Side Hustle

This Grad Student’s Side Hustle Is Trading Options

February 14, 2022 by Meryem Ok Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Min Sub Lee, a 4th year PhD candidate in Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at UCLA. Over the past year, Min Sub has developed a side hustle in options trading, which is selling or buying the option or right to sell or buy stock. Min Sub teaches us what covered calls, put options, and put-credit spread options are. He shares how he learned this technique and why he thinks it’s a good fit for a graduate student’s budget and schedule. Min Sub keeps this strategy low-risk by limiting it to only a small fraction of his investment portfolio and making small, consistent bets. This content is not advice for financial, legal, or tax purposes, and if you are interested in options trading, please do extensive research before you begin!

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Teaser

00:00 Min Sub: You know, as long as you’re consistent, as long as you are committed to your goals, I really think that in the long picture, right, the money will compound on its own. And you know, I am a very strong believer that anyone can, you know, achieve great wealth, no matter what kind of income you’re making. I personally think that as long as you have the right mindset, as long as you have the right strategy for it, then anyone can do this. That includes grad students.

Introduction

00:31 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is Season 11, Episode 4, and today my guest is Min Sub Lee, a 4th year PhD candidate in Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at UCLA. Over the past year, Min Sub has developed a side hustle in options trading, which is selling or buying the option or right to sell or buy stock. Min Sub teaches us what covered calls, put options, and put-credit spread options are. He shares how he learned this technique and why he thinks it’s a good fit for a graduate student’s budget and schedule. Min Sub keeps this strategy low-risk by limiting it to only a small fraction of his investment portfolio and making small, consistent bets. This content is not advice for financial, legal, or tax purposes, and if you are interested in options trading, please do extensive research before you begin! I have a new little project that I’d love for you to participate in! I’m crowdsourcing information on what tax forms are being issued for various fellowship and training grant funding sources. I’ve published an article with the data I’ve collected so far at PFforPhDs.com/taxform/. So if your stipend or salary was from a fellowship or training grant issued from the NIH, NSF, Ford Foundation, DoD, DoE, Hertz Foundation, Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship Program, Life Sciences Research Foundation, American Association of University Women, etc., or an internal fellowship source, please fill out the survey linked from PFforPhDs.com/taxform/ to help out other people with the same type of funding who are confused about the tax form they received or lack of tax form. Thank you! Without further ado, here’s my interview with Min Sub Lee.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:32 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today Min Sub Lee. He is a current graduate student at UCLA, and we are going to discuss options trading, which is a form of investing that I know nothing about. So it’s very exciting for me to get to learn alongside probably many of you listeners. So Min Sub, would you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the listeners?

02:51 Min Sub: Yeah. Hi, Emily. Very nice to meet you. It’s very good to be here. My name is Min Sub. I’m currently a fourth year PhD candidate. I’m currently studying molecular and medical pharmacology at the University of California, Los Angeles. And I am very passionate about financial education, financial literacy, and hopefully I can provide some good value to my audience who may not be familiar with how options work and you know, all that good stuff.

What are Trading Options?

03:17 Emily: Yeah, sounds great. I am definitely in that audience. So, as longtime listeners know, I am a dyed in the wool passive investor. I set up my investments a decade ago and have not touched them since, because I’m very happy with how things are going. So, actively investing is not something that I do and it’s not something that I teach, but of course I want to learn about it, and I’m happy to share the information with the listeners as well. So, Min Sub, let’s start with what are options, and how does this differ from what we might otherwise think of as like stock trading?

03:50 Min Sub: Yeah, absolutely. So basically most of us are probably familiar with the concept of buying shares of a company. So essentially when we purchase, let’s say 100 shares of, you know, your favorite company, you know, let’s say McDonald’s or something, or, you know, Walmart or Target. Well, that basically means that you are essentially part owner of a company’s equity. Now, options are something that I honestly never considered doing until this year. Because you know, you might hear in the media saying that, well, you know, people have like based lots of their money on options, right? People basically, you know, put their entire life savings into options. They basically lost it all. So options really have a very negative sort of like vibe on overall market trading. But I actually wanted to, you know, change that sort of like sentiment today because options training can actually be very profitable and very, very safe if you do it correctly.

04:46 Min Sub: Right. So, essentially what options are is that options are basically a right or some kind of a contract to buy or sell typically 100 shares of a company. So here’s an example that I usually tell my friends whenever they ask me, you know, about options. So, let’s say that you are a home buyer, and I am a home seller, right? So, I currently own a house that is currently selling for about $500,000 right now. And you are interested in buying my house. However, you currently do not have the full $500,000 in cash, but you are willing to essentially have the right to buy my house. So, let’s say that you pay me $100,000 of quote unquote premium, and what the premium states is that you basically ask me if you can buy a $500,000 house for $200,000 with a $100,000 premium.

05:49 Min Sub: And essentially how that works is, you know, typically when we have those contracts, we set some kind of a contract date and some kind of a strike price. So essentially let’s say in three years, even if my house let’s say appreciates to 1 million dollars, because you have a contract with me stating that you have the right to buy my house for $200,000, essentially you could buy my house at a total of $300,000 if you add up your initial premium plus the amount that you want to pay for. So that is, in a nutshell, how options work. And, you know, obviously things can go wrong both ways because you know, my house can easily collapse to, you know, $0, right? So in that case, you know, then your premium might be deemed worthless. But at the same time, you know, like if my house appreciates to, you know, 10 million, right, then you can technically, you know, buy my house for the premium price that we’ve sort of contracted for.

06:44 Min Sub: Now, the truth is, for the most part, people who buy these call option contracts, many of these premiums expire worthless. And what that means is, typically what happens is, you know, like either the price did not appreciate in value as they wanted, so basically their contracts become worthless, right? Or, you know, the other concept is that sometimes over time there’s a concept called data decay, which means even if you hold an options contract for, let’s say three years, if you do not exercise that contract for some time, the data decay essentially can actually wear off part of your option contract on a daily basis. So, essentially people’s contract just becomes worthless, one because the actual security price doesn’t appreciate, or because of the fact that data decay has essentially just devalued the entire contract on its own, and your premium is just deemed worthless at that point. So, there are different ways how people can exercise options. But typically, you know, I say about 90% of the time, you know, people who own call options typically are on a losing streak, but you know, in the end they’re not losing a lot of money because they’re only paying a small premium to essentially have the contract, if that makes sense.

07:55 Emily: I see. Yeah. So, it does actually, and I’m not sure how familiar the listeners are with this, but I don’t know the stats on this exactly, but it turns out that like over the many, many decades, you know, 90 plus percent of the value that’s been created in the U.S. economy is coming from like the tail end of stocks that have done like incredibly well. Whereas the vast majority of companies either like break even, or lose money like over the long-term. And so it sounds similar to that. So like a lot of the bets that you’re going to make if you enter into this are going to not turn out in your favor, but because you’re making small bets, you only have to win big a certain percentage of the time to overall come out ahead.

08:35 Min Sub: Exactly. Yes. Which is why, you know, when people typically buy options, they only, you know, play with a very small percentage of their portfolio because it is money that people can live without,k right? But, you know, if the country goes well, then people can make lots of money in that sense. Right.

Safer Ways to Approach Options Trading

08:50 Emily: Okay. So I think we have the basic idea of what options are. So then how do you approach options trading in such a way that you think you’re going to come out ahead mostly?

09:03 Min Sub: Right. So, I mean, there are different ways to win in options trading. So how about this, let me start with actually some of the safer ways to start options? Because I think, you know, most people still think of options as a fundamentally evil thing, and they just sort of, you know, fear losing a lot of money. And that is, you know, not wrong. You know, if you play options really incorrectly, if you really think that you could sort of win big with options, right? You’re not thinking in the right mindset, right? Because in the end, options should be only about 20% max of your total portfolio. For me, you know, I only play with maybe 10% of my total you know, security asset portfolio, mainly because I know that if I lose that 10%, you know, I’m not going to lose my sleep on that, right?

09:46 Emily: If I heard you correctly, what you’re saying is that about 90% of all the money you have available to be invested is not invested under this strategy. You’re doing maybe a long-term diversified index situation, probably?

10:00 Min Sub: Correct.

10:01 Emily: Okay. Good to know. Okay. So we’re talking about this fraction of your portfolio, and the strategy that you’re using in that. Please continue.

Strategy #1: Covered Call Option

10:07 Min Sub: Correct. Yes. Yeah. So there are actually three sort of strategies that I adopted on options. And I really think that these strategies are very, very useful for anyone to get started. Mainly because, first of all, they’re risk-free, right? Technically, there are still some risks to options. So, I mean, don’t think that this is actually something that’s guaranteed to make money, because if you do it incorrectly, you will lose part of something. So, the first strategy I’m going to talk about is actually a strategy called a covered call option. So, how this works is, the one requirement that you have to have for this strategy is that you must own 100 shares of some security, some stock class. And basically, here is what’s happening. So let’s say that you have these 100 shares of a company or of some stock, and this stock has not been moving for the past year, or this stock basically has been trending sideways.

11:02 Min Sub: You know, maybe it’s been swinging up and down, but maybe like plus or minus two to 5%, you know, on a flat basis, right? And you know, like you’re looking at your other, you know, stocks like Tesla, you know, and like other big stocks and, you know, you’re jealous because you kind of want to, you know, like start liquidating some of this and start to, you know, maybe consider putting your money into asset classes that actually do appreciate more value. So instead of doing that, right, which I don’t recommend, you should never just jump and just liquidate your cash just to jump on a hot stock just because it’s moving up like 20%, you know, on a weekly basis. But essentially how cover calls work is you can basically kind of say that I think that the current stock that I’m owning is not going to go above 10% of value in the next certain time. Right?

11:55 Min Sub: So let’s say that, you know, by next month, by December 3rd or something, right? You know, my hundred shares, I do not expect these shares to go above a certain price. So what we can do is we can actually sell a covered call and receive a premium. So, basically I am kind of betting that because I sort of know on a high trends basis that I don’t think that these shares will go above a certain strike price, I am willing to sell a covered call option on my current shares. And with that, you can actually earn roughly between about two to 3% of your current assets. So let’s say that you own about 100 shares worth of, you know, your favorite stock. Pinterest, let’s say, right? And, you know, you currently have about, let’s say $5,000 worth of Pinterest.

12:46 Min Sub: And, you know, you can sell a covered call option and receive about, you know, two to 3% of your current holdings. And if your bet is correct, right? If you’re correct in a sense that Pinterest did not go above 10% in value, then you’re basically going to keep that premium, right? You’re basically going to keep your current shares, and you’re also going to keep the premium, and we can actually do this on a weekly basis because we can actually sell a weekly cover call options on your securities. So essentially, you know, for stocks that you believe that you don’t really expect them to move on a really volatile basis, then this is a very good strategy to actually sort of earn passive income. It’s kind of like earning dividends, you know, on your stocks, right? To an extent. Now, the downside, you know, of course, is Pinterest might all of a sudden skyrocket, right?

13:38 Min Sub: You know, there might be really good news, you know, something, let’s say there’s an acquisition purpose. And, you know, like Pinterest might literally go up 30%. Well, in that case, you’re kind of screwed because you promised to sell 100 shares of your security at a specific strike price. And if the price of Pinterest has gone up way over your strike price, then there’s a high likely chance that you’ll be called out, which means, you know, you will still get your premium, but you’re forced to sell your 100 shares of a company at a target price. So typically selling a cover call is a very good viable option for stocks that typically don’t move too much. You know, stocks like Apple, like Microsoft, you know, these stocks that tend to have a very low volatility and, you know, stocks that typically have very low, you know, like ups and downs are very good ways to actually utilize cover call options as a strategy. I’ve been using this option for quite a while, and I’ve made pretty decent income. And so far, I have never got called out yet. So hopefully I can, you know, stay that way for next, you know, whatever years I continue to do options.

14:50 Emily: With that example, is the price that you agree to sell that stock for what you’re calling the strike price? So like, in your example, it was that like 10% above wherever the price was when you made this bet?

15:02 Min Sub: Correct.

15:02 Emily: So I guess what I’m thinking is, for you as the person who is, you know, currently owning these hundred shares, basically you get money if your stock doesn’t move that much, or if it goes up quite a lot, you still get more than you had in the first place, because you’re selling at that slightly higher price. It’s just not as high as it could have gone had you never put that, you said it’s a covered call, right?

15:26 Min Sub: Exactly. Perfect. Exactly.

15:28 Emily: Yeah, so I see the attraction here.

15:31 Min Sub: Yeah. So like I said, right, it’s very good for stocks that don’t really have a high volatility because you know, if your stock goes, let’s say down, right? That, you know, it still sucks because your stock went down, right? But you’re not going to be called out. But you know, if your stock let’s say suddenly goes up to like 20%, then you know, it’s an opportunity cost that you sort of gave up because of a premium in that sense. So that is one down side, but overall, like, you know, if you feel like there is a security that you just want to hold for a long time, but want a little bit more passive income, then this is one really good strategy to do so.

Feasibility for Grad Students

16:04 Emily: I guess a further follow up question about this, this a little bit relates to like, how feasible is it for a graduate student to do this. To own a hundred shares of a stock, the stock has to be fairly low in price, right? For that to be manageable for a grad student kind of income. So like for instance, when you have done this strategy, what is the stock price or some examples of stock prices that you’ve done this for?

16:26 Min Sub: Yeah. So, you know, I mean, I’ve been trading for some time, about two and a half years now. And honestly, like when I first started this strategy, I didn’t start with covered call options. I actually started with another option trading that I slowly, you know, started to accumulate a little bit of cash on the side. And I’ll actually get to that strategy, which is actually much more feasible and practical for grad students. But right now I currently only, if I were to be transparent with my portfolio, I currently own 100 shares of Lemonade right now. So, Lemonade is actually an insurance company that I really believe that there’s a good future growth to this, but Lemonade also has been trending sideways for a long time. Right now, Lemonade is trending for about $62 if I’m looking at it correctly, and it’s been like this for about the past three months. So, like I simply just used the strategy to, you know, essentially like gain a little bit of passive income on a weekly basis to at least, you know, get something out of it.

17:23 Emily: Hmm. Okay. So the way that you’re using this strategy is you have what you want to be a long-term holding, but you don’t expect it to take off anytime soon or do much movements anytime soon. So you’re making, as you said, some income from it in the meantime.

17:38 Min Sub: Right. Right. Exactly.

Strategy #2: Selling a Cash Secured Put Option

17:39 Emily: Very interesting. Okay. Well, I think you said there were three sort of approaches that you wanted to cover for options trading. So what’s the second one.

17:45 Min Sub: Yeah. So the second one is actually a little bit similar to the covered call option. So the second one is called selling a cash secured put option. So how this works is basically you are obligated to, this time instead of sell, you’re obligated to actually buy one hundred shares of a company that you like. Okay. So, I currently do not have many sold puts going on right now. But let’s say that you have a company, okay? I don’t know, let’s say that you really want to buy Costco or something, right? But you know, you currently don’t like the price right now because Costco is trending for about, you know, $350. I don’t know, I haven’t checked, but let’s say it is. But you know, you really want to own Costco at a lower price. So what you could do is you could actually sell a put option.

18:42 Min Sub: And how that works is for a put option, you actually need a collateral this time. So in the case of a cover call, your collateral was your 100 shares of a security, but for a put option, your collateral is actually cash. That’s why it’s actually called a cash secured put option. And because an option contract typically, you know, moves 100 shares at a time, you know, and maybe Costco is not a good example in this case, but basically we need to have, you know, so if you’re willing to buy Costco at $320, then you need to have a cash security collateral of about $32,000 in your account, which might seem impractical for grad students. But that’s kind of like how put options work. And basically what happens is you also get a premium on that. So you can basically put your collateral up, and then you also receive a premium based on that collateral.

19:34 Min Sub: So if Costco let’s say never goes down to $320, let’s say, right? Let’s say Costco just moons and let’s say it just stays at $350. Well, then the good news is that your premium is still yours. You get to keep that premium, and you actually get to keep your collateral, right? Because you know, basically in a put option, you’re obligated to buy the shares. But if your strike price has not reached below your expectation, then you know, after a week, right? Essentially your put options will expire worthless and you get to keep your money and you get to keep your premium, potentially. Now, I really like puts because here’s, and, you know, put options, I think is really never a losing strategy. Let’s say that Costco actually does go down to $320. Let’s say. Well, remember the reason why you’ve done it in the first place is because you are actually willing to pay that much money for Costco, right?

20:28 Min Sub: So, in a sense, it’s not a losing game because that was your original bet, right? You have an entry strategy and you wanted to basically buy a hundred shares. So even if Costco, you know, falls after earnings or something, you know, let’s say it falls down to $319. Well then yeah, you’ll be called out, right? You will lose your collateral. And actually you’re forced to basically buy 100 shares. But the good thing about that is, let’s say that, you know, you just don’t like Costco anymore all of a sudden. You can always, you know, sell those hundred shares back in the market, right? And essentially, you know, if that happens, then technically you get your collateral back, and you also get to keep the premium that you originally settled for. So I really think that put options is a very attractive strategy.

Risks of Selling Puts

21:10 Min Sub: The only downside course is that, you know, you need to have a lot of collateral depending on what kind of security you’re trying to buy. But other than that, I really think that selling puts is very lucrative. Especially if you have some cash that you really have no idea how to spend it, but you know, you’re going to at least keep your cash as collateral, then you can sort of receive some passive income premiums, in that sense. I sold puts quite often, you know, during this spring, when the market was very red and you know, I made pretty good income from that. So I’m very happy about that choice. Right now the market is doing really well. So put options are not very attractive right now, but you know, the next time we enter a barren market, I’m hoping to, you know, like consider selling more puts, if I have some more cash on the sideline.

21:54 Emily: So one follow-up question, again, I’ll use your example, and thank you for giving one. So in your example, you agree to buy Costco at $320, but you mentioned, let’s say it fell to $319. What if it falls to $200? So are you still agreeing to buy at $320?

22:10 Min Sub: Exactly. Yes. So that is a risk of selling puts, right? So essentially you know, again, which is why you should not do a put option contract on stock with a very high volatility. You know, Costco has a fairly low volatility. It’s deemed a very safe stock. You know, its P multiple is very low. So, you know, I personally don’t think that Costco will drop that much money unless there is some kind of a really bad earnings report, a really bad guidance or something. But, you know, usually with either your cover calls or selling puts, you should not do these strategies on really volatile stocks because, like I said, we know for fact that if it goes in both ways, we are kind of screwed. So that’s a very good follow up point. And thank you for mentioning that.

22:57 Emily: Okay, thank you.

Commercial

23:00 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! Taxes are weirdly, unexpectedly difficult for funded grad students and fellowship recipients at any level of PhD training. Your university might send you strange tax forms or no tax forms at all. They might not withhold income tax from your paychecks, even though you owe it. It’s a mess. I’ve created a ton of free resources to assist you with understanding and preparing your 2021 tax return, which are available at PFforPhDs.com/tax/. I hope you will check them out to ease much of the stress of tax season. If you want to go deeper with the material or have a question for me, please join one of my tax workshops, which are linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. I offer one workshop on preparing your annual tax return for graduate students and one workshop on calculating your quarterly estimated tax for fellowship and training grant recipients. It would be my pleasure to help you save you time and potentially money this tax season, so don’t hesitate to reach out. Now back to our interview.

Strategy #3: Put Credit Spread Option

24:15 Emily: And what’s a third strategy?

24:18 Min Sub: Great. Yes. So this is a strategy that I really, really like, because I think this is a great strategy for all grad because, unlike covered calls or, you know, cash secured puts, you don’t actually need a whole lot of security or, you know, a whole lot of, you know, collateral. Basically this is called a put credit spread option strategy, and how this works is essentially, you have a put option that is going both ways at the same time. So essentially, you are selling a put, but you’re also simultaneously buying a put at the same time, right? So here’s an example that I thought of yesterday, right? So, let’s say that you are selling a put option for Apple, right? So Apple is, you know, let’s say trending around $147 as of now. And remember what that means is if you’re only selling a cash secured put, you are basically putting $14,700 as a collateral because you’re willing to buy apple at that strike price, right?

25:23 Min Sub: But what if you don’t have that much money? What if you actually don’t have that cash? Well, then you could actually, you know, take that advantage and actually do the opposite. You could actually buy a put option for the same company, but at a lower strike price. So essentially let’s say you sold a put for $147, but you’re actually now going to buy a put option for the same security, but at a lower price, let’s say $146, right? And then remember, when you’re selling a put, you are receiving a premium, and when you’re buying a put, you’re actually paying a premium for that security. So essentially you’re actually receiving the difference on the premium between your sold put and your bought put. So if your sold put was, let’s say $37 of credit, but your bought put is $23 in credit.

26:14 Min Sub: That means your net credit on this put credit spread strategy would be $14, right? Because you’re basically receiving a difference between your sold put and your bought put, right? And you know, of course, you still need to have some collateral, and how the collateral works is basically, it’s the difference between your strike price of your sold put and the strike price of your bought put. So if you sold your put for $147 and you bought your put for $146, the difference is $1, right? But remember, because options operate for 100 shares, your total collateral that you’ll be paying for is $100, right? But you’re actually receiving a premium of $14. So if you put it that way, so if your collateral was $100 and your net premium was $14, that’s about a 14% profit from your collateral.

27:12 Min Sub: And, you know, if you’re correct that Apple basically did not go below your put price, then you know, you can actually keep your premium and your collateral. And the beautiful thing about this put spread strategy is that, unlike the cover puts, unlike the cover calls, you don’t need to have 100 shares, you don’t need to have, you know, basically a lot of cash as a collateral. So I really think this is a really good strategy, and I’ve actually been doing this for quite a while sometime in January of this year. And you know, I’ve been doing this on a weekly basis. And also the one good thing about this strategy is that there are actually ETFs that you could do this. So ETFs, like SPY and QQQ, those two are the two, you know great ETFs for this strategy.

