Personal Finance for PhDs

Live a financially balanced life - no Real Job required

Main navigation

Money Mindset

Catching Up with Prior Guests: 2022 Edition

by Leave a Comment

Emily published the first episode of this podcast in July 2018. This is the 176th episode, and over the last four and a half years, the podcast has featured 156 unique voices in addition to Emily’s. This last episode of 2022 catches up with the guests from Seasons 1 through 9. The guests were invited to submit short audio updates on how their lives and careers have evolved since the time of their interview. They also included their best financial advice for an early-career PhD if their answer has changed since the initial interview.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

Teaser

00:00 Sarah: I wasn’t ready to think about my finances until my forties <laugh>. And it’s not too late as it turns out. So, trust yourself, you’ll get there. Do it in your own way.

Introduction

00:19 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance.

00:26 Emily: I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

00:36 Emily: This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others.

00:49 Emily: This is Season 13, Episode 9, and today I am featuring many guest voices! I published the first episode of this podcast in July 2018. This is the 176th episode, and over the last four and a half years, the podcast has featured 156 unique voices in addition to my own.

01:12 Emily: For our last episode in 2022, I thought it would be fun to catch up with the guests from Seasons 6 through 9, and a few from earlier seasons as well. I invited them to submit short audio clips to update us on how their lives and careers have evolved since the time of our interview, as well as to provide their best financial advice if that has changed since our initial interview. We have some very big and very exciting updates this year, and I’m confident you are going to appreciate the perspectives that these guests bring.

01:45 Emily: The audio clips in this episode are ordered by when the original episode was published. If you’d like to circle back and listen to any of the previous interviews, you can do so in your podcatcher app or at my website, PFforPhDs.com/podcast. To keep up with future episodes, please hit subscribe on that podcatcher and/or join my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice.

02:14 Emily: You’ll hear an update from me first, followed by the rest of the guests.

02:18 Emily: You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s13e9/.

02:25 Emily: Happy listening, happy holidays and happy New Year! See you in 2023!

Dr. Emily Roberts

02:35 Emily: This is Emily Roberts from Personal Finance for PhDs. I am of course the host of this podcast and you hear from me every week.

02:44 Emily: On the personal side, nothing can really top the update I gave you last year about finally becoming a homeowner. My family has been in our house in north San Diego county for about a year and a half now, and life is very sweet here. We have really integrated into our neighborhood and community. This year, I rediscovered a pastime from my youth, which is reading—voraciously. Through college, grad school, and early parenthood, reading fell by the wayside for me, but I picked it up again after tax season ended. I haven’t kept close track, but I think I’ve read a few dozen books in the last 8 months, almost all from the library, of course! One that really made an impression on me was Die with Zero by Bill Perkins. I recommend it to anyone who is inclined toward over-saving and expects to have a good income for your career, even if you’re still in grad school or your postdoc. Relatedly, I’ve been inspired to have more adventures and vacations and such with my family, and I’ve gotten back into the credit card rewards game to help fund that.

03:52 Emily: As for my business, Personal Finance for PhDs, 2022 was another awesome year with strong growth. I’ve gained a lot of clarity on how I want to spend my time, and I’m implementing more productivity and time management strategies. In 2022, I attended two in-person conferences and delivered several in-person speaking engagements, which was so so rewarding. I didn’t realize how intense my Zoom fatigue was! Going forward, I’m promoting my live in-person seminars and workshops and my pre-recorded workshops and demoting my live remote webinars. If you want me to teach you and your peers about taxes, investing, increasing income, student loans, frugality, home ownership, etc. etc., please connect me with a potential host at your university. I appreciate these recommendations so much.

04:50 Emily: Thanks for listening to my update! If you want to get in touch, you can visit my website at PFforPhDs.com or email me at emily@PFforPhDs.com.

Dr. Caitlin Faas

05:07 Caitlin: Caitlin Faas here, helping experts get off the hamster wheel for good, as a master certified life coach. I was on season one, episode number seven way back in 2018, and I also gave an update last year where I was a tenured faculty member, became a department chair, and then left in 2020 to coach full-time and paid off all my debts with my husband, and you can hear those updates.

05:27 Caitlin: But in the past year, I’ve had some huge life transitions that I also want to give you an update on. So my husband and I decided to get divorced in January of 2022, and in April, he died unexpectedly before paperwork was filed, so I became a legal widow. And of course, the grief is devastating and it was something I never wanted to happen, and yet I also prepared for it with him financially. We had created our wills together; the idea of death and either one of us being a widow had been on my mind because I’m a developmental psychologist by training, and it was something I listened to, people who were widows, what they wish people had known, and I’m so grateful I listened, even though the statistics were never gonna happen, that one of us was gonna die before we grew old together, right? And yet it did.

06:42 Caitlin: And so taking the time now, my advice for you, take the time to write down your passwords for someone else. Check in about your financial status and showing it to somebody else that’s important in your life so that they know, I wasn’t prepared with all of those things, we hadn’t taken those steps, but, you know, some of the next financial steps are the legal will. What happens if you do lose someone important to you, will you have the capacity to work? Can you put yourself in a position of you’d be able to take off time if you needed to, if you wanted to? And taking a few minutes now will pay off if it ever does happen. I hope it doesn’t. And yet having awareness and not being afraid of it, not pushing it away, or thinking it would be like the worst thing ever can be so beneficial for your financial health. I’d really like to not have huge updates in the next year, and we’ll see what happens as I prepare for it and ride the waves of life coming at me. Best of luck as your life unfolds this year, too!

Dr. Sam Zelenka

08:05 Sam: Hi, this is Sam Zelenka from Government Worker FI. I talked with Emily in season three, episodes eight and nine about the FIRE movement, financial independence, and retire early. And I wanted to give everybody a big update about how we’re doing on our financial independence journey. About a year ago, I decided to work part-time, and this was possible because we were saving up a ton of money and preparing for full financial independence or leaving the workforce entirely. But, we decided that actually it would be really great if I could keep doing my job, just do less of it. I was able to negotiate working part-time with my employer, and I now still am a PhD, pretty academic type person, doing research, but I only do that part of the time and I have a lot more time to spend with my family and my pets and just enjoy life at a little bit slower pace.

Dr. Zach Taylor

09:15 Zach: Hey everybody, this is Zach Taylor. I’m currently an assistant professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, and I was on the Personal Finance for PhD’s podcast on [season 5] episodes 10 and 11. I can give a couple of personal updates after bouncing around to a few jobs during the pandemic. I finally was able to earn a job that is really a great fit for me at the University of Southern Mississippi, so I’m very happy about that.

09:42 Zach: Something that is just something interesting financially is that relocation assistance provided by institutions. My institution did provide relocation assistance, but when I asked about it, they said that very few people ask about it, and even fewer people actually keep receipts and document their expenses. One suggestion I would give to really early career PhDs who are either on the job market or are looking to relocate, is be very clear with your hiring manager about any relocation costs that they will reimburse you for and keep all of your receipts. I had to actually submit original paper receipts from gas stations and the moving company, and when I bought cardboard boxes, I needed to keep those paper receipts. They would not take electronic receipts. I had to have them printed off in paper from the original source. And so be very, very clear with your hiring manager, about that.

10:47 Zach: But a lot of the advice that I gave about sniping great grocery prices using coupons, I still do that all the time. I actually just discovered that the Walmart near where I live in Hattiesburg, they discount meat every Thursday. And so I usually go and check on Thursday afternoons to see what grocery items have been discounted. Then I buy those and I freeze them, and it’s as good as if it were fresh to me at least. So that is something that I continue to do in a habit that I continue to kind of implement in my everyday life. If you have any questions or want  to get in touch with me, my email address is zt@utexas.edu. That’s the letter U texas.edu, and I wish to everyone the best.

Dr. Sean Sanders

11:34 Sean S.: Hi, Emily. I was delighted to join you back in June, 2020, which I believe was episode eight of season six for a fun conversation about my financial journey and especially my desire to retire early. I wanted to send a quick update on what’s happened since we spoke. And my exciting news is that as of early next year, that’s 2023, I’ll be leaving my current job at AAAS and semi retiring. I’m still a little stunned that I managed to get to this point, but here I am. I’ll still lightly be doing some consulting work in my field, but I’m also taking a sharp turn away from editing to become a dog trainer. This has been a goal of mine for many years, and I feel like it brings together my love for dogs with my scientific curiosity. I want to understand how dogs think and perceive their world as a pathway to improving our communication with them.

12:40 Sean S.: I’m also planning to do some volunteering with some local organizations, particularly to help people with some of their basic personal finances. I’ve been thinking about early retirement or semi-retirement for a few years now, as we talked about in my 2020 interview. And I’ve been working hard to save since my first postdoc, really, and wanted to be able to enjoy the benefits of all of that effort before I was too old to do things like traveling and volunteer work and, you know, pursue some other passions. There were really two precipitating events that led me to pulling the trigger and finally making this, this decision. The first was that I felt really burnt out at my job, which I’ve been at for 15 years, and really felt that a change was needed. The second is the long bull market that we’ve enjoyed for the last 10 years or more that has grown my investments to the point that I could feel comfortable making a move to part-time work.

13:44 Sean S.: To be honest, I’m still a little nervous with all the talk of the impending recession, but I’m staying the course and have put some safeguards in place to mitigate any risk of a recession, like having a bit more cash available to get me through the next two years. This is a big move, so wish me luck. I’m excited about the prospect of still staying in touch with my science roots, but also branching out into some new and exciting areas. If I were to offer any advice to early career graduates, I’d say do your best to focus on your long-term financial goals and remember that as the saying goes, time in the market is better than timing the market. So start investing early and try not to get caught up in the daily news cycle. Thanks so much for this opportunity and stay well!

Dr. Sean Bittner

14:41 Sean B.: Hey there, this is Sean Bitner. I was interviewed by Emily on Personal Finance for PhD’s season six, episode 12 and season 10, episode 14. In the most recent episode, Emily and I discussed comparing job offers after defending my thesis, the main components of a non-academic job offer, and how to prepare for the job hunt. Since our interview aired, I’ve been able to complete my accelerator’s first cohort, and I had an opportunity to work with a group of really incredible medical device company founders. I’ve also continued my coaching work and I’ve begun leadership education at the undergraduate level. Here, I’m teaching students about important leadership and communication skills that they can use, not only while they’re in college, but also as they move out into their first jobs. On a personal note, I still love to travel, which you’ll remember from season six, episode 12. Since last year, my wife and I have taken an incredible trip to South Africa, and by the time this recap episode comes out, we’ll be gearing up for a trip to Japan.

15:39 Sean B.: To add on to my advice from previous episodes, I want to again, encourage listeners to be looking for how they can fit their PhD work or their new job into their broader life and goals, rather than trying to squish their broader life and goals into their studies. If you’d like to connect with me, you can find me on Twitter @lifescicoach, on Instagram @seanwithoutanh S E A N or on LinkedIn. I’m also taking new coaching clients, so if you’re curious about leadership coaching and want to learn more, feel free to reach out to me. Thank you again to Emily and her team for having me on the podcast and thank y’all for listening and I hope you have a great holiday season. Bye!

Dr. Travis Seifman

16:25 Travis: Hi Emily and listeners, my name is Travis Seifman and I was featured in season seven, episode four, where I talked about the pros and cons of university housing. At that time, I had just finished my PhD in history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and was preparing to move to Japan to take up a postdoc position where I remained today as a project researcher at the University of Tokyo’s Historic Graphical Institute. Life here in Tokyo is good. I feel extremely fortunate, just so lucky to have landed the position that I did and to be able to be living the life that I am now. In contrast to paying a thousand dollars a month for a poorly maintained basic amenities housing in a middle of nowhere California town, I’m now paying 92,000 yen a month, that’s about $650 with the current exchange rate, or closer to 800 and more normal times, for a nice apartment right in Central Tokyo. Excellent, basic amenities, excellent location in one of the greatest cities in the world. I’ve been fortunate too in that I’ve been able to save a considerable amount of money from being on this postdoc. So fingers crossed, depending on what job or lack of a job I may have after this, the academic job market being what it is, I’ll at least have a sizable savings to fall back on, in case my financial situation becomes tight again.

17:46 Travis: I would offer two points of advice to current grad students regarding housing. One, do what you can to investigate research institutes in the area that might offer housing or other alternative housing options. When I first arrived at the University of Hawaii for my masters, East West Center was a mystery to me – a research institute that I had no connection with, no idea about, no sense that I could potentially move in there, and yet I di and I found in the East West Center a wonderful community in a building where I paid $400 a month to live right off campus instead of a thousand dollars a month to live alone, a long walk or bus right away, somewhere out in town. It can be difficult to know what’s hiding in plain sight sometimes right on our campuses or in our city, so do what you can to find these possibilities.

18:32 Travis: Second, organize and agitate. As I record this in mid-November 2022. As you may well know, nearly 50,000 grad students and the like across the University of California are on strike, striking for better pay and better working conditions. When our institutions won’t act on their own to create affordable, pleasant, supportive environments for students and faculty, but instead put other priorities ahead of that, they need to be held to account and to be pressured to change and to do better. I hope that these strikes lead to positive change at the UC and across the country. Good luck to you all and solidarity.

Commercial

19:10 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude!

I’m hard at work behind the scenes updating my suite of tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2022. These pre-recorded educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return.

For the 2022 tax season starting in January 2023, I’m offering three versions of this workshop, one each for US citizen/resident graduate students, US citizen/resident postdocs, and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. That third workshop is brand-new this year, and I’m very excited about it.

While I do sell these workshops to individuals, I prefer to license them to universities so that the end users, graduate students and postdocs, can access them for free.

Please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, etc. to request that they sponsor one of my tax preparation workshops for you and your peers. I’d love to receive a warm introduction to a potential sponsor this month so we can hit the ground running in January serving those early bird filers.

You can find more information about licensing these workshops at PFforPhDs.com/tax-workshops.

Now back to our interview.

Diandra from That Science Couple

20:52 Diandra: Hi there, this is Diandra from That Science Couple and I was on the PFforPhDs podcast season seven, episode 10. I was talking about working before starting a PhD and the financial and career advantages that go along with that. Emily asked me if I could provide you an update with what I’ve been doing in the last year and so in 2022, I completed my preliminary exam and became a dissertator. My research is on diet and lifestyle factors and on the impact that they play in the risk of developing vascular dementia and white matter hyperintensities, and I’m set to graduate in spring of 2023.

21:29 Diandra: On the personal side, this past year, I took a once in a lifetime trip with my husband and parents to Italy and I overcame a major health crisis. Both of these things directly relate to what I talked about in my episode that by having a financial cushion before I entered my PhD program, it was much easier for me to handle an overseas trip and also to afford the healthcare related expenses because I had an HSA and investments to fall back on from my previous employer.

21:57 Diandra: This year, I also launched That Science Coaching and my program is evidence-based nutrition coaching in which I help others to identify food allergies, create a healthy lifestyle, and prevent or manage chronic illness through diet and lifestyle changes. When I was on the PFforPhDs podcast, my best financial advice for early career PhDs was to fight lifestyle inflation. And while I still believe that this is very important, I think you should also keep investing in yourself and in your health. While I was going through this major health crisis, I realized that it’s easier to maintain your health than to regain it, so if there are small things that you can do on a weekly basis, such as yoga or working out for self care, it’s gonna help your mental health and also your physical health. While we work really hard in the lab, I think it’s important to actually unplug and take the time to relax when you’re on vacation.

22:53 Diandra: If you’d like to contact me or follow our blog, we are online at thatsciencecouple.com. We’re also active on Twitter @science_couple and Facebook @thatsciencecouple. I’m currently accepting new clients, so if you’re interested in my program, please don’t hesitate to contact me. To wrap things up, I’d like to thank Emily for asking me to do this update. I hope everyone has a great end of their year, and please keep listening to the PFforPhDs podcast.

Dr. Samantha McDonald

23:25 Samantha: Hi, My name is Samantha McDonald. I was on season eight, episode three and I was discussing in particular in this episode, knowing your worth in an environment that devalues you work, and looking especially at someone who made more money than a lot of people in the the department at that time. Life has changed a lot. <laugh> I got my PhD woo-hoo about a year and a half ago in, I believe it was either March or May of 2021. After doing so, I took a three month break after my PhD as almost like my mini wellness sabbatical. I took a sailing class for two weeks in the Catalina Island to learn how to sail catamaran. I worked on a farm in a seek community in New Mexico for a few weeks, which was amazing. And I backpacked the High Sierra Trail in the Sierra Nevada of California, which is also amazing. It was a great break! I recommend to anyone after their PhD take a few months off. Even my partner spoke to a Nobel laureate who said that one of his biggest regrets was not taking some time off between his PhD and post-doc. It made all the difference in the world.

24:46 Samantha: After that was over, I started working full-time in industry actually at Meta, which was at the time Facebook when I joined the company. I still work for Meta, and I have for the past year and around I’d say three to five months, which has definitely been an insightful experience. Financially I am in a position I’ve never been before with making more money than I ever have or probably ever will in my life, so my finances are doing great. I save 50% of my paycheck still because I’m still in this super save mode. And luckily Meta provides a financial planner, who has been super helpful in making sure I’m making the right investment opportunities when I’m still young, still can take risks, but also figuring out some other plans.

25:33 Samantha: Personally, and the reason why I say Meta is as much money as I’m gonna make ever is I’m actually quitting my job in a few months, starting in January. Not because in particular I didn’t like my job or didn’t like industry, but mostly because I made a promise to my partner that when he finished his PhD, which is gonna be happening soon, we’d take a year off and live on a sailboat that we bought together. That’s happening very soon. It’s very different than what I thought I’d be doing, but we’ve saved up enough money, especially with my tech job that it’s a very cheap way to live financially and have an adventure for a year with his one year sabbatical after his PhD. After that, we’re going to New Mexico for a postdoc for him, and I’ll figure it out. I don’t know what I’m gonna do yet, but there’s something exciting about that, of taking a year off and just taking some time to breathe.

26:23 Samantha: My financial advice is still the same. Keep saving as much as possible, but taking as much time off and really understanding your worth and your value, it’s super important. And just understanding how much you’re worth and knowing that sometimes in industry, you’re overqualified for jobs in ways that you don’t realize that you’re there. So I’ve learned a lot in the past year and a half working in industry and I can’t wait to learn more. Contact info – my email is still the same. You can still contact me. Also, if you’re just interested, Michael and I, my partner, have started a YouTube channel for our sailing adventures, just for us to remember for ourselves and for our family to see. It’s called Sailing Ambrosia, A M B R O S I A, Ambrosia. It’s named after Michael’s grandmother. So if you’re just interested to see our adventures after PhD, it’s there too.

Dr. Jacqueline Kory-Westlund

27:14 Jacqueline: Hello, I’m Jacqueline Kory-Westlund. I was interviewed in season eight, episode eight. In that episode, I talked about how my husband and I managed our work and finances while I was in grad school so that we were able to start a family. Yes, I had my first baby as a fourth year PhD student, and then when I graduated we bought our own home in cash. We’ve continued to choose flexible work arrangements and prioritize our family. And now I’m excited to share that I have a book forthcoming from Columbia University Press, tentatively titled “#PhDone: How to Get Through Grad School Without Leaving the Rest of Your Life behind”. It’s the book I wish I’d been able to read as a student, a pragmatic how to guide on flourishing in grad school, both personally and professionally. And alongside all the life balance tips, you’ll find a whole chapter about grad school finances. You can find me on Twitter @JacquelineKory or on my website www.jakory.com.

Elana Gloger

28:25 Elana: Hi, I’m Elana Gloger, host of Dear Grad Student, and I’ve been on the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast twice. I was on season eight, episode nine where Emily and I did a financial coaching session; season 10, episode 17, where we talked all about me doing a side hustle while in grad school; and I’ve had Emily on my podcast, Dear Grad Student, she was on for episode 27 with another graduate student where we talked generally about grad school finances and episode 56 where we talked more in depth about surviving tax season.

28:59 Elana: Since you last heard from me on this podcast, I have become a PhD candidate. I’ve submitted a really exciting grant and I’m only a year and a half away from graduation. In terms of finances, I have finally almost finished saving up my emergency fund. I’m still throwing a little bit of money in that Roth IRA even though Emily told me not to. It’s just a little bit, and honestly, I’m still fighting a little bit with debt, but I know that that’s what comes along with making $20,000 a year, so mostly I’m trying to make sure that I’m setting up patterns for myself so that when I make a little bit more money, it, you know, it’ll all work out.

29:36 Elana: The best financial advice that I have for an early career PhD is don’t be afraid to budget for things that you enjoy. That way you won’t overspend if you know that you’re allotted a little bit, even with a small budget to start with. If you wanna hear more from me or Dear Grad Student, you can find the podcast Dear Grad Student anywhere on any podcast app. You can check out the website deargradstudent.com for literally everything related to the podcast, including ways to contact me, to support the podcast, and even merch, lots and lots and lots of merch! You can also find the podcast on social media. You can look up deargradstudent on Facebook. We’re @deargradstudent on Twitter @deargradstudentpod on Instagram and now on TikTok, @deargradstudent. Thanks again to Emily for having me twice on the personal Finance for PhD’s podcast. Hopefully you’re all hearing my voice again soon and have a good holiday season.

Dr. Sarah Birken

30:34 Sarah: Hey everyone, this is Sarah Birken. I am an associate professor in the Department of Implementation Science at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. And Emily interviewed me in episode 12 of season eight, and we talked about my early financial decisions in that episode. I’ve always been pretty assertive when it comes to negotiating salary and startup, but I’ve also been very passive with my personal finances. That all had to change when my partner, who is a personal financial planner, and I separated. Since then I’ve gotten very serious about managing my finances and my sister has been helping me since April really get my finances in order using YNAB, the You Need a Budget App, which Whitney Robinson, my co-host from AcaDames has always advocated for.

31:31 Sarah: Since I have been very scrupulously managing my finances, I’ve noticed a couple of things. One is that it’s unbelievably empowering <laugh>. I get to decide what I spend my money on and kind of just accept full responsibility for it. And I don’t have to answer to anyone for my decisions, which is lovely. And also I do have to answer to myself, so it’s caused me to be a lot more thoughtful and dare I say philosophical about what money is for in my life. The other thing I’ve noticed is that I’m focusing much more on managing my startup budget from my position. It’s something I’ve been starting to track as carefully as I do my personal finances and again, kind of bringing in this philosophy of what do I care enough to spend this money on that my institution has provided to me so that I can be an asset to them. I think the only additional advice I would give to early career folks is trust yourself. I wasn’t ready to think about my finances until my forties <laugh>. And it’s not too late as it turns out. So, trust yourself, you will get there. Do it in your own way. You can reach me on Twitter @BirkinSarah. Thanks everybody!

