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Money Mindset

Knowing Your Worth in an Environment that Devalues Your Work

January 18, 2021 by Lourdes Bobbio Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Sam McDonald, a fifth-year PhD student in informatics at the University of California at Irvine. Sam received the NSF GRFP, completed a lucrative internship at a tech company, has won multiple smaller grants and fellowships, and taught classes for additional income. Upon observing this, some of her peers questioned why she was still applying for awards. Even more light was shone on this issue when her department compiled a list of all the grad students’ income as part of the Cost of Living Adjustment protests in the University of California system; Sam was the highest-paid grad student. In response, Sam became discouraged and even stopped submitting funding applications until her advisor counseled her about knowing her worth. Sam has now come out the other side of this financial shaming experience and has great advice for anyone else questioning their worth and what they should be paid in academia.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

  • Find Sam McDonald on her website and on Twitter
  • PhDStipends.com
  • PostDocSalaries.com
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Tax Resources
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Community
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Podcast Hub
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Subscribe to the mailing list
grad student know your worth

Teaser

00:00 Sam: Sometimes our expertise and our ability to do stuff is so undervalued. And it’s hard to measure how much you’re personally valued because you have all these different discrepancies in how different grad students are getting paid. And you really, I think just have to sit yourself down and look at comparatively, well, if I were to go into industry right now, how much would I be making? So I’d recommend the students to really go out there and see how much is my value in other places versus in grad school, where I think we have this skewed sense because of this limited budgeting construct of how much you’re actually worth.

Introduction

00:33 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season eight, episode three and my guest today is Sam McDonald, a fifth year PhD student in informatics at the University of California at Irvine. Sam received the NSF GRFP, completed a lucrative internship at a tech company, has won multiple smaller grants and fellowships, and taught classes for additional income. Upon observing this, some of her peers questioned why she was still applying for awards. Even more light was shone on this issue when her department compiled a list of all the grad students income, as part of the cost of living adjustment protests in the University of California system. Sam was the highest paid grad student. In response, Sam became discouraged and even stopped submitting funding applications until her advisor counseled her about knowing her worth. Sam has now come out the other side of this financial shaming experience and has great advice for anyone else questioning their worth and what they should be paid in academia.

01:42 Emily: It wasn’t until Sam brought up this topic to me, that I realized that I had my own story of financial shaming and academia. Additionally, several of my relatively well-paid grad student, friends, acquaintances, and podcast guests have told me their stipends or that they had won a fellowship, but asked me not to repeat that information. I believe this was in fear of the financial shaming they might experience from their peers. I am a big advocate of transparency around stipends and benefits, which is why I started the websites, PhDstipends.com and PostdocSalaries.com. But transparency is hindered by shame. Asking for what you’re worth is hindered by shame. Shaming someone else for their financial success doesn’t put any money in your pocket, it just discourages them and ultimately harms our whole community. I’m so pleased that Sam volunteered to give this interview. I hope her message encourages you to swing for the fences financially and to speak respectfully when discussing sensitive topics like finances. Those are great lessons for me too.

Book Giveaway

02:35 Emily: Let’s turn our focus to the book giveaway contest in January, 2021. I’m giving away one copy of the House Hacking Strategy by Craig Curelop, which is the Personal Finance for PhDs Community book club selection for March, 2021. Everyone who enters the contest during January will have a chance to win a copy of this book. I’m delighted to bring attention to house hacking, which is when you buy a home live in it and rent out part of it, thereby radically reducing or even eliminating your housing expense. It’s a new name for an old tactic that grad students and PhDs have been using for a very long time, but this book puts a highly strategic spin on it. If you’d like to enter the giveaway contest, please rate and review this podcast on Apple podcasts, take a screenshot of your review and email it to me emily@pfforphds.com. I’ll choose a winner at the end of January, from all the entries you can find full instructions pfforphds.com/podcast. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Sam MacDonald.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:54 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast, Sam MacDonald, who is a graduate student at the University of California at Irvine and she’s here to talk with us today about kind of a touchy subject. It’s financial shaming, and she’s experienced this and I’m really just excited that she’s decided to come forward because I know that her experience is not unique. After she approached me about this topic, I started thinking and I realized I’ve experienced this. I’ve realized I know other peers who have experienced this, so she’s definitely not alone. And we’re going to treat the subject very carefully today. So Sam, thank you so much for your willingness to talk about this. I know it’s not an easy subject matter at all. Would you please tell the audience a little bit more about yourself?

04:37 Sam: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me Emily. Like Emily said, my name is Sam McDonald. I am a fifth year PhD candidate at the University of California, Irvine studying informatics. I actually study the United States Congress and their use of constituent communication. So I’ve been back and forth in DC and in California to figure out how members of Congress use technology to communicate with their constituents and how to make it better. I have an undergrad degree from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where I did a lot of research before going straight from undergrad to my PhD and I got a master’s along the way that I got from UC Irvine.

Funding During Graduate School

05:11 Emily: Thank you so much that overview. Super interesting subject matter, not what we’re getting into today, but thank you so much for the context. So what’s been the funding situation for you during grad school?

05:21 Sam: My funding has been different for different years. My first year I got the GAANN fellowship, which is from the US Department of Education that my department supplied to me, which was really helpful not to TA at first. Then I TAed for two years, and while I was doing that, I applied for the NSF GRFP and luckily I got it to fund my last three years of my PhD. I’ve also spent two quarters teaching as additional funding and have gotten grants from congressional research funding and travel grants. And then also I’ve worked for Facebook for an internship, so I have internship money as well.

05:54 Emily: Can you give us like an idea of much money you were being paid — and I know it might be different year to year — versus, if you’re aware of it, the baseline stipend in your department?

06:05 Sam: Yeah, absolutely. The TA baseline stipend is around $2,200 for teaching us a little bit more. And my GRFP is about $2,800 per month, just to give you a baseline ballpark for how much that is.

06:21 Emily: Okay. And it sounded like in your second year you were being funded only from TA-ships. Is that right?

06:27 Sam: Yes.

06:27 Emily: Okay. So on that year, you lived on that baseline stipend and is it every other year you’ve been above that for one reason or another?

06:34 Sam: Yeah, it’s really fluctuated for different months, depending on if I’m getting travel grants, going to DC during the summer is quite expensive, so getting additional grants for that to be moving around, but still keep my apartment in California. I think my money has fluctuated every single month, being different because of all these different activities that I’m doing in addition to this baseline salary.

06:57 Emily: That is such an interesting budgetary conundrum. One that I would love to explore, but not our subject for today. And this is maybe not super on this subject, but I’m just curious how much the internship at Facebook paid.

07:09 Sam: Let me remember. I think it was around. I could be wrong, I think it was around seven per month,

07:16 Emily: $7,000 per month?

07:18 Sam: Yeah. I think it might be a little bit higher than that. I’d have to go back and double check, but it’s definitely around that ballpark.

How Sam’s Peers Reacted to These Extra Sources of Income

07:24 Emily: Yeah. Sounds great. Well, I am of course, wanting to congratulate you on winning the NSF, gaining these other travel grants, but I understand that’s not necessarily how some of your peers reacted to you having this wonderful CV full of accolades.

07:40 Sam: Yeah, absolutely. The NSF GRFP — I want to particularly point out, I’ve had three advisors, not through my own fault, one retired, one moved, and then one picked me up like a lost puppy and she’s been great, but none of them have had funding for me, so I’ve always had to go out and get my own funding as well, which is why I was so motivated to get a lot of these grants. But I always haven’t had the best reactions to it. After I got the NSF, which is amazing and it’s given me so much more flexibility, I still had to pursue other grants for travel to DC, and then I just kept applying to more grants because it looks good on your CV. A lot of students were really supportive, but one or two would always sort of give me side comments of like, “Oh, you’re applying for this grant, I thought you already had the GRFP. Why do you need this? Why did you win this grant even though you already have these things?” So I’ve had to deal with a little bit of tension and figuring out my own worth in that process.

08:30 Emily: Yeah. How did you feel when you got those snide comments?

08:35 Sam: I felt a little bit guilty. I will say with a caveat that like I am a more privileged person. I’m white. I came from an upper middle class family. I am working in technology, so I get tech internships. I have a really supportive advisor. I live on subsidized housing and I also live cheaply because I love hiking and I bike more than I drive places. Just for context here at the University of California, Irvine it’s so expensive to live in Orange County that even the professors have their own subsidized housing on campus and there’s an entire professor community. I’ve done a lot to really sort of push myself towards getting these grants, and it kind of made me feel bad that I was getting them because I am in such a privileged position. So for a while I was feeling bad about applying to grants and had to talk to my advisor and other peers about it to figure out if I’m in the wrong here of applying for more money, even though I already have a more stable income.

09:28 Emily: So it seems like even though a lot of your peers were supportive of this and they were helping you edit your applications and so forth, a few, a minority, were making these comments. What do you think their kind of motivation was behind that?

09:43 Sam: I think a lot of students — we’ve had protests in California about this — are struggling financially in some ways, or maybe they don’t get the grants that they want, and then they’re feeling like I’m getting a lot of grants and my research is very attractive for the current context with everything going on in Congress and wanting to improve that. I naturally do have an attractive topic and I think some people feel like maybe their topics aren’t reaching that same attractiveness when it comes to advertising your own research. Also it’s hard being a grad student and I’ve worked really, really hard to have really good grants. When I did the GRFP, I went to the writing center on campus at least 12 times and had dozens of friends review it and professors review it, so I really, really take my time with grants where I know some people also can do them last minute because they’re so overwhelmed with everything else. I think it depends on the person, but it’s just the struggle a lot to get grants in the first place, I think.

10:38 Emily: Yeah, definitely. I understand that at some point, this sort of crystallized and it was not only people by happenstance noticing that you won this grant or that grant, even though you already had the GRFP, but at some point it came down in black and white. Can you tell us about that?

10:54 Sam: Earlier this year, our department got together and decided to make a spreadsheet of everyone’s income from the department, because this was part of our consolidarity with the COLA protests. And for those who don’t know, COLA stands for cost of living adjustment. Here in California there’s been a lot of protest from grad students around, the cost of living adjustment, especially at UC Santa Cruz, where a lot of grad students are spending 50 to 70% of their income on just their housing alone, because it’s so expensive to live and they are demanding to have an adjustment to their rent because they are so rent burden. So UC Irvine and my department in particular, especially one or two students who are really involved in the unions on campus, wanted to make a spreadsheet to show how much did we all make because we needed the data in order to demonstrate how most of us are rent burden. Even though we have subsidized housing, even though we are a tech department, we found out that 99% of us are still rent burden just going through this. But did find out in that instance that I do make more money than everyone else in the department. And that was in black and white and that’s on a spreadsheet that’s available to all students in my department to see.

12:03 Emily: I think this is a great process to go through actually and I am very in favor of more transparency around what people make, especially in grad school, not necessarily with your name tied to it, but just what people are making and the range. I’m kind of curious about why you ended up, I guess it was because it was asked of everyone, but what the motivation was for including people who were on fellowship, especially external fellowships like yours, along with people making the baseline stipend from the department. The argument is going to be about increasing the baseline stipend, right? So is it, we want the bottom sector here, that’s just making the baseline to be brought up closer to where you are, closer to where other people who receive outside fellowships are? I’m kind of wondering what the angle is on that.

12:47 Sam: That’s a great question. When this was sent out to students, it was completely optional. You had the option of doing it anonymously. I think most of us just decided to do it publicly and to be able to share how much, and we did put specific notes for each person of like where your funding was coming from — is this the baseline, or is this with an addition to external income? Is this pre-tax, this is post tax?. So we had all those details as well and it is a good question because I think with our department particular, there is an assumption, especially in the summertime that you’re going to go out and get other sorts of funding. And they know that there are a lot of students in our department who have Google and Facebook and Amazon and other sorts of internships because we are a more attractive group for those big tech companies that overcompensate sometimes for this wealth gap and this discrepancy for teaching.

13:34 Sam: I think that was also sort of demonstrating, even if there was a baseline, how much students were maybe feeling like they have to go for these internships in order to supplement their income. And just seeing these different discrepancies of if you were lucky and privileged enough to even get an internship. There’s actually someone in our department who studies this and how to get a tech internship, and she’s really helpful, but also shows the different discrepancies that can happen for who gets it and who doesn’t. So all those details, I think, were just really interesting to sort of demonstrate how broad the ranges and incomes in our department, just for students.

14:06 Emily: Yeah. It’s a super interesting project. I’ve actually recently heard of another, not related to the California specific protest, but another department where students took this on and used it as a negotiation tactic, as in a sense collective bargaining, although they were not in a union. So it can be a really powerful exercise. And what happened with either your peers or with your own feelings about this after the spreadsheet is out there?

14:28 Sam: The spreadsheet was out there during the pandemic, so I haven’t seen much of my peers in person, so there’s less discussion that I can have with them. Definitely for me personally, it did really two main things for me. First, it really sort of solidified this idea that I do make more money than everyone else in the department, and sort of feeling a little bit shameful and a little bit uncomfortable with that, but also at the same time, recognizing that I have a privilege to have these sort of grants and I’ve worked for it, but I’ve also been very lucky with some of these grants. And because of that, I do feel like I have a responsibility to share that and make that transparent and advocate for the people in my department who don’t. So on the one hand, it does make me uncomfortable to come out and say like, “Oh, I make a lot of grant money and I do a lot of other things to supplement that money in different ways, but also I am privileged enough to share this with you to show these discrepancies and make sure that we’re all coming up to a baseline.” And even before I had my tech internships, despite getting all these grants, I was still technically considered rent burden. It’s kind of funny to show that you make more, but we’re all still in this sort of struggling standpoint, so it doesn’t really help to have as many tensions, in-fighting, I guess, as much as it is to collectively work together.

Continuing to Apply for Additional Grants

15:38 Emily: How did you feel regarding going after more funding?

15:45 Sam: That was a little bit hard for me. I had to talk to my advisor once about this and really figure out what’s the best path, because I did have to tell her once that I felt uncomfortable applying for more because I’ve gotten some of these comments. I was like, “I have enough, I’d be okay.” And she really sat me down and made sure I remembered what my worth is and that grants are really important for CVs if you’re wanting to go into academia, and that you should not stop applying for things just because you have some money.

16:13 Sam: I have a great example of this where actually one of my funders, the democracy fund in DC helped me fund an entire summer in DC and they asked me, “Okay, how much do you need to do your research? And I was like, “okay, well I need this much for housing and this much for food and this much for a plane ride and some Metro and like, that’s it.” And they came back to me and said, “This is great, but you forgot to mention your actual value in terms of the work that you’re doing for this grant, so we’re going to double what you’re asking for.” That just blew my mind because it was the first time that someone came to me and told me you’re worth way more than you’re asking for and you need to make sure that you’re asking for these things at a higher level. I think even now I am getting these grant fundings, it doesn’t necessarily mean that that is my baseline worth just because I get something. And that took me a while from my advisor really encouraged me to keep applying for grants coming to me and telling me that I’m worth more than what I’m asking for.

Commercial

17:06 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude taxes are weirdly, unexpectedly difficult for funded grad students and fellowship recipients at any level of PhD training. Your university might send you strange tax forms or no tax forms at all. They might not withhold your income tax from your paychecks, even though you owe it. It’s a mess. I’ve created a ton of free resources to assist you with understanding and preparing your 2020 tax return, which are available pfforphds.com/tax. I hope you’ll check them out to ease much of the stress of tax season. If you want to go deeper with the, or have a question for me. Please join one of my tax workshops, which you can find links to from pfforphds.com/tax. It would be my pleasure to help you save time and potentially money this tax season. So don’t hesitate to reach out. Now back to our interview.

Understanding the Value of Your Work

18:12 Emily: I’m really glad that you can share that with our listeners, because some other people in the audience might be feeling the same way — sort of limiting themselves and saying, “well, I shouldn’t go after more. I shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t do that.” You had these great mentors in a sense in your life to help you push back against that, but maybe someone in the audience doesn’t have that and they’re hearing this line of thought for the first time, which is really wonderful, so I’m really glad you’re sharing that with us now. Is there anything else that you want to say about like understanding your worth? I mean, that is not just in the context of fellowship and grant applications, but just for graduate students more broadly, this is a very tricky topic to value yourself.

18:53 Sam: Yeah, absolutely. I think sometimes our expertise and our ability to do stuff is so undervalued and it’s hard to measure how much you’re personally valued, right? Because you have all these different discrepancies and how different grad students are getting paid. How much you’re worth versus another grad student. You really, I think just have to sit yourself down and look at comparatively, if I were to go into industry right now, how much would I be making? How much is my value in terms of giving to different nonprofits or companies, which was what I was doing. I was technically partially consulting, but mostly had a grant to do my own research. Having those opportunities and making myself step out there and ask other people, “how much am I worth to you?” I think that makes a big difference, so I’d recommend to students to really go out there and see like how much is my value in other places versus in grad school, where I think we have this skewed sense because of this limited budgeting construct, of how much you’re actually worth.

19:46 Emily: I think that’s a really excellent point and I want to underline it that who is paying you, that context, matters a lot in how much you can command for your value. Your value can be the same in the academic context, in the private sector, or in the nonprofit sector. But what you can get paid is vastly different from those different contexts and if you stay stuck in just the academic context, you’re not really going to realize all those different price points, in a sense, for your work.

20:16 Sam: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve come across different discrepancies, even internally, because in addition to having the GRFP and doing my research, I was extremely lucky and my department gave me a chance to teach twice, the first time being right at the onset of the pandemic. And me never teaching before and then teaching 140 students online wasn’t the funnest, but it really showed me how much they were also paying. And actually apparently we get paid more as grad student lectures than adjunct faculty do, which is kind of crazy think about because we have a better union. Recognizing the transparency that “wait I’m a grad student, but I make more than an adjunct faculty.” That’s just telling me that the value system inside the university is skewed and I really shouldn’t use that as a metric for my worth and that I really need to go outside the university bubble to understand that metric at least for grad school.

Financial Transparency in Academia

21:10 Emily: I understand we’ve been in COVID times, you haven’t seen much of your peers so I don’t know if you’ve actually, now that you have this new mindset around going after things and valuing yourself, maybe you haven’t had a chance really to speak with your peers and receive a comment and be able to respond or push back against it. Certainly tell us, have you had that opportunity at all?

21:33 Sam: No, I really haven’t just because everything’s remote and most of the stuff is just friendly, get togethers and things like that. There was a little bit of work with COLA still going on, but that’s a little bit hard with everything being remote and kind of put off to the wayside, I think, in a lot of people’s minds.

21:48 Emily: Definitely. I guess maybe in preparation for you once again seeing your peers in some months, maybe — we’re recording this in January, 2021 — is there anything that you think that you’ll say to your peers at that time, or maybe something you wished you could go back and tell them, earlier on in this process when these comments started?

22:09 Sam: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the biggest takeaway that I’ve really found, especially contributing to this data when it comes to COLA is that we’re really all in this together. And it’s really important to be open to this process, to share it with other grad students and to not really react negatively when other people are potentially making more than you are applying for more grants than you are, because everyone’s so different. Especially even in my department — my first advisor was an anthropologist, my second was a computer scientist, and my third had a business degree a PhD. Even in that, the professors in our department have different scales of finances just because they come from different backgrounds, so it’s all a little bit hodgepodge anyways.

22:46 Sam: But most importantly, I think it’s important to be transparent. I had an occasion where we had new grad students come into the department, like accepted grad students, and they had a panel of current grad students answering questions about what it’s like living in Irvine. What is the rent like? What is it like being a student and what type of classes do you take? And one of the accepted students asked “what is your stipend like, and how much is it to live on campus?” And none of the other students on the panel were directly answering the question. They’re like, “Oh, it’s enough. It’s reasonable.” And I was like, why aren’t you giving people a number and I just straight up said, make this much money. This is how much I pay for rent. And this is for this type of housing. And they’re like, “Oh, thank you. That’s really helpful.” And I think there’s a stigma still even just to share for accepted students, this is how much you’re actually going to make, because there’s some uncomfortableness with this transparency that I think really needs to be broken because it really does help us collectively to have those discussion.

23:46 Emily: Yeah, thank you for that. And of course, I also contribute to and promote this process through my website, PhDstipends.com and PostdocSalaries.com. That’s an anonymous way that you can share what you’re making, what the funding sources and so forth, because that is also super, as you were just saying, important in this context. Are you making a baseline stipend? Do you have supplemental money coming in from XYZ, other sources? Are you taking out student loans to supplement the income because the rent is so high? Whatever the situation is I’m definitely in favor of being more transparent about it. But I certainly understand the discomfort because this is not, of course, something that exists only inside academia, only in our context, but in our entire society. Employers, even if they can’t actually disallow it, certainly discourage employees from sharing their salaries with one another. It’s really an entire society wide situation, so it’s really commendable for you and also for your peers that you are doing more to throw back the curtain and say this is what it is and we want more and using it as like a bargaining tool. It’s really awesome.

24:49 Sam: Yeah, absolutely. And especially, I think now that we’re having more conversations about minority students and getting a leg up for a lot of people who are underprivileged, it helps to know where the line is and what they should be meeting equally. I work a lot with Congress and there are so many debates about congressional staffers, because staffers are woefully underpaid, but there’s no transparency as much. There is some in documentation about knowing people’s worth in that context. So I’ve just been around these discussions and I feel like the more that we can pull back the curtain, the more we can level up people, especially people who are underprivileged in the beginning and even that playing field.

Advice for Other Early Career PhDs

25:22 Emily: Yeah. Thank you so much and thank you for your willingness to come on the podcast and talk about this because it’s a bit of an uncomfortable process. As we wrap up the interview, the question that I like to ask all of my guests is what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on in this interview, or it could be something completely different.

35:43 Sam: Yeah, absolutely. Going along with the theme here, apply to everything, even if you think you have enough, because you’re often worth way more than you think that you are, things cost more than you think they’re going to be in the beginning. That’s always something that happens too. So I think that’s really, really important and always being smart with your money. I’m personally a big fan of the FIRE method. I barely eat out. My activates that I love are cheap, so I’m just naturally in that mindset of being more financially savvy than I think a lot of people want to be, but that’s okay, and that’s my position. Not everyone needs that. But I think the more that people understand to apply and to really say “I could have more and I can really utilize this to my own advantage.” Take advantage of it. There’s so many grants out there that barely anyone applies to and those micro grants really can add up. Just applying for anything that you possibly can, I think is really important. And I know sometimes you get tired, especially towards the end of your PhD, like I am now, but it definitely makes a huge effect in the long run, especially you want to talk about compound interest and investments and things like that. Absolutely doing those as much as possible in the beginning.

26:49 Emily: Yeah. Thank you so much for that advice. And I totally agree with that. I want to emphasize two components of that. One is, like you were just mentioning, kind of the only way you can get a raise as a graduate student is to win outside funding. And whether that is outside funding that replaces your stipend at a higher level or supplements a stipend that you’re receiving, maybe like you mentioned earlier, taking on extra teaching work could be another way to do that. But the fellowship and grant applications are really the way to do it without actually adding more work to your life, so it’s kind of the equivalent of getting raised rather than just taking on more hours of work. A lot of paths to higher income are barred for graduate students, but this is one that is available.

