies with the guests! I really appreciate my guests being transparent about this taboo topic. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Jen from Budget Epicurean.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

05:10 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast today Jen from Budget Epicurean. And we kind of ran into each other on Twitter. And I realized that Jen would have a lot to say to us on the podcast. So that’s why I invited her on. And she is both a former grad student and, as you can tell by the name of her blog, Budget Epicurean, has a lot of content to offer us on managing a budget with respect to groceries, with respect to cooking, food spending. So we’re going to learn about both these things. Why did Jen leave her graduate program, and then what are the food tips that she can give us for, you know, eating well on a budget? So I’m really excited for this interview. Jen, will you please introduce yourself to the audience a little bit further?

05:59 Jen: Sure. Thanks Emily. Yeah. I was a graduate student for a very long time. My mom’s a nurse, my dad’s a chemist, so I’ve always been interested in science and knew from a young age that I wanted to go to grad school, get a PhD, run a lab. So that was kind of my path. And I got my undergraduate degree in biology and then I pursued a master’s degree right after, also in biology, and then got into a PhD program in genetics which was wonderful. I loved being in school and learning, but I realized after about a year of talking with the other graduate students, the other postdocs, and even some of my advisors who said funding kept getting tighter and tighter. Tenure-track jobs were almost non-existent anymore. And it just seemed like a big struggle. So it took me about two and a half years to decide, it was a really hard decision, but I did not complete the PhD program. And we can get more into that later. But throughout all this time, I was also blogging because I love food and cooking. So it started out in undergrad as College Approved Food, that most of it you can make in like a dorm room. And it’s just kind of grown from there and morphed over time into the Budget Epicurean as my personal cooking skills and interests expanded.

What Were Your Career Aspirations at the Start of Grad School?

07:24 Emily: One thing I love about blogging, and I used to blog about personal finance, is that you have this wonderful record to look back on, you know, years later. When you can’t quite remember as well, you know, what was going on day-to-day, you have that blog. So it’s so fun that you were focused on food for all those many years and that you have the record of it. So I want to go back to, you know, when you started graduate school, you said you were basically going straight through, undergrad, master’s, into a PhD program. What were your career aspirations? Was it definitely to have a tenure-track job or, you know, was that the only thing you were there for, or what were you thinking when you started the PhD program?

08:00 Jen: So early on, I guess I just had this dream of having my own labs and writing papers and grants and, you know, like I’d cure cancer someday or some kind of fabulous scientific discovery. It just seemed so interesting and just a thing I wanted to do. And then the more I got into it, it’s kind of, they say, you know BS is bull crap, and then MS is more crap and then PhD is just piled higher and deeper. And the longer you go, the more narrow your focus gets on your field. So you know a lot about a little. And so my ideas of big discoveries kind of just became more like fixing this one little problem that we don’t know enough about. And I think that was the further I got, the more I saw people in the end goal as like a professor, as someone running a lab and saw what their lives were. They don’t actually do the science anymore. They’re lab managers and money managers and politicians almost to a point. So I think that’s where the kind of disillusionment started.

09:19 Emily: Yeah. I think, you know, I had a similar trajectory, I would say at the beginning of grad school, like came in wanting to run my own lab, not necessarily in academia, but just to be doing research. And I realized as you did that, once you’re at the top of that, you know, hierarchy of your own lab that you are not doing the day-to-day in the research. And so I then started thinking, oh my God, I actually sort of idealized a postdoc as like the perfect job. And of course there are, you know, staff scientists, those positions can exist, although they’re not super common in academia. So for me, it was never about like academia and like the tenure-track and so forth, but rather about doing research. That was until I got sick of doing research and decided never to do it again later on. But yeah, I’m just thinking about like, I’m sure you considered this because you took a lot of time for this decision, but what were the jobs that you maybe could have had without the PhD? And did you just still have that sense of like, no, I’m going to be overeducated by that point, according to what your interests were? Was that kind of how the decision was made? That even if you didn’t stay in academia, if you finished the PhD, you would still be pigeonholed so much?

10:30 Jen: Yes. I think that ultimately is why, because I did finish a master’s program before going into a PhD program, so not everybody does that. So I had the masters already, so I knew I was that like one level above a college degree, which was, you know, good financially-speaking and did lead to the career path I’m currently in. But not wanting to go the full PhD without wanting one of those “You need a PhD to do it” jobs. I was lucky we had a group that was called careers, alternate careers in science, something like that where once a month they brought in people. So I saw a couple of different options of people who, you know, were clinical scientists in pharma and they advise drug companies or clinical illustrators for textbooks and things like that. But none of those really spoke to me. So I kind of got into that thought process of, okay, well, if I finish the PhD, then there’s nothing really at the end of this tunnel, so I should stop now.

Role of Finances in the Decision to Leave Grad School

11:31 Emily: Yeah. Again, I see myself so much in this path because when I went through the same career exploration process, I did identify a career track that I was like, well, that sounds really cool, and I do need a PhD to do it. Or not need, but you know, it’s helpful. And so I decided to keep going kind of with that in mind. And of course after I finished my PhD, I started my business and it has nothing to do with that career track or anything. So it’s just so interesting, like that can make all the difference is really seeing a career that you’re interested in. Obviously, why would you finish it if you didn’t think there was a career on the other end that needed the degree and that, you know that you were super passionate about? So what role did finances play in this decision?

12:12 Jen: So, there are definitely pros and cons to going straight through. Sometimes I kind of wish I had just taken a few years off after undergrad or after the masters to try and get a career and see if I liked it and then go back. But I think it was also helpful that I had just come out of undergrad where, you know, you’re very used to living on a low income. So going into the master’s program, I think I made $12,500 per year. Which now seems completely absurd, but this was in Ohio and my rent was only $350 a month. So it was doable.

12:47 Emily: What year was that? Or years?

12:50 Jen: 2010 to 2012.

12:53 Emily: Okay.

12:54 Jen: I believe. And it was an attic. So I was literally just living in an uninsulated attic apartment in Ohio. So, you know, my electric bill was probably almost that. But then going into the PhD now I was making 20 something in Colorado. So this is circa 2012 to 2014, something like that. And it just was getting very difficult. I was starting to think about wanting a house someday. I met my future husband there. So we’re thinking about, you know, buying a house, having a family, getting married. And we were both graduate students at the time. So even combined, we were 40 ish. So it was just really difficult to save anything or feel like, you know, you could start doing those adult things as a grad student. So that’s one of the many things we discussed was, okay, if we want to buy a house, we need more income.

High Attrition Rate Amongst Grad School Cohort

13:53 Emily: And you mentioned to me when we were preparing for this interview, that most of your friends left grad school too. Was there a pretty high attrition rate from your cohort?

14:02 Jen: Yes. we had four start and, to my knowledge, only one is still in the program. And the year after us I believe they had the same, they had four people start and only one is still in the program. And now six, seven years later the one person who stayed is still not graduated and had switched labs twice already. So.

14:28 Emily: And do you think that finances are playing a role with those decisions as well? I mean $20K a year, you know, 6, 7, 8 years ago in Colorado, not a low cost of living area, by any means. It sounds quite difficult, even as you said, in a two low-income, two low-income household combined, I still think that would be quite difficult. I’ve just been thinking a lot recently about the strain that we put–“we,” academia–puts on our young, our trainees, of the financial strain that we put on them and the effect it can have on our mental health, our career outlooks. Obviously the financial directly affecting that, even physical health because, you know, food security can be an issue. Housing security. So, yeah. Did you talk about that sort of thing with your cohort mates?

