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Catching Up with Prior Guests: 2021 Edition

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Emily published the first episode of this podcast in July 2018. This is the one hundred and fiftieth episode, and over the last three and a half years, the podcast has featured 134 unique voices in addition to Emily’s. The last episode in 2021 catches up with the guests from Seasons 4 through 6. The guests were invited to submit short audio updates on how their lives and careers have evolved since the time of their interview. They also included their best financial advice for an early-career PhD if their answer has changed since the initial interview.

Link Mentioned in this Episode

Episode image of Dr. Emily Roberts with the title "Catching Up with Prior Guests: 2021 Edition" and the subtitle "Money Stories with Various Contributors"

Teaser

00:00 John: You know, life doesn’t wait and you can still be financially sound while in graduate school.

Introduction

00:10 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts.

00:19 Emily: This is Season 10, Episode 20, and today I am featuring many guest voices! I published the first episode of this podcast in July 2018. This is the one hundred and fiftieth episode, and over the last three and a half years, the podcast has featured 134 unique voices in addition to my own.

00:41 Emily: For our last episode in 2021, I thought it would be fun to catch up with the guests from Seasons 4 through 6, and a couple from earlier seasons as well. I invited them to submit short audio clips to update us on how their lives and careers have evolved since the time of our interview, as well as to provide their best financial advice if that has changed since our initial interview.

01:03 Emily: The audio clips in this episode are ordered by when the original episode was published. If you’d like to circle back and listen to any of the previous interviews, you can do so in your podcatcher app or at my website, PFforPhDs.com/podcast. To keep up with future episodes, please hit subscribe on that podcatcher and/or join my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe.

01:28 Emily: You’ll hear an update from me first, followed by the rest of the guests. Happy listening, and I am wishing all good things for you in 2022!

Dr. Emily Roberts

01:43 Emily: Hi! This is Emily Roberts from Personal Finance for PhDs. I am of course the host of this podcast and you hear from me every week!

01:52 Emily: It seems strange to say, but 2021 was a banner year for me and my family.

01:59 Emily: On the personal side, my husband and I bought our first home, which I discussed in great detail in Season 8 Episode 18. We now live in the San Diego area, which has been our dream for over a decade. Our children are in kindergarten and preschool, and after being out of school for over a year due to the pandemic, it’s really wonderful for our family to be in a routine and for them to be around their peers. We are loving playing tourist in San Diego and enjoying the incredible weather and wealth of outdoor activities.

02:32 Emily: As for my business, Personal Finance for PhDs, I am so grateful that it has grown quite a lot in the last year. I’ve simplified my paid offerings so that I can focus on what seems to be in highest demand: 1) my personal finance seminars, both live and pre-recorded, which are hosted by universities; 2) my tax workshops, which can be purchased by individuals or in bulk by universities; and 3) the Personal Finance for PhDs Community, which individuals can join. To each of you who have joined the Community or one of my workshops in 2021 or recommended me within your university, you have my sincere thanks. The reason I can continue to create this podcast and all of my free resources is the revenue that I generate in these other areas.

03:20 Emily: I’m really looking forward to starting 2022 off strong with tax season and admissions season. If you know any PhDs-to-be who need help in either of those areas, please send them my way!

03:32 Emily: Thanks for listening to my update! If you want to get in touch, you can visit my website at PFforPhDs.com or find me on Twitter @PFforPhDs.

John Vsetecka

03:49 John: Hi everyone. It’s John Vsetecka from Season 2, Episode 2 on the personal finance for PhDs podcast. Several years ago, I got to talk with Dr. Emily Roberts about negotiating PhD offers and I wanted to just offer a quick update on how I think that has benefited me up until this day. So since that time, many things have happened. I got married during this time. I’ve moved and now I’m actually living outside of the US. I am currently in Kiev, Ukraine working on the last stages of my research for my dissertation, so I am now at the tail end of my graduate career.

04:29 John: When I last spoke to Dr. Roberts, we discussed how to go about negotiating PhD offers and I want to offer an update now about why I still think you should this. When I was applying to programs prior to 2017, I was able to successfully negotiate offers at several universities. This has really, I think benefited me to this day because I was able to choose the school, not only with a great funding package, but also great benefits that I’ll talk about in just to second. I know things have changed since the pandemic and many programs last year halted admissions, and this has made many programs and departments more competitive, and so you might be a little hesitant to negotiate an offer if you receive one, but I still think you should. If you receive a funded offer and you should absolutely make sure that any offer you receive is funded, this is really important, I think you should still ask if there’s anything else that that department or program can do for you.

05:29 John: Now, this can mean more money. This can mean insurance benefits. This can mean grant money, travel money, or any other resources that they have. See if there’s anything else that they can tack onto your package to help you be more successful in your program. And if you’re fortunate enough to have multiple offers, you should still negotiate these and see which one is the best one for you. And this might not be the one with the most money, but I think the ones that tend to offer the most money and the most incentives tend to be the best bet for your graduate career because life doesn’t wait and you can still be financially sound while in graduate school, if you can start by looking at what your department can offer you so you can plan ahead and make the best of your earning while you’re in graduate school.

06:18 John: So my advice remains the same. Again, if you receive multiple offers, don’t be afraid to ask. In some ways this is just like a job offer. It’s okay to negotiate. It’s okay to ask what else they can do for you. You’re going to do a lot for them. Don’t be afraid to reach out to the director of graduate studies or whoever’s in charge in your department and see what else they can do for you, if your package sort of insinuates that maybe there’s more that is available. I’ll leave you with that and of course, if you have any other questions about graduate school or negotiating offers, you can always get in touch with me on Twitter. My handle is @JohnVsetecka, or you can feel free to email me, it’s vsetecka@msu.edu. Best of luck to those of you who are applying and I hope you have successful negotiations.

Dr. Lourdes Bobbio Smith

07:22 Lourdes: Hi listeners. My name is Dr. Lourdes Bobbio Smith and I’ve been on a few episodes of the podcast. I was first on Season 3, Episode 11, where I gave a budget breakdown as an NDSEG fellowship recipient at Penn State University. I was also on Season 5, Bonus Episode 1, where I discussed my life as we entered social distancing in early 2020, and on Season 6, Episode 18, where I discussed some best practices as a side-hustling graduate school. Since those episodes, I have defended my PhD, started a business and gotten married.

07:55 Lourdes: In my first episode I spoke about how I use targeted savings accounts to save for various mid- and long-term financial savings goals, which hasn’t changed. My husband and I were able to fund our wedding with a combination of the wedding targeted savings fund I discussed in the episode, as well as savings my now husband had, and some generous gifts from our parents.

08:15 Lourdes: Since getting married and joining finances with my husband, we still use the target savings accounts, but we’ve modified what those different savings buckets are. Buying a house, which was previously a long term goal, has now become a more short to mid-term goal as we are looking to settle down in a house of our own. We also recently adopted a cat and my husband’s car is on the older side, so we are making sure to keep a pet fund and a car fund well funded as part of our monthly targeted savings. Investing is also a big priority in our household, and we’ve been able to max out our Roth IRA for 2021 and invest outside of the Roth in taxable brokerage accounts.

08:52 Lourdes: Post-PhD I’m working on a few different things. I have a job as a research associate at Penn State, I continue to work with Emily on this podcast, and I’ve also started a wedding stationery business this year. It’s been a fun adventure to learn both the management and financial sides of owning a business. I initially invested some of my own money, but it’s been self-sustaining for the last few months and I will even be turning a profit in my first year in business. 

09:17 Lourdes: I was asked to give my best financial advice for early-career PhDs and I would say, invest as early as you can, even if it doesn’t seem like you can contribute a lot. When I was first on the podcast, I was early in my own investing journey, only able to contribute a little each month, and it seemed like the progress was slow growing. But even in the two years since then, I’ve been able to see how powerful compound interest can be when it comes to growing your money.

09:44 Lourdes: If you’d like to connect online, you can find me on Twitter @lourdesb1012, that’s l o u r d e s b 1 0 1 2. You can also find my business on Instagram @cardsmithdesignstudio. Thanks for listening and have a good new year!

Jane CoomberSewell

10:08 Jane: Hi Emily! It’s Jane CoomberSewell of CoomberSewell Enterprises here, and we last chatted back in Season 2 (editors note: this should be Season 4), Episode 8, and we talked a lot about working on a budget, and self-sufficiency when you have a family and you’re doing a PhD and you’re also running a business. We talked a lot about menus, budgeting, gardening, both for practical reasons and for your mental health. And in terms of early career financial advice, none of that’s really changed except remember to have some fun. So occasionally after you’ve obviously dealt with all the bills, go and have a drink with friends, or have a meal out, or go and do what we did at the weekend, which was go and have a game of bowling, but only with adults, no children in tow. It was lovely.

11:03 Jane: Thanks so much for the timing of this as well. I finally got to my graduation yesterday. Within the business, Joyce, my other half has very much rebranded herself as an autism advocate and that’s going really well. And for me, I’m concentrating on research, but not in the academic sense. So at the moment I have two family biographies that I’m writing that people are paying me, have commissioned me to write, as well as attempting to turn my thesis into something slightly less theoretical for the commercial market. That’s my update. Everybody take good care and if you want to get in touch, it’s Jane@CoomberSewell.co.uk.

Abigail Dove

11:53 Abigail: My name Is Abigail Dove, and I was on Season 4, Episode 9, where Emily and I discussed the graduate Student Savings Act of 2019. I spearheaded the endorsement of this bill by the Federation of American Societies for the Advancement of Science, also known as FASAS, as part of a science policy fellowship. The graduate student savings act is a bi-partisan bill that allows graduate students and postdocs to be able to contribute income from a fellowship stipend to an individual retirement account or IRA. Previous IRS wording prevented contributions from fellowships as they were considered unearned income.

12:27 Abigail: Since we recorded that episode, I have a few big updates on the personal side. I have a daughter who is 18 months old, and I will be defending my PhD in a couple weeks and looking forward to the post-graduate student life.

12:40 Abigail: The big update in relation to the episode where I appeared on is that trainees can now contribute to IRAs while receiving fellowship stipends. The language from the Graduate Student Savings Act was added to an omnibus spending bill HR 1865, and was passed into law at the end of 2019. Emily did touch on this update after our interview to share the good news with everyone in a bonus episode in season four, for more information, be sure to check out that episode. But this is really fantastic news for anyone on fellowship stipends and wants a say for retirement.

13:11 Abigail: My updated financial advice has thus changed a result of the new laws. Since everyone is now allowed to contribute to an IRA, I highly recommend that if you have the financial ability to do so, do it. There’s a maximum contribution cap for IRA accounts and right now that cap is set at $6,000 for anyone under the age of 50. Additionally, there are income caps, but graduate student stipends are unfortunately well below those income caps so not something that we often have to worry about. That $6,000 cap may sound intimidating, so contribute what you can or put aside a fraction of your paycheck towards an IRA contribution. It’s never too early to start contributing to a retirement account, and it’s a good spending habit to start. And no amount is too little.

Commercial

13:57 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! Are you a graduate student, postdoc, or early-career PhD considering buying your first home in the foreseeable future? If so, I invite you to join the Personal Finance for PhDs Community for a Book Club discussion of First-Time Home Buyer: The Complete Playbook to Avoiding Rookie Mistakes by Scott Trench and Mindy Jensen of BiggerPockets. I and all the Book Club participants will read the book and come together for a one-time live discussion in January 2022. This is perfect timing for anyone with an eye on the spring or summer 2022 peak buying season. Since it might be hard to find this book in a public library, I will give you a copy of the book after you join the Community. If you want to join the Book Club for First-Time Home Buyer, please fill out the survey, including your availability for the discussion, at PFforPhDs.com/BookClub/. That’s P F f o r P h D s dot com slash B o o k C l u b. Now back to our interview.