28:00 Min Sub: Mainly because these ETFs actually have three different strike dates per week, right? So basically Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, they have a different strike expiration date. So essentially if you do this correctly, you can actually do this three times a week. And if you, you know, let’s say you sold about, you know, three contracts per, you know, like every two days. And if you make about, let’s say to be conservative, let’s say about $8 per contract. Well, that’s still about $24, you know, on that expiration date. But if you multiply that by three days, that’s still about, you know, $74 of just profit that you’re making from just the strategy. And, you know, like, I think I kind of can figure out your next question. Is this actually a very, you know, like good time commitment for grad students? Because, you know, it might sound like this is very long, very time lucrative and, you know, very, very time sensitive.

28:58 Min Sub: And the truth is, when you first learn how to do this, it does require a little bit of, you know, time to sort of like learn this. But honestly, like once you get more comfortable with these strategies, all you really have to do is simply just wake up in the morning and then, you know, just open your brokerage account, and like on your phone, or it could be on your computer, and just trade these options for, you know, maybe like the first, like 15 minutes of the market open. And that’s it. As long as your security is sold, then you can just, you know, put down your computer, go on a hike, you know, get your breakfast, go to lab. And, you know, like not worry about it until the next expiration date, which is, you know, typically in two days. So I really think that this is a very good tangible strategy that anyone can actually utilize, whether it’s grad students or whether you’re just trying to get started with options.

Recommended Resources for Executing Options Trades

29:47 Emily: If someone is listening and is really interested in pursuing this strategy, but they have no idea where to start, where would you recommend they go to learn more about how to execute these options trades, but also, you know, the research into like, you know, which particular stocks should you be doing which particular, you know, option trade for? So like, what are some really great sources that you’ve learned from in the past few months and years?

30:09 Min Sub: Right. So here’s the thing. So when I first learned about stocks in general or options in general, I actually started with paper money. Because I personally don’t like losing money, and you know, like learning something new like this, even if it’s like a hundred bucks, I mean, even if, you know, that might be a small percent of my portfolio, I don’t like losing money. I mean, so like I would rather be somewhat of an intermediate expert on this field before I actually use real currency. So, you know, there are actually, you know, like online, you know, sources, you know that you could use. I think that the one that I used was actually called the Stockwatch, I think, but basically there are a lot of paper trading platforms where you can sort of like play with fake money and see if this strategy works for you.

30:56 Min Sub: And once you are comfortable with trading fake money, and once you have profited, maybe even become a millionaire with the paper money, I think by then, you know, maybe to me, you know, it took about maybe a good three weeks to be more comfortable with this. So it was a very good learning period for me. And, you know, I’m very glad that I took that time to actually learn about this because now, you know, again, like I said, the time investment, you know, initially might be a little painful, it’s just sort of a big climb, but once you are comfortable with the level of, you know, risk-free training, then honestly this becomes a very routine task for me. So, I started using, you know, a paper training currency, but, you know, there are a lot of YouTube videos out there nowadays, right?

31:43 Min Sub: If you just, you know, look up, you know, how to sell covered call options, how to sell put options, right? How to do a put credit spread. There are many, many sources that people actually use. And there are actually, you know, plenty of day traders online who actually record their, you know, online, you know, videos on live. And they actually show how to execute different trades and they actually do tutorials of this. So there are actually endless amounts of resources that anyone can get started with this strategy. So if anyone is really interested in actually starting, you know, to learn a little bit about options, you know, how to actually trade options in a risk-free way, then I really think that those two ways are a very good start. And you really must make sure that you have enough collateral cash that, again, you are comfortable losing potentially. Because, you know, like I said, I’m only doing this for about 15% of my portfolio, right? Because you know, like I will not lose my sleep if, I mean, it would still stuck, but I will not lose my sleep, you know, if I potentially, you know, lose everything the next day.

Fairly Low Time Commitment

32:46 Emily: Yeah. So I want you to make some comments now about how compatible you think this strategy is with like a grad student lifestyle. And we’re talking both income, like available money to be invested, and of course, again, we’re only talking about a percentage of that total portfolio. And also the time. So like you mentioned earlier, I think there was a little bit of time invested to learn the strategy and you were, you know, playing around with a simulation. And then you actually start doing it. But once you are familiar and comfortable, it sounds like it’s a fairly low time commitment on like the daily or weekly basis, right? To actually execute the trades.

33:25 Min Sub: Yeah. It really is. I mean, you know, honestly, like the actual, like trading itself takes, you know, maybe less than three seconds. You know, like as long as you set your own strike price that you’re comfortable with, and as long as you are, you know, like consistent with what you want to sell it for or buy it for, then it really just, you know, like usually, you know, like I do multiple options on Monday because, you know, technically Monday is when the new market opens, unless it’s a holiday, and then the option contracts expire usually on Fridays. So usually selling a weekly put or cover call on the same week, I think is a very good, consistent income. Now sometimes, you know, like I do a little bit of longer calls. I make longer contracts if I feel like, you know, I can get more premium because you know, the longer your contracts are, the more premium you will get.

34:13 Min Sub: So sometimes if I feel like a stock, you know, might not potentially move for maybe another like two weeks or so, right? Then, you know, I could consider doing that for a longer time, which means the next week I’ll just take a week off or something because I don’t actually have to worry about you know, like losing maybe a premium in that sense. Yeah. So like, honestly, like once you sort of reach that phase of, you know, I learned how to do options, I kind of know what I’m doing, right? Once you sort of like, I think pass that barrier, I think from there, it becomes a very, very passive thing. And that’s the reason why I chose to participate in this podcast because, you know, when we talk about, you know, like passive income, you know, and side hustles. Most side hustles that we are familiar with, you know, usually requires some kind of a time commitment.

35:01 Min Sub: You know, we spend about, you know, an hour or two tutoring, we spend an hour or two, you know, maybe, being a tour guide or something. Or, you know, like you could be some kind of a, you know, participant in some, you know, case study, right? But I think with options, you know, it’s very great because it doesn’t require you to actually exchange your active time for money. Because once you sort of like, you know, have a system, right? It’s kind of like, you know, you are generating your own, you know, machine that gives you your own passive income. Now, you know, don’t get me wrong. Like, again, there are risks to options trading. So, you know, don’t think that everyone’s an expert, because I definitely lost some money during this. You know, but for me, like, you know, because I was very consistent over time and I was very keen to what I believe, and I was very committed to my purchases and other stuff. I was able to make a slowly but substantial income that I still have today. And I’m still looking forward to, you know, keep on doing this, you know, hopefully until I graduate. And by then, who knows what’s going to happen.

Choosing the “Right” Stocks

36:00 Emily: So kind of one more follow-up question on that. Like, I understand that, you kind of said once you set up this like system or like machine, you know, consistently. Yes, there are risks, but you have generated a fairly consistent passive income from this. But I guess I’m more wondering about how you’re figuring out, like you’ve mentioned several individual stocks as examples so far in our conversation, like there’s whatever thousands of stocks to choose from. Like how do you actually figure out which ones you’re going to be making these bets on? Like what resources do you use?

36:30 Min Sub: Yeah, that’s a very good question. So when you talk about like stocks that are deemed considered safe, so there are actually many measurements you can actually learn about this. So, basically when I first got really into investing, I actually read the book called The Intelligent Investor. I actually have it here. Let me pull it out right now. So it’s called The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. If you see this right here. And basically this is a really good book because it actually really shows you a lot about how to, you know, pick the stocks that are right for you. Essentially, you know, there are two like great measurements of a stock that you consider, right? Because remember, when we do a covered call, you want to choose a stock that has a fairly low volatility that does not tend to move up and down in price too much, right?

37:15 Min Sub: So, you know, a good example would be Google, right? Google or Apple, right? Those two, you know, are very big, you know, big blue chip stocks that have already performed very, very well. Right? So, these are called, you know, large market cap stocks because these companies have already grown, and you know, the amount of growth that they are projecting forward is a lot less compared to, let’s say new SPE companies that have just, you know, IPO’d and you know, these companies have a lot more, you know, potential to grow, right? So I mean, you know, if you’re looking for, let’s say this growth stock investing, then you should not do options on them, personally, because you know, these, like I said, these growth stocks can either go both ways and, you know, because of the high volatility. You might receive more premium, but you have a much higher risk of losing all your money.

37:59 Min Sub: So I would personally stay away from any of those companies that have a very small market cap, right. And, you know, market cap simply means it’s the total asset of a company. So you can basically multiply the share price times the number of shares, that’s how you get market cap. The other measurement is actually a measurement called beta. So I don’t know if you’re familiar with beta, but beta is basically a comparison to the S&P 500 index. And for those who are not familiar with the S&P 500, the S&P 500 basically is a way to think about the U.S. economy as a whole, right? So if your S&P 500 sort of grows on this path, then we can kind of expect that the U.S. economy also follows that trajectory, essentially. So if your beta for a stock is one, that means that stock essentially aligns parallel to the S&P 500.

38:48 Min Sub: So an example of a stock that would have beta one is actually Google, right? Basically, if you actually look at the past chart of Google versus the S&P right, we can actually see that they actually largely overlap together. You know, mainly because, you know, those two companies, they sort of flow in the same trajectory, right? So if I were to, you know, recommend a stock to do options on, I would choose a stock with a very low beta, or with a beta that’s as close to one as possible, mainly because we know those stocks are a lot less volatile compared to other stocks, right? You know, please don’t do, you know, options on, you know, like stuff like Tesla right? Because we know Tesla goes like up and down, in like so many ways.

39:30 Min Sub: So, it’s really, really risky to you know, do those kind of options, you know, unless you have a lot of money to lose, right? And the third measurement that I also look at is something called the PE ratio. So that’s called the price to earnings ratio. And typically I mean, some people say that PE ratio is a measurement of companies’, you know, future performances. But usually I like to basically use a metric where the PE ratio for a company typically should be around 20 or lower. And basically with that measurement, that usually means that the company has already grown, you know, has a lot of built-in growth. And there is a lot less growth potential possible in the future. So, it’s kind of like Google.

40:13 Min Sub: So Google also has a fairly low PE ratio because, you know, they also have grown so much these past, you know, couple decades that you know, we don’t expect Google to, you know, become like a master large cap stock in the future. So, you know, like you could actually search up these stocks on Yahoo finance, and actually look at their charts. And, you know, these charts will actually display all the parameters that I talked about. Beta, PE ratio, market cap, all that stuff. And, you know, if you are interested in learning more about this stuff, there are plenty of resources out there online. The one source that I really like is a source called Investopedia, actually. So Investopedia is basically like an encyclopedia with all the investment terms.

40:54 Min Sub: So, you know, like if you want to know more about, you know, what is a large cap company versus a low cap company? What is a PE ratio? What is a beta? You know, what are call options? You know, you will be able to find individual articles on all of these. So, again, it takes a little bit of time and practice to be familiar with these, but I personally think that as long as you are comfortable and as long as you are interested in making money, then I think these are very good strategies that we could potentially incorporate in our daily lifestyle. Especially if you like investing.

Portfolio Growth in 2021

41:26 Emily: Sounds really attractive. So for your personal portfolio, do you mind sharing how long you’ve been doing this for, how much money you’ve made or how much your portfolio’s grown, and how much time you think you’ve put into the research and the execution?

41:44 Min Sub: So this year alone. So if I were to, you know, just add up all of my total put credit spreads that I made from January 2nd to now. I have about $7,322. And that is because I was able to do this on a weekly basis. You know, I was selling SPY put credit spreads on three times a day, and eventually, you know, those money has been accumulating and compounding. And quite frankly, that’s the reason why I was actually able to accumulate a little bit more capital to start, you know, selling puts. Remember to sell put options, we need cash collateral. So because now I had a little bit of cash, now I’m able to, you know, use these put option strategies to actually sell puts on companies that I’m willing to buy. So basically, like, you know, I think you can see what I’m getting at here, you know, as long as you’re consistent, as long as you are committed to your goals, I really think that in the long picture, right, the money will compound on its own. And, you know, I am a very strong believer that anyone can achieve great wealth, no matter what kind of income that you’re making. So, I personally think that as long as you have the right mindset, as long as you have the right strategy for it, then anyone can do this. That includes grad students.

43:01 Emily: I love the way you put that. I don’t have anything to add to that, except to just say that $7,000 in, let’s see we’re in November now. So almost a year of what is essentially like a side hustle. You know, not that active, you’re not spending a lot, a lot of time on it. It’s a very decent rate of return, especially for a graduate student. So yeah, this is very exciting.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

43:21 Emily: It’s been really a pleasure for me to learn more about this. So thank you so much for volunteering to be on the podcast. I want to conclude with the 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 related to what we’ve talked about today or something completely else.

43:40 Min Sub: Yeah. So this is actually not financial advice, but this is actually, I think, a very good personal habit that everybody should employ, and that is to wake up early. So the reason why I started waking up early was actually frankly, because the stock market in California opens at 6:30. And, you know, like, you know, if I’m trying to get the best bet out of this, right? You know, usually I like to do most of my trades in the morning. But honestly, you know, quite frankly, like after I started to have very prosperous morning habits, I realized that I feel like I have a lot more time in my day, right? Because, you know, when we wake up at let’s say 9:00 AM or 10:00 AM, right? You know, like we tend to feel I think more lazy because the sun’s already out and, you know, we already hear people outside. So, I really feel like fostering this kind of like early morning routine is a very good habit, I think for really anyone, right? Because not only do you feel like you have more time, but I think that, you know, in the morning when people are, you know, mostly asleep typically usually like I get less distracted and I tend to get more work done in the morning, personally.

44:50 Emily: I have to say that I concur, and it’s even a surprise to me. Well, it was so good to meet you Min Sub! Thank you so much for coming on and sharing about this topic. New to me, new to probably many of the listeners, but really exciting to learn about. So thank you! It was great to have you on!

45:05 Min Sub: My pleasure! Thank you so much for having me!

Outtro

45:12 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? I have 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/. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are 3 ways you can help it grow: 1. Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. 2. Share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email list-serv, or as a link from your website. 3. Recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and increasing cash flow. I also license pre-recorded workshops on taxes. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

This Start-Up Centers Graduate Students and Pays Them Handsomely

August 23, 2021 by Meryem Ok

In this episode, Emily interviews Jin Chow, a graduate student at Stanford, and Stephen Weber, a graduate student at the University of Georgia. Jin is the co-founder of Polygence, a start-up that facilitates graduate students and PhDs remotely mentoring high school students one-on-one through well-defined research projects. Stephen has mentored five students and speaks to the advantages of Polygence as a flexible and lucrative side hustle. We discuss whether and how to tell your PhD advisor about a side hustle, and who is or is not a good fit for becoming a mentor with Polygence. Jin also briefly shares the story of how she co-founded Polygence as a graduate student on an F-1 visa. If you’re looking for a side hustle that’s convenient to balance with your graduate work, check out Polygence: they are hiring mentors now!

Links Mentioned in the Episode

PF for PhDs: Best Financial Practices for Your Self-Employment Side Hustle
Polygence Mentor Interest Form
PF for PhDs: The Wealthy PhD Debt Repayment Workshop
PF for PhDs: Can I Make Extra Money as a Funded Graduate Student on an F-1 Visa? (Expert Interview with Frank Alvillar & Sheena Connell)
PF for PhDs: Podcast Hub
PF for PhDs: Subscribe to Mailing List

Teaser

00:00 Stephen: You know, it’s kind of funny to say, but I’m getting paid to learn more about things that I would already be interested in learning about.

Introduction

00:12 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is Season 10, Episode 3, and today my guests are Jin Chow, a graduate student at Stanford, and Stephen Weber, a graduate student at the University of Georgia. Jin is the co-founder of Polygence, a start-up that facilitates graduate students and PhDs remotely mentoring high school students one-on-one through well-defined research projects. Stephen has mentored five students and speaks to the advantages of Polygence as a flexible and lucrative side hustle. We discuss whether and how to tell your PhD advisor about a side hustle, and who is or is not a good fit for becoming a mentor for Polygence. Jin also briefly shares the story of how she co-founded Polygence as a graduate student on an F-1 visa. If you’re looking for a side hustle that’s convenient to balance with your graduate work and want to help cultivate the next generation of researchers, check out Polygence: they are hiring mentors now!

01:19 Emily: If you have a pretty well-established side hustle, whether as a contractor with a company like Polygence or your own sole proprietorship, you may be wondering how best to manage that stream of income. This is especially true if you incur any expenses with respect to your side hustle. I have a course titled Best Financial Practices for Your Self-Employment Side Hustle that speaks to two chief areas of interest for people with this type of side hustle. 1: How to financially manage variable business income and expenses so that your personal finances aren’t negatively affected. This half of the course teaches some basic business and personal finance principles to keep everything orderly. 2: What type of self-employment retirement account option to use. If you are a super-saver who maxes out your IRA yearly and doesn’t have access to a workplace-based retirement account, you can actually use your self-employment income to open and fund an additional tax-advantaged retirement account. My course explains which of the several options is the best fit for a solopreneur side hustler. If you’d like to learn more about and purchase this course, please go to PFforPhDs.com/sesh/. That’s P F f o r P h D s dot com slash s for self e for employment s for side h for hustle. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Jin Chow and Stephen Weber.

Will You Please Introduce Yourselves Further?

02:54 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast today, Jin Chow and Stephen Weber. They are representing Polygence. So I first heard about Polygence a few weeks back when I was at a conference, I had the pleasure of speaking with another employee and learned what they do, which is providing mentorship opportunities to high school students and hooking them up with graduate students and PhDs. And the reason that we’re bringing this episode to you is of course, to tell you a little bit about the company, but also to let you know that this is a potential side hustle opportunity. We’re going to get into more of that momentarily. So Jin and Stephen, will you please take a moment to introduce yourselves a little bit further to the audience?

03:31 Jin: Awesome. Hi everyone. My name is Jin, really grateful to Emily for having us on today. A little background about myself, I’m originally from Hong Kong, came to the U.S. for college, studied Comparative Literature at Princeton for my undergrad, and I’m currently a PhD Candidate at Stanford, also in Comparative Literature. And in terms of research background, I’ve just been working mostly on French and Arabic literature. And then right now I’m putting my PhD on hold to work full-Time on Polygence. I’m one of the founders.

04:00 Emily: Yeah, super interesting. We’ll get back to that at the end of the interview. Stephen, go ahead and introduce yourself.

04:05 Stephen: Well, thanks for having me. My name’s Stephen. I’m actually a third-year PhD student at the University of Georgia. My research is focused on Parkinson’s Disease and the association of the immune system and potentially perpetuating that. And then before that I was actually a research professional at Stanford University. I worked with the stem cell Institute, teaching and training anywhere from undergraduates, to postdocs, to professors on application of a specific methodology. And yeah, that’s a little bit about me.

04:40 Emily: And what’s your role with Polygence now?

04:42 Stephen: Yeah, so now at Polygence I’m a mentor and I have been for about a year and a half and recently have moved into being a mentor affairs coordinator. And that’s where I’m at now.

How to Get Involved with Polygence

04:53 Emily: Yeah. So we’re going to hear more about what is this mentor role. But to back up a little bit, Jin, as founder, co-founder let us know more about Polygence, what it’s about, and how can graduate students and PhDs get involved with the company?

05:08 Jin: Totally. So Emily, I think you gave a really great overview of what it is. So we’re an online project-based learning platform where we connect PhD candidates, masters candidates, postdocs, and also people who already have their advanced degrees with really motivated and intellectually curious high schoolers to work on personalized research projects. And our mission on the mentor side really is to democratize access to the knowledge that’s in so many PhD candidates heads and also to give PhD candidates, graduate students in general, a chance to earn some side money because we know how not well universities pay PhD students and graduate students in general. And so on the mentor side, that really is our mission. And we want to make sure that students high schoolers from all around the world who are passionate about different kinds of academic disciplines can get a chance to connect with experts like yourselves, our listeners today. And to do something beyond the school curriculum and to learn something new, create something fun and cool. And so for, in terms of how mentors can get involved, we have an open rolling application season for any mentor to express interest on our website. We’ll put in the link in the show notes later. And also once you sign up, we have rolling interviews, you’ll meet with one of our team members and then we’ll onboard you.

06:29 Emily: It’s so unusual. I really don’t think I’ve spoken to anyone else who has centered the graduate student experience in the broader mission of a startup or a company. And of course it’s very like laudable that we want to help mentor and educate these up-and-coming researchers who are currently in high school and so forth. That’s all wonderful. But to hear that, okay, this was founded by a graduate student. You can, I guess maybe you want to introduce your co-founder in a moment as well, but founded by a graduate student and really again, centers that graduate student experience and the financial concerns of graduate students. So unusual. And I’m really excited to talk to you about that.

07:06 Jin: Yeah. Maybe I’ll just take three seconds to say a little bit more about my co-founder too. So I think the reason why we’re so centered on the graduate experience is because when we founded it, I was in the middle of it. I was in my second year of the PhD program and my co-founder, Janos, had just finished his PhD in physics. And so we both just knew so well how difficult it is financially as a graduate student. And also we both just love teaching so much, but didn’t get enough of that in our own respective programs. And so those two things coming together just made the graduate experience like front and center for us.

Stephen’s Role as a Mentor

07:36 Emily: Fantastic. Fantastic. So Stephen, not speaking as the founder, but speaking as someone who has been a mentor with Polygence and now has moved into an even bigger role. What has been your experience as a mentor?