15:21 Jen: We didn’t really, I mean, we weren’t close enough to talk about the numbers and the details, right. But I know I’m the only one who stayed, I think a large part had to do with, he had a lot of family support. Family lived in the area, so he lived with them. So even though he was married and had a kid with another on the way there was, you know, no costs for housing, he had support to help watch the children, to support, to get food and things. So I think that probably helped him a lot, that, that low-income didn’t matter as much. He had that social safety net. One of the other girls who dropped out it was because she got pregnant along the way and got lucky that her husband got a pretty high-paying job about halfway through her first year. So they were comfortable enough that, you know, they said the amount that she was making wasn’t worth the stress it was putting on her. So she left and didn’t come back. So I think that if you don’t have that type of support or other income, it’s really hard to make it as a grad student.

16:22 Emily: Absolutely. It sounds like you, and you know, these other friends, you mentioned like you’re starting to kind of lift your heads up and say, what do I want the rest of my life to look like outside of my career, and what finances are needed to support that? And is grad school currently, or in the future, going to take me to that financial place that I want to get to? And you know, I’ve had a previous interview actually, we’ll link it in the show notes, with Dr. Scott Kennedy, where he talked about, you know, his aspirations initially to become a faculty member, you know, tenure-track, and just realizing as he started his family that a postdoc and, you know, an assistant professor position was not going to cut it for him and his wife and three kids and so forth.

Improved Finances and Current Career Trajectory

17:06 Emily: And so, I mean, so he changed career tracks and he’s very satisfied with that and is paid very well. But yeah, sometimes, you know, the decisions you make when you’re 22, 23, 24 years old, you’re not thinking super far, like you might be thinking decades ahead in your career, but not necessarily about how things might change in your personal life. And they can change very quickly when you’re in your twenties. And a lot of people are, you know, forming families and so forth. So yeah, I just, I find that really interesting. So, you know, what career have you had after leaving your PhD program and how are your finances looking now?

17:39 Jen: Yeah. So once I had made the decision that, yes, I did need to leave. I didn’t want to just jump ship, right. I didn’t want to have zero income. So I started looking at other options and as I said earlier, having the master’s already really helped because that gave me a leg up and a lot more options beyond just, you know, being a research tech, cleaning beakers at a university somewhere. Not that that’s a bad thing. But I think it was actually through one of the people who came to talk to us. It was someone who worked for pharma as the medical monitor for clinical trials at a pharma company. And so I started looking into clinical trials, which prior to then I hadn’t really thought about. Every drug that’s approved, that’s what they have to go through. And so I looked into, you know, how does that happen?

18:27 Jen: What are the different careers you could do on the pharma side, on the site side? And I just had good timing. I found an opportunity with a research group, very close to where I was and interviewed. And even though I had no research experience, clinical research experience, I had the master’s degree. And so I convinced them that I could learn quickly and they decided to go ahead and take a chance and hire me as a research associate. And I loved it. It was the first time I ever had patient interaction with people in a clinical setting. And it was just so much fun and it was a very eye opening moment of like, this is like the thing. This is the thing I want to do.

19:08 Emily: Wow. And it sounds actually like, you know, based on, you mentioned your parents’ careers earlier, that it’s kind of an interesting melding of the two, like still doing research, but having patient interactions, like probably, yeah. They probably both do each side of those things, right?

19:21 Jen: Yes, yes. It was perfect. So I still get to read scientific papers. I still get to browse Google Scholar. It’s just, you know, looking at the background of my drugs and standard of care and being on the cutting edge of research is so much fun. So yeah, it was a very good fit. And having the masters, I think is the thing that really pushed me into it. And then once you’re in clinical research and you have years of experience, then the whole world opens up to you. So I’ve switched companies several times, moved up in the ranks and now I’m in essentially a clinical coordinator management position. And so I think doing that was an excellent choice. I don’t know that I could have done that right out of undergrad. So ultimately I’m glad it all worked out the way it did. But I almost tripled my income within two years of leaving the program. Because I mean working full-time, I think I started at like 40. So just by getting a job, a 40-hour-a-week research assistant job, I had doubled my income there. And then after I had a year of experience, I went to a different company and then I was at like 58 or something like that. So yeah, it was very exciting to get those paychecks and say, oh, wow, this is what real money feels like.

20:43 Emily: Yeah. Incredible. And that’s the thing that, you know, I often talk the income jumps that can come along the PhD process, but guess what, if you’ve been living on a grad student stipend, almost any job is going to pay you quite a bit better than that. So yeah, I’m sure that did feel incredible.

Commercial

21:02 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! This announcement is for prospective and first-year graduate students. My colleague, Dr. Toyin Alli of The Academic Society, offers a fantastic course just for you called Grad School Prep. The course teaches you Toyin’s 4-step Gradboss Method, which is to uncover grad school secrets, transform your mindset, uplevel your productivity, and master time management. I contributed a very comprehensive webinar to the course, titled “Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School.” It explores the financial norms of grad school and the financial secrets of grad school. I also give you a plan for what to focus on in your finances in each season of the year that you apply to and into your first year of grad school. If this all sounds great to you, please register at theacademicsociety.com/emily for Toyin’s free masterclass on what to expect in your first semester of grad school and the three big mistakes that keep grad students stuck in a cycle of anxiety, overwhelm, and procrastination. You’ll also learn more about how to join Grad School Prep if you’d like to go a step further. Again, that’s the academic society dot com slash e m i l y for my affiliate link for the course. Now back to our interview.

Best Tips for Eating Well on a Budget

22:30 Emily: So let’s switch focuses now and talk about the food side of things, the subject of your blog. And so I’m going to kind of let you like drive this half of the conversation, but like, what are your best tips for us in terms of shopping, cooking, whatever it is, as I said earlier, eating well on a budget?

22:45 Jen: Yeah. So I’m also lucky there. My mom is a fantastic cook, and I grew up in a household that we were just very thrifty and frugal and creative. So I got to use all of those skills to feed myself, you know, better than ramen all throughout college. So my house was always the place to go for dinner parties and game nights. And I love hosting, so I had to find ways to, you know, feed six of my grad student friends without, you know, we can’t afford $60 worth of pizza every Friday. So I think one of my best tips is to just try new things. And eventually you will find some recipes that you like, and put those on repeat. So for your standard meals, I have tons of like cheap ingredient lists and less-than-five-ingredient meals on my blog. Things like stir-fried rice. That is just infinitely possible to mix it up. You can put beans in it, you can put whatever meats are on sale in it, and whatever vegetables. It’s good with canned or frozen seasonal produce. So find those couple of recipes that are very flexible, that you almost always like, it’s easy to cook, and that saves you tons of time and money. If you just say, okay, it’s Tuesday, I’m hungry. What can I make? And you just have these like three, five things that you just know you have on hand in the house.

24:10 Emily: One of the things that you just mentioned that I thought was really key was short ingredients lists. Because I know when I started cooking, and I did not have extensive cooking experience growing up or through college. I was always on like a meal plan, so I didn’t have to really cook outside of that much. So when I started with that, I was looking at whatever, I don’t know, standard recipe at that time books. And they would have like 10, 15 ingredients for like a recipe. And it would be cool and like taste good at the end, but the work that went into handling all those different ingredients, and also just the fact that I did not have a stocked kitchen and it would be like, oh, you know, three different spices for this one, you know, meal. And they’re like several dollars each and I had to pick them up and so forth.

24:55 Emily: I realized that it was the wrong approach, looking back at it, and now I cook much, much more simple meals, usually that have usually, you know, much shorter ingredients lists. And I think that’s really a key when you’re just starting out. And yeah, like I said, your pantry is not already stocked with, you know, the sort of esoteric like spices that some fancy recipe might call for. So I really love looking at yeah, five ingredients or less, like those kinds of recipes. And I also really like the idea of having some kind of generic base kind of meal that you can then tweak and alter with, depending on what you have on hand, or as you mentioned, what’s on sale. Something that’s flexible, like a stir fry. Do you have some other examples of that? I’m thinking like salad, you know, that works too.