Patrice French

15:03 Patrice: Hi my name is Patrice French, I was interviewed on Personal Finance for PhDs on November 25th, 2019 Season 4, Episode 15. I am still a full-time employee and am near the end of my doctoral program. I will defend and graduate in spring 2022. Since then I have made some major financial changes. I’ve sold my house, given the strong seller’s market. I have paid off all of my debt except for my student loans and will be eligible for a student loan forgiveness in March of 2022. I plan to transition to a career outside of higher education, in industry, and will likely relocate. As far as the best financial advice I can give for early career PhD is really create some clear goals in mind and create a plan from which to meet those goals. But don’t put a lot of pressure on yourself if things come up. Save, save, save! I have multiple savings accounts for things so that it doesn’t really dip into my income. So if I have car repairs, I have a car repair savings account and things of that nature. And definitely don’t pay for an educational program if you don’t have to. I can be reach on Twitter at @FrenchieMSW. And that’s it.

Dr. Zach Taylor

16:44 Zach: Hey everyone. This is Zach Taylor. I was on Season 5, Episodes 10 and 11. I’d like to give a little bit of an update. I’ve taken a new position. I’m now the assistant director of admissions for communication at Texas State University. It’s the first institutional position that I’ve had after having my PhD because I graduated into the pandemic and that was a very tough job field. But I wanted to give a few updates about how I think a little bit of my advice has changed since COVID 19 has happened and has really changed the landscape, especially of graduate education in the social sciences.

17:27 Zach: I know a lot of the harder sciences like your chemistry or engineering requires graduate students to be in a lab, working with physical materials, but a lot of social sciences PhDs, things like higher education where I came from, sociology, psychology at times, does not require you to be physically in a classroom. And I think people aspiring to earn a PhD, people in graduate school right now need to think how important is the on campus, in the classroom environment? How important is that physicality? And can you save money by taking online classes or taking hybrid classes. Think to yourselves about how much time and money is spent on commuting, especially in urban areas, coming from an Austin perspective. If I was still going to school living where I live now, I would have at least an hour long commute, including a car ride, a bus ride, and a walk. And that hour could be used to make money, could be used to do academic work.

18:29 Zach: So I think that might really change my perspective on the advice that I would give for an early career PhD is really considering online options, in addition to everything else I spoke about — the cost of living in your area, what you’re willing to go without and how you can side hustle to make a little bit extra cash. If anyone has anything that they want to reach out to me, please do so. My email is ZT@UTexas.edu, just my initial ZT at U Texas dot edu. Thanks everyone.

Dr. Rachel Blackburn

19:08 Rachel: Hi, this is Rachel Blackburn and here is my update. So since I last recorded the episode of personal finance for PhDs (Season 5, Episode 12), I actually got thinking about finance quite a bit. I was in a tenure track position, teaching as a professor, but I decided that the thought of not getting tenure, and that forthcoming potential instability was a little bit much for me. And I also considered what if I do get tenure and then I’m committing to this place for the long term and is that what I really want? And the thought hit me, when’s the last time I got to choose where I lived? I also took a look at the finances because I was teaching at a public university, I was able to take a look at salaries and I could see that even by the time I might get full professor, if that was what was in the cards for me, that my salary would not go up by a whole lot. It occurred to me that I really wouldn’t reach my financial goals. So I decided to leave academia.

20:18 Rachel: I’m still researching and publishing and writing, but I have left teaching and I’m now a learning consultant for a public company. In leaving my position as a professor and moving on to this company, I gave myself a 70% raise. I’m now making more than I would be if I were a full professor at my previous university. Now I’m learning all kinds of things about employee stock purchase plans and things like that. So that’s actually where I’m at now. I’m saving more money than I ever thought I would. And I feel like I’m meeting my goals a lot faster, so it’s great. And I’m still teaching, I just do it now on behalf of developing training material for a company. That’s where I’m at and thank you again. Good luck everyone! Bye!

Courtney Danyel

21:19 Courtney: Hi! This is Courtney Danyel. I was on (Season 6) Episode 17 of Personal Finance for PhDs, and my topic was how freelancing can take your career from academia to affluence. And that’s my brand AcademiaToAffluence.com, where I teach other people with an academic background how they can learn to freelance and grow their online income like I did. We talked about how I actually only work maybe 15 or 20 hours a week, but I earn full-time income as a freelance writer. And the reason I’m able to do that is because I find writing gigs that are highly specialized in my niche and so I’m able to earn higher income for work that takes me less time to do.

22:04 Courtney: We also talked about how freelancing gave me the freedom to travel around the world and live wherever I want and so I’ve been spending the past seven years actually living in Africa, in Ethiopia. Since that episode, which was back in August, 2020, I’ve actually immigrated back to the United States, where I continue to freelance and I continue to work maybe 15 or 20 hours a week on that, but now actually have another part-time job here in the United States also. Another great thing about freelancing is that it gives you the flexibility if you wanna have multiple careers you can have them, and you can earn full-time wage as a part-time influencer and pursue a career in academia or elsewhere, which is really nice. That’s something that’s changed in life since I was first on the podcast.

22:53 Courtney: My best financial advice for any early career PhD is to diversify your income. Give yourself options. Be a freelancer, be an academic, have your own business, do something on the side, but never put all your eggs in one basket and always have options for yourself so that when life changes or you want to make a change, like I have recently, you can do that. If anyone has questions about applying your skills from academia to a freelance career like I have done, please do shoot me an email. You can contact me at courtney@academiatoaffluence.com. Thank you!

Meryem Ok

23:36 Meryem: Hi everyone, this is Meryem Ok recording on Friday, November 26, 2021. While I typically work behind the scenes as an editor for the podcast, I was featured in Season 6, Episode 18, along with fellow Virtual Assistant Lourdes Bobbio, for an episode about Best Practices in Side Hustling During Graduate School. As I mentioned in that episode, one of the reasons that I’m grateful for my side hustle is that the extra income provides me with a cushion for those occasional purchases that might happen outside of my usual spending habits. This really comes in handy especially around this time of year when there are a lot of birthdays in my family, in addition to the holiday season, so my spending on gifts and eating out tends to spike up a bit.

24:24 Meryem: This past semester, one of the financial adjustments that I made was when my university moved from paying fellowship recipients on a monthly basis to a once-per-term model. At first, I was pretty uneasy about the change, but after talking to Emily and sitting in on some town halls, I felt more prepared and ready to strategize. When that first lump sum arrived in August, I immediately contributed part of it to my Roth IRA and moved most of the remainder into a high-yield savings account. If you want to learn more strategies, check out Emily’s blog post, “How to Financially Manage a Once-Per-Term Fellowship Paycheck.”

25:06 Meryem: As a personal and professional update, I recently changed my Twitter username, so it’s now @Meryem_T_Ok, if anyone is curious to learn more about my MD-PhD journey and intestinal stem cell research. Shoutout to all my fellow grad students on the research grind – I’m rooting for you and hope you have some time to recharge in the coming weeks. 

Outtro

25:37 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. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved!

Emily: If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are 4 ways you can help it grow: (1) Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. (2) Share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email list-serv, or as a link from your website. (3) Recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and effective budgeting. I also license pre-recorded workshops on taxes. (4) 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!

Emily: The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

Is Podcasting a Lucrative Side Hustle? with Elana Gloger of Dear Grad Student

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In this episode, Emily interviews Elana Gloger, a 5th-year PhD student at the University of Kentucky and the host of the Dear Grad Student podcast. Elana and Emily discuss Elana’s motivation to start Dear Grad Student, how the podcast makes money and how much, and the podcast’s expenses. They both give advice on how to earn money from a podcast for someone just starting out and list examples of other types of side hustles grad students pursue and how generate a high pay rate over a short period of time. At the end, Emily shares a key strategy with Elana for managing her business finances going forward.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

Is Podcasting a Lucrative Side Hustle? with Elana Gloger of Dear Grad Student

Teaser

00:00 Elana: If you want to start a podcast, overwhelmingly, my advice is going to be, do it. It is awesome. It is fun. If you want to make money off of a podcast, it’s hard. That’s my biggest piece of advice. If you figure it out, let me know!

Introduction

00:20 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is Season 10, Episode 17, and today my guest is Elana Gloger, a 5th-year PhD student at the University of Kentucky and the host of the Dear Grad Student podcast. We discuss Elana’s motivation to start Dear Grad Student, how the podcast makes money and how much, and the podcast’s expenses. We both give advice on how to earn money from a podcast for someone just starting out and list examples of other types of side hustles grad students pursue and how to generate a high pay rate over a short period of time. At the end, I share a key strategy with Elana for managing her business finances going forward. In my business, I’m well into scheduling events for the spring term. If you have a position in a Graduate School or Graduate Student Association or similar—or have the ear of someone who does—please consider bringing my material to the graduate students and postdocs at your university or institute. I offer live and pre-recorded seminars and workshops on a variety of personal finance topics, all tailored for the PhD audience. I’ve noticed that my investing content, whether as a deep-dive workshop or as part of a comprehensive seminar, garners a lot of interest and questions. Most popular of all is my tax workshop for graduate students who are US citizens, permanent residents, and residents for tax purposes, which teaches them how to calculate and report their taxable income and determine which higher education tax benefits to use. If any of that piqued your interest, please start a conversation with me over email, emily@PFforPhDs.com, or visit PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Elana Gloger of Dear Grad Student.

Will You Please Briefly Introduce Yourself?

02:21 Emily: I have a very special episode for you today, Elana Gloger is back with us. You know her as the host of the Dear Grad Student Podcast. She’s also a PhD student at the University of Kentucky, and we are talking today about her podcast, but specifically the financial side of her podcast and how it’s working out as a side hustle. And maybe some ideas about how you can best manage side hustle income or pursue side hustle income as a graduate student or PhD. So very, very exciting. Elana was last on the podcast in season eight, episode nine. So if you want to learn more about her personal finances, not just the podcast side, you can listen to that one, sort of a mini coaching session. But Elana, welcome back to the podcast and for anybody who is not a listener of your podcast, or didn’t hear the last episode, would you please briefly introduce yourself?

03:07 Elana: Absolutely. So, so, so happy to be back! I have recommended this podcast to so many people since I was last on it. But yes, hello. I am Elana. I’m a fifth year PhD student and I study health psychology at the University of Kentucky. I focus on how our immune system interacts with how we manage stress and regulate ourselves and how that determines how well or poorly we age. And I host Dear Grad Student, which is a podcast. And I’ll just give you my slogan, “for all grad students to celebrate, commiserate, and support one another through grad school.” And yeah, I started it in summer 2020, 6 months into COVID, feeling lonely. Wanted to complain with fellow grad students, and I missed doing that in the hallways between classes and I made a virtual space for that to be, you know, more than just Twitter. So yeah, I love to podcast. It’s a great creative outlet. And as we will discuss today, not a great side hustle for cash, but super, super fun.

What Inspired You to Start Dear Grad Student?

04:07 Emily: Yes. I feel the same way about my podcast. What inspired you to start Dear Grad Student, aside from just lonely during the pandemic?

04:14 Elana: Yes. Well, right. So that was sort of the first one, right? I was lonely. I missed complaining. The other thing is that I really needed something creative to occupy my time that I wasn’t just going to drop off. You know, I crocheted for a really long time and I loved that, but it was like, after you make a few blankets, it’s like, you’ve done it. You know? So it was like, what’s going to be the next thing? And what’s something I can do long-term, that’s going to be fun and relevant for me? And then the other thing, I mean, I did want something that was going to be a side hustle. I don’t make a lot of money as a grad student. We talked about this on your episode, we talked about it on the episode you are on for my podcast, it’s episode 27. We don’t make a lot, but I’ve made a little bit of money from the podcast, and it’s sort of incremental. So, maybe one day this will be, you know, a big dent, but mostly it was, I wanted something fun and creative. I wanted to feel fully me in whatever that was. And I wanted to do something that was impactful to other people, which luckily the podcast has been.