07:50 Stephen: Yeah, I mean, I think that that’s one of the biggest questions. So I actually am a part of doing the interviews for potentially onboarding mentors. And so, you know, that’s a question that I get asked a lot is so why are you still here? You know, because I think for a lot of graduate students, their experience is TA ships, right? Wherein they are paid poorly for their time. And they’re expected to do a lot. And they often have that as an interference to their day to day. You know, especially someone who’s coming from the hard sciences where there’s a lot of really long days spent in the lab, for instance, it can be hard to juggle the responsibilities of that plus being a TA. And so despite having a really huge love for teaching, it can be really difficult to make that work.

08:37 Stephen: And it also is not quite as flexible as the schedule at Polygence, right? So at Polygence, you’re committing to hour-long sessions with students, roughly once a week, and you can make those times whenever is good for you. So I think that that’s part of why I’m still with it, obviously, but it also adds value to the fact that I get to still enjoy it each time. You know, it’s not just a, “I have to be here doing this.” This is something that I want to do. I feel like my time is compensated well. And I feel like I get to talk about things that I really want to talk about. Whereas as a graduate student, you’re often TAing for courses that may not be within your wheelhouse or may not be of specific interest. They might just be departmental courses that you’re just kind of asked to TA for. So I think that that’s another huge point of why I’m still here is that I feel like I get to not only talk about what I like, but also get to explore it in ways that are new and novel for incoming students.

Intangible Benefits of Mentorship

09:32 Emily: We’re going to talk more about sort of the financial side of this in just a moment, but I wanted to hear some more about like maybe the intangible benefits, the intangible experience, the warm fuzzies that you get from working with these students. Like you’ve done multiple cycles of this, I understand. So, you know, what is your enjoyment of the process?

09:52 Stephen: Yeah, so I’ve, what is it, five students now at this point and I’ve had three of them publish their work in high school-tier journals. And so, you know, for me, what I think is kind of like a part of it that you can’t really capture with, like the financial element is that you’re getting to be a part of the developmental process for people that have a passion similar to yours. And I mean, maybe I’m like the outlier, but when I was in high school, I can definitely say that I didn’t have this kind of opportunity. And so it was a really novel experience to be a part of the early foundation-laying of students who really want to pursue this. And not only do they get to learn more about a subject, but they also get to learn more about the ins and outs of the career itself.

10:37 Stephen: And I think for me that would have been hugely valuable to know here are skills that I could start working on now in high school to get ready for, you know, a long-term academic career. And I think that those are parts of the intangible that just feel like, you know, it’s paying it forward in a way of like, okay, so I struggled through and learned these things. Let me try to provide some insight for you that you can now take forward and maybe try to share with people around you as you go through the academic process.

Why this Side Hustle is a Great Fit for Grad Students

11:04 Emily: Wonderful. I also am reflecting on kind of my experience in high school. And I was fortunate that I did have research opportunities because I attended a particular school that offered that, but they weren’t like one-on-one, it was group. And I think that given my personality, I think a one-on-one setting would have been fantastic for me at that age. We talked about how the commitment when you’re mentoring a student through Polygence is approximately one hour about once a week, and that it’s flexible to be, you know, conforming to the mentor’s schedule. And I love this because one of the key key elements I think of a successful side hustle in graduate school is being able to schedule something that’s not going to interfere with, as you said, Stephen, your long days in lab. Like that really does need to be your priority. And so being able to do something around that is absolutely perfect. Is there any other reason that you can think of that this particular side hustle is a great fit for graduate students?

11:56 Stephen: There’s a whole host of reasons really, I guess, but you know, there’s some of the core ones are in addition to the flexibility of it all, it’s also an opportunity to maybe explore parts of research that your boss doesn’t really find interesting. You know, because for me, my area of research is very niche. And so as a result, I don’t get to explore some of the outside things. It’s not that I don’t have an interest, but now I’m getting, you know, it’s kind of funny to say, but I’m getting paid to learn more about things that I would already be interested in learning about. And, you know, those were opportunities really because, you know, some of the conversations that I’ve had with my students have actually turned around and been things that I was able to employ in my own research. And so, you know, those are things that just through the conversation, through the ever-evolving amount of information you’re getting from these students. And from that process of learning more about your own subject, I think it kind of pays itself back to you in addition to, you know, being compensated for that time.

12:53 Jin: I’ve heard from some mentors too, that like, especially for those who are thinking about building a career in teaching, whether in high school teaching or later in academia, obviously getting more teaching experience and connecting with young people is something that is really beneficial for their own sort of pedagogical development as a teacher and an educator. And obviously getting paid to get that experience. Our hourly rate is usually around $75 and above. And so that’s usually sort of both the financial and also the paying it forward and as well as the teaching experience piece is what I hear most from mentors.

13:29 Emily: Yeah. I was just thinking that like, you know, one of the things that you’re supposed to be doing in graduate school is being exposed to new ideas by networking and talking with new people and going to conferences and going to seminars and so forth. And this is just another way to have that happen, to have to be exposed to another like creative mind who’s not as encultured maybe yet to the way that we think in academia that can help you spark your own ideas. As you said, Stephen, to go back into your research to feed back into that. And so I just think this is again, another way of doing that kind of networking and exploration, but getting paid for it at the same time which is fantastic.

Financial Benefits of Polygence Side Hustle

14:06 Emily: So Jin, you just mentioned the pay rate, usually $75 per hour and above. Fantastic for a side hustle for a graduate student. Stephen, you said you’ve done five cycles of this mentorship program. And so what have you been doing with this side hustle money? How has this money impacted your financial life?

14:26 Stephen: Yeah, I mean, it, in a sense it provides a certain semblance of security, right? So, you know, as a graduate student, you don’t really make a whole lot, really, especially when you consider taxes and just having to pay student fees and all of this stuff. So basically that money basically affords the ability to have hobbies again, whereas before it could be difficult to do that. So I’ve done martial arts my whole life. So being able to pay for training at gyms, that’s sometimes a sacrifice that has to be made of, you know, if I don’t have any additional income, it may be hard to kind of balance that out. So that’s, you know, one place, it also just adds a little bit of actual savings to your life, which is, you know, an amazing thing to be able to have as graduate student is that you can kind of accrue that semblance of like, oh, I’m not living paycheck-to-paycheck anymore. So I think that those are two key ways that it’s been, you know, a nice opportunity for sure.

15:20 Emily: Yeah. I’m just thinking I’m doing tiny bit of arithmetic here. Okay. So $75 an hour once per week, we’re talking 300 a month if you’re doing this for a whole month. And I know, because this is cyclical, people might not be like continuously involved with mentorship, but let’s say you do it for six months out of the year. That’s $1,800 coming in for the year that you didn’t have before. And that goes a pretty nice far ways to contributing to an IRA, for example, where the max is $6,000 per year. If you wanted to invest it there are plenty of other good things you can do. Like Stephen, you just said improving your physical and mental health and you’re making time for hobbies and so forth. Lots of good things you can do with money, but that’s a pretty nice chunk of change, especially as we mentioned for the hourly commitment.

Commercial

16:06 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. We have a special event coming up on Friday, August 27th, 2021. It’s the fourth installment of my Wealthy PhD workshop series. The subject is debt repayment. This workshop is for you if you’re in debt of any kind and want to learn the best strategies for getting out of debt. These strategies are tailored to the PhD experience, particularly that of graduate students. We will cover student loans, of course, which are such a complex topic, as well as mortgages, credit card debt, auto debt, medical debt, et cetera. I’ll give you a spreadsheet that will help you work through in which order to tackle your debts, taking into account the type of debt, the interest rate, and the pay-off balance. We’ll also discuss how to sustain your motivation through a long debt repayment process. This is going to be a value-packed session. So please join us on August 27th. You can register at pfforphds.com slash wphddebt. That’s PFforPhDs.com/W for wealthy P H D D E B T. Now back to our interview.

How to Inform Your Mentor About a Side Hustle

17:22 Emily: So Stephen, we talked earlier about how flexible and low time commitment this is. Did you choose to tell your mentor that you were involved with this? Did you choose to keep it on the down low? Like yeah. How did the sort of time management work with you and your mentor?

17:39 Stephen: Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, I get that question from mentors all the time actually is how do you kind of balance this with other obligations? And I mean, I would 100% advocate for informing your mentor, right? Because I think without doing that, it’s not really going to be something that is going to feel comfortable for you, but this isn’t something that needs to be hidden, right? This is a teaching opportunity that your mentor is probably going to be very enthused about you doing, you know, especially if they’re not in need of you to be on a TAship. This is just further development professionally. It also affords you the opportunity to make a little bit of extra income, which as mentors will often tell you, it’s nice to not have students feeling like they’re starving. You know what I mean? And so I think that those are pieces that are important.

18:21 Stephen: And so I certainly told my mentor, and basically I just laid it out as this is not going to impact any of my day-to-day work. Because as I was saying before, you know, the flexibility of the scheduling affords you to be able to set this up well after anything that would be needed in your day-to-day. It can be done on weekends wherein you may not have as many obligations to your full-time position, whatever that might be. And so I think that that’s really how it should be approached, is that this is just a additional professional development opportunity. And I would wager that most mentors and most programs are going to completely support and advocate for that.

18:58 Emily: Yeah. I think that unless there’s an explicit prohibition on any kind of outside work for money, this is probably one of the first things that’s going to go over pretty well with a mentor because of the time commitment because of flexibility. Jin, have you seen other mentors take the same approach as Stephen or different ones? Do you have anything to add about how to approach your advisor with, “Hey, I’m going to take this opportunity”?

19:24 Jin: Yeah, I think definitely a lot of the other mentors that I’ve talked to have just made it very clear with their PIs, that this is not going to affect, or maybe this will even enhance, their own work. And especially those who are thinking about, again, a career in teaching, this usually just goes over really well with PIs. The only sort of difference is I think there are some mentors, if they have certain funding from certain foundations and sources that explicitly prohibit, let’s say outside work, then there have been some conversations where the mentor realized that they can’t actually get paid for the work. And they’re going to just volunteer and work with some of our scholarship students in the scholarship program. But in general, for most of our mentors, it’s gone over actually really well with their PIs. And most of our mentors will want to tell their PIs just in the name of transparency.

Anyone Who Might Not Be a Good Fit at the Moment?

20:12 Emily: To kind of expand on that question a little bit more, Jin. So you just mentioned, okay, there might be some limited circumstances where, contractually, graduate students are not permitted to be paid for outside work. Are there any other people who might be excited by this episode and thinking that they might want to work with Polygence, but that you know already would not be a good fit at least at the moment?

20:35 Jin: Yeah, so unfortunately we are not able to employ graduate students who are on student visas, just because with payment issues, we need everyone to have U.S. work authorization. So mentors who are on F-1 student visas or I think J-1 student visas as well. Sadly, the only way to get involved is through volunteering, which some of our mentors still do, but obviously we know that the financial reward is something that’s very important. And so that’s one thing that’s unfortunate. But for international mentors who are on OPT, CPT, or H1B visas or obviously on a green card, they are absolutely welcome to the paid side of the program. But again, just because of legal issues, we can’t with international students on student visas. Yeah. And I would also say in general, in terms of like what makes a good mentor, is someone who’s really excited about teaching, someone who likes connecting with young kids, and who has a little bit of extra time and energy to devote to this.

21:38 Emily: Yeah, absolutely. And if any international students or students on F-1 or J-1 visas are listening, I released an episode a few months back on what kind of side work is allowed for students on those visas. And it’s a very illuminating episode. So we’ll link it from the show notes, but yes, very clearly this would be considered self-employment income. And that is not a type of income that F-1 students can pursue except on OPT or CPT. So yeah, just want make that clear, but Jin, you’re kind of speaking from personal experience here. You know, you mentioned that you were an international student, at least when you first came to the States. So can you talk more about your experience founding this startup as an international student and someone pursuing their PhD? That’s a lot of things.

22:18 Jin: Totally. It was, I think emotionally, just so, dealing with American immigration is just, I think emotionally exhausting, and I’m still in the middle of it because now I’m actually in the middle of dealing with the green card process, which is a whole separate headache. But yeah, so I was on F-1 from undergrad until the beginning of my PhD. And then when I first established Polygence with my co-founder, I was still an F-1 and I just wasn’t getting paid. It was just sort of like a unpaid thing for the exact same reasons that we were talking about. And then when I decided I wanted to take time off and be paid by the company and do work on Polygence full-time, I then applied for part-time CPT because I wasn’t ABD yet. Like I wasn’t all but dissertation yet, so I couldn’t exactly just do OPT.

23:06 Jin: And so I was on part-time CPT for the first year of my full-time work with Polygence. And then I got married and then started the green card process after which I got the temporary EAD from work authorization thing. But all that to say, I think, yeah, navigating immigration and having an extra source of income as an international student, like I know full well to all of our listeners who are going through the same thing, like how much of an emotional drain it is. But there are ways to work around it. And sort of going back to our previous topic of how the department or how my own, you know, academic bosses dealt with it. They were actually really, really supportive of me actually taking time off even, partly because the job market is so dismal in the humanities that they’re like, if it’s one PhD candidate to fight for one job in comparative literature on a yearly basis, that’s, you know, a win for us. And so they were actually really supportive of me taking a break and helping me throughout the whole visa debacle.

Jin: What is Your Work-Life Balance and PhD Status?

24:14 Emily: So I definitely understand the pressures and the circumstances that led to you saying, okay, this is a solution. I need to take a pause in my program, do CPT for a bit. Are you back into pursuing the PhD actively now? Like what is your work-life balance going on right now?

24:32 Jin: Yeah, it’s still a little bit complicated right now. I’ve finally gotten to ABD. I was actually working somewhat on my perspectives and on my research during the first year of me being on CPT. But now that I’m all but dissertation, I can just take my time. I’m not being funded by Stanford at all. But I’m still sort of on paper enrolled so that I can still stay in housing and get health insurance, that kind of thing. But I am full-time working on the company.

24:59 Emily: Oh, that’s so interesting. Yeah. I didn’t realize you had that set up right now. So everybody hates this question. How long do you think it will take you to finish the PhD? Like when you have a full-time position and you’re doing this on the side, I know this is something that so many people get into when they are ABD, especially in fields like yours, where you don’t have to be in the lab and you’re not being funded by a grant and blah, blah, blah. So like just let us know a little bit more about how you’re managing both aspects of this work.

25:25 Jin: Yeah. It’s definitely a little hairy and tricky because I actually still have, I think one or two more courses that I’m supposed to teach at Stanford. But other than that I’m essentially just writing. And it depends on how quickly I write and how much time I can spare outside of working on the company. Right now, it’s not a lot of time that I can spare, just because I think the company just takes up all of my bandwidth and mind space. That being said, I definitely do want to finish it, because the research I’ve been doing and the novels that I’m working with are things that I care deeply about and derive a lot of intellectual satisfaction from. But I think it really is still a bit of a black box in terms of when I can devote myself to the extent that I would want to. And to the extent that the work deserves my attention while working on the company. So that is still a little bit unclear. I was thinking that maybe I could slowly chip away at the dissertation while working on the company, but that’s clearly not really happening. So I’m going to have to sort of kick the can a little bit further down the road.

Next Steps for Getting Involved with Polygence

26:30 Emily: Okay. Well, that was fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing. Let’s circle back to how people can get involved with Polygence if they want to. What is the next step, if they’re like, oh yeah, I’m really, really interested in becoming a mentor. I want to learn more.

26:42 Jin: Yeah. So the next step would to go to the link in the show notes. It’s our short mentor interest form. It takes three seconds to fill out. And once you fill that out, we basically ask you what discipline you’re in, where in your program. Yeah. What stage in your program you are, name, email, whether you have work authorization, very important. And then after that, we will ask you to schedule a 15-minute preliminary call with one of our mentor interviewers. And it’s where you can learn a little more about the program, ask questions about what students are like, what kinds of projects they do. And then after that interview, we will set you up on the platform with your own profile account. And then after that, we will start sending you students once we’ve done a background check on you as well. And then we have a lot of really cool mentor programming and scaffolding to help you get more comfortable with this kind of one-on-one Socratic project-based teaching model, where we offer sort of teaching demo preparation sessions, where we ask you to prepare a mock assignment. And we put you in groups with other new mentors, and maybe Stephen can talk a little more about those because he’s the leading a lot of them.

27:47 Stephen: Yeah. So the teaching demos, they’re the opportunity for incoming mentors who have been matched with a student to be able to kind of review some general tips and tricks essentially of, you know, how to kind of engage with the student initially, because we have a lot of mentors who come in with previous teaching experience, obviously, but with a particular format that we are trying to support. Sometimes it’s a little bit different, right? Because you mentioned earlier, Emily, about how like most of these teaching opportunities are typically in groups, which kind of affords a certain social flexibility. But when it’s, one-on-one, it’s a slightly different architecture, which requires, you know, a little bit more of a, like how do you motivate maybe a shy student or how do you engage with a student who’s very enthusiastic and maybe needs to kind of regain some semblance of focus? You know, those are just little things that can come up, but we, as, you know, mentor support team members, we want to make sure that mentors feel like they have access to the information that they’ll need to be as successful as possible with students, because their success very directly affects the success of the students. Right? So we want to make sure that we’re providing that kind of support.

Best Advice for an Early-Career PhD

28:55 Emily: I’m so glad to hear that you’re not just being thrown into like, as happens so often in academia, you’re just being thrown into a situation and expect that you already know what to do, and there’s no like clear way to go for help. Okay. That’s really good to hear. Awesome. So people know where they can go next and we will just wrap up by, I’ll ask you the same question that I ask of everyone that I interview on the podcast, which is what is your best financial advice for an early-career PhD? And Jin, why don’t you go first?

29:22 Jin: That is a million-dollar question. I would say be on top of your savings and make sure that you are saving at least a little bit every month. I know a lot of people, you know, also have student loans to deal with and other things. But I think what was really helpful for me is like really learning how to budget and make sure that on a weekly basis or even on a daily basis, I know how much is coming in and out of my accounts. And also if you’re able to, you know, have a little bit of fun as well, be kind to yourself because I think being a PhD student or any graduate student is really hard mentally and intellectually. And if you have, you know, a little bit of extra funds, whether it’s through Polygence or some other side hustle, treat yourself to something from time to time and just be kind to yourself because this is a marathon, not a sprint.

30:11 Stephen: Yeah. Well, for me, it works out best to use an Excel sheet honestly, right? For the budgeting. And I think that it’s good to kind of orchestrate what is good for you. For some people, they want to spend more money on food. Some people want to spend more money on free time, hobbies, whatever it might be. But I think kind of looking at what you have available to yourself, setting aside, obviously, a column for savings just for who knows what, but, you know, as Jin was saying, being able to kind of establish something to give yourself a break every once in a while and provide yourself some semblance of excitement, I think is really key. Because once you have that, you won’t feel the need to maybe overspend unnecessarily in certain segments of your life. And so I think that that can really be a great way to get the most out of what you have available as a grad student. For sure.

31:00 Emily: You both articulated that so well. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode and I hope that you have a great season of recruiting mentors. Hopefully, a few from this podcast.

31:10 Jin: Thank you, thanks for having us.

Outtro

31:10 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPhds.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast. On that page are links to all the episode show notes, which include full transcripts and videos of the interviews. There is also a form to volunteer to be interviewed on the podcast. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email listserv, or as a link from your website. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and effective budgeting. I also license prerecorded workshops on taxes. Four, subscribe to my mailing list at PFforPhds.com/subscribe. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode! And remember you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps! The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the free music archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio, and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

Why and How to Start a Coaching Side Hustle as a Grad Student, Academic, or Researcher

October 5, 2020 by Meryem Ok

In this episode, Emily interviews Cheryl Lau, a PhD student and branding and content coach serving graduate students, academics, and researchers. Cheryl assists her clients with their service-based side hustles, and our interview today is on why and how to start a coaching business on the side of your PhD training or full-time job. Cheryl identifies two mindset shifts that new coaches might need to make before they dive into their businesses and the first three steps they should take. Cheryl shares her story of figuring out personal branding following a quarter-life crisis and the financial impact that her own coaching income has on her grad student finances.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

00:00 Cheryl: And that’s what I realized that, “Oh, wow. I actually have some answers and suggestions and tips. Maybe I can help people on that.” So, what I did first was actually started working with people for free. And I saw that, well, one of my clients actually was able to get a paying client for her own business. And that’s when I realized, you know what, I can charge for this.

Introduction

00:23 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season seven, episode five, and today my guest is Cheryl Lau, a PhD student and branding and content coach serving graduate students, academics, and researchers. Cheryl assists her clients with their service-based side hustles, and our interview today is on why and how to start a coaching business on the side of your PhD training or full-time job. Cheryl identifies two mindset shifts that new coaches might need to make before they dive into their businesses. And the first three steps they should take. Cheryl shares her story of figuring out personal branding, following a quarter-life crisis, and the financial impact that her own coaching income has on her grad student finances. You can find out more about Cheryl and her business at cheryltheory.com. Cheryl and I met through the self-tenure community run by Dr. Chris Cloney. And speaking of coaching, Chris is actually my online business coach. If you want to learn more about starting and running an online business as an academic or researcher, definitely check out Chris’s resources at gradblogger.com and selftenure.com. What Cheryl and I cover in this interview dovetails very nicely with some resources I’ve released this fall inside the Personal Finance for PhDs Community. If you run a business as a side hustle, whether coaching or otherwise, you may be interested in my new course, Best Financial Practices for Your Self-Employment Side Hustle. I’ve covered two topics so far how to budget with a variable side income and how to choose a self-employment retirement account. If you are maxing out your IRA this year and don’t have access to a 401(k) or 403(b), I highly recommend the latter module. To view all the benefits of being part of the community and sign up, visit pfforphds.community. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Cheryl Lau.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:30 Emily: I’m really excited to introduce you all today to Cheryl Lau. She is a branding and content coach focusing on PhD, students, academics, and researchers. And specifically today, we’re going to be talking about coaching businesses. Now, I just said, Cheryl herself is a coach, she helps other people who are also coaches, and I also serve as a coach. So, we have a lot of coach talk going on today. And just to frame this a little bit, Cheryl specifically works with people who doing coaching or other service based businesses as a side hustle. So, this is absolutely something that you can do on the side of your graduate work, your PhD training, your full-time job. That’s perfectly okay. So, I want you to keep listening to this episode, even if you’re initially thinking, “Wait, why would I become a coach? What could I possibly coach someone about?” No, that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. So, you’ll probably have your mind expanded a little bit about the possibility of you starting a coaching business, and Cheryl’s here with us too, to help us do that. So Cheryl, will you please tell the audience just a little bit more about yourself?

