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Financial Goals

This Soon-to-Be PhD Is Facing Debt and Underemployment as He Goes on the Academic Job Market

December 2, 2019 by Meryem Ok

In this episode, Emily interviews Chad Frazier, a graduate student in history at Georgetown University who is about to complete his PhD and go on the academic job market. Chad’s career plans and personal finances have changed a lot during his PhD (and a master’s before that). When he received his stipend offer from Georgetown, he thought he had made it. But seven years later, the pay increases haven’t kept pace with housing prices in DC, and Chad has accumulated credit card debt. As he applies for faculty positions, Chad faces underemployment, and the grace period on his student loans from his undergrad and master’s degrees is quite limited. Chad argues that universities have a moral obligation to pay their grad students a living wage so that they can thrive academically. (Update: Chad successfully defended his PhD just prior to the publication of this episode!)

Links Mentioned in the Episode

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PhD debt and underemployment

Teaser

00:00 Chad: I just spent the last 10 years at an institution, and I’m now actually financially worse off than I was when I started. At times that makes me really scared and angry. And that wasn’t something that I imagined it would be like when I would get to this point.

Introduction

00:21 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 four, episode 16, and today my guest is Chad Frazier, a rising eighth year PhD student in history at Georgetown. Chad and I discuss some really tough and even emotional issues in this interview including large student loan balances, credit card debt, underemployment, the difficult academic job market, and the feeling of being let down by your university. Chad shares quite openly the current state of his finances and career aspirations. We discuss what universities can do to alleviate financial stress among their grad students as well as what prospective grad students should think about when they look at a stipend offer letter. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Chad Frazier. You don’t want to miss this one.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:15 Emily: I am joined today on the podcast by Chad Frazier, who is currently a PhD student at Georgetown. And we’re going to be talking about the financial issues that arise, particularly as you’re getting close to the completion of a PhD. Right? You’re getting to to the end of graduate school, and what happens next and how do you handle that with your finances? It’s a really challenging situation for many, many, many PhDs. So Chad, I’m really delighted that you joined me today. And will you please tell the audience a little bit more about yourself?

01:46 Chad: Yeah, sure. First off, happy to be on the podcast, Emily. So just kind of a little background. I’m, like you said, just in the process of finishing up my PhD. I’m kind of planning to defend middle to late part of September. I focus on US history. Before that, I got my MA at Georgetown, which is the institution I’m currently at, BA at Dickinson. I guess those are kind of the broad highlights. I’ve been in the last couple of years, very active with the graduate union here at Georgetown. I’m part of the organizing committee and started getting more and more interested as part of that work in the last couple of years.

Evolution of Career Plans in Grad School

02:32 Emily: Yeah. Super interested here. Maybe not specifically about the unionization issues or your role in that, but just about your thinking around those issues as it relates to what we’re going to be talking about today. So, you’re almost done with your PhD. What are your current career plans, what you think you’ll be doing next, and also maybe how has that changed over the course of your degree?

02:54 Chad: Okay. Yeah. So when I started out the PhD, which would have been fall of 2012, the plan was generally that I was going to just tenure track, ideally at a liberal arts college. I was a peer writing tutor in undergrad and I really liked the experience of teaching. That said, I was kind of amenable to the idea of like maybe doing alternate career paths, kind of sidetracks, that led eventually to this final goal. But I can’t say that I really thought about them in any sort of depth. I think I figured, “Oh, I’ll just figure it out as I go.” So, like last year, I tried the academic job market for the first time, kind of a soft search. I didn’t get anything, which was not unexpected where I was with my dissertation. And then I’m going to try it again this year–be better, generally more competitive I think–and we’ll see what happens there. But over the course of the sort of last several years, I have just gotten more interested in other possible career paths. Because there are maybe some things about academia that I’m not always a fan of. And I think in particular, one would flag, like I mentioned, the unionization, maybe involvement with something to do with the labor movement, either as an organizer or researcher for a union. I’m also working with a professor here on building an online archive. So it looks at teachers in the labor movement. So it’s kind of up in the air.

When Does Your Graduate Student Position End?

04:18 Emily: Yeah. So it sounds like you’re getting other kinds of work experience. Right? Other kinds of, or not necessarily work, maybe it’s volunteer as well, but other kinds of experiences that’ll help you figure out what you want to do with your career and maybe you know, land, whatever that next job is. So you said you’re planning on going back on the job market again this fall. When does your position as a graduate student actually end or do you have an end date for that?

04:41 Chad: So I actually just put in paperwork with the graduate school. So the way this basically works is, I will defend, ideally late September. Once I do that, and generally, I am sure this is true for a lot of people, the assumption is that when you get in the room, you’re ready. Then there are revisions, which part of that is what your committee says, part of it is shaping it to the graduate school. And, as far as the university is concerned, when I’m in that mode, I’m still a student. And it’s just then once those are done, you file it with the graduate school, and then you apply to graduate, which for me the plan is to do that in December.

Plan for Income Until Graduation

05:24 Emily: And so as far as your income goes, in the meantime, do you have an assistantship that’ll still be ongoing, or what’s the plan for the income?

05:32 Chad: So the plan for the income by sort of Georgetown rules is basically after seventh year, which my seventh year technically concluded in May, I’m not eligible for any kind of assistantship, whether as a TA or an RA. So, the work I’ve been doing with the online archive is paid out of an Institute here at Georgetown called the Kalmanovitz Initiative. And I’m figuring out how many hours they will be able to pay me for that. But I’m also looking for sort of part time jobs. One of the advantages of being in DC is there’s a fair amount of work for research with journalists or stuff like that to kind of make enough money that I can make ends meet until I can have something more definite.

Are You Considered an Employee at Georgetown?

06:20 Emily: So, the position that you’ve had at Georgetown, not your assistantship, are you an employee technically or is that like an independent contractor position?

06:32 Chad: So, I’m an employee. It’s routed through sort of the student payroll office. It’s a little complicated just because the way the rules are here with PhD students, we have to estimate how many hours a week I plan to work and how many weeks. And then they are like, “Oh, this is his stipend.” And then that gets dispersed out in biweekly installments. They changed that recently. It used to be able to have been, oh, just hourly, as long as I didn’t exceed like some certain restraints, that would have been fine. Bureaucracy.

What is the State of Your Finances at this Point?

07:05 Emily: Yeah. So, it sounds like you have a part-time position that’ll be ongoing through Georgetown. And then on top of that you do need to work a bit more as well as actually finishing up your dissertation and doing the defense and all of that. So, it’s a lot going on at this juncture. It’s a time of transition and a challenging time. So, can you tell me a little bit more about the state of your finances at this point? It sounds like, well first of all, is that income that you anticipate making going to be enough to sort of keep your head above water or is that still a question mark?

07:43 Chad: So, the way it’s kind of shaping up is that income that I’m going to get from the job with KI, with Kalmanovitz Initiative, probably I’m hoping that’s enough to cover rent. And then the additional work–the idea is basically enough that I can feed myself and pay for Metro and sort of living expenses and hopefully get enough too that I can start paying down credit cards a bit more. Because I’m very cognizant of the fact that, six months after I graduate, the student loans are going to start coming due. And that’s going to drop like anvil from heaven, it feels like. So, I want to have hopefully something ready for that where I’m not getting hit from two sides.

History of Chad’s Student Loans

08:37 Emily: Yeah, totally. So, you’ve mentioned you have student loans. Do you want to share like the amount of that, or like which degree you accumulated them from?

08:47 Chad: Yeah, sure. So, I went to a private liberal arts school, Dickinson College, for my undergrad. And I got lucky. I got a pretty good financial aid package there that most of it consisted of scholarships and grants. And I only had to take out, I think, anywhere from 10 to 20,000 [dollars]. Most of the student debt I’ve accumulated was because of my master’s degree that I took before I started my PhD. And for that, I basically have to look through the records and that’s about 80 to 81,000 dollars. So that’s, yeah.

09:20 Emily: Yeah, that’s going to be a large minimum payment. Even if you go one of these income-driven routes, depending on what you’re doing the rest of the year, assuming you haven’t gotten like a full-time faculty position yet. Anyway, it’ll be a large payment, presumably. So, that sounds really, really tough, but it’s also pretty common as you might imagine. Okay, so you have the student loan debt from your earlier degrees, not from the PhD itself. And then you mentioned credit card debt. Do you want to share the amount of that, and how it was that you accumulated it?

Accumulation of Credit Card Debt

09:54 Chad: Yeah, because I’m not sure. I don’t think I can pull the dollar amount right off the top of my head. But it’s basically–so, a little background about how a PhD sort of works at Georgetown. I was admitted with a five-year package, which meant that for three years there was a service obligation, which I TA’d. Two years was non-service. And then basically, for year six through seven, the department was able to fund me kind of on a discretionary basis. I got a fellowship my sixth year where I got to teach my own class, and then I got a semester of non-service. And then this last year I was on service. And I got a decent enough job working kind of as an administrative assistant to a professor. But the big issue was, that fellowship when I was getting paid was only nine months out of the year, which is pretty common for humanities and social science students here at Georgetown.

10:55 Chad: And so that meant that like, I tried to set aside money so I could cover rent. I would basically always try to find an extra, some sort of job either during the semester where I could save up money or a job during the summer where I could kind of live off of that. Invariably, credit cards became the sort of go-to during the summer. And the usual MO is, in the summer months, pay them down during the year, and then in the summer months make minimum payments until–maybe a little extra if you can–you get back into the fall, and then start paying them down again. And that worked actually pretty well the first couple of years. It’s just in the last two, three years, cost of living has been going up in DC with rent. And also with like, you know, last summer I had three really close friends who got married, and I wanted to go to their weddings and I had to pay for that. And I went to a conference in November that I didn’t get reimbursed for that was on the West coast, which was expensive. And it’s been hard to sort of do that, pay it down this last year where, come June, they were all maxed out, and I just was boxed in.

12:15 Emily: Yeah. I think what you’re describing is super common for PhD students, for people in their twenties and thirties, generally. I mean the nine-month pay, of course, is fairly unique to our mode of work, depending on what kind of field you’re in. But yeah, I mean it sounds like you had the right idea, right? Save up during the year, so you’re cognizant of that in advance. You’re trying to plan for it in advance, save up during the year, live on that over the summer, plus you work a little bit. But it’s really hard to do that planning. It’s just a really, really challenging situation to be in. So yeah, it sounds like credit cards came into that for you as well as the whole irregular expenses thing, you know, going to people’s weddings. I also really value attending weddings.

13:00 Emily: I love being able to go, I always had to travel. It was a challenge, financially. And what you mentioned, of course, the conference thing. We all know inside academia that conferences either are not paid for at all for students, or the student has to pay upfront and then the reimbursements, and it’s months later. That can definitely get people into cycles of credit card debt as well. It’s a huge, widespread problem, I would say. So, I’m sure all of this sounds very relatable to the audience, and I’m really thankful to you for sort of bearing yourself this way and sharing this because it is a really difficult thing to talk about publicly. So, thank you so much for doing that. Is there any other debt that you’re dealing with at this point aside from the credit cards and student loans?

Any Other Debt Besides Credit Cards and Student Loans?

13:41 Chad: I think those are the two biggest sort of issues. Like, yeah, there’s nothing else really out there. I rent so I don’t have to worry about like a mortgage. I don’t like to drive. I don’t own a car. So, it’s public transit. So yeah, it’s pretty much just credit cards and student debt.

14:01 Emily: Yeah. And it sounds like, given that you don’t own a car–which is one of my very go-to suggestions for people trying to reduce their expenses–you live in an expensive city. That’s how it is. You pay a lot in rent. You don’t own a car. Rent’s been going up, presumably, as is almost always the case. Stipends do not keep up with rising rent costs and yeah, it’s just a really, really tough spot to be in. I’m curious actually what your thought process was about choosing–and maybe it’s not really like a conscious choice, but like you have been accumulating credit card debt over the past couple of years. You know, at first, you said you were in a cycle of, “Okay, I build it up and then I pay it down.” But as you said, the last couple years, it’s been more building up than paying down.

14:43 Chad: Yeah.

14:44 Emily: Why did you go that route instead of taking out additional student loan debt?

Why Credit Cards Over Additional Student Loans?

14:50 Chad: I think part of that was I was just being cognizant of the fact that I had a fair amount coming in from my master’s program in particular. I actually had this conversation with my mom a couple of times. Where she’s like, “Well you should just put in for FAFSA and try to get more. You should try to get another student loan or something.” And I was like, “But I’ve already got at least 80,000 perhaps up to a hundred thousand, and it sort of seemed like I would be mortgaging my future even more so than I did. In the early years of the program, kind of you brought up the whole idea of stipends not keeping up–throughout sort of my time here at Georgetown, usually the stipend has gone up in each year by about a thousand dollars, which in year one that meant I went from 22 to 23 thousand. That was like a 5% increase. And that I think helped keep ahead of a lot of stuff.

15:50 Chad: And then, more recently it’s like now that last year–the university introduced a wage freeze this year, but the year before it was like–that amounted about 3.5%. I don’t have terribly many expenses. I used to joke that I only allowed myself sort of three very basic luxuries, which was food, like going out to eat. Not that I go out anywhere very expensive. Booze. I like beer, but I like cheap beer. Weirdly enough. And then books. And those, even there, I’m like, “Oh, I won’t spend more than like 25 bucks.” So, it was like, “Oh, these are really small things.” And it’s not like I was going on trips to Europe or anything that expensive. So it was like, “Okay, the credit cards just seemed more manageable.”

16:48 Emily: It really seems like just mentioning those little luxuries that you allowed yourself–which again, like you just said, did not amount to a lot of money–it really illustrates for me how large a chunk of your income must be taken up by your necessary expenses. Because what you mentioned as discretionary expenses have not been outrageous by any means of course. So, it just for me really illustrates this like probably 60, 70, 80% of your income has probably been taken up by like your rent and your basic food and you know, basic transportation and all that kind of stuff, which is a really, really, really tough spot to be in. There’s a benchmark that I like to reference which is called the balanced money formula, which I don’t know if it was created, but it was definitely popularized by Elizabeth Warren and her daughter in their book from, it must be 10 plus years ago now, All Your Worth*.

[* This is an affiliate link. Thank you for supporting PF for PhDs!]

The Balanced Money Formula

17:43 Emily: And they introduce this concept of the balanced money formula. And in that, a person’s necessary expenses–so you know, stuff to keep you alive, housing, food, et cetera. Also, all the contracts that you are in, your insurance, that kind of stuff–that should amount to no more than 50% of your net income after-tax income. And that’s to live like a balanced life. On a sustainable basis, it shouldn’t be more than 50%. If you go above that, it’s like warning, warning, warning. This is not going to feel sustainable for you. It sounds like you’ve probably been in that warning zone your entire time you’ve been in graduate school most likely. And again, really, really common for graduate students, especially those who live in higher cost of living areas. So, that benchmark can feel really discouraging to people who have lower incomes. And it’s just kind of something that like, I don’t know, just you need to acknowledge. It’s going to feel really difficult to live on your stipend if you can’t fit your rent and your transportation and your food under that 50% figure. And is that something that’s worthwhile to attend the institution you want to attend and do the research and pursue our passions in our careers. It’s a tough spot to be in.

Commercial

18:59 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. As a listener of this podcast, every week you hear strategies that another PhD has used to improve their financial picture. But listening and learning does not automatically translate into action in your own financial life. If you are ready to change how you think about and handle your money but need some help getting started, I can be of service. There are two main ways you can work with me to create and implement a financial plan tailored for you. First, I offer one-on-one financial coaching, either as a single session or a series as you make changes over the longterm. You can find out more at pfforphds.com/coaching. Second, I offer a group program called The Wealthy PhD that is part-coaching, part-course, and part-community. You can find out more and join the waitlist for the next time I open the program at pfforphds.com/wealthyPhD. I believe it’s possible to succeed with your finances at every stage of PhD training and throughout your career. Let’s figure out together how to make that happen for you. Now, back to the interview.

Anything Else You Would Like to Share?

20:14 Emily: I wondered if you had any additional thoughts, feelings that you wanted to share regarding what we’ve been talking about. Your career transition upcoming, about the state of your finances right now. Anything you haven’t said so far?

20:28 Chad: I think in terms of sort of the way this has all been. Because again, I don’t come from money. My dad works as a supply manager at a college bookstore. My mom recently started working for Chick-fil-A. Like, working-class family. And there was even this weird stretch when I started the PhD in 2012, my dad who had gotten fired from his job like just after the financial crisis and just took the opportunity to go back to school himself, to finish first his undergrad degree. He could only find a job working part-time for a big-box retailer. And you know, there were moments where mom was calling me up and having to borrow little bits of money from me and then she’d pay them back to make their ends meet. And there was just this sort of sense of like, “Oh, I made it. I’m okay. Like this is not a lot, but it’s going to be kind of uphill, you know, all going up from here.”

21:35 Chad: And then now to be in this position where I kind of feel like at times I just spent the last 10 years at an institution, counting the same institution for both my MA and my PhD, and I’m now actually financially worse off than I was when I started. And I think at times that makes me really scared, and at times it really also bothers me–like now, my mom has to front me money for stuff like getting a new cell phone. Because my old one was four years old and couldn’t hold a charge for like a few hours–and angry. And that wasn’t something that I imagined it would be like when I would get to this point. I felt like it would be tough. There’d be an adjustment, but I didn’t think there would be quite this type of problem.

Supporting Family Members During Graduate School

22:27 Emily: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah, just thank you for sharing the point that you’ve gotten to here. I think that graduate students supporting their family members to a degree–and it could be their parents, it could be a sibling, it could be a dependent child–is something that is, in my opinion, not really talked about that much openly. But it happens a lot. And your degree of like, you know, maybe short term loans to your family that happened over what seems like a relatively short period of time is a more brief, just smaller kind of support that you were able to provide at that time, which is awesome. And other graduate students support their family members for a significant fraction of their stipend for years.

23:19 Emily: And maybe it’s remittances they’re sending to another country. It could be within the US. That situation happens all the time, too. And so, I’m glad to share your perspective on the podcast of thinking, “Okay, I made it into my PhD program. I’m no longer taking out student debt. I have an income. I’m making it. I’m living in DC. The future ahead of me is bright. I’m going to be a professor.” And then, you know, seven years later coming to this point, like, “I’m not so sure what my career is going to be. I have a lot of student loan debt. I have consumer debt. I don’t quite know how I’m going to be making it from month to month starting in just a few months.” So, really, really tough spot to be in. But again, I don’t think it’s that uncommon for PhD students. What has been your observation about how your situation maybe compares to some of your other peers?

How Does Your Situation Compare to That of Your Peers?

24:11 Chad: Actually, I think you’re right. In talking with my peers, there are a lot of similarities. Like you were talking about grads supporting other grads. I’ve got friends in my program, other departments that I’ve gotten familiar with thanks to my involvement with the union, where they’ve got families–or like one of my really best friends in my cohort was from the Philippines and throughout the program he was sending money home to Manila to help his family out. And yeah, it is very common. It’s just, the more jarring thing about it is that for me, on one hand with history, more and more of an awareness of like, “Okay, the job market has sort of changed. Higher ed: We’ve seen this sort of adjunctification of labor. Okay, we need to start thinking about alternative pathways or career diversity.” Different labels get used for different fields. But there really has never been this sort of awareness about the financial dimension. I think the only time it’s ever come up in conversations with faculty are like, “Oh, the stipend’s enough, right? You’re doing okay.” Or, “You’re not having to take out loans for this, are you?” And I’m like, “No, I’m living within my means. I’m fine.” And part of it is, this stuff is kind of new-ish. It’s not necessarily out of the blue, but it is new-ish. And for a lot of faculty, this is wasn’t their experience and isn’t their experience now. So yeah, those are kind of two broad impressions.