Dr. Lindy Ledohowski

33:22 Lindy: Hi everyone, this is Dr. Lindy Ledohowski. I spoke with Emily in season eight, episode 15, and she titled our conversation “How a Boom and Bust Money Mindset from Grad School Serves this Startup Founder Well”, and what we chatted about was the ways in which being a graduate student prepared me for some of the ups and downs of my post professorial life as a startup founder. I left my tenure track job as an English professor and I co-founded and then led academic writing startup, Essay Jack since I last chatted with Emily, Essay Jack has been acquired and I joined the acquiring company so I can add driving a startup through an acquisition to my resume. And I would say that that boom and bust money mindset that I carried over from graduate school into the ups and downs of startup life for five years into the acquisition and now I am Chief Operating Officer at Wise Prep, the company that acquired Essay Jack, that boom and bust Money Mindset has served me well all along the way. And luckily now I’m at a boom phase in life post-acquisition and we continue with the adventure as Essay Jack is reborn as Wize Writer part of the Wize Prep family of educational resources. So that is my little update since I last chatted with Emily about my post academic life and the way that I thought about finances as a graduate student and how that carried over into the very different world of entrepreneurship and startup life.

Rutendo Chabikwa

35:19 Rutendo: My name Rutendo Chabikwa of the So You Got a Scholarship podcast as well as the Taking Into Account podcast. I was on season nine, episode one of the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. I’m now in my third year of my PhD at the University of Oxford. Financially, I ran into a bit of a hurdle where my tuition was unexpectedly cut and the rug taken from beneath my feet unexpectedly. However, I was able to connect with people in the university who became my allies and advocated for me and ensured that my tuition agreement would remain. And then the second thing that I have done professionally is that I have now reached a stage where I’ve done enough reflection and exercises and enough research for me to figure out that I want to be in industry at the end of my PhD. I do not want to stay in academia. And so as a result, I am now able to put my energies more into doing that, into making those connections, into getting internships, or contract positions that are more aligned with where I see myself. As a result, this has also actually helped my finances because industry positions do pay a little bit more, even if you’re working part-time.

36:39 Rutendo: And so my advice for early career PhDs, it has not fully changed since my interview, but I think with these new experiences that I’ve had, there are two things that I would say. And the first is, within your institution, do find people who are your advocates. Do find people who are your allies, especially if you’re someone who comes from an underprivileged background or from a different country and you are new to this system. Things like getting your funding pulled from you, as I have learned through my own experience, are that these things do happen to people and for others, this can mean that they do not get to finish out of no fault of their own. And so it is unfortunate that institutions do function in this way still, but it is really useful that you find the people around you who can make sure that the agreements that were made for you do stay in place.

37:29 Rutendo: And then the second thing also is that if you’re thinking about splitting your energies between part-time work and doing your project, I would advise that after at least your first year, you start to consider seriously where you want to be in terms of industry versus academia. That way you’re putting your energy into something that actually then helps you with where your next step is and it’s not just something you’re doing because it is useful for the money. I wish you all the best! My contact info, you can find me on Twitter, I am @tedoex. That is T E D O E X and all my information is available there.

Outtro

38:13 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode!

I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/.

Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/.

See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps!

The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC.

Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

How to Apply Valuable Scientific Mindsets to Your Personal Finances

by Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Brock Bennion, a financial advisor with Kimball Creek Partners who draws on his scientific training when he works with clients. Brock and Emily discuss how the mindsets and principles that scientists learn can translate very well into their personal finances, everything from thinking long-term to avoiding flashy experiments to collaboration. Brock also lists the essential personal finance strategies to apply during or following the PhD to avoid making a big mistake.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

S13E7 Image: How to Apply Valuable Scientific Mindsets to Your Personal Finances

Teaser

00:00 Brock: In science, what we learn early on is the value of collaboration and how important it is to get your findings out there as soon as you have something. And you would never wait to present those findings until you were at a conference or you were publishing them in a journal. You find the experts along the way and you workshop it the whole time. We’re hesitant to do that with finances. You’ve got to talk with people who have done it and who have some expertise, even just through their experience. Because if you do that, you will start refining your way to a better answer.

Introduction

00:39 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 13, Episode 7, and today my guest is Dr. Brock Bennion, a financial advisor with Kimball Creek Partners who draws on his scientific training when he works with clients. Brock and I discuss how the mindsets and principles that scientists learn can translate very well into their personal finances, everything from thinking long-term to avoiding flashy experiments to collaboration. Brock also lists the essential personal finance strategies to apply during or following the PhD to avoid making a big mistake. The inevitable—the unavoidable—is approaching. Tax season begins in about two months. But help is on the way! I have been busy this fall creating a new version of my annual federal tax return preparation workshop and updating the versions I have offered in the past. These workshops are designed exclusively for funded graduate students and postdocs.

02:08 Emily: I used to teach this material live for university clients, but in recent years have switched over to offering pre-recorded videos plus Q&A opportunities. I actually much prefer this format because you can work through the content at the time that is best for you, whether January or April or in between, and also at a comfortable pace. For the tax return preparation process in particular, I think it’s very helpful to be able to pause the videos and collect documents or make calculations and rewatch segments if you didn’t catch the nuances the first time through. Plus, you still have the ability to ask questions in case anything is unclear or you aren’t sure how to apply the information to your situation, and frankly these are even better questions than the ones I used to get during fully live workshops because you’ve had time to reflect. I’m very proud of these workshops, and they’ve been reaching more and more graduate students and postdocs every year. The new version of this workshop that I’m offering this coming tax season is for nonresident graduate students and postdocs, and I will continue to offer the versions for U.S. citizen/resident graduate students and U.S. citizen/resident postdocs.

03:20 Emily: If you would like to use one of these workshops in the upcoming tax season, you do have the option to purchase it as an individual via PFforPhDs.com/tax. However, I would much prefer that you gain access to it for free, which you can attempt to arrange by helping me find a sponsor at your university, such as your graduate school, graduate student association, postdoc office, international house, etc. I’m bringing this up now because these offices and groups generally need some time to figure out if they have any funding available to allocate toward this purpose. Please let me know of your interest in approaching a potential sponsor at your institution by emailing me at emily@PFforPhDs.com. I may already have someone in mind! Thanks for your help with spreading the word about these educational tax workshops! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s13e7/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Brock Bennion.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

04:28 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on podcast today, Dr. Brock Bennion. He is a PhD from WashU in St. Louis, and he’s also a wealth strategist at Kimball Creek Partners in Tacoma, Washington. So Brock, so delighted that you’re here today. We’ve met on Twitter, which is a really fun way for me to get to meet my guests. So, I’m so glad that we, you know, had some exchanges over there and now here you are on the podcast. So, this is really fun. And would you please introduce yourself to the audience a little bit further?

04:56 Brock: Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Emily, it’s, it’s great to be here. It’s great to talk to you kind of face-to-face, like you said, it’s fun to meet people online. Like you said, I’m a wealth strategist at Kimball Creek Partners. My background is in biology. I was an immunologist, studied at Washington University. I studied viruses and autoimmune diseases and how those two things work together and I absolutely loved it. I still love science. I think it’s amazing, but I am enjoying my career here and, you know, we might talk about how I ended up here and why I did that. But now, I love talking about the interface of science and finance and how these things come together. And so, when you offered me the chance to come on the podcast, I thought, well, that sounds like a lot of fun.

Research Mindsets that Translate into Finance

05:38 Emily: So, we decided on our topic for today being, you know, for the researchers in the audience, the PhDs and PhDs-to-be who are listening, who want to enhance their practice of personal finance. What are the mindsets that we have already developed or are developing as researchers that are really going to serve us well if we’re able to translate those over into this personal finance space? And so, you and I kind of collaboratively came up with a list of a few different points together. So, we’re just going to talk through those and kind of have fun with this like, idea of translating these mindsets from research into the practice of personal finance. So, what was the first one that we came up with, Brock? And let’s start us off.

06:21 Brock: Well, so first we talked about the importance of kind of knowing your goal. I mean, if there is again, a unique aspect of a PhD, it’s the variable size and length, but how you really do view your projects in terms of years. You know, it’s not, you know, this semester’s, you know, test or you know, the upcoming quiz. It’s okay, how do I craft a story that takes place over, you know, years and then, you know, beyond your graduate work, you know, sometimes decades-long, you know, pursuits. And that’s what finance really is. You know, if you are thinking about finance properly, you’re thinking about it in terms of your life, and often beyond that and legacy planning for, you know, future generations and setting up your kids for their success. And that’s a really great skill. And something I think is underappreciated as a PhD student is the ability to say, okay, I’m starting at zero, you know, and I want to go to this point far off in the future. And that applies really well to finance, to be able to say, I’m starting at zero. How do I get to where I want to be? And let’s build a plan to get there.

07:31 Emily: I completely agree. This is one of the points that I kind of start off one of my talks with, The Graduate Student and Postdoc’s Guide to Personal Finance. I like to start off on a like a positive note of like, encouragement for the people in the audience who might feel a little bit like intimidated about, you know, a lot of people are uncomfortable talking about their finances or learning. So, I like to say to them like, if you as a PhD student or postdoc already have like a grand vision for your career and for how graduate school or your postdoc fits in to that vision of your career, you have to do that to get to the stage of being in graduate school. Like you have to write it in your essays, like how this is going to play into your career.

08:11 Brock: Exactly.

08:12 Emily: And so, you’re doing that long-term planning on the career side. And so if you could just pivot that and think about, you know, the decades in your finances and what you want your vision for your life to be, over not just the next few years, but you know, the decades, that’s already a skill that you’re developing there. And you just have to put it over to the other side of the finances and apply it there and it’s going to serve you really, really well. And I’m also thinking now about how like, you know, in setting goals, like, okay, this is what I want my career to be. And then you can break that down. Okay, that means this is what I want to do for my graduate degree and then I think I’m probably going to follow that up with a postdoc or this type of job after that.

Financial Goal-Setting

08:49 Emily: And you know, as you said earlier, people can pivot. You and I both, you know, made some pivots after graduate school, but we at least, you know, you can at least start down that path with a plan. And I think that is similar in the finances, right? Have the goals for the decades, but then back that out and have the goals for 10 years and five years and one year. And then that breaks down to your current goals as well. Yeah, is there anything you want to say about those, like links of time or like decision-making around goal-setting?

09:15 Brock: I think you’re right that like what PhDs do really well is they set these long goals, but then also that they set little goals to get there, which is the step of goal-setting that I think most people fall flat on. I’d say the first problem is people don’t set goals to begin with. If you ask somebody what are your financial goals, they’ll often just give you a blank stare. You should have some goals. And then what you need though, you need lots of small goals that get you there. You know, so if your goal is to discover, you know, something, you know, or show that a drug works, there are all these experiments that go into how does that line up? For the same way, when you’re doing a financial goal, one, you have to pick what your goal is. You have to know where you want to go. But then you’ve got to set the little goals to get there. It’s doing both of those things that really is where you harness the power of goal-setting and of planning.

Long-Term Goal: Retirement

10:03 Emily: I’d love to hear some examples now, like in that financial realm of a really long-term goal and then some more short-term or intermediate-term goals that will help you get there to that long-term goal.

10:13 Brock: Yeah, so usually, I mean, one that we talk about is just retirement. Now, not every scientist wants to retire. I used to joke that the retirement plan of many scientists, especially in academia, is something like drop dead in your office at 95 as you’re writing a grant, you know? But for those that do want to retire, you’ve got to come up with an idea of what that retirement looks like. You know, basic things of where you’re going to live, what do you want to spend your time doing? Because few people just stop and play golf now. I mean, that’s not really what retirement looks like for most people. And then, put a dollar figure on what that costs. Say, well, you know, if I want to travel abroad three times a year, once I retire, well you know, what’s that going to cost me? And then back out from there, and once you start getting a goal of a lifestyle type of thing, you put a big dollar sign on that. And then you take that big dollar sign, you break it down into smaller dollar signs of, well how much is that on a yearly basis? And then what do I need to start saving now to be able to accumulate those kinds of funds to be able to live that kind of lifestyle?

11:24 Emily: This example of retirement is one that I end up speaking about a lot because it’s obviously one of those biggest goals within personal finance that takes so long to properly prepare for, you know, and employing the power of compound interest and so forth. But I’m remembering that when I was in graduate school, and to some extent up until just like a couple of years ago, I didn’t really have that vision of what I wanted my retirement to look like. So, my shorter-term goal was just start saving and start investing and assume that you’re going to get to like the more specific vision later. Because I know it’s going to take investing to some degree either way. And I wonder if there’s a parallel that we can draw over to like the process of getting your PhD or your career on the other side of it. Like maybe it is just, okay, I’m pretty sure I need to have a PhD to do something with my career later in this area. So, I feel like a PhD is a good thing to complete, and that’s a nice five or so, you know, year term goal.

Value of Planning and Collaboration (PhD/Finance)

12:20 Brock: And I think with that recognizing though, like from the beginning, you’re investing a certain amount of time in your PhD, and what do you expect the return to be on the end? You know, for some people, it’s the logical next step from undergraduate. For others, they know going in, well this is what I want to do. And others figure it out along the way. And that’s totally fine whatever path you find yourself in, but you should be actively looking for your plan and your outcome. You know, the future belongs to those who go out and get it. And if you’re always just taking things as it comes, that’s an okay thing to do as you’re figuring things out. But eventually, you’ve got to set your sights on something, and you’ve got to go and get it.

13:04 Brock: And that’s exactly what I think a PhD teaches you really well to do. We all know the person who sat at their bench and didn’t do any experiments and eventually, they had to go do those experiments. And we all know the person that came in every morning at 6:00 AM and was off working, and they got a lot of stuff done. It’s no different in finance or in life. The other thing that you kind of brought up before, and I think, you know, dovetails nicely at this, is the hesitancy that people have to talk about their finances with others, and how they kind of hold this in close. And what I find so interesting is that’s so counter to good science <laugh> right? In science, what we learn early on is the value of collaboration and how important it is to get your findings out there as soon as you have something.

13:55 Brock: You know, from the time that, hey, I have this idea, and you go and you share it with somebody and they say, well that’s a terrible idea, but you know what, if you did this, this would be a better idea. And then you go down the hall and tell somebody else and they say, well that’s a pretty good idea. We could do this experiment that would find out if it would be a really good idea. And, and you would never wait to present those findings until you were at a conference or you were publishing it in a journal. You find the experts along the way and you workshop it the whole time. We’re hesitant to do that with finances. We say, well I want to keep this secret until I’m totally secure. Right? Once I’ve become financially independent, then maybe I’ll talk about my struggles early on or whatever it is.

14:36 Brock: And I think whether you’re choosing, you know, the loan forgiveness pathway or you’re trying to decide is now the right time to buy a house or should I go to a high cost-of-living area for this job that I think has potential? You’ve got to talk with people who have done it and who have some expertise, even just through their experience. Because if you do that, you will start refining your way to a better answer. And you don’t just talk about it once you talk about it every chance you get because everybody will add something different and you’ll form a really good understanding of where you want to go.

15:11 Emily: This is definitely something that, at least I would think many graduate programs you’re taught and encouraged to do this. In fact, find peers and collaborators at many different levels. You have your peers, like other people in your cohort or in your program or in your lab and they’re going through the similar, you know, struggles that you are and they can have something to say about your thought process or your goals or what have you. And then you have your mentor and then you have your committee, and then you have maybe a collaborator at another institute. You know, there are many different levels of people who can help and guide you. And you’re right that we don’t, I mean on like the personal finance side of things, I’m trying to think because like, yeah, some people work with someone like you, like a financial advisor usually after they have some money to be advised upon <laugh>.

Overcoming Stigma

15:54 Emily: And then before that point, when you’re in the, let’s say the training stage and you’re just like trying things out and trying to get some debt paid off and get your, you know, your investing off the ground or whatever’s happening, it’s much less common to talk either with peers or with a mentor or someone who’s been there before. And you know, I do kind of serve as that role as like an educator, but I don’t have like one-to-one relationships with people. It’s more of a teaching like mechanism for me. But people, yeah, don’t tend to talk very much among their peers, even though they could be really good, resources and sounding boards. Yeah, what have you seen, like, I guess with your clients or have you seen any way to like kind of overcome this stigma that we have?

16:34 Brock: You know, it’s hard. Like any stigma, you know, and if we’re talking about, you know, mental illness or social issues or whatever it is, any stigma is best broken by breaking it. And you really just kind of have to start and realize that most people don’t judge. Most people are very accepting, very welcoming to that being honest and open. And you actually forge some real connections with that. You know, some of the best relationships that, you know, me and my wife made during our grad school years were with other couples who were going through the exact same thing. And we’d talk about, you know, our struggles of how do you make this work in the finances, and everybody’s dealing with the same stuff. And typically, people who have already overcome are even more empathetic because they remember those years and they think about, well, how could I have been helped? I wish I would’ve known this, I wish I would’ve known this. And it’s really valuable.

17:32 Emily: I think that’s definitely an encouragement to the listeners to talk with whoever’s a little further along than you are. Like if you’re an entering graduate student, talk with an older graduate student, talk with a postdoc, anyone who’s at like a later stage. And what’s kind of interesting about academia, I mean, obviously people come from very different, um, financial backgrounds. And you know, some people might be deeply in debt coming into graduate school. Some people might have resources from their parents or maybe a prior job that they had before they started graduate school. We can all be coming from different places, but within your program, it’s pretty likely that people are being paid somewhere in a similar range to each other unless there’s like an outside fellowship involved or something like, so at least you have some degree of commonality that you can like start conversations from. Like, oh wow, you know, rent is like 40% of my income.

18:22 Emily: My goodness, what are you paying for rent? I love that question. What are you paying for rent? It’s a very easy one to answer. Everybody knows how much they’re paying for rent. And it’s low stakes, right? Like, it’s not a judgment, oh, you’re paying more or less, whatever. Oh, we found a great deal. I’d love to know how you did that. I literally did this in graduate school because I ultimately moved a couple times in graduate school, and by the time I got to the last place that we stayed, it was like the best deal that I ever lived in during that period of time. It was because I asked people, how much are you paying for this place? Seems great. Oh wow, I can’t believe it’s that little. I’m going to get on the waiting list. You know? So, it it took that like collaboration, like we were talking about earlier, in sharing information to get to those great tactics that actually really help your finances when you can do something like reduce rent. One quick example, easy example. Very easy to talk to other people about rent. I found <laugh>.

19:09 Brock: No, that’s a super great example. No, and I love that because you’re right, people, everybody knows what it is and you know, you don’t judge anybody. You know, you don’t feel any judgment. You feel like you got a deal if somebody’s saying, oh, I paid this or I paid this, and Oh, that’s a great question. I like that.

Commercial

19:26 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2022-2023 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/speaking/ or simply email me at emily@PFforPhDs.com to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

Not-Flashy Experiments in Research and in Finance

20:49 Emily: Another point that we put in our outline was to choose experiments that you are fairly confident are going to work in the sense that they are going to give you information. And the way you put that was don’t be flashy. So, what does this in the research realm, and then how does this translate over to the personal finance realm?

21:11 Brock: Yeah, I hope this wasn’t just me in grad school, but I feel like a lot of grad students, maybe it was just me, you know, early on, will sit down with their advisor and say, Hey, I read in the literature about, you know, this new aspect, this new cool thing that’s out, and I was thinking that this might be affecting this, which might be affecting this, which is actually driving, you know, my project. And you know, the advisor lovingly looks at you and says, mm, probably not <laugh>. You know, like that’s a really long stretch. It could be, and if it did, it’d be really cool and to be really impactful, but the chances of that being true, that’s not really well-grounded in the literature. And then they steer you to some experiments that whether or not, you know, whether you get a positive result that you’re expecting or a negative result, it’s the right question to be asking.

21:59 Brock: It’s the right experiment to be doing and that can go into your paper, you know, be part of your project. And, you know, often people will ask, you know, what do I need to do to be financially independent? And like a really basic way to start is save 10% of your income. Not super flashy. It’s not about a specific investment or it’s not about, you know, doing a fixer upper home or having a side hustle or whatever it is. It’s just, you know, what, if you save 10% of your income, you put it away super diligently for 30 years. I don’t run into many people that have done that and aren’t in a good place financially. They may not be super rich, but they’re in a good place financially. They did something with a high degree of probability that it was going to work, and it worked <laugh>.

22:51 Emily: I think the way that I would put this, and I’m trying, I think this was advice that I sort of, I don’t think I applied it but I sort of heard it during graduate school, was to have a couple of sort of safe aspects to your project. Maybe more conservative, maybe more likely to pan out. And then take one high flyer on some strange idea you have. But don’t devote all of your time to it, right? We’re talking about 10, 20%, something like that. And have, you know, in terms of like constructing your dissertation, like have a couple of chapters that you’re pretty sure are going to work out and then save your, you know, strange, unique, possibly very high reward, but also very high-risk idea for, you know, the last one, right?

23:32 Brock: Yes.

23:32 Emily: And so, I think that that translates over very well to personal finance. It’s like, yeah, a few people might, you know, make it big financially on essentially a gamble, but the vast majority of people do not win the lottery, whatever, you know, the crypto lottery, whatever the version of the lottery is that you’re playing. You can try it, but with the vast majority of your resources, let’s do something that’s a little more tried and true. As you were kind of saying earlier, like, you know, I think about, and maybe we’ll link it in the show notes if you can find this, but I don’t know if it’s a PhD comic or xkcd or something like that, but it’s like, you know, a circle and it’s like these are the boundaries of human knowledge, and the PhD is like putting a little tiny bump on the edge of that circle, you know, like that. It’s the same thing with finances. Like the circle is like, do the stuff like saving 10% of your income, having insurance, like do all the regular stuff that is boring. It’s not flashy, but it’s going to work. And then, okay, yeah. Like, let’s take a little risk over here and a little risk over here as, you know, your personality might lead you to, or something like that. Is that another way of phrasing what you said?

24:38 Brock: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are things that you should do that make a lot of sense. And then yeah, you know, I’m certainly not saying you can’t take any risk or you can’t, you know, say, have fun with some aspects of your finance. But where you get hurt is when you devote too much time to that, just like you would in a project where if you spend all your time doing high-risk projects, maybe you get lucky and you hit it out of the park, but most likely you’ll end up with a lot of dead ends. You’ll be years into your project and you won’t really have a good foundation. And that’s what we’re trying to avoid.