03:32 Cheryl: Sure. So hi everyone. My name is Cheryl and I am originally from Toronto, Canada, but right now I am based in Hong Kong. So, originally I studied psychology at the University of Toronto, and now I am starting my PhD in Social Welfare at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. And online, I am a brand and content coach or strategist, and I basically help academics, graduate students, and researchers to really show up online confidently and build a brand and a side hustle business that really makes an income and an impact.

What is a Coach, and What is a Coaching Business?

04:05 Emily: So perfect. Thank you. Okay. So, Cheryl, what is a coach, and what is a coaching business? Because I know a lot of people, my audience will never have hired a coach for anything, they aren’t coaches themselves. So, what exactly are we talking about?

04:18 Cheryl: Sure. So the pure, pure, pure definition, if you search on Google, I’m sure the definitions will be something along the lines of empowering the client to make a decision for himself or to empower clients to really think on their own and think about how they want to achieve their own goals. So, that’s like the pure, pure definition of coaching. But how I like to look at a coaching business is basically using your own preexisting skills, knowledge or experiences to help someone solve a problem. And that could be in the form of coaching, mentorship, or teaching. So, basically if you’ve been able to get a result for yourself or for others and you can help other people achieve that same result, you can start a coaching business on that.

04:59 Emily: Yeah. So, a coaching business could be drawn out of professional expertise, certainly, but it can also kind of be drawn from expertise that’s developed through your personal journey and then expanding that beyond just yourself, working with other people, learning from other people. And I would say that latter describes, you know, my journey as a personal finance expert, right? Like I don’t have any certifications when it comes to like the financial stuff, but I’ve spent enough time in this space, talked with enough people, listened to enough great resources that I consider myself an expert, and bill myself as an expert in that area. So really, you know, you don’t have to be a professional in the area that you ultimately coach in. You just have to be, well, frankly, you just have to be more competent than your clients, really. I’ve heard it said that, to be a coach, you have to be just one or two steps ahead of the person you’re trying to help. So, like in the financial realm, you don’t have to be a certified financial planner. If you want to coach people on their budgeting, you have to be like pretty good at budgeting. You don’t even have to know about investments or all the other stuff. So, you can sort of narrow the scope of what you’re going to be coaching on based on the actual expertise that you do have. Don’t feel like you have to be an expert across the board at everything, right?

06:11 Cheryl: Yeah. And I totally agree with that. I feel like there are maybe a few different ways that people can look inside or in the past and assess where they can draw, they can derive a coaching business from. So, maybe like you said, your personal experiences or maybe achievements you’ve accomplished. Let’s say, for example, maybe you were a TEDx speaker. You can teach people how to become a TEDx speaker or get invited to speak at TEDx events. Or maybe if you’re really just naturally gifted at something, maybe you’re just a naturally good listener, so maybe you have a particular strength and you’re really upbeat and motivating and uplifting to other people. You can support people by being a listener. Perhaps you can become a life coach eventually. So, there are many different ways you can look at your skills, your achievements, or your strengths. And I think by looking at those three areas, you can kind of start thinking about what are things I can help people solve a problem on?

Why Coaching is a Good Side Hustle

07:05 Emily: Absolutely. So, let’s get back to like the idea of the coaching business. Why would someone want to pursue this while they have a full-time job or while they are in graduate school, for example? Like why is this a good side hustle?

07:20 Cheryl: So, as graduate students or academics, your time is very, very valuable. And by being able to start a coaching business on something that you already know by using your preexisting knowledge, skills, or experiences or achievements, you’re not starting from scratch. You’re not learning an entire new craft from stage zero, but rather you’re already building on top of what you already know. So, the learning curve is a lot faster. And that said, you really do not need an original idea. So, contrary to maybe startups where you need something that’s very new and fresh and original, here, your coaching business model or the problem that you’re helping to solve for other people. It’s usually kind of mundane. It’s nothing that new. So, maybe for example, for me as a brand and content coach, there’s many people helping others in marketing or starting an online business or side hustle.

08:17 Cheryl: So, the idea itself is not new, but in fact, where there is competition, that means there’s more demand for that service. And so, because time is so valuable as a graduate student or a PhD or academic, by building a business that doesn’t require you to learn that much skills upfront, you can save a lot of time. And also by working closely with your clients, whether that’s one on one or in a group setting, you’re really able to help pinpoint what are areas that people are getting stuck on and you can really answer their questions and help them resolve issues as they come up really quickly. And as a result, your clients are getting much faster results and much higher quality results than if you were to just create an ebook and give them all the information and they were to implement it on their own. Because challenges do come up, limiting beliefs and self-doubts do come up. But if you’re able to coach them through those limiting beliefs, then they’re able to get results much, much faster. So, those are a couple of reasons people might consider starting a coaching business.

Active vs. Passive Coaching Income

09:17 Emily: Yeah. You made a couple great points in there that I wanted to follow up on. One is regarding like the value of your time as a researcher. Service-based side hustles in general, they’re the fastest way to make money on the side when you’re literally trading your time for money. So, you know, you mentioned this in contrast to like for instance, writing ebook and publishing it and maybe generating passive income over time. That’s another way to help people, but they’re very different approaches and you can charge a lot more for one-on-one or small group services than you can for an ebook, for example. And you’re literally just trading like your hours for money. And so it’s very, very fast. You can build it very quickly, turn it around. Of course, you need people who want your service.

10:03 Emily: But it’s a very quick way to make money and more reliable, I would say, then doing something like trying to generate passive income from an ebook. And I think another point that you made in there that I wanted to pull out is that the way that you’re serving people is different than them just trying to learn something on their own. They probably have already attempted to learn and take action on whatever the subject area is that you are coaching in. Like in my sphere, in personal finance, maybe someone listens to my podcast, other podcasts, maybe they love to read about personal finance, maybe they read books. But there is still a disconnect between absorbing that information and actually implementing it in their life. And so if someone is at that stage of, “Well, I’ve taken in a lot of content, but you know what, I’m just not making changes in my life, and I want to.” That might be a place where a coach could step in, like I could step in, and help that person get to that next step. So, they’re both valuable, but it’s very different approaches for helping people achieve their results.

11:03 Cheryl: Yeah, totally. And you know, there are so many different ways that a person can make money online using your own skills and experience and knowledge. But one thing that’s very unique about coaching is that, or one benefit I should say, is that by serving your audience in such a high touch, high accountability, high personalization manner, even the quality of the results that your clients will get will be a lot better than if they were to do it on their own. And because of that, the testimonials that you’ll get in return at the end of your work together will be much better. And your testimonials are very important, especially when you’re building a coaching business because other people want to see that, “Hey, this person can actually help me solve a problem and get me really good results.” And so testimonials are really important for the marketing aspect of your coaching business.

Flexible Working Hours

11:51 Emily: I think another thing that you haven’t necessarily touched on yet, but is another point in favor of coaching as a side hustle, is that it’s very scalable in terms of time. Like you can spend an hour a month coaching if you want to, or you can spend many hours per week and that could be your side hustle. And so, it’s different than, you know, a side job, let’s say where someone else is dictating your schedule and the amount of hours you should work. It’s completely up to you as the business owner to dictate how many hours you’re going to work per period of time.

12:20 Cheryl: Yeah. That’s a really great point because the flexibility of the coach is just incredible because all you really need is wifi and Zoom basically. So, by being able to, basically honestly, you can work from anywhere. You can be a coach anywhere, as long as you have the internet, even the startup costs that you need to start a coaching business are quite low compared to other business models. You don’t need that much tech. You don’t need that much software. You just need Zoom and internet, basically. You can easily package later on if you choose. So, you can package what you’ve taught and coach people on into a digital course, a passive product. But after you gain more experience, after you really pinpoint what are areas that people really struggle with and what are questions that come up over and over again, and you take notes on those issues and challenges that come up, you can easily create a digital course or digital product based on your experiences as a coach. And you can sell that much better, as opposed to just creating a course upfront and not really knowing if it’s going to be able to help people get results.

Mindset Shifts to Start a Coaching Business

13:22 Emily: Yeah, I totally agree. We’re talking to like graduate students, a lot of people and other PhDs, and they might be thinking like, who, “Who am I to be starting to be starting a coaching business, what is this? So, what are some of the mindset shifts that someone in my audience who is sort of intrigued by this idea? What do they might need to work on in their mindset before they’re able to really embark on a coaching business?

13:44 Cheryl: So, you just mentioned basically imposter syndrome: who am I to start a coaching business? And I think that is massive. And I think one other, I guess, belief that goes hand in hand with imposter syndrome is the idea, or basically the fear of judgment. So, what are people going to think if I start a coaching business? So, one perspective shift that I would really like to offer your audience today is to think about who are you trying to work with versus who are the people who might potentially be making judgments about your business? Because ultimately whatever you do in your life, there will be people who are making judgments about you, even if you’re not doing anything. Even if you’re not doing a coaching business, you’ll still receive judgment. So, the question is how much time and concern are you giving to the people who you’re trying to serve versus the people who really aren’t going to become clients in the long run?

14:32 Cheryl: And so, I would really encourage the audience who might be thinking of starting a coaching business to really think about, “Okay, this is a target audience I want to serve and how can I actually get my message and/or work in front of them so that they can see the value of my work?” As opposed to just worrying about what people are going to think, especially those who are really just never going to become fans or supporters of my work, because there’s definitely people who would never really see the value of coaching. So, that means that they’re unlikely to become paying clients or part of your audience. So, if you are really worried about what are people going to think, I would urge you to just to just focus on the impact that you can make and the audience that you want to serve, as opposed to worrying about people whose opinions really have no bearing on you serving that particular audience.

Navigating Imposter Syndrome

15:17 Cheryl: And also, as we mentioned, imposter syndrome. One really easy way to navigate this imposter syndrome is to remember that imposter syndrome really roots from feeling like you’re not credible enough to start this coaching business. But if you just remember that you’re starting a coaching business based off of your preexisting skills and knowledge and experiences, these are things that you’ve already done before, and you’re simply helping other people do the exact same thing. So, if it really is an issue that comes up, one thing that I encourage all of my own clients to do is to start working with people for free first. That way you can actually make sure that you can help people and get them results and not worry about, “Oh my gosh, can I really help people?” But by having actual evidence, concrete evidence that you can get results for other people, you are not only running your business in integrity, but you’re also able to work through that imposter syndrome by seeing that, “You know what, I can do this.”

16:13 Emily: Some people around you might be saying, “Wait, would anyone find value in the coaching that you’re providing?” But like you said, if you actually start working with clients and on a free basis or low-cost basis to begin with, then you can prove to yourself and the people who might be questioning around you, “Oh yes, I do help people get results. Like this is what I’ve done. This is what I’ve helped them do in the past.” You have the receipts basically. Once you start working with people and you can keep track of those testimonials and keep track of their results, that can both encourage you and help you answer to people who are wondering really what you’re doing here.

16:48 Cheryl: Yeah. I love that point. And you know what, very recently, I think about two months ago, I was meeting with an old classmate. So, my classmate said, “Wait, people actually pay you for this?” And I’m not gonna lie, I was pretty taken aback when I heard her say that. Because for many, many months, I’ve been working on my business and I’ve been working with clients and helping them get results. And to suddenly hear someone I used to be friends with question the validity or the legitimacy of my business was really shocking. But then in order to snap back into the swing of things, I reminded myself that, “Hey, you know what, I do have the receipts, just go on my website and you’ll see all these testimonials.” And I remember once again that I have worked with people, I’ve helped them get results.

17:35 Cheryl: And as a result, I’m able to run my business in integrity. And I think that’s really important for people to remember that you are focusing on people that you can actually help as opposed to faking your way into getting clients. Because, as opposed to just signing on every single client that is in sight, really focus on helping people that you can actually help so that imposter syndrome doesn’t come up and you can actually see the clients achieve amazing transformations.

18:01 Emily: Hmm. I totally agree about being selective about the clients that you take on. I think just coaching overall is kind of an unknown industry, or at least maybe among like the academic audience, it might be a little unfamiliar. So, I think the question of like, “People pay you to do that?” I can understand why you’d be a little taken aback by that, but I don’t think it was probably meant in offense, just like, “Oh my gosh, like there’s an industry around people getting paid to do this thing?” But like we were saying earlier, you know, for people who really want that high touch interaction with a coach, then yes. They decide at some point some of them that it is worth it to them and they choose to pay for it. So, it’s the decision of your clients, not the people around you.

Commercial

18:44 Emily: Emily here, for a brief interlude. If you are a fan of this podcast, I invite you to check out the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at pfforphds.community. The Community is for PhDs and people pursuing PhDs who want to take charge of their personal finances by opening and funding an IRA, starting to budget, aggressively paying off debt, financially navigating a life or career transition, maximizing the income from a side hustle, preparing an accurate tax return, and much more. Inside the Community, you’ll have access to a library of financial education products, which I add to every month. There is also a discussion forum, monthly live calls with me, a book club, and progress journaling for financial goals. Basically, the Community exists to help you reach your financial goals, whatever they are. Go to pfforphds.community to find out more. I can’t wait to help propel you to financial success. Now, back to the interview.

First Steps Toward Starting a Coaching Business

19:47 Emily: Let’s say that we’ve talked someone into, “Okay, I’m going to consider starting a coaching business. I have my area of expertise, my area in mind that I want to coach in.” What are some of the first steps that that person should take towards starting this coaching business?

20:02 Cheryl: So, I would say the first step is really getting clear on what do you want to coach on? And I think that if you want to gain more clarity on that, one of the steps that you can take is to really identify an achievement or a process that you’ve undergone and just map out that process step-by-step. What are the steps that you took or different areas or components that contributed to that final result? So, really just write down what are the different steps or parts of you being able to achieve a certain result or solve a specific problem for yourself.

20:35 Cheryl: And that will become kind of like your framework or methodology that you can walk people through to help them get results as well. Because ultimately, the goal is to be able to help someone through a process that is unique to you and something that you’ve done for yourself as opposed to teaching something that you haven’t really done for yourself. So, I think the first step is to really identify what are the key steps or key areas that have led you to where you are today. And then the next step would be marketing and sales. So, perhaps you can be on social media to share your services, to talk about your program, and to talk about how you’ve been able to get results for yourself. And really just share how excited you are about the program and why this worked for you and why it will work for other people who are struggling with something similar as well.

21:22 Cheryl: And finally, just delivering a really awesome coaching experience for a client. And I think those are the very fundamental steps that people can take when they’re just starting out. I mean, there are so many different things that you can do. You can start a webinar funnel, you can start an email list, you can create a podcast or YouTube channel. There are so many different things you can do to market and promote your coaching program. But I think at the core of it, having clarity on your offer, being able to share insight on your first few clients and also deliver really good results with people. I think that’s the core. The first few steps that people should look into first.

Finding Your First Few Clients and Charging for Coaching

21:55 Emily: I also think that there might be some people in the audience who are a little bit nervous about, you know, you used the word marketing. Like a little bit nervous about kind of putting themselves out there as like this coach in this certain area. You know, you mentioned earlier taking on your first few clients for free. So, I sort of view that as like an exploratory process, both for the coach and the people being coached. The coach is sort of investigating, is this something, you know, like you said earlier, can I provide value? Can I help this person achieve results? Do I like it? What do I think my time is worth? They’re kind of exploring through that process. And then of course you do need to start charging and I would say pretty soon. You know, don’t do that for very long. Can you talk to me about those first few clients? Maybe how to find them and then also the transition between doing that for free and then starting to charge for it.

22:44 Cheryl: Yeah. The interesting thing that I’ve learned about working with people for free is that because they’re not necessarily financially invested in your program, the chances of them staying committed throughout the entire process is not as committed as someone who has actually invested money into your coaching program. So, what I would suggest when you’re finding beta clients is to really be selective about it. So, invite people as opposed to just shouting it from the rooftops and hoping that people will inquire about it. So for example, what I did was actually, I looked at my current audience and I would recall the conversations I had with people and identify two or three people who I think would be a good fit and really fun to work with. And I send them a personalized message and say that, “Hey, this is my goal. I really want to launch this paid program in a few months time. But first I want to make sure that this actually works. So, based on our conversation so far, here’s what we talked about. And I think that this will be a really helpful program for you, and it will be complimentary, it’ll be for free. And in return, I just would really love for feedback and a testimonial if I provided value.” And so that’s how I would go about inviting people to be clients, your first few beta clients, you could say.

Transitioning from Free to Fee-Based Coaching

23:58 Emily: And how about that transition to starting to ask for money? I think that’s a really intimidating one for everyone, self-employed people–especially people who have been cultured by academia to believe that they should be giving away their work for free.

24:14 Cheryl: Yeah, that is a very, very interesting topic to talk about because you know, how I did it was I simply worked with people for free first and got the testimonials. And that just gave me the full-fledged confidence to tell people that, “You know what, here are the results I was able to help people achieve, both internally in terms of mindset and externally in terms of what they’re able to achieve online or for their own personal goals. And here’s why I am so confident in my work.” I think for someone who is starting a coaching business, just being very confident in yourself is something that is very important when it comes to marketing or selling your program. As long as you truly believe that you’re able to get results with people, as long as you truly believe in the impact of your work, I think that that energy can exude and can translate and people can tell. People can really tell when you’re confident in your work. But for someone who might be a little bit nervous about it, what I recommend is, I think pricing is a tricky thing. But what I recommend is just to pick a price that you are comfortable saying and sharing with people and just stick with it. No need to compare your prices with other people. Just pick a price, a number, it’s very arbitrary, to be honest. Just pick a number and then increase from there. As you gain confidence, continue increasing your prices and have it reflect the value of your work.

25:32 Cheryl: So, I think for people who might be nervous for charging, start low and increase as you go, that might be a way to go about it. Of course, please charge. Please charge for your time and the value and impact that you’re going to make for people. But when you’re just starting out, it might be a little trickier. But over time, you’ll recognize the value and impact of your work. And as a result, your prices will go up naturally as well.

Free is Okay at First, But Start Charging Soon

25:57 Emily: Yeah, I definitely agree. Okay. So, what we’re pointing out is, okay, free is okay at first, but put a limit on it. Start charging somewhere, and increase it. Whatever you feel, whatever you think you can say with a straight face, maybe after talking yourself up a little bit, start there and then increase it. I’ll say two quick anecdotes about that. One was from when I started my speaking aspect of my business. I decided to offer a free seminar to three clients. It was based on what was convenient to me geographically. And then I said, “After that, that’s it. I’m done doing things for free, and I’m going to be charging, and this is the price point.” So, I did that. One school turned me down. So, I gave two free seminars, and then I started charging. And in those first few months of starting to pitch myself and telling people about the seminar content and stuff, I was laughed at, and I was told that my prices were not appropriate a couple of different times. But I sort of knew that they were appropriate based on what I’ve learned about the market pricing.

27:00 Emily: And I just kind of had to persevere through that and, you know, ultimately, just a few months later, was able to earn that amount that I had been asking for, and then have increased my prices every year, since then. So, talk with a lot of people, once you’re ready to start charging. Cast a wide net for potential clients, and don’t be discouraged if the first two people you talk to don’t like the price point. That’s okay. Just keep pitching it and keep putting it out there, making sure of course that it’s reasonable for the market that you’re in. So, that’s one anecdote for my business.

27:32 Emily: Another that I’ll relay is Dr. Jen Polk, whose brand is From PhD to Life. She is a career coach specializing in PhDs. And I remember her saying that when she started this, this was probably about 10 years ago, she started doing this. She asked people, her first paying clients, for $10 for an hour of work. And that was the price point. And she is a huge advocate of people increasing their prices and charging what you’re worth and so forth because she did start out with like way, way, way, undervaluing herself right out the gate. And I think she did that for a little longer than she would like, which is why she’s always telling people the advice that we just gave, which is just increase, increase, increase. As you were saying, as you grow in confidence, as your pile of receipts of great testimonials grows and grows.

Origin Story of Cheryl’s Coaching Business

28:17 Emily: So, I totally think your action steps were were wonderful and right on the point. And now I want to get to a little bit more of your story. Out in the front of this interview, we wanted to talk about coaching more generally, but now I want to hear a little bit more about your story. And especially now that you’re starting a PhD program, what your coaching business is going to look like on the side of your graduate work. So, can you tell us more about your story of starting your business?

28:40 Cheryl: All right. So, let’s bring it back to a few years ago when it really started for me through a quarter-life crisis, essentially. So, what had happened was I was actually in law school. I finished my undergrad and I went straight into law school because I was in the mindset of, “Oh my gosh, what a prestigious career.” That was the mentality I had back then. So, I immediately jumped into law school without really thinking about, “Is this a really good personality and career fit for me?” But, you know, lesson learned. But fast forward a year later into law school, I realized this really was just not the right fit for me. I mean, it was very interesting to learn about the law, but being a lawyer is a completely different story. And after my internships, I realized that I just cannot do this. And so I made the very difficult decision to drop out of law school, and this was late 2018.