27:30 Emily: The second thing that I wanted to emphasize is, you mentioned earlier that your advisors don’t have funding for you, so this was completely your responsibility. I think that’s part of this mindset of you know that you have to provide for yourself, but I just want to emphasize for people who do have funding to fall back on as a research assistant or teaching assistant, whatever it is for their advisors or their departments, the word guarantee might be in there, but what does it actually mean? And the word guarantee you might not be in there and what does that mean? I had a friend for example who had the NSF GRFP and that finished and she still needed another year or something. And because of a situation going on with her advisor not providing funding as he had in the past, she was left unfunded for a year. That was not something she ever anticipated. That was not supposed to happen in the way the funding typically went in this department, but it did happen. She had to negotiate and say, “you know what, I brought in the GRFP, you can give me another year. I brought in three years of funding.” But that wasn’t necessarily guaranteed to work.

28:37 Emily: In a sense, in academia you’re a little bit like an entrepreneur. You have to hustle for your own money. Yes, you’re supposed to be paid by someone, but how secure is that really? It feels to me a little bit more secure to be applying for lots of different things, have a lot of irons in the fire. And if those don’t work out, at least you can say to your department or to your advisor, “I have applied for four grants in the last year. Hey, they didn’t work out, can you give me some bridge funding?” There’s a way to argue about that too. I think there’s a lot of merits and a lot of different directions for applying for as much as you possibly can. I’m really glad you came back around to that position after having these conversations with your advisor and so forth.

29:19 Sam: Yeah, absolutely. And I love what you said about thinking about it as a raise. Especially as you’re getting more and more in your PhD, you are more valuable, but your finances stay exactly the same. I love the idea of thinking about applying as a way to show that your worth increases over time. Thanks for sharing that too. Yeah.

29:35 Emily: Well, thank you so much for joining me today for this interview, Sam, this was really enlightening.

29:39 Sam: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much!

Listener Q&A: Investing

Question

29:42 Emily: Now onto another one of our new segments, the listener question and answer. Today’s question actually comes from a survey I sent out in advance of one of my university webinars this past fall, so it is anonymous. Please note that nothing I say in the segment or anywhere else on the podcast is investing advice.

Answer

30:00 Emily: Here’s the question: How do I invest? I don’t have time to monitor the stock market constantly, but I would like to have at least a small amount of money invested.

30:10 Emily: What a wonderful question and I am so on board with the sentiment here. I also do not have time to monitor the stock market constantly. Who does? Honestly, I feel like people who do have the time and inclination to constantly monitor the stock market should just make that their full-time job, like go become a fund manager and get paid millions of dollars to do so instead of just doing it for your own paltry assets.

30:33 Emily: The good news is that spending that kind of time on investing is absolutely not necessary. In fact, in 99+% the cases it’s actually counter-productive to do. Let me introduce a term to you: passive investing, also known as index investing. Passive investing is the most effective least expensive and most time efficient manner of investing.

31:00 Emily: The real quick gist of passive investing is that you buy one or a small number of index funds and you hold those funds in your portfolio long-term in a percent-wise allocation that you have determined in advance. Index funds themselves are collections of, we’ll stick with the stock market, collections of stocks that reflect a broad market sector. So in these funds, the fund manager is not trying to pick the winners and dump the losers. They’re just trying to buy either everything or a representative selection of everything available in that market sector. My go-to example is always the S&P 500 index. When you listen to the stock market news of the day, you’re going to hear how the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ and the Dow Jones did. So those are three indices that represent how the market overall is doing. The S&P 500 has a really clear definition. It’s simply the 500 largest companies that are traded on the US stock exchanges. So if you were to purchase an S&P 500 index fund, you would be a part owner, a very small part owner,of all 500 of those companies. So that represents the market sector of large cap companies, the largest companies. So basically the learning and the research that you need to do is to understand what passive investing is, what index funds are and which index funds you want to purchase and in what allocation. This might take you a few hours of upfront investment of your time, but it’s not something that you need to put time into on a continual basis. Once you’ve decided on your strategy, you basically just let it ride. Another really easy set it and forget it way of accomplishing this is to use what’s called a target date retirement fund, which is in itself a collection of index funds in a percent-wise allocation like I described earlier.

32:53 Emily: So where to go next for resources. I actually have a set of webinars inside the Personal Finance for PhDs Community explaining what passive investing is, what index funds and exchange traded funds are, how to choose them, which brokerage firm to use for your investments, whether you use an Roth or a traditional IRA, all these kinds of questions. So if you would like to view that webinars series, simply join the Personal Finance for PhDs community at pfforphds.community. And that webinars series will be immediately visible to you. I also have inside the community, a challenge that I ran a few months back on opening your first IRA. So you might be interested in following the steps of that challenge, which point to certain webinars to watch in a certain sequence and other steps to take. That might be relevant for you. Or you could do something like read a book such as the Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins.

33:46 Emily: Now, another element to this question is that you mentioned you want to have a small amount of money invested. You might be tempted to use. What’s called a micro investing platform. Those are brokerages that specialize in helping people with zero capital upfront get started with investing. Some names you may have heard are Acorns, Robinhood, M1, these kinds of platforms. I want you to be really careful when you’re choosing the platform to go with. Ideally, you would only pay the fee associated with the ETF itself that you end up buying. You wouldn’t be paying fees on top of that. For example, some of these platforms charge like $1 per month to be invested with them. I want you to avoid a platform that charges, that kind of fee. Because when you are investing only a small amount of money, a fee of $1 per month actually takes a big, big bite out of that money. So if you go with a micro investing platform, make sure it’s one that doesn’t charge any fees on top of the underlying ETF fees.

34:46 Emily: You also should check whether the platform offers IRAs, individual retirement arrangements. It might not seem important when you’re just starting out with investing, but retirement investing should probably be your top investing goal when you’re starting out, because it is such a large need, even though it’s a long time away. For example, Robinhood fit some of the criteria I mentioned earlier — they don’t charge you fees on trades, you can buy ETFs through that platform, but they don’t offer IRAs, at least as of the time of this recording. It’s very worthwhile to check out what are called the online discount brokerage firms, like Vanguard, Fidelity, and Charles Schwab. Those are kind of my go tos for being able to avoid higher fees that might be charged by other companies. However, the issue is that sometimes they have minimum amounts that you need to invest to get started, like maybe a thousand dollars, which of course is not at all a that you would have that much money. So in my mind, those are the places to get to, eventually maybe when you’re starting out or maybe later on. But if you need to start out in a micro investing platform or a robo-advisor at the beginning, that’s perfectly fine.

35:51 Emily: I think once you really understand the concept of passive investing and how simple it is, how easy in a sense it is to build up wealth over the decades, you’re going to want to have more than a small amount of money invested. You’re going to be really motivated to increase that savings rate and a discount brokerage firm is a great place to be when you’re saving a hundred dollars a month or more, or have a thousand dollars in your account already. Personally, when I first opened my IRA and started investing, I went with Fidelity because at that time they allowed me to open an account with no money up front, as long as I set up a recurring savings rate of at least $50 per month. So I did that for a little bit over a year until I had $3,000 in my IRA. And then I transferred my account over to Vanguard. They had a $3,000 minimum at that time, and I’ve been with Vanguard ever since. So I hope that is a start to answer your question and that you have a place to go for our further resources, either with me or other people who talk about this. And I really want to encourage you at the start of this investing journey, so I do hope you’ll take that next step. If you would like to submit a question to be answered in a future episode, please go to pfforphds.com/podcast and follow the instructions you find there. I love answering questions, so please submit yours listeners.

Outtro

37:10 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPhDs.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. On that page are links to all the episodes show notes, which include full transcripts and videos of the interviews. There is also a form to volunteer to be interviewed on the podcast and instructions for entering the book giveaway contest, and submitting a question for the Q&A segment. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. If you leave a review, be sure to send it to me. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email list serve, or as a link from your website. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt, repayment and taxes. Four, subscribe to my mailing list at pfforphds.com/subscribe through that list. You’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode! And remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. Music is Stages of Awakening by Poddington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC podcast, editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

How to Set Yourself Up for a Successful Career and Financial Life Post-PhD

December 7, 2020 by Meryem Ok Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Jennifer Polk, a career coach specializing in PhDs whose brand is From PhD to Life. Emily and Jen explore the damage that graduate school and academia often does to PhDs’ financial lives, in terms of both dollars and money mindset. They answer the question, “What can a graduate student or PhD do to mitigate academia’s financial damage?” from both a financial and career perspective, starting in grad school and extending several years post-PhD. Jen concludes the interview with an incredible insight that can only be gained with years of distance from the PhD.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

  • PF for PhDs: Community
  • PF for PhDs: Chart Your Course to Financial Success
  • PF for PhDs: The Wealthy PhD
  • PF for PhDs: Subscribe
  • Jen Polk: From PhD to Life
  • Tweet Mentioned by Jen Polk
  • Self-Employed PhD
  • PF for PhDs Interview with Scott Kennedy
  • PF for PhDs: Podcast Hub
post-PhD career and finances

Teaser

00:01 Jen: Woo boy, I think the two-word answer is compound interest. The more that you can put away, even very, very, very small amounts earlier on, make such a huge disproportionate difference over the long term.

Introduction

00:23 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season seven, episode 14, and today my guest is Dr. Jennifer Polk, a career coach specializing in PhDs, whose brand is From PhD to Life. Jen and I explore the damage that graduate school and academia often do to PhDs’ financial lives, in terms of both dollars and money mindset. We answer the question, “what can a graduate student or PhD do to mitigate academia’s financial damage?” from both a financial and career perspective, starting in graduate school and extending several years post-PhD. Jen concludes the interview with an incredible insight that can only be gained with years of distance from the PhD. If this episode, and that final insight in particular, get your wheels spinning about what you should be doing right now in your finances, there are several ways you can work with me in the upcoming months to level up your financial life.

01:29 Emily: The Personal Finance for PhDs Community is always open to new members. That’s where you can find my courses on financial goal setting, budgeting, investing, et cetera, plus monthly challenges to participate in a book club and lots of opportunities to ask me questions and engage in discussion with other like-minded graduate students and PhDs. You can find out more at pfforphds.community.

I’m facilitating my brand new half-day workshop, Chart Your Course to Financial Success, twice in the next couple of months. Spend four hours with me and a small group of peers, and you’ll come away with clarity on what your current financial goal should be and how to achieve it, plus super actionable ideas for increasing your income and decreasing your expenses. On December 12, 2020, I’m facilitating the workshop exclusively for funded graduate students. And on January 10th, 2021, it’s exclusively for PhDs. You can find out more at pfforphds.com/chart.

02:34 Emily: Finally, Mark your calendars for the next round of The Wealthy PhD. My two-month group-coaching program that provides guidance and, most importantly, accountability to help you achieve a significant financial goal and set you up for future financial success. Enrollment will open in early January, 2021. You can find out more at pfforphds.com/wealthyPhD.

I’m so pleased to be able to offer you all these different avenues of support going into the new year. I hope you will identify one that fits you the best and sign up.

If you’re not quite sure about diving into working with me, please join my mailing list at pfforphds.com/subscribe. Every Friday, I’ll send you an email detailing, a personal finance concept, an actionable strategy, or an inspirational story. You will receive an incredible amount of value, absolutely for free, through the list.

Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Jen Polk.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:28 Emily: I’m delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Jen Polk. You probably know her brand From PhD to Life. She is a career coach specializing in PhDs. So, she has a lot to say to us around this topic. And we’re actually going to be talking about money mindset today and specifically how it affects, you know, your finances, but also your career journey as you’re moving through and beyond the PhD. So, Jen, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast day. It’s wonderful to have you.

03:56 Jen: Yeah. Thank you, Emily. It’s my pleasure. I’m nervous. I’m excited.

04:01 Emily: It’ll be fun. So, please tell the audience just a little bit more about yourself.

04:05 Jen: Sure. So Jen, as Emily says, I work with PhDs figuring out what to do next in their careers and my business is From PhD to Life. That’s fromphdtolife.com. And I’m self-employed and I live in Toronto.

What Academic Culture Teaches Us About Money

04:22 Emily: What does academic culture–in your experience, and also what you’ve observed from your clients–what does academic culture teach us or tell us about money?

04:32 Jen: Yes. Yes. Big question. So, my own personal background is from the humanities, a history PhD. And I think that academia emphasizes, at least my corner of academia, to use that phrase, thinks of money as a bad thing, as kind of a necessary evil. And extremes to which we might take that view do exist out in the wild. There are people out there who will, they can’t possibly live this way every day of their lives, but they will literally say things to me that anybody who has more money is morally inferior or that it is unethical to have, you know, more money than one needs, et cetera. And I think that, yes, one can find that view in academia.

05:29 Emily: Is that defined as more money than they have? Is that the dividing line?

05:34 Jen: Probably, probably, probably. But yeah, I think that thinking about money, talking about money makes you somehow less of a scholar, less of an intellectual. Of course, as we know, the truth is that you can’t actually do scholarly work over the long-term if you are constantly worried about money. It’s difficult. But yeah, there’s definitely a sense that if you’re the person–and I think this is also tied in with aesthetics–if you show up in your humanities department wearing flashy suits and red lipstick and earrings you will be deemed less serious as a scholar, as an intellectual. I think that is related to money mindset as well. It’s really gross. It’s really gross. And yet, of course, you need money.

06:33 Emily: Yeah. I mean, you just said that, of course over the long term, you, you have to have money or else you’re going to have a constant, you know, really it’s a fog in your brain. When you’re constantly stressed about money, when you experience scarcity, and this has been studied, you know, through research, that you literally don’t cognitively function as well as you could, if you did not have that stress in your life. So it’s really actually perplexing to me that we do this. We–academia–does this to graduate students, especially, but also postdocs and also, you know, adjuncts and other faculty members to a degree. Why are we doing this to our youngest, most vulnerable developing scholars? I mean, I know you can’t answer that question, but it’s really perplexing to me that, you know, the system chooses to put this kind of stress on people, and then moralizes it, as you were just saying, says, “Oh, this has been official to you that you don’t have the distractions of money and flashiness and opulence and so forth in your life.” When really what it is is, “No you’re stressing us out, so we can’t even think properly.” And that’s, it’s horrifying, really.

07:37 Jen: Academia is perplexing. I think that’s a good short way of putting it. There’s a lot of work to be done to kind of recognize the truth of one’s situation and think about what you actually do value that is different from what academia implies that you should value.

Money Mindsets in Academia

07:57 Emily: Yeah, I will say from my, you know, my corner of academia and engineering, I did not get the message that money is evil or money is to be shunned. Certainly, we were still under, you know, some money stress depending on how well-funded you are. But definitely from the advisor or the faculty level, we weren’t getting that kind of message. And yet, there were still money mindsets that academia tells even to students in disciplines like that, like all your best time and energy has to be spent on research. Like, you know, you’re not allowed to do XYZ other things in your personal life or earning money on the side. Even if it is not explicitly disallowed, it is certainly frowned upon, because again, you should be spending all your best energy on your research. Things like that. And I think another really sort of damaging thing that happens that probably speaks a little bit more to your experience as a career coach, is that people become anchored at the graduate student salary that they are earning during those years. And so how do they judge what they’re worth in the marketplace after they exit academia when their skills can and should be valued much differently? But how do they, you know, transform their own understanding of the value that they bring? Maybe we can talk more about that.

09:14 Jen: And I also see from scientists that, of course it varies and everyone’s experience is unique, but a lot of worry about getting a quote unquote industry job is morally inferior. And I think part of that is that those jobs pay better than academia. And I think people not only would you make more money, but potentially, I mean, depending, you would have a better life and a better career. Because there’s just lots more variety out there. And there’s a lot more better places that one could be for a lot of people. But I do think that money is part of it as a signal of virtue. Does that make sense, Emily?

09:56 Emily: Yes, I definitely hear what you’re saying. I actually would add onto that. It’s possible that you can have more of an impact on the world in industry than you could in academia, potentially, depending on your field. So, there’s that too. Is your scholarship actually getting out there?

10:11 Jen: Yeah. More money, more impact.

Financially Damaging Money Mindsets

10:14 Emily: We’ve talked about how these money mindsets are not true, damaging in some ways. How is this financially damaging?

10:25 Jen: Whoo boy, the two-word answer is compound interest. The more that you can put away, even very, very, very small amounts, earlier on makes such a huge disproportionate difference over the long-term. There is such a potentially, I mean, again, it really varies, but there is a real opportunity cost to spending time in academia, as a graduate student who is not earning, you know, a whole lot of money. And then, you know, if you do post-docs and then in a lot of disciplines, even a tenure-track professorship, is not going to pay you really enough to live in a lot of cases. And that, you know, life isn’t about comparing oneself to others, but it does put you behind, to use that framing, other people with similar types of education in terms of your financial resources. And of course, if you have debt.

11:20 Emily: I couldn’t agree more. I mean, you know, sometimes I think about there’s been, I don’t know, I think I’ve seen studies from time to time on, “Oh, a PhD is worthwhile like salary-wise because yes, you take this income hit early on, but then later you could make, you know, much more than you would with just a bachelor’s or whatever.” But I really wonder, and I have not done the math on this. I really wonder, well, you’re disagreeing with even that assertion because I’m sure it is very individual, entirely. But even taking that as a given, if you then factor in the opportunity costs for compound interest of paying off your debt, starting to invest for the long-term for retirement, it becomes very dubious.

11:58 Jen: Well, that’s just it. That’s just it. Exactly what you say. Like, even if the salary itself is higher, you’re starting so much later than other people. Like Emily, you and I are both in North America, U.S./Canada context. PhDs take a while. You know, on average, somebody is 30, more than 30, almost 30, right, when they finish, with limited prior work experience. And yeah, it’s not just about annual salary. I’ve seen those studies where everybody’s like, “Look how much more money PhDs make” than people with other degrees. And yes, that is an average. And, you know, it varies a lot. A lot. Not only between disciplines, it does vary a lot between disciplines, but within disciplines, it varies a lot, over gender and race and immigration status, et cetera, subfield. And whether you’re in an academic career track or not, right?

12:54 Jen: There’s a lot of variety there. But yeah, it’s not just about your salary number. It’s not just about that. Yeah. It’s about all of the other things you said. You know, if you’re 10 years later entering the housing market, you might not enter the housing market, et cetera. Anyways, I don’t mean to bemoan and lament, but I do think that it is a message that if anybody listening is considering a PhD or in a PhD program earlier on and doubting whether they should continue, please take this seriously and know that I respect any and all decisions to not apply, not enroll and potentially, you know, if it’s right for you, to not continue in a PhD, because it really might not be the right thing for you for lots of reasons, including financial ones.

Working on the Post-PhD Money Mindset

13:40 Emily: Yes. I would actually love to expand on that. So, we were just saying, okay, to people who have not yet applied for graduate school or are early on in your graduate school journey, take seriously any doubts you may be having and explore other career possibilities for you. For my part, I’m a little less don’t do the PhD, but I’m more on like, why don’t you get some work experience and see what’s out there for you and be able to judge the PhD more, not from, okay, I just got out of undergrad and this is what I want to do, but judge it in a little bit of a more informed context? So let’s say someone is on that path and they’re firm about finishing the PhD, but they’re still early on or, you know, midway through. What can that person be doing to be, you know, both working on their mindset, setting themselves up for financial and career success, following the PhD, what can they do at that stage?

14:31 Jen: I think that, you know, and this comes from my own work, you know, day-to-day career coaching PhDs. I think it is never too early, never too early to think about your career because there is, and I don’t, I think this surprises people, there is so much work that you can do that you really ought to do, but you know, that you can do before you ever apply for a job. And part of that is about money and how much you really need and how much, you know, you 10 years from now is going to want. But I would really, the quicker that you can get into a job and the quicker that you can get into a job and a career that is one that you like, and you can really excel in and you know, it doesn’t sort of match up that you would excel in a career and you make money, but a little bit, right, the quicker you can make that happen for yourself after you graduate, the better.

15:28 Jen: So, do all of the work that you can when you’re still a student. And I just mean the self-assessment, the reflection, like what you were talking about, Emily. Identifying the right, you mentioned identifying the careers that you are interested in going into, right? Like do all of the work ahead of time to identify those, and then start building your network, and, and draw on your network to learn more about those career paths, to get really specific about the types of work that you could do. To have a kind of a draft resume in place for various different kinds of roles that you might apply for. Again, long before you ever get to the point of application. So that six months, four months before graduation, before you’re kind of ready to work, you can hit the ground running.

16:13 Emily: You mentioned like doing self-assessments and so forth. I did a lot of that stuff and it was provided by the career center at my university. I wouldn’t say I showed up at every event, but I was definitely like a regular frequent flyer at, you know, what they had going on. And I was able to do like, yeah, some of the various self-assessments and that was wonderful.

Career Exploration: Know Thyself

16:30 Emily: So, there’s resources that may be available to graduate students through their career centers. There’s your website of course, From PhD to life. Do you know, would you recommend any other resources outside of the university context, for people to help in this like career exploration phase?

16:46 Jen: Yeah. I think at this point, anything can be useful. And so, you know, I think it can sound really simple, simplistic but even just sitting down and making a list of the things that you actually truly value and that are really important to you, that there’s real power in that. Taking a few minutes and just doing a brain dump, like, okay, what do I actually value in having, and write it down. Make a visual of it and make a graphic that you stick on your computer desktop. I mean, whatever it is so that you can keep reminding yourself when academic culture is swirling around you, which can be, I’m exaggerating, but it can be a bit of a totalizing culture and impose values and priorities on you that, you know, can kind of make things messy, just to remind yourself of what you truly value.

17:42 Jen: When I say anything can be useful at this point, I mean, sure do the Myers-Briggs. Scientifically dubious, doesn’t matter, because point is to give you new language, like literal words, and new perspectives, different perspectives on the types of skills and strengths that you have. So, any kind of like skill assessment, strengths test, value survey, anything like that, you can find online. Any of those that can be really kind of interesting to get you thinking about yourself in a different way. And then make your own lists. Some people like spreadsheets. And take advantage of any and all assessments that, yeah, you get from your career center on campus if that’s available to you. This process, I’m talking about it like it’s a mess, and that’s because it is a mess. So, it’s fine. And the other thing I would say is that this is not a process of identifying your one true right job.

Do Not Get Stuck on the “Dream Job”

18:42 Jen: Your dream job. No, no. Wipe that from your mind. That’s not a thing. A lot of jobs out there are broadly similar. And you, whatever your PhD discipline, whatever your background, you can do a lot of them. So they’re broadly similar and you can do a lot of them. And so what becomes important is not that particular job title, but more where in the world do you want to live? What kind of lifestyle do you want to have? What the vibe of the office that you want to be in? What kinds of like actual work do you want to do every day? Who do you want to hang out with? What kind of impact do you want to make? So all of those kinds of questions that, like job title is not even that relevant. At a certain point, you’re going to try and identify some so that you can find jobs to apply to. And so that your network can help you out by making suggestions. But yeah, it’s a mess. Embrace the mess and know yourself.