Return on Investment (ROI)

05:12 Emily: I think that ordering of your motivation is really crucial. That you wanted to create something that you’re passionate about. And also, if money comes from it, that’s cool. And that would be a nice supplement. Let’s talk more about how that’s actually working out. So I know from our kind of offline conversations, how much of yourself you put into this podcast. So let’s kind of talk about the ROI here. Like what are you putting in and what are you getting out aside from the feeling of creating community and helping people?

05:43 Elana: Yes. I mean, as a hobby, it’s incredibly fulfilling. Like you said, I mean, I could not be happier. I’m probably at one of the happiest points of grad school, not just with my own personal stuff going on, but because of this podcast, so absolutely fantastic and satisfying for that. Regarding time I spend, which is of course what you were alluding to, I’ve done a little bit better this year. I have shortened the length of my episodes. I’ve gotten some folks on my team to help me out. Last year, I was spending a solid 10 to 15 hours a week, basically unpaid, to do the podcast. This year, it’s a little bit closer to six to 10, depending on length of episode, depending on the hype I’m making for each episode, you know, communications and things. And regarding what that looks like financially, I mean, I’ve actually been making profit every month, profit quote unquote, every month since March.

06:34 Elana: So like individual months, I’m in the green, I would say. But over my whole chunk of this experience, I think I still am in debt, like 134, like that’s, my net is negative $134. And that comes from a lot of different things. And I’ve spent, I will say probably the minimal amount of money that I would spend on a podcast of this size. So it’s been a lot of time to be unpaid. I mean, you really have to love something to put this much time in and get no money and be in the negatives despite the popularity of the podcast over the last year.

07:10 Emily: Yeah. You know, I think that information might be surprising to some people who know how well your podcast has taken off and how well it’s doing and the fact that it is monetized. Just to know that, okay, it is great news the last six months or so, like you’ve made more money than has gone out. But one, that doesn’t account for your time spent at all, you’re not paying yourself directly.

07:33 Elana: Literally not at all.

Emily’s Podcast’s Business Role

07:33 Emily: But then two, like it does cost money to get a podcast off the ground. And so those initial expenses, you’re still paying yourself back for those initial expenses that you incurred near the beginning. Podcasting is definitely a labor of love, I would say for the great, great, great, great, great majority of podcasters, but yeah, it might be surprising to know that behind podcasts and behind bloggers and YouTube channels and all these things like, yes, there are ways to make money from this, but the percentage of people, the percentage of creators who are making any kind of substantial money is so, so, so small.

08:05 Emily: Since you’re disclosing, I may as well disclose that for me, the podcast is not a money-making endeavor. It actually costs me a lot of money directly to make the podcast. And secondly, I pay virtual assistants to work on creating the episodes with me. And so each episode probably costs me 150 to $175 in direct costs of paying assistants and other things like hosting and doing transcripts and so forth. And I’ve decided to incur that cost because this does supplement and support the rest of my business. So for me, the podcast is technically content marketing. So it’s me talking about things that are related to my business. Hopefully, you know, people listen to this, they get something out of it. And eventually they get around to somehow sending money my way through the various means that that could happen like speaking engagements. So that’s kind of my business model. The podcast is in itself as isolated, a money loser and a time loser, but it bolsters the rest of my business. I think to me, in a way, that’s worth it. So that’s kind of my perspective on the podcast financials. Is there anything else that you wanted to add about how you’re like managing the finances of the podcast?

Dear Grad Student Main Revenue and Costs

09:17 Elana: Yeah. I mean, I’m happy to be super transparent about like what my main revenue is, the costs that I’m incurring, things like that. So I have it broken down here in front of me and I just think it would be helpful to let people know like, what is the minimal cost as I mentioned? Like, you know, so people know that the podcast has a Patreon group. I currently have 17 active patrons and I allow people to contribute 1, 3, 5, or $10 a month to the podcast. And it’s listed on the Patreon page, all the things that you can do and the reasons that I’m, you know, trying to earn money. So I have 17 patrons that all have those choices. And last month I made $60 after taxes, which maybe sounds like a lot. It’s actually not. And that’s the most I’ve ever made in one month.

10:00 Elana: And I do have other ways of making money. Like I am an affiliate for you and some of your tax workshops, I promote BetterHelp and their therapy services, Magoosh which is a GRE prep service. I’ve worked with Instacart, things like that, but it is really hard to make money with an affiliate link. I think that you and BetterHelp are probably the ones that I make the most money off of. But it’s a lot. Because with, they say that it’s like 1% of the people that click will buy something. So a hundred people click on something, you might get one purchase. My rate is a little bit better than that because I’ve never had a hundred clicks and I’ve sold things, but it’s really hard.

What is an Affiliate?

10:37 Emily: I want to make sure we were clear about this. So like, when you say affiliate, people might not know like what that means. So an affiliate is like, you’ve decided you as the content creator have decided that you’re going to have an advertising relationship with another entity. But you only get paid if someone actually makes a purchase to, you know, BetterHelp or one of my tax workshops or whatever the different partnerships are. And so it’s like, by the way, for the listener, it’s really helpful if you are going to make a purchase anyway, if you actually do it through the link where you heard about it, right? Like give that person the credit, let them get the few, you know, the dollars or whatever it is that they’re going to get from that sale. That’s really, really helpful. So thank you for those of you who are doing that. This is different from maybe like flat rate advertising where like maybe an advertiser would pay you to run a commercial based on your listenership, like based on the exposure they think they’re going to get, but they’re not going to directly track sales. Two different models. But that’s how affiliate marketing works.

11:36 Elana: Yeah. I’m so glad that you explained that. That’s one of those things that like, it’s now normal knowledge for me, but like, this was all new for me a year ago when I was diving into it. It’s usually bigger podcasts or YouTube channels that if they have millions of followers and people just are like, yeah, the exposure is fine. And then whatever. And so those are my main sources of revenue. And like I said, the costs I’ve put in, despite making, you know, 50, $60 a month off Patreon and other things, I still haven’t broken even. So some of the costs that I’m accruing regularly are things like hosting the podcast on Buzzsprout and that’s $18 a month. I do use a social media schedule to make sure that I can have boundaries with the podcast and have things automatically post.

12:16 Elana: And that is, I think about $14 a month. Because I had to up that a little bit. And then there’s the stuff I pay for yearly. And this is where the big chunks come from. Hosting the website on Squarespace: $200 a year. Otter.ai is what I use for transcripts, which is a big must for me, that is $80 a year. And I pay my transcript editors, Kayden Stockwell, and Vishal Thakkar. And you know, there’s also things like patron benefits, which people are starting to sign up for the tiers where there’s a free mug, a free sticker or whatever it is. And that comes out of my pocket because I’m really thankful for anyone who is putting enough money towards the podcast, that it warrants a free item. And then the last way that I get revenue is merch sales. And so I have made probably $25 in profit from Dear Grad Student merch that’s on red bubble.

Redbubble Merchandise

13:10 Elana: The way that red bubble works is you upload artwork and then you can put it on any item. They handle the payment, the shipping, making the product, all of it. But you get a very, very little bit of the actual sale made. So that is a small place that I get some profit, but I don’t make a ton. And the podcast was never meant for that. So that’s okay. And you know, even if I did make more, probably wouldn’t pocket it, it would probably go to growing the podcast more until I was at like a really steady rate. So, it’s a balance and I’m doing the best that I can, but maybe don’t go into podcasting for money unless you already have a big following.

13:47 Emily: If there’s anyone listening who wants to support either one of our podcasts monetarily and wants to know what is the biggest impact action they can take, they are willing to part with some money. What can they do to make sure these podcasts continue? So for you, what’s your answer to that? I’m assuming it’s Patreon, is that right?

Patreon and Networking

14:05 Elana: Is, yeah, Patreon’s the biggest one. I do have a couple of affiliate links that pay me quite a big chunk of money. The most being from BetterHelp, but I’m not going to say like, if you want to support the podcast, I would ask you to please go to therapy. What I would rather is to have a relationship with you, and Patreon really allows for that. So you can contribute, like I said, 1, 3, 5 or $10 a month, which hopefully is in a range grad students or postdocs can afford. And it allows you to have a private message with me on there. There’s benefits like you can ask questions I put in the episode, you can know episode themes early. One of these days, I’m going to have special Patreon-only merch. So you really get some extra fun content. And it means a lot to me. I shout the patrons out every month on the podcast, I take special requests from them. So it’s also a benefit for people who really like the content that they know that I’m making. So Patreon is the biggest, and I think the most fun for me as well. So I really see it to be mutually beneficial.

15:05 Emily: Yeah. I think if someone wanted to send a message to you through their money that says, I support Dear Grad Student, the Patreon is the clearest way to send that message, and possibly the least expensive for the person sending the message. Because as you said, for some of the other things, you only get like a small payout compared to what the customer would be paying via the other entity. Of course, that’s how that works. To answer the question for myself, really monetarily, the best thing that comes out of me for the podcast, similar to what you were just saying, is networking. So it’s getting it’s when listeners refer me well, either when listeners themselves have the power to host me for an event with your university or your grad student group or whatever, or can refer me to someone at their university who can. Like those sort of bigger jobs and bigger payouts literally sustain the business. So that is amazing. And thank you so much for those of you who have made those recommendations.

Starting a Podcast and Knowing Your Audience

15:58 Emily: Let’s turn the advice to a different segment of the audience. Let’s say that someone else really wants to start a podcast and they want to make money from it. What is your advice for that person?

16:09 Elana: Great question. If you want to start a podcast, overwhelmingly, my advice is going to be, do it. It is awesome. It is fun. If you want to make money off of a podcast, you have to be really, really good at shameless self-promotion. You need to know your audience. So there’s a reason that I have Magoosh and BetterHelp and things like that, that grad students or people applying to grad school would benefit from. It’s a reason why the merch that I sell is on mugs and stickers because grad students have coffee and laptops. So you want to know what your audience would actually buy from you. And then there are websites like Podcorn. That’s P O D C O R N. I know there’s others, but this is the one I’ve used before, where other people that want to advertise on podcasts, even small ones will say, Hey, we have this thing we’re trying to promote.

17:01 Elana: And then us podcasters can submit a proposal to say, Hey, we want to promote it. Would you pay me X amount of dollars to read an ad? I have never gotten one of these, but I know other small podcasters who have, that spend and dedicate more time to it. So there are ways to do it. You can also get on YouTube with your episodes. And then if you have, you know, X amount of followers and you become a YouTube partner, that’s the way to get a little bit. You can have ads on your website, which I do not do, because I don’t know how, but technically that can also happen where Google analytics can track how much money each page makes. But it takes a lot of time to build money from that. So I think the biggest thing, if you want to make money from a podcast, maybe have a big audience first, know your brand, know your audience, and do things that would make sense for them buy. Like I’m not going to try to sell wellness things because grad students don’t have the extra money to try some tea. Like, that’s not going to work. So it’s hard. That’s my biggest piece of advice. If you figure it out, let me know.

18:04 Emily: I think that is great advice.

18:06 Elana: I guess my conclusion there would just be, there are so many other ways to make money as a grad student that aren’t related to this, like tutoring or transcribing things for businesses or podcasts or a research lab. Making things for an Etsy shop where you probably get a similar, you know, the content is something physical that you can send people. So it’s not like making money. Isn’t possible. Like, I don’t want the total takeaway message from this episode to be grad students cannot successfully have a side hustle. Because that’s not it, but we already have a full-time and a half job probably. So the time it takes to get something that is lucrative, we don’t have as much. That’s where it gets tough.