Not-Flashy Personal Finance Advice (But it Works)

25:15 Emily: So, let’s give people some not-flashy personal finance advice. Let’s come up with like, I don’t know, three or five like baseline things, not flashy stuff, great strategies to be using. Whether that starts during graduate school or starts a little bit afterwards if they’re not quite ready for them yet. What’s on your list?

25:31 Brock: Well, I mean, you know, you’ll always hear, you know, my favorite is they’ll always say something like, you know, man, if only I bought, you know, insert whatever tech company in the nineties, you know, now I’d have, you know, this whole fleet of jets or something, right? Like, what people don’t say is, man, I sure wish I bought a diversified low-expense ETF in the nineties. But if you did that and you waited 30 years, it grew <laugh>, it worked. And there were a lot of companies in the nineties that just went away. And so yes, we can in hindsight look back and say, it would’ve been great to have bought this one that became big and changed the world. But if you just bought a low-expense, you know, ETF-type solution, it’s not flashy, it didn’t make you a billionaire, but it did work and it did grow.

26:19 Emily: Because, also by the way, it probably included that flashy tech company, whatever the sector was that, you know, is hot at the time, right? You just bought a tiny bit of it instead of a hundred percent of your bets on that. But the thing is like when you make that diversified portfolio bet, as you were just saying, you’re going to have some winners in there. If the economy is winning, you’re going to be winning with that portfolio. And you’re going to have a lot of losers in there, too. But thank goodness you bought some of the winners as well because you were so well diversified and it didn’t rely on your research and your ingenuity and your insights and blah, blah, blah to pick those out. Okay, so passive investing, index funds, ETFs, that’s a non-flashy strategy. Great. What else is on your list?

26:58 Brock: You need to have some form of life insurance if you have people that depend on you. Now, this does not mean an expensive, you know, universal whole life, whatever policy. But what we’ll tell people is, you know, make a list of everybody you say I love you to. Put a checkmark next to anybody you’re financially responsible for, and then ask yourself what would happen to those people if I wasn’t here? It’s not a flashy way to do it, and the goal is that you die never using it, but if you’re wrong and you don’t have that, you could leave people that you care about in a very unfortunate position.

27:42 Emily: Yep. Love it. And I want to add to that disability insurance too.

27:45 Brock: Yes.

27:45 Emily: Own occupation. Okay. What else is on your list?

Don’t Overextend Yourself

27:48 Brock: Just little things like don’t overextend yourself. Keep a budget, you know. Understand where are you putting your money every week? Is that in line with your priorities? And the example I sheepishly use, soon after undergraduate, I found myself working at a company as a microbiologist and I would go to lunch at just a sandwich shop every day. And all of a sudden I looked back and I’d spent like $300 that month going to the sandwich shop. Well, it didn’t put me in a bad financial position, but I thought, this is not in line with my priorities. It didn’t bring me that much more joy and to think that I could have put that money to something that had, you know, more in line with what I wanted to be doing, well that compounded over time. And so, again, there’s nothing flashy about bringing your lunch or making those small purchases and funneling your money in the direction you want it to, but it does work and it does add up, especially when you start early.

28:52 Emily: Yeah, I think I would phrase that as like an awareness of your money and just being willing to make adjustments when things are kind of out of alignment. And as you said, not overextending yourself. When you said that, I always think of housing and transportation, right? Like large fixed expenses, like especially challenging during graduate school, but like as much as possible, keep those in alignment with your overall income at that time. It’s obviously going to be really challenging in high cost-of-living areas, but just do the best you can during that kind of strange period of life, and you’ll be able to be more in balance later on when your salary is higher. But do the best you can and be aware of it. And like we talked about earlier, just be aware of opportunities where maybe you could find a way to spend a little less on one of these expenses if you feel overextended in that area.

Focus on Your Main Job

29:38 Brock: The last one I might add to this is just lots of times, people will focus on having a side hustle or side job, which is great if you enjoy that. I’ll often talk to people about focus on your first job. You know, there are things especially early in your career that you can take on more responsibility in different areas and accelerate your career growth and your career trajectory so that you’re making more money and you don’t have to spend 10 hours a night doing something else. You could spend an extra hour at your job and show that you’re willing to take on more responsibility and you grow. And as your salary grows, you don’t let your lifestyle creep with it, but you find ways to put that money to where you value most.

30:25 Emily: I love that point, kind of the rise of the side hustle corresponded with when I was in graduate school, like during the great recession, I think you were there at that time as well. And you know, at that time it was like sort of a necessity thing. Like a lot of people didn’t have primary jobs, couldn’t make more of their primary jobs, so they were turning to the side hustle. And then sometimes we were talking about earlier, like you see these successes of people who have a great side hustle or turn their side hustle into their main thing and their businesses and forth. And that can seem really attractive. But the 80/20 on this is just make more at your primary job as best you’re able to. And that could be through negotiation, that could be through, I want to say like preparation.

31:03 Emily: So, as a graduate student, as a postdoc, I want you to negotiate, I want you to apply for the fellowships. I want you to advocate for yourself. Absolutely. But if you’ve done that to the greatest degree you can and that’s where your income is for the time being until you graduate or move on or whatever, what you can still be doing is preparing for that next stage in your career through professional development, through networking, through gaining more skills. And so, that will pay off later. It’s not going to be in the immediate future, but when you have that first post-PhD, you know, career, job or whatever, that’s when it can sort of be like pedal to the medal and you’re going to apply all that stuff you learned, you’re going to negotiate, you’re going to do all the stuff to get that great salary.

31:39 Brock: Yeah.

Don’t Be Wrong

31:40 Emily: And the last point on our outline, Brock, I love the way you said this was, don’t be wrong, <laugh>. So, what do you mean by that?

31:48 Brock: Well, it comes back to the idea of, you know, doing what works. But we’d often say that the number one rule in science is don’t be wrong. You don’t have to be totally right. Nobody publishes a paper and at the end says, and this is it. No reason for a follow-up study, no reason for discussion. This is the end of the study. No, everybody has more questions. Every good study brings up implications and has things that spread from it. What you can’t do in a study is say something that’s wrong. You can’t make a claim that’s unsubstantiated, you can’t, you know, lead the field down the wrong path. You don’t have to be a hundred percent right, but you can’t be wrong <laugh> if that makes sense. And it goes the same way for finances. Making bad investments, things that are too risky early on, paying way too much than you should for things like a car or a house early on in your career. Those are things that can get you sideways financially and really throw you off course for a long time. It is better to just not be a hundred percent right. Talk about buying a diversified fund or something like that. You buy everything, you buy some losers, you buy some winners, you’re not wrong even if you’re not a hundred percent right. And I really think that’s important. Too many people are looking for that, well what’s the trick that’ll get me there faster? And it’s those tricks that usually mess you up.

33:22 Emily: Yeah, I feel like we went over this a little bit when we were talking about those like non-flashy strategies. Because the flashy strategies are the ones where we’re like, well, you might be right, but you definitely might be wrong as well. And it takes a lot of time to like figure that out, right? I mean, if you are an active investor for example, and you love to pick your own stocks, time will tell whether your strategy was successful or not. But it’s going to be time over like decades, not over like a year. And there’s less time to course correct once you’ve figured out that statistically that did not, you know, work out very well for you. So, don’t make a big mistake like we talked about earlier, like having sufficient insurance, not just life and disability insurance, which we mentioned, but like keeping health insurance and all that other stuff. Like insurance generally is one of those like nobody wants to pay for it, but guess what? The reason why the product exists is because you have an area in your life where if something terrible happened, you would not financially be able to recover from that, or at least not very quickly. That’s why you have the home insurance and the renters insurance and all that stuff. So like insurance is definitely one of those like, don’t make a mistake kind of products like yeah, it’s not pleasant to pay for it, but what’s really unpleasant is if that thing happens that you’re trying to insure against.

34:30 Brock: Yeah, we talk about, you know, you invest in what’s probable and you insure against what’s possible. So, the things that are possible but financially devastating if they were to occur, that’s where insurance can mitigate that. We don’t invest in those kind of things that are possible but not probable. We invest in what’s probable, insure against what’s possible.

34:51 Emily: Interesting. And can you think of any other areas that would be like a big mistake? Something that we haven’t already mentioned?

34:58 Brock: Yeah, I mean the one that comes to mind, and this is probably for people considering a graduate school or something like that, but where I look at people who go into a program and don’t finish. Or, you know, and I’ve seen people that drop out, you know, maybe just after five years, but just a year or two away from finishing that you get going down the wrong path and you decide that’s not for you, but you leave taking away nothing. It’s better to finish all the way to the end and then pivot once you’re out, and this isn’t for everybody, but in a lot of cases. Because then you have something to show for that. You show you’ve completed this, then you can move on to the next thing. But where again, you can get yourself really sideways is if you spend half a decade or more going down a path only to drop everything and not at least attempt to build on that momentum that you came up with.

35:57 Emily: Yeah, this is an interesting point and I feel like actually it could apply in other areas of career as well. Like not just the choice to go to graduate school or not, but sort of going down the wrong just career path generally for you. And it goes back to what we were talking about earlier about knowing yourself, knowing your values, knowing your personality. And I think just as soon as you start to notice a misalignment with whatever is going on in that area, it behooves you to examine that and then take action. Whether that’s the action to decide to finish, let’s say the PhD, the action to leave at that point before you, you know, spend three years in that state and not take any action about it. Because there are off ramps, right? Out of academia that can still be fruitful.

Be Open to Pivoting

36:35 Brock: Oh, I’m obviously all for pivoting. Me and my career, I pivoted. I think it’s great. I think you have opportunities throughout your career to pivot. But there’s a way to build on your pivots so that they aren’t turning around, but just changing course. And I think that’s important.

36:54 Emily: Yeah, I think actually my career has been an illustration of this point, actually, because I started knowing maybe around two years into graduate school that I probably wasn’t going to continue in research. But at that point, I really did a heavy reexamination period for about a year and decided that I did want to finish the PhD and it was because I was interested in several, you know, quote unquote alternative career tracks where the PhD would be useful. And so, I finished and then I picked my head up and did another reevaluation and said, oh, but I really love personal finance now and I really wanna go in this direction. So, I ended up pivoting again. But as you said, I was very happy that I got to the credential and got to the finish point because it has been useful since then. Then again, if I had been certain earlier that I didn’t want the PhD, then that would’ve been a good point to take that exit.

37:42 Brock: Exactly. Because, just like you said, those additional years that you would’ve invested. I mean, the relationship between time and money I think is very important. And, you know, whether it’s that you realize that my time is more important spent in this other direction, that’s great. Pivot. Leave grad school if that’s the right call for you. But know and recognize what you’re giving up and what you’re changing to. Because those are the kind of decisions that, you know, make a big swing in your career, in your finances, in your life. You’ve got to pay attention where you’re swinging.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

38:19 Emily: I want to finish up now with the final question that I ask all of my guests, which is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And we’ve talked about so much like advice-y kind of stuff in this podcast episode already that I actually want to give you a more specific assignment, if you don’t mind.

38:36 Brock: Yeah. Okay.

38:37 Emily: Which is that you mentioned earlier that you had children while you were in graduate school. And so, I would love it if you would give advice for another graduate student or early-career PhD who has children maybe at a time when their peers do not yet have children, and what is some financial advice for that person?

38:54 Brock: You know, I <laugh> that’s a hard one. It is hard to have kids in grad school, but for me it was so worth it. It was great. My wife and I are a fantastic team. I hope she would say the same, and certainly she shouldered a lot of that burden. And I wouldn’t have been able to focus on grad school the way I did if it wasn’t for her support. And, you know, she deserves probably more credentials than I do. The advice that I would give to somebody thinking about this is to be really intentional with your time. Kids, whether you have one or I have three now, so I can speak up to three, they take up all your time. No matter how many you have. They are, you know, they expand to the volume to which, you know, the container holds.

39:51 Brock: And so, you need to be very good about structuring your day and your time so that you can be where you need to be. Now when kids are young, they don’t really know whether you’re home or not. So, it’s as much about supporting, you know, your other team member, you know, your significant other, in that process. And you need to do that. You need to be an equal team. But know that you will have less time. You will have competing priorities, and it will be hard. But I’d say that’s okay because it’s really fun. I’m a big fan of kids <laugh>.

40:37 Emily: I think, you know, the first thing you mentioned there was like time management basically, like being really intentional about where you put your time. And that’s something that I’ve definitely been learning as a business owner and as a parent. Sort of like the, when you’re at work, be all at work, be really focused, get what you need to get done in that time. And then when you’re at home, be off of work, be with your kids, like have that quality time together. And hopefully, you can make the arrangements with your partner and your childcare provider and all this stuff so you have that like, committed time that you can devote to both. But yeah, like you just become pretty, I at least have become a lot more hands-on manage-y about my time because I need to be now that that’s a factor in my life.

41:23 Brock: Yeah. And again, it’s different ways of doing it. You know, so I mean, I had friends in grad school that they would come in later in the day and they’d stay until three in the morning. And that worked really well for them. And for me it was get in early and leave in time for dinner at home and come back if I needed to, if there was a late night time point or something for an experiment. But you need to find something that works for you. You know, your life, your finances, have a goal of what you want that to look like and then you make a plan to get there. It’s not easy. It’s actually incredibly difficult, but it is worth it, and you will find more happiness if you do it that way.

42:06 Emily: I love that note to end on. Thank you so much, Brock, for giving this interview. It’s been a pleasure to talk with you.

42:11 Brock: Thanks so much for having me on, Emily. It’s great talking.

Outtro

42:18 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

This Graduate Student Doesn’t Sweat the (Financially) Small Stuff

by Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Keiland Cooper, a fourth year PhD student in neuroscience at the University of California, Irvine. Thanks to his inquisitive nature, Keiland has developed a financial philosophy that he has applied to his own financial management practices since his days as an undergraduate. Through focusing on the big picture, he has increased his income as a graduate student and right-sized his housing and transportation costs, which has enabled him to accumulate cash savings and invested assets. You won’t want to miss Keiland’s insight at the end of the interview into the optimal money mindset for a graduate student.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

Image for S13E4: This Graduate Student Doesn't Sweat the (Financially) Small Stuff

Teaser

00:00 Keiland: We’re all PhD students. Think of it as like a research project, right? There have been times when I’ve sat down and like analyzed my financial data in Python, right? It’s, you know, it’s kind of fun to sit down and play with the spreadsheets and add things up. Most of us are nerds here, and finance can be a very nerdy topic. So, it doesn’t all have to be scary. And certainly, all of us are getting PhDs, so we all have the aptitude in one way or another to learn about these topics. Even though some of them might seem really complex at first, they certainly don’t have to be.

Introduction

00:35 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 13, Episode 4, and today my guest is Keiland Cooper, a fourth-year PhD student in neuroscience at the University of California, Irvine. Thanks to his inquisitive nature, Keiland developed a financial philosophy that he has applied to his own financial management practices since his days as an undergraduate. Through focusing on the big picture, he has increased his income as a graduate student and right-sized his housing and transportation costs, which has enabled him to accumulate cash savings and invested assets. Don’t miss Keiland’s insight at the end of the interview into the optimal money mindset for a graduate student.

01:44 Emily: My Office Hours are back for this fall! About once per month, I’m hosting a free Zoom call to which you can bring any financial question or topic that relates to your journey as a PhD or PhD-to-be to discuss with me and the other attendees. These sessions are limited to four people each. Register through PFforPhDs.com/officehours/. I look forward to speaking with you there! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s13e4/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Keiland Cooper.

Would You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:28 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Keiland Cooper. He is a fourth-year PhD student in neuroscience at the University of California Irvine, and we are going to talk today about some mindset shifts and some strategies that he’s found really useful for his finances during graduate school. So, Keiland, welcome to the podcast. Would you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

02:48 Keiland: Hi. Yes. It’s really great to be on, and I really admire a lot of your work that you’ve done. I found it really helpful. And part of the reason why I wanted to be on is I think it’s really important and really useful to share, you know, each person’s experience, because we can all learn from it. And I’ve certainly learned a lot from everyone else’s. So, I thought it’d be useful to contribute.

03:11 Emily: Well, yeah, thank you so much for volunteering!

03:13 Keiland: So, I’m Keiland Cooper, as you said. I’m a fourth-year graduate student at University of California Irvine. My PhD’s going to be in neuroscience, and so I study how the brain learns and remembers at the neural circuit and ensemble level. I’m also interested in artificial intelligence and the co-founder of a nonprofit called ContinualAI which is the largest international nonprofit for our branch of neuroscience.

Financial Mindset at the Start of Grad School

03:40 Emily: Oh, wow, okay. Didn’t even know that. Great. Let’s talk about your financial picture when you started graduate school. Like where were you, maybe both literally with your numbers and then also with your like mindset?

03:54 Keiland: Yeah, yeah. So, I knew going into a PhD that, in many ways, it was going to be a big opportunity cost. A lot of friends that I were graduating with from undergrad were, you know, starting with six-figure salaries in a lot of cases. And so, I knew kind of from the get-go that it was going to be a big adjustment from that. But I think telling myself that I’m not doing a PhD obviously for the money or even for what the money could be down the road because that is not necessarily the case, but for other reasons that I felt really important about. So, I absolutely love what I do. I love where I’m doing it at, and love who I’m doing it with. And that was really important to me, and I knew I probably wouldn’t be as happy doing other jobs than starting the PhD. So I think, you know, right from the get-go, that was really, really helpful, at least for me to kind of justify, you know, that kind of change in income. And then everything else just kind of falls out from that.

04:56 Emily: I am really glad that you articulated that perspective. I don’t think that most people go into PhDs for the money, even if they do expect like a better-paying career later on, maybe, than what they could get with their bachelor’s degree. It’s definitely a passion-driven decision. But, I think as I talk about in many other places, and we’ll see during this interview, that doesn’t mean your finances are neglected entirely. We’re still going to focus on them a bit and do the best we can with what we have at that point. But it’s so important to have your priorities straight and your reasons for why you’re embarking on this. I love that. And did you go straight from your undergrad into your PhD program?

05:32 Keiland: I did, yeah.

Debt and Savings After Undergrad

05:33 Emily: Did you have any student loan debt, for example, or any savings coming out of undergrad?

05:38 Keiland: I was really lucky that I didn’t have to take student loans by the end of college. And so, that was a function of, you know, some family savings. And also I worked most of, I mean I worked all four years of college. So, I was really lucky to not have that. But I also lived really very frugally in undergrad, as most people do. I think what was really important for me to do that was I wasn’t living frugally without a goal. So, in my head, I knew that once I saved up, say, you know, three to six months of savings that if I had to drop out or if I couldn’t get a job that I would be able to live or pay rent or do something for about three to six months was like my first goal. Then I would start to feel okay, and I would, you know, not regret paying for other things that maybe I didn’t necessarily need or something like that. So, I think that was really important that, you know, living frugally kind of comes naturally to me, but something certainly didn’t and it is kind of a harder choice. And so, having that kind of goal in mind of, you know, one, it’s not forever, right? Because like once I get this and how I get that and could be strategic about that, at least once I kind of have that number in mind, then I’ll be okay.

07:04 Emily: I think there’s a huge difference between setting the goal for yourself, not even really articulating it as a goal of just, I just need to get by.

07:14 Keiland: Yeah.

07:14 Emily: Right? I’m not going to take out student loans. I’m going to work enough so that I don’t take out student loans. I’m just going to get by. And that is one level, and that is an accomplishment, obviously, to not have to take out student loans. But you went further than that and wanted to provide for yourself a safety net. Did you get to that point by the end of undergrad? Did you have that three to six months of savings?

07:33 Keiland: Yeah, yeah, I did luckily. And that was really important I think from moving in, maybe like towards the end of senior year and then going into to grad school to kind of feel a little bit more comfortable with, you know, meeting new people and going out and not having to worry about, you know, I can’t go out with my friends because I don’t really, you know, spend money this week or something like that. But generally, I think once I kind of had that, I started feeling more comfortable. Not only with just spending money in general, but also thinking about, you know, now that I have that safety net, what’s the next one? Well, probably retirement, so I’m going to open a Roth IRA. And once you have, you know, start spending the extra money have filling up that, you know, bucket or cup. Or if I was in industry, it would be a 401(k) and then Roth IRA to max.

08:23 Keiland: And then once you have that, then you can think, okay, well, you know, I have enough money, I’ve maxed out both my, you know, emergency savings, you know, six to 12 months, my Roth IRA, that’s maxed out. What’s next? Well, you know, I have some money left over, cash gets basically no return. The four big buckets are cash, bonds, stocks, and alternatives. So then, you know, you can start feeling a little bit more comfortable saying, I’m going to spend a little bit of money on stocks, not Roth IRA stocks, but just in general, you know, investing just so you can somehow try and beat inflation in these other things. And then starting to spend a little bit more money on that. Or, you know, I like to donate, and so donating money to certain charities. I have a little bit extra money, I don’t have to worry about, you know, if I give money, then I won’t feel as bad.

09:11 Keiland: And so, that’s kind of how I saw it, is that I have these kind of milestones and cups. And once I, you know, get more comfortable and safe, then I can start doing this next thing, and then I’ll have a little bit more cushion for the next thing. Which for me, as a very financially risk-averse person is kind of a good way to manage, I think, that risk. And at least in the back of my mind, yeah, I have that in case something happens.

Financial Knowledge Resources

09:39 Emily: What you just described about these different milestones and goals is very reminiscent of my financial framework that I teach through my seminars, which you probably haven’t actually encountered because it’s not really on my website. I saved that for the seminars, but yeah, very, very similar to that. So, it sounds like you actually have, or maybe even had, at the point of entering graduate school a pretty high degree of financial knowledge. And I’m wondering where you got that from? Because I think you mentioned in our prep materials that you’re like a first-gen college student, for example. So, like did you learn that from your parents? Or did you learn it from other sources?

10:14 Keiland: Yeah, so yeah, I’m a first-gen undergrad student and certainly a first-gen PhD student in my family. So, like I was saying earlier, a lot of the reason I came on is because I really just had to leverage a lot of resources in other people. And so that was just a function of, you know, asking every question that I could. And not just in, you know, in terms of finance, but pretty much for all of navigating college, and especially the PhD because it’s so you know, such an esoteric thing that is really kind of hard to teach unless you’re in it and you really just get that kind of ad hoc advice. And so yeah, with finance, I learned obviously like everyone, some things from my parents. I certainly learned to live more frugally from, you know, my dad for instance, who also didn’t grow up with a lot of things. And so really knows the value of, you know, having that safety net and feeling comfortable and those things.