25:39 Jen: Yeah, for sure. Salads are a great one. You can, you know, can a corn, can of black beans, suddenly it’s Tex-Mex. If you got, you know, walnuts, cranberries, some kind of cheese, salads are great to mix it up. Whatever proteins on sale. I love chickpeas or, you know, a little flank steak. You can get those for a couple bucks, slice it up. It makes a great salad. Soups are really great. If you’re a person who likes soups that’s always a good kitchen-sink meal. Like I don’t know that I could think of anything that you couldn’t throw in a soup and make it work. Casseroles are also great. Omelets, you would be surprised at the things you can put in an omelet and make it delicious. I’ve had like leftover French fries that normally taste terrible. Chop them up and throw them in an omelet. Now they’re basically hash browns. So yeah, I love meals like that. We still have them all the time.

Time Management Tips for Food Shopping and Cooking

26:30 Emily: And so what’s another kind of suggestion, maybe on the time management side of shopping and cooking, which I know can be a real challenge for graduate students?

26:40 Jen: For sure. So again, I would start with what you like, and then branch out a little bit from there. So a list is very helpful if you’re the type of person who likes lists to keep you focused and not spend eternity at the store. Plus it’ll keep you from, you know, just being confused in front of the spice rack, like there are 7,000 things. What do I get? Like, you look at your list, you know, I need like salt, pepper, cinnamon, that’s it. So having that also keeps you from spending money because grocery stores, you know, want you to spend more money than you intended and having a list can help not do that, although I still do.

Process for Making a Grocery List

27:23 Emily: And what about when you’re making that list? Like, what’s your process for that? Like, are you looking at the circulars that are produced by, you know, I don’t know how many different grocery stores you kind of cycle through, but is that, is that another strategy that you use, like shopping multiple stores? Like, let me know how you’re doing in terms of making a list, how you do that with your budget in mind.

27:42 Jen: Yeah. So I have a number in mind that I’m trying to hit every week, right? So let’s say you only want to spend 50 to $70 a week for one person. So you should definitely look at the circulars because stores have what they call loss leaders. So it’s usually whatever’s in season or they can get a lot of, and they want to use that to get you in the store. So like it’s wintertime and cabbage is on sale and Brussels sprouts are on sale. So they’re super, super cheap per pound. So you start with those things and say, okay, what can I make with those things? I can make soup. I can roast them as a side dish. I can put them in a casserole, and just come up with some ideas for meals. And so I would then make a list of, okay, I want this thing, this thing, this thing, they’re all on sale.

28:33 Jen: Check your pantry as well. So like, you know, I have some pasta noodles still, so I’m going to make pasta one night. So I don’t need to buy that, but, oh, I don’t have any sauce. I’ll put a jar of that on the list. So between what you need that’s not in the house and what’s on sale, you can then kind of build your meal ideas around that. And then when you’re at the store, you can look around because, you know, sometimes I’ll find deals that weren’t advertised in the circular, but they have, you know, there’s like a markdown on pineapple because it didn’t sell well enough or whatever. So I’ll pick up some of that too. So I think the idea of flexible meal plans is what works best for me. I’m not like, okay, Monday I will have oatmeal and then sandwiches. And then a tuna noodle casserole. It’s more like, I’ll probably make tuna noodle casserole this week.

Using a Price Book

29:23 Emily: Another strategy that I use. So, my husband always makes fun of me. I do not know the prices of things. I don’t like look at price when I’m shopping, especially in something like a grocery store. So it’s really important for me to kind of study the prices because it’s not something that I like naturally will just absorb. Like he just naturally absorbs that. He knows the last time we bought this, we paid this. The price I see in front of me is lower or higher. That helps me know when to buy it or not, or to skip it. But I actually have to use a price book. So especially when I am, so we recently moved to a new state. And so we were kind of like, well, we don’t know what the prices here are. So we started using a price book again.

30:02 Emily: It’s not something I do all the time, but just to check out, okay, well, this is what we’re paying over here, studying the receipts, basically. This is what we paid for this food at this store. This is what we paid for this food at this store. Okay, that price is the same every week. Okay, sometimes that price is lower and sometimes it’s higher. We need to like pay attention to when it goes to this level and then we can buy it. So the price book to me is really helpful as someone who does not naturally incline to, you know, notice the prices of food to know when something is a good deal or something is not a good deal. Because for me, if it’s not going to appear on the circular, unless I have that price book, I’m not going to know if it is a good price or not a good price.

30:37 Jen: Mhm, that is an excellent point. Absolutely. And I think I’m like, I must be like your husband. I just know in my brain like, oh, last time I bought Italian dressing, it was about 1.50 and it’s, you know, 10 for 10 while on sale. That’s a dollar. So I’ll just get three of them. Should last for, you know, until the next sale comes around. But if that’s not a thing you notice then a price book is definitely a good idea. And I would suggest a price per unit as well. Because sometimes they do get you there. You assume, you know, the big package, cheaper per ounce, but maybe it’s not, maybe you should get two of the one-pound bags instead of one of the two-pound bags. And that’s one way to know for sure.

Finding Your Go-To Stores

31:17 Emily: And one strategy that I just mentioned with that was shopping multiple stores. And so I’m wondering, you’ve lived in multiple places now, someplace for your undergrad, master’s, PhD, maybe you’ve moved since then. How have you found like your go-to stores in those new areas?

31:34 Jen: So I think it’s a lot of the mental price book thing. So we did move around a lot. We’ve lived in Colorado, Connecticut, and now we’re in North Carolina. And so when I go to a new place, I usually do go to all of the grocery store options at least once just to see, you know, what’s the layout, what do the prices look like? How far is it from home? And then I kind of choose the best one based on prices and now a little convenience, because we have that wiggle room in our budget to sometimes pay a little bit more just because it’s closer. But yeah, so I would definitely recommend going to the stores, just checking things out, write down in your price book the things you commonly buy. So that’s another way that you’ll know your eating habits like, oh, I always buy chicken and spinach and milk and bread.

32:20 Jen: So those are the things you’re buying every week, even if you’re only saving 10 cents, 20 cents every week, that’s going to add up. So I usually go to our Harris Teeter because they have pretty good prices. They have regular rotating sales on things we use all the time. Then I supplement once a month, once every other month with Aldi, which is one of my favorite discount grocers. And they’re expanding, they’re in most of America by now. So they just have great super cheap prices on your common everyday staples, like canned tomatoes, canned beans. So those are my two I use most frequently.

33:01 Emily: I’m glad you mentioned that you were in North Carolina. I did not know that. I did grad school in North Carolina at Duke. And so actually when my husband and I first got married, the closest grocery store to where we lived was a Harris Teeter. So we were doing a hundred percent of our shopping at Harris Teeter, which I do not think was a good idea, especially because we were not, again, paying attention to the sales cycles and so forth. It was just, it was all about the convenience of that being like super, super close. So after we started paying attention, after I started paying attention a little bit more to the grocery prices, we mixed in Kroger in North Carolina and Costco and Aldi. And so we would not definitely hit up, you know, Kroger and Costco and Aldi every week, but it would maybe be kind of on a two-week rotation.

33:45 Emily: And yeah, another kind of vote for Aldi. I recently moved from Seattle to Southern California. There were not any Aldis in Seattle, I don’t think, that I was aware of, but there is one really close to where we live now. And so I’ve been, like, as soon as we got here and we were like, oh my gosh, there’s an Aldi again, like we are so excited to be able to go back to Aldi. So yeah, definitely that’s where we do, like, our kind of primary shopping, I would say. And then sort of supplement it with like a regular, you know, grocery supermarket kind of situation.

Tips for Meal Prepping

34:11 Emily: I asked earlier about time management and I was thinking about like, I don’t know, meal prep or like bulk cooking, batch cooking. Do you have any tips around that for someone who maybe is just cooking for themselves and has a busy schedule? I know when I was in graduate school, a big problem for me was staying on campus till, you know, post-six, post-7:00 PM and coming home hungry. And what do you do in that situation?