18:47 Emily: Yeah. I agree. Podcasting is an ultimately very indirect way to make money, if that is your goal at all. And until you get very, very big, you’re not really directly making money.

Commercial

19:00 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. If you are a fan of this podcast, I invite you to check out the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community. The community is for PhDs and people pursuing PhDs who want to take charge of their personal finances by opening and funding an IRA, starting to budget, aggressively paying off debt, financially navigating a life or career transition, maximizing the income from a side hustle, preparing an accurate tax return, and much more. Inside the community, you’ll have access to a library of financial education products, including my recent set of Wealthy PhD Workshops. There is also a discussion forum, monthly live calls with me, and progress journaling for financial goals. Our next live discussion and Q&A call is on Wednesday, December 15th, 2021. 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.

Finding Your Unique Space as a Grad Student

20:12 Emily: So you just mentioned a couple of great examples of ways that graduate students can have a lucrative side hustle that is not podcasting. I would say like generally speaking, the fastest way to make money is to sell services. So like you can immediately start making money if you are putting yourself out there for tutoring, like you just said. Or writing or editing services or coaching services, if that’s within your wheelhouse. Selling sort of directly your time or how you apply your time to like a project is the fastest way to make money. It’s not necessarily the most lucrative. Unless I would say as a subset of that, you look at what your really special skills are. Like, what makes you unique in the marketplace? And so for graduate students, like maybe that is some skill you’ve been developing during graduate school, like maybe it’s like super ninja data analysis, something or other, and you can sell that as like a consulting service. So that’s something else to think about. Like, if you want money now, go for a service. If you want a lot of money, what makes you unique? A lot of people can tutor. A lot of people can teach, what is it that you do that’s special?

21:22 Elana: And I would say as well, I mean with how big Academic Twitter is and how much advice there is out there, there are a lot of people doing coaching in that space. So now it’s even not just, you know, what’s unique about you, but what can you provide above and beyond what people are accessing for free? And I think that that would be the really tough thing. It’s why I am not offering that kind of thing because I don’t think anything I have to say is that unique. The podcast just gives me a place to say things that I hope everyone knows accessibly. And so it’s really hard to be unique. I think that that’s really something that people don’t quite understand. I don’t know if it’s that we all just think we’re special or what. But I’m having a very hard time on a regular basis figuring out what is unique for the podcast. And that’s something that I’ve spent a lot of time doing to make the podcast something. But when we think about like you said, services, it is hard to sell yourself. That’s why I’m not doing it. I’m selling, you know, the podcast, I’m selling merch, blah, blah, blah, because that’s something that is so hard. And I don’t know if I have the self-esteem for it. I mean, it’s tough, it’s tough.

22:24 Emily: That’s such a good point. I’ve had like, if this will help people who are feeling that way, I’ve had several episodes on the podcast, and I’ll try to link everything I can think of later in the show notes of people who have done things, like consulting, something very relatively high ticket for a graduate student, finding their unique space. And I think a lot of times that just starts with like, you talking about your work with people who aren’t necessarily your peers. So like pivoting, like out of academia and looking in the wider world where they have more money for higher pay rates and like asking yourself, how can my services help these people in this other area who don’t typically interact with PhDs and academics? And maybe what I do seem special. I don’t think it’s special inside academia, but maybe it is special in this other setting. And how can I connect with those people? And this often results in like amazing like work experience and growth experiences. I have an episode with Dr. Chris Caterine that I published recently, we’ll link in the show notes on yeah. Taking those skills that you developed in academia, outside of academia. And having them be really valued because they’re rare. They’re not rare at university, but they’re rare elsewhere.

23:32 Elana: Yeah, for sure.

Impact of Podcast on Personal Finances

23:33 Emily: You mentioned that in recent months, you’ve made something like $60 a month on average from Dear Grad Student. Is that impacting your personal finances at all at this point? Like, are you actually taking that money home? Are you reinvesting it somehow? What are you doing with it?

23:48 Elana: Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, I’ll say sort of broadly, you know, I track everything for the podcast on this, like Google spreadsheet, because I don’t have a lot of money going out or coming in. So it’s very easy. There’s, you know, three or four lines filled out every month. It’s not high-tech. And because I’m tracking, oh, you know, what is my net gain or loss of the podcast since I started it in August, 2020, I know that I’m still like in the negative one thirties, like I mentioned. So right now, when I get paid from the podcast, it goes into my checking account and it just becomes part of whatever I’m paying off of my credit card or throwing into savings. I’m just replenishing at this point, even though it’s been long-term, like I bought the podcast website in February of 2021. Technically, you know, the $200 I spent I’ve made back, but in all with everything I’ve spent, I haven’t.

24:33 Elana: So right now, it’s just going into my bank account, like normal income, almost like I’m not even seeing it. When I get to the point of hitting zero, which, you know, cross fingers because we’re coming up on a one year of Otter and one year of the website and I’m going to start all over again. But when I get to $0 and I can start actually making profit and, you know, and getting somewhere, I think that will be a question of how much of this do I want to invest in the podcast for what? Right? What’s going to have the biggest gain and growth for the podcast? Like the website was a big one, huge. Transcripts, huge. So the question really will be what is going to be the thing that makes this income even higher? And from there, I can start thinking about investing or fun things or other things like that. But for right now, just replenishing, just trying to hit zero because, you know, I don’t want to be in debt for this. I don’t want to like regret, and I don’t, but I don’t want to be in debt from it. Even $130, like that’s a lot for a grad student.

25:34 Emily: May I make a recommendation?

25:35 Elana: Yes! Help!

Keeping Business and Personal Finances Separate

25:38 Emily: If listeners, as I was talking about earlier, want to learn more about this recommendation, I’m just about to make, I have a course inside my Personal Finance for PhDs Community called Best Financial Practices for Your Self-Employment Side Hustle. And you can find that course directly at pfforphds.com/S E S H for self-employment side hustle. So go there. But the basic basic basic tip is to have some separation between your business finances, and you do have a business, now, even if your business is in the red, you still have a business, and your personal finances. And so I totally understand what you’ve been doing because you’re still in the red net over time and it makes sense that you’re paying yourself back with whatever, you know, monthly profit you have. But once you get to that zero point, once you get to being in the black overall, my recommendation is to have a separate checking account where you’re running everything for your business through that.

26:28 Emily: So all the expenses are paid from there. All the income goes to there. At first, you may not pay yourself, right? Once you’re back to black, you’re not relying on this income, let it build up a little bit in that account. And then you can make decisions about, do I want to reinvest in something? You know, you can save up for maybe a bigger expenditure using that account. Or maybe the answer is no, I want to pay myself a tiny bit for the massive amount of time that I’m putting into this. I’m going to set a salary for myself. And it almost sounds like silly to say that because you know, when we’re talking like $60 a month level, like maybe you would have the ability in a few months to pay yourself a hundred dollars a month. Maybe you’d have that ability.

27:07 Elana: I mean that’d be incredible, because a hundred dollars goes a long way as a grad student.

27:11 Emily: It does. And especially a hundred dollars you can rely on. So this is not like, oh, maybe I’m going to get 60 or maybe 150, or maybe this other amount. When you have the separation between your business finances and your personal finances, once again, you build up some kind of buffer to, you know, ride out the ups and downs. You can make these regular salary transfers. And then maybe it starts out at a hundred dollars, but then maybe in six months, it’s 200 and then maybe it’s 500 and then maybe $1000.

27:37 Elana: It’s the dream, right? It’s the dream.

27:38 Emily: Exactly. And this is how I’ve handled my business as well. Like my salary, I didn’t pay myself a salary for a while, and for a while was a thousand dollars, and then it was 2000, and then et cetera, et cetera, we’ve gone up from there. But I think it’s so, so helpful just mentally to have that separation. Because you don’t feel like you’re being, like you mentioned earlier about like not wanting to put yourself out there and sell and stuff like that. Like, how well you’re doing with selling doesn’t have to immediately impact her personal finances. You can have this degree of separation. So, that’s the first tip.

Facilitating Taxes for Business

28:11 Elana: Yeah, that’s good for the boundary of it. I mean, I hear that and my first thought is like, Ooh, when do I have to start paying taxes on this kind of thing? But I know that that’s the next step. My mom can help me with that. It’s going to be okay. But I know that that is sort of the next step. And maybe that’s what I should have said. Like, I’ve thought about it. It kind of feels dramatic, but I think that I just need to let go of that mindset. Like it isn’t dramatic. Like you said, this is a business, you know, as much as it’s fun, and it really is a hobby. I mean, this is really a passion project for me. There’s income going in and out, and maybe I should start treating it that way.

28:41 Emily: It’s going to be a lot easier come tax time to have this easy record in this one bank account of all of your expenses. You’re not going to have to go hunting through your personal expenses to find all the charges from XYZ different services that you use. So like, that’s one of the main reasons to do it. One is the personal finance reason of the separation. One is the tax simplicity of like the tracking of it. I am very, like we said, this is September, 2021. I think you’re going to sound like you’re going to be in the black in 2021, right? Like overall?

29:10 Elana: Oh wow, I hope so. From your mouth to God’s ears. I mean, truly let’s hope so.

29:15 Emily: So, 2021, you get to file your schedule C and pay tax on this whatever amount of income it ends up being above your expenses. It’s going to be helpful to have that separate account. But yeah, separate account and eventually a salary that you can build into your budget.

29:32 Elana: I’m excited to tell you when I get there. I’ll definitely let you know, I’ll tweet at you. I’ll say Emily, it’s happened. It’s time. I made it.

It Takes Time to Build Something

29:40 Emily: Anything else we want to talk about in this episode about, you know, starting a side hustle, managing finances from a side hustle? Any other comments you want to make?

29:48 Elana: Yeah, I think my biggest thing is that it takes time. Don’t get discouraged if you are trying to build something. I mean, you know, when I started the podcast, I had 372 followers on my personal Twitter account. I ended up having my tweet go viral, which is really what started and launched the podcast. But it takes time, you know, over a year I’ve had like 26,000 downloads. I have almost 5,000 followers on Twitter, over a thousand on Instagram. But all of that has taken all of those hours I mentioned with basically zero income and being in the negatives. So don’t give up, if you have a passion project and you want to go for it and it might make you money, go for it. But you never know if it will or not. And I think that it has been so satisfying and fulfilling in my personal life that, you know, here we are over a year into me doing it. And I don’t even care that I’m in the negatives, but I’ll be super happy when I’m not anymore. So let the passion fuel it rather than the money. Because I feel like that spark will leave really quick if you become impatient with that part.

30:49 Emily: I totally, totally like could not agree more that when you start this kind of thing, creating content that maybe will eventually result in money, you have to be passionate about it to get it off the ground. You know, you mentioned earlier when you had the idea to start the podcast that you wanted something that you were going to stick with long-term. Frankly, a lot of people don’t stick with podcasting, long-term, right? Like most people produce a few episodes and then it’s a lot of work.

31:11 Elana: Yeah, the average is about seven. I saw that online. It was like a threat. It was like, the average is like, they’ll make seven and they’ll stop forever. And I remember when I published my seventh episode, I was like, yeah, watch me. You know, like it became like a dare to myself, and then when I got the followers, it was like, well, now people are expecting a weekly episode. And of course, if I was like burnt out, people are like, oh my God, like, we don’t care to take a week off. But generally I’m like, I have a schedule. I have a structure. People are expecting an episode and I want this to keep growing. So it fuels me.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

31:41 Emily: Okay. So final question that I ask all of my guests and I asked this to you last time, maybe you’ll come up with something new.