Universities Do Not See All of Our Financial Struggles

25:45 Emily: Yeah. I think what I’ve observed from maybe more of the university perspective is they track things like amount of student loan debt taken out. And so, if they don’t see a lot of, let’s say, PhD students taking out student loans–like you have consciously avoided student loans because of your existing level of debt–then they may not be aware of the hardships that people are undertaking outside of the university system, like racking up credit card debt or like borrowing money from other sorts of lenders or from family members or whatever it might be to again sort of keep their head above water. And also, the whole side hustling thing, which is super, super common. And I’m generally a fan of side hustling, especially when it advances your own career, like what you’ve been doing with your other position. Like that’s exposed you to a new area of work and maybe you’ll keep going in that area.

26:40 Emily: So, what can be really beneficial in a lot of ways, but it’s something that can be distracting from the degree, especially if a student has a lot of other responsibilities going on too, like they have a family or whatever. So, it’s not great if a student has to side hustle. It’s okay if they want to and they can balance it or whatever. But it’s not a good situation when they have to do it to just keep their heads above water. So, all of that can be very stressful. Of course, of course it’s stressful and can affect career decisions. And I think what you’ve been talking about–that we’re specifically talking about transitioning out of graduate school–the idea that your stipend is enough to make it on like a month to month basis is kind of one thing. But is it enough to actually bridge you until you get to the kind of job that you’re supposed to have as a PhD?

27:27 Emily: And we know as you were just mentioning from the academic job market that it can take multiple cycles of going through this before maybe you get a possession or maybe you don’t. And what are you doing in the meantime? Are you adjuncting? Like that’s not a really solid situation either. So, it’s not only a stipend needs to serve you in getting, you know, from month to month, but it also should be enough that you can actually transition into the next position, you know, and not have to take on let’s say a bunch of credit card debt or whatever it is in the transition. Like to have to move and to have to have a lapse in employment and all the expenses as you enter the job market. Anyway, that’s me going on for a while about that. So, these challenges are definitely common. What do you think are some solutions or better practices that either the universities could be doing or individuals could be doing or anybody else could be doing to kind of alleviate this situation?

Solutions for Universities and Individuals

28:21 Chad: Yeah. Well, I think universities kind of start from the top and work down. Because I very much do believe in sort of this idea of agency and personal responsibility. But you have an obligation to make the best of the cards that you’re dealt. But you’re also not the one dealing the cards. And I think universities really do have an obligation–for PhDs or master’s students who are working– to pay them sort of a living wage. And there are definitely forces that are nudging them in that direction. Whether it’s like Washington DC, which has passed a referendum that I think will eventually set the minimum wage to $15 an hour which has started leading new improvements for friends that I know or master’s students who work hourly. Graduate unionization, kind of nudging for upped stipends. Also just, there’s the competitive angle of this, you know, trying to get the best recruits. I know with Georgetown we want to get the best people and we’re competing against universities like, for example, Emory or Vanderbilt that actually pay better and are also in cheaper cities compared to Washington DC. So I think universities have an obligation there.

29:40 Chad: I also think sometimes with just like master’s students, it’s a thing that is kind of maybe a joke or a truism, at least with the people I’ve talked to here, that, “Oh, master’s students, your job is basically subsidizing the PhDs or you’re subsidizing the department,” so you have an incentive to bring in more people. And it’s not necessarily going to be a funded program. And you know, okay, I paid in my $80,000. So as a PhD, I don’t always feel bad when I go into the department supply closet and be like, “I need a notepad.” But part of the function of some master’s programs is to recruit people, like identify people that would be good in PhDs. And I don’t know, the sort of like treating folks as a revenue source in that way. It’s just deeply unsettling. And not that I necessarily have an answer to that, but I think universities thinking of alternative ways to handle that or to control sort of tuition is important.

Are Students Primarily Producers or Consumers?

30:38 Emily: What I’m thinking about when you’re saying this is whether the student is primarily a consumer of what the university produces or a producer of that work. And scholarship is part of what a university produces, right? As well as the teaching and everything. So, for undergraduates I guess we kind of accept that they are consumers of the university, and they or the government or whoever should be paying for them to get this lovely education. PhD students we generally see as producers. They’re either teaching and spreading their knowledge and mentoring people, or they’re producing scholarship that is worthwhile. Master’s students I feel like could fall in either category and maybe are viewed mostly as consumers, yet as you were just saying, especially if they’re going onto the PhD level and producing scholarship of their own, even at the master’s level, maybe they should be viewed more as like producers.

31:40 Emily: But anyway, all of this is so, so complicated. And I’m really glad that you brought up like the unionization movement and how that’s affecting this conversation, as well as the competition thing. Of course. I was just thinking that, if we are going to view PhD students as producers of work, it makes a lot of sense to pay people enough that they don’t have to feel stress. Because if what the university wants is a product out of a graduate student, whether it’s a class or whether it’s a paper or whatever, it makes sense to give them an environment where they can produce a good product. And paying them enough that they don’t have to side hustle and they don’t have to take out debt and they don’t have to feel stressed, and it’s not a cloud looming over them all the time. It makes sense to me in terms of producing the best product out of those people as possible. I don’t know what your thoughts are on that.

Quality Work Requires Quality Pay

32:30 Chad: No, I absolutely agree with it. And I think it’s interesting because for me when I first got involved with the unionization effort here at Georgetown–it’s really funny if like, someone had tried to talk to me and get me involved by talking about how low my pay was, that wouldn’t have worked. It would have just been like, “Well no I make enough. It’s not a lot, but I make enough to just get by, and I have a little extra if I want to go out to eat with friends, I can do it.” For me the issue was sort of more transparency about things like job listings and responsibilities. But kind of over the last two to three years, as I have gotten closer and closer to the sort of end, it’s now much more about sort of money and like the awareness that, like what you were talking about earlier, a stipend that just allows earning a living in a livable wage that kind of also gives people a cushion. I’ve been lucky. I haven’t had any sort of serious medical problems or family issues that would’ve required like a massive outlay at one time. But there are a lot of people that don’t have that privilege. So, that’s for me like the big part of the unionization effort. Now it’s just like, we want people to do good, so we should create conditions where they can do good. Like, can do the thing that they signed up to do, whether that’s research, whether that’s teaching.

34:04 Emily: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for that part of the discussion. I think we’ll just conclude the interview here by asking you what is your best financial advice for one of your peers? Maybe someone who’s anticipating the end of the PhD coming up fast.

Best Financial Advice for Your Peers

34:21 Chad: I think probably my best advice would maybe be more geared towards people earlier on, which is recognize that you’re going to change. When I started, I was 25 years old. $22,000 sounded like a lot of money. And like I said earlier, I felt like I kind of had made it. Recognizing that by about now I’m 31. I’ve had friends getting married and needs change. And seven years is a long time to be in one place. So, be aware of that, and when you’re starting out, make a plan kind of on that basis. You’ll hear some of the faculty here talk about, “You need to have like a 10-year plan for academic stuff.” Like when you’re going to publish and do all this sort of stuff. But I think also just the idea of having some sort of longterm financial plan, especially when you’re a graduate student and you’re dealing with pretty thin margins already.

Consider Long-Term Financial Goals and Changing Needs

35:17 Emily: Yeah. I totally agree and want to just underline what you said. To someone who’s in their early twenties or mid-twenties or something, that first stipend offer can seem great. Totally adequate. Fine. You’re looking at your rent, whatever it’s going to be fine. And then you get a few years down the line and your life changes and your career goals change and your responsibilities increase, often. I had another interview in season three with Scott Kennedy and he talked about getting married and having children during graduate school, which is not something that he had in his plan when he accepted that first offer letter. But it was, you know, over the years that he spent in graduate schools, something that came into his life. And so an amount of money that can seem workable at a younger age doesn’t necessarily seem so workable later. Not just because of the individual and your own life changes that you incur, but also as we were just talking about, because stipends don’t keep up generally with the cost of living and inflation, especially in these higher cost of living cities.

36:12 Emily: So, it could be that you’re actually falling behind in terms of an indexed amount of money as well as you yourself are getting older and having all these changes occur in your own life. So, it’s just an argument for prospective graduate students to be not accepting of something that seems “okay,” but really looking, as we were just saying, for competitive offers that will offer you well above the living wage for whatever area you’re moving to. Another thing which we didn’t discuss in detail, but tuition and fees–the responsibility that falls upon the graduate student for paying those–that can sometimes change. And universities who are facing funding shortfalls can change the package that you receive. So, hey, maybe your stipend doesn’t decrease or maybe your stipend goes up, as you were saying. Maybe it’s $1,000 a year, but maybe your fees are also going up by hundreds of dollars per year. That could easily be the case too.

37:04 Emily: And once you start in a program, you start feeling stuck and you’re invested, and there are sunk costs and so forth. And so, it’s just something to think about at the beginning to have more margin than you anticipate that you’re actually going to need because over five years, over seven years, whatever it is, a lot can change. So, Chad, thank you so much for this interview. It was really a pleasure to have you. Thank you for sharing so openly about your situation.

37:26 Chad: Yeah, thanks for having me. It was great talking with you.

Outtro

37:29 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. Pfforphds.com/podcast is the hub for the personal finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. 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 podcast, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media or with your PhD peers. 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. 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.

This Part-Time PhD Student Needs Her Full-Time Income for Her Financial Goals

November 25, 2019 by Lourdes Bobbio

In this episode, Emily interviews Patrice French, a PhD student in adult education at Texas A&M. Patrice has a full-time position at her university and is pursuing her PhD part-time. She is paying for her degree through her employee benefits and a small grant she won after searching and applying for over 50 external scholarships and grants. Emily and Patrice discuss her path to the PhD, her decision to maintain her full-time job while in her program, and what she expects the PhD to do for her career going forward. Along the way, they touch on Public Service Loan Forgiveness, repaying consumer debt, side income, investing for retirement, and the positive steps Patrice has taken with her finances over the past few months.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Sign up for personal finance coaching
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Wealthy PhD group program sign-up
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Podcast Hub
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Subscribe to the mailing list
  • Find Patrice French on Twitter
  • This Grad Student Defrayed His Housing Costs By Renting Rooms to His Peers
  • How the Promise of Public Service Loan Forgiveness Has Impacted This Prof’s Career and Family Decisions

part time PhD in TX

Teaser

00:00 Patrice: The reality at the PhD level is that there’s not a lot of funding for part time students and that’s just something that I had to contend with. I’ve scoured the internet, I’ve looked throughout all of our university. I looked at regional associations tied to my degree and it’s just not a lot out there for part time students, so being prepared to really fit the cost of your education is something that you have to think seriously about because there’s not going to be a lot of financial support for you as a part time student.

Introduction

00:35 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 four episode fifteen and today my guest is Patrice French, a PhD student in adult education at Texas A&M. Patrice has a full time position at her university and is pursuing her PhD part time. She’s paying for her degree through her employee benefits and a small grant she won after searching and applying for over 50 external scholarships and grants. Patrice and I discussed her path to the PhD, her decision to maintain her full time job while in her program, and what she expects the PhD to do for her career going forward. Along the way, we touch on public service loan forgiveness, repaying consumer debt, side income, investing for retirement, and the positive steps Patrice has taken with our finances over the past few months. I’m very excited to share her perspective here on the podcast. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Patrice French.

01:39 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast today, Patrice French and she will be telling us about her journey to the PhD as a part time student and a full time worker. So Patrice, thank you so much for joining me today.

01:52 Patrice: Thank you for having me Emily.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:54 Emily: Please tell us about yourself — where you’re in school, who your employer is, where you live, all those kinds of.

02:01 Patrice: Sure. Well, I am currently at Texas A&M University. I’ve been here a little over three years and this is also where I am pursuing my PhD. I am finished with my second year in my program, which is educational human resource development with an emphasis in adult education, but I like to call it adult education for short because the degree name is a little bit long and people often don’t know what that means. Texas A&M, the main campus is located in College Station, Texas, which is approximately a hundred miles northwest of Houston, Texas. So we’re not too far aside from some major cities in Texas.

02:44 Emily: Yeah, that sounds great. I actually have a little bit of a personal connection, I guess, to your field because my mother-in-law made her career in adult education and ultimately rose to the level of principal of an adult school. So yeah that’s what she’s been up to. Tell us your backstory, maybe from high school or college and what you were studying and what brought you to your current point.

From Social Work to Adult Education

03:12 Patrice: Sure. I have a background in social work actually. I have my bachelor’s and master’s in social work. I went to Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas for my undergrad and I got my master’s degree at the University of Michigan, also in social work. So for a little bit of time I was licensed to practice social work in the state of Texas, but while I was pursuing my master’s degree, I learned that my focus on social work was pretty much in the minority because I was more focused on policy analysis, whereas most of my colleagues really wante to work inter-personally with families, children, things like that. I made a strategic decision to build my skill in a way that would support the efforts of social work, but at a macro level. While I was at my master’s program, I was a research intern at a social justice education program and my experience there basically just led me to an opportunity in higher ed doing social justice and multicultural education and basically led to my switch from social work to higher ed, which is where I’ve been for the past 10 years.

04:23 Patrice: My first job outside of my master’s degree, I would definitely say parallels different areas of social work, but I’ve transitioned in some ways to being more entrenched in higher ed where I wouldn’t consider my work to be social work. I did diversity and multicultural education work for four years and I was in St. Louis. I moved from University of Michigan to St. Louis in Missouri. I did that work for four years and then I transitioned to doing academic student success and retention work, where I oversaw unit that was tasked with supporting students who are transitioning to make sure they have their tools and things to be successful for retention, et cetera.

05:11 Patrice: I moved back to Texas about three years ago and some of that was precipitated by a major health event with my father. I was searching at the time, but by happenstance I happened to apply right around the time my father became ill. While I was in Houston, which is where I’m from, being with him, I basically got a really quick offer from Texas A&M. and I said, “well, I guess it’s meant to be that I’m back in Texas.” And a couple months later, I was back and that was in 2016 and I’ve been back since.

05:45 Patrice: As far as my trajectory to pursuing a PhD, I had been thinking about that really since I was in my master’s program and thought that I would work for three years and go back to school and become a social work researcher. But since I’ve kind of floated around outside of social work for so long, I didn’t think that was a good fit anymore, but I really was still interested and ended up exploring different programs either in psych or communication or an education for probably two or three years. I decided to take a break from looking at it because I thought it’d be more advantageous to work. I was not willing to sacrifice my income, and with my father’s health, I just put that on the back burner so I can be closer to him and my family to make sure that they had what they need. I was back at A&M and learned that they had an adult education program in my university and I actually work in the college that also hosts my program. I did some research and just decided to apply and got in. So a year into me working at A&M, I started my doctoral program and I started part time and have been pursuing the program part-time since 2017. It’s been a bit of a journey. I will say that I don’t know if I would recommend working full time and being in a doctoral program part-time or even, I know some colleagues that do it both full time. For me, I don’t really have any major life commitments to where I can’t balance it. I have a dog, but I am child-free, I don’t have a partner. Outside of going to visit my family, which is about an hour or 40 minutes drive away from me, which I usually go twice a month, I don’t have those huge commitments to where that it would make it harder to balance outside of just the commitment of supporting myself and making sure I’m doing what I’m meaning to do with my main employment position. And then just figuring out life and making sure I take care of myself, health wise and things like that. It’s been a lot.

Deciding on a Part-Time PhD

08:11 Emily: I can definitely see how you got to the PhD though. It’s clear from the point when you were in your master’s that the more academic kind of work and training was going to be a good fit at some point and you got there in a slightly different field than you were expecting. That’s great. I think you mentioned a little bit earlier that you didn’t want to sacrifice your income, but was that the main reason to do what you’re doing this way, with full time work and part-time PhD, rather than doing the PhD full time or are those programs not like well-funded or how did you come to that decision?

08:48 Patrice: I believe the year I started at A&M as an employee, they just started a new benefit where staff employees who could pursue a degree and get some tuition assistance. You had to work at the university for a minimum of one year to be eligible for that. The way that it was marketed at the time, I thought it was only $2,000 maximum for your pursuit of your degree or maybe between $2000 and $5,000 just for one year. So I was under the impression that I would be funding most of it myself and my program funds traditional full time students that are able to serve in TA, GA, or RA positions. Funding was not an option for me through my program nor was it at the larger university level because most of the graduate funding and fellowships were full time students. Or all of them actually. I haven’t seen any part time student funding fellowships at the university level. Financially, it would not have worked for me to go back to school full time because I think our average GA/TA salary is about $1,900 a month and most of them fund just traditional fall and spring hours, and the summer. My amount of bills and needing to be available if it was necessary to support my family. It just really wasn’t an option for me and I just didn’t want to sacrifice getting to a place where I was sort of comfortable. I didn’t want to struggle like I had been in graduate and undergrad and so I just decided not to do that.

10:31 Patrice: Up until the time when I got admitted, I was searching furiously for funding opportunities and I think I applied for over 50 external scholarships. I have a very detailed spreadsheet that tracks all of that and I didn’t get anything. I was applying to $500 scholarships from law offices or foundation repairs. It was just everything that didn’t have a stipulation for what a student should be, I applied for, and nothing. Right into the start of my program, I talked to our benefits people at the university and that’s when I learned that the benefit actually is as long as I’m employed at the university full time, I will get up to $5,000 a year in tuition assistance, which breaks down to $2000 for the fall, $2000 for the spring and $1000 for the summer. That, in combination with some fee waivers, which I think equate to about $300 a semester, really covers about 80% of my overall tuition fee costs. That ended up being way more affordable for me to have to come up with maybe $400 or $500 a semester in comparison to $2,600. In my college, our tuition and fees, excluding some of the fees that I don’t have to play as an employee , the tuition is about $2,547 per semester if I’m taking six credit hours. It sounds really inexpensive in comparison to some other institutions and I’m in state as well, so that makes a big difference, but still it wouldn’t be affordable on my salary to pay out of pocket without pursuing any external aid or scholarships or loans.

12:25 Patrice: I made a very intentional decision not to pursue any more student loans because I have them now and they are continuing to accrue interest and things of that nature, based on the payment plans I’m under because I am pursuing the public service loan forgiveness and have been under the income based repayment plan for four years. Now I’m on the pay as you earn, but my balance has increased and although I’m in school, I have chosen to waive my deferment so I can continue to make payment towards my loan so I can increase my qualifications sooner than later. I just didn’t want to occur any more debt and so I decided either I’m paying for this out of pocket as much as I can, so that might mean that it takes me 10 years to finish my degree, or I’m going to try to find some aid. Gratefully, I have been able to cover all of my costs for my program. I also found a small grant that I have to apply for annually, but I’ve gotten each year, that is for $1,500 for the fall and the spring.

13:36 Patrice: My net costs for my degree program has been negative for me out of pocket, meaning that in many cases between the grant and my tuition assistance, I actually get a little bit of a refund that I’m able to put towards books and supplies, software and other general living expenses. It’s actually worked out very well and I’m very grateful that I’m able to pursue my degree pretty aggressively. I think two courses per semester is a lot to be doing while working full time. And I do one in the summer. So far it’s been a very affordable degree. And even with that, I have a very detailed spreadsheet to the penny where I’m able to project how much my total degree is going to cost with fees, tuition, even diploma fee, the dissertation fee, even the regalia, I already haven’t an estimated a cost of total attendance. I’m being very diligent towards those costs, even though they have primarily been covered by my institution.