11:09 Keiland: But other things, I really just had to learn on my own and from talking to friends and, you know, there’s a lot of research online and asking, you know, professionals questions sometimes when it comes to it. Just cold emails of like my parents didn’t know what a Roth IRA was, or they really didn’t invest in the stock market outside of their 401(k) and what the company had given. And so, those things, you know, you just pick up from all sorts of sources, whether it’s excerpts from books or websites or YouTube talks from professionals over time. There’s really not exactly one source. And I think what also makes it difficult that I found is there’s certainly, like with most things, not one strategy either to build wealth. There are a thousand different strategies, and everyone is going to think that they have their right way to do it, but that’s not necessarily the case, right?

12:04 Keiland: So, there’s a whole cohort of people who think you should have no debt ever. You should try and pay everything in cash than have debt, where on the flip side people are like, Well, no, no, no, debt can be really useful. Why would you buy something with, you know, debt that has a really low interest rate when you could get that more return if you invested that money in something else, Right? So, you know, different strategies to accomplish the same goal and not either of them is necessarily correct. It probably just depends on the individual person and their situation and how they want to navigate things.

Financial Strategies During Grad School

12:41 Emily: Yes. Let’s talk more about strategies now. And I want to kind of divide this into two categories. I want to divide it into what strategies are you using during graduate school that you found fruitful for your finances? And then what have you tried and then discarded along the way because it didn’t work out for you? Because you mentioned in our prep that you like to do experiments, which I love that idea as well. So, let’s start with what you have picked up in terms of strategies during graduate school or have continued from your earlier life.

13:11 Keiland: Yeah, I think the big one that has been probably most helpful for me, one is like I said, having that safety net I think is really important. Just because once you have it, you feel really comfortable and you can start doing other things or you can start working in other areas of finance that you might necessarily do. Another is, I like to focus on the big purchases, or at least put way more effort in the big purchases and big expenditures than the little ones. And so, the famous example is everyone yelling at millennials for buying Starbucks coffee. Too much Starbucks coffee each month. And I would much rather be able to not worry about whether or not I’m buying a Starbucks coffee each day than how much money am I paying for rent. Because in the long-term, that rent cost is going to far exceed, I would have to drink a lot of Starbucks coffee to exceed the amount that that rent will cost.

14:18 Emily: I totally agree with this, like getting those, I call them the big rocks. Getting the big rocks in your budget right. But you live in Orange County, California and it’s hugely expensive. So, I want to know specifically what have you done with your rent to try to minimize that cost to the degree that you are comfortable?

Minimizing Rent in California

14:36 Keiland: So, I’m lucky. Obviously, rent is awful in California. That’s just a blanket statement that’s going to be true pretty much wherever you are. But even within that, there’s certainly variability. I’m lucky in the sense that University of California Irvine subsidizes rent, and so you don’t have to live at the university. You could live outside and commute and some people do and it might be a little bit cheaper, but then you have to factor in commuting costs and so on and so forth. But even then, I knew I wanted to live, you know, near campus so I wouldn’t have to drive to campus every day. And even within the housing that UCI offers, there’s variability on the order of, I think on the low end it’s, you know, $500 a month and at the high end it’s like $1,300 a month.

15:28 Keiland: And I chose and requested housing that’s on that lower end. I didn’t get the lowest because, you know, they don’t have very many of those, but, you know, and certainly my apartment isn’t as nice as it could have been, but it’s not that important to me for those years. And so again, the $300 I would save just from that one decision each month adds up to, you know, a few thousand that cushions some of the other things. So, I don’t have to worry as much about, you know, I enjoy eating out. I don’t like to cook as much so I can eat out and not feel as bad about that decision. Or, I can intentionally say, you know, I’m going spend my money on something that I want to do or that actually makes me happy rather than something that, you know, I’m just spending money on kind of mindlessly and doesn’t really bring that big quality of life to me.

16:22 Emily: Yeah, I think, I mean this housing decision is just, it’s so important. You can change it if you’re a renter, you know, it’s difficult but not impossible to change where you live. So, it’s great to get it, you know, as best you can sorted out from the beginning. But it’s again, as you said, for each individual you have to evaluate how much joy am I going to get from living in this type of apartment versus this type of apartment. And to me as well, like I need to, you know, I want to have a place to live, but it doesn’t have to be the most hospitable or the most fancy or whatever, whatever. And so, I think that sometimes people can get tripped up, maybe setting other people’s expectations on themselves about, oh, I have to live in a nice place because that’s what my parents think or whatever. Whereas if they really evaluated it, maybe they could go a little lower on the cost spectrum and still be just as happy. And as you said, then the money is available to divert to something else that does bring them more value and does bring them more joy. Like you said, you don’t want to sweat the small stuff, so you’re going to focus on those big items. Are there any other big items that you want to mention? Aside from rent?

Another Big-Ticket Item: Car

17:26 Keiland: Car is certainly a big one. You know, buying a new car off the lot versus a used car. For some people, I’ve met a lot of people where both of those decisions is a no-brainer. It’s like, obviously I’m going to get a new car, why wouldn’t I? Or obviously I’m going to get a used car, why wouldn’t I? Right? So again, it really goes back to what’s your financial situation and really what’s important to you. Is it really that important to you to have that nice of a car? In some cases it might be, and that might be the thing that you really enjoy and really, you know, why you work and make money and what you live for is that thing. And so that’s fine as long as it’s, you know, in my view, intentional. But other things, like for me, I don’t really need that nice of a car and so I can, you know, cut back and use that money I save for other things that do mean more to me.

18:18 Keiland: And so, that’s kind of the intentional decision. And it doesn’t mean that even for the big purchases you can’t do them, or you have to live cheaply. But I, I think the amount of time you spend needs to be proportional. And there’s a famous law in psychology that kind of proves that, the prospect theory that we will fight tooth and nail to spend a coupon on like a $5 hamburger. But for a thousand-dollar car you won’t fight for that $5 savings, even though at the end of the day it’s still $5 in your pocket. So, to to kind of be mindful of these kind of like cognitive biases and really put the effort into the big things. Because you can still have probably the same car for a better price if you just put in a little bit more work to find it and look for it and save.

19:06 Emily: Absolutely. And sort of like what you were saying earlier, if you put in the time and you put in the work to finding that, you know, great housing situations, a great deal, or the car or whatever these other bigger items, as you said it should be proportional to the amount of money that you’re spending on those. Then, again, you don’t have to spend much time fretting about those smaller purchases. So you specifically, do you own a car?

19:27 Keiland: Yeah.

19:27 Emily: Is it paid off? Like what do you want to tell us about your car?

19:29 Keiland: Yeah, I’ve been driving the same car since high school <laugh>, so and I was actually thinking about saving it because it’s awful on gas and the environment, but then the economy and the used car market was terrible. And I honestly don’t drive, like I said, I live very close to campus, so I really don’t drive that much at all. So, you know, personally, I didn’t feel as bad of, you know, just keeping it for a few extra years and then after, you know, the PhD, maybe I’ll look for another one or if I see a really good deal then maybe I’ll consider.

20:03 Emily: Yeah, my family has one car for four of us but we really don’t drive very much, as you just said. Like, we work, my husband and I work from home. I walk my daughter to school, my other daughter we need to drive, but it’s like a two-mile distance. And so, yeah, I don’t know, it just doesn’t add up to much. And we’ve sort of, for the last couple of years since, you know, kind of before the pandemic been thinking, oh, I, you know, at some point we need to upgrade this car, like get more of a family one or whatever. But you know, just not driving that much, I don’t see the way to justify like the expense until it’s absolutely necessary. And that’s kind of our like, attitude about it. And again, if we were spending a ton of time in the car, then it would be a higher value, but it’s really just to get from here to my daughter’s preschool and back. That’s pretty much all it’s being used for.

20:49 Keiland: Yeah, that’s how I see it too. Like if I was commuting an hour a day and I just, every single day for an entire hour I was sitting in my car and I just said, I hate this car, I hate this car, I hate this car. Right? That would be worth it to me to spend a little bit extra money on, you know, something a little bit nicer. Just because I knew, you know, I would much rather have an hour a day where I just don’t hate myself in the car than, you know, this fine car or I’m thinking about something else other than, you know, is my check engine light going to combust at any moment? So yeah, I think it’s those kinds of decisions that are really helpful.

Commercial

21:30 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, including my recent set of Wealthy PhD Workshops. There is also a discussion forum, monthly live calls with me, 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.

Increasing Income by Applying for Funding

22:36 Emily: How about some other strategies you’ve used during graduate school? I understand you have increased your income.

22:42 Keiland: Yeah, yeah. In grad school, it’s kind of hard because as you all know well, you can have side hustles, but PhDs are huge time commitments and really demand a lot of your focus and there are also kind of sometimes regulations in your program that prohibit it and so on and so forth. But there are things unique to a PhD that I think have been really useful. So scholarships and grants and those types of ways to increase your income are pretty unique to a PhD and there’s a lot out there. And I know everyone says this and even I really wish I probably one of my biggest regrets in undergrad was not applying to more, because the more I learned it really is just free money. And especially seeing it from the other side, from like sitting on committees that give out grants, they really just want to give money to people.

23:35 Keiland: And so, really just applying to as many as you can and especially the big ones will probably be worth the time. And so for instance, I did the GRFP, which was a huge comfort. Not only just from a little bit of extra income each month, which really wasn’t much compared to my stipend. But also just minimizing risk of, you know, if for instance, my advisor doesn’t have money, I know that I’m funded. Which I think of as probably just as important as increasing your income is just knowing that your income is stable, right? Because that helps you plan, that helps you, you know, make other investment decisions, that makes you, you know, feel a little bit more comfortable when you do other things rather than needing to save. And also, you know, smaller ad hoc grants that you apply for, or travel awards, or these things. Even the small ones, you know, if it’s quick and doesn’t take too much time, if you go back and add them up, they really add up to quite a bit of money. So looking for all those kind of opportunities and not being afraid to like ask for them or ask for help or these things when you need it, I found really, really useful.

24:57 Emily: I like the way that you phrased that. Being able to apply for scholarships and grants and fellowships is a unique thing to the academic experience. Because at face value, if I said something like, how do you increase your income as a graduate student? A lot of people would just dismiss it out of hand. There’s no way. They tell me what my stipend is, that’s it. But they’re just automatically discounting this whole category of an academia-approved way to increase your income, which is just to apply for awards of various types. And you’ll be lauded for doing so if you actually, you know, end up winning them. And so it’s like, yeah, even for people who are prevented by their visa or by policy from working outside of, you know, the PhD program, this is a completely straightforward and great way to at least attempt to increase your income.

25:42 Keiland: You asked earlier about things I’ve tried that work and don’t work. For me personally, I don’t really budget each month. Mostly because I’ve tried things that, you know, I tried to sit down and budget. But I think once you, or at least for me, once I got to the point where I kind of had a feeling of what the things were that I was buying and what the big purchases were, like I said, I didn’t really feel like I needed to budget as much each month. And so usually I’ll sit down maybe once a quarter or even once a year and really kind of get a handle on, you know, like I said, what are the big things I’m buying? What are the little things that are adding up? What are the like subscriptions that I don’t need? And those things to try and like reset myself for the next quarter or next year. But I really don’t sit down month to month anymore and really kind of get on myself.

Experimental Expenditure “Fasting”

26:40 Emily: I think there’s a lot of value in the exercise of budgeting and tracking and so forth, but only to the extent that it helps you actually make decisions or change your behavior. Because if all you’re doing is kind of a, okay, I’m doing a budget exercise, but it makes absolutely no difference to my behavior or how I feel or anything, then it’s pointless. But I like what you’re saying is okay, yeah, you’re not budgeting on like a weekly, monthly basis, but you are using the data that you’ve collected to make decisions going forward. And so, that’s really what you need to get out of budgeting anyway, is the ability to make those decisions. So that sounds perfect. Yeah, any other strategies that you’ve like tried out and decided that they weren’t the best for you?

27:23 Keiland: Yeah, there’s one thing I kind of did in undergrad just as a proof of, so like for instance, I would, you know, live without AC for a few months just to, you know, see what it was like or not AC, heat. I would turn the heat off in the winter for a few nights just to prove to myself that like, you know, before then I was like, I must have heat. I can’t live in a cold environment. And then you see all these things where like, you know, what if I couldn’t afford it? What if I couldn’t use it? What if I couldn’t do it? For no other reason just to one, to prove to myself that if I didn’t have it, I would probably be okay. To a certain extent. It’s nothing extreme or crazy. Or if I, so for instance, I felt like I was buying a bit too much like tea or coffee at the store and just be like, you know what, for this month I’m not going to drink it, and how badly will it really affect my life?

28:24 Keiland: Will I really be that upset if I don’t? That was kind of like the earlier advice that you had heard and it’s like, oh yeah, you need to cut back on everything. And I think it’s useful as an exercise just to get that point too just so you feel comfortable as like, you know what, it’s nice to have and I would love to have it, but it’s not a necessity, to really kind of understand what the necessities are. Because I think, at least for me, there were a lot of things that at one point that I thought were necessities and I thought that I had to have them and I had to spend money on them and I had to do them. And it wasn’t until I forced myself to kind of cut them out for a short period of time and kind of reflect back and see, was it really that bad? And then you realize, no, it really wasn’t that bad. It’s really not as important to me as I thought it was going to be.

29:13 Emily: I really like this point about these experiments to really determine for yourself like what is the line between a necessity and a discretionary expense? Not that it’s bad to spend on discretionary expenses, but just as you said, like, what can I survive without? What can I live without? And what is it really adding to my life to have that expense in my life? So then you can more accurately judge like how much you should be spending on it. I call these little experiments, the way that you’re describing them, fasts.

29:42 Keiland: Yeah.

Quiz Yourself on How Much You Think You’re Spending

29:42 Emily: So like, I know I’m going to go without this thing that I’m accustomed to for this defined period of time and we’re just going to see how it goes. And I fully expect to return to, you know, having it in my life after that point, but we’re just going to see, you know, how I feel about it, and maybe I’ll end up making a different decision later on with that new information. So, it’s not something to be doing all the time on everything, but from time to time yeah, to conduct those kinds of experiments, I think that’s valuable. Anything else you’d like to add about like, tactics that you’ve used during grad school?

30:12 Keiland: Yeah, one thing when I first learned about prospect theory, and that we focus more on the little things than the big things, even though they’re not proportional. I kind of got a little deep into it, and one thing I thought actually ended up being kind of useful was when I was sitting down and trying to budget my finances and what I was spending money on, to kind of take a minute before then and kind of ask myself how much I thought I was spending on these things beforehand. Almost like a quiz or a game, and then you’ll have your answer in black and white once you actually sit down and calculate it.

30:49 Keiland: But for me, I think it was really useful to try and begin to gauge how well do I know my own habits? And how much, you know, if you just like, it’s really hard. I think if you sit down and ask yourself, how much do I spend a year on x? How much do I spend a year on groceries? How much do I spend a year on blank? Even if you budget once a month, it still might not be that automatic before you budget to try and have that kind of handle on it. So really quizzing yourself before, so you know what you need to learn rather than just waiting for that aha moment of, oh wow, I’m spending too much on this. But to really kind of handle that psychology that’s underlying those decisions.

Money Mindset Shifts During Grad School

31:39 Emily: Let’s go a little bit further in this vein and talk about mindset shifts you’ve had. Now, the mindset that you described coming into graduate school, you were very inquisitive, including about finances, learning a lot from a lot of different sources, that’s super valuable. But have you seen any shifts in your mindset during grad school with respect to your finances?

32:00 Keiland: Yeah, I think the big one for me was not being as risk-adverse. So like I said, there are kind of two camps of you should have zero debt at all times, pay everything in cash, have little to no credit, et cetera. And the other camp is, you know, debt can be useful, just be careful or be very strategic about how you use it and you can actually earn more over the long-term. The thing is being like, if you do a big purchase of say like land or a house, it’s probably better to get a mortgage than pay straight up in cash because if you put that cash in, say like stocks for the same amount of time, you’ll make more money over the long-term. Pretty basic, but still there are kind of those two divides. And I really found myself on the other end of that spectrum for a long time of like, I’m going to pay everything in cash.

32:51 Keiland: I really didn’t want a credit card for a long time until I realized very soon that you have to build credit in today’s world. So, in undergrad I ended up finally getting a credit card and using, you know, 10% of the limit per month and so on. But that was, I think a shift is, you know, debt and credit and risk can be useful. You just have to be careful and you really have to, you know, plan and learn and know how you’re using it when you do use it. And if you do then, you know, in the long-term you can probably come out ahead of the super risk-adverse camp. So, that was one and that also helped with like other investments with like Roth RA and stocks and so on. To know that like, you know, like I said, I have a safety net.

33:41 Keiland: I’ve worked hard for this, I lived very below my means for this, but now that I have it, now I can try and, you know, learn what the stock market is, learn, you know, what it feels like to lose money for an extended period of time and have, you know, to discipline not to sell and so on. And to see and just kind of handle that volatility for me was a good exercise one, because I knew at some point most of my assets are gonna be in a 401(k) or retirement account at some point. And so, when I inevitably talk to an advisor, I would love to at least know a little bit about what I’m talking about so I can have those conversations with them. I thought was a tremendously useful exercise and then I like it, so, you know, invest some extra money that way.

34:28 Keiland: But yeah, that was a big shift I think. And also like I said, in undergrad, I was very, very frugal. I’m a lot less frugal. And that was actually hard for me. I know, like it was hard to kind of like let myself spend money. And it wasn’t until I really sat down and said, you know, these are my twenties, despite the fact that, you know, two of them are in COVID. Like, yeah, you have to live below your means and you have to live frugally and you have to save, but at the same time, you don’t want to save a bunch of money when you’re 60 and then look back and be like, what did I spend it on? So like I said, really kind of giving myself the permission to spend on the things that I really think make me happy or really increase my quality of life and those sorts of things. I at least found really useful to kind of justify like, yeah, I can go on vacation or I can spend for this because it’ll be really worth it and it’s not a mindless decision. I’m not just giving money because I want it in that moment. I really, you know, think this thing will be good and it’s worth the amount of money I’ll spend now on it.

Act Your Wage

35:42 Emily: I’m giving a webinar later this afternoon on the day that we’re recording, and one of the slides that I’m going to present exhorts the listener to act your wage. And that partially means being frugal in graduate school. You know, you’re not going to be living on a lot of money, but for you, because you had lived on even less as an undergraduate and you know, you had these really highly ingrained, frugal tendencies, for you and for other people like you, acting your wage also means doing things that you’ve never done before with your finances, like starting to invest, like acquiring credit. And it’s appropriate, right? As long as it’s all in balance with where your salary is at that time and the cost of living and everything. Like, so act your wage can mean a lot of different things to different people depending on where you’re coming from and where you are now.

36:31 Emily: And so, I like that you’ve grown, right? Over these last few years in that sense and your finances because your salary allows you to do those things to spend on vacations from time to time. To start to invest as long as you are careful about your rent and all the other things that we’ve talked about, it’s all in balance for you. And that’s a great place to be during graduate school. A lot of people don’t get there, but I’m really pleased that that you are yeah. Is there anything else that you wanna add like maybe mindset shifts that you would recommend to other graduate students?

37:01 Keiland: Yeah, I think the most important thing is just to think about your money, which, you know, a lot of people might not necessarily do, but you know, if you don’t do it at all, it’s worth, like you said, budgeting and going through and seeing where you spend your money and kind of getting a sense for yourself and learning about yourself. And I know we’re all PhD students, think of it as like a research project, right? There have been times where I’ve sat down and like analyzed my financial data in Python, right? It’s, you know, it’s kind of fun to, to sit down and play with the spreadsheets and add things up. Most of us are nerds here and finance can be a very nerdy topic. So it doesn’t all have to be scary and certainly, all of us are getting PhDs, so we all have the aptitude in one way or another to learn about these topics.

37:47 Keiland: Even though some of them might seem really complex at first, certainly don’t have to be, especially when there are experts like you sitting really close to us that, you know, are an email away or workshop away. So yeah, really, really know yourself, and learn how you spend your money and get a really a good sense for yourself and then ask yourself what your goals are and then if they don’t align, readjust, and if they do align, then don’t adjust. But I think having the comfort and knowledge of knowing your own behavior is probably the most important thing to just know how you spend money and whether or not it will get you where you want to be in the long-term or not.

38:31 Emily: I can definitely understand if some people do not want to go through that exercise, like they expect it to be like unpleasant or something. Like, yeah, it’s not the greatest thing to look at like a small salary as a PhD student and figure out, you know, how you’re managing it and everything, but it, it’s not gonna get better by ignoring it, right? So, really the only way out is like, is through <laugh> through the process of the introspection that you were just talking about so that you can make some better decisions on the other side that’ll help you feel better about your whole life and about your finances too. So, thank you so much for that.

Effective Altruism

39:04 Emily: Is there anything that you want to tell us about your finances now? I mean, I think we’ve gotten, you know, some pieces of the picture. You have some savings in place, you’ve started investing in a Roth IRA. Yeah, would you like to say anything more about sort of where these mindsets and strategies have taken you over the last three years?

39:18 Keiland: I’m lucky to have saved enough for six to 12 months of a safety net, which to me, I kind of think is my foundation. And then another, I try and max out my Roth IRA as much as I can each year. And once I’ve done that, I try and donate some percentage and I also try and invest so hopefully I can hopefully donate more. I’m really interested in kind of this mindset called effective altruism, which a lot of people have talked about. And it’s in a great community and so it’s just, you know, investing in spending your money in such a way that you can quantitatively maximize the impact. And so I do, philosophically, I really like those ideas and the discussions there.

40:04 Emily: There was actually a Stuff You Should Know Episode on Effective Altruism. Just we’re recording this in June, 2022, so it was a few weeks or a couple of months ago. But anyway, I hadn’t heard of the concept before that, but following that episode I ordered a book from some effective altruism organization that sends out free books about it, <laugh>. So, it’s on my reading list, although I haven’t gotten to it yet. So, thanks so much for bringing up that concept. Is there anything else that you want to add?