34:36 Jen: Yeah, absolutely. So I think as a grad student, if you don’t eat leftovers, you should start now. I think I only met one person who refused to eat leftovers and they spent way too much money on food. But that is the best way to just make sure you always have something ready. So I would say, seek out things that freeze well. Things like pasta bakes and soups and chilies, and even some casseroles, and you can make those things in bulk. And honestly for one person, that’s not very difficult. You make one pan of, you know, like a rotini bake or lasagna, and you can eat some then, have some for tomorrow, and then freeze the other half. And that’s 2, 3, 4 more meals for you. So you can start out with cheap Tupperware or even Ziploc bags. The way I do it now is not necessarily cooking whole meals, but I batch prep when I make ingredients.

35:33 Jen: So say I’m making rice for stir fry and burritos this week, and I need like a cup or two cups of rice. Well, I can cook like six or eight cups all at the same time and freeze it in Ziploc baggies. And then next time I need rice, I don’t have to cook it. It’s already made, I just pull it out of the freezer, stick it in the microwave. And that saves me 40 minutes of not having to boil rice next week. So if you’re making things like that, I would say definitely batch it and freeze it if you can.

Go-To Kitchen Appliances

36:05 Emily: And also with, you know, someone budget-conscious in mind, what are your go-to like kitchen tools or small appliances that you would say are good for facilitating the kind of things we’ve been talking about?

36:19 Jen: Yeah, for sure. It’s a little hard looking back now, now that I have the luxury of so many things in my kitchen. But I would say if you can only get one thing right now, probably a pressure cooker is my absolute favorite accessory right now. And the newer ones that are super fancy and have a million things that can do are great, but you don’t need a super fancy one. Like I have an ancient pressure cooker from my grandma and it gets the job done. But that will definitely save you time. You can cook something like a roast from frozen in 30, 40 minutes. It’s amazing. So that helps you maximize your freezer usage of foods like that, and it’ll save you money because you can make your own dried beans. My biggest problem with dried beans was that they take so long. You’ve got to soak it overnight, put it in a Crock-Pot for hours. You can take dry beans, stick it in the pressure cooker, and 40 minutes later, you’re good to go. So the price per pound of dried beans is way better than canned, and a pressure cooker makes them almost as convenient. So that would be my top one right there.

37:35 Emily: That’s a good tip. I’m like pulling out my Amazon like wishlist, like, oh, I need to add one. Because I don’t have a pressure cooker right now. Oh yeah. That sounds really. Because I have far too many times left, you know, some meat or something frozen until way too late and have to kind of scramble and remake the plan. So I mentioned, I don’t have a pressure cooker, but the appliance that I used most when I was in graduate school, and I think it was something like $40 when I received it, was a slow cooker. And I really liked that too, because it was so easy to cook in bulk, again for one person or two people. Like you can cook one meal in a slow cooker and it’s going to last you all week pretty much in terms of like taking it for lunches or whatever.

“Leftovers” Avoid the Takeout Trap

38:13 Emily: So that was my, like, when I started using that, it like completely changed my like cooking life. It made things so much easier. And I really, like we mentioned about like, you know, freezing meals and having things ready also, you know, leftovers. I don’t even like the word leftovers. I love eating leftovers, but I don’t like calling them leftovers. I feel like it’s really pejorative. Like they’re like an afterthought. No, you intentionally created food than you needed, you know, initially. And you had a plan to eat it like over time. I love that because yeah, I think a big sort of trap is being hungry and not having anything really easy to go to at that moment. Especially as I mentioned, like coming home from lab late, I remember when I was blogging at some point and I mentioned something about cooking.

38:56 Emily: Like, you know, not eating out, basically. Like not eating out for convenience. I remember I got a comment from a grad student like, well, what do you do? Because you know, when you get home from lab, like you have to be, it’s late. Like you’ve got to be hungry. And I was just like, oh, I realize I never cook at that time. I always had something already ready to go in the fridge and the freezer because yeah, I came upon that situation over and over again. And I would be tempted to grab takeout on my way home if I didn’t know that there was something there waiting for me that was appealing.

39:25 Jen: Yeah, absolutely. And, the Crock-Pot would be my second for sure. They probably are a little bit more affordable, but yeah, you can make a lasagna in a Crock-Pot. You can make a huge batch of chili or soup or casserole or cook a whole chicken and shred it up and save it for later. So yeah, just having a bag or a Tupperware you can pull out of the freezer, the refrigerator, whatever, you know, it’s eight 30 at night. You just need something before bed. That is definitely a huge time saver, huge money saver.

Find What’s Cheap Per Pound Near YOU

39:55 Emily: Do you have any other tips around budget, budget, cooking, shopping, eating?

40:00 Jen: I would say just look, I mean, there are so many resources on things that are generally cheap per pound. Take those lists, but compare them to what’s near you. Just because the internet says eggs are cheap, that might not be the case where you live. Just because, you know, carrots are supposed to be cheap, maybe they’re not in Canada, I don’t know. But find the things near you that actually are cheap per pound and just keep trying different ways to make them until you find one you like. Because if you can make your average cost per pound lower, that’s going to make your cost per meal lower. And that’s going to be much friendlier to your budget.

40:38 Emily: I have to say, I’ve been doing this recently with cabbage. I’ve been on the website, like Budget Bytes, a lot recently and noticing a lot of cabbage recipes coming up on there. So I was like, okay, I need to find a way, because I never ate cabbage earlier in my life, but yeah, that’s the one I’ve been experimenting with recently. Haven’t quite found the thing that we love yet that’s made of cabbage, but maybe I’ll try one or two more before I give up.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

41:01 Emily: Okay. Well Jen, thank you so much for giving this wonderful interview. As I ask all my guests at the close of our interviews, what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD?

41:13 Jen: I would say, learn all you can about investing, but then do it. I spent far too many years just reading, reading, reading, but never actually opened an IRA or a Roth. I had a savings account, you know, but it wasn’t much. And even if all you can do is $10 a month, you know, at least I would have had something building, because time is your biggest ally and don’t let it slip away. Just do it. Open it. That’s what I told my sister. She’s six years younger than me, and she probably already has more than me in her retirement account. So just do it.

41:51 Emily: Yeah, that is perfect advice. I see the same thing with many, many people who come to me, come to my material that they know kind of what they’re supposed to do. They’ve been reading about it, but that step of getting off the sidelines and doing it is really where they get kind of held up and tripped up. And I guess my message to like that same audience is like, you don’t have to be perfect from the start. You don’t have to have the perfect investing strategy figured out. It’s much better to get started imperfectly and figure it out as you go along than do everything perfect right from the start. However, the start is two, three years later than it could have been if you had just been willing to, you know, take the leap. So I’m really glad you mentioned that, it’s yeah, a very, very common problem.

42:35 Emily: I don’t know. Maybe it’s a PhD thing, like a grad student thing, like wanting to do the research and wanting to be right and wanting to not mess up. And I certainly understand that. I actually did mess up when I first opened my IRA and didn’t catch my mistake for like a year, but you know what, I’m glad I started when I did, even though I didn’t do it right at the start. And I’ll mention actually for anyone who’s, you know, hearing themselves in that situation. I have a challenge inside the Personal Finance for PhDs community that is specifically about opening an IRA. So if you join the Community, PFforPhDs.Community, you can go to that challenge and find a six, I think it might be seven, actually, seven-step process. This is exactly how you open an IRA. This is what you need to do, the decisions you need to make at these different points.

43:17 Emily: This is how you research it. It points to resources I’ve created that are inside the Community. So it just, for exactly that problem, people getting off the sidelines. And so it just provides a little bit of accountability, too. Like you kind of go in there and you call me and say, okay, I’m taking the challenge. I’m going to do it. And then by the end of the month, I’m going to be asking you, did you finish? Did you go through all the steps? So thank you so much. Thank you so much, Jen, for this interview. And it’s been great talking with you and hearing about your journey and hearing these great grocery budgeting tips. Thanks.