14:43 Emily: This is a very thorough explanation. Clearly you are on top of all of these different areas, in terms of the, and I’m, I’m glad that you mentioned pursuing all of those like scholarship applications that you did. I mean, only one grant has come of it, which is good, it’s what you needed, but not more than that because it was such a limited pool for part-time options. But it definitely sounds like you’ve been funded to the degree that you need to be and you just have to keep working your full time job and time to do the graduate work on the side. It’s different to work a full time job than to be like a TA, because a TA, tt’s only a 20 hour week per hour per week commitment and you have a presumably 40 hour per week commitment, but also as a professional, you’ve been doing this for a while, you’re very efficient. I can see how this would work out like pretty well, definitely financially, and also how you can manage your time. Before we move on from this, what does the future look like for you? What are your career goals with the PhD?

Post PhD Career Goals

15:56 Patrice: I always wanted to get a PhD for the credentials and that is still my primary goal. When I was admitted to my program, since Texas A&M is such a huge research institution, I wanted to open myself up to opportunities that would expose me to the academy, to what a tenure track faculty position could be for me. Is this something that I can see myself doing? So I’ve been building my experiences to both pursue the degree itself and also build my CV to give me opportunities, through publications, research experience. I’m still on the fence about whether or not I’m interested in an academic career and I’m leaning towards that not being for me and I do feel like I have a lot of skill and I’ve gotten some really positive feedback from my professors and peers in the field at conferences I’ve attended, but I don’t know if it’s for me in terms of the work with the writing and a lot has changed in the academy with how competitive it is. And quite honestly, based on my research, I would likely be taking a pay cut and would essentially be transitioning to a new career track that would take me maybe five to seven years to recoup the my salary that I had built thus far. And I don’t know if I’m willing to sacrifice that. I don’t really foresee myself getting a partner anytime soon, that may contribute to making a change in that decision. Aafter this, I do foresee myself staying in higher education. My current role right now is that I’m in an academic administrative position overseeing a program assessment that’s tied to some accreditation needs. It’s very much an administrative role, but there are lots of opportunities in higher ed that with the PhD specifically will open up opportunities. So I’m not too worried about where I’m going to land. I’m just gonna hold on for dear life for right now so I can finish my degree and then make some decisions about that. I’m crossing my fingers, I should be finished by the end of 2021 with everything. I have a year and a half left of coursework, so I should be done fall 2020, and my goal is to devote 2021 to writing. By 2022 I should be at a place to evaluate where I am and make some decisions, things like that. I don’t know, we’ll see.

18:30 Emily: You anticipated my next question because you had offhandedly said earlier, “Oh, might take me 10 years to finish,” but that definitely does not sound like the plan that you see yourself on, so that’s really, really good to hear.

Commercial

18:45 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. As a listener of this podcast, every week you hear strategies that another PhD has used to improve their financial picture. But listening and learning does not automatically translate into action in your own financial life. If you are ready to change how you think about and handle your money, but need some help getting started, I can be of service. There are two main ways you can work with me to create and implement a financial plan tailored for you. First, I offer one-on-one financial coaching, either as a single session or a series, as you make changes over the long term. You can find out more at PFforPhDs.com/coaching. Second, I offer a group program called The Wealthy PhD that is part coaching, part course, and part community. You can find out more and join the wait list for the next time I open the program at PFforPhDs.com/wealthyPhD. I believe it’s possible to succeed with your finances at every stage of PhD training and throughout your career. Let’s figure out together how to make that happen for you. Now, back to the interview.

Side Hustling for Extra Income

19:59 Emily: So in terms of funding your PhD, we’ve talked about you have your salary. Thankfully you haven’t, it sounds like, had to use your salary directly to fund the PhD. You have your tuition assistance from your employer. You have this grant that you won. But you told me that you also side hustle, so can you tell me about that?

20:16 Patrice: Yes, I am trying to find multiple ways to supplement my income even though I feel like I’m pretty stable. I did buy a home a couple of years ago and so there’s some costs that I’m looking to cover in terms of maintenance and repairs that are eating away at my salary more than I anticipated and I’m trying to recoup my savings. I have done a number of things. I have done freelancing editing work. I am renting out a room in my house with a colleague and friend of mine. I have done a lot of freelancing stuff as well, mostly editing. And something that’s more towards my student loans, I am partnered with an organization that basically connects nonprofit organizations with freelancers that have a level of skill that the organization needs and upon successful completion of a project, that organization will pay my student loans directly in the form of a stipend. And so I’ve done a couple projects. I haven’t done that many because I’m super busy, but that is another way that I’ve tried to indirectly try to pay down some of my debt with my loans even though I still plan on pursuing public service loan forgiveness, but I don’t know if I will continue to pursue that because it’s counted as income. So I did get a miscellaneous 1099 and it’s taxed, so I don’t know how advantageous it is for me to not see those costs directly, and how it affects my taxes. That’s pretty much what I’ve done. I don’t have a lot of time to do a lot of freelance stuff. Before I started, before I moved here, I did Ubering for a while, which was more lucrative for the drivers than it is now, hearing what I’ve heard, because I do still have some peers that drive for it. But I’m pretty busy so I don’t have a lot of times to do work that takes a lot of time, so any way that I can make free money, that’s where I’m kind of looking at now. The rental income is an easy way to do that and it works out both for myself and my friend because she gets to save money because she’s also in a doctoral program and is really looking to save on costs from renting her own apartment. And I’m able to get a little bit extra income that can go to other things.

22:45 Emily: Yeah, I was going to say the rental income sounds like the perfect solution in your situation because a full time job plus being a PhD student plus trying to side hustle where the side hustling involves trading your time for money, that is a lot on your plate and as you said, you’re visiting your family and so forth. The rental income is really just leveraging another asset you have, not your time, but your home, in a new way. That sounds like a really a really good fit. I’ve published an episode on the podcast before about a homeowner who rents out, who at the time was renting out rooms to his friends and how it was really just, while interpersonally challenging in a couple of ways, really overall very beneficial, mutually. So a good situation when you are able to rent to someone that you know and like and want to be around and trust to pay the rent on time and so forth.

Student Loan Repayment as a Part-Time PhD Student

23:38 Emily: You’ve mentioned your student loans a couple of times and your pursuit of PSLF. I meant to say earlier, it actually makes a lot of sense to me if you are into PSLF to not, I guess go to graduate school full time because I think that would have stopped the clock on that, I’m assuming.

23:56 Patrice: Yes. As long as I’m have my employment verified for full time employment, it would not. It still defers my loans automatically, but there is a one-time option to submit for a waiver of the deferment. You have to either stick with it or you don’t, they’re not going to give you the option to go back and forth, so I made that decision before I started, so I never had a lapse in my qualifying payments for that reason. I’m just sticking very diligently to and really connecting with the loan servicer in regards to where I am and I’m making my minimum payments and just chugging away.

24:37 Emily: And I think you may have mentioned earlier, are the student loans totally from your master’s degree or also from undergrad?

24:44 Patrice: They’re a combination. My undergrad degree was, my first two years were fully funded by scholarships and due to some transition and changes, a part of that was there was an increase in tuition of about up to 7% per year. And TCU is a private institution, so that 5-7% on $19,000, it makes a difference. My last two years of my undergrad, I think I took a total out of, I think, $14,000 and my master’s degree, I took out $24,000 and my master’s funding was only to cover my living expenses because I had a scholarship that covered all of my tuition and fees. While I tried to find employment while I was at Michigan, it was getting really tricky, so I just decided to take out the loans. I was only there for a 13 month program anyway, so I figured, let me just focus on my education and get out and just deal with the loans later. Total for both my degrees it’s about $36,000, but my balance is about $37,500 now eight and a half years later due to the accrual of interest and capitalization since I’ve been on the income based repayment plan instead of the standard option. So it’s just sitting there.

26:01 Emily: I’ve also done other other episodes where we discuss PSLF, very common in our community to be either pursuing it or considering it. What do you think about that decision now, eight and a half years in? Was PSLF the right route for you?

26:17 Patrice: I think it is. My salary when I was right out of my master’s degree was about $30,000 a year and it was in a state that took out state and local taxes, so my take home was about $1,800 per month. I think my standard payment at the time would’ve been about $400. That is a little bit under a quarter of my salary, and so I was really intentional about thinking about the options. I know I’m likely going to stay in nonprofit higher ed. That really wouldn’t be too much of a challenge to pursuing other employment options in lieu of a public service option. Really the salary and then my employment options were my main decisions behind that. I’m a little bit antsy about it given the challenges that I’ve been hearing about, but I think by the time that I’m qualified for forgiveness, there will have been…One, I think that any changes they make will affect new borrowers and not existing borrowers. Let’s say they take it away. I think that it won’t affect me. I think a lot of the hiccups that have happened with the borrowers that are qualifying now will have been remedied by the time that I qualify, which honestly should be in 2022, but I have some payments that are under review that I’ve not gotten a straight answer on in over a year. So my date is September 2023. So within 2022 or 23, I should have a qualification for forgiveness. I’m trying to stick to my decision. That’s why I’m on the fence whether or not I’m going to ambitiously start paying them down, or if I should just stick to the minimum payments because it really aggravates me to see my balance to staying. Because I’ve also been able to maintain a taxable adjusted salary that is, that keeps my payments pretty low. I have a very good accountant that’s able to, with my freelance income, to reduce my income a lot to where what’s reported helps to keep those payments low, which is a goal of mine since I am still covering a lot of other things. But I don’t know. We’ll see. If it happens that it no longer is advantageous for me, then I will make plans to pay them down because I am on a pretty ambitious consumer debt plan right now to where I should be done with all of my consumer debt, excluding my mortgage and my student loans, by next year. And so that should free up a lot of salary, especially if I continue to get some supplemental income through renting my room or stuff like that. So if it happens that I want to change my mind, I’ll just start ambitiously paying it down and will get rid of it.

29:19 Emily: You sound, overall, pretty optimistic about the program. I share your optimism.

29:25 Patrice: Cautiously, I’m cautiously —

29:27 Emily: Yeah, very good point. And really since you’ve been on the plan for eight years, it makes sense to hold out for that last 20% and just see it through and hope for the best.

Other Financial Goals

29:40 Emily: Tell about your other financial goals. You mentioned other debt repayment.

29:45 Patrice: Yes. So my goals right now are to really get a hold on my consumer debt. I have a little bit of credit card debt. I have a car that I have a year and a few months left back on that. I actually have been listening to a lot of your podcasts and reading the blog and have put together a debt plan where I think I’m using the avalanche method to really just target one area of debt at a time. I’m targeting the highest interest rate and then just tackling it and then going to the next. I have a pretty robust plan that if I stick to it, I should be done with everything by the end of June. I have a couple of credit cards and I have a car payment that I think has about $6,000 left on it. I had a really good interest rate on that. It has 2% interest on my car. Really, it wouldn’t save me that much. I have a loan for doing some home repairs and I would pay off a year early, a little bit under, maybe 10 months early on my current plan. I’m really just focused on getting the consumer debt down.

30:57 Patrice: I also want to build up my savings because partially me buying a house, there were some unanticipated expenses of repair really early on to me purchasing them. Since I had done so much on the down payment, I didn’t have the savings to do the repairs, so that was part of the reason why I have a loan for doing some of their repairs. By paying off all of this debt, it will free up a lot of my income so I can start saving, which is a big goal. I’d really like to have more of a cushion than I have right now. Besides that, some larger goals are to just do a lot better at my mid-term and long-term planning. I usually would just plan month to month and all my bills are really the same, so they’re on auto repayments. Any overspending I’m doing or not planning ahead is my fault, quite honestly, unless there’s an unexpected expense, like if my tire blew out or something. But a part of it is just me just being too social and liking to go out and drink and eat out when I can easily just eat at home. It’s just being more fortuitous on my budget so that I could meet some of these financial goals and I’m being less reliant on overspending and really trying to plan out.

32:19 Patrice: I actually have a spreadsheet that is between now and 2020 that kind of plans out how much I’m expected to spend on all my bills, which really shouldn’t change. And then as those debt balances go down, I anticipate that my salary is going to go up so I can start planning for more savings and planning around travel because that’s a big thing that I don’t do a good job at. If I’m traveling for a conference, which a lot of that is self funded, or I’m just going to visit friends and stuff, I kind of just figure it out, and usually me figuring out is putting on my credit card and paying it off later, which isn’t the best approach. I’ve actually applied for a credit card that has a really good mileage rate. There are no airports that are really close to me where I have a preferred airline and so I’m really focusing on putting my recurring bills on that card to build up points, so that I can use that for more of my travel instead of just relying on just any old card. I’m trying to be a little bit more savvy with things. I definitely think when I get through with my debt, I won’t really have to worry about trickling back to my credit cards since there will be so much more flexibility in my salary or my take home anyway. That’s about it.

33:40 Emily: Yeah. It sounds like you’re tackling now the personal finance side of things with the same kind of diligence and energy that you were in these other earlier areas that we discussed more related to your career. That sounds amazing. There are so many wonderful strategies that you just laid out and so I hope that everyone caught them the first time around. Great stuff that you’re doing right now. How are you doing on long-long-term, like retirement stuff? Does your employer already do a lot of that?

Retirement Savings

34:10 Patrice: Yeah. My previous employer, I worked at and institution in St. Louis, I forget what they matched up to, but after the year I was able to contribute at a matching rate up at least to 5%, but I think I might be wrong.I have a 403b that is sitting, that I haven’t touched, I’m just letting it accrue. And then I have a separate retirement plan since I worked for the state of Texas. They take a little bit longer to get vested in, so they’re contributing an equal amount, which is 7.6%, that I’m contributing each month. But after five years I’ll be fully vested as an employee. Um, so if I ever leave I can just let it stay there, I can come back and it’s a really robust retirement system. I will definitely be here long enough to get vested. Those are my main two things and because of that, I haven’t really pursued any other retirement options such as a Roth IRA or things like that, because I’m well-matched at my institutions and I think it’s the equivalent of a pension retirement with the state of Texas. I don’t think it’s your traditional investment fund. I think it’s fully funded and that my eligibility I think is at 55 years age or the equivalent of I think 20 years of service or something. If I wanted to, if I ended up staying in the state of Texas or at this institution, I would have the option to retire at 55 because I’ve been working here since before I was 30. I think it’s a good option. That’s something I’m paying attention to more readily, but I’ve been contributing to my retirement since I was 22, at a minimum of at least 2.5% of my salary, which was not a lot at the time because I was making $30,000 or $33,000 or whatever. But definitely at a point now I’m maxing out the full contributions and maybe if my salary is freed up once I start paying off my debt and have a more sizable savings and I might take out in a Roth IRA to maximize their savings as well. Or I think I’m also looking into some investments, but that’s kind of a long-term thing. I would feel more comfortable pursuing investments once all of my debt is free, so I’ll have a lot more pocket money to play with, assuming that I’m in the same role I’m in now, making the same salary that I am.

36:41 Emily: Yeah. I can definitely see this as one of the advantages of doing the PhD part-time while working full time is that not only do you have the higher salary, but you have these benefits that graduate students never receive. That’s awesome. And it seems like over the next two, three, four years, a lot of different pieces of your finances are going to get a lot easier, right? That’s going to be paid and PSLF will either come through or you’ll have to focus on paying off in another way. Other consumer debt will be gone. It really seems like…And of course when you finish your PhD and your salary hopefully will change, it’ll really be a pretty nice rosy picture at that time and you’ll be able to pursue the IRA or other types of savings, or whatever lifestyle stuff, whatever you want at that point.

37:29 Patrice: Yes. Yes. That’s my goal. Something I neglected to mention is hat my tuition benefit that the university is actually really smart in this because if you’re pursuing graduate level work, and you get tuition assistance from your employer in excess of $5,250 in a calendar year, anything over that amount would be taxed as income. And my previous institution gave a hundred percent tuition remission, but it was a private institution and tuition was about, I think $25,000 a year. So even if you were pursuing part time, most of my colleagues that were pursuing degrees, they would actually end up owing taxes annually because of that. Then our employer worked out a deal where you can just pay the taxes out of your salary, so it wouldn’t feel like such a big hit. But I don’t have to worry about the tuition assistance being a taxable benefit because it’s right under that mark in a calendar year, which is fantastic.

Financial Advice for Part-Time PhDs

38:32 Emily: Yeah, because I mostly deal with full time students, it’s something that I’m like, “Oh yeah, I remember those numbers, I remember being aware of that,” but it’s not something I’m intimately familiar with, so I’m glad you can tell us about that on the podcast. As we wrap up here, what is your best financial advice for another PhD student? Perhaps a part time student.

38:54 Patrice: I would definitely say, look and find as many resources as you can to fund your education. Depending on your program, there may be funding through grants. For example, I’m on a research project right now, that I’m not being funded on, but they got a little bit of money to fund graduate students for extra work. I know that it may be something to consider between the time you’re already spending working, but there is funding out there within your programs, through a lot of the research that’s being done. It’s really just being proactive to ask for it and also don’t feel like you have to rush to graduate and get it done. That’s something that I had to reconcile with, and I had to keep asking myself, why am I really pushing to get this done by this date? And there’s no real answer to that. So if you are reasonable with your time, that is something to make it really affordable, in terms of whether or not you’re going to pursue self funding or program funding or even things like loans and stuff like that. I have a colleague of mine that she and her husband actually bought an RV and we are a huge tailgating community at Texas A&M and she actually rents out her RV during our football season and that is partially how she’s able to fund her cost of her program. And so I’ve heard of some really creative things in addition to just the taking out loans or paying out of pocket that have helped support them.

Patrice: Unfortunately the reality at the PhD level is that there’s not a lot of funding for part time students and that’s just something that I had to contend with. In doing my exhaustive internet search, I was on some premium scholarship websites where you pay a fee to look in databases. I’ve scoured the internet, I’ve looked throughout all of our university. I looked at regional associations tied to my degree and it’s just not a lot out there for part time students. So being prepared to really fit the cost of your education is something that you have to think seriously about because there’s not going to be a lot of financial support for you as a part time student, even if your program gives a lot of flexibility in the pursuit of your degree, which my program does by offering a number of courses online and then in the evening. So it doesn’t really conflict with my nine to five, eight to five work schedule, but it just is hard. There’s just no way around it , there really isn’t. Maybe for some people that are in a partner relationship that it’s more feasible for them. Thankfully through my benefits I am able to not really worry about my cost, but if I wasn’t, I definitely would be taking a lot more time to pursue my degree because I am very much committed to not incurring any more student loan debt.

41:45 Emily: Yeah, I think the listeners can pretty well trust what you’re saying, when you say I have scoured the internet because you’re obviously very thorough in your work and so it’s disappointing to hear that, but better to be realistic about the situation than to go into it hoping that you’re going to win something that’s just not available to you. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. I am so glad to have your perspective here.

42:08 Patrice: Thank you so much Emily. I’m glad I’m able to share.