40:30 Keiland: Yeah, no, yeah, I really like those topics. Particularly because I think, in a lot of ways, that scientists really just want to do the amount of good and don’t really think about money as much. But effective altruism, at least for me, made me think of money in such a way that, you know, it’s the energy to do good. Money doesn’t necessarily have to be evil, right? It’s like how much money is being spent in the NSF or NIH budgets each year. It’s like millions and millions and millions of dollars. So, to think of money as, you know, earning money need not be kind of like a greedy evil thing, as long as you are ethical about it and you’re conscious about it. Because ultimately you can use it to do other good things. So, that was a good way to kind of changed my mindset of how I was thinking about, you know, earning wealth, and so on.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

41:23 Emily: I love that we got there. I love that we got to that motivation by the end of this interview. Let’s conclude with the question that I ask all my interviewees, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be something that we touched on during the episode or it could be something completely new.

41:40 Keiland: I think we tend to to be stuck in our fields and think like, Oh, I’m really good at this, but not this. But the PhD is really just a signature of you’re a really smart person and probably any problem that you’re handed, given enough time, you’ll figure it out. And your finances could just be another problem that’s on your PhD. And no matter how daunting it might seem, I’m sure the beginning of your PhD probably seemed more daunting than that. So, finances need not to be that thing. No matter how weird our taxes are in quarterly payments and you know, do we pay on stipends or not and have to get like a mini degree in accounting to do a, you know, 20-something-year-old’s taxes, it’s fine. At the end of the day, you’ll learn about it and that’ll be useful in the long-term and could even be interesting depending on who you are. So, don’t let it be daunting, and don’t be afraid to ask for help along the way to answer those questions.

42:41 Emily: I don’t think I’ve thought about it or heard it phrased that way before, but I really like your articulation there of like think of your finances as another thing that you can be a student of, and another thing you can learn about during this period of time. And you don’t have to have it right from the beginning. You don’t have to master it from the beginning. It’s a process. And I also like that there’s relatively lower stakes with your finances when you’re earning that lower salary. And that can be kind of the training ground and the proving ground so that when you get to that higher post-PhD salary, then you know the things about, well, does budgeting work for you or not? Maybe you have a different system that’s better for you. And like, yeah, I’m now versed in how to invest in a Roth IRA, so it’s really not going to be too challenging to select the investments inside my 401(k), et cetera, et cetera. So, I love that framing of it. Well, Keiland, this was such a pleasure to talk with you and thank you so much for volunteering to be on the podcast!

43:30 Keiland: Yeah, yeah, thank you. And thanks for all the work you’re doing for PhD students like us trying to navigate it all.

43:36 Emily: You are very welcome. It’s my pleasure.

Outtro

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

This PhD Student-Nurse Is Confident in Her Self-Worth

by Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Brenda Olmos, a nurse practitioner and rising third-year PhD student in nursing. A first-generation college student who grew up without financial stability, Brenda was debt-averse throughout college and her master’s degree and started building wealth in her 20s through investing and real estate, eventually aligning with the FIRE movement. When she decided to pursue a PhD in her late 20s, she held out for an online program with an excellent culture and funding package. Thanks to her lucrative outside work, Brenda has continued to invest consistently during her PhD, although more slowly than she did pre-PhD. Brenda’s strong financial position and career optionality have set her up well for a fulfilling post-PhD career.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

Image for S13E2: This PhD Student-Nurse Is Confident in Her Self-Worth

Teaser

00:00 Brenda: It’s so cool to like see yourself grow in ways that you never thought you could. And financially like, okay, maybe I’m taking like a 50 or $60,000 per year cut. But in the course of my life, like is three years really going to matter that much, you know? And how much more will my life be enriched by having this degree? Like what doors will it open for me? Whether they’re monetary or not is not really the point for me anymore. And that’s something that I was able to achieve in my twenties.

Introduction

00:37 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 13, Episode 2, and today my guest is Brenda Olmos, a nurse practitioner and rising third-year PhD student in nursing. A first-generation college student who grew up without financial stability, Brenda was debt-averse throughout college and her master’s degree and started building wealth in her 20s through investing and real estate, eventually aligning with the FIRE movement. When she decided to pursue a PhD in her late 20s, she held out for an online program with an excellent culture and funding package. Thanks to her lucrative outside work, Brenda has continued to invest consistently during her PhD, although more slowly than she did pre-PhD. Brenda’s strong financial position and career optionality have set her up well for a fulfilling post-PhD career.

01:56 Emily: Would you please help me out with something? I want to record six podcast interviews this fall to be published over approximately the next six months. Will you consider being a guest? As a listener, I’m sure you have something to say about money as a PhD or PhD-to-be! Simply fill out the Google Form at PFforPhDs.com/podcastvolunteer/ to get the ball rolling. Alternatively, if you have someone in mind who you’d like to hear me interview, please connect me with that person over email or Twitter! I really appreciate it! Let’s keep the podcast going strong! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s13e2/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Brenda Olmos.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:52 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today someone I know from Fintwit, Brenda Olmos. She is a rising third-year PhD student at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. She’s actually doing a PhD in nursing, so a very different kind of PhD student than we’ve had on here before. Not only that, her program is online, so she lives in Austin, Texas. So, Brenda, I’m so happy to have you on the podcast and get to have a deep-dive conversation with you. Will you please tell the listeners a little bit more about yourself?

03:20 Brenda: Sure! Hello everyone. My name’s Brenda Olmos. And, like Emily said, I live in Austin, Texas, and I’ve grown up in this area of central Texas and really enjoy living here. So, when I was searching for PhD programs, I was definitely searching for distance programs. And that’s the case about me being in an online PhD program. I grew up, like I said, here in central Texas, and I went to UT Austin for my undergraduate in nursing degree. Six years later, I graduated with my Master’s in Nursing as a family nurse practitioner. So, I had about six years of experience as a registered nurse at the bedside, which means I basically worked in inpatient hospital settings, taking care of people who were acutely ill. And then I chose to leave that setting when I became a nurse practitioner and I worked in an outpatient primary care setting for older people.

04:11 Brenda: So, I’m a geriatric nurse. And I found a scholarship in 2019 for geriatric nursing research. And I was kind of at a point in my life where I was satisfied with my career, and I found it rewarding. I found my work very gratifying, but I felt that my potential wasn’t really maximized in that role, that I made a difference one-on-one with patients, but that I wanted to make a difference at a larger scale. And in nursing, there are two paths for a doctorate degree. There’s a Doctorate in Nursing Practice, which is a DNP, and a lot of nurses do that because they want to make immediate change, like in administration or policy. And then there’s the PhD, which is the Doctor of Philosophy. And that’s more of a research-based doctorate, like most other PhDs in which you focus on generating new knowledge and you learn the research process.

05:07 Brenda: And I actually had really great mentors, which caused me to lean towards the PhD. And I chose the PhD in nursing because I felt that I wanted to have the doctorate that was universally recognized as a terminal degree and as a doctorate, whereas a DNP is very specific to nursing. I wanted to have something that, you know, the three letters that mean something to everybody <laugh> in the world, right? So, that’s kind of been my trajectory. I worked as a nurse practitioner for three years, full-time from 2017 to 2020. And then in 2020, I had been accepted to the PhD program. I was still kind of on the fence about it because I was making six figures as a nurse practitioner. And even though I didn’t know at the time that I had won this scholarship, I was like, I don’t know, this is a big leap to take. And then the pandemic hit and that took away so much of the joy of my work. And so much of the compensation that I realized I’m ready to go do something different. So, I’ve been in my PhD program since August of 2020. And like you said, I’m going into my third year now.

06:13 Emily: Wow. I love when I get someone on the podcast who has really, really thought deeply about their career and the trajectory of it and chosen, after all of that, to go into a PhD program. I don’t want be, you know, too critical of people who went like directly from undergrad down that path. I went almost directly from undergrad, but I just think it takes on a different tone. You have more focus in your research usually with all that like background work experience, and especially for you having a very, you know, very solid, super lucrative like career leading into that and you just really thought about, well, what do I want in my life? How do I want to be spending my time? That’s actually a lot of what we’ll be talking about today.

06:51 Emily: And I just want to kind of frame this for the listener a little bit that you know, Brenda’s had, as we just said of really different career trajectory than probably most people who are listening, probably the vast majority of people who are listening. And so once we get to start, you know, talking about Brenda’s finances, you’re going to see a pretty rosy picture. And it is of course, largely due to having that career in her twenties. But I don’t want you to like dismiss this episode as like, you’re never going to learn anything from it because you’re not in the same kind of position that Brenda was, because I still think there’s going to be something here, some strategy, some mindset, especially, that you can learn from. So, keep with us even though it may be a little bit of a different kind of story.

07:29 Brenda: And I do want to add to that that not every nurse is in my position, right? Like I had a really great scholarship for undergrad. Probably about 75% of my undergrad degree was paid for through scholarships and grants. I paid for my master’s degree, partially through hospital tuition reimbursement, and partially by working full-time. But I had classmates who took out a hundred thousand dollars for two years of their master’s program, and they’re paying that off now, right? So, I just want to be transparent about the fact that like, don’t go up to every nurse and be like, oh my God, you have no debt and you make a ton of money. Like, no, I was very strategic about the way that I got my education and I was always debt-averse. And so, I think that’s also important to point out.

Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE)

08:14 Emily: Yeah. Because I next want to kind of talk about you discovering the FIRE movement, which you did prior to starting the PhD program, but you had already, as you just said, taken some, you know, FIRE-like steps leading up to that, by being debt-averse, by working a lot while you’re in school, by choosing an employer who’s going to give you tuition reimbursement and so forth. So like, you were already setting yourself up well financially, even if you hadn’t, you know, discovered that particular movement. But let’s go to that like moment when you discovered the FIRE movement and what appealed to you about it? Like, why did you decide to start going that route?

08:45 Brenda: Yeah, I think a lot of it was rooted in, like for many of us, the way that we grew up around money, right? Like the beliefs that were planted in our minds as young kids. And for me, and I’ve talked about this in BiggerPockets and in some other podcasts, is that I had so much financial instability growing up and I knew so much about my parents’ finances and I knew the lows and I knew the highs. And I had kind of, maybe not consciously, but unconsciously decided that I was going to be stable, that my adult life was not going to be a roller coaster of emotions, secondary to my financial situation. And so, I think that’s why FIRE appealed to me because it was like, oh, I don’t just have to be stable. Like, I can be free. <Laugh>, you know, it’s like, there’s one extreme where you’re tied to the ball and chain, there’s the middle ground where you’re stable and you’re working, you’re saving, maybe you’re investing. And then there’s financially independent where no matter what you do, whether you work or you don’t work, you’re okay, right? So, I found out about it through some podcasts, StackingBenjamins, Afford Anything, Earn and Invest. And I just started listening and I was like, wow, there’s a lot I can do with some money I have saved up. Or like, maybe I should buy a property, you know? And that’s kind of how it all took off.

10:13 Emily: I think we’re going to get here, like later in the interview, but this like really interesting overlap in your story between pursuing FIRE and pursuing the PhD, and like the time freedom that FIRE can give you to then apply it to your academic interest. Even if those interests don’t pay as well as other career paths, perhaps, that were available to you. So, I really hope, yeah, we pull that out later in the interview. So, give me a couple, like, you know, mechanical things that you did in those early years of FIRE. You mentioned, oh, maybe I should consider buying a property. Like, what were some things that you did that were deviations from the path that you were on before, once you learned about FIRE?

10:49 Brenda: Right. So, I started investing in a brokerage account, which I had never done before. Like the thought of investing in the stock market was really foreign to me. I knew that my parents had 401(k)s, but I didn’t know that that was investing in the stock market. And so, I started doing research on that. And I talk about this on the podcast I have with my friend, Minority Millennial Money, about how my first experience into investing was like going to Wells Fargo and having an advisor there telling me that I needed at least $25,000 to like open a portfolio <laugh> and, you know, I look back on that and I did it. But I look back on that and I’m like, oh, I was so naive, you know? And now I know so much more and eventually, I transferred it out of Wells Fargo, but so the first thing was investing, and the second thing was buying a home.

House Hacking

11:40 Brenda: First, it was a small condo in 2017. Prior to that, I had kept my living expenses low because I just lived with a friend who owned a home and I rented a room from her for $600 a month, right? So, for Austin, even seven years ago, that was really cheap. So, and I didn’t, I don’t mind living with people, but it was nice to have my own place when I bought a condo in 2017. And then in 2019, I bought a single-family home and I rented out the condo. And so, now I have both.

12:11 Emily: So, let’s see, in 2019 you bought the single-family home, in 2020, you started the PhD program. So, are you still living in that single-family home? Or did you move again?

12:19 Brenda: Yeah, and I house hack it. So, I mean, house hacking is really just having roommates, right? So, basically, I started having travel nurses stay with me so that I didn’t have a permanent person. I just kind of had a nurse house. And so, I really enjoyed that. And there was a little bit of a lull there when COVID hit because many of their contracts got canceled. And so, I was at a critical point where I was like, I’m quitting my job. I have this house to take care of and the income may not be there, but it ended up working out. And hosting travel nurses is really awesome.

12:59 Emily: Yeah. This strategy of house hacking is one that I have given some air time to in the past and I’m really excited about for PhD students, because for that stage of life, it’s already really normalized to live with roommates. And so, if you have the financial wherewithal to be able to purchase, be the owner and be the landlord, it can like really radically transform your finances. So, so glad to hear that you were taking advantage of that strategy even before starting the PhD.

Choosing a Supportive PhD Program

13:22 Emily: So, we kind of already talked about like, why you wanted to start the PhD, you know, why you thought it was the best move for your career. Did you want to add any more details about, I don’t know, that particular program or anything else about your, you know, deciding to go down that career?

13:35 Brenda: Yeah. And, you know, we have met over Financial Twitter and there’s also Academic Twitter. And on Academic Twitter, I see so many horror stories of like really difficult programs, really toxic environments. And I was like, A) I don’t have to do this. So, I am not going to go to a program like that. And B) What if I found a really great program, you know? And so, I just created a spreadsheet with all the schools I was looking at. And this particular program, the director called me, she wanted to talk, she was warm, she was encouraging. And she was genuinely interested in me, you know? And I was like, wow, that’s really special. Whereas other schools like just sent me computer-generated emails, you know? And I was like, okay. So, like my email just went into like a black hole. So, that was important to me, especially because I know that people don’t know this, you know, people outside of nursing don’t know this, but nursing academia has a really negative reputation for being very toxic, very discouraging, not supportive, hazing, in a sense.

14:44 Brenda: And it’s especially prominent at the graduate, you know, and doctoral level. So, I was like, I don’t need that in my life. So, I’m going to look for a program where I feel like it would be a good experience. And I found that, and I was like, okay, I could do this here. So, that was important to me. And also, it was important to me that, if I was going to take this big financial hit, that it was going to be for something worth it. And like you said, for me, the PhD is really something I’m doing for personal enrichment, right? There’s no guarantee that I’m going to make more money when I’m done. You know, I made almost $200,000 in 2019 just working a little bit extra. If I get a job that makes me that much post-PhD, I’ll be really excited. But for me, it was also really important to see people that look like me because I’m a Latina nurse practitioner. And I just could count on one hand how many people who were nurses who had PhDs, who were Hispanic, that I knew, you know? And so, in a field that’s predominantly or 95% white women, I thought it was important to increase the representation.

16:00 Emily: Yeah. I love all those overlapping motivations. And I love, it sounds like you were patient, right? Like you were willing to be really selective about the program that you went to. And I love that little note about like, oh, this person actually called me, like, I talked to this person over the phone instead of just email correspondence and just form letter stuff. And I love that like, you looked at this field, like you said, it has this bad reputation, and you said to yourself, I don’t need to do this. And I’m only going to do it if I can find the program that is going to be really supportive of me. It’s the right fit for me. And even if you know, Academic Twitter and everything else is telling you, no, no, everything’s terrible. It never, it doesn’t exist anywhere. You were like, no, I’m going to hold out and find that perfect program for me. And you did. So like, I just say that to point out that, like, that’s a limiting belief that you could have had. Like, you could have told yourself, oh, I’m never going to find a home. It doesn’t matter. People like me never, you know, get into this level of nursing or succeed or whatever, whatever. And you chose to not have that limiting belief, right? So, I want other people to hear that message as well.

17:02 Brenda: Yeah. And I’ve spoken with my classmates about this, and I think I’m just fortunate in the sense that I have a very positive disposition <laugh> and so I didn’t, it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t find one. I just thought, I just need to find one <laugh>.

Net Worth in Grad School

17:17 Emily: Okay. So, let’s hear more details about your life, like coming into the program. We’ve heard a couple of things. You already owned two properties. You had been making like over six figures. In fact, your income was nearly $200K in that year immediately prior to starting graduate school. Would you like to share anything about like your net worth or just any other aspects of your financial picture at the time that you started graduate school?

17:38 Brenda: Yeah. So, at the time I started graduate school, that was 2020. So, my net worth now is about $550,000. And at that time it was probably, I think I remember tweeting about it and I think it was like $330K at that time. And that big leap has really just been real estate prices just skyrocketing. And so, I do count like potential, you know, appreciation in my net worth. And then I probably have, right now, I have about $160K or $170K invested. And at that time I probably had like $120K. And so, I’ve been contributing, let’s see, with Roth contribution maximum, which is 6,000, plus about a thousand dollars a month. So, that’s like $18,000 a year in the last two years. So yeah, that makes sense. $120K plus another $35K to $40K. So, I’m at $160K. And I anticipate, you know, this is just kind of a lull in my investing trajectory. And once I go back to full-time work and I’m earning a full-time income again of hopefully at least a hundred thousand, if not more, because I’ll be able to add my clinical practice contract work to it, then I’ll be able to go back to investing closer to $25,000 a year.

19:00 Emily: I mean, investing $18,000 a year while you’re in a PhD program is well, definitely the highest number that I’ve heard <laugh> of anybody on the podcast. So, you’re not exactly a slouch in this area. But so, prior to the PhD, though, it sounds like you were using a taxable brokerage account and maybe some employer-provided stuff 401(k) or 403(b).

19:18 Brenda: Yes, a 401(k).

19:18 Emily: Yeah. Okay. And so, that benefit went away, I assume. Like at the moment you’re only doing your Roth IRA and then the taxable brokerage account.

19:27 Brenda: Yeah. And actually, so before the episode, we talked about my stipend. So, my stipend is, just to protect my time, I don’t owe any kind of labor for that stipend, but I am limited to working 20 hours per week. The great thing about that stipulation is that I’m not limited to how much money I can make. I’m just limited to hours I can work. So, I have been a graduate research assistant at the university since spring of 2021 with one of my professors. And we’ve actually published two papers together, which is awesome. But one of the benefits of that is that as a GRA, you become staff of the university and you get access to their 403(b) and 457. So, I have been contributing at least half of my GRA income, which pays $25 an hour. And what’s funny about this is that the original pay for that position was $15 an hour at the university.

GRA Salary Negotiation

20:27 Brenda: And I told my professor, I was like, I’m sorry, like, I am passionate about your work, but like, I just cannot do it for $15 an hour. Like I have too many things going on and I have too many other much more lucrative offers. And so she went to financial, I don’t know, the financial services building and they agreed to bump it up to $25 for everyone in the nursing program, because we’re all registered nurses, at least, you know, some of us are nurse practitioners. So, it was like almost insulting <laugh>, you know? I mean, I don’t want to be a snob about it, but it’s like, who would take $15 when I can go work the same hour for $65 or $75? So anyway, so yeah, I’ve been doing the Roth, the taxable brokerage, which really comes third on my list. Like if I’m short on money one month, that’s the last one I fund. And then I contribute 50% of that $25 per hour income, which is 10 hours a week, a thousand dollars a month. So, half of that goes to the 457. And I chose the 457 on purpose because you can access it anytime without penalty.

21:38 Emily: Love all those details. Actually, it’s interesting because most people who I speak with who are like on the level of 10-hour per week employees are not offered those benefits. So like, I would say that’s a great, like, exception that your university or health sciences center offers that. So, that’s awesome that you’re doing that. And I love that you, you know, shared that negotiation story and that it not only benefited you, but benefited everybody. Like this is a message I’m trying to get across with like, you can negotiate for yourself as an individual. Yes. But it can also help other people when you do that, because it sends a message.

22:12 Brenda: I wouldn’t have expected them to just give it to me. I mean, it would’ve been fine, but then it’s like, I think it was a fairness issue, right? Because they were like, oh, well, all these other students are also doing it. No, it was great. And I think it was definitely something that the graduate college had to take into consideration because you’re looking at, you know, graduate students, but we’re also working professionals, right? So, that is kind of a unique situation that nurses in graduate school are in.

22:43 Emily: Absolutely.

Commercial

22:47 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! These action items are for you if you recently switched or will soon switch onto non-W-2 fellowship income as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac and are not having income tax withheld from your stipend or salary. Action item #1: Fill out the Estimated Tax Worksheet on page 8 of IRS Form 1040-ES. This worksheet will estimate how much income tax you will owe in 2022 and tell you whether you are required to make manual tax payments on a quarterly basis. The next quarterly estimated tax due date is September 15, 2022. Action item #2: Whether you are required to make estimated tax payments or pay a lump sum at tax time, open a separate, named savings account for your future tax payments. Calculate the fraction of each paycheck that will ultimately go toward tax, and set up an automated recurring transfer from your checking account to your tax savings account to prepare for that bill. This is what I call a system of self-withholding, and I suggest putting it in place starting with your very first fellowship paycheck so that you don’t get into a financial bind when the payment deadline arrives.

24:06 Emily: If you need some help with the Estimated Tax Worksheet or want to ask me a question, please consider joining my workshop, Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. It explains every line of the worksheet and answers the common questions that PhD trainees have about estimated tax. The workshop includes 1.75 hours of video content, a spreadsheet, and invitations to at least one live Q&A call each quarter this tax year. If you want to purchase this workshop as an individual, go to PF for PhDs dot com slash Q E tax. Now back to our interview.

Sources of Income in Grad School

24:50 Emily: So, let’s like back up a tiny bit and talk about sort of all of your income sources during graduate school. Because you know, you’ve mentioned a couple times you have this really fantastic scholarship, so let’s start there. Like, what does the scholarship give you?