43:46 Jen: Yeah. Thanks so much, Emily!

Outro

43:48 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! pfforphds.com/podcast/ is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. On that page are links to all the episodes’ show notes, which include full transcripts and videos of the interviews. There is also a form to volunteer to be interviewed on the podcast and instructions for entering the book giveaway contest. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved! If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are 4 ways you can help it grow: 1. Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. If you leave a review, be sure to send it to me! 2. Share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email list-serv, or as a link from your website. 3. Recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and effective budgeting. I also license pre-recorded workshops on taxes. 4. Subscribe to my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe/. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

University Policies to Better Support Grad Student Parents

March 15, 2021 by Lourdes Bobbio

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Alaina Talboy, a PhD in cognition, neuroscience, and social psychology. Alaina had her son before starting grad school in 2011 and separated from her husband a couple of years before finishing her PhD in 2019. She describes what it took financially to complete her PhD on a small academic year stipend: multiple side jobs, the maximum possible federal student loan debt, and childcare negotiations with her co-parent. She did nothing in those years aside from researching, working, and parenting. Emily and Alaina discuss the university policies that would have made all the difference to her experience as a graduate student and parent, such as fee waivers, conference funding, and on-campus childcare.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

  • Find Dr. Alaina Talboy on Twitter and on her website
  • Alaina will speak on overcoming imposter syndrome at the Women in Tech Global Conference in June 2021.
  • 20s and 30s Personal Finance Panel
  • Related Episodes
    • As a Single Parent, This Graduate Student Utilizes Every Possible Resource
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Speaking
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Community
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Podcast Hub
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Subscribe to the mailing list
grad student parent

Teaser

00:00 Alaina: If those supports were in place, I can imagine this going a completely different direction. And I don’t know if I would have ended up where I am, but I can’t imagine it would have made things worse, it could only have made things easier. It would have relieved everything. That support would have completely changed my life and made my PhD something I could just focus on without worrying about all the other stuff.

Introduction

00:32 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season eight, episode 11 and today my guest is Dr. Alaina Tallboy, a PhD in cognition, neuroscience, and social psychology. Alaina had her son before starting grad school in 2011 and separated from her husband a couple of years before finishing her PhD in 2019. She describes what it took financially to complete her PhD on a small academic year stipend, multiple side jobs, the maximum possible federal student loan debt and childcare negotiations with her co-parent. She did nothing in those years, aside from researching working and parenting. We discussed the university policies that would have made all the difference to her experience as a graduate student and parent, such as fee waivers, conference funding, and on-campus childcare.

01:30 Emily: As I’m recording this many people in the US are reflecting on what their life was like a year ago when the country started shutting down versus now, so I thought I’d do the same for a moment. My very last in-person speaking engagement was on March 5th, 2020. While I was waiting for my return flight in the airport, I started receiving emails that regular meetings and events in Seattle, where I was living at the time, were being canceled. That’s when I knew that we would be hunkering down at home for a couple of weeks and started mentally preparing for my husband and I to work from home without childcare. Of course, we all know how wrong that expectation turned out to be. I felt relieved at the time that I didn’t have any other speaking engagements on my calendar so I didn’t have to cancel any travel or switch seminars to webinars.

021:15 Emily: However, once May rolled around, I started getting quite concerned about my business, which did heavily rely on in-person speaking engagements at universities for its revenue. Not only was I unsure when I’d be able to travel again, but I had no idea whether university budgets would be slashed and unable to accommodate hiring an outside person like me.

02:37 Emily: Over the summer, I pivoted my business to focus more on serving individual graduate students and PhDs, and that has been successful, but I’m also delighted to report that believe it or not, the speaking side of my business is currently having its best year ever. I discounted my speaking fee for the webinar format, which has enabled me to work with more offices and groups than ever. In previous years, my clients were always graduate schools, postdoc offices, career centers, et cetera. But this year I’ve actually been hosted by single departments and small graduate student associations as well. It’s been so rewarding to reach more people than ever this year with my tailored financial education. This spring alone I have given, or I’m scheduled to give 19 webinars, and I’m still receiving inquiries for events in April and May. I don’t know whether or how long this trend will last, but I’m going to try to serve as many people as possible while it does.

03:32 Emily: If you would like to bring one of my webinars to your university schooled apartment association group, et cetera, please check out my website pfforphds.com/speaking. All you need to do to get the ball rolling is schedule a call with me through that page or email me emily@pfforphds.com. I hope to hear from you!

Book Giveaway

03:58 Emily: Now it’s time for the book giveaway contest. In March, 2021. I’m giving away one copy of, “I Will Teach You to Be Rich” by Ramit Sethi, which is the Personal Finance for PhDs Community book club selection for May, 2021. Everyone who enters the contest during March, will have a chance to win a copy of this book. If you would like to enter the giveaway contest, please rate and review this podcast on Apple podcasts, take a screenshot of your review and email it to me emily@pfforphds.com. I’ll choose a winner at the end of March from all the entries. You can find full instructions pfforphds.com/podcast.

04:38 Emily: The podcast received a review this week titled “Great Encouragement”. The review reads: “This podcast provides so much useful information while also encouraging me on days when I get worried about my limited funds. I’m not bringing in much money while working towards my PhD, but this makes it feel more possible to save a little for the future while working towards my degree.” Thank you so much to batty_in_AK for leaving this review! I am so glad that you find the podcast encouraging during a financially difficult time of life. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Alaina Talboy.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

05:21 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Alaina Talboy. She has a really compelling story for us today about becoming a single parent while pursuing her PhD and what that was like financially to experience that. And then we’re really going to have a detailed discussion around what are the university-level policies that would have made her PhD go easier for her as a single parent, what policies would be helpful. I hope that this conversation will be, maybe yes, maybe no, applicable you as an individual, but it’ll give you some insight into the experience of PhD parents, especially PhD single parents, and what we can do as a community to support them better, Maybe at the university level. So Alaina, I’m really happy to have you here. Thank you so much for agreeing to the interview ad will you please tell the audience a little bit more about yourself?

06:05 Alaina: Absolutely. Thank you for having me today. I started graduate studies in 2011 and finished my PhD in 2019 in cognition, neuroscience, and social psychology from the University of South Florida. Ever since then, I’ve actually been a research scientist at Microsoft, looking at user experiences for the Edge browser.

06:26 Emily: Yeah. Sounds wonderful. We’re recording this in January, 2021 for the listeners context, so you’ve been there somewhat less than two years, between one and two.

06:33 Alaina: Just under.

06:33 Emily: Yes. And I believe that you got a master’s degree first and then moved on to your PhD. Is that right? Was that when you started in 2011, your masters?

06:43 Alaina: I did. I started my master’s at University of West Florida in 2011. That took two years to complete. And then I went straight from my masters to my PhD at USF in 2013 and was there until I completed in 2019.

06:57 Emily: Great. Okay. So we’ve got the professional highlights. Let’s hear about what was going on in your personal life at that time, the development of your family.

07:04 Alaina: Yeah, so I actually started my family before I started grad school. My son was born in 2010, and so he’s been with me every step of the way from my first graduate interview all the way until I had my diploma in hand. And he helped me hang it up on the wall and everything, right next to his picture. So he has been here through everything and has seen all that it takes to get a PhD.

07:32 Emily: And you were married for time as well. Is that right?

07:36 Alaina: I was married up until about a year and a half, two years before I finished my PhD. We had a very amicable split, but we had to figure out a lot of the co-parenting stuff that is not typically a concern for graduate students. So it took a while to really figure out how to balance making sure the family was taken care of, had a roof over our heads and then ensuring equitable time between each of us for parenting.

08:06 Emily: Yeah. And just for a little bit more context for us, what was the stipend that you were earning during that time and then what was your former husband earning as well?