19:37 Emily: At that stage. Because you can be really open to a lot of different things, like you were saying. We’re not at all trying to like narrow things down, right? It’s about sort of broadening. So, I’m also thinking about, for an early-stage graduate student, mid-stage graduate student, how to mitigate this financial damage that we were talking about. And so very briefly, I just want to say, as you said earlier, compound interest. So if you are at a stage in your finances, when you’re able to save, get an emergency fund together, but after that start tackling your debt, start investing if that’s where you are. And I of course talk about that many, many other interviews and so forth. So people can find a lot more resources. But as you said earlier, the early you get started, small amounts of money, perfectly fine. It’s still going to make a difference.

The Value of Outside Work Experiences

20:18 Emily: So don’t dismiss just because you’re a graduate student, “Oh, I can only save 50 bucks a month or I can only save a hundred bucks a month.” That’s amazing. That would be a lot of money if you actually got that invested. So don’t dismiss that while you’re, you know, doing all this other career stuff. I also want to bring up outside work experience. You know, you mentioned earlier, like, you know, think about your network and so forth, and you can do that without working. You can expand your network. But you know, for some PhD students, it is possible to do internships or to have some kind of side hustle, that’s going to ultimately help you in your later job. Can you speak to that a little bit?

20:53 Jen: Yeah. And I take your point, Emily, that you said for some they can have, because yes, acknowledgement that, you know, it does depend on visa status and the contract, et cetera, et cetera. But, so in response to a Tweet I sent earlier this morning, somebody, I think she’s a humanities PhD student, said that in her program, when she was doing her PhD, she was reflecting on one of her colleagues had this like prestigious grant. So she didn’t have to have a job on campus to pay the rent. Because she had the prestigious grant. And the person who wrote the tweet was saying, you know, I didn’t have that, but instead I worked outside of academia and that, you know, the implication here being that, that gave me the same amount of money. And the vibe she got, not only the vibe, the actual literal the message she got from her professors in the department was that the fellowship was of greater value.

21:46 Jen: Even though from our perspective now, as people out in the world, you know, working jobs, we know that actually in some ways having actual work experience is more valuable. And that is really, really, really important and can’t be undervalued. This is not, you know, to ask students to do more and more and more work. But just to say that when you are making decisions about what to do in your kind of free time, quote unquote, you know, where you have a choice about whether to do this and this and this, just to pause and say, “Well, the, the thing that I think that I should do is adjunct one more course.” Well, hold up, just think to yourself, what is the value of adjuncting a course versus stepping up your side hustle or getting a job outside campus, even just in retail? I mean, it’s not obvious from where I sit that adjuncting a course is the right move. Whereas that can be like just a totally obvious thing according to academics, but no no no. I mean, it really depends. So, I would, you know, use your critical thinking skills and question the things that seem obvious to you.

Commercial

23:00 Emily: Emily here, for a brief interlude. You are invited to my brand new half-day workshop, Chart Your Course to Financial Success. The central question this workshop will help you answer is what should my singular financial goal be right now and how should I best pursue it? I’ll teach you my eight-step financial framework that explains when you should save versus pay off debt versus invest. And we’ll explore many, many strategies to increase your income and or decrease your expenses. I will facilitate the workshop exclusively for funded graduate students on Saturday, December 12th, 2020, and exclusively for PhDs on Sunday, January 10th, 2021. You can learn more and sign up at pfforphds.com/chart. That’s P F F O R P H D s.com/ C H A R T. The deadline to register for the December 12th workshop is Wednesday, December 9th. So, don’t delay. There are discounts currently available for both workshops and registration is limited. Now, back to the interview.

Pay Attention to Your Base Salary

24:10 Emily: Let’s now talk about someone who’s finishing up about to finish up the PhD, and maybe about to finish up a postdoc, if that’s the choice that you made following the PhD. And you want to get a real job and it’s not going to be in academia. So, what can a person who’s reached that stage do, again, to mitigate the damage that the mindsets and the financial damage that academia has caused?

24:31 Jen: It’s really tricky this because you know, some people ask, how do I know when to take this job now, or to take the risk of turning it down in hopes that I would get a higher offer six months from now? So, you know, I think it’s not obvious what the answer is and it will highly depend on the individual person. But one thing for sure to think about is, when you’re ready to accept and negotiate a job offer, right? Accept and negotiate, right?

25:02 Jen: Both of those together. That your base salary is a really important consideration. It’s not the only thing up for negotiation. It’s not the only thing to discuss. But that a one time payout, like a bonus, like a signing bonus of five grand, for example, that seems great in the moment and sure you could invest that, but over the long-term, it’s probably better for you to have like $500 extra on your base salary, something like that. I mean, I can’t do the math immediately, but I think tending to base salary is really important.

Do Not Underestimate the Value of Your Network

25:37 Emily: To pick up where we left off with the career exploration, exploration of yourself. Now this person is ready to narrow things down and apply for some jobs. So, what do they do at that stage?

25:53 Jen: Yeah. So, I think don’t underestimate the value of your network. And before people are like, “Hold up, Jen, I don’t have a network.” No, you have a network, you have a network and you know people, and the people that know you also know other people. And, it can depend, but your academic network, don’t discount them. Even if you’re applying for non-academic jobs. Again, it can depend. But, I mean, I have a client now who is a research associate, a post-doc, and he was nervous about talking to his PI about the fact that he’s, you know, he’s on the job market. And he had the conversation and the PI was very supportive. And then the PI sent a few emails. My client got some interviews literally the next week and, you know, might have a job offer like within like a month. And so don’t discount the value that your network can come through for you.

26:54 Jen: And I know in my work with PhDs, with my own clients, but also all of the research that I’ve done over the years that you talking with people, and that’s all I mean when I say you should network, is you should interact actively with people in your field, with other professionals, quote, unquote. Just actively interact with people, that pays off enormously. And if you don’t do that, it’s going to be so, so, so, so, so much harder. At this stage, unless you have really particular technical skills, and I would wager that a huge number of PhDs don’t–and that’s not a criticism, that’s not a criticism–but if you don’t have these like really narrow, really specific, really rare technical skills, and you’re not at the right place at the right time, then you really have to use your network.

People Can Connect Us to New Opportunities

27:48 Jen: And that’s all of us. Not only so that potentially you could get referred to a job, you could be an inside hire as it were. Right? That’s great. But it’s not only that. It’s so that you can learn what’s out there. It’s so that you have people on your team to send you job ads. I applied for a job in September, and I wouldn’t have seen it except that somebody that I know and have known over the years. I’m not frequently in contact with her, but she kind of knows about me in general. She sent me the job ad as soon as she saw it posted. And I was like, “Oh my goodness.” And what happened is I had a number of other people send me the job ad subsequently.

28:26 Emily: Your branding is so clear that many people could identify what is a perfect job for you.

28:31 Jen: Exactly, exactly. Right. Exactly.

28:34 Emily: I actually have another story to add to that pile, which is how my husband got his job in industry. And so this is more about the value of networking with people from your own program who have moved on in the years prior to you. Because it’s not just the faculty who have networks. It’s anybody who’s exited academia. Even an undergraduate that you worked with who is now in the workforce can be a contact in your network. So my husband, some person who had graduated from his program a couple years earlier, sent a job listing for his, you know, at the time current company to my husband’s PI and said, I know that your lab lines up very well with what we do here. Could you show this to your students who are graduating? And that happened, and my husband got that position. So that was like just, yep. Clearly networking. Because of course it was on the strength of his PIs reputation. This individual didn’t know my husband in particular. But yeah, that’s exactly how it happened and it was quick and easy.

29:31 Jen: Yeah. And that’s what you want. Right? I mean, life doesn’t always work out that way, but quick and easy means that there was years of work that went into that ahead of time, but it doesn’t have to difficult. It’s all, I mean, it’s just about making friends, having good conversations and doing work that you find interesting and that you find engaging. And if you do that over the years and you are in conversation with people about that, hopefully kind of stars align at a certain point and it seems easy.

Always Try to Negotiate Your Starting Offer

30:03 Emily: Yes, exactly great point. So, okay. Our candidate has, you know, done the job searching, done the self-reflection, applying for jobs. You mentioned a moment ago, negotiating base salary as incredibly important. And so this to me also is one, probably your biggest opportunity, to mitigate financial damage that’s occurred during your PhD, is to get that first starting offer as high as you reasonably can within the scope of the field and your skills and so forth. But to negotiate that offer, because I think some PhDs might be kind of bowled over by, “Oh my goodness. You’re offering me how much money?” And again, they’re anchored to their graduate student salary. And so, might just feel so grateful, yeah, and I get that, that they don’t negotiate. But really it’s expected. It’s absolutely expected in industry and it’s probably going to be pretty well-received.

30:54 Emily: Even if the answer is, no, this is a union job and you can’t negotiate, that might be the answer, but you’re not going to be faulted for trying. Right? So, definitely at least attempt that negotiation, because as you said, having a slightly higher base salary, that’s going to affect for sure, whatever salaries you have, as long as you stay at that company. And may even beyond that, if you know, employers shouldn’t, but are allowed to, at least in the U.S. In many cases ask about prior salaries, it depends on what state you’re in. So it’s possible that it could even affect once you leave that, you know, that particular employer, could still follow you. So getting that starting salary as high as you can is a great idea. Even if it seems really scary and daunting to you in terms of the number.

31:38 Jen: Yeah. And I would recognize, you know, everything in life is a risk. Sure. Of course. But once an employer has made an offer to you, they are imagining you solving their problem and hanging out with them every day. And that gives you some power here. As I say, there’s a risk, but I would, you know, own the power that you have in that situation to make a strong case for yourself. You have to make the case. But you want to be successful in that position long-term to help the team grow, et cetera, et cetera. And so, you’re going to show up for them and they should show up for you in terms of base salary.

Good Employers Make their Employees Feel Valued

32:22 Emily: Yeah. And I think it actually goes back to what we talked about earlier that academia, for whatever reason, decides to put this financial stress on its trainees. Your employer probably does not want you to be under that kind of financial stress. They want to pay you enough to reflect the value, to make you feel like you’re valued. That you’re not going jump ship and go to someone else. That you’re going to be able to live in the city that they’re in, you know, comfortably without having to move an hour away for your commute. All of that stuff affects your performance at work. And so it can all come into play when you think about what is the salary that I want to have to perform well in this position? That’s really your opportunity to express that.

32:57 Jen: To a certain extent, there’s some recalibration that might need to happen for folks coming out of academia, where things can be such a struggle, and you can have this impression that any employer is kind of out to get you, out to screw you over. Depending on the experience that you have in academia and the experience of your colleagues and friends around you. But yeah, as Emily said, I mean, any employer that you would really want to work for, they recognize the crucial importance of their labor, of the people doing the work. I mean, this is so, so, so important, and employers, good employers, employers that you want to work for. And there’s lots of them out there. They’re not going to pay you outrageous sums of money potentially, but they want you to be able to have the lifestyle and do the work and be happy and get what you need to be on their team, solving their problems. So, I would assume, assume that they want to pay you equitably right. Fairly and adequately. And, you know, maybe a little more than that. I would assume that, and go forth.

34:04 Jen: Yeah, I am glad you put in the caveat of a good employer, because certainly there are ones that–maybe not employers broadly, but maybe a manager, someone who views this more as a competitive thing, like I’m going to pay you less because I have that better from my bottom line. But it really should be viewed more so as, “We want you to do a great job, and we’re going to compensate you well to do that great job.” And certainly if you get into a salary negotiation process with an employer and you’re getting a vibe that they don’t really seem like they want to support you, then that’s your red flag. And that’s the time to go back to the exploring you’ve done and go back and look at other, you know, positions that you might have, and so forth.

Avoiding Lifestyle Inflation and Unhealthy Mindsets

34:40 Emily: Okay. So, let’s then talk about, you’ve got the job, maybe you’re a few months, a few years into that point. What should you still be doing to again be mitigating the mindset and the literal financial damage that your time in academia has wrought?

34:55 Jen: Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, I think there’s lots of things that one could say here, but something that comes to mind for me is a phrase that I’m sure, you know, people that grew up in this part of the world have heard, penny-wise and pound-foolish, right? And to a certain extent, you know, when you’re in academia, there are a lot of things that you don’t pay outright for, of course you do pay for them through tuition, et cetera. But it doesn’t occur to you. So there might be things that you yourself would want to invest in, to use that term. And I use that term kind of in a broader sense that will help you over the long term. Ideally, your employer pays for professional development and pays for coaching and whatever, pays therapy, right? Ideally you have benefits around that. But it could be, you know, if you don’t, or if you’re unemployed at the moment, that it can be really valuable to invest in those kinds of services for a relatively short amount of time, because the investment as a metaphor is the right one, because there will be a longer-term payoff.

36:01 Jen: And if you can get your career started kind of on a good footing, great. Right? It’s just so helpful. It’s so helpful. And I would sit down with a money advisor, financial advisor, or whatever the term is, you know, somebody who can kind of tell you things, even if it’s your mom, right? Because if you can get into the lifestyle kind of early on of making good decisions around money, but also, you know, making decisions about you suddenly have more money, hopefully maybe you can set money aside for vacation. You know, that’s a good thing too, et cetera.

36:43 Emily: I totally agree. And actually, this is a phase that I’ve come to now that I’m, you know, a few years post-PhD and into my career, my business with Personal Finance for PhDs, is this idea of investing in myself was something I was very reluctant to do, right? Because I was being penny wise, pound foolish right when I finished my PhD because I wasn’t making that much money yet. So how can I, you know, decide to invest? But actually, you were one of the first people who I worked with, you know, near the start of my business. And it was a was a small investment, but I joined one of your programs. And it, I mean, I still talk about it and laud it, this was Self-Employed PhD, and how we originally met and what an impact that made on me.

37:23 Emily: And I’ve since then been much more willing to invest in training and professional development for myself. So I would definitely, I mean, obviously my field as an entrepreneur is, is different from what other people were doing, but just be thinking about what are the professionals, if it’s again, not provided, as you said, through your workplace, which sometimes it is, what professionals might I work with that can help further my career further, my financial development? Of course you are one of those professionals. If the question is more on the career front with PhD to Life. I am one of those professionals if the question is more on the, how do I handle my finances? How do I handle my budget? You know, what should I be saving for? What should my life look like? If those are the kinds of questions, then of course, feel free to work with me, but there are also many other types of professionals, depending on the exact needs that you have.

Invest in Your Future

38:06 Emily: And as you said, it is an investment. It takes money to work with a professional in the way that we’re talking about. But ideally, the dividends are going to start coming very, very soon after you begin that relationship. Another sort of financial tip, I’ll definitely say, once you’re into that, you know, your career and you’re making a much better salary than you were as a post-doc or as a graduate student. This is now the time to not super increase your lifestyle. Yes. Hopefully, you will be spending more so that you don’t feel stressed. But to some extent you should keep your lifestyle level on a little bit lower than maybe where you see your new colleagues at because you do need to make up for lost time a little bit, and doing things like starting to invest inside your company’s 401(k), even maxing out that 401(k). So to be going into those tax advantaged, designed for retirement types of accounts to a great degree, I mean, just put money away from your salary. You never see it coming in your paycheck. It’s all payroll deductions. That’s the best way to do things. So it might seem like a large number. Right now, a 401(k) in the U.S. would be $19,500 per year to max that out as an employee.

39:17 Emily: Why not? Why not? If your salary has jumped up by much more than that in this transition, why not go for that? Why not have that be your new anchor in your mind? So think about maxing out that 401(k), or at least contributing a good amount to it. Think about making serious, serious progress on your student loans if you have decided that you’re not going to go for an income-driven repayment plan and forgiveness plan. So all kinds of other questions, but this is the time when you get into that job where you can really, like you were saying earlier, you know, hitting the ground running like you’ve done these years of preparation for your career so that by the time it’s finally time to apply for a job, you’re ready and raring to go. It’s kind of the same thing financially. You’ve been keeping your lifestyle low for such a long time. Now you have the salary, don’t do too much lifestyle inflation and just get saving, get investing, get on that debt.

Think of Your Future Self

40:02 Emily: When we were preparing for this interview, you told me you had a message for people earlier on in their PhD journeys than you are currently. So what is that message?

40:12 Jen: Oh boy, your future self is going to care so much more about money than you do now. You know, if you’re in a PhD program, like I started my PhD at 24, like I was like, “Whoa, $15,000 a year.” This was a while ago now. Great. I can’t believe, you know, we hear this all the time. I can’t believe I’m going to get paid to do a PhD. That’s amazing. Okay. Awesome. Congratulations. But just know that your future self is going to care so much more. I mean, I happily, relatively happily, lived with a roommate for years and years and years, and I now live by myself and I pay a lot more money for that privilege, but I just, I just don’t, I don’t want to go back. Right? And so, of course I need a lot more money than I used to. And that, yeah, your future self is going to thank you i you care about it a little bit more than you might be inclined to when you’re, say, 24.

41:15 Emily: Yeah. And by doing the things that we’ve been talking about, like negotiating, like starting to invest early, even if none of your peers are doing it. Like having a side hustle maybe to bring in a little bit of extra money. I’ll say from my perspective too, like now that I, you know, my husband and I got married during graduate school, so we really, you know, we didn’t need any more money after our marriage than we did before. We were both in graduate school. But after we finished our PhDs, we had a couple babies and you know what, once you get on that train, things get very expensive very quickly. And so that’s not at all to say that you can’t have children earlier. That’s just my personal journey, but I certainly feel like we need to command a much higher salary at this stage in our lives and our family formation than we did years ago when we were, you know, DINKS [dual income, no kids]. So there’s that too, if you want that in your future. Yeah. It’s something to start thinking about now.

42:08 Jen: One of my recent clients, she lives in an expensive part of the U.S. Right? Granted but the lifestyle that she has now, a few years out of her PhD with a couple of kids and, you know, a mortgage and all of the above, she really can’t accept a job that pays her less than $150,000 a year. And right. It’s just the reality. And that might seem outrageous to folks listening now who are living on, $30k or less, maybe much less. Like, just keep that in mind. It’s not, you know, I’m not saying that my client, she’s not greedy. It’s just the reality of the situation. Life can get expensive really quickly.

42:45 Emily: Yeah. And I’ll link actually in the show notes, a wonderful interview I did with Dr. Scott Kennedy a year or two ago where he talks about his own realizations as he formed his family during graduate school, that he was going to have to change his career plans, to go into a different field that was going to pay more because he could not afford, now that he had a family, to stay on the track that he had been on. Even though that was sort of intellectually, maybe his preference from earlier on. So these kinds of things have, you know, your life has real impacts on how much money you need to make. And that’s something to start, you know, being realistic about as early on as possible.

How Can People Work With You, Jen?

43:24 Emily: All right, Jen, how can people work with you, should they, you know, if they’ve been intrigued by this interview?

43:32 Jen: For sure. Yeah. Thanks for asking. So, start on my website fromphdtolife.com. I work with individuals. I do small group things, coaching, open discussions. Those are a lot of fun. Shout out to small group things. I think those are awesome. I do drop-ins for Self-Employed PhDs. So, if that applies to you at all, check those out. And then I also work with institutions. So I’m happy to come to your campus, virtually please, I do a presentation or a workshop. I love workshops. So there’s different options.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

44:07 Emily: Wonderful. And final question that I ask of all my guests. What is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD?

44:15 Jen: So this is a totally “do as I did, and also, as I say,” usually those two things do not go together. But one thing that I have been doing for 20 years, gosh, wow, something like that, is I track every penny. There are no pennies in Canada anymore. I track everything that I spend. So I know how much my life costs. Like I literally know how much my life costs in different categories. And years ago, I used to do this on a, it wasn’t even Excel. I use the WordPerfect version of excel, just a spreadsheet. But now there are lots of programs out there. But I think, you know, tracking what you spend is really, really important. It’s different from budgeting. You can do both together. But the example I like to give is like, I think this is really common for grad students.

45:11 Jen: Like you might spend like a lot of money, like on clothing kind of once or twice a year, not on a monthly basis. So some of the kind of standard ways of thinking about budgeting is sort of like a monthly thing. You go to your big annual conference one month and suddenly you’ve spent $2,000 more than, right? So anyways, but track, and then you can see the trends over time. And by seeing the amount of money that you’re spending in different categories, literally being able to like, see it on a spreadsheet, you can make decisions, better decisions about, you know, how much, how do you really want to spend $200 on takeout every month? Maybe. Yes. Maybe no. Right. But it makes it very clear.

45:55 Emily: I totally totally agree. Foundational personal finance advice. Step number one, track your spending. Track your expenses. Well Jen, this has been such a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your expertise.

46:07 Jen: Thank you.

Outtro

46:09 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. Pfforphds.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, please consider joining my mailing list for my behind-the-scenes commentary about each episode. Register at pfforphds.com/subscribe. See you in the next episode! And remember you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington bear from the free music archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

How to Curb Your Impulse to Keep Up with the Joneses

November 23, 2020 by Meryem Ok Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Joy Lere, a licensed clinical psychologist and behavioral finance consultant on the danger of “keeping up with the Joneses.” Joy explains how emotionally unsatisfying and financially damaging trying to keep up with the Joneses is and that contentment can only come from within yourself. PhDs anticipating future income jumps would do well to put off lifestyle inflation for a least a few years after their salaries increase, which will give them more career and lifestyle choices in the future.

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Links Mentioned in This Episode

  • PF for PhDs Episode with Daniel Crosby
  • Your Money or Your Life (Book)
  • PF for PhDs: Community
  • Joy Lere Website
  • Joy Lere LinkedIn
  • Joy Lere Instagram (@joylerepsyd)
  • Joy Lere Twitter (@joylerepsyd)
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keep up with the Joneses

Teaser

00:00 Joy: If you can understand that this idea of peer comparison, it is going to be ever-present, and it’s not so much that the environment or the people around you need to change. What needs to flip is the script in your mind, in terms of the mentality you have when looking to the people in your life.

Introduction

00:28 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season seven, episode 12, and today my guest is Dr. Joy Lere, a licensed clinical psychologist and behavioral finance consultant. Our topic is the danger of keeping up with the Joneses. Joy explains how emotionally unsatisfying, and financially damaging, trying to keep up with the Joneses is, and that contentment can only come from within yourself. PhDs anticipating future income jumps would do well to put off lifestyle inflation for at least a few years after their salaries increase, which will give them more career and lifestyle choices in the future. This interview really hit home for me, as I reflected on my post-PhD life and finances and where my family is headed next. As you might have garnered from listening to previous episodes of this podcast, I had a pretty good handle on my finances by the end of grad school.