25:02 Brenda: Right. So, the scholarship is specific to my university, and it’s a special foundation that was money given through a philanthropic organization. And they basically allotted $150,000 scholarships separated into three years, $50,000 per year. That comes out to $30,000 per year or $2,500 per month as a stipend, and $3,000 for summer tuition, $6,000 for spring and fall tuition, and $4,000 leftover are for travel to conferences and that kind of thing. And I will say that I have used some of your courses and the taxes because that $2,500 counts as 1099 income for me. So, I do have to pay taxes on that. And most of my contract work is not on a W-2. So, I do have to pay taxes on that as well.

26:01 Emily: Okay. So, it sounds like the scholarship is fully paying your tuition and fees, giving you a stipend of $2,500 a month, and you have this additional professional development fund per year. Wow. Okay. That sounds great, but we’re not done yet. The way that we talked about this earlier, and I think the best way to phrase it for the listener is that that stipend of $2,500 per month essentially protects 20 hours per week of your time for you to devote to your dissertation research, or your classes, whatever it is you have to be doing for your PhD. And so, with the next 20 hours of your work week, you can be doing other paid work in that time. So, you can earn above your stipend. It’s just, you’re limited in the number of hours you can spend working. And so for you, you’ve already mentioned like the assistantship that you have at 10 hours per week. Do you have any other work that you do in the other remaining 10 hours per week?

Clinic Contract Work

26:52 Brenda: Yeah, so my former employer kept me on as a contractor. So now, I technically work for the agency that staffs their clinics, but they have urgent care clinics every weekend from nine to four. So, I’ll pick up weekend shifts. And occasionally, because my former boss knows me and knows that I know like the day-to-day clinic work, then he’ll ask me if I can work some days during the week. And so, I’ll do that. And that’s at $75 an hour. And then I have a couple of other jobs where I fill in for other nurse practitioners, like when they’re on vacation or they’re out sick or something. And the great thing about some of those is that they’re kind of slow clinics. And so, I can just take my schoolwork and do it there <laugh>.

27:43 Emily: Yeah. Sounds like a sweet deal. So, with all these active income sources together, the stipend plus the other work that you’re permitted to do, what does that add up to in terms of like your yearly income on average?

27:56 Brenda: So, last year my taxes were a little bit complicated, so I have the 1099 income, and then I have the real estate income. And I don’t take any of that as income from the real estate. So, the condo has its own account, and it has a little emergency fund for itself. And anything that it makes, it stays in there for emergencies, and same with the house. It has its own account. I pay rent into the homes account for myself, and then my tenants pay for pay into that account as well. But I rarely take any money from those accounts. So, I don’t count that. So, out of $112,000 last year, about $30K of that was from the rentals. And so, I really made about $70K, probably. So, $30K of that was from the stipend and then I made another $40K in part-time work.

28:53 Emily: Okay. So interesting. So, you have income sort of on your tax return, you have income that you don’t actually consider, like you’re not actually taking it into your personal accounts. You’re just leaving that as emergency funds and so forth for the real estate stuff. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, earning $40K on top of the $30K, again, really great for a PhD student. So good for you. The message that I want the listener to be hearing from this part of the interview is Brenda’s time is valued in a certain way because of her existing credentials and work experience and so forth. But earning something like $75 an hour is not out of the question for a PhD student in other disciplines. Depending, of course, on your work experience and what your field is and how, you know, in-demand it is, et cetera.

Valuing and Monetizing Your Skills

29:38 Emily: So, like you made the comment earlier. It’s a good thing they’re only limiting me on time and not the amount of money that I can make, because, you know, in some of your income sources, you can command quite a high hourly rate. I would love for other graduate students and postdocs to hear that message and think about, wow, if I’m making $75 an hour, a hundred dollars an hour, I only need to work two hours a week to make a really huge difference in my budget. You know, like when you can get to those high hourly rates, you don’t have to spend a ton of your time, you know, to get your finances in the shape that you want them to be in.

30:10 Brenda: For sure. And I think that, you know, like you said, I have a very particular skill, but there are skills that I don’t have that I would gladly pay someone $65 an hour to do. Like currently I’m dealing with some big data and I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m like going on websites of like, you know, people you can pay on an hourly basis to like walk you through something. And I’m sure that there are people in PhD programs who know this like the back of their hand, and they’re just not making themselves available for someone like me. Because I can earn that money, you know, relatively easily, and I’m happy to pay someone for their expertise as well. So, that’s very true. And I think that maybe sometimes, you know, I am very aware of my skill because I have a license and a certification for it, but you may have skills that other people need that don’t necessarily have, you know, very formal credentials, but that people would be happy to pay for.

31:12 Emily: And I think it’s so easy to get caught in this trap of undervaluing yourself inside academia. Like what you were talking about earlier with like the $15 versus $25 per hour negotiation that you did. It’s so common inside academia to undervalue ourselves. We see everybody else doing it, then we do it as well. But if you can take a little bit of a pivot and maybe, you know, market your skills to somebody outside of academia where these are not, you know, a dime a dozen kind of skills that everybody has, then you can, you know, potentially get those higher hourly rates. So, definitely food for thought, I hope, for some people.

Negotiating In-State Tuition

31:42 Emily: So, I think that you are probably the first interview we’ve had on the podcast who is doing like a hundred percent remote program. Not just like remote for COVID or whatever has been going on temporarily. So, you live not in the same state as where your university is. So, how does that work out with your scholarship and with the tuition and everything?

32:02 Brenda: Yeah, so that’s true. I specifically was looking for long-distance programs because I like where I live. I live close to my family, and I knew that a PhD was an experience that I would need support for <laugh>. And so, I didn’t want to leave my support system behind to do that. And so, whenever I got accepted to the University of Oklahoma and I was still living in Texas, and I had no plan to leave Texas, there was the issue of out-of-state tuition costs. And so, I got accepted in about March 2020. I found out I got the scholarship in April of 2020, and I had kind of set that as the bar, like if I get accepted and I get the scholarship, I’ll go, right? But then I thought, well, out-of-state tuition is almost double, right? It’s the difference between $10,000 and $6,000 a semester.

32:58 Brenda: And I just told the director, like I really want to go to this program, and I’m really grateful for the scholarship, but I realized financially that the out-of-state tuition is going to eat up about 50% of my stipend per semester. So, is there any way I could get in-state tuition? And she actually took it up to the graduate college and they agreed to give me a waiver for three years. So, I pay in-state tuition, and actually the great part about being a graduate research assistant is that, when you take on that position, it’s actually the grant that is funding you, that pays the waiver. And so, the waiver that I had originally been promised can be given to someone else while I’m a GRA.

33:44 Emily: Wow. Okay. Another great example of negotiation, and also another kind of general negotiation point that I like to make to prospective graduate students is like, you don’t necessarily know all the different levers that these people behind the scenes can pull to like enhance your package. So, you made the suggestion, maybe I could pay the in-state tuition rate instead of the higher rate, and they made that happen. And if that hadn’t exactly been possible, maybe they could have found a different way to augment your package to make up that, you know, $4,000 per year difference. So, yeah, so encouraging for prospective graduate students.

34:15 Brenda: I do want to mention that one of the points I brought up was that, and maybe this is just using a rivalry to my advantage, but you know, UT Austin and the University of Oklahoma are rivals in football. And UT Austin has a policy that, if you’re an out-of-state student and you come in to Texas with a scholarship from Texas, like if you won a scholarship in Texas, then the University waives your out-of-state tuition. And so, I presented that to the director and I said, you know, UT Austin does this, do you guys do anything like this? And I think that was what helped, you know, is that I had kind of done my research and I was like, you know, this is something another university is doing. Can you guys do it? And they said yes.

34:58 Emily: That’s a great example as well of like sharing of best practices. Hey, these other people have found this solution over here. Sometimes it helps to open their mind. Oh, well, maybe we could find this similar solution. Absolutely.

Money Mindset

35:09 Emily: So, you mentioned, you know, you’ve taken a pretty substantial income cut to pursue the PhD. Are there any other ways that taking this step in your career has impacted your path towards financial independence?

35:23 Brenda: Yeah, like I said, it’s probably a little bit of a setback numbers-wise and on the spreadsheet, but I feel that it’s so valuable to me personally and professionally and in my development as a person, as a researcher, as a scientist, as a nurse. You know, I’m just being challenged to think in ways that I never did before. And my practice in primary care became kind of monotonous and, you know, unfortunately, there wasn’t very much motivating me forward. And I feel totally different now. You know, even though sometimes I’m overwhelmed to learn new things, it’s so cool to like see yourself grow in ways that you never thought you could. And financially like, okay, maybe I’m taking like a $50 or $60,000 per year cut. But in the course of my life, like is three years really going to <laugh> matter that much, you know? And how much more will my life be enriched by having this degree? Like what doors will it open for me, whether they’re monetary or not is not really the point for me anymore. And that’s something that I was able to achieve in my twenties, right? Like that I set myself up to where, whether I make $50,000 or $150,000, what matters most to me now is that I’m happy, that I’m fulfilled, that I’m challenged, that I enjoy the people I work with, that I genuinely feel that I’m making a difference.

36:54 Emily: And it’s just so like gratifying to hear that, you know, the work you did on your finances in your twenties, both before and after discovering the FIRE movement, set you up to have this excellent financial experience during the PhD. Now, part of that is your field, and this is normal and so forth, this fantastic scholarship, you got all of that. But part of that is just, you know, when I was listening to some of your other podcast interviews, I was thinking that you just sound so like, calm about your finances. Like you just sound so like relaxed about them, which is a very different energy than what I give off sometimes, and like other people who I listen to, or interview on the podcast. But that is on the back of all the work that you did in your twenties to lead up to this point.

37:37 Emily: And so, you get to be relaxed because you have this net worth, you have your properties, you have your house hack, and you have this fantastic income. And this is just something that I so wish that more PhD students could experience. Even a fraction of the experience that you’re having, right? Like maybe it’s having the reasonable income for a person in their twenties or thirties. Or maybe it’s, you know, having worked for a few years, building up a bit of a nest egg before taking that income cut the way you have. I just, I love hearing just your whole like, sort of disposition towards this.

38:09 Brenda: Yeah. And I think a lot of it is reorienting your mind to not have a scarcity mindset, right? To kind of have an abundance mindset, like I’m going to thrive and I’m going to find a great job after this. And like I said, I’m just gifted with a naturally positive disposition, but like, I don’t have any worries about what will happen after, because everything’s worked out so far. <Laugh> maybe that’s just because I’ve been so strategic, right? Maybe in some ways I could have relaxed a little bit, but I am very forward-looking, right? I’m always kind of thinking about the next thing. And I have to remind myself to live in the moment, too, but yeah. I think that most PhD students, like you said, undervalue themselves. And I think about my classmates alone. You know, I’m like, they’re so talented, they’re so smart. Some of them are doing this with kids, with a family, taking care of their parents, with a job. And I’m just like, those are skills, right? Like those are highly marketable skills. Like just getting through the program with life the way it is is a crazy good skill. So, I really appreciate that you encourage people to, you know, maybe do some inward thinking about how can I monetize these things that just come naturally to me now in this stage of my life?

What is Coast FI?

39:40 Emily: You said a couple of minutes ago that, well, it doesn’t really matter if I make $50,000 or $150,000 a year. It’s going to be okay. It’s going to work out. That reminded me of the term Coast FI, a particular version of FIRE. Do you think about Coast FI? Would you describe yourself as Coast FI? Let’s define that for the listener.

39:59 Brenda: Yeah. I think traditionally, Coast FI means that your retirement is set, even if you don’t invest another dollar. I wouldn’t say that I don’t need to keep investing. I think I do. But I don’t really see myself retiring early in the traditional like FIRE sense because I have, A) A very useful skill that’s highly needed in this country. B) I speak Spanish, which is really useful in my part of the country. C) I’m just such a busybody. Like I could never stop working, you know, <laugh> like, I just, when people talk about staying home, like with children, I’m like, I could never do that. I could have children, but I’m not staying home with them 100% of the time. So, yeah, Coast FI for me just means that I have the financial flexibility to choose something that means something to me, as opposed to just a means to an end, to like pay my bills. And a part of that has also been keeping my expenses low. But the other part is, like you said, everything I did to set myself up in my twenties. And, you know, a few years ago, I probably would’ve told you that I would quit working at 45. And now that I’ve been in the PhD program, I’m like, no, there’s so much to do. There’s no way I could cut off 15 or 20 years off my career, you know?

41:26 Emily: That’s so interesting that you described earlier kind of finding, getting into like a lull in your career. Like you weren’t so stimulated. And I think that some people, like you did, would see FIRE, the potential to retire early, as the solution to that. And you did, but you also found another solution, which is, you know, taking your career in a slightly different direction, going down the academic path. And you found that reinvigoration there. And now you have kind of choices on both fronts. You have many career options, you have many financial options, to work, to not work, to work in a capacity that other people would not be able to, perhaps, because they hadn’t maybe had all these, you know, made all these decisions in their twenties and so forth. So, kind of the world is your oyster really <laugh> once you finish this program.

42:09 Brenda: Yeah. And things have come up during the PhD program. I don’t know if it’s because of the PhD program, but for example, I was a volunteer vaccinator for a local community center that was giving out COVID-19 vaccines every three weeks. And I was just consistently going, because I just wanted to help my community. And then they reached out to me about being the clinical consultant for their community center, because it was part of their grant. It would help their grant application if they had someone, you know, whose name they could put down, and they offered to pay me for that as well. That was an income source I forgot to tell you about. So, they pay me $500 a month, and I basically like attend some meetings and answer questions about COVID, about the vaccine, about what to do if this or that. And that was something I never would’ve thought I would do. You know? And it’s just like kind of a result of just saying yes, like I was like, well, I don’t see clinical consultant on my resume yet. <Laugh> but I guess I’ll do it. You just tell me what to do and I’ll show up, you know?

43:17 Emily: That comes from having that financial margin in your life and the time margin, right? To be able to say yes to, at first unpaid, but then later look what it turned into, you know, opportunities, which is something I could certainly <laugh> learn from.

Post-PhD Plans

43:29 Emily: Okay. So let’s talk a slight bit more about post-PhD plans. You mentioned earlier, you know, you have a few different career paths that you might choose among. What are you thinking?

43:40 Brenda: So, the idea of working in industry, or like the pharmaceutical area appeals to me because every pharmaceutical company has a medical affairs division in which they have doctoral-level prepared clinicians or pharmacists, which kind of serve as the bridge between the scientists creating the drug or the device and the prescribers out in the world. And so, that’s actually a really lucrative option. Like I know a couple people who do it and they make about $170,000 plus bonuses. So, they’re making like $200,000 a year. So, if I wanted money, that’s what I would do. <Laugh> which I’m not above saying that I want money. Okay. <laugh> so if that job came up, I would definitely consider it. Then there’s obviously the traditional route of pursuing some kind of tenure-track research career in academia. I’m kind of iffy on that. I don’t know that it’s the best use of my strengths. I’m definitely a people person. I’m an extrovert. I can do writing and I can write grants, and I could potentially, you know, try to prove myself to the NIH for the rest of my life <Laugh> to try to get research money, but I’m not sure that I want that.

45:03 Brenda: And then, I could do a blend of clinical practice and teaching where I just teach as an adjunct and I maintain my clinical practice. That’s kind of what I was doing before the PhD. So, I’m not sure that I would really be maximizing what I learned in the PhD if I went back to that. And then there’s a postdoc if I do want pursue research and I just want to get into someone else’s work and see what they’re doing, and maybe that’ll make me more excited about a tenure-track career. And then I was also looking at the National Clinician Scholars Program, which is kind of like a subset of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. And that’s a program at six campuses all over the country in which you basically get more education on health policy and organizational change. And most of the graduates go on to work at like the Department of Health or Health and Human Services or the CDC or some kind of federal agency where policy is happening. So, that’s probably one of my top ones. Pharma’s one of my top ones, and teaching in a, non-research, like very little research, that’s probably my third one.

46:11 Emily: Yeah. Well, hopefully, you have all of those things on the table once you get towards your graduation. And like you said, money could play a role in your decision, or maybe you’ll be following, you know, what seems most interesting to you. And again, the position that you’re in affords you those options. So, it’s wonderful to hear. And I think you said earlier, you know, you’re probably not going to be idle, right? Even once you achieve financial independence, however you want to define that. It sounds like you expect to have a long career, which is, once you’ve invested in something like a PhD program, it’s very, I think, worthwhile to keep your skills out there and keep, you know, working for your communities you’ve said so far. Yeah. Anything else you want to add about what you envision your life to change or not change? Like after you achieve financial independence?

46:57 Brenda: I think as a woman and as someone in their early thirties, you know, one of the big factors in deciding what I do is like, if I want to start a family, and what career option would be most conducive to that. And like you said, I have options, but like women have to think about that more. And especially in academia or in science, like you don’t want to be put on the mommy track, right? So, that’s also something I consider like if I were to have children, would it be right away after the PhD? Would I settle into another job? Like give it a year or two? I’m going to be 33 in September. Like what about my, you know, what about my fertility? Like, there are so many things to think about. And I think that’s very real for a lot of women in academia, right? It’s like juggling your human babies and the baby of your career, which is your research or whatever you’re working on post-PhD.

48:00 Emily: Absolutely. And another thing that having a strong financial position just puts you in a strong position to decide about. If you want to take an extra long maternity leave that’s unpaid, but you have a job to go back to, well, maybe that’s going to be, you know, the best situation for you, or maybe not. Maybe it’ll be a different decision, but whatever you do, I mean, having money gives you options. I say that over and over again, it just gives you options. And that’s really what you have now, which is so delightful to hear.

Where Can People Find You?

48:24 Emily: So, if people want to hear more from you, where can they find you?

48:29 Brenda: I’m on Twitter @almostbrenda, like the word almost, and then my name, almost Brenda. And that’s also my Instagram handle and my email address at Gmail, almostbrenda@gmail.com. I’m on LinkedIn. That’s linkedin.com/in/bolmosfnp for family nurse practitioner. And I’d love to connect with people. Even if, you know, even if you just want to talk about how to improve your finances, I know Emily, you’re a great resource for that. And I’ve been in the Community forums there too. But if you’re interested in coming on our podcast, I cohost Minority Millennial Money which is on Apple and Spotify and all of the platforms. We love to have people come on and we talk through their finances with them and see what they could do better. So yeah, I’m easily reachable. I’m all over the internet. <Laugh>

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

49:26 Emily: Wonderful. I hope you’ll have a few people follow up with you from this. Okay. I’m going to conclude with the question that I always ask my guests at the end of interviews, which is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be something that we touched on in the interview, or it could be something completely new.

49:44 Brenda: I would say it would be to disassociate your self-worth from your net worth, right? Because although I’m in a particularly advantageous position, I know how difficult it must be for people who are not in this position and are looking forward to those days when they get to earn a higher living. And you know, you’re already undervaluing your skills. You’re already in places that may be toxic and not supportive. Like, the very least you could do is like not value yourself based on what’s in your bank account. <Laugh>. And also, if you have the ability to keep investing, like to not lose time, because time is money in the market, right? So, anything you can throw at it is super helpful.

50:32 Emily: Great messages to end on. Brenda, thank you so much for this delightful interview!

50:36 Brenda: Yeah. Thank you!

Outtro

50:42 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

This Grad Student Advocates Individually and Collectively for Higher Stipends

by Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Alyssa Hayes, a rising 4th-year graduate student in nuclear engineering at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Alyssa is a first-generation college student who experienced food insecurity and other forms of financial precarity as an undergraduate. Now that she earns a stipend of approximately $45,000 per year and lives in a low cost of living city, she feels financially secure—and wants the same for all graduate students. To that end, Alyssa shares two advocacy approaches: 1) Ask for what you need. As a prospective graduate student, she negotiated for a top-up fellowship to be added to her assistantship stipend. 2) Share pay information with your peers across universities and use that data to collectively bargain for higher stipends in individual programs. Alyssa and her peers in nuclear engineering are currently gathering this data, including stipends, benefits, cost of living, and university and departmental ranking.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

Image for S12E5: This Grad Student Advocates Individually and Collectively for Higher Stipends

Teaser

00:00 Alyssa: I think that like all grad students should feel as comfortable as I feel in terms of my financial situation. I think that I make a fair wage, and maybe I’m biased because of my previous financial situation, but I personally have no complaints about the amount of money that I’m making right now. I feel supported by my advisor and by my department. I feel that I am valued for my labor. And I think that shows through how much they pay me. And I think that everybody should be able to feel that way about their department and about their advisor.

Introduction

00:44 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 12, Episode 5, and today my guest is Alyssa Hayes, a rising 4th-year graduate student in nuclear engineering at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Alyssa is a first-generation college student who experienced food insecurity and other forms of financial precarity as an undergraduate. Now that she earns a stipend of approximately $45,000 per year and lives in a low-cost-of-living city, she feels financially secure—and wants the same for all graduate students. To that end, Alyssa shares two advocacy approaches: 1) Ask for what you need. As a prospective graduate student, she negotiated for a top-up fellowship to be added to her assistantship stipend. 2) Share pay information with your peers across universities and use that data to collectively bargain for higher stipends in individual programs. Alyssa and her peers in nuclear engineering are currently gathering this data, including stipends, benefits, cost-of-living, and university and departmental ranking. You won’t want to miss Alyssa’s powerful messages peppered throughout the episode!

02:30 Emily: Longtime listeners of the podcast will remember the interviews I’ve published with Sam Hogan, a mortgage originator specializing in graduate students and PhDs, an advertiser with Personal Finance for PhDs, and my brother. Several years ago, I told Sam how I’d heard over and over again about graduate students and PhDs being denied mortgage loans because of their unusual income sources and income history and asked him to look into the issue. Following that request, Sam actually developed quite an expertise in this area and is now the go-to mortgage originator for people with non-employee fellowship income. He even found a way around what we thought was an insurmountable barrier in the 3-year continuance requirement. If you’re considering buying a home, especially if you have non-W-2 income, I encourage you to reach out to Sam for a quote. He has a new website, which you can visit at PhDHomeLoans.com, or you can reach him on his cell phone, 540-478-5803. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s12e5/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Alyssa Hayes.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:56 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today Alyssa Hayes. She is a rising fourth-year graduate student in nuclear engineering at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. And we have a lot to talk about in terms of like her pay and her money mindset. And I’m really excited for this conversation. So Alyssa, thank you so much for volunteering. And would you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

04:16 Alyssa: Thank you for having me! Yeah. So, I’m currently at the University of Tennessee. I did my bachelor’s degree in the same field at the University of Illinois. My current work involves like, you know, fusion engineering, specifically. I do a lot of computational plasma boundary stuff. But yeah, I guess we’re not really talking about any of my technical work today. <Laugh>

Money Mindset Up Until Starting Grad School

04:38 Emily: No, but very related to your experience as a graduate student. So, let’s take it back a little bit and tell me about sort of what your childhood’s like, and specifically how it relates to money and how that sort of developed your money mindset through your childhood and through undergrad, up until you started graduate school.