31:46 Elana: I have something new. I’m ready to go.

31:48 Emily: Okay, good. What is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? It could be something that we touched on in this episode or it could be something completely different.

31:56 Elana: Yes. So this is going to be sort of a bridge between the last episode and this one. You said that was season eight, episode nine. Okay. Everyone should go listen to it. It was a great conversation. So I think my best financial advice bridging these two together is follow a budget early, and listen to financial tips about how to grow wealth at any income. Ever since I was on this last podcast, I’ve been looking for other places where I can also learn about this. One place that I’ve gone, there’s a podcast and Instagram account called Her First $100K, which is kind of like a feminist approach to women building income, which is like, I’m living for it. Your podcast. I’ve listened to many, many, many additional episodes. Like, before I think I’d listened to like what I thought were quote unquote relevant. And now I’m like, just listen to more because you’re going to find bits and pieces, especially when you have like the Q&A section at the end, which may be, or may not be related.

32:47 Elana: I’m like, that’s where I’ve learned the most. I’ve now invested, I know you told me to stop putting money in my Roth IRA. And I did to keep that in my bank, but, I invested that in a mutual fund and I learned a lot about, you know, what to pick. So I think similar to my last advice, it’s about the little steps, but realizing that even at a small income, you can start making those steps. Even at a small income, you can build things and don’t be afraid to go for something. Don’t be afraid to try to make money on the side. There’s nothing wrong with that. And you know, at the end of the day, we’re all just trying to build the best lives for ourselves.

33:21 Emily: I love that. I love finding some people to follow who are having these conversations that feel relevant to you. So like I’m sitting in this like grad student, PhD, academic like perspective on this, but obviously you can learn a ton. And I learned a ton from people outside of that specific niche. And so finding someone else, I mean, there’s so many in the financial space content creators now, like you’re going to find someone that you can identify with, whether it’s Her First $100K, excellent, excellent brand. Whether it’s, they’re all these, like people, you know, people of color and like first gen, you know, college graduates, you know, if that’s the group you are in, like, you can find someone who’s speaking to that audience and will address your, you know, the particular issues that I might not be talking about. Because I’m focused on people in academia. So like assembling like a team of experts that you’re like listening to.

34:09 Elana: Yes, it’s my like mentorship team and they don’t even know about it.

34:11 Emily: Exactly. Excellent, excellent strategy. Well, Elana, it’s been such a delight to have you on again. I’m so glad we were able to do this. I don’t know when this is going to be released, but I will be on your podcast in tax season. So check Dear Grad Student in tax season for that one. And yeah, it’s just great to have you, and thank you so much for coming.

34:30 Elana: Thank you so much for having me again. I have loved this partnership that you and I have built and the collaborations back and forth. Your episode will be coming out on Dear Grad Student at the end of January. So really like, beginning of tax season for me, but maybe that’s actually middle of tax season for normal people who are on top of their finances. But yes, end of January. And then for anyone listening who has not heard of me or Dear Grad Student before, you can find everything for the podcast at deargradstudent.com, you can find me on Twitter @DearGradStudent or @Elana_Gloger. You can find the podcast on Instagram, @DearGradStudentPod. You can find me on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or anywhere. I’m really easy to Google. So I hope you’ll join me if this was interesting, and definitely listen to Emily’s episode on my podcast we’ve already done. You can find that at deargradstudent.com/episodes/27.

35:17 Emily: Perfect. Thank you so much!

35:18 Elana: Thank you!

Outtro

35:26 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. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved! If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are 4 ways you can help it grow: 1. Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. 2. Share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email list-serv, or as a link from your website. 3. Recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and effective budgeting. I also license pre-recorded workshops on taxes. 4. Subscribe to my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe/. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance…but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

This PhD Entrepreneur Advocates for Universal Basic Income (Part 2)

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Jim Pugh, the founder of ShareProgress and co-host of the Basic Income Podcast. Jim defines universal basic income and outlines how it would alleviate poverty and other social ills, including results from research and real-life experiments with basic income. He describes the possible avenues by which universal basic income could be funded and whether it would replace our existing social safety nets. Jim and Emily speculate about how universal basic income might affect higher education funding, including PhD stipends and postdoc salaries, and PhD trainees themselves.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

PhD universal basic income

Teaser

00:00 Jim: You could basically think of this as universal basic fellowships for PhD students because I think that the dynamics that come with it very, very closely would match what it would be if you were getting a fellowship of the same size.

Introduction

00:18 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 six, episode two, and today my guest is Dr. Jim Pugh, the founder of ShareProgress and cohost of The Basic Income Podcast. In this second half of our interview, Jim articulates what basic income is and how it would alleviate poverty in the United States, including results from recent research and experimentation. He describes the possible avenues by which it could be funded and whether it would replace our existing social safety nets. We speculate about how basic income might affect higher education, including PhD stipends and postdoc salaries. Without further ado, here’s the second part of my interview with Dr. Jim Pugh.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:06 Emily: We’re back now with part two of my interview with Dr. Jim Pugh. In part one, he told us all about how he started a business a few years after graduate school, which ultimately allowed him a great deal of time freedom. So, his business pays for his lifestyle, but he only works at this point about five hours a week on the business. And that has allowed him to pivot to his advocacy work around universal basic income, which is what we’re going to be hearing a lot more about today. So, Jim, thank you so much for continuing this interview with me. And we want to start off with a basic question about universal basic income because frankly, I probably would not have really heard about this except that you and I are Facebook friends. And also, we’re recording this in September, 2019 and Andrew Yang is a candidate for the democratic nomination for president. So, between those two things, I’ve kind of heard a little bit about basic income, but I would love to hear a lot more about what it actually is from you.

01:59 Jim: Sure. Well, so, just to start with the definition. A universal basic income is a policy that would provide every single person in the country with unconditional cash payments regularly–most people talk about once a month–that’s actually enough to cover basic needs. And the idea of it is that, if you were to enact this, you eradicate absolute poverty. You’re ensuring that everyone does have enough money to cover the fundamentals. And so, in some ways it’s very, very simple because it’s just giving people some cash. But in other ways, we’re potentially talking about something very radical because we would for the first time be saying, we are fully abolishing absolute poverty. We’re saying that absolutely no one in the country should be poor and that we’re going to structure our systems with that in mind. And so the ramifications of that are pretty profound as far as what does it mean for work? What does it mean for health? What does it mean for people’s general lifestyle if you’re actually establishing that fundamental financial security floor?

Benefits of Universal Basic Income (UBI)

03:12 Emily: Okay, so let’s first take the benefits–the upsides of this–and let’s leave aside, for the moment, the practicalities of it, but just to talk about the vision for what this society might be like. So, what are the benefits that people might experience maybe who are currently in poverty but would be lifted out of that through UBI? You started to talk about this a little bit at the end of the last episode. So, there’s actually been research done in this area and there’s been some experimentation. So, can you talk a little about what we know already about how this might change things for people?

03:43 Jim: Yeah, so I think there are the obvious things that we know when people are poor, they can’t afford food or at least healthy food. They may be having trouble finding somewhere to live. They may not be able to take care of themselves. So, if you’re actually ensuring that everyone is up above the poverty line through just regular cash transfers, those are all things that are addressed, first order of facts. But I think beyond that, that’s where things start to get quite interesting because we have seen more and more evidence around how poverty and financial insecurity, if not causing, are at least are greatly contributing to a lot of other issues that we’re dealing with today. And so, people when they are approaching any aspect of their life, they can either be in an abundance mentality where they think, “Okay, I have enough. I can think bigger picture.” Or a scarcity mentality where they feel constrained, which basically gives people tunnel vision that they’re only thinking about what’s right in front of them.

Abundance Mindset, Higher IQ

04:51 Jim: And that difference has huge impacts on what happens to people. So, first off, there have been studies just looking at general intelligence, and there is a substantial shift in people’s IQ level between those two different headspaces. I think it’s around one standard deviation, so about 10 IQ points, smarter when you’re in an abundance mindset as opposed to a scarcity mindset. So, you’re making better decisions. Second, as I said, when you get that tunnel vision and so it means you’re just thinking about what’s right in front of you, it basically prevents you from longterm planning. You can’t be thinking about, “What is my life going to be even a year, much less, five, 10 years down the road?” if you’re worried about, Oh, how am I going to put food on the table tonight or tomorrow? And so, it allows people and encourages people to plan better, to make better longterm decisions which has big impacts around choices on education, choices around what sort of work they pursue, and ultimately, where they do end up in five, 10 years down the road.

Scarcity Mindset Damages Mental and Physical Health

05:58 Jim: And so, beyond just being able to afford health treatments, there’s also a lot of evidence that when you’re in a scarcity mindset, when you’re in poverty, it’s extremely damaging for mental health. And also for physical health, the stress has an impact on that as well. Crime–strong, strong correlation based on people’s financial security as to whether they’re more or less likely to commit crimes. And so there’s all of these second and third order implications around how things would look in our society if we weren’t to have this absolute poverty. That’s seems incredibly promising. And so, that’s why, again, our typical approach as a society is to, when something’s going wrong, to treat the symptoms of it. And this, instead, is really saying, “Let’s actually try to take a step back, deal with some of the underlying causes, and see how much easier that makes dealing with all the rest of this stuff.”

UBI and Job Flexibility

07:00 Emily: Okay. Sounds amazing. It sounds very, very compelling. I’m wondering a little bit more about what the vision for what this society may look like, should we bring it about. You talked earlier about jobs. And so, is the idea that not as many people would need to work? There wouldn’t necessarily be as many people in jobs? Or is the idea that you would have just more freedom and flexibility around when you want to work and when you went to have further training? How does this relate to the jobs, I guess is what I’m asking?

07:28 Jim: I think much more the latter. So, the idea is not that this is something that’s going to replace jobs wholesale. I think it does allow you to pursue a more general definition of work, I would say. And so, in the sense that “job” right now means a fairly specific thing in those conversations about more like a nine to five, like ongoing, consistent workplace. This does give you additional flexibility to think a bit differently about what is the right form of work for you to be doing. So, whether that’s part-time, whether that’s taking some time to get more of an education in the area that ultimately is going to allow you to do something that you feel better about and maybe much more productive for society. Whether it’s going to give you the flexibility if you want to do some sort of family care or staying home with children or elderly folks.

UBI Facilitates Entrepreneurship

08:25 Jim: Another one is entrepreneurship. If you’re considering starting a company or doing something that, in its early stages, may not be giving you a steady paycheck–having more flexibility around that as well. So, it opens up all these doors that most folks, I would say, don’t really have access to at this point in time. As far as overall impact on how much people are working, there have actually been a number of studies on this. And what it suggests is the results vary. That there are certain situations where, when you give people regular, unconditional cash, they work more. It seems like, either through stimulating the local economy and creating jobs or by giving people that flexibility, they end up doing more work. So, Alaska for the last 40 years has actually had a universal income provided by oil in the state. And recent studies have found that the overall work rate hasn’t changed, but you see a lot more people engaging in part-time work than you have in the past. Or, certain groups, studies have found there is a decrease in work, quite consistently actually across studies. The ones where that’s only really stood out is parents with young children and teenagers, basically. And interviewing folks involved in that, it seems like the former is spending more time staying home with kids, the latter spending more time at school. So, again, it’s not captured as work in how we measure it today, but it actually is work and potentially much more pro-social work than they might otherwise be engaged in.