08:15 Alaina: The stipend I had at that time was a nine month contract from USF that was $14,300 for nine months. That worked out to a little under $1,500 a month for my income. My husband was making about the same as I did, but at that point then we were supporting two different households, so I actually had to take on numerous side jobs to support myself and my son during those last two years of graduate studies.

Funding Situation During Grad School

08:46 Emily: Yeah. I want to get into sort of the tactics you were using that time in a moment, but I want to go back for a second to talk about the funding during your master’s degree because you mentioned your PhD funding. How was your master’s funded?

08:58 Alaina: The master’s degree was not funded. It’s interesting because I left undergraduate without any student loans, because I was able to get a lot of grants and things like that, but when I got into my master’s program, it was not a funded program. I actually had to take student loans out to support us at the time, because my husband’s job at the time was not enough to support our family. We use the student loans to support us through some really difficult financial times, and then eventually I did end up getting a 10 hour per week position my second year of my master’s program, but that was just barely enough to cover half of a week’s cost of my son’s daycare. I have had side jobs for a very long time to make sure the family was supported.

09:50 Emily: Yeah. Okay. When you finished your master’s, you’d worked for a variety of part-time positions during that time. What was the balance of student loan debt when you came out of your master’s?

10:04 Alaina: I had about, I believe it was $30,000 in student loan debt for my master’s degree, and in total with my PhD, I had borrowed just over $120,000, which was the maximum I was allowed to borrow. And the last two years of my PhD, I didn’t even have student loans. Now I am two years post PhD at $4,000, roughly, a month in payments. And my student loan balance is $198,000.

10:37 Emily: Wow. Maybe a conversation for another episode. Incredible. So you were taking out more student loan debt during your master’s and PhD. But in addition, working at your assistantship, you got during your master’s, as well as the one you had during your PhD. Let’s talk more about, okay, we got this stipend, which is not very generous, not a very generous stipend.

11:01 Alaina: And it’s only nine months. That’s something I don’t think people realize is that this does not include summer funding and summer funding is never guaranteed, so that’s three months you got to figure it out.

11:13 Emily: Yeah, and what kind of benefits came along with that? Like health insurance, was there more than that?

11:19 Alaina: There was health insurance for myself. There was the option to get dental, but the cost was insanely high. There was no way to get my son or my former husband on the health insurance because the co-pays would have been more than a paycheck, and it wasn’t financially responsible to do insurance that way. Unfortunately, during that time, my son was actually enrolled in Medicaid to make sure that he had health coverage and that he had dental coverage and things like that because we simply couldn’t afford to get health insurance for him and him.

11:58 Emily: Were there any other benefits available to you?

12:01 Alaina: They had the campus health and wellness centers that you could go get your physical checkups. You could get psychiatric services, therapy services. Really great, but of course there’s always the co-pay for that. If there were any other benefits available, I couldn’t tell you because I looked and it would just wasn’t clear.

12:25 Emily: Yeah. So probably none. And if not none, at least a lapse in communication about what benefits were available.

12:34 Alaina: Exactly.

Balancing Parenting, PhD Dissertation, and Side Work

12:34 Emily: I want to get an idea of how, especially your PhD went with these financial pressures of having the small stipend part year, of having the student loans that you were taking out, but then at some point couldn’t even take out any longer. And you’ve already mentioned side work. So tell me about how the balance was in your life between actually working towards your PhD on your dissertation, all the side work, if it was an assistantship that you had the work for that, the parenting. It sounds like a lot. What was your life like at that time?

13:08 Alaina: Looking back, I look at it and I have no idea how I did any of it. I look back and I think about doing that now, and it just blows my mind because I was teaching a class at USF, I was teaching a class at a local community college. I was doing another class at a private college, plus my dissertation plus parenting. I did dissertation editing services on the side just because that money had to come from somewhere. Looking back, I was either always working or parenting. There was never me time. There was never downtime. There was never just time to sit and relax. It’s either work or parents and you make do and you get through it, and hopefully on the other side end up with some sort of work-life balance.

14:04 Emily: Yeah. I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but it seems to me incredibly unfair that you would be in a funded PhD program and be striving so hard to work on the side and spending so many hours doing that. And still on top of that, be racking up more student loan debt. I think we all kind of get, yeah. PhDs are underpaid. Yeah, it’s a hard time of life. Well, you added parenting onto that too. Wow. Yeah, of course, you’re going to have some time constraints, but to do all of it with the energy that you had, which sounds inhuman, almost, and then to add the student loan debt on top of that is really kind of mind boggling to me, that that’s what it came to.

`4:47 Alaina: It is. And the advice that you get is that, try pay back your student loans while you’re in grad school. But in my mind, I’m just sitting there thinking, I’m taking these student loans to make sure we have a roof over our head. That we have food to eat. That we have the ability to go back and forth between buildings. How could you possibly pay back student loans while you’re in school? And particularly in my situation, where I’m supporting a family. It’s not a realistic expectation. And when my student loans ran out and I had to talk about possibly going and getting another side position, the conversation I had with some professors was just go take student loans. Like why can’t you just take student loans? And it’s an unfair conversation and it doesn’t address the realities and the limitations of what we can actually do during grad school, financially.

15:42 Emily: I do want you to explain a little bit more what happened, financially after you were no longer able to take out student loans. And of course that was also the time that you were separating from your husband and you have the two households and all of that. If you were only barely hanging on before that point with the student loan debt, what happened when that stopped?

16:03 Alaina: I cried a lot. I’ll be completely honest, the last two years of grad school had a lot of tears and a lot of stress. I was teaching six classes to make ends meet and I was trying to get my PhD done and I had to, because my former husband and I co-parent, and we’re really adamant about making sure our son spends equal amount of time with both of us, we had to actually work that around my adjunct schedule because as adjuncts, you don’t get to choose what time you teach. You’re just given a time slot. And so not only was I under the financial pressure of that, I had to move my time with my son to make sure I could keep those jobs to make sure that we could keep paying bills.

16:51 Emily: So you added more work essentially while you were trying to finish your dissertation. I’m actually very impressed that you finished. I think because a lot of people at that stage when they’re ABD and the financial pressure is there, they want to move on and they may not ever end up completing it. So how did you hang on to the end?

17:13 Alaina: I almost didn’t. I almost walked away. Um, there were several times where I just looked at my document that I was writing and just went, “why, why am I doing this?” But I’m stubborn. I am an incredibly stubborn person, and I have put eight years into this degree. I am finishing this degree. This is going to get done. And I just put my foot down and said, no, this is, this is going to end. There’s going to be a light at the other end of the tunnel. It’s going to be worth it.

17:40 Emily: Yeah. And we’re going to circle back to this at the end of the interview, that there has been a light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t want to say it’s all been doom and gloom. Okay, so we’ve got an idea of the financial pressure that you were under and what you were doing, basically pushing yourself to the human maximum to meet the responsibilities that you had, and finish your dissertation. You said earlier, okay, yes, there was health insurance for you. It was not practical to put anybody else in the policy. There weren’t really any benefits offered by a university in terms of you as a parent.

The Benefits That Would Have Been Helpful as a Single Parent

18:09 Emily: What policies, now that you’ve taken some time to reflect on this, what policies would have made a big difference in your life? What policies on the university or departmental level would have made a big difference in your life in terms of making sure you did complete the degree and maybe not in the fashion that you did?

Reducing or Eliminating Semester Fees

18:28 Alaina: There’s so many things I would go back and argue against and one of the first thing is semester fees. ‘m not sure if this is across all universities, but almost every graduate student I’ve talked to has had to pay roughly $800 a semester in fees, even though they are employed by the university. And so you imagine that’s one entire paycheck that’s just completely gone for the semester because those fees are required. Eliminating fees for graduate students would be the first and foremost thing on my list to go back to the university and say, “Hey, you want to help parents who are finishing their PhD, eliminate these fees.”

19:14 Emily: The fee itself, of course, $800 per term is quite it’s a lot of money and no, that’s not universal. Some places have figured it out that they don’t have to require that kind of fee. Was it due all at once or was it something that you were able to prorate?