29:29 Cheryl: And I realized at the time, “Wow, what am I going to do with my life? Essentially, I entered my quarter-life crisis at that point. And I was dabbling in the internet looking at career websites. And I found the term personal branding. And that was very interesting to me. I’ve never heard of the concept before, but I thought, “You know what, let me try to build an online presence. I don’t know where it’s going to go.” So, what I actually ended up doing was creating a YouTube channel to share my experiences about navigating parents’ expectations, making difficult life decisions. The channel does not exist anymore, but what happened was that I was actually building a slow and steady audience on Instagram and YouTube, and people were asking me questions. They were asking me questions about, “Wow, how did you have the confidence to show up online? Like, I really want to share this experience or that experience, but I’m just so scared. Or, “How are you able to grow an audience on social media?”

30:18 Cheryl: And that’s when I realized that, “Oh, wow, I actually have some answers and suggestions and tips. Maybe I can help people on that.” So, what I did first was I actually started working with people for free. And I saw that, “Wow, one of my clients actually was able to get a paying client for her own business.” And that’s when I realized, you know what, I can charge for this. And that’s how my coaching business came about. I officially launched my paid program in March of 2019 and have been charging ever since. And fast forward to today as a PhD student, this is a side hustle for me. And my PhD is my first priority right now, but that said, my side hustle is a large source of income for me compared to my stipend. And just having that extra income, it’s able to help me feel more financially secure. Especially with such uncertain times right now, just having that sense of security is very comforting for me.

31:15 Emily: Absolutely. I don’t know how your stipend is at your university, but there are plenty of places here in the U.S. where graduate students are not paid a living wage, barely paid a living wage. And having a side hustle, especially like we talked about earlier, one where you can immediately start making money trading your time for money can really help you through. Through feeling more financial security, as you were just saying, through being able to, you know, enable some pleasures in your life that you want to pay for, to enable saving. Like there are all different kinds of goals that you might put in place for your side hustle income. So, I’m really glad that you mentioned the financial aspect of this too.

Learn More About Cheryl Theory

31:56 Emily: So, where can people find you online, Cheryl, if they want to learn more about your business and your work?

32:01 Cheryl: Alright. So, I can be found mostly hanging out on Instagram. So, you can find me @cheryltheory. And just for a fun fact, my last name is not theory, but it was simply because all of the variations in the full name was taken. So, I had to pick an Instagram handle name. So, I decided to call my business name Cheryl Theory because back in high school, I thought, “One day I’m going to have my own theory.” So, that was just a running joke for myself. So, I created my business name, my username as Cheryl Theory. And you can also find me at my website, cheryltheory.com.

Best Financial Advice for an Early-Career PhD

32:37 Emily: Perfect. So final question, Cheryl, that I ask all of my guests is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be related to something that we’ve talked about today, or it could be something entirely else.

32:51 Cheryl: Sure. So, I think if I were to tie in a piece of financial advice related to the topic we were talking about today, is starting a coaching business can really bring in an extra source of income that can create so many different opportunities and options for you. But that said, one mistake that I see time and time again when it comes to new coaches, is that they get stuck in consuming information and not actually taking action on it. So, this is more so a business advice as opposed to financial advice, but I think it ties in with your coaching side hustle. So, instead of just waiting for you to feel ready and waiting to listen to another podcast or watching another YouTube video or download another PDF guide, just take action on what you’ve learned in those pieces of content, and actually just move forward. And if you fail, fail fast. And if you have to make tweaks, tweak fast.

33:42 Cheryl: The point of the matter is to take action really quickly and refine as you go so that you can keep moving forward. Because the interesting thing is that rather than having a step-by-step checklist that you can follow, and if you check off all the boxes, you’re going to get the coaching business success. That’s really not how it works, but rather there’s so many different ways that you can make money online. Just find what works for you and commit to it. So, continue taking action and not get stuck in information consumption or analysis paralysis.

34:08 Emily: Thank you so much for joining me Cheryl. This was a great conversation. I really hope that some people in the audience are going to start businesses based on, you know, hearing this. If you do, please let me and Cheryl know. And thank you. Yeah. Thank you again, Cheryl for joining me.

34:23 Cheryl: Thank you for having me.

Outtro

34:24 Emily: Listeners. Thank you for joining me for this episode. Pfforphds.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, please consider joining my mailing list for my behind-the-scenes commentary about each episode. Register at pfforphds.com/subscribe. See you in the next episode! And remember you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the free music archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

Best Practices in Side Hustling During Graduate School

August 31, 2020 by Lourdes Bobbio

In this episode, Emily interviews Lourdes Bobbio and Meryem Ok, two PhD students who work on this podcast as virtual assistants. Today’s conversation is all about side hustling! Lourdes and Meryem each give their perspectives on why and how they started side hustling, how they manage their time, and how they handle their self-employment income with respect to taxes and budgeting. Throughout the interview, you’ll get a behind-the-scenes perspective on how this podcast is produced. The end of the interview is a discussion of the unexpected benefits Lourdes and Meryem have experience from working on the podcast.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

Find Lourdes Bobbio on Twitter @lourdesb1012 and Meryem Ok on Twitter @Meryem_T_Ok
Related Episode: This NDSEG Fellow Prioritizes Housing and Saving for Mid- and Long-Term Goals
Related Episode: This PhD Student in Texas Side Hustles to Overcome Her Unique Financial Challenges
Personal Finance for PhDs: Financial Coaching
Personal Finance for PhDs: Podcast Hub
Personal Finance for PhDs: Subscribe to the mailing list

Teaser

00:00 Meryem: Every once in a while, if I need to make an extra purchase or a gift, I will kind of rationalize with myself, “Okay, I was able to make some extra income this month with the side hustle so it’s okay to spend that extra money.” And essentially that’s not a super cut and dry method, but it sort of helps me at least to rationalize my additional expenses and not get too anxious about finances during grad school, which is really, really nice to have that cushion outside of my usual budget.

Introduction

00:36 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast and higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season six, episode 18 and today my guests are Lourdes Bobbio and Meryem Ok, who are both PhD students and work with me as virtual assistants on this podcast. Today’s conversation is all things side hustling. Lourdes and Meryem each give their perspectives on why and how they started side hustling, how they manage their time, and how they handle their self employment income with respect to taxes and budgeting. Throughout the interview, you’ll get a behind the scenes perspective on how we produce this podcast. We close the interview discussing the unexpected benefits. Lourdes and Meryem have experienced from working on the podcast. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Lourdes Bobbio and Meryem Ok.

Will You Please Introduce Yourselves Further?

01:31 Emily: I’m bringing you a little bit of a different interview today. This is the first time on the PF for PhDs podcast. We have had three people on the call at once, that is two guests interviewees, and it’s really special to me because the people I’m interviewing today are my virtual assistants who work on the podcast with me, Lourdes Bobbio and Meryem Ok, and they’re both PhD students. We’re going to get into more about side hustling today, like the side hustle that they do with me and their experience with that, maybe their experiences side hustling with other people. So yeah, we’re talking side hustling today and I have my two guests with me. I’ll have you introduce yourselves, so Lourdes, why don’t you go first?

02:10 Lourdes: Hi everyone. My name Lourdes Bobbio. I’m a fifth year PhD candidate at Penn State University in the Department of Materials Science, and I work on additive manufacturing of metallic materials.

02:23 Emily: Yeah. Lourdes was actually a guest on a previous podcast episode and we will link that from the show notes. We did a budget breakdown with Lourdes, so we talked through her budget there in State College and Meryem, please introduce yourself.

02:35 Meryem: Hi, my name is Meryem. In 2016 I started the MD PhD program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — go Heels. After completing the first two years of med school in 2018, I started my PhD in UNC-NC State’s joint Department of Biomedical Engineering. Currently I am working in the Magnus Lab, developing tools to better understand human intestinal STEM cell fate. And I’m happy to say that I’m officially a PhD candidate as of two days ago.

03:05 Emily: Yes. Congratulations! We will record and release this in August 2020, so it’ll still be fresh news by the time this episode comes out. I’m just delighted to have you both on.

Why Side Hustle In Grad School?

03:17 Emily: First question here is why did you decide to start side hustling in graduate school? Why don’t we still go with Lourdes first?

03:25 Lourdes: Financially, I was doing actually pretty okay with my stipend. As Emily mentioned, I was previously on an episode where I discussed my NDSEG fellowship, and so I generally have a somewhat higher stipend than my peers and State College has a generally low cost of living. So financially I was doing, in terms of I had enough money to live on and for extras and to save, but the reason that I got into side hustling was so that I could have money to contribute to a Roth IRA. I think Emily has done an episode on this earlier in the year, but as of this current year 2020, fellowship recipients are now eligible to contribute to a Roth IRA, but previously they were not. I started one before I was being paid on fellowship and I wanted to try to contribute at least a little bit of money monthly to that, so having that side hustle, self employment income helped me to be able to do that and continue to contribute, even though I couldn’t with my general fellowship income.

04:32 Emily: That’s so strategic. I love that. It is the advice that I was giving out for people who had multi-year fellowships, is to consider that self-employment side hustle. Meryem, why’d you decide to start that side hustling.

04:44 Meryem: For me, I guess coming into medical school, I had actually taken a gap year and was able to transfer a lot of those funds into starting an IRA, so for me, it was less of a strategic approach and more just that I’ve really always had a lot of interests in gaining new skills and collaborating with other people outside of my primary career interests. I think specifically, actually, as far as video and podcast editing, I was inspired by my dad who is always the one recording all of our family memories and making home videos. And he actually founded and produced a public access TV show called Turkish American TV. That’s been going on for 15 years, completely as a passion, volunteer project. I remember many times he’d rope me into his projects and show me how to use video and editing software, and I really just felt lucky to have his guidance. I feel like I inherited his eye for detail since that’s helped me be more confident in marketing myself as a freelancer who just really genuinely enjoys editing. I guess for me, just as someone who needs to have hobbies and tasks outside of work, I wanted to try something new and also make a little extra income in line with my career development goals.

06:03 Emily: Maybe we should say what you all actually do for me with the podcast, to give you credit where credit is due. As the listeners know, I conduct the interviews for the podcast, but kind of everything that happens after that, I hand off to you two. So you do all the video and audio editing of the interviews, and you compile the show notes, which are actually full transcripts. It’s more work than it sounds actually. We use an automated tool to generate the first transcript, but then you go through with a careful listen and make it actually readable, which I really appreciate. And you also write the social media posts that we do for each episode, and you schedule things. There’s a few other tasks in there too, but those are the major pieces of work. It’s been an amazing help for me.

How did you find your current and previous side hustles?

06:44 Emily: I know how you two landed this side hustle, which is that I reached out to my mailing list when my last VA decided to leave the position. Thankfully, she gave me a lot of notice. I reached out to my mailing list and said, “Hey, podcast listeners, do you want to work on the show?” And you two both volunteered to do a trial episode and ultimately your work was great, so I hired both of you. But I don’t know if that’s the first side hustle you’ve had in graduate school, or whether you were even particularly looking for that kind of side hustle, or really how it came about kind of from your end, so why don’t you tell us. Lourdes?

07:19 Lourdes: I had done a couple of side hustles through freelancing websites. There was actually one particular one that was captioning and transcription of usually short audio files through this company called Rev. It’s basically just pick and choose these audio files and you get paid. It’s a very low paying job, but it was something that I did just sort of in my spare time. When I heard about the opening on this podcast, I was like, “Hey, this is perfect. This is like what I was doing before, but on sort of like another level and sort of a next step up.” It seemed like a perfect fit for what I like to do in general anyway, just on a higher level.

08:07 Emily: Yeah. Meryem, how about you?

08:09 Meryem: Yeah, that’s so funny, because actually that’s the first time I’m hearing this. For those who don’t know Lourdes and I actually went to undergrad together, so the fact that we serendipitously ended up as virtual assistants for the same podcast and kind of working together was phenomenal to experience and to find out. For me, I also was trying to look into doing these things independently through similar websites, but it was not really a sustainable effort or something that was really worth the rate that they were paying. And I felt like it’s so much more useful to be able to use these skills and also benefit from all of the knowledge that I’m gaining as I’m editing these episodes, which is relevant to us as graduate students trying to better our personal finances. Really it was a no brainer when I saw that email from Emily and reached out and I’m just so glad that it worked out and that we were able to take turns, Lourdes, and still have an activity shared together despite the distance and the years since college.

09:15 Emily: Yeah, that’s why I reached out to my list first, to try to hire for this position. I hoped that there would be people who would actually be interested in the material as well as having the skill set to work on the episode, instead of going with an independent agency or something, which I could have done, maybe if it hadn’t worked out, initially. I wanted to go to people who I sort of had a relationship with, and actually it happens to be the fact that I had corresponded with both of you over the years before that — we mentioned Lourdes had been on the podcast and Meryem has been on my mailing list for a long time, so we had exchanged emails and I think had call or two in that time. It was really helpful that I knew your names at least, when it came time for people to apply for that position. Meryem you have, since we started working together, taken on another podcast editing position, why don’t you talk about how that came about?

10:08 Meryem: Yeah, that’s right. Actually, I owe it to you, Emily, for alerting me to another side hustle opportunity in podcast editing with the AcaDames podcast, which is another awesome podcast focusing on women in academia. Earlier this year, I remember Emily sent an email to us, letting us know that AcaDames was looking for help since their previous student executive producer was graduating soon, and they wanted to have somebody to overlap during that period of transition. I reached out to them about that position and thankfully we were a good fit. Now I just feel really lucky that I get to work with these two amazing podcasts. My work with them partially involves editing, but also involves a little bit more of administrative and social media management work. I’ve just learned so much from both podcasts and I’m excited to be involved. And also again, benefit from all of the career development advice that I’ve been receiving just by working with both of them.

11:09 Emily: Yeah. I think it’s kind of interesting that for these positions, this podcast virtual assisting position and the AcaDames one, it sounds like we’re looking for someone who’s going to be doing a multiplicity of different things and you come in with maybe some subset of the skills, like Lourdes, you had the transcription type experience, but then we’re asking you to learn a bunch of other stuff which expands your skillset overall, even if you’re not going to be career podcast editors. I assume you’re going to do something with your PhDs, but it’s nice to have that kind of side work, I think.

Balancing Side Hustles, Grad School, and Personal Life

11:36 Emily: Between the side hustle, your graduate work, everything else that’s going on in your life. I know you two are both in relationships — Meryem, you recently got married. Lourdes, you’re engaged. You have a lot of stuff going on in your lives. And so how do you fit in this side work that you’re doing, along with everything else? Lourdes?

11:55 Lourdes: I guess for me, what attracted me to the side hustle specifically was that it’s something that I can work on from home. I don’t have to go anywhere to do anything, and I can kind of fit it into my schedule. It’s very flexible. Emily is super nice, in that she gets us a lot of heads up time between when we get audio files and when they’re going to be released. So there’s a lot of flexibility in the position, which is definitely something that I was initially looking for in side hustles, as well, when I was doing the more freelance, low paying transcription job, it’s something I could do just in my own time, so that’s been helpful in terms of being able to work it into my schedule, work my schedule around it.

12:38 Lourdes: Also, like Emily mentioned, I’m engaged, but for the last year I’ve also been long distance, and so I’ve had a little bit more free time. It’s also been really great during this work from home time, to have something else to do. Now that you’re pretty much primarily at home, we’ve all been at home, things can get a little bit stale, but having a lot of different activities to do has been really helpful in managing my own mental health. I don’t feel like I’m only at home to do work and I get to sort of have some variety in my day, so that’s been nice.

13:22 Emily: How about you Meryem? How do you do the time management aspect?

13:25 Meryem: Yeah, I want to echo everything that Lourdes said. I think it’s really nice, even without a pandemic, but especially during a pandemic, to just have something else to turn to when you need a break from grad school or just want to use a different skill set for a bit, or just kind of escape from the world. And right now, especially because of COVID, I tend to work a later shift in lab, and my understanding is Lourdes does as well, so the rest of our work is pretty much done remotely, which makes it easier, but also I have to be a little bit more diligent about priority setting and setting boundaries, because it is so easy to kind of just switch between projects both between my main job as a grad student and then my side hustles and leaving room for my personal life.

14:07 Meryem: Usually I’ll try to do this by reserving chunks of time to work on the podcast editing, either in the mornings or late in the evenings after my shift and maybe the weekends to kind of catch up, which is very useful for particularly busy weeks. I think just like setting deadlines and trying to stay organized to prioritize all the things that are going on is helpful. I will say that I recognize that it’s probably easier for me to manage everything that I have to do given that I don’t have too many responsibilities outside of my work and extracurriculars right now. I don’t have any human babies, but I do have a fur baby named Sabine, but she’s pretty self sufficient. I think overall it is pretty much managing expectations with myself and now with my husband, but overall I think, much like Lourdes said, you get into a workflow and we do have a lot more time at home so that does help a lot.

15:06 Emily: I’m just thinking how I would answer if I asked this question of myself, of how do I manage my time? Because I do have two human babies and no childcare in a pandemic and it is definitely more challenging now than it was a few months back to be handling my schedule. But I think what Lourdes brought up initially, the fact that in our schedule we have basically a two week cycle from when I get the raw interview to you two and then we have a two week process before publication, and Ithink that really helps. I know a lot of side hustle jobs are really quick turnaround, like super short deadlines, and it’s not even really so much on your end, like I’m giving you guys a lot of time. I need a lot of time to do my part of the process as well, because I can’t necessarily jump on a response right away, because it’s just a busy long day every day right now.

Commercial

16:00 Emily: Hey, social distancers, Emily here. I hope you’re doing okay. It took a few weeks, but I think I have my bearings about me in my new normal. There is a lot of uncertainty and fear right now about our public and personal health and our economy. I would like to help you feel more secure in your personal finances and plan and prepare for whatever financial future may come. You can schedule a free 15 minute call with me at PFforPhDs.com/coaching to determine if financial coaching with me is right for you at this time, I hope you will reach out, if only to speak with someone new for a few minutes. Take care. Now back to our interview.

Budgeting Side Hustle Income

16:46 Emily: Okay, so personal financial show — let’s talk about the money that’s associated with the side hustle income. What are you doing with the money from your income? Does it have a particular job to do in your budget or how are you handling it generally? Lourdes, why don’t you go first?

17:01 Lourdes: In general, I put most of my side hustle income into savings, whether that be more long-term savings or shorter term savings, kind of depends. If I have an upcoming trip, it might go a little bit towards that. In general, how I work my budget is that, I pay myself first, in that I put money aside for savings first, and then any money leftover is my money that I get to spend for the month.

17:31 Lourdes: One of the tips I learned from the first episodes I edited was a side hustle episode, I think it was Allie Judge, and she mentioned how she holds off on paying herself her side hustle income until the month after she’s earned it. So sort of working on a delayed schedule, in terms of using the money that she’s earned. After I heard that, I’m like, that’s a great idea, so ever since then, I’ve been doing the same thing, where I count basically any money I earn in August goes towards my September monthly budget. That helps me in terms of planning and not using the money before I’ve actually earned it. That’s how I mainly handle it in terms of budgeting.

18:22 Emily: Yeah. Thank you. Meryem, how does it work in your budget?

18:26 Meryem: I’ll be totally transparent in that I don’t necessarily have a specific allocation for my side hustle income, because for me it was primarily a chance to essentially have a hobby and use a different skillset. But I kind of do try to visualize it in a way that permits me to have those extra side expenses during the course of the month that you might not otherwise be able to do. For me, it’s kind of a mental exercise, and I do have the money go straight into a savings account that I don’t really touch, but every once in a while, if I need to kind of make an extra purchase or a gift, I will kind of, I guess, rationalize with myself like, okay, I was able to make some extra income this month with the side hustle, so it’s okay to spend that extra money and think of my extra purchases outside of my needs in terms of how much of my work and effort that is worth. And essentially that’s not a super cut and dry method, but it helps me at least to rationalize my additional expenses and not get too anxious about finances during grad school, which is really, really nice to have that cushion outside of my usual budget.

19:41 Emily: Yeah. That trick, that mental framework of translating the cost of a purchase into your time, or maybe number of episodes, or however you want to structure it, is a really powerful one, a really common one for people sort of were advanced in their personal finance skills to think about really carefully, like whether they want to make a purchase and how they want to spend and so forth to translate into time. That’s a really good tip.

20:07 Emily: I’m particularly thinking about this question of how to handle your irregular income with respect to your budget because, so in August 2020, I launched a community PFforPhDs.com/community, if you want to find out more about that, but every month I’m creating new content for it. Right now I’m working on the September content, which is on how do you handle your irregular income with respect to your budget?

20:28 Emily: Lourdes, the tip that you gave is basically the first one that I’ve already put into this, which is count up your income from one month and put it towards the next month budget, that you got from Allie. It’s absolutely perfect, because you never know when something could go wrong with your side-hustle income. Like if one of you became ill, for example, maybe you need to skip an episode. That’s not a problem for us, but it would be a problem for your budget if you’d already spent the money that you expected to come in. That’s number one, baseline tip for handling side hustle income is give it a delay. Meryem, you’re doing a similar thing by putting it directly into savings, and then later on thinking about, well, how do I want to spend it, or do I want to keep it here? Different articulation, but kind of the same principle there. I’m really glad to hear that.

Side Hustle Income and Taxes

21:13 Emily: Now we come to one of my favorite subjects within personal finance, which is taxes. So you two are both self-employed, you are contractors for me, and Meryem, now you have this other contractor, essentially you’re like a real true contractor working for multiple people with the same skillset. Self employment taxes are kind of a whole other ball of wax. You’ve been doing this for a year, do you have any systems that you’ve put in place or just what are you doing with it, with respect to your taxes? Lourdes?