01:30 Emily: And I was truly satisfied with my lifestyle. I had defeated my Joneses. Or so I thought. Then, my husband and I moved to Seattle. We rented a relatively inexpensive apartment in a wealthy neighborhood. There’s a lot of tech money in Seattle, as I’m sure you know. Suddenly, I wasn’t comparing my lifestyle to that of other graduate students in a medium cost-of-living city, but to other full-fledged adults in a high cost-of-living city. I distinctly remember my first and hardest-hitting Jones moment in Seattle. Shortly after we had our first child, I joined a mother support group in my neighborhood. Our first meeting was in the home of our group leader, and each participant would rotate hosting subsequent meetings. I remember walking into our group leader’s house, which was gigantic, gorgeous, and immaculate. It was somewhat shocking to me. Plus, during the meeting, our group leader casually mentioned she was in the process of custom building another house in our neighborhood to move to the next year.

02:33 Emily: My heart sank, knowing that I would eventually host these mothers and babies in my small, dingy, undecorated apartment. That cheap apartment had been a strategic financial choice upon our move. We were following the advice to live like a grad student so that we could keep our retirement savings rate high while I got my business off the ground and we adjusted to parenthood. Even though we had good reasons for living in that apartment, those reasons paled for me, when I saw where and how my group leader lived. And I started questioning all our choices. That was my first big post-PhD Jones moment. I got past that feeling, kind of, eventually, for that situation, but now my husband and I are in the early stages of searching for our very first home to purchase. And I can sense myself starting to become aware again of the Joneses. Since buying a house in Southern California is such a big, expensive decision, I know I have to be really conscious about those feelings and influences. That’s why the subject of this interview was so timely for me. I hope it will be for you as well. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Joy Lere.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:50 Emily: I am just delighted to have joining me on the podcast today Dr. Joy Lere. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and behavioral finance consultant, such an interesting combination. So, I’m really happy to have her on the podcast today. We’re actually going to be talking about keeping up with the Joneses. Or rather, how not to keep up with the Joneses. So, Joy, will you please introduce yourself a little bit further?

04:11 Joy: Absolutely. It is a joy and a privilege to be here with you today. My name is Joy Lere. I am a licensed clinical psychologist and behavioral finance consultant. So, essentially I am someone who as a clinician works where Freud meets finance. So, I live and work outside of Napa, California, and I’ve a telemedicine practice where I see patients for psychotherapy. And I also work in specializing in consultation within the finance industry. So within that role, I’m providing support, training, education, coaching, and psychotherapy also to financial planners and financial advisors, because there are a lot of really exciting things happening within the industry where there’s more and more attention being given to the fact that people’s relationship with their money is not just a matter of math or economic theory. Money itself is emotional currency. So, having an understanding of human psychology and how that drives financial decisions is really starting to be integrated more and more into the world of finance.

05:33 Emily: Yes. Thank you so much for that description. Yes, of course, I have observed this trend as well. And I’m really excited to have you on. Actually, I did an interview some time ago with Dr. Daniel Crosby. So, we’ll link that from the show notes as well, since that was on a similar topic.

05:47 Joy: He is a good friend and just, he’s fabulous.

Tell Us a Little More About Your Education

05:52 Emily: Oh yeah, it was a wonderful conversation. Would you also tell us a little bit more about your education, because you’ve spent some time in academia as well?

05:58 Joy: Yes. So, I obtained my master’s degree while living abroad in the UK for a couple of years. And I decided after that experience and after starting my clinical work in England, that I wasn’t quite yet ready to be done with school. So, my husband is in the military. We made our way back across the pond. And then I went to graduate school at George Washington University and obtained my doctorate in clinical psychology while I was there.

Can You Define “Keeping Up with the Joneses”?

06:33 Emily: Yeah. Wonderful. Okay. So, our topic for today, keeping up with the Joneses. Probably a phrase that maybe everyone’s heard in the audience, but can you give a little bit more of a fine point on the definition?

06:45 Joy: Absolutely. So, this is a phrase that’s popularized in society, and it really speaks to the way that people look around their social spheres and circles, and look oftentimes at their peers and kind of benchmark their lives and their decisions to that. So, they are seeing something, often an outside image or kind of a curated facade. I think certainly social media makes this even more complicated for people today. And then they think to themselves, “Well, if they have that or they are making that lifestyle choice, that must mean I can, or I should.” So then, they make decisions based on what they are seeing around them.

Does “Keeping Up” Make Anyone Happier?

07:43 Emily: Does attempting to keep up with Joneses actually make anyone happier? You know, we’ll address the financial component of that in a moment, but does it do anything for us emotionally or socially to try to keep up with the Joneses?

07:58 Joy: I think really, being in the comparison trap just keep someone emotionally stuck. Because what is not happening when you’re telling yourself, “I need to be, I need to be doing that. I need to be getting farther ahead,” is you aren’t focusing and being centered from a place of being grateful for what you have and really having a sense of contentment. And when you think about someone’s financial life, when there’s this constant search and drive and need for more and more and more, that can lead to dangerous, destructive places. Being on a hedonic treadmill like that can be exhausting. And the truth is that when a lot of times people think, “Well, I will eventually catch up,” but oftentimes the goalpost just keeps on moving.

09:01 Emily: I was just going to say that the phrase is keeping up with the Joneses, right? It’s not hanging out with the Joneses and being at the same level as the Joneses. It’s just like it implied in the phrase itself is a continual striving, as you were just saying, which sounds totally exhausting. I really like that you make the point that we can also move these goalposts on ourselves. Like yeah. Maybe you caught up with, you know, Jones number one over here. Well, that just means you’re going to switch your attention to Jones number two and try keeping up in some other area.

09:32 Joy: I tell people, throughout your life, there will always be Joneses there. You went to graduate school with them. You looked around there and you were like, “Well, they’re doing this. That means, naturally, that’s what I should be doing.” They are always going to be in your workplace. They’re going to be on whatever street you live. So, you moved to the bigger house, the newer neighborhood. Well then there’s going to be someone else who ultimately has a little bit more. So, if you can understand that this idea of peer comparison, it is going to be ever-present, and it’s not so much that the environment or the people around you need to change. What needs to flip is the script in your mind, in terms of the mentality you have when looking to the people in your life.

The Hedonic Treadmill

10:29 Emily: Yes, such a wonderful point. You mentioned the term hedonic treadmill a couple of minutes ago, and I’m betting not everyone in my audience knows what that is. So, can you explain that a little bit further?

10:42 Joy: This idea that often times we’re running a race, we’re going after more, something better. There’s a desire for enough. And people think they are moving closer to the mark, but really you are just exhausting yourself on a treadmill, and there’s never a finish line. So, when you are caught in this cycle, you’re just going to keep running. And it ultimately is never enough. I think, I encourage people to reflect on this idea of what is enough. Who decides what it is, how much it is, how do you know you have it? You know, even how someone answers that question is, is enough a number? Is it a sense of security? Does the outside world get to decide what enough is? Or is that something that you determine for yourself? No, this is, this is good. I can stop. I can breathe. And I don’t have to continue to feel the need to be amassing more.

11:55 Emily: Mhm. I’m currently reading the book Your Money or Your Life for the very first time. This is inside the Personal Finance for PhD’s Community. We have a book club, so I’m reading it for the book club.

12:06 Joy: That’s fabulous.

12:06 Emily: Yeah, I’m surprised it took me so long to read actually, because of course it has been out for a couple of decades. But anyway, the concept of enough figures very prominently, the argument that the authors are making in that book about having, as you were just saying, determining for yourself, and it’s really about self-reflection and it’s not at all about looking around you at what anybody else is doing. You know, what it is to be content, be full in a sense, like in terms of thinking about your appetite. You’re full, but you don’t want to stuff yourself. You don’t want to go beyond this, you know, level of fullness or contentness or enoughness because it’s damaging not only to your finances, but also to you as a person to, you know, as you were just saying, continually strive to go and beyond, beyond, beyond. One aspect of the hedonic treadmill idea that I understand at any rate is that, maybe it’s a little bit similar to like addiction or like getting into that, but what you need to feel a pleasure hit from spending becomes higher and higher and higher because you become adapted every new spending level.

13:10 Emily: You know, you get to a new spending level, you’re like, “Well, this is fantastic. I have all these new experiences and stuff. It’s wonderful.” And then suddenly it’s just normal and it’s just you again. It’s just you, yourself. And then you have to go to a higher spending level to get that hit again. And that’s the sort of a mountain climbing, like that’s kind of the treadmill aspect of it, is that correct?

13:28 Joy: Yes. Yes.

Keeping Up with the Joneses Affects Your Finances

13:31 Emily: So, we were just talking about how this is not ever going to be emotionally satisfying. What happens to your finances if you are striving to keep up with the Joneses?

13:40 Joy: I think it, peer comparison when it comes to finances is so complex. And oftentimes it is very problematic because peers give you permission to sometimes spend in ways that you ultimately can’t afford. And sometimes there’s pressure or there’s fear of missing out. Now, when we look at this idea and this concept of keeping up with the Joneses, when we look at the financial state of affairs of the average American family, who is indebted, over-leveraged, all of these things, if you are then trying to keep up with someone who is overextending, you are then overextending yourself even more. So, it just perpetuates this problem indefinitely. My great-grandmother who lived through the depression, had this phrase that I love. And I never met her, but it was something that was instilled in my mom. And it was this: “Just because they have it, does not mean they can afford it.”

Just Because They Have It, Does Not Mean They Can Afford It

14:53 Joy: And that is something that so many people confuse. They look at, “Well, this is the house they’re living in. This is the car they are driving. These are the vacations they are taking. And so that must mean like that’s okay.” What they don’t see is what goes on behind closed doors. They don’t see the physical, the psychological cost of the stress that comes with carrying debt. They don’t see the impact of the work stress of the employment situation that person feels like they are trapped in because of the lifestyle that they are living. A lot of that stuff happens behind closed doors. But I tell people, so part of my job as a therapist is–I love my job–so often, I wake up and I’m like, “I truly believe I have the best job in the world because I get to sit behind closed doors with incredibly bright, driven people who are having conversations they aren’t having with anyone else in their lives.” So, I’ve sat behind closed doors with the Joneses. And let me tell you, their lives are not as rich or pretty or neat as most people think when you just see a public-facing persona.

16:28 Emily: Yes. That’s a wonderful phrase from your great-grandmother. And actually, it reminded me of something that my pastor from my church in North Carolina was preaching a sermon one time and was talking about this concept of keeping up with the Joneses. And I remember him saying, you know, if you’re going to follow sort of the the Christian way of handling money, you know, there’s certain things in the Bible, the layout of how you’re supposed to do this. He says, you’re going to be living multiple steps behind who you perceive to be as your peers. You’re going to be living a step behind because you’re not going to be leveraged with debt, at least outside of your mortgage or whatever. You are going to be living in step behind because you’re going to be giving. You’re going to be living a step behind because you’re going to be saving for your future as well.

You’re Going to Be Living Three Steps Behind

17:12 Emily: So, he was like, “You’re going to be living three steps behind, you know, who you perceive to be your peers in terms of like your career or whatever it is.” And that has really stuck with me too, that like, yes, it just, as you were saying, you don’t know how other people are handling, you know, as an outsider, you don’t know what’s going on inside their homes and how they’re really managing to live the lifestyle that you can perceive. And, you know, you brought up social media earlier. We have so many more, I think, potential Joneses in our life right now, because we have access, in a way limited access, to a lot more people from maybe a lot of our different stages of life and even people you don’t know. So, I’m sure that this just exacerbates this entire problem.

17:50 Joy: Yes. And I love what you brought up. You brought up something so important about lifestyle choices. If you do the things that most people do, you are going to get the things that most people get. You’re going to get average. And right now, financially average in our country is not a pretty picture. So, it really requires people to step back and ask, “Okay, what do I really want? And what do I want long-term?” In order to get ahead, you have, especially early on, our little choices compound over time. So, I will often explain to clients and people, if you can make, and this is especially applicable to, to students, to professionals. A lot of times, if you are entering a kind of employment, or you’re graduating, you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to start living the doctor life.” No, hold on.

18:56 Joy: If you can give it a couple of years of living like you are a broke grad student and what you can do with the savings during that time, when a lot of your peers are starting to make very different choices, what that can lead to for you in the long-term is huge. But that requires being able to say, “No.” It requires being able to tolerate, okay. Maybe you’re going to miss out on some things. But, if you can be willing to do things differently than other people, you give yourself a chance at having something bigger and better that most people will never achieve.

Commercial

19:44 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. If you are a fan of this podcast, I invite you to check out the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at pfforphds.community. The Community is for PhDs and people pursuing PhDs who want to take charge of their personal finances by opening and funding an IRA, starting to budget, aggressively paying off debt, financially navigating a life or career transition, maximizing the income from a side hustle, preparing an accurate tax return, and much more. Inside the Community, you’ll have access to a library of financial education products which I add to every month. There is also a discussion forum, monthly live calls with me, a book club, and progress journaling for financial goals. Basically, the community exists to help you reach your financial goals, whatever they are. Go to pfforphds.community to find out more. I can’t wait to help propel you to financial success. Now, back to the interview.

Present Lifestyle Choices Impact Your Future Comfort

20:49 Emily: I’m really glad that you took the conversation in this direction, because it’s exactly where I wanted to go as well. Talking about, you know, when you have these large income jumps, you know, okay for PhDs, you finished graduate school, maybe you’re moving up to a post-doc. Hopefully, a decent jump in income there. Okay, you’re moving out of the postdoc or directly out of the PhD, you’re getting into a proper job. Hopefully, a big jump there. And maybe, you know, throughout your career, potentially there could be other big jumps as you switch, you know, employers or whatnot. So, a lot of my audience is still in graduate school or is still in training. And so, they’re still anticipating and looking forward to those large income jumps in the future. And of course, the advice you just brought up, you know, there’s versions of it. You know, live like a grad student, live like a college student, live like a resident. It’s basically just, keep that lifestyle, or as close to that lifestyle as you can, from your prior earning stage for at least a little while into that next one. And then as you said, you know, this can do fabulous things to your finances. So, can you elaborate on that a little bit more?

21:45 Joy: Absolutely. And I want to explain. I think something that people often don’t fully understand or account for is in school, or maybe early in your career, you have a picture of, “This is what I’m going to want. I’m on this linear trajectory, professionally.” But things change. Life circumstances change. Sometimes your dreams, your desires, opportunities can lead to different places. And, if you have made financial choices so that you have the freedom and flexibility to change your mind, if you want to at a later time, and not be locked in because of the debt you have and the lifestyle that you have settled into, that gives you a ton of freedom. So, I just really emphasize to students that the things you are doing with your money now in these first years of your career are huge. So, if you can just hold on and be a little bit more conservative in some areas, that can have huge implications for your financial life later on.

Saving During Graduate School

23:11 Emily: Yeah. I actually want to give an example from my own life here. It a little feels like I’m tooting my own horn, but I think it does illustrate what you were just talking about. So, when my husband and I were in graduate school, we did our PhDs at the same time. So, we were both on stipends, same time. We saved, you know, I’m into personal finance, right? So like I was figuring this stuff out early. I was figuring out saving, investing and paying off debt and doing all these things. And so I started that during graduate school. Whereas a lot of people, either one have no opportunity to start saving or investing during graduate school, just completely off the table based on either their going into debt for their degrees, or they’re just simply not paid even a living wage. That was not our case.

23:50 Emily: We were very fortunate. So, we were doing that saving. We, one, could, but two, we took the initiative to do it. We were figuring that out at that time. By the time we finished graduate school, we had amassed quite a decent nest egg. And, you know, one, one attitude could have been during that time, “Well, you know, I may as well just spend what I have have, I don’t really need to save right now because I’m going to have this big income jump in the future. And, you know, it’s going to take care of itself at that time. I won’t worry about investing until, you know, later on.” But because we took that other route of starting as early as we could with, you know, saving and investing and so forth, we had a decent nest egg built up by the time we finished graduate school. That enabled one, my husband to take a job at a startup, which he had never anticipated doing and was completely, you know, really nervous about that.

24:30 Emily: We’re sort of conservative with our careers. And so we were like, “Wow, you know, this good job could go at any point.” But it was just such a perfect fit for him. We were like, “How can he pass this up?” You know, we’ll take the risk. We have the nest egg, we can do that. We can take that risk of him taking that kind of job. Secondarily, I was able to start my business, which meant, you know, just completely going off a different track from, you know, the normal job thing, which is a fantastic opportunity and similarly, very good fit for me. So, I feel like our life, you know, career satisfaction levels were much higher than they would have been had we not been in a financial position at that time to be able to make that choice. And the reason we were in that position was because years earlier we had started this process not really knowing that was how it’s going to work out. You know, we didn’t realize, you know, these opportunities came our way and we could take advantage of them because of the preparation we’d done before that point.

25:19 Joy: Absolutely.

How to Cultivate Contentment in the Now

25:21 Emily: So, I’m thinking about a graduate student, probably. Maybe a post-doc, who is currently maybe even practicing not keeping up with the Joneses. Because they probably have a lot of Joneses in their lives that they couldn’t possibly keep up with. Right? Like it’s just not even a feasible thing for them to do right now. So, what would you say to that person about how to still cultivate contentment in their life when they know they can’t even possibly play the game with the Joneses right now, and also how to maintain that once maybe they are able to get in the game once their income is higher?

25:57 Joy: I think, you know, this idea of game and even if we bring it back to the race. if you can understand everyone is playing a different game, and if you can focus on running your own race and just stay in your lane, that is going to set you up for success. Now, I don’t think that if you are not trying to keep up and you’re making a concerted effort around that, that doesn’t mean your life needs to be devoid of fun and human connection. I think, I encourage people to be creative. You can be the one driving the conversation, making suggestions. And the truth is, sometimes if you are maybe doing things or suggesting things to your social circle that are not going to be exorbitantly costly, there are probably going to be some people who are really relieved. Because here’s the thing. Everyone’s running this race.

27:04 Joy: And some people are more aware of it than others. Some people, based on their upbringing and what they bring to the table in terms of their own money scripts, and what gets activated for them around money, they may have different thoughts and feelings about it. But that’s one way to think about it. And you know, this transition when you do have more income, I think it’s important that it doesn’t become, you know, if you think about someone who’s been on a diet and then it’s like, everything is suddenly available, I’m just going to binge. If you can keep a mentality of moderation, that is going to serve you going forward.

Take Ownership of Social Spending

27:50 Emily: I love those two suggestions. And especially the first one around like, it’s sort of like, money decisions, let’s say about social spending with your peer group. They don’t have to happen to you, right? Like you can actually sort of take the wheel and say, at least some of the time, I’m going to be suggesting things to do that are within my budget. Like you said, probably some other people will be relieved. And so, you know, you can do a combination of planning things and maybe saying yes or no here or there to things that other people suggest. So that you’re not, you know, always, always saying no to everything, but yeah, you can keep it more within your range and steer things. I know, certainly for me in graduate school I found a group of friends that I was comfortable socializing with and we all sort of had the same manner of socializing that we enjoyed, and it was very inexpensive. And it was really good for all of us in that sense.

28:40 Emily: And so, you sort of find your people, is maybe one way. So like, there aren’t so many Joneses, so close to you in your life. I had a couple other ideas about how to like combat this, you know, impulse to keep up with the Joneses. One was to redefine what you’re jonesing for. So like instead of jonesing for the consumption aspects of using your money, Jones for like, “I’m going to max out that 401k,” like “I’m going to, you know, be striving”–if you want to strive for something–be striving for something that’s ultimately going to benefit your finances instead of, you know, working in the opposite direction for you.

29:17 Joy: Change your status symbols.

Happiness is Not Contingent on What You Are Chasing

29:20 Emily: Yes. Oh, that’s a great way of putting it. I love that. It’s very, you know, it’s millionaire next door. Right. So, try to be like that person. Are there any other like sort of behavioral finance tips that you would suggest for, you know, helping people achieve their financial goals without letting these Jones impulses kind of get in their way?

29:40 Joy: Well, I think just really paying attention to what you are benchmarking to, this idea of this is the baseline. I think that’s really important. As you think about and reflect on, I think developing financial self-awareness and doing some reflection and understanding about what gets activated for you with your money, and really starting to dig into some of the more core beliefs you carry about money and how that drives what you do with it. I think those are really important foundational places for people to start.

30:26 Emily: Yeah, I think going along with those exercises as well, and you just mentioned this, is sort of remembering where you’ve come from. Like remembering the influences, of course, that your parents have, and then maybe your peers, you know, through different stages of your life. And remembering like, especially once you’ve passed, like the graduate school stage, like, “Okay, back then I did live on this amount of money. I did have this size of home. I did do these things. Was I happy then? Was I content then? Why are things different now? Could they be more similar to how things were in the past?” I’m asking myself some of these questions now that I’m, you know, a few years out of graduate school.

31:02 Joy: If you are telling yourself, “I will be happy when,” and you are then looking to something in the future, I would really encourage you to go back into your history and think about this idea of happy. What is some other evidence you have that there have been other times when you’ve had that feeling that experience that you haven’t had that thing? So, happiness is not contingent on that which you are chasing.

The Power of “No”

31:34 Emily: Yeah. That’s such a, I think foundational point about happiness, that I’m only just sort of starting to learn myself now in my thirties. And I wish I had known it because I am the type of person who kind of always has goals and is always striving for something. And my husband definitely kind of complains and kind of ribs me for like always wanting the next thing. And why can’t you be satisfied now? And, I am starting to realize like that. Whoo. That’s just how I am. I need to really like, look at that because I’m never going to get there. Right? If that’s what I’m basing that on. Is there anything else you wanted to add, Joy, before we wrap up the interview here?

32:09 Joy: I think this idea of there’s a lot of power in saying no and having financial boundaries, that’s something I do a lot of talking with people about. I think a lot of things get in the way of people saying, “No.” There’s a fear of missing out. There’s a discomfort with what you are anticipating someone else’s reaction is going to be. And the truth is, I believe people would be healthier, wealthier, and less exhausted overall if they built that muscle of saying “No” more often. And again, that’s not saying no to everything. But if you are finding yourself in a situation in your gut where you’re like, “I’m going to say yes, but I really don’t want to do this.” Ask yourself why. And then what is getting in the way of your taking care of yourself? If it’s your energy, if it’s your finances, and what would need to happen in order for you to have the courage to say, “No?” And what is the cost to your yes? Be that financial, physical, psychological.

How To Connect with Joy Lere

33:27 Emily: Yeah. Thank you so much. How can people find out more about the work that you do? Or I don’t know, if they want to be a client of yours. Like how do people connect with you?

33:37 Joy: My website is my name. J O Y L E R E. Joylere.com. I am active on LinkedIn, Joy Lere Psyd, and also spin my creative wheels on Instagram a little bit, @ joylerepsyd, and also love to hang out on Twitter and connect with people there. Also, my handle is joylerepsyd.

Best Advice for an Early-Career PhD

34:02 Emily: Yeah. Thank you so much. That’s where we connected as well. So, final question here, Joy. What is your best financial advice for an early-career PhD? It could be something we’ve touched on in this interview, or it could be something else entirely.

34:14 Joy: My best advice is to do things different than most people around you. If you do that now, you will have things that no one else later on in their career will likely be able to accomplish and achieve.

34:36 Emily: Yeah. Thank you so much for that. Thank you so much for this interview and for joining me today.