10:06 Emily: So, this is really reminding me of–so I have not read this book. The book is Your Money or Your Life by Vicky Robin, I want to say. And she has a coauthor. Anyway, I heard a podcast interview with her within the last few weeks and she was talking about how in our current society, like you’re saying, there’s a lot of work that is not inside a job, right? There’s a lot of work that people do in our society to further it. A lot of women do this kind of work and it’s not valued in terms of a paycheck from a job, right? That doesn’t mean it’s not contributing to society. And so, I don’t remember if they specifically talked about basic income on that podcast, but this is a way to sort of reframe what counts as work and what counts as doing something valuable with your time.

UBI and Social Safety Nets

10:51 Emily: Yeah. Okay. So, I think I’m getting you here. I have another question: would this replace the social safety nets that we have currently and expand them, I guess you could say?

11:03 Jim: So, there are mixed opinions on this amongst people who advocate for basic income. I’m actually in the camp saying that this should not initially be treated as a replacement for any social programs. And I think the reasons are: one, is that I think there is widespread recognition across the political spectrum that our social safety net is not working as well as we would like it to. You get very different opinions as to what would allow it to work as well as we would like it to. But no one is satisfied with where it’s at. I think a lot of people have talked about, “Let’s provide basic income and then just cut much, if not all, of other social programs because this will eradicate absolute poverty. Why do we need to worry about anything else?” And there are actually, I would say, a lot of edge cases here where it’s people who are dealing with some specific challenge for which cash on its own is not going to quickly solve it. It will help a lot in many situations. But I think there is the risk that if you say, “All right, we’ll get rid of this other stuff and just give you cash,” you’ve basically taken a problem that requires multiple parts to solve and just replaced one part with another. And, in some cases, maybe they keep people worse off because of that.

Targeted Interventions Beyond UBI 

12:25 Emily: Can you be more specific about what is being provided to people now that’s not money?

12:29 Jim: Yeah. So, I think disability being a good one where disabilities can look very different for different sorts of people. And in some cases, the support you would need to actually be able to live with disabilities requires much more than what a basic income would provide. And so, that’s a case where, if someone were to say, “We’re going to wipe everything off the books and just give you that,” a lot of people in that situation are going to be left far worse off. I think there are specific issues around addiction, in some situations, housing assistance where there is obviously there are areas where housing is far, far more expensive. And so, to think that a national UBI would actually be enough for people in the Bay Area to be able to get by, it’s not realistic. And so, that’s a situation where a targeted intervention beyond the UBI is going to be important.

13:22 Jim: And then I think there are other ones where it may be some general challenge where someone’s falling out of the workforce or coming back from deployment abroad where, again, making sure that they have enough cash is important, but there are additional services that come beyond that that also much better set them up to succeed than the cash on its own. And so, I think that that’s a key thing here is to recognize both how transformative and valuable UBI could be, but also that it’s not a panacea. It’s not a silver bullet. It’s something that will need an ecosystem of additional supports if we actually want to have an effective safety net. And so, I don’t think the safety net that we have right now is doing that well enough, and we need to be rethinking that. But I think that there’s a danger when people say, “UBI instead of that,” that we throw the baby out with the bathwater and end up in a situation where people may be much worse off than they are today.

Regional Cost of Living Considerations

14:25 Emily: Yeah. I think because this is, I don’t necessarily want to say it’s a new idea. I mean, you said Alaska has been doing something like this for 40 years, but it’s gained maybe national attention only in recent years. So, this is still an idea that’s being worked out. And at the policy level, if viable, we don’t know exactly what the ultimate solution would look like. And presumably, it would change over decades and generations anyway. So, I’m glad you brought up the cost of living question. Because the U.S. is very diverse in terms of cost of living. Is the ultimate idea still that people would get the same amount of money no matter where they live? Maybe with some additional help, like you were just saying, for certain people in certain areas?

Psychological Implications

15:05 Jim: So yeah, a key part of it is–and I don’t think I said in my original definition, but the idea is–this would be the same amount to everyone. And there are a couple reasons for that. One is logistical that it becomes much easier to manage if it’s the same for everyone. But the other is more psychological. One of the reasons for taking a universal approach is to try to eliminate stigma associated with receiving support, which in our modern age, we all see how much stigma is associated with receiving various forms of welfare. And that, if it’s something that everyone in society is getting, you’re able to get around that. Because why is it wrong for the homeless person on the street to get the check every month if I’m also getting my check every month?

Regional Supplements

15:52 Jim: And so, that’s another reason to have the equal, universal amount. But as you say, what that means is that in particularly different regions across the country, you’re going to see big differences as far as the implications of that. So, there certainly are parts of the country where if you were giving everyone a thousand dollars a month, you can survive without too much difficulty. If you’re in the Bay Area or other places, that does not get you very far. And so, that’s an area where you do need to have something beyond that. There’s been some discussion around regional supplements where you might be able to top up a equal federal amount with something that goes up more for more expensive areas. But I think beyond that, yeah, there may be other targeted interventions that are important.

UBI Increases Mobility

16:46 Jim: I think one question that comes up that we don’t really have a good answer to but people wonder about is, if you’re providing the basic income to everyone, it is going to increase people’s mobility. And so, if you currently feel tied to a certain geography for economic reasons, which may be very expensive, whether that gives you the option to relocate to somewhere that is less expensive. And then that gets very complicated because it goes into community ties and family and things like that where there may be other factors beyond just the economics of it. But it’s something that would be different if we did this and so, potentially, that at least partially would help to mitigate some of those challenges.

Commercial

17:35 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.

The Basic Income Podcast

18:34 Emily: I feel like I could continue asking you questions about this for quite a long time. It’s a good thing you have a podcast where other people can learn more about this. What is the name of your podcast?

18:45 Jim: Our name is a bit on the nose. We are The Basic Income Podcast. We’ve been introducing weekly episodes for about three years now and exploring both UBI specifically, but also, how it relates and connects to all sorts of other areas.

How to Fund UBI in the U.S.

19:00 Emily: Okay. So, I’m going to hold off on the questions that are still swirling in my head and just say, listeners, if you’re excited about this idea, or skeptical of it, or whatever, go ahead and check out the podcast and I’m sure there are other resources that you refer to from there where people can continue to learn even more. So, one more question around the vision of this, which is should we all, or enough of us in the United States, decide this is a good idea, what actually does it look like to fund this? Maybe post-transition, if there is a transition.

Enact Changes to the Tax Code

19:32 Jim: Yeah, so that’s another area where people have very different opinions around. Because, I mean, if we’re looking at it on its face saying, “All right, everyone in the country gets a thousand dollars a month,” that’s about $4 trillion, which is the size of our current governmental spending, which seems insane. But there are various caveats, I would say, that make it much more achievable than it may seem at a glance. My preferred approach to financing is first to recognize that, if you’re going to enact universal basic income, it means you need to make some significant differences in the tax code. And specifically, as a starting point, I think income tax. At its core, the goal of UBI is to provide people with financial security. And so, what that means is that, knowing you’re always going to get your check every month is important because who knows what may happen to you. And having it always there gives you that security.

20:31 Jim: But, if you’re earning a good paycheck, there’s no reason why you should be coming out net ahead, necessarily. And so, to basically update our income tax brackets such that, once people make above a certain point, their UBI is effectively being taxed away. So, maybe that’s four times the poverty level. So, if you as an individual are earning more than 50 or $60,000 a year, basically, you’d be getting your check every month and then you’d be paying a bit more in taxes to cover that expense. If you do it that way and look at what’s eventually the net cost, it drops to somewhere between 500 billion and a trillion dollars a year, which is still a lot, but a lot less than the four trillion we started with.

Shift Tax Programs and Brackets

21:18 Jim: And so, then there are different ideas as to how do you pay for that. That’s much more in line with other somewhat ambitious governmental programs. You can couple together some combination of a carbon tax, the financial transaction tax, a wealth tax. And sort of talking more about that, Elizabeth Warren wrote it up in her campaign where you’re able to raise that amount of money to cover that difference. And also, I think potentially looking at adding a few tax brackets at the top of the income level. If we were to go back to the taxation we had pre-Reagan, that would be bringing in a substantial amount there. So, with those things combined, you can relatively easily actually be able to cover the cost.

UBI and Graduate Training

22:02 Emily: Okay. Very, very interesting. So, I wanted to pivot a little bit to tie this really into more of our PhD audience because we haven’t brought that up so far really. I mean, you mentioned earlier that you know, having a basic income could afford people the flexibility to do more training. Of course, PhDs have a lot of that. Have you given any thought, or has there been any discussion around this, how basic income–I’m sure it’s been discussed at the undergraduate level, how that would affect people pursuing college degrees? You can speak about that a little bit if you like, but I am curious about what you think about how it might affect PhD training in the United States. And specifically, you know, you brought up earlier the scarcity mindset and how that prevented people from thinking longterm and it caused an effective IQ drop.

22:45 Emily: And in season four of this podcast, I published a two-part interview with Dr. Lucie Bland and she talked about her scarcity mindset that she developed during her PhD because she was living in poverty during her PhD. She was funded at a very low level. She lives in a very expensive city, and it’s something that a lot of people can relate to during their graduate training. Although you wouldn’t necessarily think about graduate students, a relatively privileged bunch, I would expect, necessarily being beneficiaries of basic income. But maybe during that training period, they are. So, can you just speak a little bit about that?

UBI and Financial Security

23:18 Jim: Well, I would actually just add on to that. What we’re seeing in the Bay Area right now is not only at the graduate student level, but actually the assistant professor level, in some places, that people are homeless. They can’t afford to live here. So, they’re living out of their cars. Yeah, I mean I think that it’s giving you that layer of financial security, which should help with that. I think, not just because it’s some extra money, but because it would be extra money not tied your employment education situation. And obviously this is not everyone, hopefully a small minority, but if you’re having some bad power dynamics with your professor and feeling like you don’t want to be working with him or her but are not able to step away because of finances you’re receiving from there, it gives you kind of that out knowing that, regardless of what you decide there, you have that income coming in otherwise.

Parallel: UBI and Fellowship Income

24:15 Emily: So, there’s actually a slight parallel there, actually with fellowship income, right? And you did your PhD outside of the state, so, maybe it’s a little bit different there. But here with fellowship income, you know, it’s an award that you receive as an individual. It’s based on your own merits. And so, it’s not necessarily tied to you staying in one person’s lab. And so, I again, I publish an interview in season four where someone was able to switch labs, did not have a good relationship with their first advisor, was able to switch labs partially because she received an NSF graduate research fellowship. And so, similar situation, right? If, you know you can go a few months and transition without a paycheck coming from your advisor, it gives you more freedom there to really seek out the situation that is going to support you best as a developing researcher. So, yeah. Excellent point there. Please continue.

24:59 Jim: Yeah. Well, I was going to say, I think you just nailed it. You could basically think of this as universal basic fellowships for PhD students because I think that, yeah, I think the dynamics that come with it very, very closely with match what it would be if you were getting a fellowship of the same size. I mean obviously with the added flexibility that you could leave a PhD program and still have it. But as far as the context within graduate school, I think that that’s basically what it would be.

25:27 Emily: Just to explore that a little bit further. Because I do think it’s a good analogy. So, one of the great things about fellowship income is that it gives you more freedom in your research, right? So, if you’re not beholden to working on a specific grant for your advisor, like you often are in STEM fields if you have a research assistantship. The fellowship allows you more intellectual flexibility and pursuing projects that are more in line with your own goals. It allows you to pursue collaborations. It’s just a greater degree of freedom. Now, some advisors exact more or less control when they do have people on a grant for research assistantships. That’s sort of up to their discretion. But yeah, the flexibility there in terms of your intellectual pursuits would then translate in terms of UBI into your general career pursuits, life pursuits. It would just be a much broader funding of that.

26:14 Jim: Yeah, I think that’s right. I think I could imagine there would also be kind of a trade-off on that versus greater financial security. Because one of the questions would be, if everyone were getting a basic income, would you still have PhD student stipends and outside fellowships at a similar level? If you would, okay, everyone’s going to be much more economically stable.