Outtro

42:12 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPphDs.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. 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 podcast, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media or with your PhD peers. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars covered 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. The music is Stages of Awakening by Poddington Bear from the Free Music Achive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

This Postdoc’s Financial Turnaround Story and Attitude Toward Money Are Incredibly Inspiring

October 21, 2019 by Lourdes Bobbio

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Indira Turney, a postdoc at Columbia Medical Center. Indira tells the story of how her finances changed over the course of her PhD at Penn State. Indira started graduate school with approximately $60,000 of debt in a variety of forms and no idea where her income had been going. She resolved to turn things around, and by the time she graduated she was debt-free with cash savings and investments in a Roth IRA. Indira details the strategies she used to increase her income and minimize her expenses. Her methods are both creative and highly accessible for other graduate students.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Schedule a Seminar
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Podcast Hub
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Help Out
  • Find Dr. Indira Turney on Twitter and Instagram

PhD financial turnaround

Teaser

00:00 Indira: And I think that’s when I realized, wait, my bills are going to be the same for the next five years and we’re having all this money coming in, I could pay off my loans. I don’t have to wait until the end. I think that’s what kind of started opening up my eyes.

00:16 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season four, episode ten and today my guest is Dr. Indira Turney, a postdoc at Columbia Medical Center. Indira tells the incredibly impressive story of how her finances changed over the course of her PhD at Penn State. Indira started graduate school with approximately $60,000 of debt in a variety of forms and no idea where her income from the previous year had gone. On top of that, she realized that she was taking an income cut to approximately $20,000 per year for her stipend. She resolved to turn things around and by the time she graduated, she was debt free with cash savings and investments in a Roth IRA. Indira details the multiple strategies she used to increase her income and minimize her expenses. Her methods are both creative and highly accessible for other graduate students and we could all do well to adopt her attitude toward income and finances. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Indira Turney.

01:25 Emily: I’m delighted to have joining me today on the podcast, Dr. Indira Turney, and she has a really remarkable financial story to tell from her time in graduate school and since. Indira, will you please tell us a little bit more about yourself?

01:38 Indira: Sure. I’m happy to be here and thanks again for inviting me on the podcast. I’m currently a postdoc at Columbia Medical Center in New York City and I graduated from the University of the Virgin Islands with my bachelor’s. I went on to do a pre-doctoral program at the University of Pittsburgh for about a year and then I went on to earn my PhD in cognitive neuroscience at Penn State University in Pennsylvania. Now, I just started a postdoc at Columbia Medical Center, where my research essentially focuses on using molecular and functional neuro-imaging to identify socio-cultural sources and neuro-correlates of Alzheimer’s disease across diverse racially and ethnic population.

02:25 Emily: That is awesome. Thank you for telling us about that.

Indira’s Debt-Free Journey

Emily: So financially, where were you at the start of graduate school?

02:34 Indira: When I started grad school, I had about $60,000 in debt at the time. I never really calculated it specifically, but I had a car loan, I had about $20,000 student loans, and I had some health insurance stuff that I hadn’t paid off fully and some credit card bills. So in total about $60,000.

02:56 Emily: Yeah, that’s a pretty heavy debt load for grad student, and especially because with all student loans, of course you’d be able to defer that and not pay attention to it. But with other types of debt you still have to address it as a graduate student. What was your income during graduate school?

03:12 Indira: My first year I had the regular base pay of about, I think it’s about $1950 on a monthly basis, so about $19,000 a year. That’s what we got to cover stipend and then they paid tuition as well, as a teaching assistant. That’s what I had the first year and then after that with applying to other things, I essentially increased that based on how much funding I got that year.

03:37 Emily: So can you give me like a range for your subsequent years in graduate school of what you were earning?

03:43 Indira: As far as grad school funding, for years two, three and four, I got an NSF grant, so I went from $19,000 to $35,000, so that was a huge increase. My last year I got off of NSF because it was only three years and I went back to the regular base pay of $1950, but because I was an NSF for three years, I also kind of negotiated having a little extra, so I had about $23,000 or $22,000 a year. In addition to that, I also had other grants and funding, which probably, at max, was about $25,000 a year from graduate funds, as far as stipend goes, in my last year. So anywhere between $19,000 to $36,000

04:32 Emily: And it was just five years during your PhD, is that right?

04:35 Indira: Six years, actually, six years. Right. So the last two years.

04:39 Emily: And you said a word that I love to hear, which is negotiate. Can you tell me really briefly about negotiating?

04:46 Indira: Sure. So technically the program is five years and if you’re more than that, they tend to bump you down as a way to push you out. I essentially was like, “No, I’m not going to get paid $18,000 a year. I saved you guys a whole lot of money for three years by getting NSF funding.” And even while I had NSF funding, I technically taught a class, which I wasn’t necessarily supposed to. So I was just like, “I did a lot for the university, especially for this department. You’re not going to bump me down. If anything, you guys should increase my stipend.” Not in those words of course. I think there’s always room for asking for more money because there’s always money there, because technically they gave you, in your letter in the beginning, this is your five-year funding. There is money there. If you told me there was money there for five years, I deferred for three years, then there’s money there, so don’t tell me I used up your money for six years. I think there’s always ways to negotiate and tell them why this is what you’re worth and you are always worth more than what they give you. And if you ask there’s usually a lot of room for extra money.

05:51 Emily: I know you just said you didn’t use those words, but I really love the words that you just said and I’m so pleased to hear them. I think a lot of people need to hear them, about your value, and especially if you win outside funding. Yeah, of course they should extend your tenure and increase your pay. But I was just very interested in hearing that you actually did that negotiating after the NSF concluded. And so there’s still room when the money is yet to come in, even after the money has already passed through the system. In your opinion and in your example, the money was still there, you said the right words, you unlocked the money. In those last two years, were you doing like an RA or did you have to TA or where did the money from?

06:31 Indira: I did a mixture of both, so I TA-ed, where I taught a class because after your master’s you can actually teach versus just correcting papers, I guess. Then I also did an RA fellowship with my lab advisor where essentially I just did the work in the lab and got paid for it, instead of teaching a class where I’m taking away time from my research. I also got another award that bought off some time where I didn’t have to TA that year, even though I was getting funded by the university, I still didn’t have to TA that semester. So I really only taught two years out of the six years and on-and-off half a semester here and there.

07:09 Emily: Gotcha. Okay, so start of graduate school, things are actually not looking too great for you to start of graduate school. Approximately $60,000 worth of debt, not a very generous stipend, although probably okay, given where you were living. But then second year and following, buku bucks, at least for the time you were on the NSF. What’s the snapshot of your financial picture upon your defense, when you finished graduate school?

07:35 Indira: Upon defending, I was completely out of debt. I had $0 in debt. I tried to pay off everything, so my goal was pay it off in five years and I paid it off in four and a half, so my last year I had absolutely no debt at all. My car was paid off. I had paid all my student loans, except for maybe like $1,000, that I think is lurking somewhere from undergrad because the $20,000 I had was for my first year of grad school because I had moved away from the Caribbean to the United States, and so I felt like I needed the extra money, but I had about $2,000 in undergrad, which those are deferred because I’m still taking in school. But your grad school loans, they accrue interest while you’re in grad school, so I was determined to pay off that before I graduated. So on graduation day, defense day, I was completely out of debt, which was amazing.

08:22 Emily: So just so I’m clear about where the student loans came from, that was from the year that you were in school prior to starting your PhD? Is that right?

08:31 Indira: No, so the year prior to starting my PhD, I was fully funded. I think we got like $2,500 a month for a year or eight months pre-doctoral program. Then, right before I started grad school, I applied for financial aid, for a student loan until the start of grad school. I had a $20,000, I don’t know what it’s called, but essentially it was a loan from the federal government and it accrued interest every month. once you started grad school.

08:59 Emily: Okay. So you had taken out a $20,000 student loan, but you also had the loan money. You received it at that time, at the beginning of graduate school?

09:09 Indira: Yes, essentially they give you the loan from the beginning, and then you decide, which was scary because I’m like, I have $20,000, what am I going to do with it? But the point was for moving expenses and living other things that I didn’t account for moving from the Caribbean. So I had that, and from day one, I guess it started accruing interests, so when you get that first bill where it’s accrued about $50 an interest, because I think it was like a 6% or 7% interest rate and I’m just like what. And I didn’t even know that at the time when I applied for it because I assumed I’m in school and I’m not gonna be paying off or getting interest while I was in school, but not for grad student loans, apparently.

09:50 Emily: Yes. Okay. I’m glad to get a little bit more clarity on that. So you took out the loan at the beginning of graduate school, which was un-subsidized, as graduate student loans are, because of the expenses that you had just accrued immediately before that in the moving expenses and so forth. And also, I’m assuming you’re looking at your stipend thinking, “how am I gonna do this?” Okay, so you had that loan right at the beginning, but then by the end of it, you had paid that loan back entirely, as well as the rest of your debt. Anything else going on in your financial picture by the time you finished graduate school?

10:22 Indira: So at that time, about maybe by third year of grad school, I had started saving, just regular savings in a bank, and then I also started investing in a Roth IRA where I ranged from putting in monthly about a $100 when I started and then maybe I upped it to about $300 a month. So I had a Roth IRA and regular savings at the end of grad school and zero debt, which was amazing.

Making the Changes to be Debt Free

10:47 Emily: Yeah, that sounds fantastic. And what a turnaround story. So what were you doing in between point A and point B to have this vast change?

10:57 Indira: Right. So essentially I applied to everything, including large grants up to $40,000, $50,000, or if you account for stipend, some of them were $80-$100,000, to things that were even just $500 for anything, whether it’s for research or…What I did was, so for example, if you go to a conference and they give you per diem, where you have about maybe $90 a day for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I don’t need $90 a day for food. I don’t normally spend that anyways. And so yes, I can’t meal prep while I’m on a conference, but I usually don’t have breakfast anyways. I’m not gonna waste $30 on breakfast. So when I get back from the conference, especially say a week long conference, I now probably save at least $30 for five days from a conference that I didn’t have breakfast. And most conferences probably give you coffee and bagels in the beginning anyways. Mmost times I probably spent most of the money on dinner because that’s when you network with colleagues in the field. So $30 breakfast and maybe I’m off $50 for lunch, so $70 for five days that I would save. I think that was one of the easiest ways in the beginning that I learned to save money from money that I got legally — legally I’m saving this, but I’m not, you know, forging signatures to say I didn’t have lunch or something like that. Not signatures, receipts, sorry. Because with per diem they’re not asking for receipts.

12:15 Indira: Then the other method. I meal prepped, so I didn’t have to buy lunch, because as grad students I think it’s so easy to run to the cafe and get something there, long nights you get food there, but I generally meal prepped, most times, on Sundays. I have these Mason jar salads that towards the end of grad school I learned was amazing, and so I would prep five and that’s lunch for the week. I have no excuse to buy lunch, especially since a salad costs like $10, when I probably spend $15 for five salads a week. I had fun, I hung out with friends, but I always planned it. Not the specific event, but plan for this month, like I’m spending $120 on fun and by the halfway of the month I’ll check in, where are you in that $120. Because I feel like once I’m out I’m like, “Well, I’m out, I’m going to have fun, I’m not going to make finances keep me down.” And so I just spend whatever versus if I know I’m within my budget, it doesn’t matter. But if I didn’t plan for it, then I overspend.

13:15 Indira: I also did a lot of side hustles, in addition to funding and federal money, where I did hair braiding, dog and cat sitting. House-sitting was my first summer when I moved. I moved about two months early before grad school and instead of paying for rent, I essentially house-sat for someone and they had a cat, so house and cat stuff for that two months. I also did Airbnb with my apartment. In PA, it was a lot cheaper than New York, so I was able to have a two bedroom apartment. On football weekends — Penn state is a big football school — so from Friday evening, someone would come and leave early Sunday morning and in just one weekend I can make anywhere between $600 to $800. I would just go bunk on someone’s couch and leave my entire apartment for someone, because even within the town, they knew football weekend was big, so hotels would be about $400 a night. Instead of paying $400 a night for a bedroom, they’d easily pay $400 a night for a whole house. I did football weekends about maybe five or six times a semester in the fall, and that would essentially be my roommate. I had a two bedroom, but I didn’t need a roommate. Then on graduation weekends, which was in May or December, but usually the May graduation weekend hotel rooms would be like $800 and $900 as well, so I would rent out my entire home again. On graduation weekends, I think I did it twice, and one time I got about $1,500 for just the weekend. I don’t remember the second time how much it was, but it was around that. So side hustles, applying for everything, and also meal prepping, saved me a lot, and planning my expenses for even fun.

Balancing Different Incomes During Grad School

14:56 Emily: Yeah, that was an amazing amount of information and amazing overview of what you were up to. I want to follow up on a lot of that stuff, but just before we get there — so when you started graduate school and you had this lower stipend level and then you know, in the next year the NSF stipend is so much higher than what you were making, so you have this vast income increase — did you change anything in between those two years? Were you living in the same place, for example?

15:28 Indira: Between the first year of grad school and second?

15:31 Emily: Yeah. I’m kind of wondering if you sort of set up your life in the first year to live off of that $20,000 per year-ish, but then you had that vast income increase — did you increase your lifestyle or did you keep your lifestyle at that original level?

15:45 Indira: No, so at the very beginning I was making about $1,800 a month and so I lived in a one bedroom, but technically it was actually more expensive than the two bedroom I moved into cause it was like a apartment complex versus someone who had a home and they were like, yeah, you can live here kind of thing from Craigslist. Um, and so I didn’t intentionally necessarily go cheaper. So that was really the only thing that changed. I probably, I think I was being like $975 for a one bedroom and that I paid like $950 for two bedrooms. So it wasn’t necessarily a big change. I still had a car so that all of those things remained the same. Um, side hustling if anything. I started Airbnb my second year. So even after I got NSF, it was when I started doing it, because I was like my biggest paying side hustle.

16:29 Indira: Lifestyle-wise most of the things stayed the same which is, I think one of the beauties of grad school. Your bills, your lifestyle for the most part stays the same for at least five years. I think for things like that, I started realizing, and I did a workshop from the Black Graduate Students Association and they had something about financial literacy. I think that’s when I realized, wait, my bills are going to be the same for the next five years and we’re having all this money coming in. I could pay off my loans, I don’t have to wait until the end. I think that’s what kind of like started opening up my eyes. But as far as lifestyle, no. Those things pretty much stayed the same for five years. Aside from like emergencies and stuff like that and just like maybe a little more traveling towards the end. But the basic lifestyle remain the same.

17:14 Emily: Okay. So really what happened is you had your lifestyle set at that original stipend level that you were receiving, and then your income vastly increased both from the NSF and from your side hustling. Were you just like crazy throwing everything at debt? Like that was a huge goal that you had. What were you doing with that excess?

17:34 Indira: In the beginning it was more so I never used to save. Like I said, the year before I started grad school, I did that pre-doc program and we got about $2,500 a month and we didn’t have to pay for housing because all of that was paid for. I don’t know where that $2,500 went for eight months. So when I started grad school and I realized I’m getting paid less than I was going to get out of the pre-doctoral level, I was like, “Wait, this makes no sense. Where did that money go? I need to learn to start saving.” I started just putting that extra money in savings, but then realizing of course I’m not getting a big return. All right, I know those debts, those bills keep coming back. And I’m like, “Why am I just letting this accrue interest for the loans?” So then I started paying just the interest rates and stuff like that.

Indira: I think I just didn’t want to be in debt and I realized that I have all this money coming in and grad school and the lifestyle that’s going to be the same for five years. I started realizing that I was blessed to not have $100,000 in just undergrad debt alone because a lot of my friends did. They just have that sitting there because it’s not accruing interest and that’s fine, but I realized too, a lot of them were taking that money and living a more luxurious lifestyle now in grad school because we’re getting all this money and we could live a pretty decent lifestyle depending on how much money you get coming in. But I’m like, “why not just pay off the other debt?” because then guess what, when you’re done with grad school, the debt is still there waiting for you versus live a balanced lifestyle and paying off your debt. I think it wasn’t like a big, “I have to pay off $60,000 debt”, I was just more aware of where my money was going and one thing after another just led me to investing and putting it into different things.

19:18 Emily: Yeah, I’m really glad that you had that sort of realization. Yyou had this one year in the pre-doc program where you are making a pretty okay amount of money for a stipend, but where was it going? And you sort of had a re-evaluation point, like “Okay, I don’t know what just happened to all of that. I obviously have to change some things within like my financial management going forward.” Also, it sounds like you also went to some financial literacy events or a course or something and that also helped you think differently about your money during graduate school and realizing that you had the ability to work on it right then and didn’t all have to wait for the end.

19:57 Indira: Right. Because unfortunately I think a lot of us are just not taught about how to use the money we get. And so then when you get it naturally, we’re like, “Oh my God, I have all these extra thousand dollar a month. Maybe I’ll go somewhere and travel, do something.” Which is nice, but I mean I think that workshop from the Black Graduate Student Association definitely opened up my eyes.

20:13 Emily: Yeah. Sounds super valuable. I’ll make a shameless plug for my own services here. Probably not exactly the same as what you experienced, but I do offer seminars and webinars for universities, specifically for grad students and postdocs on, I don’t call it financial literacy, but I call it personal finance. So anyone out there who’s looking for that kind of programming that can be incredibly life changing, please think of me. My website, pfforphds.com/speaking, is where you can go to find out more about that.

20:38 Emily: Back to Indira’s story. Okay, so we’ve seen the beginning of the end point. You’ve talked about a few of the strategies that got you from point A to point B. I want to dive into each of them a little bit more. So as you said, you were applying for everything to increase your income, including, I mean obviously you won the NSF, you’ve already mentioned that. That’s awesome. Probably the biggest difference of any of anything that happened. You were talking about how you were using per diems from conferences, but just being frugal right around your food spending. So instead of spending 100% of what you are given, that really is a little bit of like windfall money. You come home from a conference, you realize, “Okay, I was receiving X amount of money, only spent whatever it was, 50% of that.” Hey, a little bit of extra money. That’s something that I think having a plan for, that’s what I call windfall money, unexpected money that enters into your pocket somehow. Did you just throw that towards whatever your current goal was? Savings or debt? How did you think of it?

21:41 Indira: Yeah, so in the beginning, whatever extra I had, I just had it in savings and then I realized my savings was looking really nice and I was like, “well, what am I doing with this money?” I don’t have kids. I send money home to family and stuff in the Caribbean, but aside from that, I didn’t have a need to have a big cushion. Especially, like I said again, I know I’m not going to get laid off of grad school, so I didn’t have to have this big cushion in case I lost my job. I was like, “what am I gonna do with that?” In the beginning, I put everything into savings and then I started doing the Roth IRA because I’m like, “Oh well maybe I can get a bigger return there.” Now, as a postdoc, I’m doing some regular investments as well. But at that time it was just a Roth IRA and savings. I started calculating, if I have this in my Roth and this in my savings, where there’s still a “life happens” emergency fund in my savings, the extra I put towards starting to pay off my student loans. I think at one point I just put a lump sum on my car payments. That way, in case something happened, I just didn’t have like the feeling of every month I had to pay a certain amount and if I didn’t then all of a sudden it’s a problem, so I just put a lump sum down. Technically, I was always about three months ahead of my actual payments due. So starting with savings, then the Roth, and then started paying off the student loan and the car loans and the other health insurance and credit card debt. It’s like the highest interest rate and from there, just started working my way down. One thing I liked about what you said is that extra money. I had a monthly income, then I said this is what I’m spending and when I calculated my spending, I had fixed, flexible, where fixed is like the things that you need — there’s no ands, ifs or buts about it. And the flexible is like Netflix or eating out and stuff like that. Those were budgeted based on my $1,800 a month, and then when I had NSF, it was budgeted on my $3,500 a month and then all the extra staff, I never budgeted. Those just went into my savings and paying off debt. I never felt like I was using it and then extra stuff, that I used for extra fun.