34:39 Joy: Absolutely. It was a pleasure. Thanks for sharing your platform with me.

Outtro

34:44 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. Pfforphds.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, please consider joining my mailing list for my behind-the-scenes commentary about each episode. Register at pfforphds.com/subscribe. See you in the next episode! And remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the free music archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

How to Identify and Change the Money Mindset You Developed in Academia

November 16, 2020 by Lourdes Bobbio Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Chris Cornthwaite of Roostervane. Chris and Emily share the money mindsets that they have observed among PhDs and academics, including believing money and wealth to be evil, scarcity, relating time to income, and anchoring. They discuss how to identify and change your own money mindset. Chris shares how his money mindset has evolved from his youth idolizing poverty through his underpaid grad student years and now into his employment and entrepreneurial journey.

This is post contains affiliate links. Thank you for supporting PF for PhDs!

Link Mentioned in this Episode

  • Find Dr. Chris Cornthwaite at Roostervane.com and on Twitter
  • Get Money: Live the Life You Want, Not Just the Life You Can Afford by Kristin Wong
  • The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy by Thomas Stanley and William Danko
  • The Undercover Economist: Exposing Why the Rich Are Rich, the Poor Are Poor—and Why You Can Never Buy a Decent Used Car! by Tim Harford
  • Millionaire Teacher: The Nine Rules of Wealthy You Should Have Learned in School by Andrew Hallam
  • Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money that the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert Kiyosaki
  • The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime! by MJ DeMarco
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Community
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Podcast Hub
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Subscribe to the mailing list
PhD money mindset

Teaser

00:00 Chris: It’s one thing to start when you’re, when you’re 20 or 25, and have the value of compound interest over time and save that $40 a month or whatever it was. But it’s actually quite a different thing to start when you’re 35 with student loans that need to be paid off and try to create a sizeable chunk of wealth.

Introduction

00:23 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season seven, episode 11, and today my guest is Dr. Chris Cornthwaite of Roostervane. Chris and I list the money mindsets that we have observed among PhDs and academics, including believing money and wealth to be evil, scarcity, relating time to income, and anchoring. We discuss how to identify and change your own money mindset. Chris shares how his money mindset has evolved from his youth idolizing poverty, through his underpaid grad student years, and now into his employment and entrepreneurial journey. As you’ll hear during this episode, one of the best ways you can change your money mindset is by intentionally seeking out and learning from people who have the money mindset you want to move toward, whether that is through books, other media or new acquaintances.

01:22 Emily: If this episode convinces you that you should work on your own money mindset, I invite you to join the Personal Finance for PhDs community at pfforphds.community. Inside the community, you can communicate with me and other like-minded PhDs through our forum and monthly live calls. The community has a monthly book club and group financial challenges as well. In November, 2020, we’re reading Get Money by Kristin Wong and in December, it we’ll read The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley and William Danko. Our challenges for November and December are to create a frugal stack and set up a system of targeted savings accounts. One of the eBooks included in the community, The Wealthy PhD, also has a chapter on what money mindset is, why it’s important, and how to shift it. While I didn’t understand it at the time being part of the personal finance blogosphere while I was in grad school was absolutely vital to the level of financial success I had then and now, and was directly my inspiration for starting my business. With the Personal Finance for PhD’s community, I’ve attempted to replicate many of the positive elements of that experience while making the whole process more time efficient and accessible for you. If you’re interested in learning more about and joining the community, you can do so at pfforphds.community. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Chris Cornthwaite from Roostervane.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:49 Emily: I’m so delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Chris Cornthwaite of Roostervane. He writes a lot about PhDs and career transitions and career over there, but he also has a lot of material about money, wealth, money, mindset, and so forth. And that’s why I invited him on the podcast today to tell us more about money mindset. So, Chris, will you please just introduce yourself a little bit further to the audience?

03:14 Chris: Yeah, for sure. So in terms of my academic background, I have a PhD in religious studies from the University of Toronto and after I finished my PhD, I was kind of lost and didn’t know what to do for work. Kind of was the impetus for starting Roostervane, eventually. But I went and I worked for a think tank. So I ran projects for Canadian think tank. Kind of a lot of different projects, but some that kind of related to money that are still interesting to me is things like economic development and prosperity and things like that. And then I went and worked for the federal government for a little while, the Canadian federal government. I worked on a project that helps other countries launch refugee programs. Basically it’s a lot of like international diplomacy kind of stuff and that was really neat. And I still do some consulting in that world, in the refugee program world, but I also run Roostervane. I started a blog, initially it was kind of chronicling my own journey out of academia, but it’s just evolved to things that I like to write about. It’s become everything from a little bit on personal finance, as you say to careers, LinkedIn, ideas about purpose, which has really been an interesting question for me. That’s become about, I would say it’s maybe like 80% of the work I do, but it’s not my full-time income yet. It’s growing, but as you know, it takes time, so I’m working on that too. That’s me.

4:40 Emily: So interesting. Thank you so much. So money mindset is our topic for today.

What Are the Common Money Mindsets of PhDs and Academics?

And I wanted to start off by asking you what are the common money mindsets that you have observed in PhDs or academics?

4:53 Chris: This is such a fun conversation. I’m really glad to have it. I think the thing that I see a lot of, I mean, we could talk about scarcity mindset and that sort of thing, and that’s certainly common. I think the thing that I deal with the most, especially as people are like leaving academia and it’s not just about money, but it’s about careers in general, but there’s a lot of constructs within academia, like ideological constructs that money is bad, money is evil. The pursuit of money is something that, especially for those pursuing life in academia, a lot of people kind of buy the idea that this is a noble cause and worth doing for nothing basically. I think that a lot of PhDs have the idea that they shouldn’t think about money or that they’re bad for thinking about it or that they’re not serious academics if they want to think about it.

5:46 Chris: The irony is that, I remember having one exchange with a student in particular and he was kind of saying some of these things to me and he was quoting his professor. And some of the things his professor had said about how this is not about money. And I said, “is that your professor who makes $170,000 a year?” There’s a huge discrepancy, I think, between the idealism of PhDs and the reality of both the Academy and just “real world”. I think that’s the biggest holdup I see in terms of money mindset is that people have this idea that poverty is noble or that earning money is bad. Investing is capitalism, capitalism’s bad. I think those become really big holdups and I think can actually seriously hinder people from first of all, making good decisions about their career, but also from actually acquiring wealth and getting comfortable, much less wealthy.

6:38 Emily: So I think here, your discipline might be showing because like in contrast, so I’ve heard the same things, but it was not until I started speaking with PhDs more widely across a lot of disciplines that I encountered that mindset. Because for me as an engineering PhD and in the STEM fields, yes, scarcity mindset was there. Yes, undervaluing yourself was there, but not the money is evil aspect of things because I think we were all expecting like, okay, yeah, this is a low-income period of life, but this is not characterized my life overall. Like overall I’m going to be a highly employable, decent to good earner as an engineering PhD or STEM PhD. And honestly, even in my let’s say path through academia in terms of the professors that I interacted with, because I was in science fields and engineering fields, I didn’t have any professors say to me, capitalism is evil or anything like that. So it’s not an idea that I found until I started interacting with humanities PhDs that I even encountered that. I think this is really feel dependent.

7:48 Chris: A hundred percent, I agree. And it’s interesting for careers too. I’m always kind of realizing where these field differences are and it’s hard because I write for PhDs, like it’s one audience, and in some cases I think there are a lot of things that are kind of universal, but you’re a hundred percent right. And I think a lot of the kinds of ideologies around money that I was exposed to, and I mean, I still see them a lot, but you’re you’re right, they’re definitely much more predominant in humanities, social science fields for sure.

8:13 Emily: Yeah, but I’m so glad you brought that one up because I think that one is maybe the most insidious, like the hardest to reverse, which of course we’ll get to in a moment, but that was a great first observation to bring up. Do you have any other ones? You mentioned scarcity mindset earlier, but didn’t actually define it. Do you want to talk a little bit more about what scarcity mindset is?

8:31 Chris: Gosh, yeah. I think scarcity mindset for me, the way I understand it is just the idea that like there’s never enough money and it’s always, I’m just going to be poor and I’m always going to be poor. I mean, I don’t know, we’ve never had the conversation about the philosophies of money behind it, but a lot of the people that I read see this as manifesting into your life, that you adopt this type of scarcity and it becomes true for you. There’s a whole different conversation we could have, but I think at least anecdotally that’s been true in my life too, that when I kind of live this kind of scarcity — there’s never enough money, I have to keep it all tight, and pinch every penny and be just really, really controlling about, about my money. I think that’s what I see and I saw a lot of that in academia and I think, I mean, a lot of people are poor. I actually did all right, because I won the right fellowships. I mean, it’s just luck of the draw. There’s not really any reason why one PhD makes $15,000, another one makes $50,000. But all that to say that I saw a lot of that scarcity mindset. But the other thing that I think one of the things that I really observed academia taught me was this idea of linking your time to money. I didn’t get paid by the hour other than when I did TA or RA work, so I think one of the really valuable lessons I learned in academia and it’s a mindset that academics have if you kind of dig for it is this idea that you can actually work on a grant application for five or six hours and it might bring you a hundred thousand dollars. I think there are also some positive money mindsets from academia too, if you want to dig for them, but it’s just hard to kind of hard to get at them sometimes.

10:16 Emily: Yeah. I think that’s a really interesting point to bring up. Actually, I wanted to go back to the scarcity mindset for a second because there’s actual scarcity in your life and there’s the scarcity mindset and those things can come together or they can be separate from each other. You can have one or the other, you can have both, you can have neither. There is actual scarcity, especially at the graduate student level in terms of how much money you’re making. Now, does that apply to everybody? No, because of course there’s fellowships you can win, you can have side hustles, but there is scarcity in a sense. But whether it limits your mindset or not doesn’t necessarily come along with that scarcity. And the other thing is the academic job market, like there is literal a lot of scarcity in the academic job market. And I think that PhD’s observing that market, even if they choose not to pursue it or don’t end up in academia long-term, they still take that observation with them onto their other career paths and imagine the kind of scarcity and other places that they have rightly observed within academia.

11:15 Chris: Yeah. That’s really interesting. One thing I’m thinking of as you say that some of my professor friends who sat on on grant committees, especially for university-level scholarships and realize how many scholarships actually didn’t get any applications. So it also kind of does make me think that like there is of course literal scarcity, but I think one of the ways for example, that that can play out is that instead of me saying as a student, how can I go make more money or how can I increase my, my income? What scholarships can I apply for in this case because there was a lot of years that they didn’t give out a lot of the scholarships. It’s easier just to say, well, I’m just poor and this is my lot in life and woe is me kind of thing. So I hear what you’re saying. I do. I totally agree with you. And I think there’s a balance there for me between the actual scarcity and the mindset that says, how can I make the most of this? There’s obviously going to be some kind of a limit, but how can I expand what I do have access to?

12:11 Emily: Yeah, exactly. I think it’s really depressing for graduate students to think about their hourly wage, because they imagine, especially because they work so many hours, usually beyond 40 and yet they’re only being paid ostensibly — you mentioned RA or TA work earlier, that’s typically limited to like 20 hours a week, at least in the US — so they’re calculating this off of like 40 plus hours per week when actually they’re only being paid for 20 and technically they’re doing their dissertation for free and a lot of people don’t understand that. So it is depressing, they calculate their hourly wage, but like you said, that’s not actually literally what they’re being paid for. And sometimes you can, as you said, win an award for just a handful of hours of extra work on top of the work that you are already doing. So I do like the idea of divorcing the hourly wage thing, but it’s disheartening to think about in the first place.

13:05 Chris: I’m trying to look on the bright side. There’s a lot to be sad about, about the financial state of academia. So overall I’m not saying it’s like, great, but there are things that I’ve realized — I know we’re going to talk about it later — but as I’ve moved into my life, there are things that academia trained me for that I’m actually like, Oh, that’s actually not a bad thing.

13:22 Emily: Yeah. So let’s finish up talking about the mindsets that you see. Are there any ones that you’ve have any other ones that you’ve observed either positive or negative, helpful or unhelpful?

13:32 Chris: Let me think. Well, I guess so, so I think the thing that initiated this conversation was you had mentioned a post that I wrote where I had identified a lot of different things that I had learned. I’m trying to think about how much they relate to mindset, but I think there are principles, some of which do relate to mindset, about money that students kind of carry forward. So we already talked about the hourly wage, but I was thinking about in terms of scale, like when you think of I don’t know, a journal publication, like creating one thing that can influence multiple people. That’s not so much a mindset though. I guess I think the answer is no, I don’t really have any other mindsets offhand that I talk about.

14:13 Emily: I think the only other one that I’ll bring up is anchoring. So when you’re in graduate school and you’re making this tiny hourly wage or maybe you think about your yearly salary also tiny, because you’re anchored there, because that’s the first, early on salary that you’ve experienced in your life, you may not really understand your value in the marketplace once you go forward from that position, whether it’s in academia or outside of academia. And so your anchored to this, as you mentioned, 15 or 30 or whatever it is, thousand dollars per year, you’re making as a graduate student and you think, “Oh, wow, could I make double that?” And that’s like amazing to you. Instead of thinking, I want to three X, four X, five X, 10 X what I was making in graduate school, or more. I think that’s another really insidious one is, is the ultimate under valuing that you do later on.

15:04 Chris: Yeah, that’s a great point.

How Do You Identify Your Money Mindset?

15:06 Emily: So we talked about the money mindsets that are common among PhDs. These are not universal. So how does an individual determine what are the money mindsets that I currently have? And this is such a tough question because money mindsets are so closely held you don’t even recognize them as such. It’s just how the world works according to you. So how do you identify your own, your own money mindset?

15:28 Chris: I think the thing that helped me most was reading. I would say the first book I read on money was The Undercover Economist. And I read that, I mean, that must be 10 years ago now. I read it somewhere in my graduate journey, I think pretty early on and it rocked my world and I started reading every single personal finance or money book I could get my hands on after that. So I’ve read a lot of them. And I think a lot of what I saw through reading kind of reflected back to me in my own life.

16:01 Chris: For example, I started to, I can’t even pinpoint like where I got it from, but I started to see like things that I was raised with. I was raised in quite a poor family. My dad worked as a maintenance man in hospital, my mom stayed home with five kids, and a lot of my money mindset came from there. There was never enough money, money doesn’t grow on trees, money is for other people, and then we were also religious, so it was also spiritualized. I don’t know if I ever heard that money is evil, but I definitely heard that poverty was kind of noble, poverty was spiritual. I think the more I started to read and just hear people name similar things to what I had felt and seeing other people who grew up in similar places, I started to unpack a lot of those. There’s one podcast I really liked, it’s called Profit Boss, and she really did a fantastic job. Is it Hillary Hendershot? Do you know that one? I haven’t listened to it about five years.

17:00 Emily: I don’t think I know that one.

17:00 Chris: She had done an episode on money mindset, and it was really good and really opened up to me a lot of my own limitations and that really helped a lot. I think just hearing people name their money mindset and seeing it in myself.

17:17 Emily: So I totally agree with you that you have to start encountering other minds to recognize your own mindsets and whether that’s through reading as you were doing. I also early on in my life journey was reading the personal finance blogosphere quite a lot. So hearing from other personal stories of people who are talking explicitly about money. That’s the thing is you have to actually kind of get towards money or money related topics when you know, exchange these other minds. So it’s a little bit easier to do in an impersonal format, like reading or listening to podcasts or watching videos or whatever. But I’ll add into that talking with other graduate students, maybe like we mentioned earlier, outside your own discipline and outside your own worldview. Or not even other graduate students, but just like your peers, maybe peers who have real jobs, that can help you open up. If you’re actually, again, touching on these money or money related topics can help you recognize what’s a mindset in you and what’s like actual observable truth about the world versus just your perception of it. Encountering other people I think is crucial to identifying your own money mindset.

18:24 Chris: The kind of thing that that makes me think of is this idea of even talking about money. And I know that’s another money mindset I had is like, we don’t talk about money. We don’t talk about it with anybody. Money, politics, and I guess religion were the three things you’re not supposed to talk about. Right. And that’s definitely something that I’ve experienced. It’s funny, even with Roostervane. For example, I wrote a post a while back and it was just for fun about how PhDs can be worth a $100K or something, and it was one of the most read posts that I’ve ever done, but it’s actually one of the least shared. People were happy to kind of read about it, but didn’t really want to talk about it. I think there’s a lot of shame in talking about money and expressing an interest in money, and even an interest in having money or growing wealth. That’s another mindset that had held me back in the past. And I think it’s still pretty prevalent.

Commercial

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

How Do You Change Your Money Mindset?

20:27 Emily: Okay, so an individual has started to identify their own money mindset by listening to this podcast or reading your articles or reading other materials. How do you think they should actually go about changing a money mindset that they’ve identified as unhelpful that they have?

20:44 Chris: I’ve given a lot of thought this. It’s an interesting question, because I think what I realized is it doesn’t change overnight and I will find myself even years later, like something identified years ago and all of a sudden I kind of will stop myself when I’m doing something and say like, Oh, that’s my X mindset that has kind of played in, but it’s kind of sneaking back in. It’s really, really hard to change the way that you are kind of hardwired to think about money. It takes a lot of time. I mean, I’ve done things like I do journaling and I will sort of journal about it. I just watch and read a lot of stuff. I think really immersing yourself in things that kind of present a different view from what you’re used to, I think that kind of immersion has really helped me a lot. I’m trying to think what else. Those would be the two main ones, just kind of exposing yourself to different ideas and kind of recognize that you’re on a journey to change your money mindset. It will definitely take time. It’s not going to happen overnight. Start taking kind of the little incremental steps to grow it. And I think also education, I would say, is a big part of that. The more you learn about money, the more you learn about growing wealth, the less scary it get. It can get confusing because there’s a lot of contradictory information, but it’s at least less scary. So ideally you’re going to, you’re going to be a little more competent and therefore comfortable with actually thinking about and dealing with your money.

22:07 Emily: I totally agree with you that I think the first stop is sort of the extension of the identification. It’s continuing to encounter other ideas about money and maybe now you can kind of selectively go towards, “okay, well, this is a money mindset that I would like to cultivate, or this is the money mindset I want to get away from, so I’m going to specifically listen to source X or source Y, which is going to help me move again slowly over time towards that more helpful money mindset.” So yeah, I totally agree. Like for instance, listen to this podcast. Maybe this is giving you a different perspective on money than you had before. Or continue to read other sources. I know I, as I mentioned earlier, totally immersed myself in like the personal finance blogosphere. That was really helpful in changing some of my money mindsets, especially around like earning more because definitely as a graduate student, I had those limiting beliefs about like, I can’t have a side hustle and like, I can never increase my stipend, but that turned out to not be true after working on it for years and years I finally figured that out. So definitely getting around other people. I don’t remember the exact phrase, but there’s that thing where like, you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And so with respect to your money mindset, if you’ve had parent one, parent two, professor one in that circle before, you can maybe, at least with respect to this subject, edge those people out in favor of people who, have the mindset that you want to adopt.

23:28 Chris: Exactly. Yeah, I totally agree.

23:30 Emily: And I’ll add in, you mentioned a little bit earlier, abundance mindset and thinking and so forth. And I’ve also read a little bit about that in the entrepreneurial space. That’s how I actually first sort of encountered the topic of mindset was through the entrepreneurial stuff. One of the things that is talked about a lot in that space, which I think might be helpful, is actually writing and saying affirmations. And you mentioned, it’s a little bit related to journaling. Basically what we’re talking about is self-talk. You’ve been telling yourself money is the root of all evil and capitalism needs to die and I will never have money and all those things. You’ve been telling yourself those things for years. And so now you need to start telling yourself other things. It might be helpful to actually write down an affirmation, something that you know maybe intellectually to be true, but you don’t really feel it. You haven’t really internalized it yet and start reciting those to yourself. Maybe it’s once a day or a few times a day, to kind of get that self-talk like grooved in. And so eventually you’ll go to it more naturally. This is something I recommend to people who I work with on money mindset. It’s not something I practice all the time, but I do it from time to time when I feel like I need a little boost or a refresher with my mindset. Have you ever done the affirmation thing?

24:46 Chris: I do actually. I think I just, wasn’t clear in defining how I think of journaling because I do journaling, but within my journaling, I do affirmations as well. I have every day and there’s one in particular, there’s one that I’ll share just because it’s been a recent realization for me. I’m not particularly religious anymore, but coming from this idea of my youth that having money is evil somehow or whatever, I’ve really been thinking through like trying to get myself to adopt the idea lately that money is almost spiritual. That having money and creating wealth, especially as an entrepreneur, is actually an indication of the value that I bring to somebody else’s life. Rather than our ideas about entrepreneurship growing up is like, well, business people trick people into giving them money or whatever. In fact it’s quite the opposite. My wealth, the amount that I get paid is reflective of the value that I bring to people’s lives, and that’s really a beautiful thing. I think that’s one thing, just for example, that I’ve been kind of writing down variations of that for quite a long time now, trying to really worm it into my head because I really do believe it’s true, actually.

25:54 Emily: Yeah. I’m working on a similar one for me and my business as well. The amount of money you’re bringing in reflects the value that you bring to the world. That’s true, if you have a job too, but it’s sort of brutally true when you’re an entrepreneur, like you’re feeling that like all the time, there’s no comfort of the salary.

Chris’s Own Money Mindset Journey

26:13 Emily: Okay, so we’ve talked through what kind of mindsets you might have if you’re in academia, how do identify them, how to change them or start to change them, because you said, it’s going to be a process. You’ve talked about your own personal story here and there throughout this. Is there anything that you want to add more so about your career or your financial journey, especially as it relates to your money mindset?

26:35 Chris: Yeah, I think it’s interesting. I’ve had a constant evolution of my money mindset and it started back when I started reading personal finance books, at the beginning and each personal finance books was like a revelation. Like the first one, I remember reading a book called The Millionaire Teacher. I don’t know if you know that one. And it was like, okay, it’s low cost index funds, that’s how I’m going to build wealth. Low-cost index funds, low MER, ETFs — that’s the answer. And then I read the next one and it was like, actually people with managed portfolios do better over time and like, okay, who do I believe?

27:11 Chris: I think one of the most interesting things about my money journey has been, first of all, just digesting the huge amount of contradictory information out there. And there is a lot of it. For example, I remember reading Dave Ramsey and David Bach around the same time, and Dave Ramsey is like, pay down debt, don’t buy a house until you’re out of debt and David Bach was like buy a house tomorrow because nobody’s going to let you leverage that amount of money anywhere else. So it’s funny, I think like looking back now, I was forming my own views around money, even though there are little nuances in how they actually play out. I remember reading one book in particular and it was after I had read all these different people and the book was, I’m almost ashamed to say it. There are two money books I’m really ashamed to say that I like. I wonder if you could guess them, the first is Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

28:05 Emily: Yeah I was going to say Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

28:08 Chris: I’m so embarrassed to say that I liked that one. First of all, because if you Google Robert Kiyosaki, as an individual, I’m not endorsing Robert Kiyosaki. He’s had some interesting business practices and definitely has some interesting beliefs today. But the book was revolutionary for me. It really changed the way that I thought about business and wealth and just my own upbringing. The second one, this one it’s called The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime! It’s by a guy named MJ DeMarco. I would almost recommend it, but I’m hesitant because it’s like a bro book. He’s just one of those…he was an internet millionaire and it’s really, especially when you read it there are just some things that like don’t sit right. But the one thing that I will say that hit me about that book is he said actually when you look at all these personal finance gurus, none of them got rich off of following their own advice. Dave Ramsey and Susie Orman, these people didn’t get rich from saving 15% of their paycheck. They got rich by creating something that had massive value, massive scale, and creating huge personal brands and putting it out there in the world.