21:40 Lourdes: For me, it’s a little bit of two different things. I generally set aside about 30% of my self employment income for taxes. That’s taking into account the about 15% self employment tax and then income tax being around 12%. But also, I am on a fellowship that requires me to pay estimated taxes quarterly, and so at the beginning of every year, I basically estimate how much — well, I know how much I’m going to earn from my fellowship, and then I basically estimated how much I anticipate earning from doing this virtual assistant for the podcast. Basically, I have ahead of time, I know how much I have to set aside each month for both my fellowship income and this side hustle income. I immediately put that into savings and I just don’t touch that money. It’s not even money that I think about. And then I tend to over save just a little bit in terms of taxes, just because I’d rather have a cushion. Last year, I think I was off by like $150 just because of other things. I also have some investments that will change throughout the year and change my tax situation, but I do tend to oversave just so I have that little extra cushion and I don’t have to take it out of other pockets of my savings. Then if I have extra money left over, I kind of use it as my own personal tax refund. So the government isn’t giving me any, but I have some extra money left over in my tax pot. I use that and just reallocate it usually to different savings categories.

23:23 Emily: Yeah. I handle my income from my business exactly the same way, so it sounds like you’re just incorporating the self employment tax issue into your existing structure for paying quarterly estimated tax. Meryem, I want to give you a chance to answer that one as well, because I know this is shifting for you right now,

23:39 Meryem: Actually I’m absorbing all of Lourdes’ tips because for me, I just, in the month also started receiving fellowship non-W-2 income. Prior to that, I wasn’t really thinking about estimated quarterly taxes as much because I didn’t have to deal with all of that. But now moving forward for tax year 2020 into next year, I will have to kind of be thinking about that. Even though the actual amount of taxes that I’ll from the side hustle income will be less than the amount that is necessary to be able to pay estimated quarterly taxes — so my original strategy was just to collect all of the receipts that I’ll receive from PayPal and then make sure that I back calculate the amount that I have to pay for the self employment tax and pay that come tax season. That original plan is fine if you know that you’re not going to owe the amount that you would need to, to not have to pay fees for not paying estimated quarterly taxes, but I like the strategy of kind of building it in so that by the time tax season does roll around, you’ve already paid everything.

24:45 Meryem: I actually think that I’m going to adopt that policy rather than shifting it and waiting until tax season. And as for my other side hustle with AcaDames, their structure is also changing since they’re recently going through the process of incorporating and becoming an LLC. Previously, and currently during the transition, I’m being paid through W2 income because it’s very easy to me to be able to do that as a UNC student and the cohost, or at least one of the coasts now is based at UNC, so it was really easy to deal with that through payroll and not have to worry about freelancing or independent contracting. But I imagine that that will also shift within the next year as they’re making this transition into becoming an LLC. So having all of these strategies in place now will probably be really useful moving forward.

25:38 Emily: Yeah, that’s good for me to know. Interesting. I should mention also, I just brought up the Personal Finance for PhDs Community, but for the last several years, I’ve had a workshop available for individuals on quarterly estimated tax and helping them fill out their estimated tax worksheet and form 1040. That workshop is now coming under the umbrella of the community. So anyone who’s wondering about how do I file quarterly estimated tax on my fellowship, that’s where to go for that particular workshop PFforPhSs.com/community. And I just told you, I’m thinking about in September, the training that I’m going to release on handling your irregular income with respect to your budget. Later on this fall, I’m planning on doing another full workshop on the self-employment side hustle that is so common for graduate students and PhDs, and how to handle that for your taxes, so a whole other tax workshop just on this topic of self employment taxes. That’ll be available if anyone needs help with that sort of thing. I’m really excited about creating because I’ve been doing my own taxes as a self employed person for a number of years, so I have a basic familiarity with it and I’m excited to do a bit more research to figure out how it works for other kinds of businesses as well. That’s where to find out more info there.

Unexpected Benefits from Side Hustling

26:54 Emily: As a second to last question here, have there been any benefits to doing a side hustle that you didn’t anticipate when you first took on the position? Lourdes?

27:05 Lourdes: Specifically for this podcast, Emily interviews a wide range of guests and a lot of them also have social media that they promote. I’ve been able to connect with some of the different guests on social media, just as a result of sometimes promoting the episode. They’ll see that I promote it, and then we connect, we end up talking, following each other on Twitter. That’s been like something I didn’t really expect to happen, but it’s been really cool because q lot of them are fellow grad students, and then just getting into that academic sphere of Twitter has been really interesting just to see all these different graduate experiences from people all over the country and all over the world. That’s been one of the most unanticipated benefit from this particular side hustle.

27:57 Lourdes: And then also, as has been brought up multiple times, I think Meryem brought this up, just learning a different skillset that’s something very different from what I do in my normal day to day graduate work. And I, in particular, am starting to figure out what I want to do after grad school. I’m a fifth year student going into my sixth year, so I’ve been leaning towards maybe some more like alt-academic jobs, and being able to have this completely different skill set is definitely something that I think adds to my resume and adds to potential job options and sort of also gives me ideas of what other type of work is out there. Along with what I was mentioning before Emily does have so many different types of guests on the podcast, just seeing what opportunities are available to graduate students after they’ve defended and after they graduated, has been really interesting and something that I hadn’t even considered or even thought of prior to really getting to know some of these guests through the podcast.

29:04 Emily: Yeah. That’s really great for me to hear. I know that this too was an unexpected benefit for me of doing the podcast is I didn’t expect it to be such good networking. I knew some things that would happen from it, but not the networking aspect, so I’m really glad that you’ve been able to tap into that as well. So Meryem, how about you?

29:24 Meryem: Yeah, I agree completely with the networking component as this amazing side benefit of being involved with editing the podcast. And I think for me also, I just find it inspiring how relevant the episodes have been in my own personal journey as a student, often in real time. In fact, I’ll never forget that the very first trial episode that I edited was with Dr. Katie Wedemeyer-Strombel about her decision to change labs and how to prepare for the unexpected in grad school. And it just so happened that that exact same week that I was editing that episode, my former PhD advisor surprised that our lab with an announcement that she would be leaving UNC and moving across the country, and all of this was happening while I was trying to plan a wedding with my fiance, and now husband, who had just moved down to Chapel Hill to start a new job, to be with me after we’d been long distance for so many years. And anyways, it ended up working out and I was able to switch into an amazing collaborating lab and stay at UNC, but unbeknownst to Katie, her advice at that time was so timely for me and helpful for me as I was going through that transition. So I always rave about the podcast to pretty much every grad student I come across and I try to send along helpful episodes and resources to them if it sort of just happens to come across in conversation. It’s just amazing to me how many times that, that has just happened, where I’m editing an episode and realizing, wait, I really need to pay attention. This is really relevant to my life right now.

31:00 Emily: That’s really good to hear. Of course you told me at the time that that episode was striking you in that way and I’m so glad that I could help. I think that, as Lourdes, as I was saying earlier, I’ve been doing this podcast for about two years now and I have quite a few interviews under my belt and it’s not always the same type of person, as you were saying. It’s a lot of different kinds of personal finance stories coming from a lot of different sorts of people who have been in academia for a time at least. There is a good trove of episodes there, that you might find something useful to your current situation, if you do a little diving into the archives.

Best Financial Advice for Early Career PhDs

31:34 Emily: Last question here, which, you know, I ask of pretty much all the guests who come on the podcast. I’ll give you a chance to give your answers as well. What is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And we’ll go to Lourdes first again.

31:48 Lourdes: For me, I think one of the best things for me is having a yearly budget. At the beginning of the year, and I’ve been doing this for quite a few years now, I lay out my plan for the year financially on a spreadsheet, and it really helps to be able to see a longer term plan for my money for the year. I think, especially with self employment income, side hustling, it kind of gives you an idea of…Maybe I have a trip planned later in the year, or I have some big event that I’m going to need to save up money for, and being able to more strategically allocate your money on a larger scale rather than just month to month. I think that’s been one of like a strategy that I’ve been employing for a couple of years now, and it’s just been super helpful for me, and it’s something that I will see myself doing like far into the future

32:44 Emily: That is, I think, typically a good piece of advice, but I want to know how it’s going in 2020.

32:50 Lourdes: It’s been interesting to say the least. There have been a lot of…I had some trips planned that have gotten canceled, so I have this extra money, but also different expenses that I didn’t anticipate come up. And it’s been a little bit of am eye-opener in terms of plans change as the year goes on, but I think sort of having that framework to begin with helps me realize that even if…I go back to this budget every month, it’s the same spreadsheet I use for my monthly budgeting, so it changes and updates and it’s a very fluid document, but just having that outline there to begin with has also been something that provides some structure, especially when the year got so different than what everyone anticipated.

33:43 Emily: Yeah, I also use the year as the sort of standard timeframe when I talk about irregular expenses, so expenses that come up non monthly, and you and I talked about this in our interview from a year or so ago. I think it’s a great strategy to think about what budgetarily is coming up for you — trips, as you mentioned earlier, or maybe some other kinds of irregular expenses, so you can anticipate them over the course of about a year. So yeah, I like that time frame as well. Meryem, how about you? What’s your best advice?

34:12 Meryem: Yeah, so my best advice is probably to be honest with yourself and keep an open mind about your personal finances. A wise friend once told me that disappointment happens when our expectations don’t match up with our reality, which was really helpful for me to hear at the time, as an optimist, because I used to feel a lot of guilt or disappointment if I couldn’t maintain an unrealistic budget, or if I couldn’t resist making an impulse purchase on something that maybe wasn’t necessary, but made me or someone else really happy. But I also think it’s really important for our mental and physical wellbeing to work towards a healthy relationship with money, which I know can be particularly challenging on a grad student’s stipend. So with that in mind still, I think as best as you can try to be honest with yourself and set realistic goals for yourself, not based on anybody else’s priorities or spending habits, but whatever matches your needs. That being said, if something really isn’t working for you, that’s probably a good time to have an open mind and try to adapt, effective strategies from others. I guess I would say it’s okay to experiment and even take calculated risks, while figuring out what works best for you, but being honest yourself and keeping an open mind is probably my best financial advice and general life advice as well.

35:44 Emily: I love that as well. I often think about the mismatch between expectations and reality, and how that provokes us, so I try to keep my expectations low, basically. I really love that advice and I think that’s unique. I don’t think we’ve heard that on the podcast before, but I think it’s perfect. And something that graduate students can sometimes be discouraged around their finances because they are working with such a low income, it’s for such a long period of time, and I talk a lot about investing and saving stuff and that’s just out of reach for a lot of graduate students, but they can implement your advice, Meryem. They can like learn to just figure out what’s going to work for them in managing their own finances right now and carry that skill set and that habit, whatever it is that they determined as the right system or whatever, forward into their career and post-PhD income, and hopefully have a lot of financial success at that time, having been honest with themselves and really using the time in graduate school to get to know what their preferences are with respect to managing their finances. That’s good advice for anybody, anytime. You can always implement it.

36:46 Emily: I’m so glad to have had you two on the podcast and thank you so much for volunteering to do this. Thanks for coming on.

36:53 Lourdes: Thank you, Emily.

36:54 Meryem: Thanks Emily.

Outtro

36:56 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPhDs.com/podcast is the hub for the personal finance for PhDs podcast. There you can find links to all the episode show notes, and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, please consider joining my mailing list for my behind the scenes commentary about each episode. Register at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe. See you in the next episode, and remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is stages of awakening by Poddington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

This Grad Student Is on the Lowest Rung of the Pay Ladder and Side Hustles to Compensate

February 10, 2020 by Meryem Ok

In this episode, Emily interviews Sarah ‘Frankie’ Frank, a grad student in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Frankie describes the hierarchy of grad student positions at UW; the positions she’s primarily held over her years in grad school, teaching assistantships, are on the lowest level in terms of hourly pay. To make ends meet, Frankie side hustles doing activities that she truly loves, chiefly tutoring and baking. She concludes the interview with excellent advice for a grad student who wants and needs to do it all.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

00:00 Frankie: You feel so subjected to whatever the institution tells you you’re worth–what you can do, what you can’t do–and the honest truth is that you have a little bit of bartering that you can negotiate. If you are in a position that you can make that kind of offer, you should because it’s possible that they find that money somewhere.

Intro

00:22 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season five, episode six, and today my guest is Sarah Frank who goes by Frankie, a grad student in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Throughout most of grad school, Frankie has been a teaching assistant, a position that receives the lowest hourly pay rate at her university. We discuss the various types of positions a grad student might have and the advantages of being paid through a fellowship or research assistantship. Frankie’s $15,000 per year stipend isn’t enough to make ends meet, so she is engaged in many side hustles, the best of which were tutoring NCAA student athletes and her cake business. You won’t want to miss the advice Frankie gives at the end of the interview to grad students who are juggling a lot of responsibilities and activities at once. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Frankie.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:22 Emily: I’m delighted to be joined today on the podcast by Sarah Frank who goes by Frankie. And we’re going to be talking today about TA-ing, having a teaching assistantship and how that compares to other jobs you might have on campus as a graduate student. So, Frankie, thank you so much for joining me today.

01:38 Frankie: Thank you, Emily. I really am excited to be here. I feel honored.

01:42 Emily: Oh, well that’s lovely to hear. Would you please tell us a little bit more about yourself, you know, where you go to school and so forth?

01:48 Frankie: Yeah. So, my name is Frankie. I am a PhD candidate and a lecturer now at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Department of Sociology and in the Department of Legal Studies. I’ve previously spent three years as a teaching assistant and lecturer. I’ve also worked for athletics. And yeah, I think I have about two years to go before I have a job somewhere, hopefully.

02:10 Emily: Sounds good. So, you’ve already mentioned you’ve had a few different positions, so let’s talk about what your current position is and what your pay is right now.

02:20 Frankie: Yeah, so current position for lecturers, right now it depends on how many students will be enrolled in the course, but at a 33% appointmentship for one course in the fall, I’ll make about $7,000. So, over the whole course of the year, that can fluctuate to about a $15,000 baseline salary. And then adding in other jobs thereafter, I don’t make more than about $22,000 a year.

Level of Pay Variation at UW-Madison

02:45 Emily: Okay. So, that gives us a good idea of the range. So at a 33% appointment, if you did that approximately for the whole year, it would be about $15 K. Plus, your side hustle and such, have other jobs on top of that, of course, to make that work, naturally. Okay. And how has that level of pay varied over your time in graduate school?

03:06 Frankie: Yeah. So, when I first came as a TA in 2016, University of Wisconsin had one of the lowest pay rates for TAs. So, in our tiers of graduate studentship, being a teaching assistant was at the very lowest, at about 15 and a half thousand dollars per year at a 50% appointmentship. And then the union here, there’s a teaching assistant union that put a lot of pressure on our administration to raise that salary. So, we have gotten substantial raises. And then just this year, lecturers also got another bit of a raise. So, it has increased a little bit as we’ve gone on. But we still pay student fees. So, we pay segregated student fees that go into like student clubs and student rec centers that are mostly undergraduate. So, we lose a little bit of our salary there to the tune of six or $700 each semester that you’re taking full load.

03:55 Emily: Yeah, that is a huge bite. Okay. So, I just want to add in like a couple of notes there for the listener. So, if you want to see what other people are being paid at Wisconsin or in other places, one of the websites I run is phdstipends.com. So, go there and check out what TAs and RAs and other types of grad students, fellows are being paid in various places and enter your own data. So, there are a couple of things you mentioned I want to follow up on. You mentioned that TA pay was the lowest among the different sort of options, the way graduate students might be paid. So, what are those other options at Wisconsin?

04:31 Frankie: So, typically the lowest tier would be teaching assistants. The next tier up would be research assistant, and the tier after that would be project assistant. And then the top tier is obviously fellowship. So, if you’re on fellowship, you make the most. After the raise, teaching assistant and research assistant are more in line with one another. So, this is the first year that they’re really in line.

04:54 Emily: Yeah. That was something curious that you said that I wasn’t really sure about, that TAs and RAs had been paid differently. Now you mentioned that the union was just a TAs union, or does it also cover RAs?

05:09 Frankie: Right, so it’s strange. It’s called the Teaching Assistant Association, so it would sound like it’s just for TA’s, but it’s actually for all graduate student workers. So, it includes RAs, PAs, and it includes people on fellowship actually as well. So, graduate student workers generally.

What is a Project Assistant?

05:23 Emily: Okay. That’s really interesting to hear. I would love to follow up more on that actually with you, but I actually have multiple episodes scheduled with other people talking specifically about unionization movements at their own university. So, I’m excited to dive into that more in other episodes. But I’ve never heard of this job title, project assistant before. Can you tell me what that is?

05:43 Frankie: So, there are research assistants and project assistants, and it depends wholly on the grant that a supervising faculty applied for or the amount of responsibility or ownership that the student is taking over the project. In the mix, there is something called a traineeship, which seems to be blended with both project assistant and research assistant. I think it’s a matter of just titles, honestly. Because I’ve heard very different projects, very different gamuts, it depends on the department, what they call a traineeship versus a research assistant or project assistant. To me it sounds like, as far as hours worked, I know that teaching assistants have the most, and then research assistants have the second most followed by project assistants and trainees, and then fellows should have the least amount of work. They’re not required to do any specific work activities.

06:34 Emily: Okay. So, you mentioned a 50% appointment for a TA position, so that’s ostensibly 20 hours per week, is that right?

06:42 Frankie: Yeah, it’s supposed to be 20 hours a week. Yeah.

06:43 Emily: Yeah. Well, we all know how that really goes. So, what is it for RAs and PAs then? Do you know?

06:49 Frankie: They’re supposed to be 20 hours a week as well.

06:52 Emily: But in reality…

06:54 Frankie: Yeah, so the common thread is people know that RAs and PAs don’t work that much. They usually do closer to like 10 or 15 hours a week, if that.

RA-ing Does Not Always = Dissertation Work

07:04 Emily: Okay. So, this is something that I and other people get a little bit confused or conflate together. So, are you talking about for an RA position, a research assistantship, is that distinct from the student’s dissertation work?

07:22 Frankie: So, this is a really good question. It can be. It may be that’s the way you are earning your income, working on a supervising professor’s work and using their data. And depending on your relationship with that professor or what you want to do for your dissertation, their data might be your dissertation. And in some cases it is, but in other cases it’s not. So, the way that those things help you out in the long run dissertation-wise varies. The variation is incredibly wide.

07:52 Emily: Yeah. Because it’s always seemed to me–so, I come from a STEM field, biomedical engineering. And so what was common in my field and others that I observed in STEM is that most of the time most people had RA positions, and their RA work was the same as their dissertation work. So, it was like, really, once your classes were done and so forth, your full-time efforts could go towards your dissertation. And, you were also being paid off of the grant to do that work. Now, that means you don’t have as much freedom in what you do because it depends on what the grant is, of course. And so it’s all worked out between you and your advisor. I do think that it was more rare in my observation to see someone have an RA position that was different from their dissertation work. But it sounds like that is maybe more common where you are. And I’m sure this is very like field-dependent, right?

08:40 Frankie: So, in sociology, because someone might be working on some specific project long-term, or like a demographic project that takes many years of data collection, people might use some part of a dataset. Or you know, they’re becoming really familiar with the general science survey through their research assistantship, and then they use another element for their dissertation. Or, they end up meeting their professor who will chair their dissertation based on that project or find out who shouldn’t be their advisor via those kinds of projects. But I mean it does vary incredibly widely. I have heard that sociology is one of the few disciplines where it’s not a direct relationship, like you are working on what you will dissertate on. But I know very few people who are earning their income on exactly what they’re dissertating on. They’re usually right next to it somehow. Particularly, in sociology here we have demography. So, you have a lot of quantitative people working together. As far as qualitative researchers, not one of them have I heard is working on the same data set that they will use in their dissertation unless they get some sort of fellowship or specialty grant or something or have access to a professor’s previously collected research.

Perspective on Assistantship Tiers

09:51 Emily: I see. This is really interesting for me to hear because it’s such a different field than where I’m coming from. So, it’s good for me to learn about this. So, what I’ve always found as the important distinction, let’s say as a prospective graduate student, when you’re looking at different offers and different programs, I’ve always found an important distinction to be what percentage of your time is going to be available for you to work on your dissertation versus doing some other thing. You know, classes, TA-ing, RA-ing not for your dissertation, whatever that might be. And I would think that the advantage would be going towards programs where you can put a higher percentage of your time towards your own dissertation work. Now, that’s not to say you can’t find value from these other activities, but I don’t know, that’s kind of what my thought has been. Do you agree with that or what’s your perspective on that?

10:40 Frankie: So, for me and where I’ve been located, the more lucrative offers coming into graduate school are the ones that have more money or the fellowships. So, it’s sort of like you have to be higher ranked I suppose, or like at a higher admit level. So, then you have to take classes, right? But you can only take so many classes if you’re a teaching assistant, especially for the first time. And you know you have the highest workload, but you have the lowest pay, so you have to take on more classes or you just have to stay in graduate school longer. So, the system seemed really backwards to me when I first got here. Like, why would TAs be your lower tier? Or like, you know, not your highest admit student. Not that the people who teach are necessarily not as smart or anything, but the grant money is really in that quantitative data that the demographers are collecting.

11:33 Frankie: But then you have to work really hard, possibly more years while you’re taking classes. And at the same time, the expectation to publish is exactly the same across the board. And some people are given data from professors or they have quantitative data, but then you have qualitative people who have to conduct their own studies from the ground. So, IRB approval, to recruitment, to interviewing. And so, the people who are teaching have to do far more hours, far more work, but they’re also the least paid, so they may also have to take on these outside jobs. So, I think that those are the people who I see being the most stressed out. I think that they have the highest turnover as far as dropout rates as well. I think it’s just incredibly stressful to have little money and not enough time to accomplish every single thing you’re supposed to accomplish. At the same time, you’re supposed to be applying for every grant in the book while you’re doing all of this.