Final Thoughts on UBI and Academia

26:40 Emily: You said earlier as like a touch point that, in your vision of this, around 50 or $60,000 of income, that’s when the UBI would kind of phase out. And for the graduate student level, graduate students don’t reach that point. A lot of postdocs don’t reach that point. So, in some sense, if nothing changed on the grant side of things, then it would boost your income. But yes, the question is whether people would still be funded to the same degree given that they have that baseline. So, if the idea right now in academia is we give people just enough money to live on so they don’t have to have other jobs that distract from their PhD research, well then maybe they would just decrease that funding. So, yeah. Any other thoughts around that? I’m sure this has not been very fully explored because it’s a very niche interest.

27:24 Jim: Well, no, I think that this is a specific example of something that is much broader, which is basically, if we were to have UBI, what does that do to wages? And the theory is that it depends a lot on what type of work you’re talking about and how much there is the internal versus external motivation around doing that work. Because if someone’s only doing the work because they’re getting paid to do it, UBI actually has the potential to then increase wages because it basically gives them more leverage to say, “Oh, well I don’t actually like this work. I’m going to go pursue other options.” And a company might then have to say, “Oh, well instead of $8 an hour, we’re going to pay you $15 an hour.” On the flip side, if it’s something that people just want to be doing for other reasons, like perhaps going to graduate school since not too many people go to graduate school to get rich, then there’s the opposite potential where, if someone is basically willing to do it, assuming that they won’t be starving, then universities may say, “Okay, well you’re UBI now instead of giving you $18,000 a year, we’re going to give you six.

28:43 Jim: So, I mean, it’s a whole other topic, but I would say that that’s where unions might come in handy. But yeah, I think it’s one of those areas that it’s very, very difficult to answer and know exactly what will happen until we actually do it. So, we can hypothesize around it. But yeah, that’s an open question.

Value of Teaching and Shifting Landscape in Education

29:07 Emily: Yeah, I guess I’m also thinking about sort of we’re having larger debates and angst in academia around the value of teaching, right? Because there’s this huge adjunct workforce that is, you know, severely underpaid. They don’t have job security and yet such a huge percentage of the classes that undergraduates and graduate students take are being taught by people who are not full-time employees of the institution that they work for or institutions. And it’s just such a difficult area right now. I can definitely see how UBI would help people in that situation, right? Because they are also experiencing poverty or near poverty-like situations, many of them. But, yeah. I mean, we’re in a transition point for education broadly. Like, if we’re moving to massive online courses and so forth, maybe if your teachers are needed. I don’t know. There are just a lot of transition here. I guess when we’re talking about maybe some kinds of jobs disappearing or transitioning, teaching at the higher education level, is one of those jobs that is sort of in transition in the workforces. And so, yeah. UBI is just kind of another element to kind of throw into the mix here that we don’t really know how it’s going to play out entirely.

30:13 Jim: Yeah, I think that’s right. And this applies less, I would say. I would expect it to still apply to some degree, but on the flip side, as far as what is the responsibility of the teacher versus the student? I think, certainly at the elementary and high school level, there’s ample evidence that financial stability of the family that the students are coming from makes a big difference as far as how well they’re able to learn. And so, that’s, I would say, another wrinkle that gets thrown in here as well, where if you are ensuring that everyone who is in the class is in more of an abundance mindset, what implications does that have to what is the most effective way of educating?

Tell Us More About Your Podcast

30:55 Emily: Such an interesting topic, Jim. I think that people will definitely want to follow up with you and learn more about this. Maybe have more discussions with you around what does the potential of UBI look like in affecting higher education and graduate students and postdocs and trainees. Again, tell us a little bit more about what you do. We have the name of it, but what do you do on your podcast?

31:14 Jim: Yeah, so we cover a lot of different areas. Most of the episodes, I think like yours, feature or are centered around a guest interview on some topic. And so, we’ve covered everything from, yeah what does UBI do with the disability community, to what’s happening in Canada with UBI to digging in on some of the modern control pilots that are being done in the U.S. and abroad to what is the connection between UBI and housing? And so, it really covers a lot of different areas, but generally we bring on an expert, we chat with them, and then we talk through what are the ramifications of what they said. And so, really try to dig in a little bit on many different areas.

UBI and Healthcare, Education

32:03 Emily: So, actually one follow-up question that goes maybe more back to our earlier conversation with what does this vision look like? Does the implementation of UBI come with it or depend on a revolution within healthcare and also in higher education? You know, paying for higher education.

32:21 Jim: Yeah. So, I would say healthcare comes up a lot. And in my view, UBI can only truly be successful if we actually have truly universal healthcare because it basically counts on the assumption that you can somewhat reasonably project what is the cost of living for people across the country. In our current system. If you don’t actually have universal coverage, that is impossible. I mean we see all the time, all these cases of people having insane bills for services. And as long as that continues to happen, there’s no way to actually guarantee universal financial security. And so, I see those two things as very, very complementary and part of a whole package that we should be fighting for. And education, perhaps not quite as closely coupled, but I think if we’re talking about what is beyond just financial security, what is really setting people up for longterm success, it seems obvious that we want to make that as accessible as possible. And so, a model where everyone in society has access to higher education is certainly the way to go.

Best Financial Advice for Another PhD

33:29 Emily: Gotcha. Okay. Standard question as we wrap up here that I ask all of my guests which is what is your best financial advice for another PhD? And that could be related to something that we’ve talked about in these two episodes, or it could be something entirely new.

33:44 Jim: I mean, I think it’s just like figuring out your sustainability. So, I mean, thinking about where you’ll be going with your PhD and what is your cost of living then, but just trying to set yourself up so that you’re not heading towards a cliff somewhere, which yeah, I feel like it would look very, very different depending on your specifics.

34:06 Emily: Yeah, definitely. It’s something I talk about a lot for people who are sort of in transition, right, out of graduate school, out of the postdoc into other positions, especially when they’re moving. Make sure you understand the cost of living. As you brought up earlier, you know, in San Francisco, make sure you understand the cost of living that you’re getting into and that the salary that you’ve been offered is is appropriate for that area and negotiate if that is not your initial offer. So, thank you so much for that advice. Jim, this has been a fascinating conversation, really just the tip of the iceberg on this topic, and so thank you so much for joining me.

34:38 Jim: Yeah, I really enjoyed the conversation as well.

Outtro

34:40 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.

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

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

Links Mentioned in the Episode

PhD debt and underemployment

Teaser

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

Introduction

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

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

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

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

Evolution of Career Plans in Grad School

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

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

When Does Your Graduate Student Position End?

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

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

Plan for Income Until Graduation

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

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

Are You Considered an Employee at Georgetown?

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

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

What is the State of Your Finances at this Point?

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

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

History of Chad’s Student Loans

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

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

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

Accumulation of Credit Card Debt

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

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

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

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

Any Other Debt Besides Credit Cards and Student Loans?

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

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

14:43 Chad: Yeah.

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

Why Credit Cards Over Additional Student Loans?

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

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

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

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

The Balanced Money Formula

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

Commercial

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

Anything Else You Would Like to Share?

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

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

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

Supporting Family Members During Graduate School

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

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

How Does Your Situation Compare to That of Your Peers?

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

Universities Do Not See All of Our Financial Struggles

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

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

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

Solutions for Universities and Individuals

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

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

Are Students Primarily Producers or Consumers?

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

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

Quality Work Requires Quality Pay

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

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

Best Financial Advice for Your Peers

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

Consider Long-Term Financial Goals and Changing Needs

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

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

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

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

Outtro

37:29 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. Pfforphds.com/podcast is the hub for the personal finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple podcast, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media or with your PhD peers. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in like investing, debt repayment, and taxes. Four, subscribe to my mailing list at pfforphds.com/subscribe. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode! And remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the free music archive, and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

This NDSEG Fellow Prioritizes Housing and Saving for Mid- and Long-Term Goals

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In this episode, Emily interviews Lourdes Bobbio, a graduate student in materials science at Penn State and NDSEG fellow. Lourdes breaks down the top five expenses in her budget: housing, food, taxes, utilities, and subscription services. She explains the financials systems she has put in place to reach financial success during her PhD: targeted savings, automated transfers, quarterly estimated tax, high-yield savings accounts, and taxable retirement investments with a roboadvisor. Lourdes has decided to prioritize her housing within her budget, but still balances that expense with plenty of saving for her future wedding and retirement.

Links mentioned in episode

NDSEG fellow budget goals

0:00 Introduction

1:07 Please Introduce Yourself

Lourdes Bobbio is a fourth year PhD student at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania. She is in the materials science and engineering department. She currently lives alone.

1:55 What is your income?

Lourdes is on the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate fellowship. She makes $38,400 each year which is $3,200 per month. She says that this income goes pretty far in State College.

2:37 What are your five largest expenses each month?

Lourdes explains that the cost of living in State College is fairly low, especially compared to where she grew up near Washington, DC and where she went to undergraduate in Boston. She was more accustomed to high cost of living. Her top expenses are rent, taxes, food, utilities and subscription services.

3:08 #1 Expense: Rent

Lourdes lives in the downtown area of State College. She lives on her own without roommates. She determined that she values being able to walk to work every day, living close to campus, living near restaurants, and living by herself. She doesn’t have a car, so she doesn’t have car related expenses in her budget. She says she has never owned a car. She says a majority of graduate students in State College have a car. The town is small and there is a limited number of things to do. If you want to go away for the weekend, having a car is useful. She says there is an abundance of housing close to campus and a fairly good bus system.

She spends about $1500 per month for rent. She lives in a one bedroom with an office space which could be a second bedroom. She values having a space of her own. Because it is a college town, it runs on the school schedule. She says the cycle of finding apartments is over in November and December. She has lived in the same place for her whole time in graduate school. She says for her first year of graduate school, she wasn’t on the NDSEG fellowship. Her parents helped her pay rent a little bit and they stayed in the office room when they came to visit her. When she got her fellowship, she determined she could pay for the apartment on her own.

Lourdes says that her boyfriend has a car, and several of her friends own a car. When she wants to travel out of town, she goes with them.

8:46 #2 Expense: Taxes

Lourdes charges herself for taxes. Because she has fellowship income, she does not have automatic withholding for her taxes, so she needs to make quarterly estimated tax payments to the IRS. When she gets paid at the beginning of the month, she takes out the money for taxes right away and puts it into a savings account. When it’s time to make the quarterly payment, she has the money available. Emily emphasizes that the majority of fellows do not have taxes withheld and fellows need to withhold taxes themselves.

When she first got her fellowship and realized that no taxes would be withheld, she had to go through the process of filling out the 1040-ES worksheet to figure out the total amount that she would owe. She figured that out and divided it by twelve so she could save that amount each month. She has a spreadsheet to plan her budget for the entire year. She sets it aside in a high yield savings account until she has to pay it each quarter. Emily explains that 1040-ES is not submitted to the IRS and she has a workshop to help people work through the form.

Lourdes banks with Discover online bank and she also has a credit card with them. She puts her long term savings there. She has a checking account with a local credit union and a short term savings account.

13:42 #3 Expense: Food

Lourdes includes groceries and going out to eat in her food expenses. She says she spends more on dining out than she would like to, but she doesn’t feel guilty about it because she budgets for it and knows how much she can spend. Emily shares that budgeting is “freeing” and Lourdes agrees. Lourdes says that she values the social time that is associated with dining out. She spends about $200 to $300 per month on food.