29:16 Chris: And I think that was really like something clicked. I had been working for the government too and realizing that even though I was making quite good money compared to what I was making in my PhD and I was interviewing for jobs that would make even more, I was giving away a third of it in taxes. I was struggling. Even our family, we thought we were going to be wealthy now that we have a paycheck and have a good job and I have a pension. And I mean, the opposite was true. Trying to scrape together that 15% to save every month or whatever it was going to be, it felt almost impossible, just because of the realities of our cost of living and raising kids and unexpected expenses. And I remember kind of thinking this through and saying, okay, it’s one thing to start when you’re 20 or 25, and have the value of compound interest over time and save that $40 a month or whatever it was. But it’s actually quite a different thing to start when you’re 35 with student loans that need to be paid off and try to create a sizable chunk of wealth. It’s possible. It’s definitely possible.

30:23 Chris: At the time I was the only one working my spouse Carolyn was home with our kids and she is a graphic designer, so she does some freelance work, but she wasn’t making a full-time income. So I think I just kind of came to the reality and it was about the time I read this, that it kind of shook me. And I said like, actually the way that I’m thinking about wealth is right for a lot of people, but it might not be right for me. For your listeners, there’s probably a variety of people. If you’re a two income family earning $180,000 a year, it might be pretty easy to catch up and squirrel away 30% a month instead of 15% a month and catch up to where you would have been. But for my own reality, I fell in love with the idea of business and the idea that in my case, especially with an internet business that I could start with almost like nothing. I could start with $3 a month and create a business that’s worth a lot of money. I didn’t know where else you could leverage that. Like you have that kind of leverage or create that kind of scale from starting with like paying Bluehost $3 a month and putting my ideas online to creating something. And I don’t know exactly, like I’m not great at evaluating blogs, but I think even today, Roostervane, from what I understand would be worth like between $30 and $60,000, which is not a huge amount of money, but I started it last year.

31:39 Chris: As a business person, it’s just thinking through business has changed everything about how I see money and I’m no longer one of those people trying to squirrel away part of my paycheck. And those are totally fine if that’s the position somebody is in and that’s kind of their money worldview, that’s totally great. But for me personally, I just got a lot more interested in creating an asset. Creating this asset that’s called a business and it changes everything. I don’t really care how much I take out of the business. I don’t care how much my paycheck is because I actually love having money in the business to reinvest back into it. It’s just little things like that, that as an entrepreneur radically reorients your relationship to money and it really changes the way you view everything. It’s been a long journey and I think I’ve talked a lot about it, but it’s been really interesting, and I still have so much to learn, but it’s just that constant growth and realization, coming to the idea that there are some principles that I’ve come believe about money, about things like scale and impacting people and creating value. And that’s some of the things that I’ve put on the blog, which I haven’t really blogged about why you should invest in low cost index funds. I’ve just blogged about here are some of the kind of generic things that I believe about building wealth.

32:54 Emily: Yeah, I’m so glad to hear that narrative and I see a lot of my own story reflected in that as well. Of course, I’ve also come to entrepreneurship.

Chris’s Business

33:01 Emily: So if people want to read more stuff from you, tell us where they can, they can find you.

33:08 Chris: Yeah, Roostervane.com. It’s kind of like a weather vane, but there’s a rooster on top — Roostervane. And that’s where I blog about…my main thing is careers with purpose. It’s just thinking through like how we actually get jobs and careers, but also how we make meaning from them. That’s the kind of humanities thing that I bring to it is how we think about meaning. So Roostervane.com. You can find me on Twitter, @cjcornthwaite is my handle. You can just search my name, Chris Cornthwaite. Twitter, LinkedIn, wherever I’m always happy to chat.

33:40 Emily: Wonderful. And last question for the interview, Chris, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And it could be related to something we’ve already discussed in this interview, or it could be something completely else.

33:52 Chris: Educate. Education, learn. It’s amazing how many people can spend five or ten years learning about the nuances of a field, but don’t actually want to take any time to learn about the basics of personal finance. I would say read as much as you can, listen to a podcast like this one, and just educate yourself and you’ll be empowered to actually create wealth and to get over some of those mindsets we’ve talked about.

34:18 Emily: Wonderful advice. Thank you so much for joining me for this interview, Chris.

34:22 Chris: Thank you, Emily. My pleasure.

Outtro

34:24 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPhDs.com/podcast is the hub for the personal finance for PhDs podcast. There you can find links to all the episode show notes, and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, please consider joining my mailing list for my behind the scenes commentary about each episode. Register at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe. See you in the next episode, and remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is stages of awakening by Poddington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

This Postdoc from a Low-Income Family Evolved Her Financial Attitudes and Practices During Her PhD Training

September 14, 2020 by Lourdes Bobbio Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Fushcia Hoover, a postdoc at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center. Fushcia grew up in a low-income family and graduated from college in 2009. Unable to find full-time work, she accelerated her plans to pursue graduate school, ultimately earning a PhD from Purdue University and winning an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Fuschia’s background imparted her with certain financial attitudes and skills that influenced her financial journey through her PhD and postdocs. On the positive side, she already knew how to keep her expenses low and she had enough discretionary income from her stipend to pay off her undergrad student loans, even while sending money home to her mother. On the negative side, she was unfamiliar with investing and understandably gun-shy after witnessing the stock market crash. Fushcia and Emily discuss how her financial attitudes and practices evolved during her PhD and first postdoc and why and how she negotiated her salary for her second postdoc position.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

  • Find Dr. Fushcia Hoover on Twitter, Instagram, and her personal website
  • Resource: PostDocSalaries.com
  • Resouce: PhDStipends.com
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Financial Coaching
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Podcast Hub
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Subscribe to the mailing list

Teaser

00:00 Fushcia: As a graduate student, postdoc, there’s this expectation that we just kind of have to accept things as they are. And, certainly in some cases, yes, that’s true. But I think in a lot of cases, there are always things that are negotiable and that are malleable. And I think a lot of that comes down to recognizing how valuable you are, not just as a person, but also as the work and your contribution.

Introduction

00:35 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season seven, episode two, and today my guest is Dr. Fushcia Hoover, a postdoc at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center. Fuschia grew up in a low income family and graduated from college into the depths of the great recession. Those experiences, and parted her with certain financial attitudes and skills that influenced her financial journey through her PhD and postdocs. On the positive side, she already knew how to keep her expenses low, and she had enough discretionary income from her stipend to pay off her undergrad student loans. On the negative side, she was unfamiliar with investing and understandably gun shy after witnessing the stock market crash. Fushcia and I discuss how her financial attitudes and practices evolved during her PhD and first postdoc, and why and how she negotiated her salary for her second postdoc position. You absolutely do not want to miss her concluding words of encouragement for all PhDs, but especially those in marginalized groups. By the way we recorded this interview in October, 2019. Without further ado. Here’s my interview with Dr. Fushcia Hoover.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:54 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Fushcia Hoover, tnd she’s going to be Talking to us about her background, coming from a low income family and ultimately entering graduate school and a couple of different postdocs. And what she has picked up and learned about finances along the way and the work she’s done on her own mindset. I’m really excited about this episode. Fushcia, thank you so much for joining me, and will you tell the audience a little bit more about yourself please?

02:17 Fushcia: Thank you so much for having me I’m happy to be here. I am a engineer by training. My graduate degrees are all from Purdue University, Ag and Bioengineering, but I actually got my degrees from an interdisciplinary program, the ecological sciences and engineering program at Purdue. And so a lot of my research that I do now, as well as my dissertation work, looks at both social and ecological aspects of storm water management and the way green spaces and green infrastructure can be used to reduce runoff during rainfall events, but then what are the different environmental justice potential impacts. Then recently I have also started incorporating black geography theory, which looks a bit more at the way that people and places are connected and the historical and cultural connections between those two, and what that means in terms of storm water management planning and where we place green spaces and green infrastructure. That’s kind of where I’m at now, so I like to call myself, well, it always changes, but currently I call myself a socio-ecological systems hydrologist.

03:45 Emily: That is so fascinating, that the arc of your work has gone in that direction, from the technological to the more sociological. Okay, great. And so you said you have your all degrees from Purdue, bachelors through PhD, is that right?

04:00 Fushcia: No. My bachelor’s is actually from the University of St. Thomas, which is based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where I originally am from and grew up. That degree was mechanical engineering, as my bachelor’s. And then I also had a minor in Middle Eastern studies. I’ve always been interested in balancing my science and the technical work that I do with more social and cultural components. That’s where I started and I’ve just been traveling the Midwest sense, but now I’m on the East coast.

04:34 Emily: Yeah. So tell us about your positions that you’ve had since you’ve finished.

04:39 Fushcia: Yeah, so I finished in 2017. My first postdoc was through the National Academy of Sciences. And that’s called National Research Council graduate fellowship, or post graduate fellowship, I believe. That was based at the Environmental Protection Agency in Cincinnati, Ohio. I was there for a year and eight months, so almost two years. Then, my contract for that ended, and my boss and I weren’t sure if there was going to be additional funding, so I had been applying to other postdocs, one of which is the one I’m currently in, which is with the, this is very long, so bear with me, the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, um, or SESYNC for short, and that’s in Annapolis, Maryland. So both very research focused. All I do is research. At the time I wasn’t interested in going into academia. Things have changed since. Then I worked in this position with Sarah Moreau, who is a faculty at Arizona State University.

05:52 Emily: Gotcha. So interesting that you just dropped in there that you’re now more interested in academia than you were before. People don’t usually go in that direction, but not the subject of our interview today. I’ll have to follow-up about that another time.

Growing up in a Low-Income Family

06:05 Emily: Let’s take a step back even further to your childhood and then basically your time going through college and up until you entered graduate school. Just really briefly, what was your financial experience during that time?

06:18 Fushcia: My mom is a single parent and I have a twin sister as well, so it was the two of us and our mom. We grew up in a single parent households and we had been low income for the duration of my childhood into early adulthood. Certainly for anyone that is from, I think either one of those demographics, there was a lot of like coupons and buying things either on sale or clearance or discount. On and off throughout growing up, we would have access to food stamps, depending on what my mom’s specific financial situation was at the time. The great thing about growing up in Minnesota was that there were and are amazing social services. In terms of basic needs like healthcare, we were on the free and reduced lunch program, we always had all those things. So it actually took me a very long time to realize that we were low income because of that. It was, I think until seventh grade, when I realized that lunch wasn’t free. I just thought that was a service everybody got and people who brought their lunch, that was just a preference. I really grew up in that environment of saving and being very conscious about spending.

07:53 Fushcia: My mom was also very open with us in terms of explaining why we could only get things on sale, but I think the child, part of me was still like, well, if she wanted to, we could get this, but she’s just being a mom. You know, “parents are mean” type of childhood mentality. It wasn’t until I got older, I was like, “Oh yeah, that makes sense.”

Loans and Scholarships During Undergrad

08:21 Emily: Yeah. Thanks for telling us about that. Then, when you got to college, what was the situation then? You mentioned the school that you went to, but was it private or public, and how did you fund it?

08:34 Fushcia: It’s the largest private university in the state of Minnesota, and I was fortunate there was a college access program and I was part of in high school called College Possible. I made my sister join as well, so we were both part of the program and it helped teach us about scholarships, applying for college, doing college visits, as well as like practicing the ACT, which is what most of the Midwest takes as the college entrance exam. I think I had applied to between 20 and 30 scholarships as a senior, and then the ones that I was awarded, combined with, I received a full tuition scholarship from the University of St. Thomas based on my academic record and I’d done a lot of community service as a high school student as well. So through that, I was actually receiving refund checks, which is pretty rare.

09:45 Fushcia: A big part of the conversation my mom had with us in terms of college was that she could not afford to send us to college and she could not afford to co-sign on a loan. So my sister and I were very diligent about then seeking out money and applying for scholarships and finding resources that could help us pay our way, or in my case get paid, through college. I took out two loans, one for my last semester of college, and then for a January term study abroad. When I finished, I had about $7,000 in debt and that was all within Sallie Mae at the time, so one was subsidized and one was un-subsidized.

10:40 Emily: That is really good. I mean, to have access to that program, first of all, maybe that was part and parcel with the general great services you had access to in Minnesota, but yeah, that set you up amazingly and to of course then put in the work and get the scores and do the scholarships and everything that, I mean, it’s clear why that happened and why you ended up in that position. So your tuition, you had a scholarship. You had enough scholarships coming in to cover the room and board and so forth, so that you’re actually receiving at sometimes a little bit of money back. Then you took out some small student loans for part of that experience. So coming out of college, about $7,000 worth of student loans and you didn’t go immediately to graduate school, is that right?

11:19 Fushcia: Yeah, that’s correct. And I actually forgot, I did have, I think it was maybe like a $3,000 loan from Wells Fargo, which, well, maybe I can save this for the end as one of my pieces of advice, but at the time I didn’t know about kind of self-loans or just the loan system. My checking and savings were through Wells Fargo, and I was like, “okay”, not knowing that that doesn’t allow you to defer your loan and that the rates are higher.

11:52 Fushcia: When I graduated, in 2009, which if you remember, was kind of the peak of the financial crisis.

12:03 Emily: Yeah, the worst year to be graduating.

12:05 Fushcia: Yes, it was a horrible year to graduate. I didn’t have a job. I had started working part time for a program that I was a part of while at St. Thomas. And then I had transitioned into working for a program called AVID or the Advancement Via Individual Determination, which was located in the public — well, it’s a national program, but I specifically worked within the Saint Paul public school system. Tthat was part time as well. So I was doing that, I had moved back home, I was living with my mom and barely able to pay my $50 a month minimum for my Wells Fargo loan. I had been able to put it into forbearance for six months. That was the only thing that they would allow me to do. It was actually a very…I was very stressed. Thankfully, living with my mom helped cut down on a lot of expenses, but it was a lot of penny pinching. I think my income was maybe $500 a month, before taxes. So, trying to give my mom something and then basically pay for my cell phone and basic expenses and then this loan. That was my financial situation upon graduating.

Starting Graduate School in the Midst of the Great Recession

13:39 Emily: And did the difficulty in finding work of that year, the peak year, did that play in your decision to go to graduate school or had that always been the plan?

13:48 Fushcia: I’d always wanted to go to graduate school. I did not want to go right away. I was really mentally and emotionally exhausted after undergrad.

13:59 Emily: I know that feeling.

14:01 Fushcia: Yes, and I think a lot of us have those feelings even after grad school as well. I think the only difference was that I went to grad school sooner than if I would have had a full time job. I worked part time for almost two years before going back to grad school, because I also wanted to make sure that I wanted to go back and I didn’t know what I wanted to go back for quite yet. I knew I wanted to stay within engineering, but I didn’t know…I knew a lot of what I didn’t want to do. I took that time to figure out the programs and the schools of interest and what my potential research interests could be.

14:49 Emily: Gotcha. So when you entered graduate school, was that actually an increase in your income from working, I guess it’s still part time technically in graduate school, but was your income higher than at that point?

15:02 Fushcia: It was. It’s funny, a lot of people talk about how poor graduate students are and how we’re going to pay, and we are. I certainly agree that for the work that we’re doing, all graduate students should be paid more. But it was such a jump in income for me. I think especially going into an engineering program at Purdue, I think my monthly income was about $2,500 per month. All of a sudden, not only did I have a higher income, but I also had a dependable income. And it was an income that I was going to be getting, regardless of my hours that I put it in. That was the first time being on a salary, and having something that I was like, “okay, wow, I can pay my bills, I can pay my loans, and that’s not something that I’m going to have to worry about. Where’s this money going to come from? Am I going to make my minimum payment this month?” It was a big relief for me in a lot of ways.

16:13 Emily: Yeah. And I would imagine that stipend goes pretty far in Lafayette, Indiana, does it not?

Employing Frugal Strategies in Grad School

16:19 Fushcia: Oh yes, it does. And I very much…I had two roommates, I didn’t have a car either. I had a bicycle, so I was pretty much biking or Lafayette, if you’re a student, or basically if you are affiliated with Purdue and you have a Purdue ID, then you get to take the public transportation system for free, so I wasn’t having to spend money there. It was really just groceries and utilities and rent split between three people. I found a lot of ways to reduce the amount of expenses that I had because then I had also then started sending money back to my mom. I was sending her about $300 every month. Definitely trying to funnel resources and reduce costs.

17:09 Emily: Yeah. It sounds like you took a lot of the the strategies that you’d been using prior to that point, and also some of the mindsets you’d had to that point. That was what you applied right then. You found the low cost living situation, you used the public transit instead of owning a car, so you really reduce your expenses right off. But it sounds like still, even with sending your mom money, you probably had a good bit of discretionary money to be working with, above the bills that needed to be paid. What did you start doing in your personal finances at that point? What did you have to learn about since you now finally have this discretionary money to do what you want with? What did you learn about what did you apply in your life?

Paying off Student Loans During Graduate School

17:49 Fushcia: It’s funny, I had taken a financial literacy workshop before I started graduate school, and that was more focused on like budgeting and saving and negotiating whether you pay off credit card debt first, or if you have student loans and how you prioritize your debts. The biggest thing, aside from sending money home to my mom was that I started making monthly payments on the undergraduate loans that I had. I targeted the Wells Fargo private loan first, and then —

18:28 Emily: I just have a follow up about that. Were those loans, at least maybe the federal ones, in deferment at that point?

18:34 Fushcia: They were, yes.

18:36 Emily: And what about the Wells Fargo one? Was that in deferment?

18:38 Fushcia: No, the Wells Fargo, my forbearance had ended after the first six months, from me finishing my undergrad degree. I had only been making $50 a month payments, so you can imagine on a $3,000 loan, that’s not very much. So I kicked that up and I think I started making either between $150 and $200 loan payments every month. So about $500 every month was going to this one particular loan and then my mom. Then the rest that was remaining after bills and rent, I was just putting into savings or using for other expenses like going out to eat or going home for the holidays, things like that.

19:34 Emily: What I like to call irregular expenses.

19:37 Fushcia: Yes, irregular expenses.

19:38 Emily: The ones that can really mess up your cashflow if you try to pay for them in just one month. How long did it take you then? Did you just keep working in paying down those loans straight before adding any other goals to the picture and how long did it take you to pay them off?

19:50 Fushcia: I did. I had paid off my Wells Fargo loan by the end of my masters, so just under two years, and then my government loans, it took about two and a half. I don’t remember if it was two and a half or three years. I think part of the decision why, even though those loans were in deferment, one of them was unsubsidized, so it was gaining interest. And I think because of coming from low income background, and even though I was in this position where I had a steady paycheck, I was still really worried that it would end. Certainly, I knew the degree would end and I wasn’t sure what my income would look like after that, and I didn’t want to have that stress. I think I might’ve been the only one I knew of my friends with loans from undergrad who was actively paying it down.

20:54 Fushcia: That was my goal, was to have zero debt by the time I graduated from Purdue. Pretty much all of the focus was on paying off those loans. Then I would typically have anywhere from like $200 to $400 that I would just put into savings every month.

21:17 Emily: I will say, in my contact with graduate students, some people do, but it’s on the rare side to be working on paying down student loans while in graduate school. I think yours because they’re relatively small, might…I think some people get really defeatist about student loans. Especially if you have more than a hundred thousand dollars or multiple tens of thousands of dollars of student loans, it can feel really, really daunting, and why even bother like getting started on your low salary during graduate school. But I think yours, they were a fraction of what you made in a given year, and so it felt like something that you could tackle, probably. And like you were saying, you had that fear of, well, what if your program ends for whatever reason? Well, then the loans are coming out of deferment, you have to make at least minimum payments, and then what’s your income going to be? You don’t know. That decision definitely makes sense to me.

Commercial

22:12 Emily: Hey, social distancers, Emily here. I hope you’re doing okay. It took a few weeks, but I think I have my bearings about me in my new normal. There is a lot of uncertainty and fear right now about our public and personal health and our economy. I would like to help you feel more secure in your personal finances and plan and prepare for whatever financial future may come. You can schedule a free 15 minute call with me at PFforPhDs.com/coaching to determine if financial coaching with me is right for you at this time, I hope you will reach out, if only to speak with someone new for a few minutes. Take care. Now back to our interview.

Personal Finance Mindset Shift During and Post-PhD

22:58 Emily: Did you do anything else within your personal finances during graduate school, aside from paying off those loans and then also building up savings?

23:06 Fushcia: No. I had conversations, I talked with a couple of friends who were working about IRAs and investments, but it was all very intimidating. I think for me, at the time, it was easier to just put my money in savings and then I could also see it, and there wasn’t like a fear of losing it. With investments, I think particularly because of being an adult through the stock market crash, and also remembering when Enron went under and people’s entire pensions were lost. I have a, I wouldn’t say a strong distrust, but I would say I’m very kind of apathetic and very wary of different financial institutions. Even Sallie Mae and Freddie Mac and all of those. For me, I was like, “nope, I want to have my money with me, so I’m putting it in my savings account.” By then I had also transferred to a credit union, so I felt a lot more secure about credit unions as financial institutions, int that I’m an owner in this. And I have amplified checking, so then I was getting, I don’t remember what the return is, but it’s a couple percent return. I was like, “okay, I like this. I can make money from my own money.” Even though I had those conversations with a lot of friends who had higher income backgrounds or whose families did, and so these were conversations that they had. It still wasn’t something I felt comfortable really digging into because I think part of me still felt like I didn’t have the financial security yet to start investing.

25:05 Emily: Yeah. It’s interesting. I graduated from college in 2007, so two years before you did, so before the crisis hit and I was safely in graduate school, by the time everything went down. But I took away like a different kind of financial trauma from that whole period, which is that I’m very gun shy about the housing market. I’ve still always been a renter. I have yet to buy my first home. And that’s partially because, while I didn’t personally experience, all the media coverage is about people losing their homes and foreclosures. So while I was very gung ho about getting into the stock market and I was able to experience the rise right after the crash, it’s still is something that lingers with me regarding the housing. It’s just interesting to talk to someone near a similar age who had some witnessing and some stake in everything that happened and what’s lingering.

Investing

25:58 Emily: Actually, maybe you’ve turned this around since then. You were talking about during graduate school, you were nervous to start investing. And I think it actually is really smart to build up the cash savings to get the debt paid off before embarking on that. At what point did you, or have you started to invest?