12:20 Emily: Yeah, it does sound to me like we’re on the same page. If you can land a fellowship, either an outside fellowship or something that’s provided by your university or whatever, that’s going to free you from these other responsibilities, it’s going to pay you better and as many years as you can do that for, that’s amazing. Minimize your TA responsibilities. If that is the thing that has the highest workload at your university, it sounds like it’s the case for you. Not to say that teaching experience isn’t valuable. Maybe you need to have that for moving onto your next stage, but you don’t necessarily want to do that every single semester. That’s a lot of teaching. Anyway, so really glad to hear your perspective on those things. So, it’s a very complex issue, especially for prospective graduate students who may not be that familiar with the academic system.

Determine the Standard Offer in Your Field Ahead of Time

13:01 Emily: I mean, I’ve been through graduate school and I’m still struggling to understand the structure that you’re talking about, you know, in the fields that you come from. So, this is just kind of a plug to do as much field-specific research as you possibly can. Well, I actually wrote an article about this a little while ago. It was titled something like “before admission season starts, determine what a standard offer in your field is.” So, is a standard offer going to be, “Okay, you’re going to TA the entire time”? Or is a standard offer, “Well, you’ll TA a couple semesters and then you’ll be an RA and if you want a fellowship that’s cool”? Like, what is that standard? So, then you can know if any individual offer you receive is at the standard, a good offer, a really not good offer. It’s just something you have to do your homework on before you even start like looking at those offers, and it’s very difficult. It’s very field-specific. So, I’m really glad to hear from you about that.

13:50 Frankie: I was going to say I feel really lucky, actually. So, for two reasons. One, my program decided to fully fund five years. So, students who come to sociology at UW Madison will be funded for at least five years. After that, they cannot guarantee you funding. But the second piece is I came here to teach. I’m becoming a professor to teach, which is not always common at an R1. I have been discouraged from teaching multiple times, but I think I would have left graduate school without it. So, I feel really lucky that it’s in my heart because it makes it worth it. It’s still very challenging, but I feel luckier in some ways than I know other folks in other universities.

A Deep Dive into Frankie’s Side Hustles

14:24 Emily: Yeah, well it totally makes sense. If it’s part of your career path and you want to go that direction, it’s great to have that experience and for you to get better at your own craft before you move on to that next stage. So, totally valuable in that sense. For people who don’t want to stay in teaching, it’s something probably to be minimized. Yeah. So, are you ready to talk about your side hustles that you have to put on top of this graduate student stipend to make it?

Tutoring for the Department of Athletics

14:49 Frankie: Yeah. So, the first one I did was I worked for the NCAA, the Department of Athletics at UW Madison. Of course, this is a big school for athletics, so you might think that we’re the only place with money, but I actually did this in undergrad, too. And the money tends to be excellent, particularly if you already have your undergraduate degree, they can pay you more. And so this is to the tune of about $20 an hour for group tutoring, closer to $18 for single tutoring sessions. And you make your own schedule. It’s very flexible. You only tutor what you want to. It was really fun. I loved my students. Student-athletes are highly exploited by universities like Wisconsin. And so it was awesome to build relationships with them. And I mean, I absolutely loved that job. When I gave it up to finish my Masters, I was very sad. But that was probably my favorite side gig, and I recommend it to literally everyone. If you want to pick up extra tutoring hours, the Department of Athletics wherever you are has money. And they have a need for sure.

15:48 Emily: That is a great tip. I’m always really curious when people talk about having side gigs on campus. How does that play with your stipend? Were you actually a W2 employee or was it like an independent contractor position?

Self-Employment: Frankie’s Cupcakes

16:01 Frankie: Great question. So, it’s still a W2. So, you can only work 75%. That means that I had a cap on how many hours I could work at the same time as being a TA. So, then comes in my other side hustle. In the last 18 months or so, I’ve started a cupcake company. So, I now sell cupcakes and cakes to everyone in the Madison or surrounding area here in Wisconsin. It started as a self-care hobby and then I got good enough that people would start paying me. So, now that’s my side hustle and also my hobby and self-care at the same time.

16:35 Emily: That is so much fun. What is your business name? Do you have an Instagram?

16:39 Frankie: I do have an Instagram. You can find us @frankies.cupcakes, which is the name, as well. We just went to the state fair yesterday to find out that I won a bunch of first place ribbons. So, that’s feeling good. Wisconsin state fair representing. But so yeah, you can find me. It’s Frankie’s Cupcakes. We have a Facebook and an Instagram.

16:57 Emily: That’s awesome. And so that, of course, is your own business. That’s total independent, not even a contractor. It’s just self-employment kind of stuff. So, I have this framework for side hustles that I like to talk about, which is one type advances your career. That could be like the teaching or tutoring for you, for example. Another type is just something you really enjoy doing that you can monetize. That is exactly this cupcake thing. And then there’s stuff you don’t like to do so much, but it gives you money. So, you do it. That’s a third category. And then the fourth one is passive income, which is a whole other can of worms. So, I love to hear that the cupcake thing sort of hits different satisfaction areas in your life for you. So, that’s awesome to hear. Have you pursued any other side hustles besides those two?

Arbitrage via Poshmark

17:42 Frankie: Well, so as far as passive income, actually, there’s an application called Poshmark, which lots of young people are using and they’re installing themselves on college campuses. And I’ve made a couple of thousand dollars selling stuff on Poshmark. Homewares, jewelry, designer bags, whatever. I’ll go to Goodwill, buy something designer that someone donated and then sell it on Poshmark and keep the profit. Or if I grow out of something or gain or lose weight, which you do in graduate school, it’s a great way to replace/cycle out your clothing. But also make some good money, especially if you come across anything valuable.

18:16 Emily: So, that’s a cool side hustle. Anything else you’ve done?

GRE Tutoring and College Application Assistance

18:20 Frankie: I know that I’ve done like tutoring on the side. Or like, unofficial tutoring for entrance exams, GREs, college application essays, things like that. For sure.

18:29 Emily: Yeah, that’s another really accessible one for graduate students because presumably, you got into graduate school, so you’re probably good at taking tests. You may be able to help other people with that.

Commercial

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Prioritizing Valuable Side Hustles

19:46 Emily: When you are looking for a side hustle, what’s something that has really brought value to your life? In terms of like, what’s a really good pro of one of your side hustles? Where you’re like, “Yeah, this was a really great reason to be pursuing this particular one.” Or maybe, another one, “Hey, I stopped pursuing this side hustle because it turns out it wasn’t serving me that well for this reason.”

20:05 Frankie: Yeah. When I started with Poshmark, it was working really well for a while, but then it ended up being really time-consuming, and it’s not going to add anything to my resume. But tutoring for athletics–and then I ended up becoming a sociology and psychology tutor trainer, so I would help train other people–that’s going to look great on my resume. I ended up getting tutor-certified, and they pay for your training. So, they’re paying you to put lines on your resume. So, that ended up being wonderful. I wrote a couple of pieces about athletes and education. I ended up meeting some amazing people. It was great to meet people outside of my department. Not that I don’t love the people in my department, but it is nice to meet people who are not in the same building all the time with you who are also in graduate school. So, it was both personal and professional.

20:49 Frankie: Like what is it that you’re spending your time on that is good for you, your resume or your CV? But also, whether it’s because it’s something that you enjoy personally and the people you really like, or because you’re like, “Well this is a good way to make money that doesn’t like break my heart or soul somehow,” or like isn’t drawing you emotionally. The emotional drainage or some of the side hustles can be extreme. So, I knew that and needed to keep my emotional energy spent kind of low because I was spending so much of it teaching. I spend so much of it teaching. So, the cake thing is pretty much something I do by myself. And so it’s really nice because it’s something I pretty much do alone. You know, listen to a podcast or something on the radio and make cakes and it’s really good for my introverted side.

Managing Work-Life Balance

21:32 Emily: Yeah, I think that’s one really important thing. Just recognize about the whole, you know, work-life balance thing–like, the graduate school-“other things you do”-balance–is that it’s sometimes really, really wonderful to have an escape from research. I know for example, for me, if research was not going well, which it didn’t for like three years, it was great to have some things going on outside of that that I could find some success in or some satisfaction. So, how do you manage your actual dissertation work, your main job, your grad student job and all these side hustles and you know, taking time for yourself. Like, how do you make all that work?

22:11 Frankie: It’s a really good question. And I answer this question so many different ways and have answered it so many different ways. So, I think today my best response to you is that my work-life balance is less of a work-life balance. Just because my work is my life, and my life is much of my work and I have to be in love with everything I’m doing for it to be possible that way. So, I’m running these different organizations. I’m also committed to teaching. I’m deeply invested. I interview people about menstruation. And so, I have to love all of those things because I do them all the time or they’re always on my mind. So, I think for me, my work-life balance ends up being calming my mind or like finding good headspace. And for me, actually, it ends up being that my partner is not an academic.

22:57 Frankie: He is not part of academia at all. And that ends up being a blessing. And I put a lot of time into–we have wonderful cats and I do cat-sitting–finding peace in both cakes and cats. And also taking the time and being okay with not doing work for a minute or two. Not always having to do something–I have such productivity anxiety–convincing myself that it is okay to go see a movie, to just sit on Instagram for an hour and be okay with it and not judge myself. And so the first couple of years of graduate school, I had to learn to do that and know that that was actually self-care and healthy. I cannot recommend enough that anyone in graduate school go to therapy. Even if you don’t think you need it or if you’re like, “Well, I don’t need that yet.”

Benefits of Therapy in Graduate School

23:49 Frankie: It’s great to establish the tools you do need for when you need them. And I wouldn’t have made it, I don’t think this far, without having great support both at the university health system and in our own–I have this wonderful woman who I see in Madison–and sometimes it’s when I need it, and sometimes it’s when I don’t. And it’s a great tool that, like I said, I recommend to everyone in academia or any stressful life situation. It really is wonderful to have someone outside your department who won’t affect your resume, your hiring decisions, your teaching appointments, someone who you can really talk to. And you know, it’s hard to build friendships in graduate school. It’s hard to build really like noncompetitive community sometimes. And I recommend that people find spaces that they feel like they’re part of a community or they feel like they have friendship. And not that my therapist is my friend, but it’s someone who I can talk to candidly and not worry about anything. So, I definitely recommend that as a resource to anyone.

Best Financial Advice for Early-Career PhDs

24:46 Emily: You know, you put that so well. I really don’t have anything to add to that. I hope that everyone listening just kind of rewinds a couple of minutes and listens through all that again because I think what you said is so, so valuable. What really resonated with me was when you said that you have to love everything that you do. And I think that it’s something that we sometimes forget about in academia and in graduate school that, ultimately, you’re there by choice and presumably at some point there was some reason why you chose the field you did and the advisor that you did. And there’s something that you love about it, and you might be going through a really hard period. It might be a long period, but it should be something that you’re passionate about, right? Or else why are you doing it? And hey, go ahead and leave your program if it’s not your passion anymore. But it’s so refreshing to hear you say that you do love all these different aspects of what you do, even though it’s not paid that well and you have to string all these different things together. It’s something that you find great joy and satisfaction in in all these different areas. I’m really, really happy to hear that. And as we wrap up here, Frankie, what is the best financial advice that you have for another early-career PhD?

Save for Unexpected Expenses (E.g., Medical Emergencies)

25:52 Frankie: That’s also a great question. I have a little experience running into medical emergencies. I had two surgeries my first year of graduate school. That’s something I don’t recommend. If you can avoid it, don’t do that until the summer of any school year. I don’t recommend doing it over Christmas. And then again over spring break. That’s–don’t recommend. So, I was hit with some medical bills in a harsh way. And I wish that I had budgeted a little bit better, like my moving expenses my first year, and not spent money on cat trees and whatever else that I thought was necessary at the time. Because I was like, “Oh, I still have more money,” or, “Oh, I still have more money. I could spend a little bit more.” Or, “Oh, you know, I can make this $50, $100, $200 go a little bit further.”

26:37 Frankie: I wish that I had saved it and thought to myself, “If something does happen, I’m at a low enough income that I need to be collecting what I do have, even the pennies, so that if something bad does happen to me or if I do end up needing to take, I don’t know, a semester off, a summer off, something like that–which is totally normal–that I would be able to.” And I wish that I had prepared a little bit better for that because I spent the better half of my second year paying off medical debt from surgeries that, I mean my insurance plan “covered” so to speak, but I needed to more carefully plan that out my first year. I think I spent more money out of stress or thinking, “Oh, if I spend more money, I’ll feel better.” And then when I did need to have surgery and pay that off later, you know how medical bills work, they send you the bill after the whole thing’s over.

Own Your Negotiating Power (Yes, Even in Grad School)

27:25 Frankie: So it’s not like I could have avoided it. And I did fight the insurance companies. I did fight the doctors to get things lower. And then the other thing I would say is that I did end up going to my department one point and asking for more money for a certain job that I was being pushed to do. You can do that, and if you are a graduate student and you feel like you’re between a rock and a hard place, you can negotiate or ask for help or ask your university for help and put yourself in a place where you can say, “I need a little bit more for this semester or in advance or something.” And do try to work with the people around you just in case it does help you.

28:01 Emily: Two really amazing pieces of advice there. And thank you so much for those. On the first one, I totally agree. I mean, I think especially for someone who’s like a young adult, maybe you haven’t been navigating insurance on your own before. Maybe you’re new to budgeting, maybe you’re newly independent from your parents. These irregular events, these unusual events are not something that you necessarily budget in from the beginning. The thing is that, you know, maybe you didn’t know in particular you were going to have these surgeries or what the bills are going to be. Right? There is no way, really, as you said, that you can know that in advance. But the thing is that something’s going to come up in some category in some way at some time. You’re guaranteed that something’s going to happen like that.

28:40 Emily: So, as you said, just saving up in advance a bit as best you can. Obviously, it’s going to be challenging, but saving up in advance can really save you a lot. Both financially and stress-wise, like on the backend of whatever that emergency happens to be. So, thank you so much for sharing your story about that. And I am curious to hear a tiny bit more about your negotiation because it’s not something that I usually hear about, let’s say after the admissions process is done. So, can you say like what was the job that you’re being pushed to do?

Know Your Worth, and Advocate for Yourself

29:08 Frankie: Yeah, that’s a really good question. So, I was actually sort of between departments where one department had offered me a better-paying a job and one department really needed me to teach a job. Like, they were lower on teaching faculty and they needed someone to step in. And if they don’t admit enough people to teach each cohort year, then eventually they run into these issues where they don’t have enough people to lecture or people who have experience in the field. So, it was just this past year, and I had accepted this job in another department which would’ve been a lot more work, but they were going to pay me more. And I was excited about the opportunity. But then I had also said, “If I could work both jobs.” Well, UW intervened, the Dean’s office said, “You can’t work two lectureship jobs before you officially have dissertation status.”

30:00 Frankie: And I said, “Okay, so I have to choose one.” And so I was like, I’m going to choose the one that pays me more. And then basically I positioned to the other department and said, “This is less work for me. If you can match that salary and raise mine to meet the salary that this other department is going to pay me, I’ll take your job. And I’ll tell them that I’ll defer their job until next year.” And that’s exactly what happened. And people were like, “Well, I don’t think we can do that.” And I said, “Well, I don’t think I can take your job then.” So, I felt really lucky that I could sort of position that way. And it sounds very corporate, but the truth is that you feel so subjected to whatever the institution tells you you’re worth–what you can do, what you can’t do–and the honest truth is that if you have a little bit of bartering after a year or two that you’ve been part of a lab, part of a TA-ship, part of a union of some kind, to say, “I’m willing to do this for you. I’m willing to help out this department in whatever way.” You have a little bit of bartering that you can negotiate. If the department asks you to lecture and you can say, “Hey, I need about a thousand more dollars to really make that work or I can’t.” If you are in a position that you can make that kind of offer, you should because it’s possible that they find that money somewhere. Or they do this thing where they give you a top out scholarship where the department will just add on another thousand dollars in a scholarship fund to your tuition account and then you can refund, check it back to yourself. And that stuff happens and is possible. They can offer you greater hours. Like, they find little ways around the bureaucracy to help you. And I really recommend that students understand all of those different positions and also have those conversations.

Ask for Help: Get to Know Your Administrative Staff

31:33 Frankie: And if, if anything else, the administrative staff of your department are the people you need to know almost better than your advisor. Those are the people who have changed my life at the University of Wisconsin in every way. They know the system, they know the money, they know how I can get through the bureaucracy or challenges I’m facing. So, hats off to the administration at my university and my department and particularly in legal studies and sociology. They’re amazing people and they’ve made my life much, much easier on the financial end.

32:02 Emily: Yeah. Thank you so much for making that point. And I totally agree that they are the people to know. And it’s really good to hear that, you know, sometimes bureaucracy seems like this total juggernaut. It is what it is. It can’t be changed. It can’t be gotten around, whatever. But no, there are creative solutions. You just have to talk to the people who are familiar with their bureaucracy, who know all the tricks, who are going to be really advocating for you and working on your behalf to make whatever you need to have happen, happen. So, I’m really glad to hear that example of what was basically two competing job offers. Hey, you would have taken both of them if the bureaucracy had told you that it was possible. That wasn’t possible, but you were able to negotiate. That’s a perfect story, and I’m really glad that you shared that.

32:41 Emily: I’m glad to have another negotiation story that’s not right from during admissions season because that’s a really unusual one. So, Frankie, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast day. This is a wonderful interview.

32:52 Frankie: Yeah, Emily, thank you so much for having me. I feel really honored that I was able to talk to you and get to meet you. I recommend that everybody follow the advice given by other people who’ve spoken here. It really is valuable and it makes it so that everyone else’s life can be easier and everyone doesn’t have to experience it for the first time.

Outtro

33:08 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. Pfforphds.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple podcast, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media or with your PhD peers. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and taxes. Four, subscribe to my mailing list at pfforphds.com/subscribe. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode. And remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the free music archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

This PhD Student in Texas Side Hustles to Overcome Her Unique Financial Challenges

August 26, 2019 by Lourdes Bobbio

In this episode, Emily interviews Allie Judge, a second-year PhD student at Baylor College of Medicine. Allie outlines her top five expenses in Houston, TX as well as her financial goals. Allie receives a good stipend, but her pet sitting side hustle enables her to supercharge her financial progress. She uses her stipend for her living expenses and Roth IRA contributions and her side hustle income to pay down her student loans and medical debt and fund her travel to see her long-distance partner. She concludes with excellent budgeting advice for other graduate students.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

00:00 Allie: Now during a slow month, I usually net about $300-400 a month. Right now during the literal hot months, also when people are taking a lot of vacation and wanting to get out of the Houston heat, I’ll usually net $700-800. so it’s going well.

Introduction

00:24 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season four, episode two and today my budget breakdown guest is Allie Judge, a PhD student at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. Allie details her income from her stipend and lucrative side hustle and her top five monthly expenses. Two of Allie’s unique financial challenges are high medical bills and her long distance relationship and her ongoing financial goals are to max out her Roth IRA and repay her non-deferred student loans. You won’t want to miss the budgeting advice she shares at the end of the interview. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Allie Judge.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:16 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast today Allie Judge, who is going to share with us her budget breakdown — her top expenses and financial goals for her recent months. Allie, it’s a real pleasure to have you here and I’m looking forward to all the interesting subjects we’ll be covering in this episode. Will you please tell the audience a little bit more about yourself?

01:26 Allie: Thanks. I am a second year PhD student at Baylor College of Medicine in the Biochem department living in Houston, Texas right now.

01:46 Emily: Excellent. Is it just you in your household?

01:51 Allie: I have a roommate and a cat, but other than that, just me.

01:56 Emily: Great. How much money do you make?

01:59 Allie: Our stipend actually recently went up. It was $32,000/year coming in and went up to $33,500 starting this month, I think.

Pet-sitting Side Hustle

02:10 Emily: Very nice. Decent raise year over year. I understand you have a side hustle as well.

02:16 Allie: I do. I am a dog sitter on Rover. I started when I was a research tech and was paid even less than I am now, and have continued through grad school.

02:27 Emily: I’m sure a lot of people will be interested in that side hustle, so can you tell us about what it entails a bit, how much money you’re making, maybe hourly, if you know that, and that kind of stuff?

02:39 Allie: Getting started was pretty easy. You just have to do a background check that costs $10, which was nice. Of course, I had to earn reviews on the site and that took a little while. I didn’t make a whole lot of money at first, but now during a slow month, I usually net about $300-400 a month. Right now, during the literal hot months, also when people are taking a lot of vacation and wanting to get out of the Houston heat, I’ll usually net $700-800, so it’s going well.

03:13 Emily: That is very nice. What kind of time commitment is that?

03:18 Allie: I primarily do house-sitting, just because the other services tend to be requests that come in the middle of the day and I don’t like to take time in the middle of the day from lab. When I house-sit, I usually just stay at their house overnight and it’ll be maybe an hour or two a day of taking a walk with a dog or feeding, and cumulative attention time that I can usually multitask a little bit during.

03:47 Emily: That’s really interesting. I didn’t know anything about this service. Although I’ve heard of it before, I did not realize that hous-sitting was a component. That definitely seems like a pretty lucrative way to do this. I’m really glad you found a way to be able to stay at work all day and not be walking dogs in the high heat of the day. And presumably you love animals. Is this a fun thing for you to do?

04:11 Allie: Yeah, definitely. I’ve always grown up with dogs and cats and I had pet-sat for neighbors and such, so it was pretty easy to get testimonials on my little profile, but you can have friends and family do it too to get you started.

04:25 Emily: Thank you so much for telling us about that side hustle because if anyone is interested, loves animals, and wants a side hustle, that seems like a really, really good one to be doing. Why did you choose to go through Rover instead of striking out on your own?

04:45 Allie: As opposed to just independently pet-sitting? They do take 20% of your profit, so that’s a huge chunk, but the exposure that you get is so much better. I’ve lived in major metropolitan areas, and I just would not be able to network. Even with the 20%, I feel like it’s for sure worth the advertising.

05:12 Emily: Do you end up getting any repeat clients?