04:58 Alyssa: Yeah. So, I come from a biracial family, and my father comes from a long line of Americans in the military where, you know, his family was very like blue-collar labor. Like there wasn’t as big of a push to go to college, especially during the time when my dad was growing up in the seventies. And my mom is an immigrant from the Philippines. And her family was not extremely wealthy in the Philippines. And they came here when she was younger to pursue a better life. And she currently works at Walmart and has been for like almost 20 years and has supported my three siblings and me through retail and fast food. So, I was the first person in my family to pursue college. And we lived in an area where we had a lot of, like, there was a lot of really good funding for the school system, even though we weren’t in the nicest part of town. There were other folks who were pretty well-to-do, so I took advantage of everything that I could at that high school. And I got a full ride at the University of Illinois to pursue nuclear engineering. I didn’t have a lot of financial security while I was there, but I didn’t have to worry too much about student debt or tuition or paying fees or anything like that.

Food Insecurity in Undergrad

06:18 Emily: That’s amazing. The full ride to college, and obviously you went after it, <laugh> starting in your earlier years. But tell me a little bit about like the discretion that you had over money. Like, were you budgeting or like, how did you manage it? How did you manage what money you had above that, you know, what’s paying for tuition and room and board and so forth?

06:39 Alyssa: Yeah. So, I was first of all, extremely food insecure and didn’t realize it until I entered grad school. Once a month, I went out to lunch with like a professor who like, he knew I was food insecure, even if I didn’t know I was food insecure, and he would like pay for my food and we would like go somewhere nice that I couldn’t afford to eat at. For the most part, like there were times when like either because I, you know, couldn’t afford to go out to eat as often, but didn’t have the time because I was so stressed out to like make food from home. I like skipped meals often when I was in undergrad. I was very cheap and frugal all the time. I was constantly like thinking about like, I am hungry all the time and like bringing, like, trying to bring snacks with me. Apples were my thing.

07:22 Alyssa: I brought apples everywhere because they were so easy to just grab and then eat on the go. And then it was mostly about trying to make money to pay the bills and to pay rent. My rent, like in undergrad was only like $450 a month. But I worked a minimum wage job in the like plasma lab on campus. And then I worked as a TA as well. So that added stress onto my undergrad. I wish that I didn’t have to have worked so hard in order to like pay to live while trying to be a student. But that’s what it was like. Luckily, I don’t have any student debt now, but I couldn’t really you know, spend the money that was granted for my tuition on, you know, myself or the ability to make ends meet.

08:14 Emily: Yeah. So, I sort of misspoke or misunderstood earlier. You had a full ride in terms of the education cost, but not your living expenses. So, you were working to pay all of your living expenses.

08:25 Alyssa: Yes.

08:25 Emily: Yes. Okay. So that is a little bit like graduate school in a sense, except you didn’t have like a job that you were given. You had to cobble together like multiple sources of income, it sounds like. And there’s more management. You were probably paid, you know, less than maybe the average graduate student is. So, that sounds really stressful.

08:43 Alyssa: I had a little bit of spillover for my scholarships that I had received. So like it paid for like tuition and fees plus a little bit of extra and then like that would go towards rent, but it wasn’t like enough.

Student Loans for Dorm Payment

08:55 Emily: Why didn’t you take out student loans during that time?

08:59 Alyssa: So, I did have to take out student loans during my freshman year to pay for the dorms. Because dorms are a scam. If anyone who’s like not currently in grad school is listening to this, dorms are a scam. Do not live in them longer than you have to. The university says it’s so that way you can you know, help get acclimated to the college experience, but that’s a lie. They’re trying to take your money. I had to take out student loans to pay for those. Other than that, I didn’t take out any other student loans because I was afraid of the debt like piling up. I knew that like one of the types of loans didn’t charge interest until you were done, but the other type of loan did. And I, you know, didn’t want that to accrue while I was in college.

09:38 Alyssa: And I knew that I like had done all my budgeting and I knew that I was able to work to pay for all my stuff. So, I just kind of like, you know, I didn’t think anything was like wrong with the way that I was living. I didn’t see any like problems with like being so frugal or so cheap or skipping meals or missing sleep and stuff. But like, I guess grateful now to past me that I didn’t do that because now I don’t have any student debt. I paid off what little loans I had in like six months. But I did have to like work a lot to get there. But I was also happy doing the work that I did. I enjoyed being a TA and I enjoyed working in a research lab. And honestly, I’m glad that I didn’t end up like working somewhere that didn’t have anything to do with nuclear engineering. So that way I was able to apply all of that to my career trajectory later on in grad school, by having that research experience.

Funding and Finances in Grad School

10:36 Emily: Yeah. This kind of goes to show you like how we aren’t even aware of our own beliefs around money and our own mindsets around money until we sort of consciously try to take a step outside and examine them. And I understand that you can say now, “Oh, past me, I didn’t even know at the time.” You can say things like that because you’ve now reached a new phase in your financial life, which is the graduate student phase. So, tell us about how you’re funded now and how your finances are going.

11:00 Alyssa: Yeah. So, when I was applying to grad schools, I applied to the University of Illinois where I originally wanted to stay because I really loved working for my advisor there. And I also applied to the University of Tennessee because I had, through conferences and networking, I met my current advisor here. And I told both schools that I would stay at Illinois for less. And Illinois didn’t have the power to offer, or like the nuclear engineering program at the University of Illinois, didn’t have the power to offer me more than like the base research assistantship that they offer to like all of the graduate students there. But the University of Tennessee has these like top-off fellowships that they will add to a base stipend in order to get a student to commit to the university who’s maybe deciding between two programs.

12:01 Alyssa: And with just the base stipend, Illinois, I think pays, I might be mistaken on the exact number, but I think they were offering like $26,000 a year. And the University of Tennessee’s base pay at the time was $30,000 per year. We’ve since gotten a raise and now it’s $33K. But the top-off fellowship that was offered to me was $10,000 a year. So then it became a no-brainer. And I was like, I would stay at Illinois for less, but not this much less. And so, now I am making about $45K with bonuses and like a couple of like, you know, service-based scholarships that I get on a somewhat regular basis. So, it kind of evens out to about $45,000 a year with the raise and the top-off fellowship. And so now, I feel like more of a regular adult that has a livable amount of money and I’m not as worried anymore about like, “Oh God, I saw a movie this weekend and now I can’t do anything else fun for the rest of the week.” And so like, I don’t have any of those like worries anymore, but I do still think about them. Like that mindset is always in the back of my mind of like, “Oh, like, is this like a waste of money? I don’t need to be doing this,” or, “This is so expensive,” you know?

$45K Stipend in Knoxville

13:24 Emily: Okay. There was so much in there. So much good stuff that I want to follow-up on. Let’s take it kind of in turns. I want to put a pin in the negotiation part of it. We’ll come back to that in a moment. But let’s focus now on like again, still your money mindset. You just mentioned some of it. You don’t have to be as worried about small joys and extravagances that you allow yourself. So, you’re making about $45,000 a year. Very good stipend for a graduate student, especially in a, you know, lower cost of living area. How, like give us some context about how much that pays for. Because obviously in other areas of the country, $45K is like, “Oh, I’m barely scraping by.”

14:00 Alyssa: Yeah.

14:00 Emily: How does that feel for you right now?

14:03 Alyssa: Knoxville is very affordable to live in. When you’re going to school, like in not really a big city, but more of like a rural part of the country, that definitely helps. Although there’s definitely, you have to balance that with being a person of color, too. So there aren’t other Filipinos, like in this whole city, it seems. I haven’t met any of them or seen anybody else like that’s the same race as me. There’s also a lot of segregation here. And so like, there are parts of town that you can’t go to. So you kind of have to balance that when you’re like, “Oh, if I live somewhere rural, then that’s more affordable to live in,” but there are parts of those areas that also may not be safe for you if you’re in a similar situation.

14:48 Emily: Yeah. I’m glad that you pointed that out because it’s something that I often don’t acknowledge or that can go unacknowledged that people of color in some cases do not have all of the options available to them that White people do, or, you know, other like races. Because as you just said, there are some areas where you can’t live, you have to pay the premium to live in a different area because it’s simply not an option to feel safe, you know, paying the least amount of rent that you could or whatever. So, a very important consideration when people are choosing graduate schools to kind of, to feel out if you are going to feel safe there, and what is the university going to do to support you?

15:21 Alyssa: And while we’re kind of on this, it might also be worth mentioning the current abortion scenario in the United States. If that’s something that matters to you and you have the ability to become pregnant, like a lot of the 26 states that are passing laws that restrict your access to it may also be something to consider because a lot of those contain the rural areas where it is more affordable to attend a university there.

15:46 Emily: Another wrinkle. Yeah. We’re recording this in May, 2022. I don’t know exactly when we’re going to release this. There may be more developments between now and then. But yes, an issue that I think many of us were not expecting to have to consider when we’re choosing graduate school. So, another good point.

Prioritizing Happiness

16:04 Emily: Let’s talk more about the money though. So like, you’re able to pay, you’re able to live a more comfortable lifestyle. Your mindset is still, how is your mindset doing? Like, are you able to splurge on yourself a little bit, or do you still have some of the mindset lingering from when you grew up or your undergraduate experience?

16:22 Alyssa: A lot of it is more, I guess, in the back of my mind, but I have put like a conscious effort into prioritizing my own happiness. Not just in the way of like work-life balance, but financially to ensure that like, you know, spending money on things that make you happy is not wasted money in the same way that spending time on things that make you happy is not wasted time. And so, like I saw two movies this weekend <laugh> instead of one with my partner, because I wanted to and that helped distract me from some heavy things that were going on in my life. And that was money well-spent. Yeah, it wasn’t on a bill, but it’s something that I like, you know, put effort into not feeling bad about that. So, I’ve been dealing with grief this weekend, and I’ve been spending a lot of money, like additional money than I would in any other week on eating out a lot. Just so that way I wouldn’t have to like do household chores, like dishes or worry about cooking while I’m dealing with grief.

17:29 Alyssa: And so like, those are like, you know, that was part of like, I guess, a change in mindset that I noticed where it was easier for me to do that in my current financial scenario, like situation versus when I was in undergrad. Like I had those thoughts in the back my mind of like, “Wow, I’m spending a lot of money. <Laugh> this week alone between, you know, funeral costs and like the additional money I was spending on food.” I’ve easily spent like a thousand dollars in the last four days on not bills, but that was easier for me to accept now and probably even easier now versus like my first year in grad school, when that would’ve been a harder, like mental hurdle to get over.

18:16 Emily: Yeah. And I’m assuming that this simply would not have been an option for you in undergrad to spend in this way. It is not an option for many graduate students, either, who are being paid less. And in our prep for this conversation, you said to me something along the lines of, you know, you’re living well right now given what you’re paid and given the low cost-of-living, and you think that all graduate students should feel this way. Can you elaborate on that a bit?

18:42 Alyssa: Yes. So, currently, like I said, I make $45,000 about per year. And whenever I tell other graduate students that like, sometimes, like I try not to let it like come off as like a brag because of the low cost-of-living in Knoxville, too. But it’s more of that I obviously agree that like everybody should, you know, talk about their wages, especially to your coworkers. Because I think that like all grad students should feel as comfortable as I feel in terms of my financial situation. I think that I make a fair wage, and maybe I’m biased because of my previous financial situation, but I personally have no complaints about the amount of money that I’m making right now. I feel supported by my advisor and by my department. I feel that I am valued for my labor. And I think that shows through how much they pay me. And I think that everybody should be able to feel that way about their department and about their advisor.

Commercial

19:52 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. I have set a big goal for my business and our U.S. PhD community broadly. My goal is for every graduate student, postdoc, or postbac in the U.S. who is not having income tax withheld from their stipend or salary to be offered training on how to 1) estimate their future income tax liability, 2) determine if they are required to pay quarterly estimated tax, and 3) prepare to pay their tax bill or bills through setting up a system of self-withholding. I provide just such a training, which is my asynchronous workshop titled Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. Now, some universities, institutes, or funding agencies already offer such a training, and they have no need to work with me. But others won’t allow their employees to touch the topic of taxes with a 10-foot pole, and that’s where working with me can really benefit everyone. Would you please send me an email and tell me which camp your university falls into—or if it’s somewhere in between? You can reach me at emily@PFforPhDs.com. Furthermore, let me know if you want to take Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients for free or think that the cohort coming in this fall should, and I’ll reply with how you can help make that happen. I look forward to hearing from you! Now back to our interview.

Learning to Negotiate

21:33 Emily: I wanted to come back now to the negotiation piece. So, I think you mentioned something like, you know, you told both universities that you would accept a slightly lower stipend from University of Illinois. Tell me like, you even brought up money in these conversations. Like why were you even having conversations with the programs? What gave you the idea that you could talk about this and that maybe there would be more for you there?

21:56 Alyssa: So, part of it was because while I was at the University of Illinois, I got comfortable asking for money. One by being a leader in a lot of the different like student programs and then having to correspond regularly with the staff and the department head there. So, I knew a lot of those people well, and at one point I wanted to go to the Nuclear Innovation Bootcamp in the year 2017. And there was like obviously paying for travel flight costs. I didn’t have to pay for lodging as part of that Bootcamp, but there was also a hefty registration fee and I couldn’t afford any of that. And so, like there was no route to like ask for it to be paid for. There was no like standardized path or form that you could fill out for things to be waived.

22:46 Alyssa: So, I wrote like a little one-page request to my department saying like, this is this program. I really want to go. This is what I’m going to get out of it. Will you pay for it? And then at the very bottom, it said more information about why I may qualify for financial need available upon request. But I didn’t really like talk about my financial situation. I just explained what the program was, and why I wanted to go. And I gave that to them, and with no further questions they paid for everything. I think they even, I want to say they reimbursed my flights, but if I hadn’t bought them, they may have paid for them in advance. I don’t quite remember. But I had realized that like they wanted to support me, and that they were okay with students kind of going the outside-of-the-box route in terms of asking for money.

23:38 Alyssa: And that was when I was a sophomore in college. So, that gave me the confidence, then, when I was in grad school to ask for a higher rate or wage when I was applying to grad school. And they, unfortunately, weren’t able to do it or I don’t, you know, necessarily know all the behind-the-scenes that went on there. And sure, they said no, but I wasn’t at all reprimanded for asking in the first place. Like nothing, you know, bad happened to me. The best that I could have done was ask, even if they said no. So, I’m glad that I did. And it turned out well for me because at the University of Tennessee, I didn’t even know that there were top-off fellowships. But I got one because I was upfront with the University of Tennessee about how I would have, you know, taken the lower offer elsewhere and about how I was considering other schools and kind of in the same way that you’re like, I learned how to like negotiate a car price down from my dad.

24:36 Alyssa: So that was, I guess, a little bit of a privilege that I had because I had to buy a car to like move to Tennessee, because they have terrible public transit here. It’s kind of the whole tell the other you know, person that you’re negotiating with about this other thing that you’re also considering. Make that look nice and shiny. So that way they’ll try to give you a little bit of a better offer. I ended up also getting this laptop and all of the accessories that go with it out of the same deal with my current advisor. Like I asked them to buy me, you know, personal equipment that I could use to like, you know, be a person outside of grad school, too. Like I didn’t have a functioning laptop at the time. And so all of that got thrown in as well.

25:23 Emily: I think that’s such a powerful message, like, and I’m glad that you learned it as a sophomore in college and that you were able to then apply it in your process for applying to graduate school. Like just ask, like, just let people know of your need and let them figure out how they can best, you know, work behind-the-scenes to make that happen for you. So, you got this amazing like top-up fellowship. I mean, $10,000 is a very significant, you know, add-on to an already, you know okay base stipend. So, that sounds amazing. Just, I think this is a wonderful message for any prospective graduate students, or anybody at any stage, really just ask for what you need. Let people know, and especially like you said that you have options and this would help your decision. I think you said earlier, like it was a no-brainer to go with the University of Tennessee once they made that, you know, augmentation to their offer. So, so glad to hear that.

Normalizing Talking About Grad Student Stipends

26:12 Emily: Let’s talk more about stipends for other graduate students as well. So, I understand you’ve recently kind of entered into some conversations with peers about how we can, union is not the right word, but sort of collectively bargain or like share information about stipends. So, tell me more about that endeavor.

26:33 Alyssa: Yeah. So, normalizing talking about our wages is like step one in changing the culture around laborers. So that way we can all benefit collectively. But we kind of wanted to take this a little bit of a step further among nuclear engineering grad students specifically because by going to conferences and networking, not just with employers or other universities, et cetera, but we also spend that time networking with each other. And so, because it’s so common for grad students to kind of see the same people all the time in the nuclear engineering programs, because we’re so small, a lot of us just know each other from like all across the country. And I know that this isn’t something that a lot of other fields have the benefit of because it’s not realistic for like every electrical engineering graduate student to all know each other.

27:31 Alyssa: But at least to know somebody who knows somebody at pretty much any nuclear engineering graduate program is realistic for us. So, we got together at the most recent student conference. And we are currently building a spreadsheet that has everybody’s like gross pay, all of the things that you have to pay for that are related to your health insurance or your academic costs, your fees, and then what your take-home pay is, and then comparing all of that to the cost-of-living based on where your university is, your university’s ranking, and your department’s ranking. So, that way you can kind of compare and contrast. So that way, if there is a department that is ranked highly compared to its university’s ranking, which implies that that department has more power to maybe change the pay that their graduate students are receiving, but those graduate students maybe aren’t being paid well, then they can use the collective sheet to say like, this is where we’re falling right now, compared to how much these other similar programs are paying their graduate students. And we think that you should, you know, value our labor a little bit more and that we deserve to have higher wages. And so, use like that collective information for other institutions to bargain. So that way maybe they can get the same level of financial comfort that I am afforded right now.

29:07 Emily: This is an amazing effort. I totally commend you and your peers for like this idea, and starting work on this. It sounds like you’re in the data collection stage.

29:17 Alyssa: Yes.

29:17 Emily: Is that right? Like you’re building the spreadsheet, putting in all these different factors. I love that you mentioned like ranking of university, because I have some work in this area as well, and I just think about cost-of-living. I don’t think about like how, you know, the university is regarded or their program is regarded. So, I think that’s a really interesting like additional element. I’m not sure when this episode will come out in relation to these other ones, but I have some other podcast episodes slated for 2022 on this same issue of like sort of information-sharing about stipends and bargaining in some manner to increase stipends. So, this is wonderful and it aligns very well with that.

Health Insurance (Non-)Coverage

29:53 Alyssa: The thing that like, the one piece of information that like made it, like click in my brain where I was like, “We need to like, do something more about this and just talk about our pay,” was that one of the grad students that I didn’t even know well, like while I was at U of I, that I was just kind of like chatting with at a social at this conference told me that his health insurance was not covered. And like, mine is, like, I don’t, it’s not taken out of my pay. Like, yes, it’s like technically like, “Oh, like you could have just, you know, they could have just given me the money that they’re using to pay for my health insurance,” but like the University of Illinois’ grad student health insurance is like taken out of their pay. So, that’s like a part of like the gross pay that they advertise. And I was like, that’s not cool. <Laugh> what do you mean your health insurance isn’t covered? So then I asked to have a meeting with the department head there because I like knew him well from when I was a student there. And he actually was the one who gave me the idea. He was like, why don’t you get more of this information from other schools? And then, so we’ll go from there.

30:59 Emily: That’s excellent. And I totally agree, like in PhD Stipends as well, I have a way to enter like what your stipend is, but then like, what are you paying out of that stipend in terms of fees and tuition and whatever. And like for health insurance and other types of fees as well, like that can add up to thousands of dollars a year. So, that’s not some insignificant like, oh, it’s a $20 fee, whatever. This is a really big percentage of like that overall stipend that they’re receiving.

31:23 Alyssa: Yeah.

31:24 Emily: The other thing I’m really excited about for your project too, is like this fellowship that you received is probably one that’s offered sometimes to other students as well. So, it’s good to have both sets of information, right? Like what’s the base stipend and then, “Oh, sometimes this additional funding is available.” Wouldn’t it be great if we could pull everybody up to that level or, you know, that kind of thing? So, I just, if you aren’t already, I would definitely encourage you to include that kind of information as well in the spreadsheet. What different students are being paid, even within the same department.

31:52 Alyssa: Yeah, we did get a raise this year, which took effect about two months ago. So, because of the change in the economy throughout the pandemic, all graduate students in the nuclear engineering department at the University of Tennessee received a 10% stipend raise. So, full research assistants are now making 33 instead of $30,000 per year as the base-level stipend. Additionally, this was through the effort of our nuclear engineering graduate student assembly, which is kind of like also not a union, but a collection of just the nuclear engineering grad students. We managed to through a couple of years actually of pressure convince our department to begin covering our academic fees. So, which also kind of feels like a raise in terms of take-home pay. So, now we no longer have to pay as much and many students don’t have to pay any fees anymore for things like, you know, your basic like academic, you know, transportation fee, student health center fee, recreational fee. So, all of that is pretty much covered now.

33:02 Emily: For sure. And it makes it so much easier to compare apples to apples, right? When those kinds of fees are covered. But I’m sure in your spreadsheet you’ll be accounting for everything. So, I love this idea. I’m so excited for y’all to like move forward with this and hope it comes together in the near future.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

33:16 Emily: Well, Alyssa, it’s been such a pleasure to talk with you and I’m so glad that you volunteered to be on here, and you’ve had so many really vital messages that have come through in this interview. And I’m really grateful for that. I wrap up all my interviews by asking my guests one final question, which is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be something that we’ve already touched on in the interview, or it could be something completely new.

33:39 Alyssa: I had a similar question asked of me in my most recent D&D session with my friends. Just like we were talking after. And, specifically, their question was, how much of my success is rooted in like just being confident? And that applies to so much in that, like I had the confidence to ask to go to all these different programs, the Bootcamp, to different conferences. And when I’m at conferences, then while I’m there, I’m networking with all these different potential employers and powerful people, like some of my future reference letter writers are people that I’ve only ever interacted with at conferences and have no other like relationship with them. And so, by networking with those people that, you know, that’s how I met my current advisor, and that’s how he learned about my work.