26:14 Fushcia: I started a few months, maybe six months into my first postdoc. By the time I finished at Purdue, I had about a four month break where I was job searching and then preparing for a move, and I had saved up about maybe $5,000 to $6,000 in savings. One of things that I did start doing was also using credit cards as a way to prepare for high cost expenses. I had opened a card, um, just before I graduated so that it allowed me to have 18 months of 0% APR because I knew I’m not going to have a job. I was at a part time job that I got to cover basic things, but in terms of, I have to move, that card held all of those expenses. Then once I started my postdoc and getting paid, I worked on paying that down, and since I had 18 months, there was no rush. But then, because I was like, “Okay, I have a job.” As an engineer coming in for an NRC, my stipend was $69,000 for the year, which certainly is very high compared to a lot of postdocs, but I think most of the federal agencies, you’re going to see a higher salary, that’s closer to what a full time federal employee would be making

27:55 Emily: And for you in particular that’s over double what you had been making her in graduate school.

27:59 Fushcia: Yes. Well, and I should say that my first year of my master’s I applied for and was awarded a National Science Foundation GRFP, so I think that also really allowed me to focus on my debt because then I was making $30K. I still had to account for the taxes, which was not fun, but compared to my friends in college of liberal arts, who were in English or social science making $13K, that’s a big difference. One of the things that I actually learned from you was while I was in my first postdoc, I joined the National Postdoc Association, and you were a guest. This would have been a couple of years now. I watched your webinar, when you gave a presentation. From that point, I looked more into kind of the difference between an IRA and a independent tax account and figuring out, okay, with NRC, it’s the same thing. They don’t take out taxes. And so then —

29:19 Emily: I’ll jump in there and say, because you were on fellowship, because you were not technically an employee, I’m just explaining for the listener, you wouldn’t have had access to the workplace based retirement account, whatever that would be, that they would offer to their full time employees. So you’re still dealing with a stipend, you still have to handle the taxes manually, and you’re really only tax advantaged retirement option would be an IRA. Nothing was being offered through your employer, because you didn’t have an employer.

29:47 Fushcia: Yes. I was a contractor. I did a little bit of…well, I should say I did a lot of research trying to figure out then where I wanted to open an account. I actually ended up going with an online system called Betterment because I did not have the time to actually look into managing my own investments. I think because so much stuff is online, it also made it easy for me, so then I didn’t have to find an office location to go into. In my postdoc now we are considered faculty of the University of Maryland and the University of Maryland is a state run system, so we actually have mandatory investment portfolios and the portfolio that I chose is through the I don’t remember the, the full meaning, but it’s TIAA.

30:53 Emily: Yeah. I don’t know what it stands for either, but TIAA or TIAA CREF.

30:57 Fushcia: I still have my betterment accounts and I haven’t decided how much I’ll be putting into it. They take out just over 7% from my salary for the TIAA account, so I need to figure out what that balance is going to look like. Now I was like, okay, it’s probably about time. I was a little bit nervous about being older, like 31, and just starting to invest. But I think because I don’t have any debts and because, well I have a little bit of credit card debt, but I also just moved for this postdoc. I think that’s why I was finally at a point where I feel confident that I will have a job and I will continue to have income and that’s not going to be something I’ll be lacking anymore. And so now I can fully invest having confidence in, well the system is still problematic, but I at least have confidence that I’m not going to wake up and be without a job.

Learning Debt Management Strategies

32:12 Emily: You said earlier there were maybe some things that you brought out of your childhood that you had an aversion towards debt. A smart one. But you also maybe weren’t exposed to conversations around investing and IRAs, maybe like some of your peers were. Was there anything else that you kind of felt maybe you were a little bit out of step with other people during graduate school, or during your postdocs regarding personal finance. And anything you had to learn or mindsets to change or overcome?

32:44 Fushcia: I think I definitely learned about the healthy ways that you can use credit cards to manage certain debts. I think that that came from conversations with a close friend when I moved for my postdoc. I opened a card to buffer that, and a lot of that helped and realizing that all debt doesn’t have to be bad. That it can help you create a credit score and debt management techniques and strategies, and build out this financial portfolio that can actually then make you have a higher score and more competitive for other loans and things like that. A lot of that came from conversations with friends who had either taught themselves that, or they learned it by proxy from their parents. Just asking about their debt and how they managed it, and then also asking, are you afraid that you won’t pay it off or are you afraid that it’s going to be there forever? Certainly, I remember an ex of mine, she was like, “Yeah, it’s just going be there, and it’s just this thing that I have, and I’ll make payments, and it sucks, but also I have the education that I wanted to get and I’m in the job that I I think through those conversations, it definitely helps release some of the anxiety and like intense fear around debt.

34:48 Fushcia: Listening to webinars or reading your blog, for example, and just trying to educate myself more, so that I’m more informed and that’s definitely alleviated a lot of the fear and anxiety, but I think I still like coupons, I still like things on sale. It’s still really hard for me to pay full price for clothing or a pair of shoes that’s a hundred dollars. I’m like, no, can’t do that. Like you, I’ve been a renter this whole time and I don’t know if I want to buy property or a home. I did buy a car when I moved to Cincinnati, and so I’m making those monthly payments now. Part of it is also okay, well, I’m going to make these payments and pay off my car and then maybe see where I’m at in terms of, if I’m in a permanent position that then I feel more comfortable buying a home. I think some of the approaches I still have to managing that is to have one type of debt at a time. Take on debt, pay it off and take on a new debt, pay it off.

36:10 Emily: Yeah, it sounds like you really have learned much more about, as you were saying earlier, debt management or how you can use debt as a tool, especially to avoid large expenditures of cash. Because it sounds like you still have cash savings to a degree, but it’s more about not wanting to let go of that and using debt to help you basically just hold both to have the cash and to have the debt, so that you can feel, feel more secure around it. Is that right?

36:39 Fushcia: Yeah. I think that’s a really good way of kind of summing that up.

Negotiating a Post-Doc Salary

36:44 Emily: Yeah. And then the other thing that you mentioned that you wanted to talk about in this interview was negotiating your salary, which is also kind of another mindset leap, right? Like not only, maybe from someone coming from the kind of background that you have, but also just being in academia where like with your first postdoc, negotiation is not really an option, but it sounds like you did at your first opportunity, negotiate. Can you tell us how that worked?

37:09 Fushcia: Yeah. To be honest, a lot of it was just like, I know I need to practice this because I know I’ll have to do it at some point, so let me just practice it now because it’s lower stakes.

37:21 Emily: Yeah. Good point.

37:25 Fushcia: Part of that came from in your webinar you had been talking about kind of how you plan for transitions. So either going from your degree to a postdoc, postdoc to a full time permanent position, and managing the moving costs and change in expenses. I had sat down and looked at essentially the cost of living for Annapolis and estimating what my costs are now, and what’s expected to grow. The majority of that, it’s about a 300% increase in housing expenses from Cincinnati to Annapolis. I started there and then looked at how much would I want in savings or investments, and then worked with the business office at SESYNC to then figure out is there a parking cost? Learning about the exact percentage rate that they take out for retirement or investments. Trying to find what are all the other hidden costs and expenses that come with this position so that I could factor that into my budget and then know what would my minimum salary need to be, because I know my minimum payments for my car. I know my cell phone payments. Those are things that I know and then wanting to make sure that it had wiggle room.

38:54 Fushcia: Then I think on top of that, I also wanted to try and stay as close as possible to what I was already making. Certainly, it can be challenging to do that with a different type of postdoc, particularly because this one’s affiliated with the University of Maryland, academic post docs are much slower. But I didn’t want to have this $20,000 drop, because the great thing about the NRC was that they gave a $1,500 increase every year. I came in at $69,000, but then the next year I was making $70,500. So it’s like, okay, well, how close can we get to this?

39:38 Fushcia: Again, a lot of it was using my network, and talking to in particular, a good friend who is now at Cornell. She had just finished her PhD, and she had negotiated her position. Asking her for advice and resources and how you frame what you’re negotiating for and the language that you use so that it’s still appropriate and respectful, but that you’re still firm, in terms of, these are my skills, particularly because I was coming out of a postdoc. I already have almost two years of experience post-PhD, and I’ll have all these other publications, and knowing different questions to ask.

40:22 Fushcia: I wrote up this letter, had a few people review it. Ironically, when I asked my former PhD advisor, she was like, “We don’t do that. If someone were to do that, maybe I’d give like a two to 3000 increase.” But when I had looked up other negotiation strategies on Inside Higher Ed, I used a lot of their articles. They mentioned, I think it’s 15% to 22% is typically what you negotiate as your range, particularly if it’s not a lateral position, if you’re moving up. So I was like, “Okay, we’re going to go for 15%.” And they did not give it to me, but they came close. From there I went back and said, “Okay, based on this salary, could I make it work?” And I could. It’s going to be tight, which is a bit frustrating to have a point where you have more flexibility and you have more expendable income and now it feels a little bit more like being a grad student again where it’s a smaller salary. I have to be more conscious of where my money is going and not spending as much as I was, particularly now that I have a car and all the expenses that are associated with that. But I know that I have the skills to make it work. And at this point I’m also looking for a permanent position after this postdoc. I don’t anticipate after this two year position, being in a situation where I have to kind of penny pinch and reduce costs elsewhere.

42:23 Emily: Yeah. It sounds like you approach that — I mean, it’s clear that you did a lot of research and preparation through that process, not only taking what you learned from the webinar that I gave, but also this research you did with the articles in Inside Higher Ed and in speaking with your friend. You really prepared for that and kind of the best way possible, so it’s a great, it’s a great model for the listeners to hear, especially because you knew that you were going into an almost guaranteed income drop and also a cost of living increase. Both of those factors just highlight the need for being really careful around this. And if your academic advisor said, well, this isn’t done, I mean, it is, it is done sometimes, in some places. Maybe no one’s ever attempted it with her.

43:06 Emily: I want to point the listeners to one of my resources, which is postdocsalaries.com. And there’s also another one PhDstipends.com, for those in graduate school. It’s kind of like a Glassdoor, but for those types of positions, for postdocs and for grad student positions. That’s just another resource out there, if people want to get benchmarks on what is reasonable to be paid for different kinds of postdocs in different areas of the country. And I also ask questions about negotiation on that survey. I think the last time I looked in the database, it was around 25% or maybe a third of the people who had answered the questions had said, yes, I at least attempted to negotiate salary or benefits for the postdoc position. I think it’s becoming more and more popular, as people realize that this is a standard thing you do in most jobs, and why don’t we at least try it in these academic or nonacademic postdocs. That was great story.

43:58 Fushcia: Well, and I think too, salary, while I think it is very important, isn’t the only thing that you can negotiate. You can negotiate moving expenses and you can negotiate time off. I also negotiated my start time because I wanted to finish through my contract at the EPA before coming to SESYNC. That was something that I successfully negotiated. I had picked my top three things of these are the things that I would like, so we’ll see where they can meet me. There’s another postdoc who negotiated because he also was coming out of a previous postdoc and then everyone else who we’ve talked to, we were having a conversation and they were like, I didn’t know that you could do that. And we were like, all they can say is no, especially once they offer you a position, if they want you. If you don’t ask, you’ll never know.

45:02 Fushcia: I would also say for all the listeners that if you are going to any type of public institution, you can look up everyone’s salary, that’s all publicly accessible information. And that was something that I did to give me a sense of what are the ranges for the people that are employed within the center. I had an idea of what their budget is to figure out do I ask for the 15% or I do I ask for the 20% to 25%.

45:29 Emily: Yeah, that’s a great advantage when you’re going to those types of places, that there’s a large degree of transparency around salary there. That’s an amazing thing to look up, if that’s where you’re applying.

Best Financial Advice for an Early Career PhD

45:41 Emily: Last question here, Fushcia, as we wrap up — what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be something that we have touched on in this interview, or it could be something completely else.

45:53 Fushcia: I think my first piece of advice would be to do as much research as you can. As grad students, we’re training basically how to do research and conduct research. I think we already have a lot of the skills to be able to access these resources and information and find ways or people to help us get there. I would say that most of the way that I have navigated my finances has been through talking to friends, talking to people who are in positions where I see myself going, and just doing the research and using the academic online journals that are available or financial journals, blogs, anything, and everything that you can capture to try and help inform what the decision that will be best for you, or rather the best decision for you.

47:00 Fushcia: The second thing that I would say is to give yourself more value and credit than what you would default to. I think as a graduate student, postdoc, there’s this expectation that we just kind of have to accept things as they are. And certainly in some cases, yes, that’s true. But I think in a lot of cases, there are always things that are negotiable and that are malleable. I think a lot of that comes down to recognizing how valuable you are, not just as a person, but also as the work and your contributions and that the majority of the people in this country do not have PhDs, so you’re bringing in a very valuable skillset, which, when you’re going into a space where everybody has PhDs, it may not seem like that, but I think it’s important to remind yourself of that.

48:05 Fushcia: I think especially, I say this to women postdocs, women of color, black women postdocs, we are already underestimated in many way. We are already underpaid in many ways, thinking about your initial salary offer or associated benefits. I think because of all the work that’s coming out from the national academies and other research centers about this still huge discrepancy across all fields, I think I use that as a way to empower me to ask for more. Because now it’s not just valuing my work and what I bring, but also recognizing that I’m already going to be undervalued, because of what I look like when I come in the room. I think that would be the last piece of advice that I would say for all the postdocs out there. And this includes folks who are femme or femme-identified. If you’re any type of on the marginalized periphery, ask for more, because again, all they can say is no. And if they take back that offer, then that’s probably not a place you want to go in the first place. Because you want to go where you’re going to be celebrated and valued. Give yourself more value than what you default to.

49:39 Emily: I think you put that so well. That was great. I have nothing to add there. Just everybody go back and listen to that again, listen to it a few more times, especially if you’re in one of these groups that Fuschia just identified. Absolutely.

49:50 Emily: Well, thank you so much for this wonderful interview and it was really a pleasure to speak with you today.

49:54 Fushcia: Yes. Thank you so much. This was really fun. I hope that whoever’s listening has been able to take something away, even if it’s just to know that you’re not the only one that’s in grad school who’s from a low income background or is having anxiety or fear around debt or salary. That’s that’s normal and also you will be okay. Everything will be fine.

50:23 Emily: Love that. Thank you so much.

50:25 Fushcia: Yes. Thank you.

Outtro

50:27 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPhDs.com/podcast is the hub for the personal finance for PhDs podcast. There you can find links to all the episode show notes, and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, please consider joining my mailing list for my behind the scenes commentary about each episode. Register at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe. See you in the next episode, and remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is stages of awakening by Poddington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

This New PhD’s Salary Tripled But Her Scarcity Mindset Lingered

September 7, 2020 by Meryem Ok Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Samantha Snively, a PhD in literature who recently transitioned to a non-academic job at the University of California at Davis. Samantha tells the story of her financial and logistical transition out of graduate school with an emphasis on the unexpected emotions that arose upon receiving a much higher and steadier income. Samantha and Emily also discuss how to shed the scarcity mindset imparted by academia and the distinction between lifestyle inflation and lifestyle catch-up.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

  • Dr. Samantha Snively’s LinkedIn Page
  • Blog Post About Emily’s Husband’s Salary Offer
  • PF for PhDs: Speaking
  • Interview with Dr. Lucie Bland (Part 1)
  • Interview with Dr. Lucie Bland (Part 2)
  • Interview with Cortnie Baity
  • PF for PhDs: Subscribe to the Mailing List
PhD scarcity mindset

Teaser

00:00 Samantha: And you get so used to doing a lot of work as a graduate student for very little pay that it does distort your sense of what you’re worth, what your skills are worth, what anyone wants to pay for your skills.

Introduction

00:16 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season seven, episode one, and today my guest is Dr. Samantha Snively. Samantha transitioned out of graduate school last year and into a nonacademic job at her Alma mater. Samantha’s income tripled and became much more reliable upon taking the job which brought forth some unexpected emotions. We discuss the mental shifts that Samantha is working through, such as healing her scarcity mindset, as well as processing the difference between lifestyle inflation and lifestyle catch-up. I highly recommend listening to this very insightful conversation. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Samantha Snively.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:06 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Samantha Snively. I’m very excited to have her on. She’s going to be talking to us about kind of the emotional and financial rollercoaster of transitioning out of graduate school and into a professional career. So, Samantha, I’m so delighted to have you on. Will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for our listeners?

01:27 Samantha: Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Emily. I am delighted to be talking about this topic with you. My name is Samantha Snively. I am currently working as a proposal writer in higher ed development for the University of California Davis, but just this past June, I received my PhD from UC Davis, a PhD in English literature, and I focused on and wrote a dissertation on experimental culture and scientific knowledge-making in 17th century England, particularly focusing on women’s writing and women’s work in the household. So, I finished that and moved pretty quickly into a nonacademic job in service at the university, but not on the tenure track.

Transition Out of Grad School

02:08 Emily: Gotcha. So this is actually really fresh for you. We’re recording this interview in January, 2020. So, it’s only in the last six, nine months. Can you tell us a little bit more details about the timing of your transition out of graduate school and those sorts of other logistical details?

02:24 Samantha: Absolutely. So I realized in my second to last year in graduate school that I didn’t want to make a tenure track run. More importantly, that I did want to work in a job where I could advocate for the importance of research and the importance of universities and higher ed and the importance of the humanities. So, I started looking for jobs in November, 2018 because I wasn’t in a position financially to not have a job after graduation. So, I wanted to start that search early. I started my search in November with the goal of having a job by June, 2019 graduation time.

02:59 Samantha: And just very briefly, I think I had my first phone interview for a job in late December. My first in-person in early January. And then in the job I’m working in now, that moved pretty quickly. I applied back in November, had no sense of what was happening. I had thought they’d forgotten about me. And then I got a surprise phone screen in late January from the person who’s currently my boss. And from there, it moved really quickly. They asked for writing samples. I sent them in. They sent a writing test. That was a model of what we do on a day-to-day basis. They seemed to like that, so I had an in person interview, another writing test. They called me back for another in-person interview and a conversation with leadership. And I think I had a job offer by mid February, 2019. So, I started the job this past April, and I got my degree in June.

Was this Good Timing for You?

03:55 Emily: I see. It’s actually, it’s so hard to get the timing of this right, right? When do you apply? When do you reasonably think you will get a job offer and then what your start date is going to be? All of that against already the complications we have of timing a defense date and writing the dissertation. And there are a lot of moving parts at once. And so I’m wondering was that a good timing for you the way it worked out for you? Or if you had your ideal world, would it have been a little bit different?

04:23 Samantha: That’s a great question. Yes and no, this job search has been an exercise in getting what you need and not necessarily what you want. So, I think in an ideal world, I would have liked to finish the dissertation, graduate, and then start a job. But the way it worked out ended up working well for me, because it avoided the anxiety of being unemployed after finishing the degree. And I intentionally made the choices I did to avoid some of that anxiety. So, I’m very happy with the way it turned out, because it alleviated a lot of my biggest worries, but also the job search taught me that sometimes you have to compromise. I targeted my search in Seattle where my longterm partner lives. And I am not in Seattle. I am working in Sacramento. So, it works out in a way that is good for you, but perhaps not the way you originally envisioned. So, I’m very happy now, but I don’t think that this is where I thought I would be like a year ago.

Negotiated Start Date

05:23 Emily: It is really hard to see, especially with your transitioning to a job outside of academia, if you don’t have prior work experience, it’s really hard to know all these things, but that’s why we tell these stories, right? Because it’ll help people coming along behind. You mentioned that you weren’t in a financial position to have a lapse in income. Did your paycheck from the university, the one part of the university end over here on a Friday and Monday it’s going to pick up in this other part of the university, or did you actually have a little bit of a gap? Did you take any kind of a break, or what was the situation?

05:57 Samantha: The answer to both is no. But again, I was grateful for that. So, I got the job offer in February. I negotiated to be able to start a bit later than they would have liked. So, I had to finish out the quarter. UC Davis is on the quarter system. I had commitments in the quarter. I had a couple of part time jobs I needed to transition out of. And so I finished up the last week of the quarter, which was the second to last week of March. I took a break for the final week of March and then started the first day of April. And so there was no gap financially because I think the March paycheck from grad school got me into April and then the next pay cycle got me into May. I don’t know that I’d recommend that fast of a transition if you are able to do it, but it was anxiety-relieving for me. And it helped me focus on other things rather than stressing about money.

06:50 Emily: Yeah. And you just mentioned negotiation there. You negotiated the start date. Did you attempt, or were you successful in negotiating any other aspect of your package?

07:00 Samantha: I did attempt to negotiate. But because I work for UC Davis, which is part of the state of California, the salary bands are all set and were publicly posted. So, I did know the range that I would be going in. And so there was, I suspected there was not a lot of room to negotiate and I was correct. But I did ask for the practice, and I’m glad I did, but no, I did not have the opportunity to negotiate. But the financial compensation package was, I was very happy with it. So, the negotiating start date with what I needed.

Emotional Response to the Salary Offer

07:34 Emily: You mentioned you have a little bit of financial precarity. You receive this job offer, you receive the salary offer, you’re looking at it, what’s running through your mind? What are you feeling?

07:44 Samantha: Frankly, shock at first. The posted salary band was part of the reason I originally thought I wouldn’t be qualified for the job because it was almost three times what I was making as a graduate student. And you get so used to doing a lot of work as a graduate student for very little pay that it does distort your sense of what you’re worth, what your skills are worth, what anyone wants to pay for your skills. So, at first I couldn’t believe it. It’s like, is there a number of extra here? Is something going on? And I think perhaps the second emotion was relief because I realized I didn’t have to worry about the things I’ve been worrying about for the past several years. Honestly, where is the next paycheck coming from? Will I be able to ever take a vacation? Will I ever be able to live in the same city as my partner? Will I ever be able to save for further than six months down the road?

08:38 Samantha: So, relief was a big part of it. It allowed me to settle in to my new life and to have a bit of space to breathe and to really reflect on what I wanted to be doing and who I was and who I had become after graduate school. So, that was good. And I think the next big emotion that I noticed was guilt. Surprise, surprise. You spend six years in a graduate program, working continuously and in a culture of overwork that can often be toxic. And so when I moved into a job that was an eight to five schedule with a very generous boss, everyone was very flexible about their hours. I started to have feelings of guilt about taking a lunch break because I thought, well, if the, if the pay is so high, surely I must need to work enough to meet that pay. And it took me a while, several months, and it’s even still lingering today, to realize that it is okay to take a lunch break. It is okay to have a doctor’s appointment, period. You know, working through those feelings of guilt because the value of my labor is suddenly so much higher than it was a year ago, even though I’m doing very much the same kinds of things, that was an adjustment as well.

09:56 Emily: This is so interesting. I want to comment on both of those emotions. If you don’t mind, I’m going to tell a slightly lengthy story. It’s actually not about myself, but it’s about my reaction when my husband got his first post-PhD job offer. I’ll link in the show notes to a blog post where I wrote about this, but basically what happened is my husband was in Seattle interviewing for the job that he ultimately took. They offered it to him and he took it. And while he was actually flying from Seattle back to Durham, I knew the flight times and knew he was in the air, I was using his computer and I saw an email come into his inbox that was from the company that he had been interviewing with. And it was the job offer, and it included the salary. And, you know, listeners are probably pretty familiar with my story, like my husband and I worked very hard and we’re very fortunate. And actually were in a very good place with our finances for graduate students during the time when we were in graduate school, especially by the time we finished. We had cash in the bank. We had investments. We had very little debt that was very manageable.