05:18 Allie: Absolutely. I think right now, this summer, it’s almost been entirely repeat clients just because now they’re going on longer vacations and want someone they’ve had before. A few of them will kind of go off platform, or some of them will try to suggest that at first I say, “No, we should stay on the platform because I don’t know you and you don’t know me.”.

05:44 Emily: Thanks again for that detail. You’re making what sounds like pretty decent stipend income, especially for Houston, I would imagine, plus you have this very significant side hustle.

#1 Expense

Emily: I’m really curious now to dive into your top five budget line items for each month. You said you’re going to be doing your most recent months in this summery, right?

06:07 Allie: Yeah.

06:08 Emily: Let’s dive into it. What is that top expense?

06:10 Allie: My top five would be my rent, some recent medical bills, student loans and groceries, in addition to travel, which I try to contribute to monthly, but doesn’t always happen.

06:25 Emily: Yeah, that sounds great. So top one, rent, of course, unsurprising there. What are you paying and what are you getting for it?

06:32 Allie: Thankfully I have a roommate that shares my two bedroom, two bath in Houston. We each pay $600 right now.

06:40 Emily: Sounds very decent. What’s the proximity to campus?

06:45 Allie: It’s about a 15 minute bus ride

06:48 Emily: And that’s how you typically commute?

06:50 Allie: Yeah. Gigantic medical center with very expensive parking.

06:55 Emily: How do you like using the buses? Is it a decent system?

07:01 Allie: I would say that given Houston traffic, I’d much rather take an extra five minutes on the bus, then have to deal with people on the road in the morning and in the evening.

07:12 Emily: And do you own a car at all?

07:15 Allie: I do. That’s pretty necessary in Houston. I am fortunately not paying my car insurance yet because it’s still in my parents’ name. That is not crucial but helpful.

07:30 Emily: So, fifteen minute bus ride — how do you like the location where you live other than that? Are we talking city, is it walkable to a lot of stuff, how is it?

07:42 Allie: It’s an area called “”condo land” so there’s a lot of condos, and it’s a lot of families, that type of thing. It is not the safest place if you go a block this way or a block that way, but generally where we are is pretty quiet.

08:01 Emily: That sounds good. Is your roommate another graduate student, or someone you found outside of the university?

08:07 Allie: I moved into the two bedroom by myself because I didn’t want to just find a roommate on Craigslist. Then, after about six months, my roommate was looking for a place to live too and moved on in.

08:22 Emily: That’s a nice way to be able to vet the person you live with before you commit to that relationship.

08:29 Allie: She is a grad student. I don’t know if I said that.

#2 Expense

08:32 Emily: Yeah, it sounds great. Okay. Expense number two?

08:36 Allie: Expense number two would be these medical bills I have coming up. It’s about $450 a month and then this month I had to make a quick trip to the emergency room and it was about $350 extra. So if you can go to urgent care, this is my big takeaway from that.

08:56 Emily: How is your health insurance?

09:03 Allie: We do have free health insurance through our graduate program, like a lot of biomedical students do. It’s generally pretty good for the most routine stuff. Hopefully I’ll be meeting the maximum out of pocket expense soon.

09:22 Emily: There are probably some people in my audience who have never really dealt with health insurance that much. What we’re talking about is usually you’re used to paying a copay and maybe co-insurance, a percentage of the bill above a certain amount. Maybe there a deductible to meet. But at some point, hopefully the plan will have a not crazy-high maximum amount of money you will pay out of pocket, after which everything should be 100% covered, usually in network, right?

09:51 Allie: Yes.

09:53 Emily: You’ll may be meeting that at some point. And it’s hard, it’s tough to pay until you get to that point. But you can kind of look forward to say at least after that point for the rest of the calendar year, I’m not going to have any more out of pocket expenses should things go as they usually will. For those of you who are thinking about creating an emergency fund, having the amount of money to meet that whole out of pocket yearly expense in an emergency fund is a pretty good number to take a look at. It may be a few thousand dollars, or may be lower or may be higher depending on the type of plan that you have.

#3 Expense

10:29 Emily: Thanks for telling us about that. Hopefully this will not be a large expense in your budget forever. So your third expense?

10:37 Allie: So my third expense is my student loans. Right now with the medical expenses, I’m paying the minimum payment, which is $204, I think, but prior to those expenses I was throwing more like $500 or $700 a month, whatever my Rover income allowed.

10:57 Emily: Why are you paying student loans right now as a grad student?

11:04 Allie: As an undergrad I went to my small liberal arts college and took out plenty of student loans for it.

11:11 Emily: I guess what I mean is you have the option to defer your student loans, but you’ve sounds like you’ve chosen not to. Talk me through that decision.

11:20 Allie: My student loans are through the government, they’re public student loans and they granted discount of 2.5% interest if you set it to auto pay. I not only wanted to get my loans paid down, but there is actually a benefit to having them not deferred and being able to set them to auto pay.

11:40 Emily: Are any of these loans subsidized or are they all unsubsidized? Is there any calculation you’ve done there?

11:49 Allie: They’re unsubsidized. I believe that if you have subsidized loans, they don’t collect interest during deferment. So that 0.25% would be irrelevant.

11:59 Emily: It’s an unusual decision, I think. Some graduate students I talk to pay on their student loans, but you’re the first person I’ve talked with who has chosen not to defer at all, but it sounds like based on your totally decent stipend income, plus all your side hustle income, that minimum payment of $200 a month is totally manageable. Plus, you usually are able to pay much more than that, so I definitely think this can be a very, very smart decision. It’s just an unusual one, but I think it potentially is a really good one in your situation. It must feel good to be working on paying down that debt at whatever interest rate it’s at since it’s unsubsidized. You know, many, many people in our community will, during graduate school be watching that interest accrue if they’re not able to make payments, and that’s a painful thing to do, right? I’m glad to hear that you are being proactive about paying these down.

12:57 Allie: And it helps to know that I could defer them if expenses really were tight.

#4 Expense

13:03 Emily: All right, fourth expense?

13:07 Allie: So my fourth expense would be groceries. I spend about $200 a month on groceries. I probably could bring it down, but I’m trying to prevent myself from going to restaurants more and more.

13:21 Emily: There’s, of course, an interplay there, between grocery spending and eating out spending, so you’ve chosen to maybe spend a little bit more on groceries but not eat out very much, sounds like.

13:33 Allie: Yeah, I keep my restaurant budget to $50 a month or less.

13:38 Emily: Do you have any guidelines for yourself around when you do choose to eat out?

13:46 Allie: I’m in a long distance relationship, so when my partner, who lives in a small town in New York, comes to Houston where there’s an array of restaurants, that’s when we tend to eat out.

13:58 Emily: $200 a month on groceries sounds pretty low to me, actually, for one person. Are there any particular strategies that you use around grocery shopping, or around cooking, that you’d like to share?

14:11 Allie: It helps that I do live in a major urban area, so I’ll usually check out the mailer on Aldi deals and I’ll go shop at Aldi and then I’ll check out the same for Kroger and I’ll make a trip there and they’re within 10 minutes, which is convenient.

14:28 Emily: Love that your using Aldi. I used to shop at Aldi when I lived in Durham. I don’t have one close to me now, but if anyone in the audience is near an Aldi and has not checked it out, you really owe it to yourself. You won’t necessarily get all your grocery shopping done there, but you can get a lot of your staples and the prices are amazing. It’s a different kind of shopping experience. I prefer it to the standard grocery store. And Allie, how do you manage cooking as a graduate student and also as someone who’s doing all this house-sitting. If you’re not in your home a lot of the time, how do you manage that?

15:03 Allie: I do usually meal prep. Not to an extreme where my freezer is stocked full, but I’ll usually have at least half of the meals I need for the week done on Sunday. So that for the rest of the meals I can take a little more time or enjoy cooking a little more. Or sometimes it’s just a very quick canned soup kind of night.

15:28 Emily: I presume you bring your lunch with you virtually every day and then you would also be packing food when you’re going on job somewhere?

15:39 Allie: A lot of my friends do buy food almost every day in the cafeteria. I can’t imagine how much more that would cost.

15:50 Emily: Do you eat lunch with other people or do you eat by yourself?

15:54 Allie: I’m not in the immunology program, but the first year immunology students have adopted me into their friend-circle, so I usually try to catch up and eat lunch with them now that we don’t have classes together.

16:06 Emily: I think that’s one of the wonderful things about being on a campus is that it’s totally fine to bring your lunch into cafeterias or whatnot, public-ish eating spaces, and it’s not a weird thing to do. It’s not like you’re paying to have access to that space with the food that you buy. It’s great that you can be social and bring your lunch every day. I wanted hear a tiny bit more about meal prep, maybe just the resources that you use to learn about that?

16:35 Allie: I’m subscribed to a lot of subreddits that have recipes, Eat Cheap and Healthy and Meal Prep Sunday and that give some loose inspiration for recipes that all then go search for myself.

Commercial

16:53 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Through my business, I provide seminars and webinars on personal finance for graduate students, postdocs and other early career PhDs, for universities, institutes and conferences, associations, etc. I offer seminars that cover a wide range of personal finance topics and others that take a deep dive into the financial topics that matter most to PhDs, like taxes, investing, career transitions and frugality. If you’re interested in having me speak to your group or recommending me to a potential host, you can find more information and ways to contact me at PFforPhDs.com/speaking. That’s p f f o r p h d s.com/speaking. Now back to the interview.

#5 Expense

17:41 Emily: All right then, your fifth expense in your budget?

17:44 Allie: That last expense that has not gotten much love recently is typically travel. That’s a secondary savings account where I throw whatever extra I have that I have decided not to put toward my student loans that month into a designated savings account for travel. That way when I find a cheap flight, I can go ahead and book it and I don’t have worry about whether I can afford it that month.

18:12 Emily: It sounds like it varies, but what would you say average you’re putting into that savings account?

18:19 Allie: On average it’s about $200.

18:23 Emily: Tell me a little bit more about how you’re managing the long distance relationship with respect to the money and the travel components of it beause I know this is a really common thing in the PhD population. How does it work for you?

18:36 Allie: What we do is we split our flights 50/50 pretty much every time and those tend to be between $300 and $500 because it is a pretty small airport that I’m flying into. Unfortunately, he is in law school and collecting student loans at 9% interest, so while we do split 50/50, kind of as the agreement because we’re not married yet, I try to be mindful and foot some of the bill if I can and have a lot of extra.

19:18 Emily: Do you find that you are traveling about at the same frequency to see one another or does one of you travel more?

19:24 Allie: It’s varied, just on convenience for whichever one of us has the time. At Baylor, we have a week break between terms in the first year that we take classes, so it made more sense for me to go see him for a couple of those breaks. Then of course he had a fall break and spring break, so he came to see me for that. It was more circumstantial than it was just trying to keep it even on who had to travel.

20:00 Emily: I almost forgot that classes were involved with being a PhD student because that will not be the case for much of your degree, but presumably he’ll have classes that he has to attend the entire time. Do you see that changing up at all once you’re free from that aspect of your scheduling?

20:20 Allie: Good point. We finish classes in a year at Baylor so I’m done, which means I will probably be taking more time to go see him. He tends not to have classes on Fridays in law school, so it’s more likely that I make a Thursday night trip to go see him.

20:38 Emily: Are you able to work remotely when you travel or are you still considering one of those days a work day?

20:45 Allie: I have not talked depth with my PI about any kind of specific arrangement, but I do have a pretty heavy computational component to my research, so that would probably make it easier.

20:58 Emily: Yeah, it’s really nice to have that flexibility. I remember much of my PhD having to go in and feed cells on weekends and that it makes travel a little bit difficult. You have to really plan long-term to be able to be away from more than a couple of days. Have you started using any kinds of travel hacking strategies or travel rewards strategies since you are taking the same kinds of flights pretty frequently?

Travel Hacking and Strategies

21:25 Allie: First of all, your best friend is Google Flights. It’ll help you track prices so you can decide when is the best time to buy your tickets and it’ll send you email notifications and it’s been really helpful. We tend to just fly the cheapest airlines that will fly between us, which includes three different airlines, so I have not gotten a co-branded credit card, but I have used points and cash back from credit cards. Right now, I have a Chase card that gives me 2% back on all travel and the points can be redeemed usually at a higher value than just simple cashback. That’s what we’ve been using to book flights, when we can, through their travel portal. The signup bonuses have also been really helpful in getting us a couple free flights back and forth.

22:22 Emily: That’s excellent. The Chase card that you’re using, or maybe in general, do you use cards that have an annual fee or always ones that don’t?

22:31 Allie: That is my only card that has an annual fee actually, and I mostly got that card for the signup bonus. A lot of them you can do the first year with no annual fee, so I’ll have to decide at the end of the year whether that annual fee will be worth it for next year.

22:49 Emily: Thanks for sharing those strategies. I did not really get into travel hacking when I was in graduate school because living in Durham and flying to lots of different parts of the country, I was always taking different airlines, so at that time I was kind of like, “Well, it doesn’t really make sense. I’m never loyal to one airline.” I didn’t get a co-branded card at that time. Now that I live in Seattle, I fly Alaska so much because it’s a hub, so at this point, for my specific situation, it makes a lot more sense to get that card and just take the strategy a whole different way. I’m really glad to hear that you found a solution that’s working for you, even though you aren’t loyal to one airline, and using those general rewards cards that work across any type of travel is an excellent way to do that, so thank you so much for sharing that with us.

23:34 Allie: Still make a frequent flyer account for any airline that you’re going to fly on, because if you fly on it again, you might collect enough points to do something with it.

23:45 Emily: Great point.

What are your top financial goals?

23:46 Emily: Okay, so that was your, your top five expenses. Let’s then switch to talking about your financial goals, if you have any. We’ve already talked about paying above the minimum payment on those student loans, so that’s awesome that you’re doing that. Are you working on any other financial goals?

Maxing out Roth IRA

24:02 Allie: I’m also at the moment maxing out my Roth IRA for retirement, so that’s $500 a month since the maximum contribution is now $6,000 a year. I decided not to dip into that goal for these medical expenses that have come up because my student loan interest is only 4% and generally that’s kind of the breaking point on when you’re likely to beat the market and a non-taxable account versus paying down debt.

24:34 Emily: Thanks for that insight. I really love that now in 2019 we have that $6,000 limit on the IRA because it makes the math so much easier. It’s $500 every month. I don’t know if you think about things this way, but are your Roth IRA contributions coming from your stipend, or are they coming from your side hustle income?

24:55 Allie: So I do track my budget on Mint, but I’ve also been putting it into a spreadsheet so I can plan ahead because Mint won’t let you plan for next month. I put my money in one big pot, but because my IRA is something that I would not stop contributing to if I didn’t have Rover income, I’d probably say it comes from my stipend.

25:22 Emily: That makes sense. In terms of your priorities, maxing out your IRA comes before paying off your student loans and so you’re using a side hustle income really for the student loans and the contribution to the IRA as the more stable, constant goal that you have. Well, I think that’s just fantastic that you’re able to and that you’re choosing to max out that IRA. I’m so excited for you.

Emily: If anyone is thinking about doing an IRA during grad school, I’ll link in the show notes, a post that I’ve done about how much of a difference to your net worth doing that IRA during graduate school will make. Top line numbers, you can read more about it in the post, is that if you contribute $250 per month during grad school for five years, and we make some assumptions about your rate of return, if you look out 50 years from when you finish, you will be solidly into retirement at that point, that contribution just during graduate school turns into $1 million based on these compound interest calculations. You contributing $500 a month, if you do that for five years, we’re looking at $2 million, 50 years out from graduate school. Again making certain assumptions, but that’s the kind of scale that we’re talking about for making room for this within your stipend and your budget and so forth. I’m really excited for you, Allie, and what the future holds for your finances.

Targeted Savings Accounts

26:52 Emily: Any other goals that you want to discuss now?

26:55 Allie: Other than that student loan, which is kind of on the back burner, I’ve hit my emergency fund goal and some other savings goals. I do have separate designated savings accounts for my cat in case of medical expenses and for my car, just for repairing and eventually in like five or six years, probably buying a new car.

27:23 Emily: It sounds like you’re employing what I call the targeted savings accounts model or sinking funds model, which is excellent. I really love that for graduate students to help them through the months where one, two, three large expenses hit and your normal cash flow can’t handle that. I’m really glad to hear about that.

What are your top financial tips for your peers?

27:41 Emily: So let’s wrap up here, Allie, with your best advice for your peers.

27:46 Allie: One big thing is keeping some extra money in that checking account. This will allow you to automate everything. What I did is I contributed to my emergency savings until I had some extra and then I just pulled that back into the checking account. That way I had $500 buffer so that on first of the month I can always pay my rent, so that I set those credit cards to auto pay, so that I set my targeted savings accounts to auto withdraw, and the same for my retirement and my student loans. It just makes me worry so much less. Then my second tip is for those with a side gig, if you can, push the income you get from that side gig into next month’s budget. For a little while, I was taking the $50 I made last week and including it in this month’s budget, which made for really erratic budgeting and also made me more likely to put that $50 toward something I want to do instead of a savings goal.

28:49 Emily: I think those two pieces of advice are really excellent and I’ll just expound on them a little bit more. The basic concept that you’re talking about, with pushing your income forward into next month, is what I call being on time with your budget. I recently read the book You Need a Budget*. So there’s a budgeting software, You Need a Budget, and there’s an associated book called You Need a Budget. What they call it is aging your money. What this means is basically in the course of a month, whatever paychecks you receive, those go towards funding your next month’s budget.

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

Emily: A lot of people play a game, especially people who are paid bi-monthly or bi-weekly, where the paycheck they receive is immediately going to pay for expenses — so it’s like first paycheck of the month pays for these immediate expenses, second paycheck of the month pays for the bills I’ve time to be in the second part of the month. Instead, to give yourself a little bit more margin, a little bit more space and calm, take all the income you make in a given month, and say that’s funding my next month’s budget.

Emily: That’s exactly what you’re doing with your side hustle income, so you’re not turning around and spending the money you make the next week, you’re saving it for the next month. I think that’s really smart, especially for what you just said. When you put off spending the money until the new budgeting period, you can have some more time for reflection and planning and making sure that you’re using the money in the way that you think is best and not something more impulsively. I actually think that it’s somewhat easy for graduate students, if they’re paid monthly, to do this. Are you paid on a monthly schedule?

30:21 Allie: We’re paid biweekly.

30:23 Emily: If you haven’t already done this, my suggestion would be to age that second paycheck or the first one, I guess to be for that next month. It’s a very challenging thing to do, especially for someone who has really, really tight cashflow because essentially you’re saving up half your month’s salary to be delayed until using it the next month. It’s a very, very challenging thing to do, but a really excellent one and again, I really admire the “You Need a Budget” framework for calling that out as ageing your money and they have a specific tool within the software that helps the user do that. So thanks for those two pieces of advice.

31:06 Emily: Allie, thank you so much for breaking down your budget with us today and giving us this wonderful insight and wonderful advice and best of luck to you with your finances and the upcoming year.

31:16 Allie: Yeah, absolutely.

Outtro

31:19 Emily: Listeners, thank you so much for joining me for this episode. PFforPhDs.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There you can find links to all the episode show notes, a form to volunteer to be interviewed, and a way to join the mailing list. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you want to support the show and my business, please go to PFforPhDs.com/helpout. There are plenty of ways do so without laying out any of your own money. See you in the next episode and remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it doesn’t hurt. The music is Stages of Awakening, by Poddington Bear from the free music archive and it’s shared under CC by NC.

Side Hustle

Links Mentioned in this Episode

Teaser

Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

What are Trading Options?

Safer Ways to Approach Options Trading

Strategy #1: Covered Call Option

Feasibility for Grad Students

Strategy #2: Selling a Cash Secured Put Option

Risks of Selling Puts

Commercial

Strategy #3: Put Credit Spread Option

Recommended Resources for Executing Options Trades

Fairly Low Time Commitment

Choosing the “Right” Stocks

Portfolio Growth in 2021

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Outtro

Links Mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourselves Further?

How to Get Involved with Polygence

Stephen’s Role as a Mentor

Intangible Benefits of Mentorship

Why this Side Hustle is a Great Fit for Grad Students

Financial Benefits of Polygence Side Hustle

Commercial

How to Inform Your Mentor About a Side Hustle

Anyone Who Might Not Be a Good Fit at the Moment?

Jin: What is Your Work-Life Balance and PhD Status?

Next Steps for Getting Involved with Polygence

Best Advice for an Early-Career PhD

Outtro

Links Mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

What is a Coach, and What is a Coaching Business?

Why Coaching is a Good Side Hustle

Active vs. Passive Coaching Income

Flexible Working Hours

Mindset Shifts to Start a Coaching Business

Navigating Imposter Syndrome

Commercial

First Steps Toward Starting a Coaching Business

Finding Your First Few Clients and Charging for Coaching

Transitioning from Free to Fee-Based Coaching

Free is Okay at First, But Start Charging Soon

Origin Story of Cheryl’s Coaching Business

Learn More About Cheryl Theory

Best Financial Advice for an Early-Career PhD

Outtro

Links Mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourselves Further?

Why Side Hustle In Grad School?

How did you find your current and previous side hustles?

Balancing Side Hustles, Grad School, and Personal Life

Commercial

Budgeting Side Hustle Income

Side Hustle Income and Taxes

Unexpected Benefits from Side Hustling

Best Financial Advice for Early Career PhDs

Outtro

Links Mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

Intro

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Level of Pay Variation at UW-Madison

What is a Project Assistant?

RA-ing Does Not Always = Dissertation Work

Perspective on Assistantship Tiers

Determine the Standard Offer in Your Field Ahead of Time

A Deep Dive into Frankie’s Side Hustles

Tutoring for the Department of Athletics

Self-Employment: Frankie’s Cupcakes

Arbitrage via Poshmark