15:42 #4 and #5 Expense: Utilities and Subscription Services

Lourdes says that she pays $30 to $40 on electricity. She pays about $25 per month on subscription services, Netflix and Spotify. She says that Audible is about $15 per month and she recently cut it. She reevaluates what she is subscribed to each year.

Her apartment has internet and cable included. She wouldn’t have paid for cable if it wasn’t included. She says that internet can be pricey and she’s glad it is included in her rent.

19:08 What are you currently doing to further your financial goals?

Lourdes has short term, mid term, and long term goals. She says she has two savings accounts to break down her goals. She has a savings account through her credit union that’s connected to her checking account. She puts money for her short term goals there. Her mid term and long term goals go into her high yield savings account.

Her short term goals include a general travel fund. She takes a bus to go to DC to visit her parents. She puts about $15 to $20 per month for travelling home. She has a gift fund as well, which helps her save for going to weddings. She has a “fun fund” where she saves for higher price experiences, like going to Broadway shows that have $60 tickets. She also uses her fun fund for buying items for her hobbies, like baking equipment. Emily says that she calls this a system of targeted savings account. This is a system for saving for irregular expenses.

Her mid term savings goals is for her wedding. She is saving about a couple hundred dollars per month for her wedding. She is also thinking about buying a house in the future and she is saving with that in mind. Additionally, because she is on a fellowship, she has to pay out of pocket for her health insurance. Recently when she had to be taken off of her parent’s health insurance, she used her emergency savings account to pay for health insurance. Now she has been saving for her next year’s health insurance premium.

26:28 Do you have long term goals?

Lourdes is also saving for retirement. For one year in graduate school, before she was on her fellowship, she was able to max out her Roth IRA. She learned that she is not eligible to contribute to a Roth IRA while on a fellowship. Now she invests in a general taxable brokerage account. She does not contribute as much but she tries to put $100 or $200 per month into it.

Emily explains that your eligibility for an IRA depends on you having taxable compensation or earned income. For graduate students, this means W-2 pay which is typically an assistantship. The NDSEG fellowship doesn’t count as taxable compensation or earned income. At this point, many people don’t bother saving for retirement because they don’t have an IRA. Emily encourages investing at as an early an age as possible.

Lourdes said when she learned about the tax and retirement savings of her fellowship, she realized that she would have to invest in a taxable account. She did a lot of research into what she wanted to invest in. She didn’t feel very knowledgeable. She used Vanguard for her Roth IRA but she wanted to try something else. She currently uses an online roboadvisor Wealthfront, which she likes so far. She says it is an easy way to get a broad portfolio. She thinks in the future she would move to somewhere with lower fees. She says she has no fees because her amount is below the threshold of $15,000. Wealthfront lowers the threshold with referrals. Her referral link in these shownotes.

32:30 What is your best financial advice that you’d share with your peers?

Lourdes advises not to be afraid of having a budget. She says many people are worried that budgets are restricting. She says that budgets are freeing, especially as a graduate student on a limited income. She says the budget gives her freedom that is very valuable and makes finances less scary.

33:50 Conclusion

How to Make Money without Working: Credit Card Rewards and 529s

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In this episode, Emily interviews Seonwoo Lee, a PhD student in electrical engineering at Georgia Tech. Seonwoo has mastered two methods to earn extra money without “working.” Emily and Seonwoo discuss in detail their experiences with garnering credit card rewards and give both beginner and advanced tips. Seonwoo also explains a 529 hack he discovered to reduce his state tax bill that is applicable in as many as 30 states. They also briefly touch on several other methods to make money without working that are readily accessible for early-career PhDs.

Links mentioned in episode

make money without working

0:00 Introduction

1:14 Please Introduce Yourself

Seonwoo Lee is a PhD student in electrical engineering at Georgia Tech. He did his undergraduate at Cornell. He pursued a number of ways to make money without actually having a second job.

1:48 Why have you tried to make money without working?

Seonwoo says that if you do it right, you can make more money per hour than working a traditional job. He says it gives you more flexibility, since you can do as much or as little as you want.

There is some effort involved in pursuing these strategies, but it’s not as much time you would put into working if you had a second job. Additionally, some people are prevented from officially working in other capacities, either by the terms of their contract or by their student visa. The strategies they’ll talk about are probably available to any PhD student or postdoc.

3:07 What are the two topics that we’ll go into detail discussing? What are some other strategies?

Seonwoo will discuss credit card rewards as well as banking sign up bonuses. Second, he’ll talk about the 529 trick to save money on your state taxes.

Emily mentions other ways to make money without working.

  1. Emily has sold items when she’s moved as part of a downsizing process. She has sold items on craigslist.
  2. Another option is Ebates *. Here, you make purchases through the Ebates platform and you are selling your information in exchange for money.
  3. Emily presents short term investing in taxable accounts as an option to make money without working. She and her husband paid off student loans through mid-term investing.
  4. Other options are receipt apps like Ibotta, where you upload your receipts and you sell your information to get cash back.
  5. Also, there is the strategy of “car wrapping,” which is wrapping your car in an advertisement and you receive money based on how much you drive. Emily recommends listening to the How to Money podcast for more information on car wrapping.

* This is a referral link. If you sign up and spend $25 through Ebates, you’ll receive a $10 bonus to your account and I’ll receive a referral fee. Thank you for supporting Personal Finance for PhDs!

7:19 How do the credit card rewards and sign up bonuses work?

Seonwoo begins with the caveat that if you can’t manage credit cards responsibly, you should not pursue credit card rewards in any form. If you pay any interest at all when you do this, you are likely not going to reap the benefits of rewards. Emily adds that you already need a good or excellent credit score to pursue these strategies. If you carry a balance on your credit card, this strategy is not for you. Emily says make sure you are using your credit card like a debit card, and if you are you can consider this strategy.

Further reading: Perfect Use of a Credit Card

Seonwoo says that plenty of credit cards offer sign up bonuses. These require you to spend between $500 and $4,000 within the first three months of signing. The bonuses will vary from credit card points to straight cash. The offers will range from $100 to $500 in cash or 30,000 to 100,000 points. Seonwoo says there are ways to meet these minimum spending requirements without spending more than you normally would.

Emily talks about fitting these credit cards into your normal spending. She signed up for a credit card with a minimum spending requirement of $3,000 over three months. She had to put everything she was purchasing on that one card. She picked a time of year when she had to pay for car insurance and flights. She timed signing up for the credit card with when she knew she had above average expenses. Reaching the minimum spend requirements is a hurdle for people with lower income.

Seonwoo says you can see if you can pay your rent with a credit card. He says the fee may be 3%. If that is the only thing stopping you from pursuing a sign up bonus, do the math to see if the rewards are worth it. You can see if you can put tuition or fee charges on the credit card. You can see if you can pay your bills months ahead of time. He says you can buy grocery gift cards to get the charge on the credit card, but then you can spend that gift card over a longer period of time.

Emily says that someone new to this can try it with existing spending, then they can try manipulating their spending.

13:00 Is cash back or points more valuable to a graduate student?

Seonwoo says that cash back is much easier to start with and understand. There are only so many cash sign up bonuses. If you like to optimize things, credit card rewards will be more valuable if you use the rewards for travel.

Emily says that there are cards with a regular cash back rate, like 1-2% back on spending. She says that is a good way to start. Then the next level would be switching to actively pursuing credit card rewards. To make rewards lucrative, you have to be able to redeem them. She explains that in Durham, North Carolina, she couldn’t be loyal to any one airline. But in Seattle, Washington, she makes use of the Alaska Airlines credit card and its reward system.

16:18 What are the pros and cons of the annual fee situation?

Seonwoo says a lot of cards that have sign up bonuses waive the annual fee in the first year. Seonwoo’s strategy is that he signs up for the card, meets the minimum spend requirement, and by month 11 he has decided he won’t pay the annual fee and he will close the card. He says some cards are worth the annual fee, but he wouldn’t recommend keeping the annual fee card to people with lower income.

Seonwoo says that if you cancel within 30 days of being charged the fee, you can often get a refund. Ideally, set up a spreadsheet and reminders to track your credit cards.

18:54 How much money have you made using this strategy?

In his best year for strictly cash, Seonwoo has made about $2,200 to $2,500 from sign up bonuses. He says he has more credit cards and points than he knows what to do with. Most of his rewards have been in credit card points.

Emily says when she was in graduate school and pursuing cash sign up bonuses, she and her husband together made about $1,000. This can alleviate budgetary stress.

20:38 Anything else you want to add on this topic?

Seonwoo brings up how this affects your credit score. In general, when you apply for a credit card, there is a small hit because you have an inquiry on your report. He emphasizes that the point of your credit score is to help you get low interest rate loans or good rewards credit cards. If you’re not applying for a loan in the near future, you can use the credit score for new credit cards. He applied for cards until he started getting denied. He waited a few months, then tried again and got approved. He says people stress out a bit too much about their credit score. He says people should recognize the point of the credit score.

Emily points out that there are positive affects of having several credit cards. She also mentions some cases where you need to keep your credit score high, like when you apply for a new residence or take out a mortgage.

Further reading: How to Establish Credit in the US

24:24 How do banking sign up bonuses work?

Seonwoo says that the main difference is that instead of requiring you to spend money, banking sign up bonuses require you to already have money. You sign up for a new checking account, get a couple of direct deposits in there and keep it open for at least six months, and sometimes make some transactions. You can get between $100 or $350 for signing up for that account. Some have fees, but the bank may waive the fee for students or on other terms.

Emily mentions minimum balances, and Seonwoo clarifies that high balances requirements are usually for savings accounts. Checking accounts have minimum balance between $1500 and $3000, and the percent return is 10% to 20% in six months. This is a good option for your emergency fund.

Seonwoo recommends the blog Doctor of Credit, who has several blogs on these topics.

28:54 What is a 529? What are the benefits of it?

Seonwoo explains that there are two types of 529 plans. One is a prepaid tuition plan, which he is not talking about. The other type is an investment plan. At both the state and federal level, it is not taxed when you withdraw it for education expenses. Emily compares this to an IRA, where you are not taxed on the growth of the money if you use it for retirement. Seonwoo calls it a Roth IRA for education.

Seonwoo says 30 states and the District of Columbia offer a state income tax deduction for contributing to your 529 plan. Most states require that you have a plan with that state, but they don’t require a net contribution for the year. He says you can contribute the money to get a deduction, then pull it out to pay for your expenses.

Emily says cost of living expenses can be considered qualified education expenses for the 529 plan. She explains that you can put money into a 529, then take it out to pay rent, and then you get a state tax deduction or credit. Seonwoo says even if your living expenses are $0, you can still do this. The amount is set by the university’s financial aid office room and board estimate of the cost of attendance.

Seonwoo explains his specific example at Georgia Tech. The financial aid office lists the cost of attendance estimate for room and board as more than $10,000. In Georgia, a single taxpayer can deduct up to $2,000 of a 529 contribution. His marginal tax rate is 6%, so a deduction of $2,000 saves him $120 per year in state taxes. So, he contributes $2,000 to the 529 plan and leaves it in there for 10 days, then he takes it out. This is all it takes to get the tax deduction.

36:37 Where can we go for more resources?

Seonwoo says he learned about this by going through his state tax return to look for deductions. On his blog, he has a college tag and he has a post about the 529. The site Saving for College is a good resource for 529 plans.

Emily says this is a strategy that you need to investigate for your own state. Seonwoo mentions that there are other education credits and deductions available, but you can’t double count expenses. This 529 trick makes use of the living expenses, because this is unique to this tax benefit.

Seonwoo recommends printing to PDF the page from the financial aid office that documents the cost of attendance. This is documentation to keep if you’re audited.

40:50 Final Comments

This episode is about ways to alleviate budgetary stress by leveraging your assets and optimizing your usage of financial accounts.

41:17 Conclusion