11:01 Emily: But still, when I opened up that email and I saw that salary offer–and we knew the ballpark of what it was going to be–I started bawling, and I felt this huge sense of relief. And I thought to myself, we don’t have to struggle anymore. And I thought, I didn’t even know that I thought we were struggling. I thought we were succeeding. And we were succeeding definitely by external measures, but still I had that emotion somewhat, that feeling somewhere inside that sort of erupted out of me when I saw that that salary offer. And so, it was a great deal of relief, shock as well, and shock at my own response to it, I guess, and relief seeing that number. So, I think we’ll come back to the actual transition of well, does that salary turn out to be what you think it’s going to be once you actually move out of your grad school mindset and so forth, but that’s the first story I want to tell.

Money Mindset: Overcoming Feelings of Guilt

11:52 Emily: The second one is I find this guilt emotion so interesting. And I guess I can understand where it’s coming from because it’s almost like, how much harder can you possibly work? Like you’re in graduate school and you’re working yourself to the bone for a very low salary or pay or cobbled together funding or whatever it is. And then I can see you going into this job and making about three times as much and thinking, “I just can’t work three times harder.” And, you know, you can’t work three times harder, but “Oh my gosh, I’m not even expected to work three times harder? It’s actually okay to have all this flexibility and I can leave my work at work and go home.” We haven’t said that you actually do that, but you know, that’s the case for some people. What a rollercoaster ride and what a shift. Right? At that point. So, do you want to elaborate on that any further?

12:45 Samantha: Absolutely. You are describing spot-on things. I think it was certainly an adjustment. And it was the realization moving into something in a work environment that was more normal. And that allowed me to leave my work at work and, you know, to be able to have weekends, to be able to spend time with friends and family and settle into it made me realize how toxic and draining–and I use toxic mindfully–that that culture can be that expects incessant production from people who also have families and have, you know, the right to rest and to care for their bodies who are doing intense intellectual work, which is, you know, it is not physical labor. And so it is a certain kind of privilege to do intellectual work, but also to keep it up all the time is draining.

13:42 Samantha: And it is only increasing in academia, the pressure to do more and do more. And for less, especially for people from marginalized groups or minoritized groups, a lot of that labor is put onto them by a structure that just exists to extract as much value with as little pay as possible. And so, it did help me realize how erroneous my own thinking had gotten, because I’d internalized a lot of academia’s self-valuation. As I started to transition out, I started to withdraw from that feeling a little bit. It got to a point where I heard a colleague gleefully tell us that she had worked from 10:00 PM to 2:00 AM last night, as if it was something to be proud of. And that’s when I realized, I don’t want this. Something is terribly wrong if we have gotten here.

14:33 Samantha: And it’s not the only field in which this happens, right? There are other work cultures where this sort of overwork is valorized, but yeah, it was simultaneously realizing that I didn’t want it. I didn’t choose it. And yet it was in my mind still. It still affected the choices I made and the way I thought about my own work. But it was honestly very healing to take a nonacademic job. It allowed me, as I said earlier, to rethink what I’ve been taught by the Academy and from my familial background. And it allowed me to think about what my values actually were.

15:09 Emily: Yeah. I can definitely see how that increase in pay and also the more work that has better boundaries around it and more reasonable expectations can, you finally have a chance to breathe, take some space for yourself. Take some time for reflection. Yeah. When you’re in graduate school and in some kinds of jobs, this training period, it’s just push, push, push, push, push, and you can end up going quite off course and in a weird direction, if you don’t take that time periodically to reassess.

Appreciating and Using Privilege to Help Others

15:37 Emily: Okay. So, you’ve talked about the initial shock of the salary offer and this feeling of guilt that cropped up, but then realizing that your mindset was also changing as you were moving out further away from the graduate school experience. Were there any other emotions that you wanted to bring up along that path?

15:54 Samantha: I think another thing that surprised me was how quickly people started to say things like, “Oh, well, you can afford it now.” And how often that was my fellow graduate students. So, I think it was, you know, this is not a critique, but more of an illustration that this mindset affects us all. So, that was surprising. I didn’t expect that to come or to come so quickly. That would be a big one. And I think, now that I am almost a year through the new job and I’m navigating this transition, I’m thinking a lot more about the ways in which even, as I came out of graduate school, that all the different ways in which I’m privileged and the fact that I have landed on my feet and landed in a space of calm and restoration only motivates me more to want to change things and to use the fact that I am being paid decently well to help others and advocate for others who still are not. So, that’s something that’s been coming up more often is realizing like I am in an interesting position in the university and I have a lot of privilege. How can I use that to improve things moving forward?

How Would You Describe the Scarcity Mindset?

17:06 Emily: Mhm. That’s awesome. So, you’ve brought up some aspects of your mindset that you have started to shed as you’re putting more time between yourself and the end of your degree. And you use the term with me scarcity mindset. I think some of those ideas around scarcity have come up so far. We haven’t used that term yet. How would you describe the scarcity mindset that is developed in academia by many people?

17:30 Samantha: That’s a great question. I understand it, knowing that there are others who actually study it and have a much better understanding, but I understand it as the scarcity mindset is a combination of not making enough. So, not making a living wage. I live in a part of California that is lower cost of living for California, but high cost of living compared to anywhere else. It’s not in the major cities of the U.S. So, realizing that the money you earn through hard work does not go as far as you need it to. And there’s nothing you can do about that except work more. So, there’s that, you’re not being paid enough, but also realizing as grad students do, that you might not be paid continuously. And so, if you make enough money one month where you can pay all your expenses, the scarcity mindset is knowing that you might not be paid for four months out of the summer, which we were not. We don’t get paid from July to November. Hurray. So, it’s that too. It’s knowing that no matter what you do, you may have to weather the summer, a health crisis. You could be one blown tire away from having to take loans. So, that’s how I understand it. And it creeps into everything. It affects health, it affects community function, all sorts of things.

18:51 Emily: Hmm. So, what I have been interested in lately is I’ve been learning about scarcity mindset as well, almost from like an entrepreneurial, like side of things. And then it has caused me to think a little bit more about it in the academic setting. But there’s scarcity mindset, and there’s like actual scarcity that sort of objectively is going on in your life. And graduate students often have both of those things overlapping, but they can also exist independent of each other. You can have a scarcity mindset and not actually be experiencing scarcity. Maybe it’s something that happened in your childhood. Maybe it’s something that was going on during graduate school, but you’ve moved past it. You have a higher salary now, but the mindset can still follow you. Likewise, you can have a very tight financial situation and not have a scarcity mindset around it, even if it is pervasive in the community around you. I think that academia itself tries to impart upon us a scarcity mindset, even if not every member in that environment is actually experiencing scarcity. So, I’m wondering for you, as your income has gone up even though, okay, you’re still living in a high cost of living area. I’m sure there are still financial challenges associated with it, but have you been able to move past or sort of work to heal the scarcity mindset that you developed during your time in academia?

Moving Past the Scarcity Mindset Developed in Academia

20:14 Samantha: I’m starting to, and that’s a wonderful way of expressing it. That it can be both from the way you were raised and an environment that cultivates it, sometimes artificially. We think about how grants work. Grants and the publish or perish culture is the artificial scarcity mindset. From my own experience, I definitely felt it coming up when I transitioned to a nonacademic job, and in surprising ways. The first place I noticed it was with my own health. I suddenly had the means and the health insurance to be able to get new glasses, for example, and deal with a couple of health things that my parents could not afford to deal to treat as a child. And I couldn’t afford to treat in graduate school. And even though I knew on paper, I had the funds, I still felt like it was indulgent, which is ridiculous.

21:09 Samantha: Not that I thought it, but the fact that taking care of your health could be ridiculous ever, but it popped up there. It pops up even still, and as I’m working through this, but it pops up now in the difference between cost and value. So, what something costs versus how much you will get out of it. And for me, the big test was my car. I could not afford a car in graduate school. And so, I needed to buy a car for this new job and for the next phase of my life. And I found myself, you know, I had saved in grad school and, like you and your partner, had done okay, asterisk for graduate students. So, I had some savings that I had earmarked for a car, but I found myself as I researched thinking like, “Well, why don’t I just save as much money on this car as possible, buy the cheapest thing I can find?” And only through the advice of some friends realize that, yes, it might be upfront cheaper, but what about increased maintenance costs? I could buy a jumper, and for many people that’s what you can do. And so you do what you can. But I was on the verge of making a decision where I spent as little as possible, but would incur greater costs down the road. And so thankfully, through some wiser people in my life, I ended up spending all of my budget, but got a 10-year-old car with 44,000 miles on it. And so, it has saved me in gas and insurance and maintenance costs. And that’s not something that was intuitive to me coming out of grad school. I was looking for the lowest bottom line and not thinking about the future.

Pro Tip: Get Comprehensive Car Insurance

22:48 Samantha: And that is, I think, also part of the scarcity mindset is not having the means to be able to plan for the future. If you cannot afford to save, you cannot make longterm financial decisions. It’s as simple as buying what you need in the moment versus buying bulk. And many people are not able to do that. So, it shows up there. It shows up with health, and it showed up when I took my first vacation, again, something I’d saved up for, I split costs with my best friends, had a wonderful time. It was the first vacation I’ve ever been able to take, and it was wonderful. But when I got back, found out someone had stolen my catalytic converter out of my car, and that is a $2,600 repair. So, one of my tips to your listeners will be, if at all possible, get comprehensive car insurance.

23:37 Samantha: Again, something I didn’t do because I thought it was a way to cut costs. And it was at the time. And then not. But when that happened, I didn’t think, “What a terrible thing that someone has committed a crime.” I thought, “How stupid of me. I shouldn’t have gone on vacation. This was a terrible decision. I never should have taken time to take pleasure and enjoy time with friends.” And that’s messed up, too. So, I’m trying to remind myself that that’s what savings are for. That’s what insurance is for. That’s what the fact that the next paycheck is coming is for. You save money precisely to weather things, not that something you weather is a moral stain against you. And if you have to spend money, you’ve saved, you have somehow messed up. It does me no good if I hoard it.

24:31 Samantha: So, that’s been a little bit healing. Is remembering that I am saving, I am managing my money. I have people who will help me, either through advice or through the loan of a car at first, or a tip about a cheaper flight, or something like that. And people who are gentle about money. And also to remember that at least for now there will be another paycheck. And that’s something that is still not intuitive to know that I won’t have to be saving for when June hits. So, it’s a slow process, and it’s been kind of an expensive lesson to learn. So, if that answers your question.

25:12 Emily: Yeah, it definitely does. Your comments are reminding me of a distinction that we tend to draw in the personal finance community between frugal and cheap. And cheap is, it sounds a bit, you know, pejorative, but when you’re in that scarcity mindset and the actual scarcity in your life, you don’t have any other choice, right? There’s no choice to be frugal. There’s only the choice to be cheap, unfortunately. This is a big complaint kind of around frugality actually, is that it does take a little bit of upfront capital to be frugal sometimes with certain like verbal tips or strategies that you might use. Like you just mentioned buying in bulk. That’s one where it takes some upfront capital to be able to spend more over the longer term. But when you’re stuck in this very short-term cycle, you can’t even make those little mini investments in your future of a frugal tip or something like that. So, it’s a position that people are forced into. If you cannot do it in some way, you will eventually sort of snowball. You can eventually start to snowball frugal tips together and overall be spending less money, but like you have to get it started somehow. And that’s really a difficult thing to overcome. Thank you so much for sharing those anecdotes.

Commercial

26:25 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. I bet you and your peers are hungry for financial information right now, especially if it’s tailored for your unique PhD experience. I offer seminars, webinars, and workshops on personal finance for early career PhDs that can be billed as professional development or personal wellness programming. My events cover a wide range of personal finance topics, or take a deep dive into the financial topics that matter most to PhDs like taxes, investing, career transitions, and frugality. If you’re interested in having me speak to your group or recommending me to a potential host, you can find more information and ways to contact me at pfforphds.com/speaking. We can absolutely find a way to get this great content to you and your peers, even while social distancing. Now, back to our interview.

Change Financial Attitudes with Positive Self-Talk

27:24 Emily: Something I’ve been learning about, and actually, I’ve had a couple other interviews have been published, one with Lucie Bland, one with Cortnie Baity, kind of around how to change your financial attitudes. And something that I have, again, been learning more from the entrepreneurial community is the use of affirmations, is what they’re called. Which the first time I heard about–the first dozen times I heard about affirmations–I was like, “Whoa, that is a weird, like, I don’t want to get into this,” but really what it is, is it’s just, self-talk. Like, it’s just kind of, if you notice yourself saying, like, you just mentioned a few things, you’ve said yourself, “Oh, I don’t deserve to have a rest or pleasure,” when you notice yourself saying something like that, just having something there to yourself to counter it. “But no, I do deserve periodic rest. I work very hard and I earn enough money that I can invest in my future.” Like whatever it is for you that needs to be there in that self-talk can be really useful in starting to combat this mindset. I’m wondering, do you use that strategy or has it been something else that you’ve been using to work through this mindset?

28:27 Samantha: I mean I will always plug the value of therapy, not necessarily as a specific answer to your question, but more as you know, the chance to have someone else to talk to and to reflect on the ways in which you’ve been trained to think, and to have someone else say, “You don’t have to do this all the time.” So, if at all possible, find affordable affordable therapy. I don’t know that I use affirmations specifically, but I do receive affirmation from my community, from my partner who will say as I’m in tears after having the car parts stolen, like, “This is not your fault.” Or people who say, “It’s okay to have these questions about how do I manage my finances? What is the best form of insurance?” I don’t know that I repeat them to myself, but I’m trying to have more gentleness towards myself and to everyone else around me. And to understand that you don’t know where everyone is coming from. You don’t know what the background might be. And so, you don’t know the ways in which someone’s actions are a production of years of training and experiences.

29:37 Samantha: I’m very much still learning. So, I think that’s probably the answer. I haven’t figured out everything that works. Still seeking advice. A lot of it is experiential and realizing, “Okay, if I do this, what happens? If I try this, what will happen? Will I be okay if I have to weather a large expense?” And then experience does teach you, you will be okay. No one will shun you. Your worth does not diminish as a human being because you take a weekend off. These sorts of things. A lot of it is just learning by doing.

How to Combat Lifestyle Creep

30:10 Emily: Yeah, I’m really glad that you mentioned the supportive people you have around you to try to help you counter the residual scarcity mindset. But you mentioned earlier that you’ve also heard from people, “Oh, you can afford it.” And so something that I try to talk about when I have the opportunity is combating lifestyle inflation or lifestyle creep. When, you know, we come out of the PhD or out of a postdoc and you finally have that three times higher salary or whatever it is, you, maybe yourself, or maybe people around you, start to say, “I can afford this now.” And that’s potentially true, but you know, maybe there are some other reasons, other financial goals you might want to work on. So, what’s been your experience with lifestyle creep with this job transition?

30:55 Samantha: Great question. Absolutely, I have felt it. I mean, no one is buying diamonds and furs here, but certainly the realization that I could buy the nice olive oil and also get work pants when I needed them, was new to me. And so, I certainly experienced a certain amount of pushing the boundaries of my budget. Not necessarily intentionally, but suddenly just realizing, “I can afford this. I can afford these modest things.” For me, I think the danger is that the modest things add up. And so, I have to, you know, be mindful and ask myself if I need it and also pace out my consumption.

31:39 Samantha: I think the other thing that happened was there were a lot of high ticket purchases all at once. So, I moved, I had to purchase a car. I did a lot of health things. And that very much, I suppose you could think of that as lifestyle creep. You could also think of it as catch-up. So, a lot of, you know, health catch-up. Moving to a space where you feel safe and comfortable, moving out of a town that is rapidly outpricing all of its student inhabitants was one of the things that I decided to do. So, definitely there was some lifestyle expansion. Also, to be gentle to myself, I have to think about what is the startup cost of a new light versus, you know, going to the grocery store and buying the fancy stuff that you don’t need or luxury goods. So, thinking about what was important, what I needed. I needed to fix certain things about my health.

Think About Needs vs. Wants

32:42 Samantha: I probably could have gotten away without a car, but it would have made life incredibly difficult and sometimes unsafe. So, thinking about needs versus wants and realizing that it is okay to have expensive needs if you can meet them. That’s also an obligation to make sure that other people can meet their needs, but that it’s still important to temper your wants. So, just because I can afford it, doesn’t necessarily mean I need it in my life. And so, I’m trying to acknowledge the fact that I’m building a new life and catching up from years of not being able to take care of certain things, but also keeping an eye on the expansiveness of my wants and trying to make sure that I’m not spending to create a feeling. So, do I want this because I will use it a lot and it fills a need and might give me joy? Fine.

33:40 Samantha: Am I using this to create a feeling of joy? That’s a different question for me. So, those are sort of the things I’ve discovered so far for combating it. Prioritizing financial goals is, as you say, a lot of the grad school skills that I learned have helped so far, you know, shopping second-hand, being a coupon pro, repurposing or reusing, reflecting on how you spend your money, that has all been useful. But I think in this new phase, I’m also allowing myself to experience joy. And the more I do that, the more I realize actually you don’t need necessarily to spend money to experience joy. If I have the freedom from financial anxiety, I am finding that I am finding joy in things that don’t require me to outlay money. So, that was was unexpected.

34:38 Emily: So, so insightful. Thank you so much for that. Listeners, I want you to go back a couple of minutes and listen to that whole section again, because I think it was just amazing. And there were actually multiple things I wanted to pull out, but I think the couple most important ones were one, I love this distinction between lifestyle creep or lifestyle inflation, but then also lifestyle catch-up, because sort of the whole idea behind lifestyle creep and it being a negative thing is that it’s mindless. Like, “Oh, I got a raise. That means money’s going to disappear. I’m just going to spend it on whatever, and it’s not very intentional.” And this can happen when you are living an okay lifestyle to begin with that you’re comfortable with. But what you’re talking about is when you have been living for an extended period of time, well below what is to you a reasonable lifestyle, like many graduate students are during training. And once you have the means to step out of that, it’s not unintentional at all.

Mindfulness with Long-term Financial Commitments

35:40 Emily: You need to increase your spending in certain areas because you’ve been artificially deflating it prior to that point. So, that’s perfectly fine and no one will fault you for that. Another kind of point I’d like to make, and you talked around this a little bit, I think, is that one of the real dangers with lifestyle inflation, especially something where like you have three extra incomes, some large jump like that, is getting yourself into big long-term commitments, like housing and transportation. Maybe there are some others in there, that you didn’t really realize that you were biting off so much because you were so giddy from seeing that high salary. And those are the really dangerous ones, right? So, that’s the part to be really careful is these fixed expenses. When you inflate those really rapidly, or without a whole lot of planning, but you know, to do what you were saying and just have like some startup costs, okay. They’re sort of one-off things. Even if you have a few of them at once, as long as your budget can absorb them, like that’s not going to hurt you in the longterm. It’s really those fixed expenses, especially the contracts that you’re in, that you need to be careful about.

36:49 Samantha: Something you said about, you know, suddenly the mindless spending, got me thinking it is scary how quickly it happens, too. And I think this has been instructive for me, realizing how it is possible to be, you know, the stories you hear about. Someone making $300,000 a year and saying that they don’t have any disposable income. It’s the lack of mindfulness. It’s the lack of, you know, checking yourself, checking your privilege. But I’ve learned enough in these past nine months to realize those patterns can transfer. If you don’t have contentment or if you don’t have the reflective mindset at 60, $70,000, I understand how you can get to be a rich person who thinks the same way. And not in an empathetic, like “Let’s all pity the rich,” but in a, “Oh, we really need to be checking at every level.”

37:49 Emily: And it’s part of human nature rather than necessarily a character flaw. It’s just kind of present in all of us. It’s something we all have to combat a little bit.

37:59 Samantha: And time as a graduate student doesn’t exempt you from that. Like you have to do the work no matter where you are.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

38:04 Emily: Yeah. I agree. Last question here. What is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD?

38:11 Samantha: I think the advice works the same for many people and will scale. Save what you can, always, and that does not have to be a certain amount, right? What you can, can be $20, $10, $5, a quarter. It’s more about prioritizing your future in whatever way you can. And also high yield savings accounts are pretty great. I did not discover them until a few years ago, and it’s wonderful. The rates right now are pretty great. So, save what you can and put it in a place where it will work for you, but you will also be able to access it. Another tip would definitely be, if you can afford it, get comprehensive car insurance. I think it was like $5 extra a month for me. And if I’d had it, I would not have to spend multiple thousands of dollars to fix someone else’s crime.

39:05 Samantha: So, I did not know that going in. I want to share that with your listeners because sharing financial knowledge is how I got to where I was. And there’s a lot I still don’t know. So, I want to pass that on. So, I think the biggest one though, and we’ve been talking around and about this, is to think about income and personal value in the ways in which they are divorced in graduate school, the ways in which if you step into a non-academic career job, they can suddenly become linked. And so, I think my biggest piece of advice would be to make time to ground yourself and to think about what you value and what your values are. So that even, you know, no matter what income bracket you’re in, especially if you jumped tax brackets, that you are always in touch with what matters to you, the non-monetary things that are of value, your worth as a human being, your rights as a human being, all of these things are not tied to the income you make.

40:02 Samantha: And that it’s okay to return to that. You can remind yourself of this. It can be difficult if you’re in a workplace or in an environment or a culture where suddenly you see a lot of conspicuous consumption. If you jump out of graduate school to an industry where that’s the norm, the industry I work in, we will use phrases like, “Oh, that’s only a million dollars,” all the time. And that was a shock. So, I think, keep returning to the fact that your personal value is not connected to your income. It wasn’t in grad school, and that was the problem. And that is a problem that should be fixed, but that also means that it’s not in the world beyond academia as well. Money is something you use to pay your bills, to care for your family, to build a better world, to save for your future. It’s a tool and not a marker of value. And so, just finding ways to return to that and to reflect on what you value, how you express your values through consumption, if that’s something you decide you want to do. How you can use your income and your consumption to build a better world for others. If you have the financial freedom to do that, that’s some advice that I’m starting to learn, and I would like to encourage our listeners to do. I’m sure they’re already doing it.

41:26 Emily: Thank you so much for that Samantha. Thank you so much for this delightful interview. I am so glad to have your voice and your perspective and be able to share it with the listeners.

41:36 Samantha: Well, thank you for having me. It was a pleasure to talk. I wish we could talk more.

Outtro

41:40 Emily: Listeners. Thank you for joining me for this episode. Pfforphds.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, please consider joining my mailing list for my behind-the-scenes commentary about each episode. Register at pfforphds.com/subscribe. See you in the next episode! And remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the free music archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

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