19:30 Alaina: I don’t remember being able to prorate it. It was not something that could be taken out of paychecks. It was not something like your parking permit, your $200 a year parking permit — yeah, they could take that one out of your paycheck every other week and they could do it like $30 or $50 a paycheck. But your fees, no. They were due when they were due. You could make payments up until that due date, but once you hit that due date, if you missed it at all, it was an immediate hundred dollar fee stacked, right on top of it, with increasing fees the longer it took.

20:06 Emily: Okay. So punitive responses if you did miss it. Okay. Got it. Large fees had to pay all at once. High fines if you didn’t, if you didn’t make it. Okay. What was the next policy?

Policies Against Moonlighting

20:20 Alaina: The next policy I would say is looking back at my contracts at that time, it felt like moonlighting was completely unacceptable. The language that they used is, you’re given this stipend offer, you must let us know immediately if you have accepted work anywhere else. There’s the possibility that this stipend will go away if you have other funding. Looking at that language and the position that I was in, it felt like I was forced to hide the adjuncting work that I was doing and all the work I was doing on the side, because I was so scared that my stipend was going to be taken away from me, because even though it was minuscule and it is well close to that poverty level, it was absolutely necessary to make it through. I didn’t want to lose that stipend. The moonlighting restriction, I understand they want people to focus on their degree. I understand they want people to be all in headspace on their PhD and stuff, but it doesn’t allow for the reality of life that you have to be able to support your family and student loans don’t cut it. You have to be able to let people have a job outside of their department if they need to do that, to support their family.

21:29 Emily: Yeah. I mean, I’m in total agreement. Treat graduate students like they’re adults and they can manage their own time. And if a problem does come up with someone’s side job, because it actually is interfering with the dissertation progress or the coursework, or whatever’s going on, then address it when the problem comes up. But I think the language that you read that scares people off from moonlighting or hides the fact that they are doing it is really counterproductive. Of course the other part of that, which you just mentioned is you can also just pay people enough that they don’t feel the pressure to take on the side work. If you really want the students to be focused on their degrees, then pay them adequately to allow them the room in their lives for that focus. That makes the most sense to me.

22:22 Alaina: Exactly. The book that I’m working on right now, the whole first section of it is talking about treating your graduate studies like it’s your job, because that’s exactly what it is. You are going for a graduate degree, you are being paid to get that graduate degree, and in exchange, you’re teaching a course or you’re doing research, or you’re doing some kind of service to the university. You should be paid appropriately for that time.

22:48 Emily: Yes, absolutely.

Commercial

22:51 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. This coming Thursday, March 18th, 2021 at 7:00 PM. Eastern, I’m serving on a personal finance panel and you’re invited to attend and ask your money questions. The event is officially for people in their twenties and thirties, but it’s kind of secretly a PhD panel as I, another panelists, and the moderator all have PhDs. The remaining two panelists have a JD and an MBA. We are all card carrying personal finance nerds. All personal finance topics are on the table, including student loans, investing, couple’s finances, buying house, COVID economics. Anything you like the event is free to attend live, and you can purchase access to the recording for one year for $17, go to pfforphds.com/panel to find out more and your ticket through my affiliate link. I hope to see you there now back to our interview.

Accessible Childcare Options

23:53 Emily: What’s another policy on your list that was hurtful or would have been helpful?

23:58 Alaina: The other one that I was thinking of was the childcare facilities on campus, because there is a childcare facility. It was not subsidized. At that time in 2013, it was $220 a week for the age group my son was in, and that was their subsidized value. The problem with that though, is that of course faculty gets first pick and that completely fills up the entire program. There really was no daycare option available on campus that was even remotely viable. We ended up having to do a lot of off-campus shopping to find a daycare.

24:41 Emily: Yeah. I mean, of course adding another benefit, like a subsidized service, like daycare would be an incredible boon to the parents on campus. And actually I’ll link in the show notes because I did an interview back in season two with a single mother in graduate school, and she talked about the incredible childcare support that was available to her on campus. One of the things I remember from that is just in reflecting on it, I’m thinking, wow, to have your daycare option, your childcare option, like geographically, physically close to you, saves you so much time and commuting, and it actually gives you more flexibility in your time being on campus and so forth. It would be a benefit to all employees and of course, graduate students and undergraduates and everybody who has children to have more of those options. Expanding those programs would be fantastic.

25:31 Alaina: Absolutely.

25:32 Emily: And subsidizing it, if they can.

25:34 Alaina: And subsidizing, if they can. I understand they have to pay their workers. And I totally respect that, but you know, again, you’re an employee.

Conference Travel Assistance

25:43 Emily: Yeah. Were there any other benefits that you wanted to bring up?

25:46 Alaina: The last area I want to talk about is conference travel. And this is something that strikes me as so odd because I am in a STEM field or a STEAM field, depending on which acronym you prefer. Going to conferences is vital to your success in academia and also outside of academia. Being able to present your papers and your posters and giving talks and all those things. There’s something about the conference circuit that just really is invaluable and cannot be replaced. The problem is most of the program didn’t have funding for conference travel, let alone trying to figure out how to set up childcare, if my former husband wasn’t going to be able to watch my son during conference season. Luckily our lab had very small stipends. We got $500 stipends to go do conferences and there were four of us, so we split one hotel room and able to limit the cost of conferences by having four of us in one room. However, that’s another area that really is just lacking in support and really hits your finances hard, especially if you’re serious about trying to follow that academic route.

27:00 Emily: Yes. Thank you for bringing that up. There’s one other area that I thought of in terms of policies. Maybe this wasn’t on your list because you had your son before you started graduate school, but I’m thinking about parental leave and is it defined? Is it defined for graduate students? Does depend on whether your employee or a fellowship recipient non-employee? But just having, first of all, clear policies around what the parental leave is, is super helpful. Of course, if that leave can be paid or if it can be 12 weeks would be incredible here in the US. All those things can add on to that, but just having clear policies around that I think would be super, super helpful.

27:39 Alaina: Yeah. It’s interesting as you’re right, I had my son before graduate school, but I did run into some medical issues during graduate school and come to find out the grad students were not protected under FMLA. If you had to take any time off, you were literally at the mercy of your advisor. Now, thankfully I had a phenomenal advisor who let me do my work remotely and told me to stop replying to emails the day after I got out of the hospital, but there was a leave period that I had to take for medical reasons, and if my advisor wasn’t as understanding as she was, I could have been dropped from the program because there are no protections in place for that.

28:19 Emily: Yeah. Great, great point. I hadn’t really thought about FMLA, but ideally the university would be providing its own protections for its students. Wow, thank you for bringing that up.

How University Benefits Can Impact a Grad Student Parent

28:31 Emily: Okay. In thinking through this list of like, wow, what would have been like if I’d had subsidized childcare and so forth — what would it have meant to you, as a PhD, as a developing scholar to have had the kind of support that we were just talking about from your university?

28:48 Alaina: It would have been life-changing. I can’t quantify the stress that I felt those six years and what it has done, not only physically being under that much stress that long, but mentally being under that stress. And two years out still having some kind of anxiety about large purchases or the thought of going and getting the car repaired is still an anxiety, even though I have a really good job right now. There’s some almost side effects of living like that for so long that now have to be undone and have to be unlearned. If those supports were in place, I can imagine this going a completely different direction. And I don’t know if I would have ended up where I am, but I can’t imagine it would have made things worse. It could only have made things easier. It would have relieved everything that support would have completely changed my life and made my PhD something I could just focus on without worrying about all the other stuff.

30:01 Emily: Yeah. I’m so glad you phrased it that way, because if you had received additional financial support whether that’s in the form of a higher stipend or fees being waived, or some kind of subsidies, or maybe health insurance being a better option, a variety of ways that can play out, of course, that would made a difference to your finances. And of course you would have more savings in the bank or you’d have less student loan debt or something like that. But I’m really glad that you phrased that in terms of the stress that you were under, because I think that we don’t, we don’t really consider enough that affect — the cognitive, the emotional, the physical effect of that stress on our developing scholars, on our PhDs when they’re in training.