34:42 Alyssa: And that gave me the confidence to then talk to him about my financial situation. And you know, even asking to go to conferences in the first place built my confidence in asking for funding and asking for a raise. And it really taught me that, I mean, the best thing you can do is to at least ask and see if, you know, people will just give you money. Because sometimes they will. So, I don’t necessarily like the mindset of, you know, just apply to everything because it also can take resources and time. But apply to the things that you can, or that you have the spoons to. And it’s a way to try to tackle imposter syndrome is to know that other people have it too, but you deserve to have the confidence, regardless of any imposter syndrome you might have, to put yourself out there.

35:41 Emily: Thank you so much, Alyssa, for those concluding thoughts. Again, it’s been great to have you. Thank you so much!

35:46 Alyssa: Yeah. Thank you! Thank you for having me!

Outtro

35:53 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/. 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 Grad Student’s Finances and Mental Health Were Stuck in a Negative Feedback Loop

by Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Haley Sanderson, a postdoc at the University of Saskatchewan. Haley was dramatically underpaid during graduate school and discouraged from working on the side. While many of her peers lived hand to mouth, Haley’s situation was made more dire by her at-the-time undiagnosed and untreated mental health disorder. Haley entered a negative feedback loop in which her finances, mental health, and physical health deteriorated together. Emily and Haley discuss what her program could have done to ameliorate this negative spiral and why it’s vital to sufficiently financially support PhD trainees. Haley concludes with her very practical financial advice for anyone at a career transition point.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

Image for S12E4: This Grad Student's Finances and Mental Health Were Stuck in a Negative Feedback Loop

Teaser

00:00 Haley: My suggestion would be, if somebody’s in my situation, to go get the help you need and get the financial help that you need, even if it means taking out loans. Because it’s much better to have the financial debt than the mental health debt.

Introduction

00:22 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 12, Episode 4, and today my guest is Dr. Haley Sanderson, a postdoc at the University of Saskatchewan. Haley was dramatically underpaid during graduate school and discouraged from working on the side. While many of her peers lived hand to mouth, Haley’s situation was made more dire by her at-the-time undiagnosed and untreated mental health disorder. Haley entered a negative feedback loop in which her finances, mental health, and physical health deteriorated together. We discuss what Haley’s program could have done to ameliorate this negative spiral and why it’s vital to sufficiently financially support PhD trainees. Haley concludes with her very practical financial advice for anyone at a career transition point.

01:44 Emily: I have set a super audacious goal for my business and our U.S. PhD community broadly. It’s actually a bit difficult for me to even speak it out loud! My goal is for every graduate student, postdoc, or postbac in the U.S. who is not having income tax withheld from their stipend or salary to be offered training on how to 1) estimate their future income tax liability, 2) determine if they are required to pay quarterly estimated tax, and 3) prepare to pay their tax bill or bills through setting up a system of self-withholding. I am passionate about this topic because surprise tax bills, high tax bills, and fines are an almost completely preventable source of financial strife for my community, and all that’s needed is a bit of education delivered at the right time. I provide just such a training, which is my asynchronous workshop titled Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. Most of you have heard me talk about it before, and some of you have taken it. The perfect time to give PhD trainees access to this workshop is when they start or switch onto non-W-2 income, which often happens near the start of the academic year, i.e., the near future.

03:08 Emily: If you share my passion—or maybe it’s more of a frustration for you—and know that your university is not already providing sufficient training in this area, would you please recommend that your graduate school, postdoc office, graduate student association, or department sponsor my workshop for those interested in taking it? You might want to take it yourself, or perhaps you just want to save the entering cohort the time and energy it took you to figure this all out on your own. To make this recommendation, simply email the potential sponsor with the reason you are recommending the workshop and this link: PFforPhDs.com/sponsorqetax/. If you’re comfortable with it, you can Cc me emily@PFforPhDs.com, and I can pick up the conversation. Thanks for participating with me in trying to reach this goal! I know it will prevent a lot of people in our community from experiencing tax-related financial emergencies next spring.

You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s12e4/.

Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Haley Sanderson.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

04:33 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Haley Sanderson, who is a postdoc at the University of Saskatchewan, and she is coming on the podcast to talk about a really sensitive topic, which is living on a very low graduate student stipend while dealing with mental illness. So, Haley, I’m really pleased that you volunteered to be on the podcast to talk about this important topic. So, would you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the listeners?

04:58 Haley: Hi, I’m Haley. I have a PhD in environmental studies where I specialize in environmental microbiology and biotechnology. I finished my PhD in five years defending and graduating in fall 2018, since then I’ve completed postdocs with the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Dalhousie University, and I’m now a postdoc in the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan. And I’m currently applying for more full-time permanent gigs <laugh>.

05:37 Emily: Well, best of luck with that. Okay. So we’re going to go back to your grad school years, and most of my listeners are going to be in the U.S. So, could you please explain, give some context for how you are funded during your PhD?

Funding During the PhD

05:53 Haley: So, during my PhD, I started as a master’s student, so I actually started on a much lower stipend of about $14K Canadian. So, to get that money, I had to TA for about two semesters every year and then do a research assistantship in the summer. I was a master’s student for a year, and then I bumped up to be a PhD. I ended up getting three provincial scholarships in Ontario that bumped my stipend up to $25K, which is only a little bit higher than the base stipend for a PhD student. So, with that stipend, we actually have to pay tuition out of it. So, not all of it gets to go to living. You also have to pay your tuition out of the money that they give you. So, the actual amount that I lived off of was much smaller than the stipend that I got <laugh>.

07:14 Emily: Yeah. Well, let us know, do you remember the numbers on that? Like after paying the tuition, what amount were you living off of? And then give us some context for, like, how does that compare to the local cost of living?

07:26 Haley: I don’t know the exact numbers, but tuition was about $2,000 a semester, I would say, for about $6,000 a year. So, when I was on my original master’s stipend, I only had maybe $8K <laugh>, which is a little <laugh> insane. I had a lot more to live off of once I was in the PhD program. So, when I was a master’s student, I actually had to work, but there were some problems with the department not wanting me to work and kind of threatening to take away the stipend that was paying like my tuition and my rent.

Challenges to Supplementing the Stipend

08:09 Emily: Yeah. I mean, the numbers that you’re throwing out there sound incredibly low. It’s not surprising at all to me that you would, you know, seek other sources of income. Was that something that your peers were doing as well? Was the department also like threatening other peers who were working, or how were they making ends meet?

08:27 Haley: A lot of the other people in my department had like side gigs that they’d only do every once in a while. A lot of people hid if they had part-time jobs. Unfortunately, I worked close to the university and some of them saw me working, so that didn’t work out too well <laugh>.

08:48 Emily: How was that resolved? Did you have to give up the side job?

08:53 Haley: Some of the admins helped me apply to the provincial scholarships. And once I got the provincial scholarships, I was kind of told to get rid of the part-time job.

09:03 Emily: And would you say that when you had that higher $25K minus, okay, let’s say $19K per year stipend during the latter part of your PhD, was that enough to survive, or did you feel like you would’ve worked more if you were allowed to?

09:18 Haley: I probably would’ve worked more, but I think I would’ve had trouble doing that with the mental illness, because there were a lot of things that that impacted. Like my eating, my sleeping, my social life were also impacted by finances, and moreso by the mental health problems.

Mental Health Impact on Money Mindset

09:41 Emily: Yeah. Let’s talk about that more now. So, you had an undiagnosed slash untreated mental health condition at that time. So, how was that affecting how you handled your finances?

09:54 Haley: So, I have a psychotic disorder that causes me to have delusions and hallucinations that are usually really disparaging and kind of controlling. So, let’s say, for instance, when I got accepted into the master’s program, my mom made a comment that my brothers paid for their second degrees. And that kind of morphed in my mind to my parents won’t help me at all, so don’t ask them. Even when I tried to apply for like student loans, I kind of got it in my head that I would never be able to pay them back. So, it was kind of like a brick wall to actually apply for that. There were other things in my life, like I couldn’t eat certain foods because I thought I’d get really sick and stuff like that. So, it was essentially that I couldn’t really do anything to help my situation because my brain would tell me, like, you can’t actually do this.

10:58 Emily: Wow. Yeah. I had not like, thought about that or realized that was a potential, you know, symptom that some people could be experiencing. So, thank you for sharing that. I do a lot of like, how do we find workarounds on this podcast? Or like breaking through like your money mindset stuff. But like when you’re dealing with a serious mental health condition, that’s simply not an option without higher-level treatment, right? Which you eventually got, and we’ll get to that. And so, how then also did having such a low income during graduate school affect your ability to get diagnosed or treated?

11:33 Haley: I started to have psychotic episodes during my third year of my undergrad. And at that time, I went to go see a doctor and that doctor gave me antidepressants, which there was a co-pay for. And he wrongly sent me home without doing any more assessment and essentially told me, you might be developing schizophrenia, we’ll see <laugh>, which is not the best thing <laugh>. So, I was already on a very small budget when I was in undergrad. My parents paid for like my tuition and my rent. So, I was never in a situation where I would be homeless, but I was still in a situation where I didn’t have that much money. If I were in that situation now where I’m on my antipsychotic and my antidepressant, the antidepressant is maybe a couple dollars a month, but if I didn’t have benefits my antipsychotic would be over $200 a month.

12:43 Haley: So, part of the reasons why I stopped taking the medication at that point was, one, that it caused pretty severe hallucinations, more than I had before I got on the medication, because it was the wrong one. And the other thing was that I didn’t necessarily want to pay for it <laugh> because it was making me feel worse. So, I was kind of in denial that I needed them when I was in grad school, because I could no longer tell if I was feeling well, or if I was sick. Everything just kind of melded together. So, in terms of the impact of having a really low budget in grad school, I couldn’t eat properly. I maybe spent $30 a week on food, and I pretty much ate the same things all the time. Like rice, lentils, beans, and apples.

13:48 Haley: I was so worried about things that I also didn’t sleep. And by that I would mean I would be in the lab for maybe 16 hours a day and I’d go home and sleep for four to six hours. And one of the big things about controlling psychosis is that you need to get enough sleep. So now, I actually need close to eight to 10 hours on average. So, that was a pretty big impact. And it certainly didn’t help the delusions that I couldn’t get financial help <laugh>. It was kind of like a feedback loop.

14:27 Emily: I was just going to say that sounds exactly like a negative spiral, right? Like you are having tight money issues, so you forgo the medicinal and also other forms of self-care that maybe were somewhat available to you. And then your mind is also telling you that you can’t access or don’t deserve those things. And then it loops around again. So yeah, that sounds horrible.

Financial Stress and Sacrifices on a Low Stipend

14:56 Emily: You just mentioned living off of a really small, like food budget, for example. So, were there other things that you didn’t spend on that you forwent spending on to make that really low stipend work?

15:10 Haley: I didn’t go out very often and kind of avoided any social situation where I might have to pay for stuff. Particularly in my first two years. After my first two years, I moved somewhere with a better cost of living. I kind of filled my time only with work because I couldn’t really afford to have hobbies <laugh>. At one point when I decided to move in my second, third year, I had to give up a cat that was kind of my emotional <laugh> animal at that time, because I couldn’t move them across the country to where I was working. I didn’t go home for Christmas, and I barely saw my family because I really couldn’t afford to go on a bus or go on a plane. I didn’t take a vacation throughout my entire PhD. I didn’t date anyone during my entire PhD. And I avoided buying anything other than food. So, I would wear clothes until they like physically fell apart. Same with shoes. I’d wait until I really, really had to. So, I essentially forgo like anything that would be making me kind of happier <laugh>. So, it really wasn’t ideal.

16:39 Emily: Yeah. I realized that I kind of phrased that question as like, “Oh, what are the great strategies you used?” Not that I meant it that way, but this is not at all a laudable list, right? This is all a list of things that caused you to become even more unhealthy. And again, in that spiral that we were just talking about, and to not be able to break out of it. Like having an injection of some extra money, I mean, it would also help if your mind were, you know, allowing you to spend on these things, but having some extra money would’ve helped your general mental health, but also specifically your condition so much. It’s so obvious that that would be the case. I’m just like hearing a picture of you like drowning during graduate school. Financially, mentally. And I’m wondering about the people around you, like your advisor or other people in your department. Like, was there anything that they could have done? I’m asking this in a way of like, what can other people listening to this, take away if they see a peer or someone in their program that is to say, maybe they’re a faculty member or someone else who has a bit of power in the situation too. Like what, what should they have been doing or what could they have done to help you out of this spiral?

What Could Have Helped?

17:59 Haley: In some ways, there wasn’t really much people could do. In terms of what the department did, they tried to help me get scholarships, which did make the situation a lot better. There is an opportunity to do like graduate assistant work that I did for two summers. That was really helpful. Maybe having like emergency funds that are easy to apply to would be very useful too. But a lot of the time, I didn’t think that my, I couldn’t tell that my situation wasn’t normal <laugh> because a lot of my peers had similar problems. Probably not to the same mental extent, but in terms of money, it was pretty common. And maybe just increasing the stipend would make a big difference. I checked the department’s website and it looks like the PhD stipend has increased, but the master’s stipend is still quite low. But that would be what I would think of when I think of what the department could do to help people.

19:09 Emily: Absolutely. I think pay graduate students more. Pay graduate students enough that they don’t experience the things that you mentioned, like not being able to go home and visit your family members, never going out socially if there was, you know, a possibility you might spend money. In addition to just being like the compassionate thing to do for students who are under your charge, as well as, especially if you’re not going to allow them to work or whatever, they’re not developing. You were not developing as a scholar in the way you could have. You could have blossomed even more, had you been sufficiently financially supported. Same goes for your peers too. So, it’s just really, it’s very hard for me <Laugh>, I’m sure for the listeners as well, to hear how much you were struggling and how big of a difference, you know, a few more thousand dollars a year from your department would’ve made, and what exactly is tying their hands to make that not happen? If their goal is to develop scholars and PhDs, they could do that even better by financially supporting them better. That’s how I view it.

20:12 Haley: Yeah.

Commercial

20:15 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. I have set a big goal for my business and our U.S. PhD community broadly. My goal is for every graduate student, postdoc, or postbac in the US who is not having income tax withheld from their stipend or salary to be offered training on how to 1) estimate their future income tax liability, 2) determine if they are required to pay quarterly estimated tax, and 3) prepare to pay their tax bill or bills through setting up a system of self-withholding. I provide just such a training, which is my asynchronous workshop titled Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. Now, some universities, institutes, or funding agencies already offer such a training, and they have no need to work with me. But others won’t allow their employees to touch the topic of taxes with a 10-foot pole, and that’s where working with me can really benefit everyone. Would you please send me an email and tell me which camp your university falls into—or if it’s somewhere in between? You can reach me at emily@PFforPhDs.com. Furthermore, let me know if you want to take Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients for free or think that the cohort coming in this fall should, and I’ll reply with how you can help make that happen. I look forward to hearing from you! Now back to our interview.

Ending the Negative Spiral

21:56 Emily: So, how did you ultimately end this spiral that you were in? Did you get on medication? Did you see different doctors? Was it a matter of graduating? Like what happened?

22:06) Haley: Graduating was actually the worst thing that happened <laugh>. So, I had to pay for my ticket to do my defense because I was living in Alberta at the time and I had to come back to Ontario, and that actually completely depleted my bank account. If I hadn’t gotten a job pretty much right away, I would not have had a place to stay and I wouldn’t have been able to go home at all. I ended up going through an even bigger spiral where I entered like acute psychosis. Like the CRA is after me <laugh> kind of psychosis or people are actively following you and you’re hearing complete conversations and more disparaging comments and so on. I essentially kept working for almost six months with acute psychosis. And then I finally hit a point where I couldn’t do it anymore and I realized that there was something incredibly wrong.

23:21 Haley: So, I ended up going to the doctor who tried to put me on an antipsychotic, but I essentially spiraled further when I got onto the antipsychotic because it was essentially too late to be putting me on it in an outpatient location. So, I ended up having to go to the ER twice. The first time there wasn’t a psychiatrist. So, they sent me home. The second time, I was essentially really dehydrated, only weighing 80 pounds and completely out of reality <laugh> essentially. So, the psychiatrist put me into inpatient care and I stayed there for a month where they put me on medication and I essentially slept because I was burnt out from work and the PhD. So, it’s taken probably two and a half years to get on the right medication and recover fully from that.

24:23 Haley: Starting a postdoc that actually pays me enough to live has been pretty helpful <laugh> in that because I’ve been able to start eating more healthy. I’m not as worried. And I have the psychosis under control between medication and therapy. So, I’m sleeping a normal amount. I’m eating a normal amount. I’m exercising because I can afford to go to the gym and like go to spin class and stuff like that. One of the weird things is I actually got out of the grad school with absolutely no debt because I couldn’t actually apply for the loans. Like my head would not let me apply for them. So, I ended up getting out with absolutely no debt, but also absolutely no money <laugh>. So, I was really lucky that I was offered a job right away. After I was hospitalized, I had to take three months off. So, I actually lost the job that I had gotten and I had to find another job, which I had to move across the country for. And then after that job, I had to move across the country again, which has always been kind of a financial burden, but that’s just kind of how my job goes <laugh>. But I’m doing much, much better than I was doing in grad school and have a lot of things more under control.

Paying Off the Mental Health Debt

25:57 Emily: I am so glad to hear that you’re in a much better place right now. Although it does seem to me that it’s taken a long, long time to get there. I mean, you mentioned that you came out of graduate school with no financial debt, but you had a debt to yourself of another kind, right? Of having not taken care of yourself and had been on the medication and doing the sleeping and the eating and all that stuff. So like, you still had to come out of that depth of the, you know, of care that you needed to get back up to the point you’re at now, the stable and healthy point.

26:32 Haley: I would say that I would’ve rathered have the financial debt than the mental debt. So like, my suggestion would be if somebody’s in my situation to go get the help you need and get the financial help that you need, even if it means taking out loans. Because it’s much better to have the financial debt than the mental health debt.

26:57 Emily: I totally agree. And I’m really glad to hear you say that. I don’t want to criticize other people either in their financial situations, but when you’re in a unique time of life, like being a graduate student and it is ideally time-limited and you’ll move on to having a better-paying job later on, it can, in some situations make sense to take out debt and some people feel so debt-averse that they, and I’m not saying you did this because you had this mental health condition, but they put themselves into debts of these other kinds. They’re not eating properly. Maybe they are not living in a safe situation. Again, I don’t want to sound like I’m criticizing them, but they do as a graduate student, at least in the U.S., have the option of taking out debt and alleviating some of that.

27:43 Emily: And so, I just want them to think about that as a legitimate option and not something that’s completely off-limits to them to help this short-term cash crisis that they’re in during graduate school. Again, the responsibility for that as we were talking about earlier falls much more on the programs underpaying people. That’s on them, rather than the people who are being underpaid. But that is a way out of a very difficult short-term situation. And like you said, you would’ve rather had a bit of money to pay off than having these years and years that it’s taken you to recover from the state that you were in by the end of graduate school.

Save Money and Study the Financial Side of Grad School

28:20 Emily: Do you have any other advice for prospective graduate students who are walking into programs like you did your master’s, your PhD program, who are potentially being radically underpaid compared to the local cost of living?

28:37 Haley: I would mostly work for a while and save money before you go to grad school. I wasn’t in a situation where I thought I could do that, but if I could do it again, I probably would’ve started working right away and then decided if I wanted to do grad school after I’ve made a little bit of money <laugh>. Make sure that whatever program that you want to go into does have a fair stipend. I didn’t even think of that when I joined grad school, but that should have been a much bigger consideration than what it was for me because I’m first-generation. I didn’t think that they would give me a stipend that I couldn’t live off of <laugh>.

29:17 Emily: Misplaced trust.

29:19 Haley: Yeah <laugh>. I would maybe do a little more digging on the financial side before starting grad school.

29:27 Emily: Yeah. I think those are great suggestions for someone considering graduate school. Definitely look into the stipends versus the local cost of living. I have a website that helps with that. At least if you’re in the U.S., which is called PhDstipends.com. So you can see what other graduate students actually report as being their income, not what the programs tell you they’re paying. Those might be two different things until you get the offer letter, at least. So you can kind of do some pre-research on the programs that you’re planning on applying to, to see if they’re paying a living wage or not. And like you said, I think a lot more people should be considering working for a decently-paying job for a year or two or three before they start graduate school to build up some kind of financial safety net so that they don’t have to do things like you were just mentioning, the cost of moving multiple times across the country.

30:13 Emily: That’s very significant. And if you end up paying for that, let’s say with like credit cards, because you don’t have the savings or cash to do it, then you’re kind of starting graduate school like already knocked back, already knocked onto your back foot, like financially, because you’re now having to pay down credit card debt in addition to living on this very, very small stipend. So instead, if you can have that savings, so, so helpful to just kind of get out ahead of these issues. So, that’s great advice for prospective graduate students. And thank you for giving that.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

30:43 Emily: I do end my interviews with a standard question that I ask all of my guests, which is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be something that we’ve talked about in the course of the interview, or it could be something completely new.

30:55 Haley: If you’re a postdoc, I’d start saving and get a retirement fund and maybe a rainy day fund. Because postdocs are fairly short for most people, and you’re probably going to have to move again and things come up. So, it’s good to start saving once you can start saving after grad school. And kind of the same advice for looking at a postdoc. Make sure the salary is enough to live comfortably on before you agree to do it. It’s not a nice thing to accept a salary and then get to the city and realize that you can’t really live there <laugh>. And maybe try to negotiate your salary if you can.

31:45 Emily: All wonderful advice. I’m recalling actually, when my husband got a postdoc offer in Boston, we were living in Durham, North Carolina at the time. So kind of moderate cost of living to high cost of living. And we calculated it after accounting for the cost of living change between those two cities. He was actually being offered effectively less money than he had made as a graduate student with that postdoc position in Boston. And he did try to negotiate and he got them to increase the offer very, very slightly. And ultimately did not take that offer and finances were, you know, a part of that decision. And so, I totally agree with you, especially if you have not yet lived in a city, whether it’s for grad school, for postdoc, anything else. You need to really investigate what the cost of living is because you just don’t know until you actually live there. And by the time you accept an offer and move, it’s too late <laugh>. You need to do as much as you can in advance. So, Haley, thank you so much for being willing to give this interview. I think it was a really important conversation that the listeners are going to benefit so much from. So, so glad to hear you doing well. And thanks again for volunteering!

32:50 Haley: Thanks for having me!

Outtro

32:58 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/. 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.