Side Hustling as a Grad Student

23:55 Emily: I see. Yeah. Thanks for going into the that detail about your budgeting. You also mentioned that you had tried out several side hustles and I wanted to know because a couple of them are pretty accessible. So the first one that you mentioned was, house-sitting or cat-sitting, which basically meant that you didn’t have to pay rent for two months and this is like sort of a holy grail of things to pursue. How did you land that gig?

24:23 Indira: The house-sitting the first semester — I told my advisor that I wanted to move early and do an RAship, or research assistantship, so she paid me what they would pay a regular RA. I also asked her if there was anyone — on the faculty list there’s always people going on sabbatical or going away for the summer, for a month or during the summer. I know a lot of faculty members, from being at Pittsburgh, I know a lot of them were going away for about at least a month and they were looking for places or people to house-sit, or cat-sit if they had pets. So I was like, “Oh I wonder if people at Penn State do the same thing.” And lo and behold, they did. There happened to be a faculty member who was going away for the two months that I needed a place before grad school. I asked my advisor, she gave me a few different people who were looking, I reached out to them, told them I was moving, going to be a very responsible grad student and I would love to take — at the time, I didn’t have a dog so I didn’t have any recommendations about being a pet-sitter. But I mean, it was a cat, so I think it was easier to sit for a cat. I just applied and reached out to people and interviewed through Skype and stuff like that and then moved all my stuff into their basement, until I was ready to move into an apartment for grad school.

25:31 Emily: Thank you so much for sharing that because, as I said, I think it’s very accessible. It’s maybe not something you’d do 100% of the time and obviously later on you rented an apartment, you didn’t end up doing that 100% of the time. But for a bridge kind of period of time, it’s really perfect. And again, for the summer, as you said, faculty do travel quite a bit. Even someone going on sabbatical or whatever, could be longer than that. What you did is so easy to do. You asked your advisor, you got some recommendations, you followed up with those people, you land —

26:04 Indira: Sometimes our advisors may not know, but once I was in grad school, I also knew what people who needed house-sitters. I think even asking just the grad students, “do you know any faculty member who needs someone,” is another way to go about it, especially again, even sabbatical. I never did it, but for sabbatical, if someone’s going away for a year, that’s a year you can save in rent. I know one person who did that, so there’s definitely ways to save for rent.

26:27 Emily: You know someone who has sat for a year, like nine months?

26:31 Indira: Yeah, it was a little tricky. She house-sat for about four months. It was half a year, so it was just a semester, and she just stayed at their house. She still had her apartment, because she had a partner and he had to stay there and whatnot, but assuming she didn’t have a partner, that would’ve been saving rent for an entire three, four months. I know other faculty members who leave for six, eight months or usually two semesters I guess, and if they have a pet, that’s usually the key thing, where they need someone to stay there because they can’t take the pet with them or they rather not. They usually just have students who can just come and check in, but because usually we have our things set, and especially in a small town, it was a little tougher because you can’t get a six month lease or three month lease, it’s always a twelve month lease and you don’t want to break your lease. But given that opportunity, depending on the state that you’re in, the city, you would be able to just stay at that person’s place.

27:32 Emily: Yeah. This is a great idea for anyone who’s again doing something like moving somewhere on a little bit of an off schedule from what the market is accustomed to. That’s amazing. What were the other side hustles that you mentioned?

27:46 Indira: I did some hair braiding, so doing people’s hair. I have locks now, but before that I did all kinds of hair, and all kinds of races too. Especially being in State College, a lot of the faculty members kids wanted braids, for example. I know a lot of friends for example, who braid hair, but it’s a little tricky to braid ethnic hair versus someone who’s white or Hispanic. I braided all kinds of things. I would do the kids’ hair and of course they love it and be excited and be like, “Oh my God, I want you to do it to my hair all the time,” so that was a client automatically, at least once a month. Then I also did Airbnb.

28:22 Emily: Right. Airbnb. Yeah. That was the other thing I wanted to follow up with you about. It’s very evident to me that you have this, I don’t know if I want to say entrepreneurial, but you just go after things. You just take opportunities as you see them, which is amazing. The Airbnb thing I think is so clever and it’s again, something that I haven’t heard of from a PhD before. I wanted to talk to you a little about it a little bit more. You were renting during this time, right? And was that kind of usage of your rental in accordance with the lease?

28:53 Indira: I know in New York there’s a lot more, I didn’t realize there were so many restrictions with Airbnb. I know there were some rental properties in State College that didn’t allow Airbnb. I was pretty up front with my neighbors. They were these old little couples, so they were pretty flexible. I told them, you know, I’ll have people coming into my, I didn’t say Airbnb because I didn’t think they knew what Airbnb was anyways, but I was like, I have people who will be visiting and they would stay here on the weekend, especially a football weekend, Friday to Sunday. I will make sure they don’t damage anything, everything will be my responsibility, although Airbnb I think reimburses up to like $1 million in damage, I never had that issue. I essentially just reaffirmed them that I will have strangers in my apartment for short periods of time and I will make sure that they don’t disturb the neighbors or anything like that, but if you have a problem let me know. But actually, I think they never lived close to me anyways and like I said, they were older couples, so maybe there was some leeway there. Even after I started doing Airbnb, I told all my friends about it cause I was like, there’s so much money to be made here. Some of them illegally did it and others, their apartment people were fine with doing it as well, for the most part. I think it depends on the city. I think New York is definitely a big no, no, but in PA, unless it was one of those big fancy new student-based apartments, most apartments allowed it.

30:13 Emily: Yeah. This is definitely something that if someone’s interested in this idea, they definitely just have to keep on top of the regulations because it can change really quickly. But yeah, your place in time, it sounded like it was perfectly acceptable and the numbers you were throwing out earlier were very impressive for the amount of money you were able to rent for, especially the graduation weekends. I’m just thinking, you saw a huge influx of people coming in for a game day, coming in for graduation, and you saw what hotels were charging and you just said, “well, I have a place to offer too.” That’s just amazing that you did that. It sounds like some of other people are doing as well, so it’s not like you are the only person who thought of it.

30:49 Indira: I think about maybe four or five of us did. I don’t know anyone who was doing before me. Not like I’m the person who told everyone about Airbnb, but I think everyone was a little hesitant about having someone in their apartment. Is someone going to steal my stuff? And so I think after just being like, “no, there’s no harm because Airbnb also reimburses you up to $1 million,” that’s what they say anyways. I think when I got a dog it got a little trickier. Towards the end of grad school, I had a dog and it was easy for me to just go stay on someone’s couch, because you have friends, you’re probably spending the night there anyways, but with a dog you have to bring a crate and then if they don’t allow dogs in their apartment that gets a little tricky. I would do it a little less frequently when I had a dog and then the last year I just didn’t at all because it just became inconvenient for both me and him and my friends. But I think without a dog or if it’s a really small dog where you don’t have to bring a crate and all that stuff, then I think that’s more flexible too. Or like my friends, if they did it a weekend, I would take their cats and stuff and because it’s easy with a cat and stuff. I just think it depends. For the most part it was, I think, my most favorite side hustle because it brought in the most money for the least effort. Then the second one would have been hair braiding because I just loved doing hair.

32:05 Emily: Yeah. That sounds incredible. And I think this is again, potentially very accessible for other people who live in college towns who can see the same patterns emerging of people flooding into the city for big events.

32:17 Indira: I mean anywhere, especially college towns that have football games because people are just going to spend money. They come with families, they want a big place or a place versus just a hotel room. And there’s a really low risk because the whole day Saturday they’re at the game, so they’re not really there and you can decide whether or not you want them to have parties at your house or not and then they usually leave early Sunday morning and they come late Friday night. It’s really one full day that they’re there. Even now in New York, I was looking into it before I found out that you had to do at least 30 days or something like that. New York would be a good place too if it wasn’t the 30 day limit because again, it’s just another place where people are always coming in. I think as long as it’s a place that people like to visit, I think you can do it.

Lifestyle Changes as a Debt-Free Postdoc

33:03 Emily: Yeah. Oh my gosh, I’m so excited about this. Thank you so much for sharing that. We’ve talked a lot about your time in graduate school. Now that you’re a postdoc and you have even more experience in a different city now as well, you have a whole different set of challenges. What does your budgeting method look like today? What are your best practices?

33:23 Indira: I still use the same thing. I have a monthly budget, I have fixed and flexible spending and I still pay off my credit card in full. Recently, I’ve been experimenting with just trying to calculate the percentage of things that I’m spending for each expense. You know, because of the whole don’t spend more than 30% on rent kind of thing.

33:44 Emily: Exception, New York.

33:46 Indira: Exactly. I’m like, I don’t have a choice. So just having a better sense of my income and where it’s going and what I’m doing. Because in grad school, for example I just had my main fixed spending, flexible spending and everything else just went to debt. Now that I don’t have necessarily debt to pay off, but I have a huge rent and living expense, I just want to know where that money’s going. I still have a Roth IRA and now I am also doing regular investments with stocks and bonds and all that stuff. I just have the one you just leave it and you forget about it. I don’t do the following the stock market. That’s a lot for me right now. Maybe eventually one day, but right now I don’t think I have the time for that.

34:27 Emily: Stick with your current strategy, it’s a good one.

34:29 Indira: Exactly, stick with what you know. For the most part I’m doing the same strategies. I have a Mint app and I also still have an Excel sheet just to kind of visualize where all the money’s going because I think it’s a lot of anxiety of just spending way more than 30% of my postdoc salary on rent, but I’m okay. It’s more of an emotional thing to just feel okay about it. I don’t have a lot of money and I’m spending a lot on rent, but I’m still okay. I’m still doing the same thing.

35:02 Emily: Yeah. Okay, great. What frugal strategies are you using? Are you still meal prepping?

35:08 Indira: Definitely. I still meal prep. My Mason jar salads are still part of my lunches. Depending on my workout schedule and whether I am consistent with working out, I do breakfast, but I haven’t figured out a meal prepping for breakfast yet. Sometimes it’s just a shake. And then dinners, I also still meal prep. I have been trying to strategize and trying to figure out whether I need to meal prep all dinners. Because it’s fine for me to eat the same salad for months and years while I’m at work, versus when I get home, if it’s winter, I don’t really want the same food I had yesterday or maybe want something hotter. It just depends. I’m still trying to figure out dinner, but for the most part I still don’t eat out a whole lot. I still budget, like this is what I’m going to budget for lifestyle this month and if it’s the second week and I’ve gone through that, then I guess we’re done eating out for the week or the month or you know, hanging out or whatever. I still budget everything for the most part and just try to not overspend on things that I don’t need.

Indira: I don’t really take Ubers. The train is pretty reliable in New York. Unless I’m really, really late for something and it’s important that I can’t be late, then I’ll take an Uber, but for the most part, I still take the train everywhere. I feel like a lot of people are just like, “let’s Uber and I’m like, no, I’ll meet you guys there. I’ll take the train.” There’s just so many ways to lose money in New York. It’s ridiculous. I’m still trying to figure that out. I’ve been here about nine months and so I’m still trying to figure out going out. I was a big outdoors person in PA, so parks and hikes were great. Not so much in New York, although I do live close to a park, but it’s not like a hike. I’m trying to figure out those new things because I know there’s a lot of free things in New York, I just need to figure those out. But I still for the most part have a lifestyle and it’s just a matter of, again, budgeting that lifestyle.

Final Words of Advice

36:53 Emily: Thank you for sharing that. Final question as we wrap up here. Thinking back to yourself, your starting graduate school, you have a low-ish income coming in, for the stipend. You have this debt load. In fact, you even took out a student loan because you were unsure about how things were going to go with your finances. What advice do you have for another person facing that kind of financial challenge and also on a grad student kind of income?

37:19 Indira: I mean I think it’s kind of the same things you just summarize. I think apply to everything, no matter how small or large the grants are, because I think the more grants you apply to, the better you get at grant writing. In the beginning it may seem like, “Oh my God, I don’t want to write this essay or this statement.” But over time I reuse statements. And as you get deeper in the program, you learn to write better. You change things, but for the most part I never really rewrote a grant from scratch after my second or third year. Apply for everything no matter how big or small. Don’t doubt that you’re not going to get it, because a lot of grants I got, I didn’t think I was even eligible. Especially for diverse, minority students. I think there’s so much money for minority students that people just don’t even apply to. And then they give it to, not anyone, but people who actually needed versus who don’t. Because people who need it don’t apply or they don’t know about it. Ask other students because there’s so much. A lot of the grants I applied to was because another student had applied to it before. Imagine one person may not have five or ten grants, but if you ask ten different people who had ten different grants that’s ten different grants you can get, so apply for everything.

Indira: Definitely pay off debt while you’re in grad school. Don’t let it sit there and whatever money you get, don’t use it for other lifestyles until after you pay for your debt. One thing I did was paying off debt and then whatever was left over I would have for fun, travel, and stuff like that. And it’s okay to take out a loan in the beginning, especially people who have like $100,000 in debt in undergrad. Yes, it’s not accruing interest, but if you want to take out a loan and just pay a lump sum for now and just to get in the habit of like paying something down, take out the loan. And apply for a lot of things. Have a strategy to pay off the loan before you finish grad school because that loan is going to accrue interest. But in the long run you paid off more in grad school and then it’s like it never existed anyway. So apply for everything, pay off debt while you’re in grad school, and do what you need to do to also still balance life and paying off debt because you don’t have to be miserable paying off debt.

39:21 Emily: And I definitely would also add to that, from your story, just go after it. I mean you were going after funding, you said no to your program: “No, you’re not going to cut my funding. I won so much money. No, you’re going to pay me more.”

39:34 Indira: When you’re starting, so I know I asked after, but even in the beginning, once I was through the program and seeing behind the scenes, you can ask for more money in the very beginning before you even start grad school. They’re not going to take back your letter and say, “well, you asking for too much” because if they have it, they’ll give it. The worst they can say is no. So if they have it, they will give it. So ask.

39:52 Emily: Yeah, I totally agree. And I’ve done one podcast episode on negotiating grad student stipend, before in season one. I’m planning on releasing another one, actually a compilation of stories in the  early months of 2020. So if you’re very interested in grad student salary, stipend negotiation, please tune into those episodes.

Emily: Indira, thank you so, so much for sharing this story. Where can people find you?

40:16 Indira: I have been trying to be a lot more active on Instagram, so on Instagram it’s just my name, Indira Turney, so @indiraturney, I N D I R A T U R N E Y. And it’s the same on Twitter, as well. I think those are my two main networking platforms. Email is Indira dot Turney at gmail dot com. It’s fine if you want to ask me questions, please reach out. I’m always open. Like I had mentioned earlier, I’ve been trying to be more open, even about just budgeting on a grad school stipend on Instagram, but also I’ve been also doing a lot of one-on-ones with people just talking about their process because there isn’t a one size fits all for budgeting because people have different scenarios. If you’re interested, send me an email, reach out to me on social media and I’m happy to answer any questions.

41:05 Emily: Yeah, that’s amazing. Thank you for that work that you’re doing, and thanks so much for coming on the podcast today.

41:09 Indira: Thank you for having me. I had a lot of fun.

Outtro

41:12 Emily: Listeners, thank you so much for joining me for this episode. PFforPhDs.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There you can find links to all the episode’s show notes, a form to volunteer to be interviewed, and a way to join the mailing list. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you want to support the show and my business, please go to PFforPhDs.com/helpout. There are plenty of ways to sell without laying out any of your own money. See you in the next episode, and remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it doesn’t hurt. The music is Stages of Awakening by Poddington Bear from the free music archives and it’s shared under CC by NC.

 

This PhD Healed Her Scarcity Money Mindset Using a Goal-Setting Framework (Part 2)

September 23, 2019 by Meryem Ok

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Lucie Bland, about her financial journey from graduate school to self-employment. Lucie was severely underpaid as a PhD student, and she felt such guilt and shame around spending that she became terrified of money. Her money mindset didn’t improve when her income increased several-fold as a postdoc, and it wasn’t until she discovered the Good-Better-Best goal-setting framework that she started to heal her relationship with money. She now describes herself as a money boss. In this second half of the conversation, Lucie describes the Good-Better-Best goal-setting framework and how she applied it to personal finance as well as other areas of life. She also shares how mastering her personal finances enabled her to take the leap into self-employment.

Listen to part 1 of this interview!

Links Mentioned in the Episode

  • Lucie’s Website: luciebland.com
  • Lucie’s Free Guide to Writer’s Block
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Speaking
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Help Out

PhD self-employed money boss

Teaser

00:00 Lucie: Money is so interesting because it’s where you have a conflict between all your limiting beliefs and your trapped emotion and your resources that are linked to survival. That’s why money triggers our fear centers so much. It’s the modern-day saber-toothed tiger that’s coming to eat us.

Introduction

00:24 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 four, episode six, and today my guest is Dr. Lucie Bland, a self-employed PhD living in Australia. Lucie has such an amazing story to tell that I’ve split it into two episodes. Last week’s and this one in this episode, Lucie shares how she relied on the Good-Better-Best, or GBB, framework when she decided to become self-employed. She also illustrates her current practice of personal finance now that she is a self-described “money boss.” She proposes many ways PhDs can use the GBB framework with respect to income, personal finance, research, and other areas of life. Without further ado, here’s the second part of my interview with Dr. Lucie Bland.

Lucie’s Self-Employment Journey: Using GBB

01:19 Emily: Okay. Now we’re going to resume talking a bit more about your self-employment journey. So you’ve already told us that you went through this period of re-evaluation where you’re taking time off from your postdoc, then you went back part-time to your postdoc, which didn’t work out very well because it’s very difficult to do research part-time. And you also had a side job as an editor for some time. But then you were saying that you sort of realized that you really wanted to be self-employed and wanted to have more control over your work, control of your schedule, I assume that self-employment would offer you. So let’s talk more about this GBB model and how you used it in this journey towards self-employment.

02:02 Lucie: Yes. Basically, when I was using GBB in the budgeting I realized that my “Good” goal, or my minimum viable income, is 33,000 Australian dollars, which is actually not that much. It basically means that I need to make $50,000 minus tax, which is a very realistic start for a business. And especially kind of as we talked about before, I still have a lot of savings. So doing these highly-paid postdocs enabled me to have the financial security to then go on and do my business without taking a loan, without taking a lot of risks in many ways. And so using that GBB framework enabled me to make a really intentional decision and actually a very low-risk decision to start my own business.

Two Forms of Runway: Savings and Part-Time Work

02:56 Emily: Yeah, so I was highly involved in the personal finance community, the personal finance blogosphere in 2011 to 2015, I would say. And I watched a lot of other people in that space move from being employees to being self-employed. And ultimately, I did this as well. And the term that we used for what you did was to give yourself a runway. So you gave yourself two kinds of runways. The first was by having a good amount of savings from having that higher income for a number of years. So you knew that you could have no income coming in for some period of time and you would be fine. Or you know, a lower than ideal amount of income. And the other runway you gave yourself was working this part-time position, having the side job, experimenting with how much you would need to work for other people but still be able to fulfill what you wanted to do and ultimately you could drop those things off as you were able to take off with your business income and no longer need those need the runway.

03:52 Emily: Right. So, two forms of runway. Just for anyone considering self-employment or considering maybe even doing another job that’s lower-paid. Any kind of transition like that, giving yourself some runway. Here’s a great idea, whether it’s through savings or side jobs or whatever it might be. Yeah. Anything else you want to say about using that model and your transition to self-employment?

Taking the Time to Experiment and Make Mistakes

04:16 Lucie: Yes. And you know, I think you make very good points about using the two different types of runway. And for me, in a way where doing the postdoc part-time worked really well in that it gave me time to know what I wanted to do. Because it did take me two years, two whole years to figure out what I really wanted to do. And that’s very typical of any career transition if you read the career-coaching literature. So it gave me time to set up my business and know what I wanted to do. It gave me that time where I was only working part-time hours to set things up behind the scenes, make lots of mistakes, go down lots of rabbit holes and not have that pressure of things having to work out immediately in the sense that, now, I’m in my first year of business. But really, I’ve been doing this for almost two years. I know how things work a little bit better. So again, probably a theme that’s coming through this interview is that I’m actually a little bit risk-averse in many ways. But I was much more comfortable making that decision to jump into my business. Having had just a little bit of legs under that idea and a little bit of knowledge, some numbers through my GBB goals and my budgeting other than flying by the seat of my pants, which is not really me.

05:32 Emily: Really what you’re doing, in all those different approaches that you just mentioned, is giving self-employment or your business, the ultimate business idea that you settled on, the best chance it could possibly have. Because like you said, when you’re first starting out with a new venture, you have to do a little bit of experimentation. You have to bumble around a little bit and make some mistakes. And if you have given yourself no runway and it has to work within two months or whatever it is, you have to make enough money to start sustaining your lifestyle within that short period of time. It doesn’t give your business really the room to evolve and grow and succeed. And so, yeah, I definitely would say that if you’re serious and very, very aspirational about becoming self-employed, you need to build that into your plan, right. Build some bumbling around and some mistakes into your plan.

06:21 Lucie: Yeah.

What Does Your Business Look Like Now?

06:22 Emily: And so what did you ultimately come to, you know, through this period of experimentation, what does your business look like now?

06:29 Lucie: Now I run an editing and coaching business and I’ve got three arms to my business. I’ve got editing, coaching and writing workshops. And the advantage with professional services businesses, like yours and mine, is that they have very low expenses, and in a way, they’re quite low risk. They do require some work in terms of to make it more leveraged or passive. You know, I need to evolve my business model in terms of I can take holidays and not have to be working all the time. Because otherwise, I’m just my own boss that’s still the slave to working every day. But for me, it’s a much better balance.

07:09 Lucie: And I would say that I definitely went from surviving to thriving. And that’s where being really intentional and self-knowledge is critical in the sense that when I did this career-coaching with this What Color Is Your Parachute?* book, one of the things I realized was that creativity and freedom or some of my core values. If I’m not getting this in a job, then being self-employed, you have ultimate control, you have ultimate freedom. And so there are lots of reasons why for me this is the best choice. And I think for people who would be listening to the podcast, then any self-knowledge that you have about your own values, about your own preferred work environments can only enhance your decision-making. Regardless of whether you want to continue in academia or do something else. It’s like your minimum viable income, but for your personal happiness.

[* This is an affiliate link. Thank you for supporting PF for PhDs!]

Professional and Personal Development

08:06 Emily: Yeah, exactly. I did a lot during graduate school. I would always pay attention when the career center or professional development stuff sent out emails about workshops and events they were doing. And I was always like, yeah, if I can go, I’m going to go, and did a lot similar to you. Like self-exploration, guided exercises, little tests and stuff to help me figure out like what was the work environment that I wanted and so forth. And it was funny because at that time, it didn’t at all occur to me that self-employment would’ve been a good fit. And yet, I’m really enjoying it now. I’ll link to a post in the show notes about how I think that PhD research and self-employment actually have a lot of overlap in terms of the skills that you learn in one can apply to the other. But what you were just mentioning about kind of being your own boss and managing your time and so forth. I think that there is room for another loose interpretation of the Good-Better-Best goal framework there. Like “Good” might be working 40 hours a week, every single week out of the year, “Better” as being able to have a little bit more freedom and flexibility with your time, and “Best” is being able to have so much stuff outsourced and have people on your team that you can take time away from your business whenever you like. There are so many ways that Good-Better-Best framework I think can be applied outside of just how much money do you need to make to fund your lifestyle. Right? It seems so flexible.

The Many Applications of the GBB Framework

09:29 Lucie: Yeah. It can actually be applied to anything. So, for example, for a PhD student or a postdoc Good-Better-Best: How many papers do you want to publish this year? For me, I run writing workshops. How many people do I want in my writing workshop? What’s the minimum to make it viable? What would be a better goal that I would be happy with? And what would be the best that I would be completely chapped with? What’s your Good-Better-Best for losing weight or gaining weight or eating better. So, it can be applied literally to any form of goal-setting. And it actually makes any form of goal-setting much more realistic in that life is not black and white. It’s not like we meet or we fail at reaching our goals. And this gradation actually enhances motivation. That’s why it works so well for different areas, because once you reach your Good goal, you really want to reach your Better goal. Versus with traditional goal-setting: If you reach your goal, then what’s left?

10:27 Emily: Yeah. I love that you stated it that way, that you brought that up. I was thinking the exact same thing that it’s not a black and white success or failure with a razor-thin line in between the two for whatever your goal might be. As you were saying, there are gradations there of success. And even sometimes failures can be reframed as successes, you know, if you can see them the right way and so forth. So, I really love that. I think the audience members hold me to that, but I think I may try to figure out how to apply this Good-Better-Best framework within the teaching that I do within personal finance. Because I do talk about goal-setting and about financial goals. But as you were saying, it can be so demotivating to not reach a goal.

11:08 Emily: And yet you also want your goals to be very lofty, right? Like you want to be able to strive for something. So, it’s again about self-knowledge, about knowing what’s going to work for you. Do you want to strive for something and maybe not quite reach it but feel good about it? And know that you’re going to focus maybe on that Best goal? Or, do you want to set something that you know you can succeed at and then you’ll be motivated to move on from there? Well, that’s the “Good” goal. I feel like this is a good framework for people of many different kinds of mindsets toward goal-setting. So, I don’t know. I’m really excited about this. I’m really excited about learning about this framework.

Applying GBB to Research Life

11:40 Lucie: And I think one aspect where I really wish I had known about Good, Better goals when I was doing my postdoc was exactly about how many papers to publish. Because especially within research, there’s this kind of like runaway consumption model in that you need to do more and more and more and more. And if you never put a note on it, you’ll never reach it. And it’s very frustrating. Versus I feel that if now I was working in research again, I would definitely set myself Good-Better-Best goals just so I would know when to stop and relax and take a break.

12:17  Emily: I love that. Have you had any other thoughts about that? How you would apply GBB to research life for those who are still in it?

12:27 Lucie: Yes. So definitely in terms of your income and your budgeting, any of your key performance indicators, your grant income. More and more of academic life is measured with numbers, whether we like it or not. But because it is done this way, we better get on board with it. You can even apply the GBB to your h index if you really want to.

12:52 Emily: I was just thinking that. Yeah.

12:54 Lucie: But there again, it’s about, you know, having that realistic benchmark and then that motivational benchmark and that dream benchmark rather than having these unattainable goals. That makes it much more attainable and then you can discuss it with your supervisors or with your peers. And then for me, I wish I would not have gotten so run into the ground, in the sense that if you reach your “Best” goal, maybe you can take the foot off the accelerator.

How Can People Work with You? *Free Gift*

13:24 Emily: Yeah. And not get to the point like you did where you just had to throw up your hands and say, I have to take a complete break and escape from this for a while. Is there anything else that you’d like to tell us about your business? Like who do you work with or how can people work with you?

13:40 Lucie: Yeah. So, I have a website. It’s called luciebland.com. L u c i e b l a n d. And I have a blog where I blog about everything, academic writing and productivity. So you might have guessed, I’m really into goal-setting. I’m actually a certified coach, and so I work professionally with people to help them reach their goals. Especially their publication goals in a kind of holistic manner. And so I love to blog about evidence-based techniques to reach your goals. And I will send out a little gift and surprise that I would like to offer to the listeners of this podcast. I have a free Guide to Beating Writer’s Block. Everyone suffers from writer’s block one moment or another. And so I have a really nice free guide that recaps the different techniques that you can use to beat writer’s block. And you can get that at luciebland.com/write. So that’s w r i t e. And so you can go and download that for free. And I always kind of keep it to my side if I ever feel my motivation lacking I always refer back to these little exercises.

How Are Your Personal Finances Now?

14:46 Emily: Yeah, that’s great. Thank you for that. And we’ll link to that as well from the show notes. So if you want to go there first, that’s fine. So, when we started talking about doing this interview, you described yourself as a money boss or maybe it was an aspiring money boss–you’re getting to be towards the money boss state. And so there was this huge difference between the mindset that you had towards money during your PhD and where you are now. And so can you talk a little bit more about how you’re managing your personal finances right now, how you’re using the GBB framework and your personal finances? And just more about the healthy point that you are at or that you’re developing at this moment in comparison with where you were a few years ago.

15:33 Lucie: Yeah. Well, I think that really the proof is in the pudding in that five years ago, I was never looking at my bank accounts and I was completely in the dark about anything financial. And now, I make extremely detailed 2-year cashflow projections using that GBB framework. And I feel good. I feel good about it now. I enjoy it. And that’s why I’m on this podcast because I’ve actually become a personal finance nerd. So, you can see the extent of the transformation, both in practical terms and in terms of mindsets, and especially now both, given my background as a coach. So, when I trained as a coach, I worked with a lot of clients who had money issues because money is so interesting because it’s where you have a conflict between all of your limiting beliefs and your trapped emotion and your resources that are linked to survival.

Money: The Modern-Day Saber-Toothed Tiger

16:30 Lucie: That’s why money triggers our fear centers so much. It’s the modern-day saber-toothed tiger that’s coming to eat us. And so there’s a perfectly logical explanation to why money is so difficult to so many people, both for the people who are really in scarcity mindset or the people who own that runaway consumption type of spending. And so what I love about the GBB goals and the budgeting is that, for those of us who are scientists, it really taps into our experimental tendencies. So for me, going from being scared of my finances to budgeting, I took it with a lot of self-love and self-compassion in that, “Okay, I’ll just see how it is.” Had a glass of wine because I couldn’t bear to look at my expenses without a little treat, and “I’m going to tweak a few things. I’m not going to change everything all at once. I’m just going to see how it is.” As if I was running an experiment in the lab. Like, what’s working, what’s not?

17:34 Lucie: What can I change next month? What can I change the month after that? And getting kind of that objective perspective with the numbers removes that emotion. Because we’re not going to go from fearful to excited all at once. You know, going from fearful to curious is a very good progression. Maybe then you become curious about your money, curious about how it functions, what other little tricks you can use. So, for example, I went through a phase where I would change all my electricity and gas providers and my phone. I went through all the things very methodically, with my personal expenses. Yeah, the gas bill.

Easy Ways to Make Extra Income

18:33 Lucie: And then another thing that really helped my mindset, especially for people who suffer from a scarcity mindset, is I started generating lots of money from random places. I became a lot more inventive with how I generate income. For example, over the weekend, I worked at festivals during my postdoc. Most postdocs don’t do that. Just work at festivals to make a little bit of cash. I sold a lot of my unused furniture and unused clothes. So, I just started to have these random little pockets of money that would come from kind of very odd places. And then that increased my belief that I could make money easily. Money is not that difficult to make. There are lots of places where we can make money, so I can imagine some people being on Airtasker or even driving Uber, et cetera. There are actually lots of ways to make little pots of cash in this day and age. And so both kind of doing the budgeting, revising my expenses, and creating these additional pools of cash really increased my confidence.

Commercial

19:26 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Through my business, I provide seminars and webinars on personal finance for graduate students, postdocs, and other early-career PhDs for universities, institutes, conferences, associations, etc. I offer seminars that cover a wide range of personal finance topics and others that take a deep dive into the financial topics that matter most to PhDs, like taxes, investing, career transitions, and frugality. If you are interested in having me speak to your group or recommending me to a potential host, you can find more information and ways to contact me at pfforphds.com/speaking. That’s p f f o r p h d s.com/speaking. Now back to the interview.

Frugal Experimentation

20:15 Emily: I wanted to add kind of two further examples to what you were just saying. One is frugal experimentation. You said that you can take sort of an experimentalist approach towards managing your money, and this is something that I’ve talked about as well. If you’re looking for ways to reduce your expenditures, or like you were saying earlier, not necessarily reduce what you’re spending but rather shift from using your money in ways that don’t give you as much satisfaction towards ways that do give you more satisfaction is a better way of thinking about it, right? Rather than just spend less everywhere. But if you are looking for something that you don’t care about spending money on too much, how can I spend less and less in this area? So I can redirect my money elsewhere. You can run what I call frugal experiments.

20:56 Emily: And so I think this is what you were mentioning. You would find a frugal tip somewhere online or whatever from a friend, and just try it out in your life. And what I say is to try it for 30 days. So it’s really giving it a good shot. Seeing if you can make it habitual and make it mindless and easy for you, and then go ahead and evaluate what was the actual effect. How much money did you end up not spending in that area that you didn’t care so much about? Was it worth the effort that you put in? Were you able to make it a habit? Were you able to make it easy? And if the answer is no, it didn’t reduce my spending enough to make all that effort worthwhile, well then just go back to whatever you were doing before. You can just easily reverse it.

21:35 Emily: And so you can do maybe, you know, one frugal experiment per month and just take like sort of a playful approach to it as you were saying. It’s not do or die in every single one of these things. You don’t have to change everything about your lifestyle in one fell swoop, but you can just take these small areas and make a change. And if you don’t like the change, then just go back. No big deal. So that’s one comment I wanted to make. And the other one is about finding other ways to earn or finding that money would start coming your way once you were thinking about it a little bit differently.

Having a Plan for Windfall Money

22:09 Emily: And what I did during graduate school, again, when our incomes were lower and it was very important to me that we used our money in the best way possible. I was very careful that I had a plan for any, what I might call windfall money that came my way. So it could be receiving maybe a gift, a birthday gift or something. Or it could be, I occasionally would participate in studies, like clinical trials. Very minor stuff. You know, psychological surveys, that kind of thing. If I made $10 from that, okay, well I would always have a plan for where that money was going to go. It wasn’t something that went into my general checking account to be just floating out there and who knows where it went. It went towards what we were using, targeted savings accounts. So it went into my target savings account for travel usually, or one time we were saving up for like a camera purchase for a DSLR. And so we would put in the extra money that we found into that savings account for that ultimate goal.

23:10 Emily: And I think having a plan for where that money was supposed to go, to help me use my money in a way that was most satisfactory to me, really made me pay more attention to all those little ways that money came to me. Whether it was from earning it or whether from, I don’t getting cash back on something, right. I had cashback credit cards, like just having a plan for any of those little non-salary income sources of money. Having a plan for what to do with it made sure that I was using it in a way that felt most optimal for me. And so I really love that you said that example as well. And maybe money was coming your way from time to time earlier, but you just weren’t paying attention in the right way to it to be able to use it in a way that was satisfactory.

23:53 Lucie: Yeah. And what I love about your example, Emily, is the actually you were almost using GBB. Because when you talk about your camera in your savings account, you know, to me that’s like your “Better” goals. And so, you were intuitively using a similar system by putting all that windfall income into these very specific goals.

Anything Else About Being a Money Boss?

24:14 Emily: Yup. That’s probably why I’m so excited about the framework is that it’s a way of sort of crystallizing how I was thinking about things already in a way that will help me communicate those ideas better with other people. Anything else you want to say about becoming a money boss or how you are a money boss? How you behave as a money boss now?

24:32 Lucie: So definitely this in terms that I’m spending more time being more future-oriented. So for example, now thinking of buying a property having these two-year cashflow projections, dreaming to the multiple six-figure business. All of these things now are within reach because I can actually monitor my progress to them rather than feeling stumped. And the other thing that has happened, which is surprising me a lot, is that I’m teaching basic business finance to other entrepreneurs, which seems really odd. But I’m actually doing it. And so, teaching other people how to do cashflow projections, how to manage money in their business. And so for me, especially lots of everything that we’ve talked about in this conversation, is a complete turn around.

25:24 Lucie: I had the skill set to do that. My training in biology was in specifically statistics. I was a computational modeler. So, money should not have been so difficult to me because I know how to deal with numbers. But it was the emotions attached to it that were blocking me. Versus now, I can really feel that my mathematical skills or my decision-making skills, I can use them to the best of their effect because basically my conscious mind and my subconscious mind are in the same direction. And now, I can head towards the future and make these better longterm decisions and also help other people make decisions like that.

26:10 Emily: Yeah, I love that point. I mean sometimes I hear that personal finance is intimidating to people because it is about numbers. Kind of. They think it’s about numbers. But really, I mean especially if we’re talking about PhDs, the level of mathematical ability is a very low bar to be passing to be successful in personal finance. It’s really all about mindset and emotion and understanding your values and self-knowledge and all the things that we’ve been talking about in this conversation. That dwarfs the ability, in terms working with numbers, to be successful in personal finance. Of course, it helps if you’re comfortable with math and everything, but it’s not what’s holding you back basically if you’re not feeling successful in that area.

Start Frugal Experiments Today

26:54 Lucie: What I would say as well to anyone listening is to start doing these frugal experiments. Start doing it now. And that’s not because I want to scare anyone out. But now especially that I work with business owners a lot more: people who can manage their money well will always be catered for, and you’ll definitely have a leading edge over anyone. Actually, very few people manage their money well. And so, if you can have both these mathematical skills that most of us would have in the academic world. and the willingness and the right mindset to manage your money. And if you can do it as soon as possible, let’s say in your late twenties or whatever. The rest of your life is going to be so much easier because of things like compound interest. And so it’s really worth kind of pulling the BandAid off and starting small today. Let’s say, looking at your phone bill and how you can optimize that, and then just gradually looking at all the other elements.

27:59 Emily: Yeah, I think you put that so well. And I could not agree more. Start today. And it doesn’t have to big, it doesn’t have to be scary. Have a glass of wine, like you said, whatever it takes for you to be able to look at your account transactions or whatever it is that your starting point needs to be. Just start, and start small. And the earlier you do it, the more you’re going to benefit really throughout the rest of your life. So as we sum up here, how do you think that PhDs can use the GBB framework with respect to personal finance and with respect to other areas of life?

How PhD Students Can Use the GBB Framework

28:35 Lucie: Yes, I think that the main two ways that PhD students can use the GBB framework are first, in terms of budgeting their expenses, or trying to align that concept of what is “Good” or what is the minimum viable income that you need. And kind of either reducing your expenses or rejigging your expenses to some things that provide higher value. And if this is available to you, also diversifying your income. Unfortunately, now we’re in an increasing world of casualization of the academic workforce. So a lot of people are working smaller contracts and having kind of little pools of money, and the GBB framework is great for that. But also for people who might have a more stable income, there are lots of opportunities out there to make more money if you wish. And so, once you’ve costed out what your dreams are going to cost you–your savings account, your camera, and your holidays–then really it’s up to you how you reach that goal. And for me, it’s a motivation to work hard because I enjoy doing it and especially with the Best goal, that’s where you can allow yourself to dream big. And I can imagine as well that having that GBB framework comes in extremely useful when negotiating for jobs. Because once you have that number in mind, it’s crystallized in your head. I need that number. I would like that number. I really, really want that number. And it’s up to you to make it happen.

Look at the Numbers and What Works For You

30:07 Emily: Yeah. Excellent point. I think something that may be useful for someone who’s in a really, really tight spot with money, maybe it’s during graduate school, like you were really not making a sufficient income for where you were living. If you are allowed to take on outside work, if it’s permitted by your contract or you think you can get away with it, whatever the situation is. I think it could be really useful to actually look, as you were just saying, at what is the shortfall that I have between what I’m making right now and what that minimum viable income is. And if I did this type of work, how many hours would it actually take to make up that shortfall? Because I’m thinking that maybe a lot of PhD students in that situation don’t need to work an additional 20 hours per week at the pay rate that they can gain using the skills from their PhD.

30:59 Emily: Maybe they’re going to be able to make a very decent hourly rate. Maybe it’s $20 per hour. Maybe it’s $50 per hour. Maybe it’s $200 per hour depending on what their skill sets are and what the market is. But really looking at, okay, well if I just worked an extra two hours a week or five hours a week, maybe I can make up that shortfall and it would make such a huge difference to your general sense of wellbeing in your life to be able to do that. This is just basically an argument for looking at the numbers and looking at potential income in certain areas as we’ve been talking about throughout this entire episode. And again, trying to figure out what is it really going to take to make that amount of money. And maybe it’s not as much effort or not as much time as you were thinking it would be when you were just sort of hiding your head in the sand about it.

Diversification of Income: Side Hustles

31:45 Lucie: Yes, that’s excellent advice. And as you say, a lot of PhD students have a lot of skills that are very much in demand. For example, tutoring or teacher relief, et cetera. Even my editing job was something I could do from home anywhere and that any PhD student with superior English could do and would pay quite well. And so there are lots of opportunities both online and offline to make these extra little pools of money. And as you say, it might only be like two or three hours a week.

32:17 Emily: Yeah. So I think that was using the GBB framework on your personal finances and on budgeting. That was the first suggestion. What was the second one?

32:26 Lucie: Ah, yeah, the second one was to diversify your income.

32:29 Emily: Ah, okay. Yeah. Great. I love both of those suggestions. And really the diversification of income strategy is not just one for PhD students as you did during your postdoc. Or even maybe if you had had a regular job at that time, you were just experimenting and you were exploring with other types of work that you could do. And eventually, you were able to hit on what is now your business and what is really bringing joy and satisfaction in your life. But without sort of stepping out of your current status, without stepping out of your comfort zone, you wouldn’t have taken that journey and been able to get to this point. So again, a theme coming up again is experimentation, whether it’s with new types of work or frugal strategies or what have you.

Additional Benefits of Side Hustling

33:10 Lucie: And I think there are a lot of other benefits to having a side hustle experimenting beyond the extra money. You know, there are lots of talks that most PhD students don’t stay in the academic world and need to translate their skills to industry or the business world, et cetera. And experimenting and having a side hustle is the perfect way to do that, in addition to earning more money.

33:34 Emily: Yeah, if some of the different topics we’ve covered in this episode have peaked your interest, listener, please go to the show notes because I have written about so many of these things in different ways. I’m going to add a lot of links there to different articles I have that you can go to explore deeper and of course also visit Lucie’s site. You want to mention it again, Lucie?

33:53 Lucie: Luciebland.com. L u c i e b l a n d.

33:58 Emily: Yeah. Especially if you want more content around what she is specializing in. Lucie, it was such a pleasure to talk with you today, and I’ve learned a ton from this conversation. I’m sure the listeners have as well. Thank you so, so much for this interview.

34:10 Lucie: Thank you, Emily.

Outtro

34:12 Emily: Listeners, thank you so much for joining me for this episode. Pfforphds.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes, a form to volunteer to be interviewed, and a way to join the mailing list. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you want to support the show and my business, please go to pfforphds.com/helpout. There are plenty of ways to do so without laying out any of your own money. See you in the next episode! And remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it doesn’t hurt. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the free music archive and is shared under CC by NC.

This PhD Healed Her Scarcity Money Mindset Using a Goal-Setting Framework (Part 1)

September 16, 2019 by Meryem Ok

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Lucie Bland about her financial journey from graduate school to self-employment. Lucie was severely underpaid as a PhD student, and she felt such guilt and shame around spending that she became terrified of money. Her money mindset didn’t improve when her income increased several-fold as a postdoc, and it wasn’t until she discovered the Good-Better-Best goal setting framework that she started to heal her relationship with money. She now describes herself as a money boss. In this first half of the conversation, Lucie details her financial journey from underpaid PhD student to well-paid postdoc and how she needed to take a break from full-time employment to set herself on the right career and financial trajectory.

Listen to Part 2 of this interview!

Links Mentioned in the Episode

  • Lucie’s Website: luciebland.com
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Speaking
  • What Color is Your Parachute?
  • Good-Better-Best with Megan Hale
  • Financially Navigating Your Upcoming PhD Career Transition
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Help Out

healed money mindset

Teaser

00:00 Lucie: I did go to some extent through that transition of seeing not money as like an enemy or something that needs to be hoarded, but something that can be used as an investment for a good life. When I was doing my PhD, I was not future-oriented. I was in survival mode.

Introduction

00:21 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 four, episode five, and today my guest is Dr. Lucie Bland, self-employed PhD living in Australia. Lucie has such an amazing story to tell that I’ve split it into two episodes. This one and next week’s. In this episode, Lucie talks us through the roller coaster of her financial journey from severely underpaid graduate student in London to well-compensated postdoc in Australia to not having an income to starting a business. Lucie describes herself during graduate school as “terrified of money,” And that didn’t automatically improve when her income more than tripled and her cost of living dropped. We discuss the intentional steps she took to heal her money mindset, including the goal-setting framework that she now applies in her personal and professional life. Without further ado, here’s the first part of my interview with Dr. Lucie Bland.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:26 Emily: Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. We have a really delightful set of episodes ahead for us. It’s going to be a two-parter. My guest today is Dr. Lucie Bland and so I’m going to kick it right over to her right now and have her introduce herself to you a little bit further.

01:44 Lucie: Thank you, Emily. Thank you for having me on the podcast. My name is Dr. Lucie Bland. I’m an editor and writing coach and I help researchers and writers get published.

01:54 Emily: Yeah, that sounds really exciting. Can you tell us what your background is?

01:59 Lucie: Yeah. I graduated from Oxford University with a degree in biological sciences and then I did my PhD at Imperial College, London in Ecology in 2014. That’s when I finished, and then I moved to Australia for two postdocs in conservation science. The first one at the University of Melbourne and the second one at Deakin University. And now for about a year I’ve been running my academic editing business, which I now do full time. So very much serving the academic community, but I’m no longer directly a researcher.

02:34 Emily: Yeah. Well, we are in the same boat in that respect. Can you say right away up top what your website is?

02:42 Lucie: My website is luciebland.com and that’s spelled l u c i e b l a n d.com.

02:49 Emily: Yeah. And any other personal details you’d like to share, maybe where you’re living now or is your household just you?

02:56 Lucie: I live in Melbourne with my boyfriend and our Burmese mountain dog that you might see in the video if he comes around.

03:05 Emily: Yeah. Enticement to hop over to YouTube and watch this on the video instead of over the podcast. Okay. So we have this great story that I know a little bit about already, so bring us back to your time in graduate school. What was going on with you financially at that time, both in terms of like how much money you were making and also what was your relationship with money?

Lucie’s Evolving Relationship to Money

03:30 Lucie: Yeah, my money situation, my relationship to money when I was doing my PhD was very different to how it is now. I was living in London, one of the most expensive cities in the world, and I was earning 13,000 pounds per year, which is 16,000 US dollars. And I would spend 650 pounds a month on rent, which is 60% of my income. And I remember that time reading a report that said that your level of basic socioeconomic level can be determined by how much you spend on rent, and the higher it is the poorer you are. So that was a little bit depressing to me. But despite having these really high expenses and that really low income, I was really not wise about money at all. My money strategy was to bury my head in the sand. I was paid quarterly, which would mean that I would run out of money every quarter.

04:27 Lucie: And I didn’t have a savings account. So normal accounts could be very regularly in the double digits and I just didn’t know how that would happen. And when I moved to Australia, I experienced a very different money situation in that my income pretty much tripled. I was paid $80,000 a year and I lived in a really funky flat on my own in the hipster part of town. So I kind of went from rags to riches, but I very much kept my very Scrooge-y lifestyle and I still didn’t budget. It did mean that I was saving $20,000 a year because my expenses were really low cause I would still collect vouchers and coupons and have that very “PhD student” lifestyle. But I wouldn’t say that my budgeting skills or my approach to money improved in any way. It was just that my income was higher.

05:26 Emily: Gotcha. Yeah, that’s a great overview, and I think it’s one that’s going to be relatable to a lot of people within the audience. Most of my audience is in the U.S. and the cost of living differences can be so wide between, you know, New York and San Francisco versus certain cities in the Midwest that are quite a bit smaller. And so a graduate stipend can also kind of be all over the map and it doesn’t necessarily correlate with higher stipends in higher cities necessarily. Sometimes that’s the case and sometimes not. I’ve interviewed several people on the podcast who live in high cost of living cities but have an okay kind of income, maybe double or more what you just mentioned, and others where that’s completely not the case. A much, much lower income. Actually, I want to go back a little bit further and talk about your mindset from even before you started graduate school. Would you say that you grew up middle class, or what was your mindset about money or the socioeconomic status you had prior to entering graduate school?

Money Mindset Before Grad School

06:34 Lucie: Yes, so I was definitely middle class. Especially my father had a very relaxed and confident approach to money and to some extent my mother as well. But in a way they hadn’t taught me any budgeting skills at all, which is a little bit sad, but kind of looking a bit backwards again. And that has really influenced my money story. My French grandparents grew up under German occupation and under rationing and that really influenced their mindset around money and around the use of resources. And to some extent, even in my kind of middle class nuclear family, especially, my mother could also have that very Scrooge-y or scarcity mindset. And I remember my grandparents still drinking chicory, which is a coffee replacement that’s made from the root of a plant, that French people used to drink under the German occupation.

07:30 Lucie: And so they still had some of these relic habits of, you know, we don’t know when the next meal is coming. And so you’ve got to finish off your plate, you’ve got to use all your resources in a very savvy way, which in many cases can be a good approach. But I think that as a child, I really internalized that. And one of the funny stories in my family is that at the age of 10 or 11, I signed up to this website, it was called scrooge.com and got lots of vouchers and was very obsessed with using those and not spending any money. So, I’m quite conscious that my personal money story and approach to money, well to some extent determined by my socioeconomic level or being from a middle-class family, was also influenced by lots of other family patterns that predated that.

Money Mindset During Grad School

08:20 Emily: Yeah. So I guess we could suffice to say that in some ways you were unprepared for being in graduate school on that kind of income and in that expensive city. In other ways, you had maybe some skills and some mindsets that would be, I hesitate to even say helpful. I mean helpful to survive, but maybe not helpful to be sort of healthy mentally overall towards money, especially later on once you have that income increase. So when you were accepted to graduate school and you knew what that stipend was going to be, and you knew more or less where you’d be living and that it was going to be 60% of your income going towards rent, what were your thoughts? How did you approach that situation? Did you think, “well, I’m just going to have to make this work. I’ll do it somehow”? Or did you consider debt? And I don’t know if that was even really an option for you.

09:14 Lucie: The thing is I didn’t even know that I was going to spend 60% of my income on rent because I hadn’t calculated it at all. I was completely in the dark, and no, that was not an option. I’ve never had a loan or credit card. Again, different countries have different approaches to that. And for me, I was just going to have to eat pasta. That’s how short-sighted my thinking was. To some extent, I could have considered a student loan, which I might not have been eligible for as a French person. But you know, my thinking was not even that advanced.

09:54 Emily: Right. And so once you did find out, once you did secure housing and you knew how much of your stipend was going to be eaten up by rent, what was your plan at that point, and kind of how did you get through it? And I guess this might be sort of advice in sort of how to keep expenses low. Although of course in the overall arc of this conversation, that’s not really what we want to be talking about. But for those years, how did you get by?

10:19 Lucie: I probably spent very little money on food, and I did go out a little bit, but I wouldn’t do anything that was fun. You know, I would probably not go to the cinema. I probably would not go to expensive parties. One of the things I did in London, I had a bike and I would be very savvy about whether I would take the tube or the bus. The bus was cheaper, and so everything became a decision. And if the decision presented itself to me, I would always take the cheaper option. So, I didn’t think long-term about do I need to build savings? Do I need to think a bit longer term? It was extremely short-term.

10:57 Emily: Was thinking long-term even an option though?

Short-Term versus Long-Term Vision

11:01 Lucie: At that stage, I wasn’t thinking long-term at all because I just couldn’t. I didn’t have the funds to do it.

11:09 Emily: Yeah. It’s not really a personal oversight. It’s just this is how the day-to-day is passing by of thinking about these really minute decisions around money, which are so important to whether you’re going to stay in the block for the month or the quarter. So you were surviving by being extremely frugal in many areas and not spending much on entertainment. I wonder, were your classmates living in a similar manner?

11:39 Lucie: Yes. Yes, we were all living in house shares in London. In quite difficult conditions with lots of issues with housemates, with landlords, with boilers breaking and not getting repaired. Like in a way it was a very kind of low-income status. And I remember kind of looking in awe at some of the PhD students who might be a little bit older who might have worked before and had a bit more savings or maybe had a partner who could support them, who lived in a real adult flat and had furniture that they bought new rather than scavenged from the streets. And to me that was very much a vision of the long-term future. It’s definitely not something I was doing then.

12:27 Emily: Did you find that it was helpful to have that comradery with some of your classmates? Did it make getting through this experience a little bit more bearable?

12:37 Lucie: Yes, and to some extent, even people who would start their first job in London. So, not a PhD student, would probably be on a similar income. And that was 2010. It was post-global financial crisis. So actually some people had decided to do a PhD or go to graduate school just to avoid getting a job. Because there were so few jobs. So that was kind of the economic climate of the time, which has improved slightly now, but we were all very much in that same mindset regardless of whether someone was starting, you know, their first teaching job or was doing your PhD or had a job in admin or in sales at a small company. None of us were making the big bucks.

Money’s Impact on Lucie’s PhD Perfomance

13:20 Emily: How do you think that being–it sounds like very consumed with thoughts about money and decisions around money on a daily basis–do you think that had any effect on your scholarship?

13:34 Lucie: Do you mean how I performed during my PhD?

13:37 Emily: Yeah. Like, let’s say your income was double of that, and you had an easier time with money, there was less stress there. Do you think that you would have done better?

13:49 Lucie: I actually think the opposite in that because I couldn’t do that much outside of going to work and coming back home, I worked really hard. And that’s what I would just do. I had a very traditional existence of cycling to Uni, doing my PhD, and coming back. And I think that to some extent doing my PhD, was a release from my money worries, and that’s why I worked so hard on it. So that could be my specific experience.

14:18 Emily: Yeah. I don’t know if that’s generalizable. I mean, I’m happy to hear that you thought it was a positive effect on your work. But I remember when I was interviewing for graduate schools that I heard that argument from–I interviewed in a city that didn’t have a whole lot going on. A very, very small city, rural–and the argument was kind of, well there’s nothing to do here except for our work. And the weather is really tough in winter. And so we just work, and that’s all. Versus if you lived in a very exciting city or one where there’s just a lot more fun activities going on, you might be more tempted to get out of the lab and go to these other things. But we’re talking about living in London and having that attitude. So, I’m a little bit surprised by that. That you were able to kind of “tunnel vision” on just your work during that time.

15:07 Lucie: Yeah. I think that in that case, it’s very much necessity is the mother invention or this dictates how you behave.

15:16 Emily: Yeah, exactly.

15:16 Lucie: And that’s why I was very relieved when I moved out of London, came to Australia where the cost of living compared to London is lower. You know, it’s kind of insane to say. Australia has a reputation for being expensive, but I found Australia very cheap.

15:32 Emily:  Yeah. Let’s talk about that transition now. But first, how many years were you in London doing your PhD?

15:38 Lucie: Four years.

Financial Life as a Postdoc in Australia

15:39 Emily: Okay. So that’s plenty of time for this to become a very ingrained mindset and approach towards money. So, you finish up and you’ve accepted a postdoc in Australia. Tell us about that. Tell us about the money that you’re making and where you’re living and so forth.

15:55 Lucie: Yes. I was very excited to come to Australia to come to Melbourne. As I said, I would be making $80,000, which was way more money than I’d ever made. I could afford to live on my own, which was a big thing in a really nice little flat in the inner city. I bought a car, I bought new furniture, you know, things were going really well. But what I noticed as well was that I did keep a lot of my former habits in the sense that, for example, Melburnians are big fans of their coffee. All the postdocs would go to the really nice coffee shops and have take-away coffee and bring it back to their office while I was very purposefully making instant coffee in a little kitchen so as to avoid buying coffees. And most of my decisions were like that in that I still got reclaimed furniture from the streets. I would do most of my shopping at op shops, which is very eco-friendly but there is a limit to how healthy that is as well. And so, even though my income was higher, I had still kept that mindset of trying to keep my cost of living as low as possible. Not really from a conscious intention, but just because that was the only thing I knew how to do.

17:13 Emily: Yeah, it sounds it’s actually hearkening back to your example from your grandparents, right. Even the coffee, specifically. So this is really interesting to me to talk to you about this transition because it’s something that I think about a lot and that I talk about quite a bit as well of how should PhDs manage their money once they’re out of graduate school. And I think the standard personal finance advice that I often say as well is live like a college student. And that’s the general advice, and the way it applies for graduate students that I say is “continue at your graduate student lifestyle for as long as possible.” Even though, once you’re making this higher income, to kind of make up for the lost time and the lost income from the previous years, so that’s a time when you can be building up savings and starting to invest and so forth.

18:05 Emily: But I trip over that advice sometimes a little bit. And especially in a case like yours, because if your lifestyle was so constrained, due to your graduate income, that’s not good advice any longer, right? You should increase your lifestyle as your income goes up, and still do all the things you want to, you know, be saving and so forth, investing or paying off debt, whatever it is you need to do. But if you have been consumed and shutting out large portions of your life because of lack of money, that’s not something that should continue. So I’m really glad to have your example as one that is counter to the advice that I usually give and the advice that many people would probably hear once they are seeking out personal finance content. So, can you talk a little bit more about that change? Once your income is higher, how did you start changing how you were using your money and thinking about your money?

Money Change #1: Saving Toward Retirement

19:05 Lucie: The first decision that I ever made about my money, that was a very good decision, which was based on the advice of one of my friends who’s a financial advisor, was that when I started my postdoc in Australia, we’re very lucky that we have 17% of our salary be put into a superannuation fund by our employer. So the employer adds to our salary 17% and puts it into a fund for our retirement. But we can make additional pre-tax contributions. And I made the maximum pre-tax contribution, which was 9.5%. So, I basically had a quarter of my salary going into a super every month, and that was not increasing my lifestyle. That was making a very conscious decision about investing in my future. And that was pretty much the little seed that then grew not into expanding my lifestyle but into this view of investing in myself in the sense that I can invest in savings, I can invest in my super, but I can also invest in my own wellbeing, not because I’m being frivolous, but because it pays off.

20:17 Lucie: It pays off, let’s say to have a gym membership, to have a yoga membership, to have healthy social relationships, et cetera. And so I think that I did go to some extent through that transition of seeing not money as like an enemy or something that needs to be hoarded, but something that can be used as an investment for a good life. And that was what I’d seen in some of these older PhD students in London who were maybe buying a property, et Cetera, that they were investing in their future. Versus when I was doing my PhD, I was not future-oriented. I was in survival mode. Versus this increase in salary opened up for me the possibility that I could plan for a future.