20:42 Emily: And like you just said, what that does, not only during that time and how does it affect your work — I mean, your work, as if the only that’s the only thing that matters — but your work, but also everything else during that time. But then also later, because as you just said, you have to unlearn all the things. You have to recover from that period of stress financially for years and potentially decades after your PhD. And that’s a lot of what my work is as well is how do you get out of the mindsets about money that you were forced into during that time. I’m really glad that you phrased it that way. Anything else you wanted to add to that?

31:18 Alaina: It also would have opened up just so much more time to spend with my son. I feel like I missed milestones because I was so busy trying to scrape together and make ends meet that I miss some of those important childhood things that I can’t get back.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel: Current Career

31:36 Emily: Yeah, absolutely. Now we said that there was a bright spot at the end of this, because you did get to the end of the journey. You did get to graduation, you got the PhD, and now you’ve mentioned that you have a really good job. So tell us what your career is now.

31:51 Alaina: Yes. I actually made the choice to leave academia after I was offered a tenure position, and instead I moved to Seattle to join Microsoft. Now I am a research scientist here at Microsoft, a user researcher, and I do work for the Edge browser. And I got to say, I love my current career. I don’t know if that’s too forward to say that, but I am in the best spot, not only financially, but also in terms of work-life balance than since I started grad school. That’s where I’m at right now.

32:31 Emily: It really seems like you came through the crucible in graduate school, financially, time-wise, so forth. I hope the rest of your life feels this good.

32:40 Alaina: I hope so.

32:40 Emily: It’s good to hear that you’re in a much better spot now, have a much better income. You’re making those student loan payments, as you mentioned earlier. I’m assuming that you’re glad that you finished the PhD, that you think it’s working out?

32:54 Alaina: I am, yeah. And I was thinking about this earlier today, preparing to talk to you about this, is if I had the choice to go back and do it again, would I change anything? And honestly, I don’t think I would. I know sometimes people regret going the PhD route, but I don’t regret it. I am so proud of the work I did during my PhD and all of the work that it’s enabled me to do after my PhD and the work I’m doing now is so personally validating to know I can use all of those skills I developed and I can just only go up from here.

39:31 Emily: Oh, well, that’s really great to hear. I’m really glad we could end this on a little more of a cheerful note. You mentioned earlier about a book. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

33:39 Alaina: I’m currently writing a book. It’s going to be essentially a how-to guide for people who are just starting their graduate studies, but it’s trying to help people change their mindset about how they think through graduate school and doing things like research for the rest of their lives. It’s a book that will help you think about graduate stays not only as a student, but also as your job and as the start of your career. It provides the tools and tips and tricks and all the things you need to walk out, not only with your degree PhD in your hand, but also to try to land that real coveted academia job, but also how to leave academia on the other end, if that’s something that you want to do. It’s opening up the possibility of not staying in that smaller bubble of academia, but looking at the broader world of opportunities that exist just for PhDs.

34:33 Emily: Yeah. I love that reframing about yes, you’re a graduate student. Ye, you’re a student, but it is your job. It’s the start of your career. I love that reframing of it, and I wish that I had embraced it a little bit more at the start of my own PhD. Where can people go to learn about this, when it’ll be out and so forth?

34:52 Alaina: They can find updates on alainataloby.com and they can sign up for the newsletter there. I will happily post additional information on Twitter and LinkedIn as well. And I’ll ask to include those in the show notes.

Best Financial Advice for and Early-Career PhD

35:05 Emily: Yeah, absolutely. No problem. So last question before we conclude is what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on here, or it could be something completely else,

35:18 Alaina: Something completely else. So I’m going to say this is for right after your PhD, where you land that first job. With your first real paycheck, go get yourself the most delicious steak or whatever meal is your favorite and just sit down and it, because you earned it.

25:39 Emily: Wow. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining me today, Alaina. This is a great interview.

35:43 Alaina: Thank you for having me.

Listener Q&A: Emergency Fund Savings

Question

35:51 Emily: Now onto the listener question and answer segment. Today’s question actually comes from a survey I sent out in advance of one of my university webinars this spring, so it is anonymous. Here’s the question:

36:03 Emily: “Where should I park my emergency fund savings?”

Answer

36:08 Emily: This straightforward question deserves a straightforward answer, and that answer is in a savings account. Ideally, you would use a “high yield savings account”, bit of a misnomer right now., You might be able to get half a percent in interest or so at the moment of this recording, but that’s really the best you’re going to do without taking some degree of risk with your money or moving it around to chase the highest yield.

36:34 Emily: I know this is a really tough answer because emergency funds feel like they are just sitting there doing nothing when interest rates are low, but the job of your emergency fund is not to earn a return for you. It’s to be available for you, in its full amount, in case of emergency when you need it, whenever that might come up. So your checking accoun,t savings account, money market account, these kinds of places are the most appropriate for emergency fund savings.

37:04 Emily: I like to keep my emergency fund in a separate savings account so that I don’t dip into it accidentally, but at the same bank as my checking account, so that in the case of an emergency, it would be very instantaneous to transfer money from the emergency fund into my checking account. So if you, the listener have any issues with accidentally or kind of on purpose using your emergency fund for purposes other than emergencies, then you might want a little bit more separation. So definitely the separate savings account, but maybe even keep it at a different bank than where you have your checking account, so that there’s the delay of a few days to get money between the two accounts that will discourage you from dipping into it.

37:46 Emily: Now, some people who also still can’t stomach the idea of the emergency van, not getting any kind of return might set up what is called a tiered emergency fund. So there may be some degree of emergency fund savings in cash equivalents, like in a savings account. There might be some degree in a conservative investment fund, like bonds, mostly bonds. Maybe they’ll even have some of what they call their emergency fund invested more aggressively, so that some of it can earn a return while it’s still available to you, in the form of taxable investment accounts.

38:22 Emily: And I’m not totally opposed to this strategy. This may be one that I implement at some point in my life, but I just want to point out it’s for people who have money. My typical audience, graduate students, they’re typically living a little closer to the edge than the people who set up those types of emergency funds. If you just have $1,000 or $5,000 or $10,000 in an emergency fund, I don’t think you should be looking at these tiered options. I think that should be an all cash equivalents kind of situation. The unfortunate truth is as you have more money, as you have more wealth, you can afford to take on more risk.

39:00 Emily: So there’s a straight forward answer. Keep it in a high yield savings account, possibly at your bank or at a different bank. Don’t try to invest the money until you have lots and lots of wealth and accessible money at your disposal. At that point, you can afford to take on more risk with this part of your portfolio.

39:19 Emily: If you would like to submit a question to be answered in a future episode, please go to pfforphds.com/podcast and follow the instructions you find there. I love answering questions, so please submit yours.

Outtro

39:33 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPhDs.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. On that page are links to all the episodes show notes, which include full transcripts and videos of the interviews. There is also a form to volunteer to be interviewed on the podcast and instructions for entering the book giveaway contest, and submitting a question for the Q&A segment. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. If you leave a review, be sure to send it to me. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email list serve, or as a link from your website. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt, repayment and taxes. Four, subscribe to my mailing list at pfforphds.com/subscribe through that list. You’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode! And remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. Music is Stages of Awakening by Poddington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC podcast, editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Page 3
  • …
  • Page 5
  • Next Page »

Footer

Sign Up for More Awesome Content

I'll send you my 2,500-word "Five Ways to Improve Your Finances TODAY as a Graduate Student or Postdoc."

Success! Now check your email to confirm your subscription.

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

We won't send you spam. Unsubscribe at any time. Powered by ConvertKit

Copyright © 2023 · Atmosphere Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

  • About Emily Roberts
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact