Income

This Grad Student Experiences Financial Ease Thanks to Her Side Hustles

January 26, 2026 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Nashae Prout, a 5th-year PhD candidate in toxicology at the University of Rochester. Nashae’s first year of graduate school on a $28,000 stipend was financially challenging, so she now maintains two side hustles. She serves as a graduate community assistant for graduate housing, an up to 10 hour per week position that gives her a 55% reduction in rent. She also adjuncts for a nearby university with the support of her PI. Between these two side hustles and her disposition toward frugality, Nashae can comfortably max out her Roth IRA and spend in areas that matter to her, experiencing financial ease. She concludes the interview with excellent advice on time management and prioritization.

Links mentioned in the Episode

This Grad Student Experiences Financial Ease Thanks to Her Side Hustles

Teaser

Nashae (00:00): I know how hard it is. My first year, I definitely had to have a very strict budget in what I spent my money on and how much of it I did spend. And so it like just takes some of that stress off your shoulders and I have to think about, okay, I can’t do this ’cause I have to pay rent and I can’t do that ’cause I have to pay off this card bill.

Introduction

Emily (00:32): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (01:02): This is Season 23, Episode 2, and today my guest is Nashae Prout, a 5th-year PhD candidate in toxicology at the University of Rochester. Nashae’s first year of graduate school on a $28,000 stipend was financially challenging, so she now maintains two side hustles. She serves as a graduate community assistant for graduate housing, an up to 10 hour per week position that gives her a 55% reduction in rent. She also adjuncts for a nearby university with the support of her PI. Between these two side hustles and her disposition toward frugality, Nashae can comfortably max out her Roth IRA and spend in areas that matter to her, experiencing financial ease. She concludes the interview with excellent advice on time management and prioritization.

Emily (01:56): The tax year 2025 version of my tax return preparation workshop, How to Complete Your PhD Trainee Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!), is now available! This pre-recorded educational workshop explains how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. Whether you are a graduate student, postdoc, or postbac, domestic or international, there is a version of this workshop designed just for you. While I do sell these workshops to individuals, I prefer to license them to universities so that the graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs can access them for free. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they sponsor this workshop for you and your peers? You can find more information about licensing these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Thank you so, so much for doing so! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s23e2/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Nashae Prout.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (03:32): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Nashae Prout, who is a fifth year PhD candidate at the University of Rochester. And we’re gonna be talking about increasing income and making your budget work on a grad student stipend. So Nashae, thank you so much for volunteering to come on the podcast and will you please introduce yourself a little bit further?

Nashae (03:51): Yeah, um, happy to be here. My name’s Nashae Prout. I am from Washington DC and I am a fifth year PhD candidate at University of Rochester’s Toxicology Training program.

Emily (04:01): Excellent. Now, uh, let’s take it back a little bit ’cause I wanna set up what your fin- your finances and your financial life were like coming into graduate school. So I understand you graduated from college debt free. Can you tell us like how that happened?

Nashae (04:16): Yes. So I have a three-pronged approach in how I, uh, got through undergrad debt free. So one, um, I started off at community college. Uh, a lot of people don’t always do that, but it’s a really viable option, especially if you don’t have that much money to, you know, go right into a four year institution. So that was number one. Number two, I did have a lot of financial aid. Um, I qualified for the Pell Grant. Um, we also have a tuition assistance grant in DC because there’s no public colleges in DC um, where, sort of this in between we’re out of state everywhere else, but where we’re in state, it’s only private institutions that cost a lot more money. And so because of that, the DC government provides students with a $10,000 grant for each year of college. I think up until five years they cover you for the, for five years, um, for any four year institution that you join.

Nashae (05:11): And so I got that every year. I made sure to put in my application each year to renew it because I needed that money once I started at Morgan State University, which is where I did my undergrad. And then on top of that I also was an NIH BUILD scholar. Um, NIH BUILD is, it’s an acronym Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity. We were one of 10 sites in the United States. Um, and so it was a two year, um, traineeship where I got partial tuition coverage as well as money each month, um, after working a certain amount of hours. Um, and I will say, um, at that point I was breaking even if not give or take about a hundred dollars. So by the end of it I did pay for my college myself, so maybe a couple hundred. But in those first two years when I was at community college, my parents did, um, help me out tremendously and thankful to them every single day for paying for my uh, community college.

Emily (06:05): Yeah, well even with parental support to, you know, for a certain period of time, that’s still a huge accomplishment to get through college without debt. Did you go directly to graduate school or did you take any time in between?

Nashae (06:18): No, I went directly into graduate school. I, that summer I didn’t do any work. I was working since I was 14 years old every summer and it was the first summer I did nothing and I quickly realized there’s a reason why I always had a summer job because I got really bored of watching daytime TV really fast.

PhD Offer Letters and Funding Sources

Emily (06:35): Um, okay. So tell us more about like maybe your offer letter and like how, how you were funded throughout, you know, up to this, you know, fifth year of your PhD program.

Nashae (06:47): Yeah, so, um, I actually had two offers for a PhD program, one at Rochester and the other one at a school in Texas. And I, and while Texas does not have um, income taxes, that that was a good selling point, however, I decided to go for the Rochester offer just ’cause it was a bit closer to home and I loved the culture of the program as well. And so that offer letter, I think, um, I wanna say it was maybe like 28 K, but they also gave me a relocation assistance, um, fund, I think it was like a thousand to $2,000, which I, um, was really grateful for in terms of, you know, having to move, uh, six, seven hours away from my family. Um, so that did sweeten the pot. Um, the first year we’re all funded underneath the, uh, dean scholarship. So all first years, um, at my school are funded by that scholarship. Um, after that I was on a T32 grant with my program. And then currently, um, yes, so that was second and third year I was on the T32 and then fourth year and onwards I am covered by a grant with my PI.

Emily (07:52): Okay, so you’ve switched kind of from fellowship to training grant to assistantship, um, but has that 28K pretty much stayed stable or like gone up a little bit?

Nashae (08:01): Yeah, it goes up, um, what is it, I think 3% every year. So it’s gone up a little bit every year to like match inflation.

Side Income: Graduate Community Assistant

Emily (08:08): Okay. And I know where we’re going with this is that we’re gonna talk about your side income. So that 28k plus, you know, 3% growth each year. Has that not really been sufficient to pay for at least what you want your living expenses to be?

Nashae (08:21): I am never, I’d just say this, I’m never just satisfied with what I’m getting. I’m always gonna wanna challenge myself and get more, um, my parents are immigrants to the United States. They’re both from Jamaica and so they’ve always instilled in me to work hard. Um, my dad, he’s a construction worker, but he’d also always do side jobs. So I always saw him, he’d be, you know, done doing this, but he’d go into this person’s house to do the side project to get extra money. And so when I saw the opportunity, um, to start a side job, I took it. And that first one was with, um, graduate housing. Um, they had a GCA position, which is a graduate community assistant position open. I actually applied for it twice the first time I didn’t get it and the second time I ended up getting the position. Um, and it’s, it didn’t seem like it was out of the realm of what I’d be comfortable doing. It’s a lot of, you know, putting on events, um, greeting residents. I’m a yapper so I like talking with people anyways, so it’s not, um, it wasn’t too much of a deviation from like what I’d be comfortable doing on the side for a couple hours every week.

Emily (09:25): Okay. So let me ask, do you, did you have to live in the housing to have this job or were you able to live elsewhere?

Nashae (09:33): No, so you have to live within graduate housing for at least four months before being eligible to become a graduate community assistant. You also have to live in that graduate area that you’re going to be working in. So I live in my complex and because of that I am over, um, I’m responsible for um, I think the 700s and 800s like apartment blocks in this complex. If I was a GCA at one of the other complexes, I’d have to be a resident there for four months. I think I could transfer, but there’s a transfer fee and I didn’t wanna pay that ’cause there was another position open, but I would’ve had to move there to be eligible for it and I did not wanna move. I like my apartment.

Emily (10:14): I see. So you had already chosen your housing anyways, just like what you personally wanted for your time in graduate school and then, then you saw these open positions and were like, oh, I can add that into my life right now. That seems manageable, is that right?

Nashae (10:27): Yeah, because you’re only eligible to live here if you’re a trainee or a medical student or anything like that. And so everyone else that’s also GCA is also either an MBA student, a PhD student, or they’re a med student.

Emily (10:40): Okay. And you told us a little bit about the nature of the job and about the time commitment. Um, but what are you getting? Are you getting paid? Are you getting like a, a reduction in your housing costs or like how does the compensation work?

Nashae (10:51): Yeah, so because a lot of the programs don’t allow for us to be, um, paid or at least to a certain extent, we can’t get paid depending on what grant you’re on. What, um, graduate housing does is that they don’t pay us. What they do is they give us a rent reduction every month on our rent. So I get 55% off of my rent costs.

Emily (11:09): Nice. Yeah, that, I mean you said it was maybe like two hours per week. That seems like a great trade off. What, what dollar amount does that equate to?

Nashae (11:17): I’d say it depends on the week. So some weeks are a lot more intensive, especially in the summertime. We do have a lot more residents coming in, so we have to make sure that we greet them all. We have to make three attempts to greet them. Um, so that’s just knocking on their door, seeing if they’re home, if they’re not, okay, if, if they are then we have to chat with them for a little bit. Um, so it, I think it’s technically 10 hours per week, but it ebbs and flows throughout the semester. So middle of fall semester, I am doing less hours technically, but in the summertime I am doing more, but this is mostly stuff on the weekends and I, I, um, am responsible for hosting one event per month. Um, which I think the hardest part is just advertising the event. So you know, sending out those flyers, printing it off and posting it in like the laundry room and stuff like that. So it depends on for like the hours, like some are just, some seasons are more busy than other seasons are, like winter time. We don’t technically have much to do from the end of the semester to the start of, um, the spring semester in Ja- in like the end of January. So that’s like a pretty lax time where we’re not doing anything. So it ebbs and flows I’d say. So more than two hours, but some weeks it is more so like two hours. Like especially in the wintertime there’s zero hours technically.

Emily (12:33): Awesome. And you said it’s a 55% rent reduction, so I’m imagining this is a benefit worth at least several hundred dollars, is that right?

Nashae (12:40): By this year it’s at least a reduction by like five to 600.

Emily (12:44): Very nice. Very nice. Helps a lot.

Nashae (12:46): Yes, it makes like very affordable

Emily (12:49): Yeah. And so it sounds like you, you’ve, you still continue to hold this position, is that right? You started in maybe like your second year-ish and then you still have it?

Nashae (12:57): Yeah, I started in my second year. I was eligible in my first year, but again, I interviewed for it and I didn’t get it that first round. Um, still in my second year and it’s been smooth sailing ever since. I’m, uh, one of the OG GCAS in the position, so everyone else in my complex is currently newer than I am, so I sort of help them sometimes with like, oh, who do I contact for this or who do I chat with for that?

Emily (13:20): Nice. Um, well it sounds, I, I don’t know the, it sounds like a great position. I I am always a little bit like regretful when I look back at grad school and like I never even thought about like, or you know, considered doing this type of position yet. It seems like yeah, pretty good amount of financial benefit for like the work you need to put in, especially if you find the work like pretty pleasant, you know, overall.

Nashae (13:42): I have a shopping problem so I love shopping with the school’s money to host the events anyways. Like it’s, it’s a win-win situation in my opinion.

Emily (13:50): Yeah, I would say for, certainly for current graduate students, if you would like <laugh> a rent reduction, you know, look, look into this.

Nashae (13:58): Free rent is, yeah, yeah. Free rent is worth it if you wanna do that side, but 50% off is also very reasonable.

Emily (14:04): Yeah, it’s, it’s more compensation but it’s more work, right, for, for that type of position. But I would also say for like maybe even prospective graduate students who are concerned about the cost of housing in like the city that they’re considering moving to look for this kind of opportunity sooner rather than later. It could even be part of your like decision of where you go, like whether, if it is a position that you’re willing to take on whether those positions are available because it can be a massive help, 50%, a hundred percent kind of rent reduction in a high cost of living area would matter a lot for a graduate student. Um, so I really appreciate you telling us about the position. Seems like a good fit for you.

Nashae (14:40): Yeah, I personally love it. I am hoping that other people that you know need it can also get a position similar to this, especially if you’re in a high cost of living. I wouldn’t consider Rochester very high cost of living. Like the original rent is about maybe a bit over a thousand dollars for a rent one bedroom. So it’s not, it’s very reasonable. So it’s just helps me even more in terms of like this like moderate cost of living area.

Side Income: Adjunct Faculty Member

Emily (15:04): Yeah. And I understand you have another side job, um, maybe not surprising given your description of like who you are and like just you wanna be busy and wanna be working a lot. So like what’s your other side position?

Nashae (15:16): Yeah, so my other side position is being an adjunct faculty member at Nazareth University. Um, it’s a local liberal arts college here in Rochester.

Emily (15:24): So how did you first come, well I guess tell us what you teach and like is it all the time year round or in certain semesters?

Nashae (15:33): Yeah, so I teach um, biology lab, so it’s um, a one credit course and then I also last spring semester taught science communications or sorry, intro to science communications and that was a three credit course. Um, it’s, they’re both, um, in person on campus, um, classes that I teach, I do the lab courses in the fall and then I do in the spring I did science communications. Um, it’s pretty reasonable in terms of time commitment. I do one evening class and one afternoon class for my lab sections and I only do, I only did one science communications class since that one did take a lot more time grading wise. Grading wise, since it is a, uh, writing class. So you know, you’re doing papers and continual uh, edits on people’s like work

Emily (16:23): And were you like the instructor of record for either one of those?

Nashae (16:28): Yeah, so I am the listed instructor for all the courses that I teach at Nazareth.

Emily (16:32): Nice. And did you have to prepare a curriculum as well?

Nashae (16:36): No, so, um, I do have leeway with the science communications class, however, for the science laboratory class, because it is standard across all lab sections, that one is predetermined. So I have leeway in terms of how I get the material across, but the experiments that are laid out are laid out in a scheduled fashion and it’s the same for all faculty teaching the course.

Emily (16:58): And did you pursue this position purely for more money or was it for teaching experience or like what were your motivations?

Nashae (17:06): Yeah, so, um, I got the position actually because a lab member of mine was already an adjunct there and through word of mouth I was able to apply for some of their extra adjunct positions. Um, I I would say it was 50% wanting more money and 50% wanting to pad my CV with an experience. Um, I’ve done volunteer work with teaching, um, but I want to have the experience of actually being the actual instructor for a class, you know, having to take high level science stuff and break it down into something digestible for a freshman under undergraduate.

Emily (17:41): How do you feel it’s been working for you in, in terms of, let’s take the, the career development, the CV padding as the first point, like you think it’s been worthwhile, has it been rewarding for you? Has it, you know, opened up any other opportunities?

Nashae (17:53): I definitely feel like it’s been rewarding. I really do like teaching. The worst part about teaching is just the grades. Honestly. I hate, um, having to grade <laugh> but other than that I like going in, I like interacting with the students. Um, honestly they’re all really great. I would also say that it’s good for my CV because I’m getting experience and it helped me determine whether or not I did wanna pursue education at the moment. You know, with funding crazy as it is. Um, I’m not putting all my eggs in the academia basket, but I do have the experience and it is something that if the right opportunity, you know, occurs, then I would pursue it further. Especially if it was for either liberal arts college or a health professions college, like a pharmacy school because um, I like when students are really engaged. My favorite ones are the, the, the super nerdy ones because they ask the most questions and they’re the most engaged with the course material.

Emily (18:48): Did you not have an opportunity through your regular graduate program? I mean I guess you described your funding path didn’t involve TAing at all and so it sounds like you, you sort of had to go outside your university to find these kinds of opportunities, is that right?

Nashae (19:02): Um, so yeah, my program does not require any type of TAship. We’re only, um, required to do research. So I did become a TA for one semester for one of our courses, but they don’t pay you for the, for being a ta, it’s purely a volunteer type of of um, thing. I did put it on my CV of course and there is good experience there but for me, if I was going to take my time three days out of the week to go sit down in a class and be there for the entire duration, I wanna be paid for my time. And so to me it’s worth it to, you know, go off campus twice a week or once a week to teach and get paid for it versus staying on campus which eats your commute just to walk down the hallway to the um, classroom. But I’d much rather be paid for my time than not be paid for my time. And it looks better on the CV to have like you are actually the instructor your name is on the syllabus versus just being the TA for a course at your own institution.

Emily (19:58): Yeah, for sure. Um, and do you mind sharing your pay rate for those two classes?

Nashae (20:04): Yeah, so it’s around $3,000 per class per semester. So the more classes you teach the more you can get. However, as an adjunct I am limited to a maximum of three classes per semester.

Emily (20:17): Oh three per semester. Well that, yeah, that’s quite a bit more than you’re doing at the moment.

Commercial

Emily (20:23): Emily here for a brief interlude! Tax season is in full swing, and the best place to go for information tailored to you as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac, is PFforPhDs.com/tax/. From that page I have linked to all of my free tax resources, many of which I have updated for this tax year. On that page you will find podcast episodes, videos, and articles on all kinds of tax topics relevant to PhDs and PhDs-to-be. There are also opportunities to join the Personal Finance for PhDs mailing list to receive PDF summaries and spreadsheets that you can work with. Again, you can find all of these free resources linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. Now back to the interview.

Impact of Side Income on Finances During Grad School

Emily (21:15): From these two different side jobs, which you’re holding them both now, right? So this is probably like the most money slash the least rent, you know you’ve had to pay uh, during your course of time in graduate school. What would you say has been the overall effect on your finances? Like more high level?

Nashae (21:29): I would say for me it’s one being able to comfortably max out my Roth IRA every year. Um, I didn’t open it until I was like a second or third year in my PhD, but I was able to max it out for the past couple years, which I think is great because I don’t think I would’ve been able to afford to do that otherwise without maybe surviving on ramen noodles and air for <laugh>, the, all my meals and my PhD. So that is I think the biggest one. Secondarily, I’m able to comfortably like travel to see my family every year. Um, I don’t ask them for any money. I’ve been financially independent from them since I’ve moved out. I don’t wanna put that burden on them. My dad just retired, um, so I’m able to go fly to them or drive whenever I feel the need to.

Nashae (22:15): I also, um, treat myself, I do one musical festival each year. Um, I did uh, I’m doing Camp Flog Gnaw this year, so, uh, very excited for that. Um, I am splitting the hotel costs with my um, friends because I am, I like treating myself but I’m not crazy. I will not stay in LA for my own self for a hotel room. Um, we are splitting it. All four of us are spliting the hotel room. So I also do that and I also uh, like taking care of myself uh, and not having to think too much about what I’m buying. Like I definitely do, I’m very much a budget oriented person, however I’m able to like go thrifting and it was within like my allotted 30 to $50 budget for a outing. I’m able to comfortably do it. Sometimes I have gone overboard, but for the most part I’m able to save quite a bit of money every year. Just just less strain.

Emily (23:08): Yes, exactly. So like not only are you like building for your financial future through the Roth IRA, but just in your day-to-day decisions around money, you just have more ease and less stress and like you said, you’re not going like overboard as a graduate student. It’s kind of hard to go overboard in in any area, but just the additional income that you’re bringing in and the rent reduction allows you that. Um, yeah, just not to be stressed about these like more like low level purchases which absolutely characterizes, you know, the the grad student experience.

Nashae (23:37): And I don’t do like a lot of those like small purchases but like for example, I make my coffee at home. I don’t go out to get my coffee. I, I pack my lunches most days. I rarely go out to eat. Um, I will go out to drink on the weekends or something with friends or like go have a dinner here and there. But like for the most part I live like pretty frugally like my entire outfit right now it is all thrifted clothing. The outfit is under $10. Um, I love saving money where I can but because I get extra income I’m allowed to like splurge where I want to.

Emily (24:07): Yeah, and it sounds like you have a very high level of awareness of your budget too. Like you know that your spending is under control in these certain areas so that you have the more ease in the other areas that seems like they provide more like value to you.

Nashae (24:21): Absolutely. I love being able to like I think about all my purchases of course, but I’m able to comfortably pay off my credit card bill every month. I always use my credit card ’cause it’s a cashback credit card and so I never spend more than what I have anyways. Um, but even if I spend over a thousand dollars on a month on my credit card, I’m always able to comfortably cover that without going into the red.

Emily (24:44): Do you see any differences between you and your peers at Rochester in this regard or are most of your peers also working side jobs so that they can have you know, similar financial freedom?

Nashae (24:54): I would say most of my peers aren’t working side jobs. I’d say maybe 30 to 40% perhaps. Um, I have some friends that were also GCAs. I’ve had some friends that work in the graduate um, affairs office. I’ve had some friends, um, teach on the side. I know at least one other person from my school that teaches at Nazareth. Um, I definitely would say I wish more people would take more opportunities because I know how hard it is. For my first year, I definitely had to have a very strict budget in what I spent my money on and how much of it I did spend. And so it like just takes some of that stress off your shoulders to not have to think about, okay, I can’t do this ’cause I have to pay rent and I can’t do that because I have to pay off this card bill or that um, car insurance note. Or whatever it is. Um, I definitely feel like I wish more people like took more opportunities like this ’cause there are opportunities to get teaching and not have it, um, be for free. I will say the other side of our campus, like the, like the arts engineering school, they do get paid for, um, being a TA. However, for my campus we don’t. And so that is something that I know a lot of graduate students do. It’s part of their, um, funding package. But at least for my school and my program, we do not get paid for a TA ships, which is why I stopped doing it after that first semester.

Academia Approved Side Hustles

Emily (26:16): Yeah, and I, I neglected to ask this earlier, but um, does your advisor know about your adjuncting position or like is it all like sort of out in the open or is it something that you do kind of quietly?

Nashae (26:27): No, he definitely knows. Um, I actually talked with him about like how many courses I should or should not teach. I’ve never gone above two courses because we both agree that that was the maximum ’cause it’s like one evening I, it’s a 6:00 PM course so it doesn’t interfere with my studies and my work. Um, ’cause I’m able to do nine to five and then the earliest course I’ve ever taught was, uh, 1:00 PM which I, we always have our meeting directly after the course anyways, so it doesn’t impact my work negatively, I’m still meeting my milestones as I should.

Emily (26:56): I I’ve started using the term academia approved, like academia approved side hustles and like adjuncting is usually an academia approved side hustle because obviously it’s in the wheelhouse. Everybody knows even if it’s at a different institution, like everybody gets, you know, uh, why you would wanna do it and what the requirements are and the time commitment and all that sort of thing. So like as long as it’s sort of like legally permitted by everybody’s visa and like the terms of your funding and all that, um, it’s pretty likely like with your advisor that they would be encouraging of this kind of thing as long as of course you have scheduled it so that it’s not gonna interfere with your primary work.

Nashae (27:31): Absolutely, yeah, I know when I was on the T 32 I wasn’t allowed to, I think it was either 10 or 15 hours of external work per week. But even with both of my jobs, um, I teach like a one, I teach one to three credits every semester at Nazareth, so that’s not impacting it there. And then for my GCA position I, it oscillates between maybe like five to 10 hours per week. So I’m still well within or below that 15, um, that 15 hour minimum maximum, um, that’s allotted with um, T 32 grants.

Emily (28:06): Yeah, and it’s really just good to know as a student, like that sort of rule on the backend. Like especially if you got pushback from your advisor, like, oh no, I’d actually don’t think you should take that other position. You say, well, you know, my funding technically allows for this amount and this is how I’m going to balance it. You have to still convince them, but like you have a little bit of support by just it being the policy. Okay. Don’t go above 15 hours per week.

Nashae (28:28): Yeah. And I’m very happy that, love my PI, he is great and he supports me doing this because he wants me to have that breadth of experience because my, again, my uh, program does not require any type of, um, TAship or adjuncting or what have you. So this is extra opportunity for me to gain experience in something that isn’t traditionally offered in my program of study.

Emily (28:50): Excellent. I can definitely see why your advisor would be encouraging of that. Is there anything else you wanna add on that point before we move to our final question?

Nashae (28:58): I would say, uh, just my one thing about, uh, teaching philosophy. I think a lot of people, this is like the soap, this is the soapbox me. I think we should strive to be, um, servant leaders, hearing what the people that we’re serving need from us and then working to provide them with what they need instead, instead of, you know, internally thinking, oh, okay, this is what I’m going to give instead of asking what do you need? That’s my one, um, thing that I I would just like want people to, to um, have and just spread as information. Like if you’re in a leadership position, make sure that you’re serving the people that you’re leading.

Emily (29:34): I can see how that applies both to your teaching position and your position with graduate housing. Definitely.

Nashae (29:39): Exactly. Yeah, I always wanna listen to feedback and listen to requests, um, and then work to achieve that.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (29:45): Awesome. Well let’s wrap up with the final question that I ask of all my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And it can be something that we’ve touched on in the interview already or it could be something completely new.

Nashae (29:57): Yeah, I would say my advice for any early career PhD is to time manage very well. And if you can time manage very well, then you can do a side hustle. I would never want someone to prioritize their side hustle over their PhD. Um, I’m here to get my PhD, that’s what I moved here for, so I’m always gonna put that on top. But if you have the time management skills to do a side hustle or do two like I’m doing, um, then do it. I think it’s one of the best financial decisions I’ve made as an adult, um, is having these side jobs that, um, one are not very hard. Really the only thing I dislike is the act of grading because it’s very tedious to grade each student, but my class is never more than 16 students, so it’s not that much in the grand scheme of things. I’m not doing a 100 plus person lecture where I’m grading it’s maximum 30 students that I’m grading for an assignment at a time. So if you can time management, if you have the time management skills, then do it. If you can’t, then focus more so on your, on your studies and look for opportunities within your university so that it’s a bit easier for you to potentially add something else onto your plate.

Emily (31:06): I totally agree. You have to like get your, you have to have your time management house in order, as you were saying before you can pursue these other financial opportunities because like you said, you have to keep the main goal in mind. The main goal is to finish that PhD and get a great job afterwards. And if you get distracted by side hustles, especially side hustles that like, you know, your job as an adjunct, like that’s still career building, um, most likely. And so especially if you get distracted by a side job that has nothing to do with your career, it can really add a lot of time, which is ultimately detrimental financially to you. So these two are like very, very intertwined. So I’m really glad you brought that up. Thank you.

Nashae (31:44): Absolutely. Yeah.

Emily (31:45): And thank you so much for volunteering to come on the podcast. It was great talking with you.

Nashae (31:49): Absolutely. I am happy to be here and I’m happy if at least one person takes my advice or falls in my footsteps and is able to save more money than they would have and be a little bit set up, you know, better for the future considering like the crazy economy we have going on right now.

Emily (32:05): Absolutely.

Outro

Emily (32:15): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

How Financial Policies Impact Graduate Student Attrition

December 1, 2025 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Connor Ferguson, a postdoc at the University at Buffalo studying how professional development and student success initiatives influence the graduate training environment. While pursuing her PhD in higher education at West Virginia University, Connor worked full-time as a student affairs professional supporting health sciences graduate students, which has given her multiple perspectives on how to support graduate students. Connor and Emily discuss the best practices that universities and programs can implement to reduce graduate student attrition and strengthen the workforce development pipeline, including how to raise stipends and provide for basic needs.

Links mentioned in the Episode

How Financial Policies Impact Graduate Student Attrition

Teaser

Connor (00:00): You don’t want the students to be overwhelmed. You don’t want them to burn out. But at the same time, if they’re not able to make a wage to sustain a healthy living environment, they’re gonna be overwhelmed and they’re gonna burn out.

Introduction

Emily (00:21): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (00:50): This is Season 22, Episode 8, and today my guest is Dr. Connor Ferguson, a postdoc at the University at Buffalo studying how professional development and student success initiatives influence the graduate training environment. While pursuing her PhD in higher education at West Virginia University, Connor worked full-time as a student affairs professional supporting health sciences graduate students, which has given her multiple perspectives on how to improve the graduate student experience. Connor and I discuss the best practices that universities and programs can implement to reduce graduate student attrition and strengthen the workforce development pipeline, including how to raise stipends and provide for basic needs.

Emily (01:34): If you want to bring one of my live tax workshops to your university next tax season, get in touch with me ASAP! Between now and the end of the year, I’m populating my calendar, especially early February, with in person and remote speaking engagements. My workshops are typically hosted by graduate schools, postdoc offices, and graduate student associations, and sometimes individual departments. Whether you are in a position to make those arrangements or simply want to recommend me, you can get the ball rolling by emailing me at [email protected]. My tax workshops, both live and pre-recorded, are my most popular offering each year because taxes are such a widespread pain point for graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s22e8/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Connor Ferguson.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:45): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Connor Ferguson. She is a postdoc at the University of Buffalo, and we met last summer 2025 at the Graduate Career Consortium annual meeting, and during the poster session, we got deep into a discussion on grad student stipends and advocacy and Connor’s particular interest in attrition in graduate among graduate students. And Connor told me about this upcoming study that she’s working on. It was just so fascinating. I knew I had to have her on the podcast, so I’m very excited. Connor, welcome to the podcast. Um, and will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

Connor (03:22): Sure. Uh, thanks Emily. Thank you for having me. So I received both my master’s and doctorate in higher education from West Virginia University. I also have a graduate certificate in university teaching. My doctoral work specifically examined the influence of faculty mentorship on graduate student self-efficacy development, but also while I was pursuing both of those graduate degrees, I worked full-time as a student affairs professional, specifically supporting health sciences graduate students at my institution. Uh, my professional role was to support the graduate education environment through mentoring, strategic recruitment, and the implementation of professional development programming. And during this experience, I formed individual connections with students and I really got to learn about what they loved about graduate education and the research, but also I really learned about what made it a struggle, um, and how I could try to help them. So during that practical experience, I identified areas in which practitioners could shape programming or initiatives to support the needs of the graduate student population. And that objective has been pretty consistent. It’s a consistent theme across all of my work efforts. And I’m currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Buffalo, where our lab focuses on culting-, cultivating and retaining the future STEM workforce through the implementation of some evidence-based practices that emphasize equality of access. And I’m specifically looking at how professional development and student success initiatives influence the graduate student training environment.
Emily (04:57): Those of you watching the video could see that I was just nodding, nodding, nodding, nodding along with everything that Connor just said. I love this like dual or at least like multiple perspectives, um, that you have, you know, personally and professionally on the graduate student population.

How Do Stipends and Benefits Impact Grad Student Attrition?

Emily (05:10): This is amazing. And so as you know, and as all the listeners know, this is a finance podcast. So let’s take what the framing that you just gave all your background, you know, what your lab is currently doing, and let’s talk more specifically about money. So how have you observed or how are you hypothesizing that stipends and benefits and other monetary, you know, things that affect the graduate student population, um, and their own personal finances, how are they contributing to this, um, overall problem of attrition? You know, and you also phrased this as workforce development, right? So broad broadly, workforce development maybe more specifically attrition at the graduate student level.

Connor (05:49): Sure. So, um, at a more general level, research has shown that students choose to withdraw from graduate programs for many reasons, including program fit, uh, personal reasons, departmental issues, but also financial challenges. Um, before I dive fully into the financial component, my professional experience and research is placed in the biomedical and health sciences graduate student realm, of which these programs tend to be on the upper end of those stipend and benefit ranges, um, compared to students in the humanity and social sciences. So just that overarching perspective, I am in the biomedical realm, but overall across disciplines, financial instability is a serious concern for graduate students. So when stipend and benefits don’t support a living wage, students can face a chronic financial stress that impacts both their academic performance and their overall wellbeing. And we see more and more students reporting that they are being paid at, at or near the poverty level. And with some of these graduate programs, they’re also expected to essentially work full-time in the labs that they’re in. So there are limited opportunities for students to pursue additional employment elsewhere. Some programs are also discouraging students from pursuing additional employment. They state that this is because graduate studies and research makes up a full-time commitment. And I can see that coming from a place of care, right? You don’t want the students to be overwhelmed, you don’t want them to burn out, but at the same time, if they’re not able to make a wage to sustain a healthy living environment, they’re gonna be overwhelmed and they’re gonna burn out.

Emily (07:25): Not to mention the international population, right, who are legally barred from having virtually any source of income outside of their stipend.

Connor (07:33): Yes, that’s an incredibly important point. Thank you for bringing that up. So for example, I had spoken with a student who worked full-time as a PhD student, right? But they also worked overnights as an EMT, and they were incredibly exhausted and incredibly tired, and that weaves its way into all aspects of their life. But they felt that they needed to do that in order to support themselves and their family. So when students are discouraged from pursuing supplemental employment but are in need of a supplemental income, they could feel trapped between the institutional expectations and financial survival. And that tension can contribute to burnout and attrition.

Emily (08:17): And I also just wanna say, I mean all, all your points are perfectly well taken, but like I also firmly believe that it’s not just about basic needs and survival, it’s also about having a satisfactory and fulfilling life. Especially if we’re talking about PhDs, like that’s a long time to be living at the poverty level, for example. So like for me, I just wanna encourage everyone listening like, it’s okay also to want more for your financial life than just baseline survival, although that is the discussion that we’re having in certain kinds of programs at certain places,

Connor (08:49): Right. Yeah. Uh, baseline living wage is the bare minimum <laugh>. Um, but unfortunately we do have to start at the bare minimum in some of these discussions, um, in order to get this going. And stipend ranges are really variable across programs, disciplines, institutions. Um, in my previous employment I collected stipend data for comparable institutions because our students were consistently, and if this was good that they were consistently bringing up that the stipend wasn’t enough. Um, oh my gosh, now make, now I’m thinking about why it’s usually student led efforts, but maybe we can loop back to that. Um, I know that there was a broader graduate student effort called PhDstipends.

Emily (09:31): That’s actually my website.

Connor (09:33): Okay, perfect. Well, it’s still ongoing. Um, and that was collected student reported data, so prospective students can check that out to see if the stipend and the, I think they’ll probably connect probably to the MIT living wage calculator.

Emily (09:49): We actually used to link the MIT living wage database, but more recently I could not secure permission from the owners of that database to do so. So it’s no longer there. Although I highly recommend it. I highly recommend visiting the living wage database. I find it to be a very useful resource.

Connor (10:04): Yeah, absolutely. I mean, also when you’re thinking about getting a new job and trying to understand what your salary here versus in a new location, what that all translate to the really helpful resources. I guess another point that I feel, um, I should discuss is that there’s more to the graduate student financial package than just the stipend. Um, a lot of times we forget about the value of the tuition waivers. So for doctoral research assistantships, for many PhD programs, they’ll receive a stipend tuition waiver and health insurance. And that tuition waiver is a substantial amount of money that the student’s not responsible for while they pursue their training. Ultimately though, the stipend, so the take home salary is often not supportive of a living wage. Um, but I myself was not in a stipend supported position, so I feel like I would be really grateful for a tuition waiver. So that’s why that little caveat perspectives in there.

Emily (10:58): Yeah, I definitely find that graduate students feel different ways about this. Um, some put a high value on that tuition waiver or scholarship, whatever the form is, um, because they really are considering, wow, I would be paying that, you know, to pursue that degree. Um, if this wasn’t offered and others are like, this is funny money and it is meaningless to me because whatever the number is, you would pay it for me. So I really just care about the stipend. So I definitely see, you know, those different, um, perspectives there. I wanna actually sort of double click on something that you said a few minutes ago, which is about, um, that the students at West Virginia were coming with their concerns around the stipend to the administration. And that was very helpful to you and your position to hear, you know, all of those concerns and then start doing that research of, okay, what are our, you know, peer programs offering? Are we competitive with them? So I just wanted to reemphasize that to the listeners of like, this is an effective strategy. Like if you have concerns about the stipend that’s being offered, bring it up and get your peers to bring it up at every, you know, reasonable opportunity. Um, especially actually at the prospective student stage. Um, it may not, I mean, hopefully it’ll, you know, enhance your offer that you try to negotiate. Maybe it won’t, but the people who you’re voicing this to are taking notes and they will eventually respond if they’re hearing over and over again that their stipend is just not competitive with other programs.

Connor (12:30): Yeah. And we did in fact, get some feedback once from an applicant who chose to go a different way. And it is really helpful to see that one of the reasons was that the financial package was not comparable to another opportunity because ultimately, uh, graduate programs are seeking to recruit those students. So they want to be competitive. And being vocal on all avenues is how we can create change. Um, if we’re quiet, then the administration either doesn’t know or they’re gonna choose not to know about these challenges.

Why Should Universities Care About Grad Student Attrition?

Emily (13:01): Absolutely. We’ve just spoken quite a bit about the effect of, you know, insufficient stipends or low stipends on graduate students’, um, wellbeing, their ability to progress in their programs and perform well and all of that. Let’s flip the perspective to the university side. Why <laugh>? You know, we, we talked about attrition, we talked about graduate students withdrawing from their programs. Why do universities, uh, care about that? It’s kind of a silly question, but what’s your framing on that?

Connor (13:31): So, universities should be concerned with graduate student attrition at multiple levels. Um, so it can be considered a failure to support the student. It could also be viewed as a disruption to the research enterprise. Um, and it could also demonstrate financial inefficiency within the institution itself. So kind of like three different perspectives. Um, and so my student affairs background leads me to center the individual. So I’ll start here with the, the student perspective. So looking at the student as individuals and supporting them through the attainment of their educational goals and the pursuit of their desired career pathways. And here I’ll emphasize that not all attrition is negative. Sometimes leaving a program is the right choice for the student’s goals, but my research focuses on attrition that occurs because of structural barriers, not personal fit. So when students leave under those conditions, it can reflect a failure of institutional support and could also signal some broader inequities in how we prepare and sustain our students. So from that student affairs perspective, attrition can represent, represent like an unfulfilled promise between the institution and the student.

Emily (14:49): I’m so glad you started with that framing ’cause that’s exactly where I would, um, sit as well. But because I spend so much time there, I’m curious about your other approaches as well to this issue.

Connor (15:00): Sure. So in order to get some stakeholder buy-in, um, it’s really helpful to kind of frame these issues from the broader research enterprise or from the business perspective. So in general, um, graduate students are significant contributors and leaders within the academic research enterprise, uh, both in terms of advancing science within their academic research team, but also as they progress into their future careers. And these students are active members of their research teams. And when research teams as a whole encounter a challenge or a setback, those setbacks can pose a considerable cost to the research institution and their team. So we look at graduate student nutrition as a specific type of challenge to that research progress. And you could also consider more of the ripple effects of graduate student attrition. Um, graduate students become active members and leaders of the broader scientific community or the scientific research community. And so attrition within graduate programs for reasons outside of the student’s personal motivations could impact the quality and viability of the overall research enterprise.

Emily (16:10): That approach to it is something that I’ve become more and more concerned about as the more work that I do in this area. And starting to see that bigger picture of you as you phrased it earlier, workforce developments. Go on. What’s that third way that, uh, that you frame the issue for, for universities?

Connor (16:26): That third way is framing it within the business realm of higher education, um, because much of the United States higher education system functions within a business structure now. So we frame attrition around this concept of waste. And we’re not using waste to devalue the student experience or to devalue the student, but to make that problem legible to those in- institutional decision makers who are viewing this as a business. Um, so in general, supportive doctoral programs requires a significant, uh, commitment of institutional, state and federal resources. So we have a lot of stakeholders, um, at play here, and the costs increase when cases of attrition occur. And so more specifically, training doctoral students requires a substantial investment of many layers. This includes the stipends support, but also through student and faculty recruitment in training students. And also if you consider time as a financial resource, which it should be considered a financial resource. So when a student leaves those resources are partially lost. And university stakeholders can view such attrition as a sign of institutional waste and inefficiency. And we are in a time of tightening budgets and a real pressure on accountability metrics. So attrition then becomes a point of concern specifically related to institutional inefficiency. So I suppose when I talk about attrition as waste, it’s really a call for universities to invest wisely into efforts that promote greater retention. So investing in financial stability, but also mentorship, programming and supportive climates. Those are effective strategies to yield positive training outcomes and reduce financial inefficiency.

Emily (18:17): And the way that, you know, you approach that really is sort of turning around saying to the institutions, there is a degree of waste happening here. As you said, it’s not because of the, the fit issues that aside, maybe people leave programs because their career goes no goals, no longer aligned. That’s that’s totally fine, that’s a separate issue. Um, but if you see that you’re not, uh, that money is being wasted, uh, because you’re not supporting the graduate student population sufficiently in x, y, z areas, well address those x, y, z areas, reduce the waste, like win win, win win for everybody. Right. Um, so I’m so glad that you took the time to explain like the, sort of those different perspectives, um, on the issue and, and put that term waste, you know, in, in some context for the listener. So I appreciate that. So when we met last summer, uh, you were telling me that you were putting in a grant and that you have, um, some ongoing and also some upcoming studies around this issue. So can you tell us more about, um, what you’re planning?

Other Attrition Related Research: Lab Switching and Master’s Degrees as Career Exploration

Connor (19:17): Sure. So the study that we spoke about, uh, last summer was specifically about the phenomenon of switching labs. Um, sometimes referred to as changing mentors depending on the discipline and whether it’s bench work or not. So in my study, I’m proposing that the biomedical sciences education community specifically just to frame the balance of my case view, switching labs as a type of attrition to be studied and prevented when appropriate, uh, to promote positive student outcomes and support the significant financial investments made when matriculating doctoral students into pro- um, programs. It’s a little different than fully withdrawing from the program, but we have less knowledge about switching labs. We know that it, it can increase the time to degree. So at a, you know, far back lens, we can see that an increased time to degree means more financial commitment. Um, but we don’t formally know about the phenomenon. And so we don’t know about the factors that influence the decision to choose to switch labs. And we also don’t know about the corresponding impact on the training experience for both the student and the faculty member, but also training outcomes and the overall institutional financial commitment. So I’m implementing a mixed methods approach to capture institutional metrics, but also the student and faculty narratives of lab switching.

Emily (20:46): Anecdotally on my end, I remember from graduate school that some lab switching preceded withdrawal, right? It sometimes the issues can be resolved by changing mentors and sometimes it’s just indicative of graduate school not being a good fit for that, um, individual. So just from my own like observations and experience, I can see that this is definitely merits, you know, further investigation. Would you like to share anything else about other sort of questions you have, um, or that you’re trying to ask that are cir- circling around, you know, the topic we’ve discussed?

Connor (21:20): Yeah, I have, I have one that I can share about. One study that we’ve wrapped up and we’re working on submitting a manuscript at this time is examining master’s programs specifically, um, with students that seek out master’s programs as precursors to professional or doctoral level degree programs and students viewing those as strengths to build their application resume. But they’re also perceiving those as significant financial investments into the opportunity to pursue an additional graduate degree. So we’re looking to understand maybe what can we do to, uh, supplement some training that these students are seeking at the master’s level within their undergraduate programming, such that they might not need to make such a significant financial investment. Um, a lot of the times a master’s degree is necessary, um, or important towards their career goals, but for those students that were in our particular study, it may not have been the most financially necessary decision. And ultimately we want our students to be financially stable. It’s better all around for their productivity, their wellbeing in this uncertain job market and uncertain economic climate. So we’re just looking to see what interventions can be done at the undergraduate level to maybe help students go straight to where they want to go instead of using master’s programs as career exploration tools.

Emily (22:52): Absolutely. This is a population that I’m also highly interested in, and whenever I get the opportunity to teach rising or prospective graduate students, I absolutely relish it because so much trouble financially that graduate students get into, you know, years into a PhD program. A lot of that could be headed off, um, earlier if they understood the culture of different programs better or if they did, you know, um, weigh finances maybe more heavily among the factors when they were choosing their graduate program or if they had attempted to negotiate or, or there’s a lot of different ways that that could play out. Um, but I think oftentimes prospective graduate students kind of related what you were saying as like using the masters as, um, a tool for, you know, further career, you know, further educational attainment, um, down the line. Sometimes undergraduate students, um, aren’t yet making the best decisions around. They don’t understand the context and the meaning of all these numbers that are being thrown around in front of them, um, yet in a way that they will start to appreciate multiple years down the line. So the more we can get information in front of them and context in front of them, the earlier the better in my opinion.

Commercial

Emily (24:09): Emily here for a brief interlude! I’m hard at work behind the scenes updating my suite of tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2025. These educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2025 tax season starting in January 2026, I’m offering live and pre-recorded workshops for US citizen/resident graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they host one or more of these workshops for you and your peers? I’d love to receive a warm introduction to a potential sponsor this fall so we can hit the ground running in January serving those early bird filers. You can find more information about hosting these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Now back to our interview.

What Steps Can Universities Take to Reduce Attrition?

Emily (25:27): Okay. So going back kind of to the beginning of our conversation, um, and also, you know, the, the studies that you’ve been talking about, what ways do you, what steps do you think universities and programs could take to reduce attrition among their graduate student populations to reduce this waste, you know, aspect of their expenditures? Um, this doesn’t have to be super well supported by evidence yet, but, you know, drawing on your professional expertise and your observations, what are your thoughts? What are some best practices?

Connor (25:57): My thoughts might be like big dream ideas that would require a lot, a lot of work, but I do think that reducing graduate student attrition would require a multifaceted approach. So one that would support students before they enter graduate school. So prospective graduate students, uh, one that provides strong onboarding once they arrive into their graduate programs, and then one that focuses on interventions when challenges arise. So we had just kind of started talking about this, so I’ll start, I’ll really dive into preparing before graduate school. So some graduate student attrition happens because students realize mid grad program that the degree doesn’t align with their goals. And that could be seen as a gap in earlier career preparation, which is not necessarily the fault of the student, but it is definitely an area in which institutions can target interventions. So how can, right, we kind of spoke about this, how can institutions educate undergrads about the variety of careers available with a baccalaureate degree or about the pathways that would necessitate a graduate degree? So I personally pursued a master’s degree right out of undergrad because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do next. And I was like, I’ll just take out loans. And I, it’s not, I would say it wasn’t the most financially responsible decision I’ve ever made. Uh, specifically because I used the master’s program as a career exploration tool. Um, I stand by the program, I’m happy where I am now. It led me to my PhD program, it led me to my research, it worked out. But I am drowning in student loan debt. And I do feel that this is a problem that other students face as well. And that personal experience shapes how I view career exploration at the undergraduate level. So what can we be doing at the undergrad level to appropriately educate students on the values and purpose of graduate degrees as they relate to their broader goals?

Emily (27:58): I’m sure you’re absolutely aware, but you know, this issue is not an individual issue only, it’s not a university level issue only. It’s now like in the spotlight for the federal government with the changes that have just been implemented to the federal student loan program.

Connor (28:12): And students are anxious about that. Students are uncertain if they’ll be able to pursue their graduate programs or continue their graduate programs. It’s just we don’t need more question mark, question marks in an otherwise stressful time for students..

Emily (28:28): And the financial implications are gonna become stronger, right? For, you know, people who have to access the private loan market instead of being able to use federal loans, et cetera, et cetera, interest rates, repayment options, like there’s just gonna be even more weight on this decision. So it’s very timely <laugh> that you’re looking at this. Yeah.

Connor (28:48): So that was focusing at the undergraduate level, right? Because if we can reduce the number of students who realize mid grad program that this wasn’t the pathway for them, we could also be saving both the students and institution the time and the resources. But most of my like passion projects, my efforts and research tend to examine the onboarding programming of graduate students like orientation, um, because I’m particularly interested in strengthening mentor mentee relationships and the graduate student training experience. So structured onboarding efforts can help normalize graduate student expectations and also prepare students for the transition to this new environment. And these programs are more and should be more than just presenting logistics, uh, and instead provide opportunities to help students be successful in graduate studies and beyond. And so these are perfect places to begin exposing students to resources that will help them, like topics around financial literacy or, you know, advertising podcasts like these during orientation. It would require consistent reminders throughout their training that these resources and support systems exist. Because I know students experience an information overload when they start their program, but being aware of these resources early can be so beneficial because then you’ll know where to look when a challenge arises. Um, it’d be nice if you were prepared in advance, but I think many of us seek out resources when we need, when we’re in a time of need.

Emily (30:21): Um, and I’ll just put a plug in there that, I mean, ideally during orientation, yes, graduate students would be introduced to their, uh, financial wellness offices, which I don’t know, they aren’t always called that they might be housed in financial aid or other areas around the university, oftentimes in, um, student affairs or student services. But somewhere on your campus, there are people who can help you with your financial matters that arise. Not just taking out student loans like you might think that’s all financial aid is therefore, but these offices do many, many other things. Um, and so in case you didn’t hear it anywhere else, access your financial wellness office at your university, they will probably be delighted to see a graduate student because they normally see a lot of undergrads. Um, but the more, like we were talking about earlier, you know, the more you bring up financial issues to administrators, well the more you and your peers visit the financial wellness office, the more they will start to pay attention to your population and your specific questions.

Connor (31:13): Absolutely. It raises awareness to other institutional leaders as well of the significance of those programs and departments. Um, looking at it like a customer service base, right? You see a rise in customers, let’s pour more resources into that support service. Um, and those professionals, like you said, would love to see a student. They’re there for a reason. So let’s use those resources

Emily (31:35): Using that same framing of like, okay, we, you know, we, we talked about, um, graduate student attrition as a waste issue for universities. You just talked about seeing students through certain offices, you know, maybe, um, could in one light, view students as customers to their office, to their small business within the university. Um, hey, go use those resources more because that will bring more resources to that office that serves you, um, and your peers. I actually make the same argument about basic needs. I wonder if you agree with this that like, go use that food pantry on campus if assuming you are eligible for it. Don’t think someone else needs this more than me. No, you are the one who needs it. <laugh>. Go there and use it and then they’ll get more resources and there’ll, there’ll be a bigger pie available for everybody who needs it.

Connor (32:21): No, absolutely. I, food pantries are so significant and I understand why students might not wanna go to a food pantry. I do think there’s a, an unfortunate negative stigma surrounding food pantries or like students can feel embarrassed is what I’ve heard. It’s there to help, it’s there for you. It’s there as a resource. I’ve seen some institutions do some more creative approaches to try to alleviate some of those feelings of embarrassment, right? Like, so you don’t necessarily need to sign your name or log in to use the food pantry. So it’s just removing some barriers to make those things easier, uh, to access.

Connor (32:58): And I actually think that ties into my interventions when a challenge occurs idea. So starting big picture here, attrition can follow an unresolved conflict. So there could be conflict, um, with a mentor within a research team. Um, attrition can also follow conflicts that lead to personal or financial challenges. So an institution can make a real difference by focusing on these interventions. So in- interventions that would support students in a financial crisis, right? Beyond increasing stipends could include robust leave of absence policies that are easily shared with students so they know that they’re there before a crisis occurs. Um, or expansive food security services. So food pantries that are accessible to students that are on various points of campus, uh, food pantries that are inclusive of a variety of dietary needs, um, and food pantries that are responsive to changes in the landscape that impacts food security benefits. So when we see a rise based on benefit changes, um, food pantries that rise to that occasion to be accessible to the students that are no longer receiving other support services that they were previously receiving.

Emily (34:14): Yeah, I don’t think we need to talk around it. So we’re <laugh> recording this episode on November 13th, 2025. So, uh, the, the federal shutdown has, has just ended and SNAP benefits, um, allegedly have been or will be restored, but it’s obviously the timelines are different on like a state by state basis. So the SNAP benefits should be coming back, uh, or, or have been back depending on where you are. Um, but absolutely in total agreement. So like I’ve of course have been thinking a lot about SNAP, um, supplemental nutrition assistance program of food stamps, um, of course during this shutdown, especially as it loomed, you know, towards the beginning of November. Um, and I was also thinking about how some universities, like I believe at least in some University of California campuses, I don’t know if it’s like all of them, they have people on campus who help students enroll in SNAP benefits. Like they know that enough of their population qualifies, that they have dedicated people at least periodically, um, who help students enroll. So that is another one of those, like it’s, it’s not necessarily responding in a crisis, but it’s, it’s preventing a crisis from occurring by there being more visibility around, hey, there’s, you know, federal, state, local benefits that graduate students may qualify for. Let’s help you, let’s help you get past that barrier of paperwork. And maybe that barrier of, um, shame or like self-selecting out by just kind of normalizing it. I mean, okay, I don’t love that graduate students in some places are paid so little that they do qualify for SNAP on a regular basis. Like let’s, that is a problem. Um, given that that is the situation, it is helpful to get them past the paperwork hurdle, um, of, of that, you know, particular being able to enroll in that benefit. So anyway, is there anything more that you’d like to say about like accessing federal, state, local benefits as a graduate student or how universities can tie in with these other resources that are available?

Connor (36:06): Yeah, I mean I think a huge factor is just educating, like you mentioned the students one, that they’re eligible for these services and two, that it’s not bad to use these services. Like they’re there for you, they’re there to support you, and we have limited social services that are available to us compared to other countries. And so we should really be using the ones that we do have because as we’ve seen, we can lose those very quickly. But as institutions, let’s educate our students because they might not be aware of these resources and services available so they can pursue those if needed.

Emily (36:39): One other resource I wanted to bring up that you didn’t explicitly mention, but was in kind of the theme that you just brought up of like, you know, sort of helping in a time of crisis. I mean, I totally agree about the leave of absence policies. It also doesn’t have to be crisis. We can talk about parental leave medical. Like, you know, all, all under that category. Um, but a lot of universities have started offering emergency loans or emergency grants. I mean, the grants is the most helpful <laugh> thing there, but sometimes it’s in the form of a loan. Um, this is outside of, you know, the federal student loan system or whatever. This is something that the universities themselves provide. Um, it’s a growing trend that I’ve seen across, you know, the financial wellness, um, operations at universities. And so that’s another resource that again, is a best practice universities should be providing and making it obvious to students when they qualify or what kinds of things qualify for, you know, being able to take out those grants or loans. Um, so that, yeah. And, and students also being more aware of this, like on your side. Yeah. If you’re experiencing something and it’s going to affect your ability to perform in your graduate program, just reach out and see what your university can do for you. It might be something like a grant or a loan.

Connor (37:44): Yeah, I think the key factor there is that students sometimes need to reach out to learn about these resources. So I suppose in a preemptive intervention is to just kind of really make sure those resources we tell them to students right out the gate. So we don’t lose any students who encounter a challenge and then just get sucked into this, this bubble of trying to navigate the challenge that they don’t ask their student affairs professionals. But I agree it was something that my previous employer was starting up, um, like a, a grant fund for students in emergency need, uh, before I left the position. And I think it’s, it’s a wonderful resource when our students are aware of it.

Emily (38:23): Anything else you’d like to add on this topic of, you know, um, once a student is, is a continuing student in the university, um, best practices for helping them navigate through financial challenges?

Connor (38:35): I think there is tremendous strength in being open in the dialogue surrounding financial challenges. Uh, we see this with successful, you know, student efforts that lead to stipend increases. Just building that sense of community amongst your peers, um, offers the chance to learn from others about what they’re doing, but also provides opportunities for collective action. So I think really focusing on open dialogue is just, it’s, it’s a gift and we should be leveraging it.

Emily (39:05): Hmm. Yes, I’ve absolutely heard that from other interviewees who have been involved with unions or involved with unionization movements or not even an official union situation. Just as you said, collective action, Hey, talking with your peers and bringing up financial concerns to your department chair and like maybe there is something that that person can do or that they can forward onto, you know, the person of the chain from them. Um, it doesn’t have to have a formal name like a union to be helpful. Um, like you said, it starts with building community. So yeah, thank you for adding that. Well, Connor, it’s been so wonderful to talk with you. I’ve learned a lot from this conversation, so thank you so much for being willing to come on the podcast after just meeting me one time briefly at a conference. I really appreciate it.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (39:46): Um, I’d like to ask you the question that I end all my interviews with, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on in the interview already, or it could be something completely new.

Connor (39:58): My best financial advice for early career PhDs I think will stem from what we just spoke about, about open dialogue, uh, but specifically being proactive and transparent around conversations about salaries and benefits, which I’m sure people hear a lot, but it’s for a reason. So I think a lot of confusion and anxiety around career decisions. I’m, I’ve experienced this myself, I’m experiencing it now as I looked to transition to other jobs about, it comes from this secretive nature about money that we’ve been taught in the past. And we often don’t know what a fair salary looks like for our field and what benefits we should expect, but also what benefits we could ask for in addition to a package. So it’s just incredibly important in an uncertain job market where so many are also managing student loan debt and that lack of information really creates a sense of vulnerability.

Connor (40:54): We also tell students to follow their passion, and I, I love that, but passion alone won’t pay rent and it won’t pay off the student loans. So hopefully emphasizing financial transparency will allow students to make career choices that will be fulfilling, but also sustainable. And we are seeing some employers being more transparent upfront with pay ranges, but we’re also seeing that many still aren’t. So graduate and early career professionals, um, are kind of left to scavenge for this information when employers could easily bridge this gap by providing that information upfront. So my advice is to don’t, don’t be afraid to ask, um, ask about salary ranges early in the interview process. Uh, talk with peers about what they’re earning, be open about what you are earning. That way we can normalize these conversations and we can collectively push back against this culture of salary secrecy that is really creating a disadvantage for folks that are starting out.

Emily (41:58): Absolutely. Who does this culture of secrecy benefit? Who is perpetuating it? Um, exactly examine that. I actually, I’ll point listeners to a recent interview I did with Dr. Gabrielle, uh, Filip-Crawford of recovering academics where we talked around the same theme of, um, openness around financial, you know, salaries, benefits, all those kinds of things as well as, you know, you just used the word sustainability and in the light of like our broader conversation around workforce development, like we as a world country state, et cetera, we need people who are highly trained in these specialized areas to perform work functions that are beneficial to society. And so it just makes sense for all of us to be concerned about people persisting in those career paths and ultimately getting to the place where they can have a great job where they’re, you know, contributing, using their training and so forth and, you know, benefiting our society as a whole.

Emily (42:55): And so these earlier investments like we’ve been talking about throughout this, um, interview, um, only ultimately help towards, you know, sustaining that pipeline and getting people to that end result that we all benefit from. So I love this framing around how do we invest just a little bit more to get these people to the finish line of their PhD and into, you know, the career that they desired and they went to training for. So I love it. Thank you so much Connor for agreeing to come on the podcast and it was great to talk with you.

Connor (43:23): Yeah, thank you for having me.

Outro

Emily (43:35): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Financially Thriving as an International Scientist in the US

November 17, 2025 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Sonali Majumdar, the assistant dean for professional development in the graduate school at Princeton University. Sonali is the author of the recently published book Thriving as an International Scientist: Professional Development for Global STEM Citizens. Sonali and Emily discuss the various financial challenges that international graduate students, postdocs, and researchers face when coming to the US, including the start-up expenses and relative financial dependence on their advisor’s grants. They also touch on the learning curve that international scientists experience in the areas of immigration, taxes, and investing.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Financially Thriving as an International Scientist in the US

Teaser

Sonali (00:00): And what happens as a result of that is we sort of start, um, falling prey, um, to what could be called deficit thinking or scarcity mindset, which is focusing more on the problem and planning our life around the problem and not around possibilities. And so that, that’s a problem, not just for the individual, but also for science in general.

Introduction

Emily (00:35): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (01:05): This is Season 22, Episode 7, and today my guest is Dr. Sonali Majumdar, the assistant dean for professional development in the graduate school at Princeton University. Sonali is the author of the recently published book Thriving as an International Scientist: Professional Development for Global STEM Citizens. Sonali and I discuss the various financial challenges that international graduate students, postdocs, and researchers face when coming to the US, including the start-up expenses and relative financial dependence on their advisor’s grants. We also touch on the learning curve that international scientists experience in the areas of immigration, taxes, and investing.

Emily (01:44): If you want to bring one of my live tax workshops to your university next tax season, get in touch with me ASAP! Between now and the end of the year, I’m populating my calendar, especially early February, with in person and remote speaking engagements. My workshops are typically hosted by graduate schools, postdoc offices, and graduate student associations, and sometimes individual departments. Whether you are in a position to make those arrangements or simply want to recommend me, you can get the ball rolling by emailing me at [email protected]. My tax workshops, both live and pre-recorded, are my most popular offering each year because taxes are such a widespread pain point for graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s22e7/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Sonali Majumdar.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:58): I have a really special podcast interview for you today. Dr. Sonali Majumdar is with me. She is the assistant Dean for Professional Development at Princeton University and the author of the newly released book, thriving as an International Scientist Professional Development for Global STEM Citizens. We are recording this interview just a couple days after the book launch date in late October, and so we’ll get this interview right out so that all of you can enjoy the book if you think that it applies to you. Um, so Sonali and I have, uh, been in, you know, collaboration and correspondence for several years now. Um, she hired me a few years ago as a speaker back at UVA and we see one another at conferences on and off. And so it’s just a great opportunity for me to speak with her in this format on the podcast and get to introduce you all to her. So, uh, Sonali, would you please introduce yourself a little bit further to the audience?

Sonali (03:47): First of all, it’s really nice to talk to you again, Emily. We just saw each other last weekend, uh, but it’s always a pleasure to get to collaborate with you. I really appreciate the topic that you’ve been working on for PhDs on financial literacy. Um, okay, so a little bit about me. Um, my name is Sonali Majumdar, like you said. I am born in India. Um, I identify as an international scientist, um, and in some ways this is my third career path. So I started after my undergrad and master’s in microbiology and biotechnology in India. My first job and career path was in healthcare entrepreneurship. I, with a team of physicians and clinical embryologists, started an IVF clinic in a hospital in Calcutta, India, and did that for about three odd years. Um, and that’s when I got excited about doing PhD. Someone told me in the middle that you actually get paid, um, and, you know, to do research. And I thought, wow, that’s great. And as has been the theme of my career so far, um, I get bored every few years. I when I, there are moments in my life when I feel like I’m using my hands more than my head, and that’s sort of been the indicator of a change in my career path. And that’s how I kinda moved into the US in 2007 for PhD in, uh, earned in biology at University of Georgia, um, and spent the next decade as a PhD and a postdoc, uh, scientist.

Sonali (05:11): I did my postdoc in Sloan Kettering studying RNA protein complexes, um, first in CRISPR biology or like, you know, bacterial immunity systems. And the second in understanding the role of RNAs in brain development and different forms of cancer. Um, but it was, again, when I was a postdoc that I got, um, interested and in a different problem, which was how were we really training our scientists? We were all kind of stumbling into different career paths. That was also around the time that NIH had really started looking at data for PhDs and postdocs in the sciences. Um, and we realized that vast majority of postdocs don’t go into academic fields, but we weren’t getting intentionally trained, uh, for the dynamic careers that we could be, you know, beneficial and adding value to society. And, and so that’s where I started doing a lot of volunteering work, um, in New York City, um, to, uh, for equitable access for professional development for postdocs primarily, and got involved in National Postdoc Association, uh, did a leadership program in Genetic Society of America, and did a lot of work with, um, the, um, Sloan Kettering’s Postdoc Association, as well as, um, started, I was on the founding board for this organization called New York City Postdoc Coalition. So doing all of that with working on professional development and science communication kind of work, I thought, again, I was being more creative outside the bench then on it. And so that was my, uh, you know, thought of moving my career. But I was on visas, and this was around 2018. It was a very different time in terms of, uh, you know, similar to now the, uh, immigration climate was tense, um, and changing fields was hard and there wasn’t a lot of precedence for immigrants to do that, but I made it work, and we can kind of talk about that in a bit. But over the last seven or so years, I’ve, uh, been building professional development program for PhDs and postdocs. Um, like, uh, you said I was at University of Virginia there before for about four years, building a new program called PhD Plus. That’s where we got the opportunity to collaborate. And since 2022, I’ve joined the graduate school of Princeton University building out, um, this program called Grad Futures here, um, focusing more on science engineering graduate programs.

Sonali (07:28): So, yeah, I, I’ll stop right there. Um, it’s generally been my own experiences, my friends’ experiences, many of whom are immigrants, and then like advising our graduate students and postdocs in two different universities and as well as nationally. Um, if I were to put a number, it’s possibly more than 500 or so trainees that I’ve advised in the last seven odd years, um, that I’ve seen similar themes, especially among immigrants, um, that I thread into this book called Thriving as an International Scientist. Um, and then also it’s kind of came through someone in our professional community who said that there was a need for this book, someone I’ve looked up to who started talking a lot about, um, support for international scientists, um, when I was a postdoc myself. And so this was a good time to kind of like write about some of the things I’ve learned, um, and also ground the challenges of international scientists, um, and thread best practices of professional development in a more customized manner, um, and also make the stories of international scientists visible. Um, we are way more than our immigration challenges or, um, minority, um, you know, um, myths that we have in terms of getting the job done.

Dr. Majumdar’s Book: Thriving as an International Scientist

Emily (08:46): Beautiful. Thank you so much for that introduction and the backstory about how you got to this point. Um, and thank you for, you know, telling us a little bit even about the book already. I actually had a new appreciation for the position that international scientists are in here in the United States, actually at the conference that we were both at this past weekend, um, which was, what can you be with a PhD hosted at NYU Langone. Um, and I went to a session on, I think it was titled like, Can You Stay or Should You Go? And I was a little bit of a fish out of water, right? Because as a, you know, native born US citizen, I did not experience any of these things, but obviously I’ve had many peers and collaborators over the years who have been, um, part of this system. And I <laugh> got, uh, just from that session, a new appreciation for all the complexity and all the strategy and all the decision making that has to go into, um, as you put it in, you know, the title of your book, like Thriving as a Scientist across borders and in different, you know, contexts.

Emily (09:43): Um, is there anything you’d like more to tell us about, like the themes of the book? And actually I’m curious, maybe we’ll start here. Um, is the book written for, um, let’s say international grad students, postdoc scholars in the us or is it a even more global context of a any country of, you know, presence?

Sonali (10:02): Um, there’s definitely, um, more specific, um, chapters for international graduate students, postdocs and in fact scientist- early career scientists or scientists at any stage. Um, the chapters on Visa, et cetera are definitely more contextual for those who are in the United States, but there are def- uh, broader chapters, um, which might be resonant for international scientists globally in any country who might face similar challenges setting up life in a new country on trying to understand the culture or communication norms, et cetera, that are pretty broadly applicable here.

Emily (10:36): Okay. Thanks for clearing that up. Um, and yeah, any other themes you’d like to share from the book before we start really talking about the financial aspects?

Sonali (10:44): So I’d like to say that, you know, when, when you ask me about the central theme, and I’ve been giving talks about this, this is becoming more and more visible to me that somehow our lives as international, whether it’s grad students, postdocs or scientists, we face a paradox. Um, on one end we sort of drive cutting edge research innovation, um, in our professional lives, um, while operating in sort of like a restrictive environment in our personal lives, mostly driven by the immigration landscape, um, and policy, so to speak. And what happens as a result of that is we sort of start, um, falling prey, um, to what could be called deficit thinking or scarcity mindset, which is focusing more on the problem and planning your life around the problem and not around possibilities. Um, and so one example of that is choosing sort of your career paths and planning your future based on visa, visa feasibility rather than your ambition and your interests. Um, and so, and that could also have a bearing on, you know, the lack of creativity one might filter into their professional life, um, after operating in this restrictive, you know, sort of environment. And there could be repercussions to one’s future in the research as well. And so that, that’s a problem not just for the individual, but also for science in general because we are not, we are trying to train like more holistic thinkers. Um, um, and that’s a barrier. And so what, uh, this book is trying to also do outside of foregrounding the unique needs of immigrant scientists, um, is really helping them push beyond, first of all, acknowledge when they might fall prey into a scarcity or deficit thinking. Um, and then push beyond that by really, um, harnessing some of the skills they’re learning in this research. Uh, whether it’s creative thinking, whether it’s curiosity, growth mindset, and giving them more actionable strategies, um, to look beyond the restrictions, to navigate their lives, to think expansively within and beyond the sort of rules made in their immediate environment.

Emily (13:00): Yeah, and, and actually just again, thinking about this session from this conference this past weekend, that was kind of what I learned from that session. I think some people in the audience did as well, like the presenter was going through different visa options and of course, maybe, you know, the H-1B is kind of prominent in people’s minds, but he was saying there’s so many different ways to like, to have a visa that allows you to work in the United States, depending on your exact situation, exactly what you were thinking you were saying, just use curiosity, look into all the options, everybody’s situation’s different. So it has to be pretty personalized. Um, but it just opened my mind quite a bit to the possibilities, um, in this space as well. And so, yeah, you’re not locked into like one single path. Um, there’s a lot of different ways that this can branch, and I admit that I did not, I was not aware of how, um, restrictive things could get in terms of your career, uh, options through the immigration process. Like how, as you were saying earlier, like pivoting a little bit or changing fields, like in some cases you’re not permitted to go too far from, you know, the original reason why you were, um, admitted.

Sonali (14:05): I think the thinking is, and one of the reasons for this is a lot of these immigration rules and policies haven’t changed in 30 odd years, right? Like there have been some improvements made in the past decade or two decades, but the thinking is if the United States is investing in your training in X area, you should work in that X area, that that’s what you are good for. But the reality of the job market and careers and such is a lot more dynamic. Um, and so it is with scientists as well, by and large, more and more, a lot of scientists are not just working in the research field that they did their PhD or postdoc, and they’re also working outside academia. They’re working outside research all altogether, like whether it’s in business of science, whether it’s in science policy and communications. Um, and that’s where, you know, it can be done. Um, there’s a, a lot of storytelling aspect to show how you are training and aspects of the, the broader skill sets you’ve learned as scientific think, uh, thinking can be applied to many different career paths. I mean, I’m an example of that, that where I could show that my PhD training is just as applicable in administration and understanding graduate education. Um, but it’s, again, folks don’t know about it as much, whether they are the international students or their employers. There needs to be a lot of education and clarity on both ends so that we can start building those narratives, um, and trying to explore the options. So that’s definitely something that we have to kind of collectively work toward.

Startup Expenses as an International Scholar

Emily (15:36): And absolutely your book furthers that cause your, um, you know, your current position furthers that cause professional development broadly in this area can pay attention to this and help, um, scientists in, in this area as well. So I’m so glad about that. Let’s talk more about money though. So, um, you know, we were kind of chatting together and we figured out a few different areas where, um, certainly we can give a little bit of guidance from the book on how, um, international scientists can thrive financially while they’re in the us. So let’s start with like when they first arrive, what do you see as like the common way that, you know, grad students or postdocs, um, or early career researchers pay for the moving costs, the startup expenses associated with moving to a new place, getting the rental set up, um, how are they typically doing that? And then how <laugh> might we suggest that they could do it in a better way?

Sonali (16:27): Um, I mean even before that, right? Like, and when I look back around my own life, I was, I was working at the time, um, and so I could actually use part of my salary, whether it was paying for GRE preparation or the taking the test, the fees required for that. The multiple universities you make applications to like that is a limitation, right? You know, I mean, especially for a lot of internationals coming from countries where the conversion rate to US dollar is pretty steep. So in, I was from India and from Indian rupees to US dollar back in the day, it was actually half of what it is right now. Um, and so 2007, I think it was around 45, um, rupees was a dollar. Now it’s over 70, right? Um, and so that limits the number of applications you can even send because, uh, you know, a lot of people take out loans even from that stage, um, um, or depend on family.

Sonali (17:21): Um, and then you have the set of costs, like you said about the flight tickets, um, coming and paying for like, you know, even reserving, um, an apartment, uh, if you’re living there you have to pay a security deposit, the first month’s rent, setting up all the utilities, um, you know, phones and other expenses before you’ve seen the first paycheck even, right? Um, and so all of these you have to kind of like have, um, figured out and hopefully you are thinking, but like a lot of people are kind of figuring it out as they go along. Um, the other thing is during visa interviews, when you are being looked at to come to the United States, they ask you for financial documents on your savings in your home country to make sure that you can actually sustain yourself, um, before your financial support assistantship, whatever is your form of finan- income comes in.

Sonali (18:17): Um, and so from the beginning there’s that, right? Like from my own life, you know, this is where, um, university international offices, even student associations were really helpful. And so the Indian Student Association at University of Georgia, actually one of the most fundamentally important things they did was recognize this housing issue. So they had like, you know, started negotiating with properties on, um, helping, you know, immigrant international students find accommodation, doing roommate matching, negotiating for rent and security deposit issues, informing, um, the students when they got in. So they would work with the international office on just collaborating on that. And since I’ve then I’ve learned a lot of international offices actually do that in terms of like sending more information to graduate students. So congratulations for coming to Princeton. You know, these are things you have to look into as you would also pay-, file your paperwork, just start looking into this is what expenses would look like.

Sonali (19:19): And then social media has clarified a lot of things like, you know, I came pre-social media time where a lot of things were not, um, clear for us, visible for us. Now there’s so many tutorial videos, other international scientists kind of talking about these things. Um, and by and large now departments and graduate schools are also recognizing this. Um, and I might be kind of talking about a lot of these elite urban institutions, but some of them do also have financial support in helping out for a setup costs, um, or just like financial funding and support to support the tuition or, you know, so, um, before they actually come in here. Um, and so there’s that. I also talked to, um, in terms of what can be done to help.

Sonali (20:07): Like, the other thing is there are a couple more things. One is you don’t have a car when you’re coming. You have to take a test to show that you can drive, maybe even take a driver trainer, training. So many internationals don’t necessarily get a car in the first year. They have to figure out the public transport option. And so I was talking to, um, a faculty, um, his name is Harmit Malik, he’s in Fred Hutch. He, I interviewed him as part of the book and we were discussing on this specific aspect of setup costs. And he suggested this idea that he’s been discussing in his institution of maybe, uh, frontloading some of the, the stipend, maybe taking part of the stipend from say, December or some other month and front loading and paying them before they come. Um, you know, that could be one idea where when they need the money, they have some, um, and the second is also seeing if there can be vouchers or, uh, discounts for Ubers, right? Like if, if someone got like a per month X amount of dollars to use toward Uber or carpooling, that could also be very helpful, uh, for those who don’t have, they’re not, who are not living close to campus and cannot use, uh, campus transit or public transit. Um, and so those, those are like some creative ways that we can go around. But unfortunately with the, uh, current budget climate and higher ed, this is not a problem that is at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Um, but we definitely, these are unresolved issues that we have to think about. Um, and I mean, speaking of like the national organization, I think National Postdoc Association has done a great job. They have an onboarding guide for all postdocs with a specific section for international postdocs, and they also have like a separate resource for guide for international scientists and international postdocs. Um, and so some of these organizations are doing a lot of work in kind of clearing and, uh, expectations and making some of these things visible from the beginning.

Emily (22:12): I think it’s so important to share best practices like what you were just doing in this interview and also I’m sure in the book as well, so that we can create more systemic helps for, you know, based probably at each institution for the scholars coming into that institution. I love the ideas that you shared already. And actually I was recently, I visited, um, university of Texas Southwestern Medical Center to give a workshop there, and I was introduced to, um, someone in the international office whose job is like, I think her title is like relocation specialist, which you would think is very, I thought, oh, that’s common at the faculty level, but no, like, it’s actually accessible to postdocs and grad students as well. So like kind of an even more specialized version of what you were just talking about with, you know, uh, what the international offices are doing and what the, you know, student groups are doing to help this, you know, transfer of information and transfer of best practices to the incoming, um, people.

Navigating the Hidden Financial Curriculum of Life in the US

Sonali (23:06): I mean, some of these things have been improvements over time, right? Since I started PhD in 2007, but even during my time there were like small things that the international, which looks like small, but it was foundationally important, uh, was doing an orientation, which many uni- uh, international offices do for a weekend. But during the orientation they actually had, um, you know, the social security administration office come on campus and set up our social security accounts. Um, so we didn’t have to go somewhere to their offices not knowing where they’re at. During that week we were told, if you want to open up your social security account, you can do it here. If you want to open up your bank account, you can do it in the orientation. And so bringing them all to you, and I remember I took advantage of all of those <laugh> just so I didn’t have to figure out how to go to, which bank to go to, where to go to. Um, and yeah, we, those kind of smaller things, but um, um, they did was really helpful over the long term.

Sonali (24:09): But like even then, I mean, there’s a lot of these hidden curriculum which are like unwritten rules, which I feel like maybe this generation knows a little bit more about than we did was the idea of credit history, which took me a while to figure out, right? Like one of the first hurdles I faced was getting a phone, like getting a like cell phone. Um, and many of the providers have these requirements for having a, uh, established credit history, but how do you have that as it’s a chicken and egg problem? Same thing with cars and stuff like, but those are different, like more, um, established investments you’re making down the line. Um, and so while you couldn’t open up a credit card until you’ve been in this country for about like six or so months and you’ve established some amount of, uh, financial statements, um, and so there, there were one or two companies back in 2007 phone companies that would let you, um, and they recognized this market, the immigrant market <laugh>, um, and a lot of folks actually ended up getting those phones in the first year until they could build up their credit history and move to a different provider that where they could show that.

Sonali (25:13): And so things like this, um, those are hard things that you kind of learn through practice. Um, but this is where the community, um, senior international students, um, who had been through this experience in the recent past were really helpful in helping us figure out. And so we each had a peer mentor when we started, um, through the international office, through the Indian Student Association, who would talk about these issues and they would take us around. Um, and we also had like some, uh, local families, um, from, you know, India who would help us on, you know, grocery shopping or just taking us to a grocery store every weekend, um, before we had a car and such and such. So yeah, I mean there’s also a lot of help around from just the community. Um, but these are just even systems like, you know, to learn in a new country, those kind of take some time.

Emily (26:07): Absolutely. And just to bring it back around to the money, like I feel I started graduate school in 2008, so similar timing to you. Um, and I am getting the impression that in the, you know, decade and a half since then, um, that graduate student graduate schools have more and more recognized what I at that time was calling the problem of the long first month, which you mentioned is like, okay, or for me, for example, orientation started in mid-August, but I didn’t get my first paycheck till the end of September, right? The long six weeks of the long first month before you get paid, I feel like there’s been more and more action on getting paychecks sooner to graduate students. Um, but even better

Sonali (26:45): Biweekly, the biweekly thing is amazing.

Emily (26:47): Yes. Or more frequent pay. Yes, exactly. Um, but even better is getting a bonus upfront to help pay for these startup expenses or like you said, less ideal but also helpful an advance on, you know, a, a later paycheck just to have access to that bulk amount of money that you need right up front. But this is also something that people can ask. Like you said, it’s a difficult climate for funding right now, but it doesn’t hurt to ask, you know, as you’re looking at your offer letter, whether it’s for a grad student postdoc position, something later, if it doesn’t include information about a startup bonus or a moving stipend or anything similar, just ask. It absolutely does not hurt to ask. And you may actually get some money out of it,

Sonali (27:25): And especially as a postdoc, you probably will <laugh>. Um, ’cause postdocs are weird, right? Like in terms of some of them are actually employees and staff. And so those are part of staff benefits. So if you don’t ask, you won’t get. I I definitely got, um, these benefits as a postdoc moving into New York City. Um, and so yeah, that’s, as a postdoc you should be asking about all of these things

Emily (27:48): For sure.

Commercial

Emily (27:50): Emily here for a brief interlude! I’m hard at work behind the scenes updating my suite of tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2025. These educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2025 tax season starting in January 2026, I’m offering live and pre-recorded workshops for US citizen/resident graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they host one or more of these workshops for you and your peers? I’d love to receive a warm introduction to a potential sponsor this fall so we can hit the ground running in January serving those early bird filers. You can find more information about hosting these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Now back to our interview.

Learning US Systems: A Time-Consuming Endeavor

Emily (29:08): And you just mentioned also that it takes some time to figure out the new system that you’ve just moved into, the financial and legal and otherwise system. So let’s talk a little bit more about that. Like how are international scientists affected by this, you know, learning curve that they have to be on when they move to a, a new country in terms of the financial system?

Sonali (29:29): Yeah, and like I said, it’s uh, helpful when you have mentors and folks you can talk to. Um, but even like with that, some of these systems are so convoluted, um, you know, I am thinking primarily about the healthcare insurance and, you know, the healthcare system in the United States. I still don’t have a complete grasp over it and I’ve been here for 17 years. Um, and so, you know, I mean, uh, the other part of it is the number of options, right? Like I don’t even, sometimes it’s easier to say, oh, as a student you only have that option. I’m like, okay, <laugh>, I guess I’m just gonna enroll in that. But when you have multiple different options, you’re constantly trying to figure out which one’s good or not. But now with like, there’s a lot of online calculators, whether it’s with your benefits package or with your, and even with within the, you know, the package that you’re getting through your university, they have this virtual assistance that can help you kind of figure out, given your circumstances, given your family circumstances, which package might be a better situation. Back in our time there were human beings that you had to like, take appointments from and go get some of these ideas.

Sonali (30:32): So the benefits healthcare, um, all of that like takes time and it’s, the rules are becomes a little different by visa type, right? Like, so, and this is where things get complicated on a student visa, you have x amount of options as a J-1 scholar, you might have a completely different portfolio of options for your health insurance, for your be-, you know, benefits, if any. Um, and so those are things like, and the other thing is the time, right? Like not time to learn, but like the time to invest in learning, um, because you are also, you know, busy doing research or setting up credibility, um, in your lab.

Sonali (31:10): Um, and that’s the other thing that I talk about in the book. It’s like there are chapters for faculty advisors, for administrators where I discuss at, ’cause I know through my own experiences, through friends and talking to a lot of people that many have faculty who just think, you know, taking care of immigration status, et cetera. People can do all their own time in the evenings, weekends. But no, that like takes a lot of time. Like you need to give them grace to actually take care of the amount of paperwork there is to maintain your immigration status. Um, they could be spending some of that in their weekday, but like many of them don’t feel like they can. And so they basically spend their weekends. And so that’s the other part of the work-life balance on when you have all of these systemic things that you have to maintain in your life. Um, there’s the financial burden of it, but there’s also the time burden of it because you may or may not feel like that you have the flexibility to spend your weekday or any portions of your weekday taking care of that.

The Financial Costs of Maintaining Your Immigration Status

Sonali (32:12): Um, and speaking of the financial burden, I wanna make another point on immigration. Um, so although your university or employer would petition on your behalf, whether it’s for a student visa or a postdoc scholar, scholar visa or work visa, every time you that gives you the permit, you get the approval on the petition to with the permission to work a study. And that has is a document type, but to actually get the stamp on the visa on your passport, you have to either go to an embassy or a consulate in your country and there’s a separate set of fees for that. And, and they may give it to you for the entire time that your permit is on for like, whether it’s four years or five years, or they may only give it to you for two odd years and then you had to renew it. And so even as a student visa, I had to renew my student visa a few times. You have to incur whatever, a hundred dollars, $200, $500, that is the visa fees to get that stamping in the consulate. And so even maintaining your immigration status, there is a recurring cost beyond the employer’s, you know, petition cost that they’ve paid for your application. And so there’s that too that you have to know, um, and have money set up for, um, as something that for discretionary that you might have to spend every once in a while and then flight if you wanna go home, those are expensive. Um, um, the farther you live, um, it’s not just time, it’s how much money you can spend to go out. And so some internationals don’t even go home every year to save that money. And so there’s different aspects of our life. It’s not just sort of like the new systems that a lot of it has these other financial sort of costs to it.

Emily (33:59): Yeah, I definitely remember my lab mates in graduate school having once or once every two years, some of them at least needing to go home for these immigration, you know, purposes. And as you said, the flights are very expensive, time cost, monetary cost. I also recall, and I’ve gotten this question from grad students and postdocs over the years, that there’s, I would say a four to five figure cost to the process of getting your green card right, to moving to that stage of the immigration process. And so that’s something that people start saving up for, um, well in advance of when the, you know, the date and the timing actually comes because it’s a very significant cost on that kind of salary.

Sonali (34:36): Yeah. So there are few tracks on the permanent residency, primarily called EB1A or the national interest waiver, which is under EB-2, where you can self-petition. Um, and in that scenario you have to pay both for the application or petition cost, which is a few thousand dollars, and the lawyer fees, which can be substantial. Um, and uh, and if you wanted the decision within 15 days, you can expedite it for an additional cost on top of that. And on a very sort of, if I were to put a number on it, and I had looked into this too, <laugh>, I mean I, I was stubborn where I at some point decided if this country needed me, I would not spend my own money on it <laugh>. So I’ve only gone through employer, that’s how stingy I am. I, I only, I have only gone through employer sponsorship and they’ve mostly paid my way through, uh, keeping my careers here.

Sonali (35:28): Um, but I looked into actually applying on my own and how um, how much any of these like lawyers et cetera costs. Like, so I would have at some point saved close to 10,000 odd dollars for just like the lawyer petition and the expedited fee. It comes down to something like that, uh, for one petition. And then some lawyers have schemes on if it’s, they will guarantee it if they like your case enough and if they’ll give you 50% of the money back if you don’t, your petition isn’t moved for like approved. Um, and so some of those law firms have these, but in today’s climate, I don’t even know what they’re doing because the rules are changing every day. And now with this like new proposal of adding a hundred thousand dollars for the new H1B visa petitions, which may not like most likely don’t apply to our student visa or the J-1 scholar visa category because that’s a transferring from one visa to another. But for anyone who is abroad and starting off as a faculty or any other role which would require a new H1B petition, employers have to incur that additional cost on top, which would make them even less, uh, inclined to recruit someone who is outside the us. And so yeah, there’s, um, it’s becoming harder in the immigration landscape in terms of financially how much money there is, um, involved in this.

Emily (36:51): Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up because I also got clarity during the session that that new H1B fee, which was all, you know, all the news was more for people coming from outside the US if you’re already here, just to reassure audience members, if you’re already here for grad school or your postdoc and you’d be doing a change of visa type, the new fee does not apply in that scenario. Um, but I’m thinking of some other systems that can cost time and money to, you know, figure out which are the tax system and the investing system in the us. Do you wanna make any comments about either one of those?

Understanding U.S. Taxes as an International Student

Sonali (37:22): Yeah, I’ve mostly used the automated, um, taxed, uh, sort of calculator to figure out. And that’s also where there are differences between how much you’re taxed when you are on what’s called a non-immigrant alien or non-resident alien category, which is typically most visas. Um, once you’ve lived about five years in the country on any visas you are identified or as an resident for tax purposes, although you are not a permanent resident. And so at some point, I think by the end of my PhD, I was a resident my tax purposes, and that’s when in the next year’s filing I saw a difference <laugh> in how much like my returns were. I was like, oh. So I was actually paying more as, um, as a so-called non-resident alien in the category that I was at. Then there’s other differentiation about, there’s some countries that have agreements, trade agreements and other tax treaties, um, where you might get some deductions, uh, based on if you’re coming from that country, which some other countries don’t have. And so it’s very disparate in terms of how much your tax is withheld in your monthly stipend. And then the other issue is with the, um, whether you’re on assistantship versus fellowship on how you actually pay the taxes. Um, I wish I could give more like details about that, but I’m probably not the best person I’m to talk about it, but it’s quarterly versus annually is at least what I know

Emily (38:57): For residents for tax purposes, don’t worry. I talk about that plenty in other episodes. We don’t need to cover it here.

Sonali (39:03): And so yeah, there’s definitely that, uh, bit of you can see, um, how your tax filing and, um, the returns change, um, based on, you know, your visa status or your type of visa, uh, whether you are, and then there’s like compounding factors, like I’ve been single the entire time in the United States, so you know, I, I feel like I get tax taxed a lot more, um, than folks who might be with families. Um, and then you also have the local city, and that’s the other thing that I learned around the time that the federal taxes and state taxes are not the only taxes that in places like New York City <laugh> in Manhattan district, your local tax is pretty exorbitant as well. Um, and so when I started looking at how much of my monthly stipend was being withheld, I was like, wow, like this is not just your, um, health insurance or other benefits. These are sort of like state and city taxes that are also getting withheld. So my advice would be to like pay attention to those line items, um, and at least if you are gonna, if you have the ability to make any sort of enrollment changes in your benefits in the next year, doing it accordingly based on how much is being withheld from your monthly salary or stipend.

Emily (40:15): And in addition, as kind of you mentioned earlier when you were getting up to like a, a status change, like when you go from non-resident to resident for tax purposes, as you said, depending on what was going on before your taxes could go down, they could go up, they could stay similar. All different kinds of things are possible, uh, depending on what country of residence you had and what your type of income was as you mentioned fellowship versus, um, you know, W2 type employment. So really good to pay attention to that stuff. Um, something that I get questions about a lot, I’m sure you do as well. Uh, basically the question is, okay, I am an international scientist. I’m living in the US right now. I don’t know what the long-term future is. Should I start investing while I’m here in the US? And of course I have a way that I answer that, but I’m curious how you would address that or what you would get people to think about for that question.

Investing While in the US as an International Student or Postdoc

Sonali (41:02): I mean, and this, this is hard, right? Like, ’cause you may not get benefits on a, um, on a student visa or a J-1 scholar visa. Um, but I still think that you should be at least whether it’s your Roth IRA, um, that’s post tax, right? Um, that you should be putting in some money into a Roth, um, and you know, it’s building wealth. It’s just not just savings. And so as it is, there is um, um, what do we call it? The, the salary tax on how long you are training as a PhD and postdoc, the amount of years it takes for you to catch up with the market, uh, wages for someone with a lower educational level or at the same educational level. So you, they have a premium, a salary premium, um, you’re taking a hit in the number of years you are training.

Sonali (41:52): And so the only way to even equalize or think about this is how I think about is like only way for you to kind of catch up is if you are building wealth savings and, uh, rather than having your savings sitting around in the, um, in the bank, which you can, through a higher yield savings account, at least it’s adding some more to it. I would say at least putting some percent of that in the, into a Roth IRA every year. Um, my dad taught me this pretty early on, um, emergency funding on how much you should have in your bank account and that, I know there’s like metrics on what percent of your salary should have as sort of like just disposable sort of, uh, discretionary funding for yourself. But my father was like, just look at, make sure you always have in your bank account a return flight round, round way flight from India to the US as your emergency.

Sonali (42:49): Um, because you might have to come at any point, whether it’s for family emergency, whether it’s for other situation. So just think existential first what is. So the the way that I started thinking about is like, what is the worst case scenario where I might have to leave or do something? How much money will I need, whether it’s to wrap up my life and move somewhere else and do something, do I have that amount sitting around in a bank account that I can just, you know, uh, leverage right away? And then the additional amount of money that I’ve saved over time can go into building wealth through investments. Um, it gets better. You get more financial advice once you are like an employee and you have benefits packages and stuff, but it’s harder to do as a student because, and cost of living is so high, you know, um, you know, renting is so high.

Sonali (43:37): Um, and so I think in some ways in the beginning to like coming into the United States, I had, I think most way through my PhD I shared my apartment with people I never lived alone. And that was sort of like an, um, cost effective way in terms of like back then the rents weren’t as high. Um, but that’s something you could think about. Like, you know, folks could think about on how do you save money, whether it is more on, you know, the rent or other lifestyle choices you’re making and putting that money, parts of that money into investment. Um, and some of it is post tax, so you should be able to take it out when, when you want to.

Emily (44:17): Yeah. I I answer the question very similarly. Just go ahead, get started. As, as you said, it’s, it’s one of the only ways to kind of compensate for those low salary years to not come out so far behind. Um, you, you know, your similar peers

Sonali (44:30): And I’ve, I’ve learned from mistakes myself, right? Like, ’cause I wish I had asked the question, what was the alternative? The alternative’s not doing it and you’re not making building wealth at in those years. And so I’m already kind of like, you know, behind on that, those, some of those, uh, student years. Yeah.

Emily (44:46): Yeah. Well, I guess another alternative that sometimes people think about is investing in their home country instead of investing through the US financial system. And I’ve done a pair of interviews actually with a previous guest named Hui-chin Chen that I would recommend to anyone listening who’s in this situation where we talk about, um, you know, investing as a non-resident, let’s say, um, in the, in the US and why she encourages people to do it through the US systems. Um, ’cause they’re relatively more open, um, transparent, lower cost than many other countries. Not all, but compared to many other countries.

Funding Challenges for International Scholars

Emily (45:18): The other thing that you brought up that I thought was a really, really good thing to talk about during this interview was the fact that there’s, um, funding available in the US that is restricted only for US citizens, or let’s say permanent residents. And so relatively, if you’re an international scientist in the US you have access to perhaps fewer funding options. And so what are the implications of that? Um, well I don’t wanna call it scarcity mindset ’cause you mentioned that earlier, but like that reality of like the fund

Sonali (45:46): Yeah. So there’s actually data around that. So, um, NSF has this survey called the Survey of Foreign Doctorates where they, um, assess the landscape of those who’ve just got their PhDs, um, science engineering as well as humanities, all programs, uh, across US universities. And one of the questions they have in that survey is, what was the source of your doctoral stipend or income, um, in, in the, during your PhD and the numbers, I actually have it in front of me. It’s uh, uh, approximately 50. In 2022s results, 52% of visa holders who were PhD students, uh, were on, uh, faculty directed research assistantships or institutional teaching assistantships compared to 34% of their domestic PhD, um, counterparts. There’s multiple sort of implications of this. The most obvious one is the, if you apply for an independent PhD fellowship, the earlier and the more frequently you do, you can show that you have fundability of your ideas, you can pursue your own ideas and you are more competitive on the faculty job market, right? So that’s sort of the most, uh, obvious one.

Sonali (46:58): Um, the sort of like the indirect implications are when you’re tied to a faculty directed research, you’re also tied to how their career is moving. You are more likely to take the stress that they are bearing on like kind of their grant cycle or grant cycle. Um, you are also reliant on them, um, on their freedom, uh, or their flexibility on you pursuing a independent idea. Many students I talk to ha- are scared that their faculty perceived or real will not be supportive, supportive of them investing time in professional development outside their labs in doing an internship or a CPT, um, all of those decisions that you have to make are tied to faculties uh, whims or, you know, mindset about any of those. And so one way to kind of course correct that is having those conversations early on, knowing that you are kind of going to have more of an employee status with them in seeing how they feel about most of these and having clear expectations before you start working for someone in their lab.

Sonali (48:04): Um, and that the sort of least obvious one, which I’ve talked to a few people in the book who talk about it, especially as a postdoc, is the, um, sort of like the attrition and layoff situation. So if fa- faculty loses a grant, um, they might have to lay off people and if your complete income is dependent on them getting a grant, you are more likely to have your contract terminated mid cycle, um, because they lost money. Like they don’t have money to support you. And given the kind of climate that we are in with, um, shrinking research funding, um, and also the domestic candidates who are applying for these federal fellowships, those are shrinking. They’re gonna also compete for the non-federal, smaller, you know, fellowships that were open to internationals. So there’s higher competition in the smaller amount of fellowships that are, uh, available.

Sonali (48:57): And then there’s like the market changes and sort of like the flux and the mass layoffs that are happening both on the private sector as well as in the academic sector, um, that makes it like, you know, the internationals are very vulnerable to it. Um, the other sort of constraints with that is if you’re on a visa, you have a time cycle time clock typically called like grace period, which is typically 60 day on a work visa. Um, when you have to find another employment within those two months if you wanna maintain your immigration status. If not, you have to wrap up your life and leave. Um, and so those are like kind of a lot of different constraints that make internationals pretty vulnerable to the labor market changing as rapidly and you know, as it is now and with the impacts of AI and all of the other reasons that people have been talking about, I think our international colleagues and students are in a very highly vulnerable place.

Emily (49:54): And that’s why, I mean, I know that you finished writing this book over a year ago and you did not have a crystal ball as to what the situation would be looking like upon publication, but it’s a good time for this kind of resource to be out, um, for this kind of community.

Sonali (50:07): Yeah, and some of these challenges have been persisting for many, many years. It has nothing to do with, it’s come to a head now, it’s been amplified now with the current changes, but we had to collectively like have conversations and make progress and improvements in some of these systems and some of the choices our advisors and employers are making, and at least minimally make things visible. If you’re not gonna sponsor a position, keep, make that very visible in the job description, right? Have more grace and flexibility and empathy where your students can like, be more explicit in saying, I don’t mind you spending some time in a professional development. Uh, don’t keep it sort of hanging so they assume the worst. And so the, in this climate, like I hope that each of us as mentors, as employers, as managers have a role to play where we might not be able to make systemic changes, but we can improve the lives of our international colleagues and trainees every day by making small choices.

Emily (51:05): I think that’s a wonderful place to end our discussion. Um, if people are curious and want to read the book, where can they find it?

Sonali (51:12): This is how it looks. It’s a very pretty color <laugh>. Um, but yeah, you’ll find it in every you know, place where you can find books, Barnes and Nobles, uh, Amazon, as well as I’d recommend going into the University of California press site and you’ll get a 30% discount if you actually buy through the press site.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (51:30): Beautiful. Um, okay. Final question that I ask of all my guests. Uh, what is your best financial advice for an early career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on already in the interview or it could be something completely new,

Sonali (51:44): Um, like I said, like, you know, definitely saving and creating some wealth, whether it’s through investments. Um, and the other thing that I’ve learned is diversifying to the extent possible, um, your investment portfolio, um, so that you are not very sort of, um, vulnerable to any sort of like market changes. And so whether that’s equity or other sources of investment, think about that. So yeah, my best financial advice would be actually getting an advisor and seeing how you can even in small ways build your wealth. Um, there’s a lot of financial literacy resources, financial advisors who are free of cost at universities. That’s the best thing about universities. A lot of these things that cost you outside in your life actually come as free resources at universities. So take advantage of that. Um, even if it’s once a year, schedule that time in your calendar maybe every summer to just check in with your financial advisor and talk to them about how do you improve your portfolio.

Emily (52:43): Mm, very good point. Yeah, it’s very popular now for universities to have financial wellness offices or something titled similar to that. So that would be a great, um, first stop in addition to the international house actually, or international office, um, in yeah, getting some of these financial issues sorted that we’ve touched on in the interview. So Sonali, thank you so much for giving this interview. Congratulations on the book. Um, I hope it’s a wild success and thank you so much for sharing your insight with us.

Sonali (53:10): Thank you so much, Emily. This is always a pleasure talking to you.

Outro

Emily (53:23): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Increasing Income and Giving Back as an International Grad Student

September 22, 2025 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Snehanjana Chatterjee, a 3rd-year international graduate student at Texas Tech. Snehanjana recounts her financial journey over the past few years, from how she funded her start-up expenses upon moving to the US to how she’s gained scholarships and awards to increase her income. Snehanjana volunteers to help international students acclimate to the US, and she shares some of their concerns and questions. Finally, Snehanjana asks Emily about banking and investing as an international student not planning to stay in the US.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Increasing Income and Giving Back as an International Grad Student

Teaser

Snehanjana (00:00): For one fiscal year after it was done, um, they paid me a thousand dollars as like a scholarship at the end of it.

Introduction

Emily (00:20): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (00:48): This is Season 22, Episode 3, and today my guest is Snehanjana Chatterjee, a 3rd-year international graduate student at Texas Tech. Snehanjana recounts her financial journey over the past few years, from how she funded her start-up expenses upon moving to the US to how she’s gained scholarships and awards to increase her income. Snehanjana volunteers to help international students acclimate to the US, and she shares some of their concerns and questions. Finally, Snehanjana and I discuss banking and investing for international students not planning to stay in the US.

Emily (01:22): Would you like to ask me a question like Snehanjana does in this interview or work through a tricky financial challenge? I have recently opened my calendar for one-on-one financial coaching sessions, priced on a sliding scale. I can help you with budgeting for an irregular income or irregular expenses, selecting and pursuing a financial goal using my 8-step framework, getting started with investing, evaluating a new stipend or job offer, and much more. Please find additional information and sign up for a free introductory call at PFforPhDs.com/coaching/. I can’t wait to speak with you! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s22e3/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Snehanjana Chatterjee.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:23): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Snehanjana Chatterjee, a third year graduate student at Texas Tech, and we’re here to talk about her financial journey as an international student. So, Snehanjana, I’m so glad to have you on the podcast. Will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the listeners?

Snehanjana (02:40): Thank you for having me on the podcast. Uh, I’m Snehanjana Chatterjee. I am from Kolkata India and this is my third year in my PhD journey at Texas Tech University. I am studying, uh, plant mycorrhizal interactions and how they’re helping in using, uh, uh, resources from the soil and the economics behind it. Um, I’m in the Department of Biological Sciences at Texas Tech.

Emily (03:09): Wonderful. Tell us about how you’re funded as a PhD student.

Snehanjana (03:12): So I am funded through a teaching assistantship mainly. Um, so I have to teach, uh, every spring and uh, fall semester. Um, and you can reach out to the PI that you want to do a TAship under beforehand and you have to indicate that you want a TAship for that. Uh, previous, um, uh, semester and for summer, my PI provides, uh, funding, which is, uh, kind of more than what I get during spring and, uh, fall semesters. And I’m funded for those three months. And in those three months I do my research mostly.

Start-Up Costs and Challenges of New Grad Students

Emily (03:56): Let’s take it back to when you first arrived in the US and started graduate school. How did you, there’s a bit of money that’s needed up front, right? For the move and just everything that has to happen before you get paid for the first time. So for you, where were you drawing that money from?

Snehanjana (04:13): So, uh, one thing that I had to keep in mind that I didn’t get paid until October 1st. My TAship started from September 1st, but we didn’t until the 1st of October. So I had to come, uh, with a bit of money from India, uh, to make sure that I can sustain myself. Uh, I also had to pay the tuition, um, during that semester. So, uh, we have something called emergency payment plan, which divides the semester, uh, tuition into, into three parts. Um, so you can pay it upfront on September, in September or you can pay it like in different, uh, three install installments. So that was kind of tough and I did not know how to handle that and I thought they’re not paying us enough, um, which is a struggle we are still going through actually.

Emily (05:13): Can you tell me a little bit more about that? So you had the TA position and you had a paycheck coming, starting on October 1st, but they weren’t paying for your tuition that semester at all, or just the payment was like later

Snehanjana (05:26): They weren’t paying for a, uh, semester tuition. The thing is, so for fall it’s like from 2000 to 2,300, uh, dollars, and for spring it’s much more because it includes our health insurance. Uh, so for that, if you divide it into three installments, you have to pay like, I don’t know, 800 or 600 per month by 24th of that month. Um, so I did not have enough money, uh, to sustain myself at the beginning. Um, so I had to use whatever I brought from India, and that’s a big chunk of, uh, money that, uh, I had to ask from my parents.

Emily (06:13): Yeah, I I’m sure other people who are going through a similar transition have these same kinds of like concerns. Do you mind sharing with us like how much money you asked to, I don’t know if it was a gift or a loan, but how much money you asked from them for those, you know, the initial tuition payments and the move and the setting for the apartment and all that stuff, like it kind of to help other people estimate their budget?

Snehanjana (06:35): Yeah, I, uh, brought at least like $3,000, um, with me. And, uh, I had to open a bank account here. I did not know how to do that. I had to take help from previous students who were already here and after opening the bank account, I transferred all my money from my card to the account. Uh, so I think 2000 to 2,500 is completely fine if you, uh, bring that kind of money.

Current Grad Student Take-Home Stipend

Emily (07:05): Okay. So you kind of mentioned just now that getting paid enough is a struggle. Can you tell us maybe either what your stipend currently is, let’s say what you’re actually able to take home after you pay all your education related expenses or maybe what it’s been over the past few years?

Snehanjana (07:24): Yeah, so when I started, it was 1800 per month after taxes, but the department increased it gradually, uh, each semester and now it’s 2,300 per month after taxes. Um, but after paying my tuition and my rent, I barely have, uh, 1300, maybe a thousand to 1300. And with the grocery prices going up, it’s, it’s getting a bit difficult to live with that wage.

Emily (07:59): I can definitely understand <laugh> that it’s not going very far. Yet, that is actually a pretty big increase over just a couple of years. What was the reasoning behind why they increased the stipend? Was it due to students asking for it? Was it due to other factors? Do you know?

Snehanjana (08:16): Yeah, so we have a graduate representative committee and the this committee, uh, works with the graduate student and with the faculty and they listened to our grievances. Uh, like maybe they send a Google form and ask us what kind of concerns do you have? And they talked to the department chair and other faculty members at faculty meetings. And from that they decide if, uh, they need to increase our, uh, wages and if they have the certain budget for it. And I think they talked to the graduate school about this as well.

Different Strategies for Increasing Your Stipend

Emily (08:57): Okay. And I understand that you have also, aside from what the department chooses to pay you, like you personally have increased your stipend through various actions over the years. Can you tell us what those have been? What’s been effective?

Snehanjana (09:09): I personally, uh, reached out to certain, um, organizations. So I was Secretary of Association of Biologists at TTU and uh, for, uh, one fiscal year after it was done, um, they paid me a thousand dollars as like a scholarship at the end of it. And I am currently secretary at, uh, American Society for Microbiologists at Tech. And for that, uh, you also get a scholarship at the end of the fiscal year for about $500. Um, apart from that, I was also associated with the international, uh, council, uh, center, and I was a global guide there, so I was helping new and upcoming students to settle down. And for that I was paid $500 per semester. These things were added to my tuition, so they were not giving checks away, they were just adding it to my tuition bill.

Emily (10:14): Those almost sound like, well, they kind of sound like volunteer positions. Um, right. And then you sort of get like a, um, a sum of money as like a thank you for it. Any other ways that you’ve like increased your income or decreased your expenses over the past few years?

Snehanjana (10:30): I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone, but, uh, there was a time, um, I used to have one meal a day, which is not good. Um, so, uh, that is, that was one concern for me. But now I have like improved that, uh, and I have like three meals a day now. Uh, but circumstances, uh, kind of pushed me to do that. Um, and I was, uh, not being able to ask for help from my family because my mom and dad both are retired and that would put a lot of pressure on them, so I just did not tell them anything. Um, but I did apply for a scholarship, it’s not kind of a scholarship, it’s called, um, I forgot the name, but it’s for Texas, uh, students, uh, people living, sorry, students living in Texas. Um, so you tell them how much funding you need to pay your tuition, um, and it can be like from 500 to 1500 and uh, they give you the amount of money, they add it to your tuition account. But yeah, it has to be, if you’re going through like a very bad situation, like you have, uh, war back at your country, um, or you are going through really bad, um, I don’t know, financial situation, something like that.

Financial Hardship Scholarship

Emily (12:04): Hmm. It definitely sounds like you were there if you were eating only one meal per day and at some point. Yeah. I’m really sorry to hear that. Um, where did you find out about that scholarship?

Snehanjana (12:15): So the international office advertised about that and uh, I reached out to them and, uh, it doesn’t require a lot. You just have to write a, like a financial statement. Um, what kind of hardships are you, are you going through and, um, upload your, uh, tuition statements like how much you have paid over the, uh, semesters and they look at it and if you can provide more proof that uh, you don’t have enough, um, money in our account, they will definitely help you.

Emily (12:52): Hmm. Yeah, I’m really glad that they were able to connect you with that resource. Do you have a sense of like, were a lot of your peers applying for that scholarship?

Snehanjana (13:03): I don’t think so because it kind of is like a discreet thing that they do. Uh, it, it opens from like first to 10th of, uh, like February, March and April and then again in, uh, fall, maybe in, um, September, October, November. And they announce the awardee by the 24th of that month. And, uh, I have gotten that award three times. And, uh, it’s sometimes they give you the amount you want, sometimes they give you how much they could have given. Like if I want $700, it’s not, uh, like guaranteed that they will give me $700, maybe they will give me $400. So it depends on how much funding they have.

Emily (13:57): I’m, I’m really glad you’re sharing this though, like even though it sounds like kind of a, obviously you had to be in a difficult spot to be applying for and qualifying for the scholarship, but I’m really glad that you’re pointing this out because people may be, they may have access to this kind of resource at their institution and they’re just not aware of it yet. So it’s definitely worth asking. So your financial situation has been getting better over the years from the departmental side, from, you know, you taking some actions on your own behalf as well. So are you able to reach towards any financial goals at the moment?

Current Financial Goals

Snehanjana (14:33): For now, I don’t have a savings account. I would like to open one. I just have a checking account and, uh, to be honest, I don’t know how to invest money. So that is one, uh, goal that I would like to achieve maybe in 2025. Um, and whomever I reach out to, like any, uh, international students that have been alumni of Texas Tech, uh, they don’t really, uh, make me understand the process and it’s kind of confusing. So if you have any pointers that I can, I can learn from, maybe I can follow some of them.

Emily (15:18): I have a tip that I learned from, there was a podcast interview I did back in I think 2019 with Hui-chin Chen, um, who is a certified financial planner who specializes in cross-border tax issues. And this actually didn’t occur during that, that recorded episode, but something I learned from her during our later conversations. Um, so I don’t know if this is necessarily one of the difficulties you’ve been running into, but what I understand is that, um, not all brokerage firms where you would open, you know, an account to invest in, not all of them work with non-residents. So you may, and you can tell me if you have sometimes international students approach brokerage firms to open an account and somewhere in the paperwork it’s like, oh, no, no, you’re a non-resident, we can’t work with you. Has that happened to you?

Snehanjana (16:02): Uh, no, I have not approached them.

Emily (16:05): Okay. Um, but I know this is like something that is intimidating, like to non-residents, um, because they, they don’t wanna get told no and, you know, have to go through that process. So what I learned from Hui-chin Chen, um, is that there’s a brokerage firm called Interactive Brokers, which specifically sort of caters an advertises to non-residents. So if you or someone else is getting told no by a couple of your like top choices, then you could go to them and you’re gonna get a yes because that’s like part of their express business model. So that’s kind of one thing is like where to open an account, um, can I even open an account? Like those kinds of questions. What, what else has you like sort of stumped about the process?

Investing in the US Stock Market as an International Student

Snehanjana (16:50): So, so, um, in my bank app they always tell me to invest in like stocks and stuff, but I don’t understand that as well. And I don’t know if investing in stocks in the US will lead me to earn any money or not.

Emily (17:08): Hmm, yeah, kind of depends on your financial goal, right? Because with stock investing, um, it can be very volatile in the short term. Like we’re recording this interview in, uh, early March and the stock market has had some down days, um, in the past like month or two, like big downs. So we, when you say, you know, is it going to earn me money, you really have to talk about the timeline because over the short term, weeks, months, even small number of years, you know, you could put money in and have less money, you know, the next time you check, that’s absolutely possible. Yet over the longer term, 10, 20, 30, 40 years, um, you know, historical trends show us that the US stock market does very well over those kinds of periods of time. Um, as long as you stay invested <laugh>, right? As long as you’re not, you know, pulling money out, uh, when it drops and buying in when it’s high and, and those sorts of actions.

Emily (18:06): So, um, one of the things I talk about in that interview with Hui-chin Chen, which I would absolutely recommend, um, to anyone who’s a non-resident in the US, um, is about whether it’s, you know, prudent to invest in the US as an international grad student or postdoc, et cetera, when you’re not sure, are you gonna stay in the US long term or maybe move to another country afterwards? And her attitude was like pretty pro investing in the US but I would say you still have to, um, have that long term timeline in mind. Like if you’re going to be invested over the first few years, like you have to have a plan to probably stay invested over the long term to sort of, not guarantee, but have a much, much higher likelihood of a positive return on investment in that time.

Snehanjana (18:55): One other question is, I maybe don’t want to stay for long term in the US uh, so I have like two years left for my PhD. So for short term, maybe for the next two years, what do you recommend for international students? How, how should they proceed?

Emily (19:12): I think in my conversation with Hui-chin, if I remember correctly, the question was more about like, well, I’m not sure if I’m gonna stay in the US long term. And so she was kind of like, well, just get started investing. Now you don’t necessarily know what’s gonna happen, but maybe you’ll end up staying long term, or even if you don’t, you can like move the money. But if you’re saying more to me like, no, no, I’m sure I’m leaving in a couple of years, um, then I don’t know, I think cash is king in that case, like just, you know, park it in a high yield savings account. I mean, you said you don’t have a savings account here yet, but like, yeah, just park it in a savings account, get what you can without taking risk with it and start investing, you know, at the next place you move to whether it’s back, back to India or somewhere else, um, as soon as you can when you arrive there, because yeah, it’s certainly possible you could invest now and in two years if you’re trying to pull the money out, have less money than you did when you started, that’s definitely possible.

Snehanjana (20:07): Yeah. Okay.

Commercial

Emily (20:11): Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, budgeting, investing, and goal-setting, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2025-2026 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutes enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

Common Concerns of New International Grad Students

Emily (21:30): So you mentioned earlier that you were volunteering, I think you said as a global guide. What, what, what, um, office was that through?

Snehanjana (21:38): It was International Cultural Center.

Emily (21:40): Okay. So volunteering with the International Cultural Center. And part of your role was to like help new graduate students adjust right to life in the US. Um, and what kinds of questions or what kinds of concerns have you heard from those like new graduate students coming in that you know, you’ve learned from or you like to share, you know, what you’ve learned like with them or like what were those kind of common questions?

Snehanjana (22:05): The most common question is, uh, getting an apartment and before signing a lease, uh, they need to have like a person who guarantees that, uh, they’ll pay their, uh, rent every time. And if they’re not being able to have a guarantor for the lease, they need to pay extra money for that. So that is one of the concern that I heard. So, um, sometimes, uh, so when I came in I asked one of my lab mates, uh, to be a guarantor and she agreed, but that is not the case with everyone. Uh, most of the people who come here as undergrads maybe do not have friends yet. So, uh, finding a guarantor can be a bit of a problematic situation. And then they have to pay like $500 more, uh, for the rent, um, for first month at least.

Emily (23:02): Hmm. Yeah, I hadn’t heard of that in like a housing market before. So that, that’s a yeah, that’s a huge issue. So people are like arriving to your city and they don’t yet have a place to live, right? So they’re staying at, you know, hotels, Airbnbs, that kind of thing and finding a place to live signing a lease. But if they don’t have a guarantor, then they have, is it, um, is it money that they won’t get back or is it like an extra deposit that they do get back?

Snehanjana (23:31): They do not get back that. Um,

Emily (23:33): Wow, okay.

Snehanjana (23:34): Yeah, so that is a big chunk of money that is just taken away from them. And some of these, uh, places, they do not let the people move in until 18th of the month. So if the students come in for orientation day, like an eighth or ninth August, they either have to stay with, uh, someone else or at a hotel. Uh, fortunately, um, what the International Cultural Center is trying to do is trying to put them, um, at hotels that they do not have to pay for sometimes. Um, sometimes they find, uh, Texan residents who are willing to help these, uh, kids out and maybe they can stay with those residents for like 10 days and then move in later on.

Emily (24:20): Wow, okay. So it’s like the whole market is kind of, they have these sort of wide policies around this extra money that they have to pay or the date they can move in, like, wow, I hadn’t heard of that before. I wonder, I wonder how widespread that, that, that is in other, other cities.

Snehanjana (24:36): Yeah, so I think, uh, that is quite widespread, uh, at least in Lubbock. Um, because uh, the community I used to live at first, um, the management was not that good and uh, I used to get a huge utility bill at the end of the month, like $80 per person, uh, when we are sharing three bedroom, uh, apartment. Um, but uh, that has decreased for me when I moved into a different, uh, uh, community. Um, they have a cap for the utility bill and that helps out a lot.

Emily (25:17): How much like were these international students prepped in advance of their arrival of like, this is how this works. You’re gonna come here, we’re gonna try to help you find a place to stay, you’re not gonna be able to move until after the 18th. You’re gonna like, are they told this stuff in advance or, or not?

Snehanjana (25:33): Yeah, so the Global Guide program, um, hosted several, uh, seminars, uh, webinars. Uh, so some of the kids joined both grad and undergrad and we had to like tell them repeatedly that these are the rules that you have to follow. You’ll have a culture shock when you come in and it’ll get frustrating, but you can reach out to us anytime you want. Um, and they have voiced their frustrations whenever they get to learn that they can’t move in before like 18th of the month, but they have to pay the entire rent for the month. Um, yeah. So they have to pay like $480 for staying 15 days or less than 15 days, uh, in that apartment. And that’s a lot of money for an international student.

Emily (26:26): Yes, I would be culture shocked by this as well, moving from another American city to, to Lubbock. Wow. Okay. Any, any other like common questions or concerns that you’ve noticed?

Snehanjana (26:37): So some of them, uh, don’t know how to do groceries. So most of them, uh, either take the buses and the buses here stop running at 7:00 PM so it’s from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM Um, you don’t have to pay for the buses, uh, but carrying the groceries from Walmart to like your house is a big task. So what they do is go and go with a bunch of people together, either to Costco or to Walmart, and uh, they have all the groceries together and they carry those groceries all the way from Walmart, uh, to their house. Um, that is one huge thing that they do. And, uh, there are not many people who have cars and uh, that’s one of the big struggles that they go through. So they have a designated date or a date that they go for groceries, but some of the global guides are helping them. If they have cars, they take uh, like three or four of them together to the grocery store and they buy whatever they need and they give a ride back as well.

Emily (27:49): Yeah, those infrastructure issues are such a big thing. I remember when I lived without a car, I also was like, how am I doing this grocery thing? How, how was this happening? Um, and it was always kind of like a catch as catch can kind of like situation. Wow. Well, do you have, as we’re like wrapping up here, any um, questions for me beyond what you were just asking about investing? I mean, I’m happy to talk more about investing if you want, but any kind of other financial wellness related things that I might be able to help you with right now?

Savings Accounts and Credit Cards as an International Grad Student

Snehanjana (28:18): Not really. I just, I just really need to open a savings account as soon as possible, but it’s not, uh, you have to go to the bank to do that and with my schedule it’s kind of busy. Um, and you have to take an appointment with the bank, so I need to do that ASAP actually.

Emily (28:37): Hmm. Yeah. Um, who are you banking with?

Snehanjana (28:41): Uh, Bank of America.

Emily (28:42): Hmm. That’s your first problem. <laugh>, um, bank of America, I, I am a former Bank of America customer myself. Um, and the customer service is very difficult as you just said. Wait, why do you have to go into an account? Why into a branch? Why do you have to make an appointment? This is an easy process. Um, so I would actually say maybe don’t open a savings account with Bank of America. I doubt they’re gonna give you a very good interest rate anyway. Um, I would say look to the online only banks, um, that might be available. So for example, I bank with Ally. Um, another good one is Capital 1 360. Um, but even if you look at like a website like Bank Rate or NerdWallet, those kinds of sites, those aggregators, um, you can kind of search for like okay, what’s the best, you know, high yield savings account available, um, now and since you have an established bank account with Bank of America, like you’ve gone through the process of showing your ID and all that stuff that you have to do, um, once you have that it’s easier to get like a second account somewhere else ’cause the first bank has done like the work for it. Um, so yeah, I would say check out like an online only bank. Um, and I’m not sure if you would even have to open checking. You could probably just open the savings account if you’d like to and you know, start transferring money over there and getting a halfway decent interest rate on it.

Snehanjana (30:02): Actually I do have a question. So I have like four credit cards and I have friends that have like, I don’t know, 10 to 12 credit cards and they use these credit cards to book a flight and they get points for it and then they use those points back in India. And I was trying to understand the game, but it seems so complicated.

Emily (30:28): Yeah.

Snehanjana (30:29): Do you recommend having like 10 to 12 credit cards for like a each person to get these points?

Emily (30:37): I don’t think you necessarily have to go that far, but, um, for international flights, I actually recently started learning from the brand 10x travel. There’s a bunch of brands like this, like where they sort of teach you these, um, travel hacking, you know, flight, getting free flights, like kind of strategies. But the general thing that you do, and I have, I’ve done this much more on the domestic side than for international flights. So I’m a little bit speaking about something I’ve like learning, but I haven’t actually practiced yet. Um, it’s more about you figure out like what airline or airlines you commonly use. Like do you already have a preferred airline for your trips?

Snehanjana (31:21): Yeah, it’s mostly either Emirates or Qatar.

Emily (31:24): Okay. So for Emirates and Qatar, then you would figure out what bank or banks like Chase, um, Amex that offer like credit cards. There’s a bunch of them. Um, what, which banks are offering points that transfer to either those airlines that you want to fly on or one of their partners? ’cause these airlines are all in like alliances together and you can kinda um, like book, you know, a flight that’s ultimately on Emirates but you’re booking it through one of their partners. So sometimes you can get deals that way, whatever. So you figure out where you can like basically accumulate points through your normal credit card, you know, everyday kind of spending and how those points can be transferred to ultimately get you on the airline that you want to fly on. So I don’t know offhand like who works with Qatar or Emirates, um, but you could look that up and figure it out.

Emily (32:17): So then like I’m really familiar with the Chase system for example. So let’s just say that like Chase did transfer to those, I don’t know if they do. Um, so you would basically accumulate points on one or more Chase cards and you would also probably sign up for some new, um, credit cards that have signup bonuses. You would do that slowly, like as your spending is able to support it. Um, ’cause maybe you only spend on a credit card, I don’t know, 500 or a thousand dollars a month. You would have to make sure that your spending can meet their like minimum spend. So maybe it’s $3,000 in three months or $6,000 in four months, like whatever it is, make sure you can do it based on your projections of your spending. But signing up for those new cards and getting signup bonuses and also putting ongoing spending on these cards is kind of how you accumulate those points. And then you turn the points into redeeming them as like free flights. So it can get complicated, um, if you want it to be, but I think there’s also probably a way to figure it out to do it since you already know like your preferred airlines to do it like fairly simply. Um, yeah, so that’s kind of what I’m learning slash starting to like redeem on my end.

Snehanjana (33:28): Yeah, yeah, because I was asking one of my friend and he was kind of directing me and then he got, uh, busy with his research. So <laugh> I couldn’t anymore, so Yeah.

Emily (33:41): Yeah. Well you might go back to him when it seems like he has more free time if he can teach you like the system or whatever. Um, or you can go through, you know, like I just, I just mentioned 10X travel. I think there’s like the points guy, like there’s other places you can learn from. Actually the points guy Brian Kelly, he just released a book on travel hacking that I just got from the library. I haven’t started it yet. Um, so you could read something like that and figure out like how to play this game. But to answer your direct question of like, do you need 10 to 12 credit cards? No, probably not that many. Um, but should you be signing up for a new credit card, you know, once a year, twice a year, however much your spending can support? Yeah, that would certainly help get you there faster if you do these signup bonuses. But you have to be careful about it because your spending as a graduate student is automatically kind of on the lower side and a lot of these cards have annual fees. You have to make sure that the, you know, the benefits you’re getting are justifying the fee and all that kind of stuff. Um, it was pretty intimidating to me when I was in graduate school to think about pursuing credit card rewards and stuff, so I kind of stayed away from it until afterwards. But I think if you’re very careful about it, um, it can be beneficial. And actually, I don’t know when this episode is going to air, but I have um, another one that I recorded with um, Brendan Henrique and I’m not sure again what the publication date relative is going to be, but I think they both, this episode and that episode are gonna come out sometime in spring 2025. So you could, you could listen to that or the listener can look for that episode, um, in the recent past or the near future, um, to kind of learn more about the system that, that he’s using.

Snehanjana (35:13): Okay. Yeah, sure.

Emily (35:15): Yeah. Any other questions I can try to help with?

Snehanjana (35:18): No, but, uh, one common, uh, I won’t say scam, but kind of scam ish thing that I faced when I came to Lubbock was everyone was telling me to, uh, sign up for the Discover card because they were like, oh, I’ll get a hundred dollars cash back and you’ll also get a hundred dollars cash back sign up for that. And that Discover card has never helped me. It keeps on telling me that you’ll get cash back, but then some problem or the other arises from that card and will get any kind of cash back. Uh, I am thinking about, uh, not using it anymore.

Emily (36:00): Yeah, I wouldn’t, I would not have expected that. So Discover is not the most popular type of credit card, but it’s definitely one that sort of caters to like students or you know, like people new to the US like you were. Um, so I wouldn’t necessarily have called it a scam, although I’m not sure about like the, you know, what the benefits are that they were sort of holding out and that like didn’t really happen like either I I, you would know more than I would, I would be surprised if they were like outright lying, but like maybe they just made it way more complicated than anybody reasonably like would expect it to be. Um, so yeah, but if a card’s not working for you, totally move on because a Discover card is a great first card, but like, you don’t have to once you get, once you’re onto card number two, don’t worry about card number one. Like you could, I don’t know, I don’t necessarily wanna say like close it because it is helpful to have your oldest card like remaining open, but you certainly don’t have to use it in any significant way. Right.

Snehanjana (36:56): Yeah.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (36:57): Yeah. But thank you for sharing that ’cause yeah, discover definitely does sort of advertise and cater to like people new to the credit world in the US Right. Um, okay. Well it’s been absolutely lovely to chat with you over the last few minutes and thank you so much for sharing like your own story and like what you’ve, you know, been able to help other international students with. That’s really insightful. Um, I want to end with what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be something that we have touched on in the interview already, or it could be something completely new.

Snehanjana (37:27): My best financial advice that I learned from my father mainly is to save as much as possible, but don’t just save for like, oh, I’ll use it in the future. Have fun with some of it. Uh, not too much fun though. I’m very, I I can, I can tell you that I’m stingy, but not too stingy. I do like, uh, things I do, I am materialistic, so I buy stuff for myself and my for my friends, but I make sure that I’m on my budget, I’m on my limit to use this. I have that kind of sense because I was told by my parents like, you need to save for this. And currently I’m saving up for a house. That’s my goal. Um, I don’t know when I can buy a house, but that’s one of the goals that I have. Um, yeah. I’ll, I’ll put that money towards like buying a house, definitely.

Emily (38:26): Awesome. Well I love that advice too. It definitely is about having like balance, um, in your life and I actually really like saving specifically for fun things. Like, yes, I’m saving for the long-term future or yes, I’m saving for like emergencies boring stuff like that. But like yeah, I’m also saving for travel and I’m saving for entertainment and like having some, yeah, it just makes the whole process a lot more enjoyable when you can tie it to like, yeah, this is something I’m really going to, um, have fun with in the near future. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast and it’s been great to have you.

Snehanjana (38:56): Thank you so much for having me.

Outro

Emily (39:09): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Campus Resources to Improve Your Finances

July 28, 2025 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily shares the microinterviews she recorded at three conferences this year. The conference attendees, all of whom either work at universities or have PhDs themselves, responded to this prompt: “What resource on your campus could graduate students and postdocs access to benefit their finances?” You’ll hear the responses in order from the attendees of the National Postdoctoral Association Annual Conference, the Graduate Career Consortium Annual Meeting, and the Higher Education Financial Wellness Summit. You should be able to detect the transitions among the conferences as there are strong themes within each set. As a bonus, listen for a two-time contributor! While these are all real examples from individual universities, you can search for, inquire about, or request similar resources on your campus.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Campus Resources to Improve Your Finances

Teaser

Tharangi F (00:00): Our Gamecock Community Shop, which is our basic needs school supply closet. It does food meals, it does clothing, um, basic needs of any type, like hygiene, and I think that really does help our graduate student population and they’re actively using it.

Introduction

Emily (00:24): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (00:53): This is Season 21, Episode 5, and today I’m sharing the microinterviews I recorded at three conferences this year. The conference attendees, all of whom either work at universities or have PhDs themselves, responded to this prompt: “What resource on your campus could graduate students and postdocs access to benefit their finances?” You’ll hear the responses in order from the attendees of the National Postdoctoral Association Annual Conference, the Graduate Career Consortium Annual Meeting, and the Higher Education Financial Wellness Summit. I think you’ll be able to detect the transitions among the conferences as there are strong themes within each set. As a bonus, listen for a two-time contributor! While these are all real examples from individual universities, you can search for, inquire about, or request similar resources on your campus.

Emily (01:52): At the start of every academic year, fellowship recipients need to know that if they are not having income tax withheld from their paychecks, they should start self-withholding and possibly make a payment by September 15th. Otherwise, they are in for a nasty surprise when they file their tax returns next spring. If your university is not providing adequate messaging and resources regarding estimated tax, would you please recommend me as a workshop facilitator? I offer both live and asynchronous versions of a workshop that guides US citizens and residents in filling out the Estimated Tax Worksheet in IRS Form 1040-ES and managing their money to seamlessly meet their tax obligations. These workshops are typically considered professional development or personal wellness. I would very much appreciate you cc’ing me when you recommend me so I can follow up with additional information for the potential host. Thank you very much! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s21e5/. Without further ado, here’s my compilation episode on financially beneficial resources for graduate students and postdocs.

Harvard Medical School: Credit Union, Financial Advising, & EAP

Jim G (03:22): I am Jim Gould, director for Postdoc Affairs at Harvard Medical School, and a resource our postdocs could use to help with their finances are, are a couple that we have a, a credit union at Harvard that they could use for banking and, and credit cards and savings, as well as, uh, a retirement benefits like TIAA CREF offers financial advising. We also have an employee assistance program that our postdocs and many of our, um, employees could actually use for finances and many other things.

Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation: EAP

Joel S (03:48): My name is Joel Solís. I’m with the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation with our HR team as an HR associate. And I think one of the resources that is highly beneficial to everyone at our foundation is our employee assistance program. Where basically the employee has the ability to contact, um, uh, free, uh, assistance when it comes to health, uh, uh, mental health or even financial, um, awareness or legal assistance. Um, it’s basically six free counseling sessions that occur every year, and it’s not only open to them, but also to their families. Um, and like I said, it’s something that renews every year.

George Washington University: 401K/403B Retirement Match & TIAA CREF/Fidelity Partnerships

Ruchi G (04:26): My name is Ruchi Gupta and I work with George Washington University, and I think we have the benefit of having the 401k and 40- 403B, um, with my university and the university matches 1.5 times of that. So that’s a good benefit. Uh, and the university invests have the partnership with the fidelity and the TIAA, and you can either choose or they choose on your behalf. They help you with that. Uh, and not many people are aware of that, and they kind of lose on that benefit. So I think it’s a good idea to be aware and take advantage of the resources available to you.

Penn State: TIAA CREF Consultant

Jennifer N (05:03): Jennifer Nicholas, director of Postdoctoral Affairs at Penn State, and my answer is the TIAA CREF consultant because postdocs could benefit from more mindful planning of how they would save for retirement at this stage of life, and they can often use those services for free, um, because those services are available to those who work at Penn State.

University of Michigan: TIAA CREF/Fidelity Wealth Managers

Mark M (05:27): Hi, I’m Mark Moldwin, the director of the Office of Postdoc Affairs at University of Michigan. And the resource I would recommend is that they would contact, uh, either TIAA, CREF or Fidelity, the two financial service providers for their 403B. Uh, so they would have a, uh, wealth manager help set up, uh, their goals for investing in retirement and get them thinking about, um, how valuable it is to start early.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Communication Lab & Teaching + Learning Lab

Alex Y (06:01): My name is Alex Yen. My pronouns are she, her, hers. I am the program director for postdoc Career Advising and Professional Development at MIT, so Massachusetts Institute of Technology. So in terms of resources on my campus that I always encourage my postdocs to know more about and use are services outside of my own office that really emphasize written and verbal communication, which are skills that they can take with them even after they leave MIT. For us, that’s the communication lab. That’s their writing and communication center. That’s the Teaching + Learning Lab. And I encourage postdocs to go and see where can I learn how to improve that grant application I’m putting in? How do I refine the data and the graphs that I’m putting on slides? Is there some type of teaching certificate that postdocs can, um, can get? So that’s what I encourage. Go find those other resources beyond just your career resource center and also your office of Postdoc Services.

University of Michigan Medical School: Therapists

Michele S (07:05): Hi, Michele Swanson, director of Postdoc Office at University of Michigan Medical School. I’m very proud that our Office of Graduate Postdoctoral Studies now has two licensed therapists, counselors, um, who are available to meet with our pred docs and our postdocs for up to six sessions at no cost confidential to describe any kind of personal or work related challenge. And then they can introduce them to resources in the community if they, if longer term, uh, relationship is important.

University of Michigan: Centralized Shared Services

Kaylee S (07:35): My name is Kaylee Steen. I work at the University of Michigan. I’m the Associate Director of Professional Development and Trainee Support, and I would say one of our resources on campus is our centralized shared services. So if you have expenses and you need reimbursement, it’s all a one stop shop to submit a ticket to make sure you get all your money back.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Welcome Session

Bettina (07:54): I’m Bettina, I’m a postdoc at MIT, at the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, and, um, I happen to be a current president of the PDA and, um, resources on campus. I think looking back into three years of being in a postdoc at MIT I think the resources are there. It’s just that the point in time when you have the bandwidth to access them is way too late because we have the community at MIT is incredibly international, and when you change countries, con- continents, social spheres in starting a postdoc, it’s just too much to adjust to to spend. Any thoughts on your 401k and now looking back? I wish I had the bandwidth back then because I, I’m aware now at I lost money, but also I’m aware now that I’m out in a year, so it’s not even worth putting in the effort anymore, which is unfortunate. What I’m recommending everyone I meet now being a new postdoc is take the welcome session when you, when you arrive, and then take them again six months in because the info out there, it’s just a matter of how much you can digest at a time.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 401K and Reimbursement Resources

Expery O (09:04): My name is Expery Omollo. I’m a postdoc fellow at MIT. There are a few things that, uh, a few resources on campus that can benefit postdocs at MIT. One of them is the benefits, uh, and to be specific, the 401k, I feel like it’s very useful for postdocs to be educated on the power of compounding interest. Um, I feel like most people tend to wait until they get a real job before they start investing, and in that time, they’re wasting five years is enough to, let’s say, make a few thousand dollars that they didn’t know about. Um, so that’ll be one thing. Another thing is, um, there are other aspects of saving money when it comes to transit. For example, MIT has a free, uh, transit across Boston to use the public transit system. Uh, if you use your bike to go to campus every day, you can get reimbursed. Um, if you, the MIT health, if you go to the gym, you can apply to get reimbursement from the health provider as well. And most people don’t know this, but this is a free 150 to $300. Um, and another thing is they do have a pension. But it’s very hidden and there’s a lot of, uh, it’s so hard to find that information. But MIT offers it. I think there’s a, you have to be at MIT for limited for some time before you can apply for it. But it’s somewhere there. I saw it recently. And, um, maybe as Bettina was saying, having all of this information during orientation may be the solution and maybe reiterating it over time through email or, you know, in other postdoc meetings, just mentioning it so that people can know about all of it.

Medical University of South Carolina: Library Rental System

Lyndsay Y (11:04): Hi, I’m Lyndsay Young. I’m a postdoctoral fellow at the Medical University of South Carolina. And I think a resource that, um, our postdocs need to know about is actually our library rental system. So you can rent laptops, speakers, uh, projectors, screens, anything technology-wise from our library that for a certain amount of time it’s for free and you can utilize that for your own personal benefit, for your events, for anything really that is that you wanna do. So I think it’s a really underutilized resource that our people should be more knowledgeable about.

Argonne National Lab: HR Resources

Evelyna W (11:38): Hi, uh, my name is Evelyna Wang . I’m a postdoc at Argonne National Lab, and our HR department actually provides a lot of good resources about personal financing and benefits that are available to postdocs. However, I think postdocs need to access and attend some of these seminars and really gain the information that’s being shared with them.

Salk Institute for Biological Studies: Financial Advisors

B. Bea R (12:01): Morning, my name is B. Bea Rajsombath from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and I think our postdocs need to take advantage of the onsite financial advisors to schedule one-on-one appointments, so they have access to, to that in understanding how to invest their portfolio.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 401K App

Alex Y (12:19): Hello everyone. My name is Alex Yen pronouns, she, her and I am the Career Advising and Professional Development Program Director at MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology. So the resource that I really like, and I do think this is a resource many, many postdocs I work with postdocs have, is if you have a, if you have a 401k with your university, you should download whatever app that is associated with. So for MIT, that’s fidelity, and there you can actually plan out and do projections of what would it look like, say if you put aside the certain amount of money and they can project, what will that look like to get to your retirement goal? So look at that. It’s nice graphs, it’s nice numbers and data, and I really, really like this resource for helping you understand why it might be helpful for you to put money into a 401k

Fidelity Student Programs

Emily (13:19): Emily here. Adding on Fidelity actually has amazing financial education resources around investing. They have a special program for college students, but it’s rolled out at certain campuses, and I’m guessing it’s also available to graduate students. Not sure about the postdoc side of things, but please check that out if you have access to it.

Villanova: Lifelong Career Resources and Services

Casey H (13:37): Hi, my name’s Casey Hilferty. I’m Associate Director for Career Management at Villanova University. Um, one thing that we would love to remind our grad students of is that we offer lifelong career resources and services, um, including lifelong career appointments. So they don’t need to contract a career coach. If they ever need one, they can always return back to Villanova.

University of Texas at Arlington: Fellowships, Grants, and I-Engage Mentoring Program

Leah C (14:01): My name’s Leah Collum. I’m the program manager for graduate student Academic and professional development at the University of Texas at Arlington. And on our campus, we have several resources that graduate students should be aware of. We have, uh, dissertation fellowships, we have travel grants, we have writing group grants. We have the I-Engage mentoring program, which offers a stipend and all kinds of other internal funding opportunities, um, that graduate students should be aware of, and they can find them all on our website, which is uta.edu/gradschool.

UNC Chapel Hill: Impact Internship Program

Patrick B (14:36): My name’s Patrick Brandt, and I’m the director of Career Development and Science Outreach at UNC Chapel Hill. So one of the programs that I run is called the Impact Internship Program, and it’s a short term internship, uh, local to the RTP or to the triangle area of North Carolina. And it gives the UNC grad students a chance to be able to do an internship and gain some, um, some hands-on skill, uh, development so that they can be more competitive as a candidate, uh, for whatever career they’re interested in.

Georgia Tech: Campus Closet

Megan E (15:09): My name’s Megan Elrath and I’m a online Career Services manager at Georgia Tech. And a resource on our campus that grad students or postdocs should know about that would help their finances is our campus closet, where students can access professional attire for interviewing, um, presentations, maybe even to defend their dissertations or proposals so that they can have that professional look and feel confident when they go into those high pressure settings.

Commercial

Emily (15:35): Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2025-2026 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, medical school, postdoc office, or postdoc association? My workshops are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Orientations, postdoc appreciation week, or close to the start of the academic year would be a perfect time for tax education or general personal finance content. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

George Washington University: Alumni Network

Autumn A (17:12): My name is Autumn Anthony and I serve as the Assistant Director of Graduate Postdoc Affairs at George Washington University. And one way that we’ve been investing in financial success and career development for our students is within the presidential fellowship, um, which I have the privilege of directing, and it’s a small group, so hopefully in the future we can expand this out to more students. But we’ve been tapping into our alumni network and finding those individuals who have established careers, um, in managing your financial portfolio. And we’ve been able to set up some really great, um, mini seminars and workshops where these folks will come and, and present on how to make the most of your finances and set yourself up for success. And it’s been low cost so far. So that’s something that, um, I would recommend people tapping into their alumni network.

UT Southwestern: Internships

Leah B (18:06): My name is Leah Banks and I’m the director of Graduate career, uh, development at UT Southwestern in Dallas, Texas. Uh, and a resource that I feel would be really helpful for grad students and post-docs, um, is, um, having the opportunity to do internships. And so we recently were able to change the policy in which would allow for them to do research internships. Um, before that they were only able to do consulting venture capital type internships, but this allows for them to really build out their toolkit to tap into those resources outside of UT Southwestern to, um, be more exposed to, um, technical type internships that could really help them to be more, um, marketable when they, you know, leave grad school and their postdocs.

University of Michigan: Career Services and Clothes Closet

Maggie G (18:59): My name is Maggie Gardner. I’m the Senior program manager for STEM Professional Development in the Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan. Generally speaking, resources that I believe grad students and postdocs should take advantage of while they’re at Michigan that would help them financially are broadly our career services, but more specifically taking advantage of cv, resume, cover letter review, interview preparation, negotiation workshops. All of these are available to them free of charge while they’re at the University of Michigan. And these are services that they’ll have to pay for, um, if they choose to, to seek them out outside of the university. Um, so these are long-term very beneficial to their financial wellbeing. Um, we also have a clothes closet at the University Career Center that graduate students can take advantage of. Uh, they’re allowed to pick out, I think, two items per semester for interviews or networking events, whatever it is that need, they need professional attire for. Uh, we also have a, um, a food pantry that students are eligible or able to take advantage of. Um, they can stop by every day, every week, whatever it is they need, you know, when they need just a little bit of extra help to, to get by and to, to sustain themselves.

University of Buffalo: Internship Equity Fund

Gina B (20:25): Hi, this is Gina Bellavia, graduate career design consultant at the University of Buffalo. And one thing that would help graduate students improve their finances that we offer is our internship equity fund. So if you were to get an internship that was unpaid, uh, and with either a government agency or a nonprofit organization, you could apply to be paid through through this fund. And usually we have it available each semester and then in the summer as well.

Vanderbilt: Beyond the Lab Podcast

Aubrie S (20:53): Hi, my name is Aubrie Stricker. I am a part of the Vanderbilt Biomedical Career Development Office. And the resource that I think our campus provides for our students is the Beyond the Lab podcast, where it provides informational interviews to give our trainees insights as to how the, uh, alumni got to the positions that they’re in and along the way, they share their career advice, including the financial advice they may have to help the trainees get to where they want to be.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: Campus Web Store

Derek A (21:19): I’m Derek Attig, Assistant Dean for Career and Professional Development in the graduate college at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. And a resource on our campus that I, I think grad students and postdocs could take advantage of that could improve their finances is the campus web store, which has a wide variety of free or, uh, reduce costs software, uh, to, you know, support your work, help you develop new skills, right? And often people don’t know it’s there.

Boston University: PF for PhDs Podcast and Campus Workshops

Béné (21:50): Hi everyone. My name is Béné. I am the Director of Professional Development at Boston University in the Graduate School of Medical Sciences. And I think a resource that has been very inspiring for me is your podcast, Emily, because you’ve been able to actually meet with postdocs who having the same financial constraints as what I had as a postdoc were still able to really think their finances through, we’re able to decide, okay, this is how much I want to invest, this is how much I want to learn about investing. Um, and they’ve stuck with our goals and they were able to actually achieve things that they wouldn’t have without having done so. So I’m looking forward to having you on my campus to talk with our students and helping them really take a step back and make set important financial and budgeting goals.

University of Minnesota: Student Legal Services

Amelia C (22:34): Hi, my name’s Amelia Casas. I’m a one-stop counselor at the University of Minnesota. And one resource to look for on your campus is student Legal Services for help with any sort of renters disputes, immigration, things like that. It’s like having a personal lawyer on retainer for the cost of your tuition and fees.

UC Berkeley: Center for Financial Wellness

Anne X (22:59): Hi, my name is Anne Xiong. I manage the Center for Financial Wellness at UC Berkeley. Um, so the resources I want to introduce to our grad students are actually the Center for Financial Wellness. I encourage all grad students at uc, Berkeley to advantage of this free service. Go to our website, we have online resources, and then we have our peer coaching and workshops.

UNC Chapel Hill: Carolina Cupboard and Bus Passes

Sara L (23:23): My name is Sara Lorenzen. I’m the Assistant Director of Financial Wellbeing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Um, and a resource on our campus, um, that I think a lot of students don’t know about is we have a food pantry network, um, called the Carolina Cupboard, um, which is four food pantries on campus that are available, but also, um, UNC students get and employees get a free bus pass through our bus system. And the Chapel Hill Bus system is free to everyone in Chapel Hill. So I think people don’t utilize that nearly enough to save money.

University of South Carolina: Gamecock Community Shop

Tharangi F (23:59): Hi, my name is Tharangi Fernando. I’m the peer consultant manager for the Student Success Center at the University of South Carolina. Our Gamecock community shop, which is our basic needs, um, like school supply closet, it does food meals, it does clothing, um, basic needs of any type like hygiene, and I think that really does help our graduate student population and they’re actively using it.

University of Chicago: Webinars

Emmy (24:21): I’m Emmy, I’m the Communications Manager at the Office of Bursar at the University of Chicago. Our main resource that would definitely be a benefit to our grad students and postdocs would be our webinars. Um, we offer a webinar series for new students, including grad students, and over the course of the year, we offer a ton of webinars that educate on financial wellness in general, but also just the services that our office provides.

University of Utah: International Student and Scholar Services

Katie D (24:46): Hi, my name is Katie DeSau. I am the case manager for the International Student and Scholar Services on the University of Utah campus. Um, my job is to connect students to campus services and the resources that we have for grad students and postdocs, especially international students, would be the International Student and Scholar Services or the IS office. And you can come talk to me about any problem that you have, uh, financial or otherwise, and I can help coordinate contact with, uh, campus resources, especially Financial Wellness Center, where they have options for credit counseling, one-on-one counseling, budgeting, and also finding other financial resources for you. Um, you can also come to me to get connected to the basic needs, uh, collective. Um, they’re all about basic needs. We also have a Feed you pantry. Um, so there are resources that you’re already paying for in your student fees, so please come see us and get help.

New York University: Stern Graduate Financial Aid Office Website

Tina B (25:45): Tina Bird, I’m the Assistant Director of the Stern Graduate Financial Aid Office at NYU. Um, and, uh, some of the great resources that we have is our website. Um, we have a lot of information on our website about, uh, external scholarship sources, um, teaching our graduate fellowships, um, and, you know, veteran assistance. Uh, so yeah, our, our website is specifically designed to help out our students.

University of Missouri: VITA Program

Alex E (26:11): My name is Alex Embree and I’m the interim manager at the Office for Financial Success at the University of Missouri in many communities and on many campuses, uh, there will be a VITA IRS tax resource where students can receive free tax preparation in addition to some tax education, so they can learn about how their, uh, assistantships or how their other funding sources are taxed and can make more, um, knowledgeable decisions about how they’re preparing for their tax burden, um, or how they’re saving for that, how they’re, um, establishing their financial security around their funding sources. And I’ll just add these VITA clinics are for both citizens, residents, and non-residents, depending on the certifications of the people involved. So don’t think it’s not for you if you’re an international student.

UNC Charlotte: Niner Finances

Nicole B (26:57): Hi, I am Nicole Benford. I’m the director of Niner Finances at UNC Charlotte. And to answer the question, what resource on your campus could grad students or postdocs access to improve their finances? I would say that’s my office. Uh, we offer workshops, presentations, and one-on-one coaching, and we also have self-study material on our website at NinerFinances.charlotte.edu. Um, but we are happy to help.

Oregon State University: Student Legal Services

Rebekah H (27:23): Hi, uh, I’m Rebekah Hahn and I’m a graduate assistant at the Oregon State University Basic Needs Center. We have a student legal services team, um, and they’re able to provide free legal services on a variety of issues. Um, I actually completed my divorce, transferred a house, and, uh, made new advanced directives with them all at no cost. And legal services are extremely expensive, so I think that all schools should have something like this.

University of Tennessee Knoxville: Financial Wellness Coaches

Philippa S (27:53): Hi, I’m Philippa Satterwhite. I am the coordinator, uh, for the Center of Financial Wellness at the University of Tennessee. Knoxville. And my answer to be, to make an appointment with, uh, our financial wellness coaches, a one-on-one appointment. Every student can make one. It’s free where we can sit down and help you think of through like your cost, but balancing of budget, thinking about life after grad school, thinking about, uh, you know, the job search. So all those things that we do at a one-on-one counseling, you can make as many appointments as you want. As many if few or as many, um, you’re there to help.

Washington University in St. Louis: Emergency Assistance Fund, Grad School Prep Funds, and iGrad

Andrea S-D (28:24): Hi there, I’m Andrea Stewart-Douglas, director of Financial Wellbeing at Washington University in St. Louis. The resources on my campus to help graduate students, um, we actually have a fund that provides emergency assistance to graduate students. Um, we also have funding available to undergraduate students who are looking to go on to graduate school. So we support their studies for things like the mcat, the lsat, the GRE. We will provide funding to help them purchase their study materials, to cover their test exams, to even cover their fees, um, as they’re applying. We’re also supporting them by providing them with funding. If they do a visit, if they are interviewing at the school and need to travel to that college or university will provide the funding to purchase their plane ticket, cover their hotel fees. We also, um, have a online platform called iGrad, and that’s available to not only graduate undergraduate students, but our graduate students as well. And so we’re encouraging all graduate students to check that platform out. It has tons of great information, uh, for budgeting, uh, planning for retirement, if they’re interested in buying a home. Um, there’s great information on that. So it’s a really, really, uh, robust resource, uh, articles, um, courses, videos, um, pretty much every way of uh, or mode of, um, learning is available on that platform. So, um, we’re also available in our office to provide one-on-one support if students want to come in and just talk about their situation, maybe sit down with us to do a little goal setting. And we’re gonna do our best to provide whatever support we can. And if we can’t do this internally, we have places people that we can connect them to outside of the university as well.

UNC Chapel Hill: Carolina Financial Wellbeing Center

Gilbert R (30:23): My name is Gilbert Rogers. I’m the Director of Financial Wellbeing at UNC Chapel Hill. One resource that I’ll highlight is the Carolina Financial Wellbeing Center. We are a fairly new resource to campus where graduate and professional students, uh, can come and ask questions about personal finance. We can get them connected to outside of the community resources that can help them increase their overall financial knowledge or, uh, get help with, uh, specific situations that graduate students need support with.

University of Oregon: Financial Literacy Workshops

Tennille W (30:52): So my name’s Tennille Wait. I’m the assistant director at the Financial Wellness Center at the University of Oregon. Um, the resources that we have for grad students, uh, recently what we’ve had happen is one of our grad students reached out, uh, to find financial literacy information. So they got hooked up with me. Um, from that we have put together a whole series, or I should say a three part series of workshops for specifically for grad students, um, kind of based around financial literacy, budgeting, um, learning how to make, what their financial aid they’re receiving work for what they’re doing. Um, there’s gonna be a tax component on making sure that they understand any tax implications with the funding that they’re receiving. Um, and then we are also working with, um, you know, other, other campus partners to just make sure that, uh, if they have travel expenses and things like that, how to make sure that all of those things, um, how they impact their financial aid, but then also how to budget for those and make sure that it’s fitting into their financial plan.

Outro

Emily (32:09): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

How to Financially Manage Lump Sum Fellowship Income

July 14, 2025 by Jill Hoffman

In this mostly solo episode, Emily shares how to manage lump sum fellowship income with respect to your budget, cash flow, and bank account structure. Grad students and postdocs struggle to manage their money when they are paid less frequently than monthly, such as once per term or once per year. This lump sum income occurs for some fellowship recipients, though it’s not a common set-up. In the first half of this episode, Emily presents her suggested system for managing this type of income with respect to your bank account structure, budget, and cash flow. In the second half of this episode, Emily interviews Shalom Fadullon, a grad student at Northeastern who receives this type of income, on how she implemented Emily’s system in her financial life.

Links mentioned in the Episode

How to Financially Manage Lump Sum Fellowship Income

Teaser

Anonymous: Lump sum income is really challenging. I have found in thinking about this, that the issue of lump sum income is pretty inextricable for me from the issue of variable and unpredictable income. Dealing with all of that together can feel really hard, like super defeating, honestly, especially at a lower income bracket, which you know, PhD students are, it just feels like really a grind to be honest.

Introduction

Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

This is Season 21, Episode 4, and today is a mostly solo episode from me on how to manage lump sum fellowship income with respect to your budget, cash flow, and bank account structure. I’ve found that grad students and postdocs struggle to manage their money when they are paid less frequently than monthly, such as once per term or once per year. This lump sum income occurs for some fellowship recipients, though it’s not a common set-up. In the first half of this episode, I’ll present my suggested system for managing this type of income with respect to your bank account structure, budget, and cash flow. In the second half of this episode, I’ll share my conversation with Shalom Fadullon, a grad student at Northeastern who receives this type of income, on how she implemented my system in her financial life.

By the way, if your university distributes some fellowships in lump sums, I’d bet that you’re not the only one wondering how to handle this type of income. I am now offering a live workshop that teaches this material and helps grad students and postdocs implement it in their financial lives. You can read more about it at PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/. Please email me at [email protected] if you’re interested in bringing this workshop to your university. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s21e4/. Without further ado, here’s my episode on managing lump sum income.

Grad students and postdocs, by and large, do not like receiving lump sum income or once-per-term income. Research shows people prefer to be paid more frequently, like weekly over monthly, and so it follows that being paid once every three months or even once per year would be even less favorable. Grad students and postdocs are intimidated by the length of time this money is supposed to provide for, and it can become paralyzing! They are so afraid of running out of money before they receive their next paycheck that they underspend. It’s also natural to occupy the other end of the spectrum: they see a huge bank account balance and they’re tempted into a spending binge. And I’m sure there are cases when grad students do run out of money and have to survive on credit cards and personal favors until the next paycheck arrives. I definitely sympathize with feeling overwhelmed by the heavy responsibility of this frequency of income. I have to tell you, though, that I also see it as an opportunity.

The way paychecks work for employees is that you work and then you get paid after or near the end of the work period. In the case of a once-per-term fellowship, you’re being paid at or near the start of the period the money is associated with instead. Yes, you have to make the money last, but you get it up front, not at the end. That means you can pre-fund your financial goals and put big chunks of money aside for irregular expenses instead of saving up gradually from more frequent paychecks. In this episode, I’m sharing the system I recommend for managing once-per-term or lump sum fellowship income. This system was inspired by 1) this ability to fund financial goals up front, 2) how business owners, including myself, manage irregular income, and 3) how I managed my money when I was just starting out on my own and anxious about running out of money.

In the first half of this episode, I’ll explain the system. There are visuals and a template spreadsheet associated with this explanation. If you want to download these visuals and/or the template spreadsheet, go to PFforPhDs.com/lumpsum/. If you just want to see them, you can watch this episode on the show notes page at PFforPhDs.com/S21E4/ or on my YouTube channel. The second half of this episode contains excerpts from two interviews I conducted with Shalom Fadullon, a grad student at Northeastern who receives this type of income, on how she implemented my system in her financial life.

Part 1: My Recommended System

My proposed system for managing lump sum income has several components: your bank account structure, your cash flow, and your budget. I’ll explain each in turn.

1. Your bank account structure

Since one of the main paralyzing factors in receiving this income is that it comes in one big undifferentiated lump sum, our first step is going to be to divide it up into different bank accounts.

Separating the account that receives your lump sum of income from the account from which you do all your spending and making periodic transfers from the former to the latter is timeless advice from the self-employed. For example, my business bank account sees irregular income and irregular expenses, plus my business is seasonal, so the balance in that account can get quite high at certain times of year and be drawn down dramatically at others. I don’t want that irregularity and seasonality to affect my personal finances, so I pay myself a fixed salary once per month. The most fundamental way to improve your money management with lump sum income is to hold it in a separate account and regularly transfer smaller sums over to your normal account. This system goes beyond that, but that’s the principle from which it is derived.

An anonymous mailing list subscriber emphasized this principle in the following contribution to this episode: “My tip is to transfer most of the funds into a high yield savings account, then I will “pay” myself each month by dividing that lump sum by the number of months in a given semester. For example, in spring 2025, I received a lump sum of $12,000 in early January 2025. Since this money was to cover my living expenses from January to May (five months), I transferred $9,600 to my HYSA and left $2,400 of the total lump sum in my checking account. Finding a way to divide my lump sum into monthly income payments made my budget more manageable.”

Another anonymous mailing list subscriber used a slight variation on this strategy: “When I went on fellowship, I had everything deposited to a high yield savings account (Ally). I then figured out my monthly expenses and set up auto transfers to my checking account every two weeks, a little DIY payroll. I always earmarked a portion of the savings account for tax payment; the Ally accounts have “buckets” that you can designate within the account.”

Exactly! Even if you do nothing else as a result of listening to this episode, take that suggestion to keep the bulk of your lump sum in a high-yield savings account and simulate a salary with monthly transfers.

My system, however, uses a few more accounts.

I suggest housing all of the following accounts at the same bank for instantaneous transfers, as there will be a lot of transferring among the accounts. If you don’t want to open multiple accounts, you certainly don’t have to, but I do recommend it for transparency and to simplify your future decision-making.

Account #1 is a savings account nicknamed Overall Holding. This account should receive your lump sum of income. Money will be distributed from this account to the other accounts one time or on a recurring basis.

Account #2 is a savings account nicknamed Tax Self-Withholding. This account is where you will set aside from each lump sum payment the fraction that you expect to pay in income tax. The money will stay in this account until it’s needed for an estimated tax payment or to pay your annual tax bill.

Account #3 is not really an account but a placeholder for wherever you might transfer your money to fulfill your financial goals. It might be a savings account if you’re trying to build up cash savings, such as an emergency fund. It might be a certain debt you’re trying to pay down. It might be a Roth IRA or other investment account. It could be multiple of these accounts if you’re working on multiple goals simultaneously.

Account #4 is a single savings account nicknamed Targeted Savings or a set of savings accounts for the same purpose. This is where you will hold money to pay for the irregular expenses that will arise in about the next year.

Account #5 is a checking account nicknamed Fixed and Necessary Variable Expenses. This checking account will receive periodic cash infusions from your Overall Holding savings account and will be used to pay your fixed expenses and your necessary variable expenses. Fixed expenses are expenses that are the same every single month, like your rent or mortgage, your internet bill, and your Netflix subscription. This account is for both necessary and discretionary fixed expenses. It’s also for variable necessary expenses like groceries and utilities if they’re billed according to consumption.

Account #6 is a checking account nicknamed Discretionary Variable Expenses. This checking account will receive periodic cash infusions from your Overall Holding savings account and will be used to pay your discretionary variable expenses. Discretionary variable expenses are expenses that are different every month and that are completely optional, such as eating out, entertainment, and shopping beyond baseline needs.

One final note about bank accounts. This system does not work if you’re paying fees such as account fees or low balance fees. Furthermore, it’s best if the savings accounts are high-yield savings accounts. Basically, your banking should be completely free and give you a relatively high interest rate on your savings. I often suggest to PhDs and PhDs-to-be that they use an internet-only bank to gain these benefits, but I don’t normally insist on it. For your situation, I’m going to strenuously recommend that you house your money in an internet-only bank with the benefits I just mentioned. I personally use Ally and have for about fifteen years, and other banks that fit the bill are CapitalOne360, SoFi, and Discover.

Before we move on from this section, I want to briefly address the use of credit cards. A single credit card could take the place of the Discretionary Variable Expenses checking account. I would just recommend that you keep an eye on the balance so that it doesn’t exceed the amount you budgeted for that category of expenses. If you put charges of multiple types on multiple cards and want to use the two checking account system, you could pay each card down manually from each checking account according to how much you spent from each category of expenses. For example, if you charged $300 for groceries and $100 for eating out to the same credit card, you could pay it off with $300 from your Fixed and Necessary Variable Expenses checking account and $100 from your Discretionary Variable Expenses checking account.

2. Your cash flow

Now I’m going to explain how money should flow through the account structure I just laid out. Before actually moving money from your Overall Holding savings account to any of the other accounts, you need to plan your spending for the upcoming term, i.e., budget. We’re going to address that in the third section. But just know that before you actually enact the cash flow I’m about to describe, you’re going to have firm numbers in place for how much to transfer.

Step 1: Receive your lump sum paycheck into your Overall Holding savings account. It’s more common to receive paychecks in a checking account, but I suggest that you switch your direct deposit into your Overall Holding savings account instead. If your university won’t deposit your paycheck to a savings account or you couldn’t get it set up in time, you can manually transfer the full amount of the deposit from your checking account to the Overall Holding savings account as soon as possible after receiving it.

Step 2: Plan how to distribute your paycheck. I’m going to address this budgeting step more fully in the next section. Just know that it has to be done before actually moving your money around.

The most ideal time for this step and the subsequent one to occur is after you’ve received the lump sum but before you actually start spending it. This follows from the principle I expounded upon in Season 21 Episode 2 about living on time, which is that all of the income you receive in one month goes toward funding your next month’s budget.

How this principle plays out for lump sum income is like this. Let’s say you are scheduled to receive your lump sum paychecks on August 15, January 15, and June 15. Your August 15 paycheck should pay for your September through January expenses. Your January 15 paycheck should pay for your February through June expenses. Your June 15 paycheck should pay for your July and August expenses, presuming that you’ll receive another paycheck of some type in August. This way, you have some margin or breathing room in between when you receive the paycheck and when it needs to start going out the door to pay for expenses.

Now, that’s an ideal circumstance. I would imagine that it’s much more common to need to start spending the lump sum immediately on bills and groceries and paying off credit cards, because most Americans do not live on time. If that’s how you’re operating now, you just have to account for that in your budgeting step. I will emphasize, though, that you should use this lump sum to catch yourself up to living on time as best as possible over this term so that you can start your next lump sum budgeting period in the more ideal fashion. So if you have to start spending your August 15 paycheck on August 15, still plan for it to last you through January so you don’t have to repeat the process on January 15. This will help you out a ton, especially if that paycheck doesn’t arrive on the date you expect it, which has happened to fellowship recipients.

Step 3: Enact one-time distributions.

Make one-time transfers from your Overall Holding savings account to your Tax Self-Withholding savings account, Targeted Savings savings account, and Financial Goals account or accounts.

Step 4: Set up monthly distributions.

Set up a monthly autodraft from your Overall Holding savings account to your Fixed and Necessary Variable Expenses checking account. I suggest that this be scheduled for late in each month, perhaps on the 25th, as it will fund your spending starting on the 1st.

Step 5: Set up weekly distributions.

Set up a weekly autodraft from your Overall Holding savings account to your Discretionary Variable Expenses checking account. I don’t have a firm suggestion on which day of the week to make this transfer. Personally, I would choose either a Sunday to set up the subsequent Monday to Sunday week or a Thursday to set up the Friday to Thursday week.

Step 6: Manually transfer from targeted savings to your checking accounts as needed.

The function of the Targeted Savings savings account or accounts is to pay for irregular expenses. When one of those expenses occurs or is about to occur, make a manual transfer from the appropriate Targeted Savings savings account bucket to either your Fixed and Necessary Variable Expenses checking account or your Discretionary Variable Expenses checking account, whichever one will pay for the expense.

3. Your budget

The planning or budgeting step is crucial for people who receive lump sums of income. People who receive this type of income have a great fear of running out of money before the next paycheck comes, because that paycheck is so far away. Budgeting and sticking to your budget are therefore vital for giving you confidence to spend. In fact, if you budget and hold yourself strictly accountable to that budget, you can dispense with the other aspects of this system. The accounts and cash flow are really just to support you in sticking to your budget.

Another anonymous mailing list subscriber shared their perspective on the importance of budgeting when receiving lump sum income: “I highly recommend a Zero-Based Envelope Budget such as YNAB especially for people with lump sum income. The YNAB method of breaking large, infrequent and/or unpredictable expenses into small, consistent amounts is key; otherwise it is very easy to overspend early in the term then have a big unforeseen expense come up later in the term that you are not prepared for. Overall, breaking down big expenses, budgeting every dollar each month, and keeping account of over/under-spending (as the Envelope method does) gives clarity and confidence about what you can spend money on so you don’t run out before the next pay cycle. Plus, working towards getting “a month ahead” becomes harder with lump sum income but YNAB makes it easier to see your savings grow bit by bit.”

I created a template spreadsheet to assist you with this budgeting step, which you can download from PFforPhDs.com/lumpsum/. I’ll walk you briefly through the sections so you can see how they connect to your account structure and cash flow.

The first lines in this spreadsheet ask for the date of this term’s paycheck and next term’s paycheck. Remember that you should use this term’s paycheck to cover your expenses through the end of the month in which you receive your next paycheck. If there is some uncertainty about when your paychecks will arrive, use the last date in the feasible range.

The times at which you transition on and off of fellowship income are ones to pay particular attention to. There can sometimes be what feels like a lapse in pay, especially when going from fellowship income to employee income, again because employee income is typically paid after or at the end of your work period. For example, perhaps you receive a one-year fellowship that covers August through July, and after that you’ll receive employee income once per month. Perhaps those lump sums arrive near the beginning of August, the beginning of January, and beginning of June. Your first employee paycheck might not arrive until the end of August or beginning of September, meaning that your one-year fellowship actually has to pay for 13 months of expenses if you start using it in August. Or even if you’re paid bimonthly or biweekly as an employee, that first employee paycheck would arrive in mid-August and it will only be for half a month or two weeks of income. Keep these factors in mind when you decide how many months your lump sum income is supposed to pay for. You definitely don’t want to be caught paying for three months of expenses off of a two-month lump sum.

Up top, you enter your lump sum of income.

The orange section is for your estimated tax. If you are not having income tax withheld from your paychecks, you will need to set aside money to pay your future tax bills, whether they are quarterly estimated tax payments or an annual tax bill. If you are single and have a simple tax and income situation, I suggest using an income tax calculator such as from smartasset.com to estimate your annual tax bill. If you have a more complicated situation, you should fill out the Estimated Tax Worksheet on page 8 of IRS Form 1040-ES and the equivalent form from your state tax agency, if applicable. Once you’ve estimated your annual tax liability, you can fill into this section the appropriate fraction of that annual bill that needs to be paid from this particular paycheck. You can find lots more information about estimated tax inside my asynchronous workshop at PFforPhDs.com/qetax/.

The blue section is for your financial goals, and it refers to my eight-step financial framework. I won’t get into all the details of the framework, but basically, you should figure into this budget the amount of money you want to put toward your financial goals during this term. For example, if your goal is to invest 10% of your gross income into a Roth IRA, you would fill into the investing line 10% of your lump sum paycheck. This section has lines for investing, debt repayment above the minimum, and saving for an emergency fund. There is another line for creating account buffers. I do recommend placing a certain amount of money, perhaps $250 to 500, in each of your checking accounts to safeguard against overdrafting, just in case a bill comes in that is higher than what you budgeted. Try your best to maintain that buffer amount as your floor in your checking account, but know that it’s there for you if needed. You can consider it the first layer of your emergency fund.

The purple section is for your monthly expenses across several categories. You’ll enter a monthly spending number into each of the relevant line items. You’ll also enter the number of months that you want this budget to cover. The spreadsheet multiples these two numbers to generate the amount of money that you expect to spend on that expense during the term.

Some of these expenses are fixed monthly expenses, so they’re easy to look up and enter into the spreadsheet, such as your minimum debt payments, your rent or mortgage, certain utilities, and your subscriptions. Others are variable expenses, so they will change a bit month to month, such as groceries, gas, certain utilities, and eating out. If you have tracked data on these expenses, use those averages and round up a bit. If you haven’t tracked your expenses, do your best to estimate what you will or would like to spend.

The green section is for your irregular expenses, which are expenses that occur less frequently than monthly. Irregular expenses are things like insurance premiums if paid less frequently than monthly, car maintenance and repairs, travel, and electronics purchases. There are two ways to capture the numbers associated with these expenses in the worksheet. The first is to convert the irregular expense to a monthly average. For example, if in the course of the last twelve months you spent $600 on clothes and you don’t expect your spending rate to change, you would enter $50 as a monthly estimate of that expense into the appropriate cell. Over the course of a five-month term, for example, you would expect to spend $250. So you would know to set aside $250 of your paycheck into a targeted savings bucket for clothes. This is great for a category that you spend in regularly but not monthly. The second type of irregular expense that the spreadsheet accounts for is a large one-time expense. Let’s say that you want to purchase flights to visit your family over winter break, and you expect to purchase the tickets in November. You can enter the estimated cost of the tickets into the appropriate cell in this section, and you would know to set aside that amount of money from your paycheck into a targeted savings bucket for this purpose. You can learn more about irregular expenses and targeted savings in Season 7 Episode 15.

That takes us to the bottom of the spreadsheet. You of course need to make sure that your budget balances before moving on from this step.

From this spreadsheet, you can glean the numbers you need to set up your manual and automated transfers.

The total of your estimated income tax payments will be transferred one time from your Overall Holding savings account to your Tax Self-Withholding savings account.

With respect to your financial goals, I suggest transferring over or otherwise establishing your account buffer amounts right away. Same goes for any savings you want to add to your emergency fund. For financial goals money that you won’t be able to easily get back, before contributing it to a tax-advantaged retirement account or paying the principal on a debt, evaluate how confident you are in your budget. If you’re super confident that you’re not going to exceed your budget, invest or pay down debt right away after receiving the paycheck. If you’re not so confident, keep it in a savings account until the end of the term and put it toward those specific goals at that time. Or if you’re in between, split the difference by investing or repaying debt gradually throughout the term. One note though is that if your financial goal is to pay down credit card debt, do your absolute best to pay it down earlier rather than later, because that high interest rate is super toxic to your finances.

The amount of money that you calculated that you will spend on irregular expenses during this term or that you need to save for future irregular expenses should be transferred to your targeted savings account or accounts. Be sure to keep track, either using buckets or a spreadsheet, of which balances are for which purposes. If you deplete a targeted savings bucket, either stop spending in that category or adjust your plan.

The money that you expect to spend on your monthly expenses stays in your Overall Holding savings account until it’s time to be spent.

The sum of what you expect to spend monthly on your minimum debt payments, your fixed monthly expenses, and your necessary variable expenses should be transferred in a monthly autodraft to your Fixed and Necessary Variable Expenses checking account. This is the account from which you should set up autopay for all your bills and recurring expenses, such as rent or mortgage, utilities, minimum debt payments, and subscriptions. You should use this account to pay for your groceries and other necessary variable expenses as well. By the end of each month, the balance in this account should be down to pretty close to or at your buffer amount, hopefully not below. Due to the nature of these expenses, they don’t vary much month-to-month, so you can expect to spend all or nearly all of what you transfer in each month.

The sum of what you expect to spend weekly on your discretionary variable expenses such as eating out, entertainment, coffee, personal care, etc. should be transferred in a weekly autodraft to your Discretionary Variable Expenses checking account. The spreadsheet doesn’t calculate this weekly number for you, so you should divide the total you expect to spend over the term by the number of weeks in the term. Whatever balance you see in this account above your buffer amount, you should feel free to spend, but it’s also fine to carry over some balance or let it build up week over week.

Part of the point of dividing up your money is to help you discern when it’s time to stop spending. If the balance in your Discretionary Variable Expenses checking account is down to your buffer amount, it’s time to stop spending. However, you know that within a week, the account will be refilled.

If this system seems overly complicated, I definitely understand, and you can modify it to better fit your lifestyle.

Modification A: You don’t have to make the special effort to budget and set up targeted savings accounts for irregular expenses. Instead, you can create your budget with a monthly line item for miscellaneous expenses, as long as the amount of that line item exceeds the sum of the irregular expenses that you anticipate incurring during any given month.

Modification B: You don’t need two checking accounts. You can use one with either only monthly or monthly plus weekly transfers from your Overall Holding savings account. This will closely simulate a person who receives a monthly paycheck.

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Part 2: Testing out my system with Shalom Fadullon

Emily: This first interview section was recorded in December 2024. This was the first time we met to discuss how to manage lump sum fellowship income.

Shalom: My name’s Shalom. I’m a third year, uh, chemical engineering PhD student at Northeastern University. Um, and I was fortunate enough to win the NSF GRFP this most recent cycle. So, um, I just, this just kind of started in September of this year and I’m planning on being it for the next three years. So looking forward, kind of figuring out like, okay, what does that, what does that look like now? So the way that it works at Northeastern, if you’re on any type of external fellowship, um, at least my department, um, you’re paid in one lump sum at the beginning of that semester. So over the summer it’s the same uh, thing. Our semesters are broken up into kind of like five months, five months and then two months for the summer. Um, so it’s a different amount of money, but it’s the same thing where you’re paid at the beginning of that two month period.

Emily: You know, when you emailed me with this question, like what were you concerned about, what, what problems had arisen that you think, you know, different budgeting might help with?

Shalom: Right, so my main uh, like kind of disconnect is this like thing where like your expenses, my expenses are kind of on this like monthly cycle where I pay rent every month, I pay my utilities every month and so all of a sudden these like payments and these expenses don’t really line up. Um, so like in my mind it’s like this very jagged graph of things happening and then so kind of having a harder time keeping track of like actually how much money I’m spending per month has been hard because instead of having like that monthly timeline, it’s now four, five months. Um, and then also kind of that like payday temptation. So hadn’t been paid in a long time, got that big, big pay bump or whatever that looks like it, but in reality the actual sum of money hasn’t changed. Um, it’s just from when you’re receiving it. So the temptation to spend money towards like that paycheck time is actually a lot harder, I found.

Emily: Shalom explained her existing account structure, which already had a lot of the elements that I recommend.

Shalom: A direct deposit into a high yield savings account. So um, that kind of just like automatically happens. And then I do just most of my purchases on a credit card and I pay that off every month. So again, like the monthly expenses kind of lining up. And then I also take some money out for like a retirement kind of like Roth I like IRA situation. Um, and that’s, yeah, that’s pretty much how that’s set up.

Emily: So the, the paycheck goes into the savings account first. Have you been keeping it there or did you move it to checking or did you split it? Like where’s the money been residing?

Shalom: Yeah, I mostly put it in um, it mostly just kind of stays in that savings account and then when I need to pay my credit card bill, that’s pretty much what I use it to do.

Emily: Okay. And you also have presumably some bills that you don’t pay on a credit card like your rent and maybe some other utilities or something. Do you then, do you transfer from savings to checking like in advance of those payments hitting? Okay. Yeah, I think you’re, it sounds organized, you’re like definitely partway to like what I would recommend, I’m just going to recommend and we’ll talk through it about, ’cause you don’t have to take my recommendations, right. It could be too much or whatever <laugh>, but kind of layering on a little bit more structure to this. Um, and also there’s sort of two components. There’s like this account structure which can help keep you on track to know that you’re not overspending or underspending over this long period of time. Um, and then there’s the budgeting aspect which is like actually planning because again it is a very long period of time. Like am I able to spend on discretionary things without jeopardizing, you know, my February rent payment or whatever it is. Right, right. Um, do you do any kind of budgeting right now?

Shalom: Yeah, I have um, roughly I try to do the like 30, 20, 50 rule. I don’t have like um, I dunno limits setup or anything within the account. So it’s kind of just like um, an Excel spreadsheet that I do and I’ll update it at the end of the month. But um, I have stopped updating it because my like income stream has changed so much. So

Emily: Like for a larger purchase, like a flight or like a vacation, something discretionary, maybe even shopping spree. Right, how do you decide if you can afford it?

Shalom: Yeah, that’s a great question. Um, so I kind of look at, again, I look at my credit card statement and I kind of say how much have I spent on similar things this month? So something like restaurants or going out to eat. Um, and then based on that amount of money, um, I’ll say okay, do I have enough money left to also purchase this? But it’s kind of very like hand wavy if that makes sense.

Emily: I feel like that would work really well with that two week budgeting cycle.

Shalom: Right.

Emily: But I dunno how you do it with these like larger amounts of money <laugh>. Yeah. Okay. At this point in our conversation, I proposed to Shalom the structure I explained in the first part of this episode.

Shalom: I mean I really like the idea of kind of having that account for the discretionary variable expenses because um, I feel like with the big um, like some payment it’s really hard to keep track of things like oh I bought a coffee, I bought a whatever. Um, so that’s really nice to kind of be able to track that more closely and see like, okay, how much am I putting in weekly? Like am I going over that, am I going under that whatever. Um, and I also like the idea of having kind of the two separate accounts for the necessary and variable expenses. I think like you mentioned, um, it might just get a little more complicated with the credit card kind of um payments, but I think it’s definitely like again there’s totally ways around that to make it not super complicated

Emily: After that, Shalom and I went through the budgeting spreadsheet that you can download from PFforPhDs.com/lumpsum/, and I sent her on her way to implement this system! We next spoke in mid-March 2025 about how the system implementation went. We next spoke in mid-March 2025 about how the system implementation went. After our last conversation and like the resources that I sent you and all that stuff, in theory you were supposed to try out <laugh> the system I was recommending. So please let me know like what changes did you make and did they work for you, have you made any adaptations?

Shalom: Yeah, sure. So um, we talked the last time we talked you recommended having these like separate pots essentially for things like essentials where it was like rent and food and utilities, kind of these like known quantities every single month. Um, there’s a pot for like discretionary spending, so like coffee and trips or whatever. Um, and then I think you also had a separate one for time like investments like Roth IRA, like things like that. And then um, a separate bin for taxes, like where you would set aside money for taxes. Um, in my specific bank. So I use Capital One, um, they make you open a new account for every bin you want. Um, so I just wanted to kind of keep it as simple as I could while following um, your advice. So I ended up opening one for like needs, one for wants and then one for, I had one for emergency fund and then one for um, investments. So I have five, that’s five total. Um, and it was actually really eyeopening because I used to just take um, all of my expenses out of like the account that I deposited money in and obviously when you’re getting these different amounts that don’t match up with like your monthly credit card cycle or your monthly rent cycle, um, I genuinely did not have a good grasp on how much I was spending and so it actually ended up being that I was spending more money um, than I thought and I just couldn’t see it because again, like the monthly balance wasn’t lining up with when I was getting deposits.

Emily: Yeah, that’s already like a really good insight. So kind of like dividing your money up <laugh> allowed you to see Yeah, the actual cash flow. So I think um, one of the other aspects of the system that you didn’t mention so far was I believe having your paycheck deposited into a savings account, right? Is that what we talked about? And then distributed to one or more checking accounts. So did you make any shifts in that or like where is your paycheck going and then literally like where is it flowing? Yeah, like from that first spot.

Shalom: So I did change that as well. So now I have my paycheck being deposited into a high-yield savings account. Um, and then from that high yield savings account, once I get that deposit I’ll put money towards um, my budget for like food rent, which I have like a rough number that I do the same amount every month and then um, things that I want or like extra funds. Um, and I think for me the most eye-opening thing was being able to track those like you know, eating out and clothes and whatever. Um, a little bit more closely because I had just been reconciling them with my credit card statement but I hadn’t actually seen what that was doing like overall big picture with kind of like long-term savings goals And so this was really helpful to be able to see that.

Emily: Let’s talk about the um, non monthly aspects of the system. So you mentioned for example there’s um, a way of you either holding for or transferring out money towards like investing or other sort of long-term goals. Um, if you have an emergency fund that theoretically should be like separate from the rest of this money. Um, and then the targeted savings was another thing we talked about. So saving up for those either necessary or discretionary expenses but that are sort of larger and that occur less frequently than monthly. So how have you been doing with like those aspects of the system and has that helped you think about your goals or your spending differently?

Shalom: Yeah, yeah that’s a good question. I actually hadn’t set up the targeted savings bin um, just because I wasn’t really sure how much I would wanna contribute per month or like what that might look like. Um, I think like a good idea would probably be to transfer, like saving up for a trip into that pot because right now I just have it in my like discretionary fund. Um, and I think like if I’m not taking a trip every month, then that is kind of inflating that bin maybe more than it needs to be. Um, so that’s something that I definitely like to do.

Emily: So it sounds like you’ve implemented the system like pretty close, like pretty faithfully to what I suggested, but now that you’ve tried it out, would you make any modifications to it going forward? So are we done with our discussion?

Shalom: I think so. Like I said, this has been really, really helpful. Um, like I said, I thought I was doing an okay job and I really saw, saw like a big difference um, in how I was doing this next pay period. So

Emily: Yeah, well I hope it continues to work for you for the next few years. However long this frequency is. I was really glad to hear that my suggestions, at least some of them, worked well for Shalom. And if you receive lump sum income, please let me know if you try out any or all of these elements and how it goes for you. I want to conclude here with a contribution from an anonymous podcast listener. I’ve actually worked with the most simple case of lump sum income in this episode, which is a predictable lump sum over the long term. This listener shared their perspective on the difficulty of receiving irregular lump sums of income in the following audio clip:

Anonymous: Lump sum income is really challenging. I have found in thinking about this that the issue of lump sum income is pretty inextricable for me from the issue of variable and unpredictable income. I’m a social sciences PhD, others in my program and other social sciences programs, humanities programs that I know have funding structures that are volatile, like quite unpredictable. We have maybe a baseline guaranteed income either from a fellowship for a given year or guaranteed teaching spots or something like that. I’m in a PhD in a very high cost of living area, one of the highest in the US. So that kind of baseline income is pretty difficult to live on, would pose a really significant financial strain. Folks like me are in the position of kind of constantly applying for supplemental income, whether that’s additional teaching positions over the summer or maybe you have a fellowship that allows you to teach one term out of the year to supplement the fellowship and so you’re in a situation throughout the year where you have a lot of uncertainty around what your actual income in a given year is going to be. I think that this informs how I experience an issue that’s maybe more in inherent in lump sum income, which is you wind up having to basically pay yourself monthly out of that income, which requires having a medium to long range sense of what your overall income actually is beyond a particular grant payment or lump fellowship payment or whatever it is. For folks that I know this is, these two things are super interlinked. The variability trying to project through that variability plan to the best of your ability accordingly and then a lot monthly payments for yourself based on that projection. The tip that I would give to people in this situation is I think that dealing with this tricky intersection of lump sum payments that are not taxed at dispersal and are uncertain and variable within throughout the year and across different years, um, dealing with all of that together can feel really hard, like super defeating honestly, especially at a lower income bracket which you know PhD students are, it just feels like really a grind to be honest. I think that it’s easy to kind of drop into a mode of why even try to plan around this. This is so difficult to plan around. This is set up to be almost impossible to project accurately around and like set up systems around. Like why even try and I’m not even making that much money anyway so I’ll just like do the best I can without thinking about it. I think it’s really easy to get into that mode and I see a lot of my friends in that kind of like survival mode. The tip would be support yourself around that and to try not to fall into that.

Emily: Lump sum income plus irregularity is definitely a next level challenge for your budgeting and financial planning, so my next challenge will be trying to speak to this situation. I echo what this contributor said to do your best to not feel defeated by this scenario, which honestly would stump the most experienced budgeters. Give yourself a lot of credit for managing as well as you are with a highly unpredictable income. That’s all for this episode! Thank you to Shalom for being my guinea pig for this system and thank you to those who shared their experiences and advice regarding lump sum fellowship income!

Outro

Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.