21:01 Emily: I think you put that so well and I want everyone listening, if you’ve resonated with anything, Lucy said so far to go back a minute or two and listen to that–what you just said, over again–because I think it was so, so insightful and well-put. As you were saying, the first intentional money decision that you made after this income increase was not about just going crazy and spending because you’d been so restricted for so long and just splashing out on everything. But rather, being able to think about really changing how you even viewed money. What you said was in viewing it as being able to invest in yourself and having an enjoyable and healthy lifestyle overall rather than trying to hoard it as much as possible because there was such a scarcity, you know, before that point.

21:52 Emily: And I did want to add a slight translation for my, my listeners in the U.S. So, our equivalent to what you did was, when you got your higher salary, basically we would call it “maxed out your 401(k),” which in the U.S. is $19,000 per year. So if anyone’s listening who has started a new post-PhD job and you’re wondering what to do with that lovely salary bump, maxing out your 401(k) is an excellent thing to do. For the reasons that Lucy just mentioned, that it is an investment in yourself and it’s an investment in your future.

Commercial

22:25 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Through my business, I provide seminars and webinars on personal finance for graduate students, postdocs, and other early-career PhDs for universities, institutes and conferences, associations, etc. I offer seminars that cover a wide range of personal finance topics and others that take a deep dive into the financial topics that matter most to PhDs, like taxes, investing, career transitions, and frugality. If you are interested in having me speak to your group or recommending me to a potential host, you can find more information and ways to contact me at pfforphds.com/speaking. That’s p f f o r p h d s.com/speaking. Now back to the interview.

Money Change #2: Impulse Shopping

23:13 Emily: So were there any other changes that you made, after that point, after starting to think about the long-term with respect to retirement? What other changes did you start making?

23:24 Lucie: Probably the next change that I made, which was not a good change, and that happened in my second postdoc, was that I started to impulse shop, and that was entirely related to the stress that I was under. So for, as you said, for a few years I managed to keep my spending quite low, and to have that fairly frugal lifestyle. But then after years of PhD, years of postdoc being put under a lot of pressure, I was starting to struggle, and I could see that being reflected in my spending. And I very quickly knew that this was an issue. So it wasn’t that I was being frivolous in being released, I was using that kind of as an emotional Band-Aid. And that kind of was one of the alarm bells that told me that maybe I need a bit of time off or to think about why I was in academia and what I’d wanted to do. Because one of the symptoms of this was how I was sending my money, which was not really in accordance with my values, and that was quite troublesome to me.

24:31 Emily: Yeah. I think that’s also very common behavior, whether people can afford it or not. So, coming to impulse spending just to emotionally relieve some kind of stress or difficulty or pain that’s going on. So, yeah. Can you tell me more about, having recognized that issue, what then did you do? You just mentioned you took some time off from your postdoc.

Leave of Absence from Postdoc

24:56 Lucie: So I think this was kind of part of a larger quarter-life crisis in the sense that the pressure had been mounting probably since the first day that I started my first postdoc in Australia. And now that was three years later of full-time work with a lot of international travel, a lot of publications. We’re all familiar with that kind of lifestyle. And I just didn’t know why I was in research anymore. I felt really lost and kind of, as we talked about before, I could not see my future in it. And I didn’t know if it was because I was too stressed or confused or because it was genuinely not what I wanted to do. So I was very lucky that I could ask for a six-month unpaid leave of absence from my university and kind of take a little break from all my responsibilities. Because, especially in my first postdoc, I think I must have supervised four or five students to completion. I think I kind of bumped to a lecturer role very quickly. But that amount of responsibility, and then it kind of caught up with me a few years later, was like, well, I’m going down this route very quickly. Do I want to continue with this route?

26:16 Emily: Yeah, really in many jobs, many workplaces, there is a great deal of just going with the flow and some inertia. And you can get to a point where your job duties are not at all kind of what you expected or what you signed up for, but it evolved. So that’s amazing that you made the decision and also were able to say, “okay, hold on a second, I need to take some time to figure out where I really want to go next.” And this is maybe a little bit of a naive question, but were you able to fund that period of being away from your job because your expenses had been so far below your income for the previous years?

26:53 Lucie: Yes, I had a lot of savings at that point.

26:56 Emily: Yeah. And, what I say quite a bit, that money gives you options. And so, you’d been earning quite a lot and saving quite a lot for those few years, and then you had the option to take a step back and have that time to reevaluate. So, what did you do with that time off?

Personal and Career Development Journey

27:16 Lucie: First, I had a holiday to see my parents in Europe, which was great. And I think the first two or three months of the six-month period, I was brain dead. I was recovering. I was watching TV, doing all of these silly things that people do when they finish their PhD. But I’ve seen that quite a lot in first or second postdocs in that people who don’t take a break between their PhD and their postdoc tend to get hit at a later date with trying to cope with all that change. I had also moved to Australia by myself and so I think it just all caught up with me a little bit later. So, I spent a few months resting and relaxing, and that’s when I started to coach myself. I became very interested in these personal development and career development books.

28:09 Lucie: I started to use a career coaching book that’s called, What Color is Your Parachute? It’s a very famous career coaching book.

[* This is an affiliate link. Thank you for supporting PF for PhDs!]

28:16 Emily: Yes, I’ve read that.

Part-Time Editing, Part-Time Postdoc

28:18 Lucie: Yeah, it’s great. And basically, I figured out that probably a very good job for me, which matched to actually want I wanted to do as a child–I wanted to be a writer. And what I was enjoying, what I was really good at as an academic was publishing. And kind of putting these two things together, I was like, “well, getting a job as an editor would be quite a good fit.” And I got a small job with a big global editing company, editing research papers, writing research papers, kind of being a writer for hire. And I really enjoyed that but it paid very little, and I was just starting out. And I could see with the budgeting that I had started doing when I was off work–because that was another really great habit that I’ve gotten into–was that just having that editing job was not gonna cut it for the type of life that I wanted. And that kind of spurred that decision to go back to my postdoc part-time. I was also not sure whether I wanted to quit academia completely. I thought that maybe if I worked part-time, I could cope with the challenges of academia better because I would have reduced hours. Then I could do my editing job as well. So that was the plan in that period, which would be to do the postdoc job part-time and the editing job part-time, and then together it would make a healthy income.

29:52 Emily: I love just how intentional you were with all of those decisions. The series of decisions that you made there, in trying to align your career with what you really wanted to do. And also, you briefly mentioned, but starting to budget is a major, huge leap in one’s personal finances. And that, it sounds like, sort of contributed to the career planning. Right? How much money do I actually need to make to fund the lifestyle that I want and then how can I redirect my career to make sure that I make that amount of money? And is that how it worked out? Did you find that the half-time postdoc position was lower stress, and was that a good situation that you were then in?

Backfired Plan: Full-Time Work for Part-Time Pay

30:35 Lucie: In a way that was a complete failure, in that I was doing full-time work for part-time hours and part-time pay. And I’ve heard that story a lot with other people, in that research is a job that is difficult to do part-time. And a lot of mothers, a lot of people who would want to work part-time for lots of reasons, find it challenging. After a while, I did end up quitting the editing job because it was too much in that postdoc responsibilities would come during my editing hours and would influence the quality of my work at the editing company. And because I was an employee of the university, they kind of took it as this is your priority, and your other job is not a priority. And that was quite difficult to manage. And also at that time I would realize that having my own business would enable me to make the kind of money that I want it to make from editing instead of working for an editing company. And so that spurred my decision to quit the editing job and to start my own business. So, as you’d mentioned, some of these decisions were intentional, but also some of them were just due from the decision to go part-time, in a way, backfired.

32:02 Emily: Yeah. So, did you end up not staying part-time for very long? How long did you stay at that part-time?

Going Full-Time into Self-Employment

32:09 Lucie: I stayed part-time for a year. And then I went full-time with the business. I had a few months to start the business when I was still part-time at the university. And that gave me a little bit of a cushion. And then again with the budgeting, I realized within three months that actually with the business, I was making enough money to not need the Uni job, which I then let go of. It makes it sound like a very drastic and calculated decision. There was a lot of kind of emotional decisions that went into it as well because I love research and I continue in a way, but I knew that having my own business would be a better decision for me for the lifestyle that I want to have, for the type of people that I want to surround myself with, etc. And finances were I guess one of the drivers of that decision. But there were also lots of other things that went into it.

33:08 Emily: Yeah. I have many of the same thoughts around and motivations around becoming self-employed. So, we’re going to talk plenty about your transition to self-employment in the second part of this two-part series. But before we do that, I wanted you to introduce this Good-Better-Best framework that you started using. I believe during this period when you were taking a break from work and when you started budgeting. What is that framework, and how were you using it?

Good Better Best (GBB) Framework

33:40 Lucie: Yes. So the framework that I was using at the time along with my budgeting is called Good-Better-Best goals. And it’s a framework that was devised by business coach Megan Hale. So when I was on my break, I just sucked up a lot of books and podcasts on how to be an entrepreneur. And usually these guys have much healthier attitudes to money. People have worked really hard on their money story and their finances to be at a stage where they can own their own business. And so that GBB method relies on defining Good-Better-Best benchmarks in terms of income generation. So, your “Good” goal is your minimum viable income. It’s the minimum of amount of money that you need to survive. Probably, my income when I was a PhD in London was even below what could be called a minimum viable income because it came with so much strain.

34:40 Lucie: A “Good” goal in the GBB framework is your basics, your rent, your bills, et cetera. Your food, and maybe something that you find really important–a little bit of going out or a Netflix subscription, but it really doesn’t go overboard. It’s pretty much the minimum that you need to have a relatively happy life. Then it gets very exciting when we go to the “Better” and the “Best” goals because then we start to cast out some of these big dreams that we have. So, for example, for me and my “Better” goals, I’ve got things such as buying furniture, buying a new dog, going on holiday. So, that’s when your lifestyle starts to improve and increase. Like you were mentioning, with having a postdoc that has better pay. Usually, people get to that “Better” benchmark where they can start to save money. They can work towards these big dreams. And because they cast it out in advance, it’s very motivational in the sense that, let’s say budgeting or restricting your income and things that you don’t like. It comes natural because you want to reach these other goals. Instead of feeling restricted, you’re just moving your money around to enable going towards the things you really want.

35:56 Lucie: And then the “Best” goal really blows your mind in the sense that if you could make that much money, it would be almost unfathomable. And you could afford so many different things. So, here you can cast a lot of these bigger dreams like buying a house or going on very luxurious holidays, et cetera. And so because you have these three benchmarks, you can always assess where you are in this very logical and objective manner. And maybe that’s something we’ll go into the next episode. It helps you get out of this very emotional attitude to money or this very fear-based attitude to money because then they just become numbers in a spreadsheet. They are in an order: Good, Better, Best. And then you can address them in this objective manner rather than having no numbers or this nebulous idea in your head that your dreams are never going to come true because they are too expensive, versus when you know exactly how much it’s going to cost, you can start working towards it.

Expanding the GBB Framework for Personal Goals

36:59 Emily: Yeah. I think you explained that very well. So, the source that it came from for you and the way that you first learned about it is very oriented around being self-employed or being a business owner in terms of having variable levels of income and a degree of control over your income. If I make this amount that’s going to keep the lights on and my life’s going to be okay. If I strive for this amount, then the next levels I could unlock in my lifestyle, and then, okay, the third level is even well above that. But given your history, coming as a PhD student and then as a postdoc, how did you massage this framework into something that you could use maybe in your personal life and not just as an aspiring business owner?

37:46 Lucie: Yes. Well, first, just defining the “Good” goal. This is applicable to anyone in the sense that most people actually don’t know their minimum viable income. And that would change their decisions on what type of job to take, what city to move to. They might think that a certain city is too expensive or a certain job doesn’t pay enough, et cetera, versus if you have a really good handle on how much you actually spend. For me, I’ve done personal budgeting for more than a year, so I know my yearly fluctuations. That enables me to make much more informed decisions about every aspect of my life. Because if I want to go for job, let’s say I’m not self-employed, I would know what this job would allow me to do and whether, let’s say I would be ready to move to a cheaper area or to a more expensive area. And the GBB goals would put that into context.

Financially Navigating a PhD Career Transition

38:47 Emily: Yeah. I actually love that you brought that up in terms of evaluating your next position. If you’re getting out of graduate school, going to a postdoc, going to another job. This is actually something that I’ve talked about in some materials that I released in the summer of 2019, which if you want to check that out, you can go to pfforphds.com/next. N e x t. And that’s about putting a job offer, a salary offer that you receive in the context of the local cost of living for the new place that you don’t live yet. And there’s ways to do that without having tracked your own spending like you’re talking about. Like trying to figure out, okay, how does this new city’s cost of living compare to where I currently live, what I currently make, what would I be making there? How does it compare?

39:27 Emily: But it’s much, much more powerful if you actually do what you’re talking about and have tracked and budgeted for yourself wherever you’re currently living. And it gives you so much more information for then evaluating that next salary offer. And like you were saying, okay, maybe in graduate school, you’re able to spend at the “Good” level. Or maybe you’re not. Maybe you’re at an insufficient level and it’s even below what you would consider to be a “Good” level of spending. You’ll at least have a handle on that. You’ll know where your current salary and current expenditures relate to that, “Good” or “Better” or whatever it is level. And that will help you evaluate, as you were saying, the next position that you might be offered. Or in your case, well, how much money do I really need to make to make this leap into self-employment, which will be so much better for me and you know, x, y, z other areas. But can I do it financially? It helps you evaluate that. Am I getting that right?

40:21 Lucie: Yes. Completely.

Final Advice for a Healthier Money Mindset

40:23 Emily: So, something that you mentioned when we were first talking about doing this interview was that you had used this GBB framework to heal your mindset towards money. So, that’s this period that we’ve been talking about. And when you’re really facing your numbers and starting to budget and so forth. What advice do you have for another, let’s say PhD student currently who is struggling both with a low income and with an unhealthy mindset towards money?

40:53 Lucie: Yeah. My main advice would be to start taking action now in the sense of doing very basic budgeting because not knowing where your money’s at makes things worse. We think when we’re putting our head in the sand that things are better because we’re not looking under the hood but it actually makes things worse. And the reason why it’s important to take some form of action really early on–and this thinking is corroborated by forms of therapy such as cognitive behavioral therapy–is that by changing your behaviors, you actually change your beliefs. It doesn’t really work the other way around. You won’t wake up tomorrow with another set of beliefs about money. It’s about taking action. And then this informs our beliefs and how we evolve in relation to money. And so by taking small actions such as when I started, which was very simple, which was just to print out my bank statement and then put a little circle around the expenses that brought me a lot of joy or a lot of value and then a little cross with the ones that I was not so sure about. I was like, maybe that’s wasted money. And then just gradually adjust your spending so that you only have the little circles. And that can help you towards what is your minimum viable income, what’s your “Good” goal without all the extraneous bits that you spend money on but actually you don’t enjoy that much.

42:14 Emily: Yeah, I absolutely love that advice. It’s sort of increasing the efficiency of the use of your money. So, I think that’s wonderful advice for that student.

Outtro

42:23 Emily: Listeners, thank you so much for joining me for this episode. Pfforphds.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes, a form to volunteer to be interviewed, and a way to join the mailing list. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you want to support the show and my business, please go to pfforphds.com/helpout. There are plenty of ways to do so without laying out any of your own money. See you in the next episode! And remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it doesn’t hurt. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the free music archive and is shared under CC by NC.

This PhD Government Scientist Is Pursuing Financial Independence: Part 2

July 22, 2019 by Jewel Lipps

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Gov Worker, which is the moniker used by a PhD scientist and FIRE blogger. FIRE stands for Financial Independence and Early Retirement. As a PhD, Gov Worker’s motivation for and path to FIRE are different than most and specific to his high degree of training, and he thinks other PhDs should consider FIRE as well. In this second half of the conversation, Gov Worker shares what his family is doing to achieve FIRE, how being a PhD has affected his FIRE journey, and his financial advice for early-career PhDs.

Further Listening: This PhD Government Scientist Is Pursuing Financial Independence: Part 1

Links mentioned in episode

  • Financially Navigating Your Upcoming PhD Career Transition
  • Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast Hub
  • Volunteer as a Guest for the Podcast 
  • Government Workers Pursuing FI (Financial Independence)

financial independence government PhD

0:00 Introduction

1:18 Did you make any changes to your lifestyle and spending when you decided to pursue financial independence?

Dr. Gov Worker says that lately he has put more effort into learning and reading. He says that he and his wife are putting money into tax favored accounts like their 401(k) and health savings account. They are prepaying their mortgage.

He suggests one of the best ways to get started is by tracking your finances. He prefers using a manual spreadsheet because writing it down himself is important. He says that through this, they cut out spending that they didn’t really need. He shares that he and his daughters take piano lessons because this is meaningful to them. They are making sure to spend money on what they value. He says to look at what you’re spending and think about how much joy you get out of it. Try cutting it out and seeing if you really need it. If you do find joy from it, add it back in.

5:10 Can you comment about high savings rates in the FIRE community?

Gov Worker says that savings rates can be misleading. He briefly explains the different methods to calculate savings rate. His key message is that you need to save as much as you can and live on as little money as you can and still be happy with your life. He says that their savings rate is not very high because childcare and mortgage are a big portion of their income. He says he hasn’t calculated his savings rate or set a timeline because the numbers are not motivating for him.

9:45 How does being a PhD affect how you think about financial independence?

Gov Worker shares that he was 27 years old when he got his PhD. In the FIRE movement, many people have retired by age 30. But if you get a PhD by age 26 or 27, you are unlikely to retire in your 30s. This delayed start to making an income is common for PhDs. However, Dr. Gov Worker says that being a graduate student helped him learn how to live frugally. He said he was more comfortable keeping his lifestyle lean. When he did get a job, he was making above the median salary.

He goes on to share that PhDs have invested years in obtaining knowledge and becoming experts. There is a different emotional aspect to consider retiring early when you are a PhD compared to someone who works just for money.

13:54 Once you have financial independence, do you think you’ll still use your PhD knowledge?

Gov Worker says that his happiest times have been when he’s on a sabbatical. He likes collaborating with new people and supplying knowledge, without having administrative duties. He says he can see himself travelling to work with a colleague without having to worry about funding.

He shares that when there was a government shutdown for a month early this year, he discovered what he would like to do if he didn’t have to work. He also realized that he had enough money saved to be able to live off of for several years. He says that society minimizes the value of leisure time and he is interested in pursuing what brings him joy.

19:57 Do you think other PhDs should be thinking about FIRE?

Gov Worker thinks everyone should think about financial independence. He says there are many benefits to having a year of living expenses saved up. He says he’s seen people who can’t leave a toxic workplace because they need the paycheck. He says trying to get in better financial shape is for everyone. He says if you want to try to save 75% of your income for early retirement, you should try it. He was happier in his job after he committed to becoming financially independent. He says there are many mental and spiritual benefits to being on this path. He considers financial independence an alternative path to happiness.

22:45 What are the next steps for someone who wants to start on FIRE?

Gov Worker suggests looking into the FIRE community online and reading books about it. He advises continuing to live a graduate student lifestyle in your first job and save as much income as possible. He says to set up a 401(k) before your first paycheck to get the most of your employer match. He says you can consider having roommates and don’t buy into what your peers spend money on.

When you save money, you are buying yourself options or flexibility later on. Dr. Gov Worker says that in graduate school you are expected to be fully devoted to your field. He says if he could have anything in his world, he wishes he had more time to spend with people he loves and doing things he loves.

26:49 Where can people find you online?

Gov Worker says he’d love to interact with anyone interested in learning more about the FIRE movement. His blog is governmentworkerfi.com. He is active on Twitter and his handle is @govworkerfi.

27:20 Conclusion

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