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How to Cultivate a Personal Brand to Land Your Next Job or Launch Your Business

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Gertrude ‘Gee’ Nonterah on why and how PhDs and even graduate students should develop a personal brand. Strategically using LinkedIn and Twitter can play a big role in attracting opportunities, including catching the eyes of job recruiters. Gee developed a personal brand that helped her transition from her postdoc position into freelance writing and teaching at a community college. Gee and Emily discuss time management when you are getting a side business off the ground and Gee’s upcoming pivot in her business.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

Teaser

00:00 Gee: You know, in marketing, going back to marketing, they are power words, right? And so, you know, throwing one power word into your value proposition is helpful because like you said, it creates some kind of intrigue and like, Oh, I want to, I want to know more about that. So for me, that power word was sizzling because when you get sizzling, it’s kinda like, Ooh, something really like delicious, or I don’t know, but you usually think about that. So definitely you know, coming up with a power word within that value proposition, within that tagline can be helpful as well.

Introduction

00:38 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season eight, episode six, and my guest today is Dr. Gertrude “Gee” Nonterah on why and how PhDs, and even graduate students, should develop a personal brand. Gee explains how strategically using LinkedIn and Twitter can play a big role in attracting opportunities, including catching the eyes of job recruiters. Gee developed a personal brand that helped her transition from her post-doc position into freelance writing and teaching at a community college. We discuss time management when you’re getting a side business off the ground and Gee’s upcoming pivot in her business. I have an exciting personal update for you before we dive into this week’s episode. My husband and I submitted our very first offer to buy a home. It felt like a really rushed decision because we were not at all logistically ready to make an offer.

01:39 Emily: We had no agent, no financing, nothing. We saw a unicorn home pop up in our safe search on Friday morning. By Friday night, we had a Redfin real estate agent and were pre-approved for a mortgage. On Saturday, we saw the house. It was booked up with appointments every half an hour all day. So other people definitely recognized its charms. On Sunday, we worked with our agent to submit an offer. Like many other PhDs and millennials, generally, we have put off homeownership for a long time. We are now 35 and have two kids. Basically, we are trying to make our first home our forever home. So there’s a lot of pressure on the process. One of the reasons I’ve been talking so much lately on the podcast about buying a first home during grad school or in one of those earlier career phases is because I wish that I had gotten this first home purchase out of the way before now.

02:33 Emily: So I’d have more experience and insight by the time I reached this forever home purchase. Anyway, I’m recording this on Monday morning. So we don’t yet know if our offer will be accepted or if we’ll do this all over again the next time a unicorn goes on the market. At least we’ll be better set up the next time to make an offer with more of the logistics in place and having been through it once. Thanks for indulging me in that update. I’ll keep you posted periodically regarding this new adventure.

03:01 Emily: This coming Saturday, February 13th, is the next live Q&A call for the workshop, How to Complete Your Grad Student Tax Return (And Understand It, Too!). If you are a funded grad student in the U.S. and a U.S. citizen or resident for tax purposes, this workshop is for you. The IRS will begin processing tax returns on February 12th. So this is an ideal week to get that return ready to submit if you want to get your refund ASAP.

03:28 Emily: Go to pfforphds.com/taxworkshop to join the workshop and plan to attend the live Q&A call on Saturday to clear up any remaining questions that you have. Saturday, February 13th is also the deadline to join the winter 2021 session of The Wealthy PhD. This is a perfect time of year to work on a big financial goal, especially if you decided that 2021 was your year to get on top of your finances or are anticipating a career transition in the coming months. I hope you will consider joining the session if you want to gain financial inspiration, accountability, and actionable knowledge. You can find out more at pfforphds.com/wealthyPhD.

Book Giveaway Contest

04:14 Emily: Now it’s time for the book giveaway contest. In February, 2021, I’m giving away one copy of The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins, which is the Personal Finance for PhDs Community book club selection for April, 2021. Everyone who enters the contest during February will have a chance to win a copy of this book. I’m super excited to read The Simple Path to Wealth in the book club because, confession time, I have not read it before. I’ve recommended the book on many occasions on the strength of the author’s blog and its reputation, but this will be my first time through. I’m looking forward to learning alongside you. If you would like to enter the giveaway contest, please rate and review this podcast on Apple podcasts, take a screenshot of your review, and email it to me at emily@pfforphds.com. I’ll choose a winner at the end of February from all the entries. You can find full instructions at pfforphds.com/podcast. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Gertrude Nonterah.

Would You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

05:24 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Gertrude Nonterah, we’ll call her Gee during the interview. And we are going to discuss something that I don’t think I’ve covered before on the podcast, which is personal branding for academics, as well as Gee’s side hustle as a writer. And so I’m really excited about both these topics, and Gee will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

05:47 Gee: Yes. Thank you, Emily so much for having me on your show. I’m really excited to be here. So, as Emily said, my name is Dr. Gertrude Nonterah. I got my PhD in microbiology and immunology from Temple University School of Medicine back in 2015. And ever since then, I’ve been living in San Diego, California. I started out as a post-doc, worked as a post-doc for about two years and 11 months, and ever since have essentially been running my business. I also do teach at a community college, I have been doing that since the beginning of 2020. But yeah, I’m super excited to be here and to talk about personal branding and leveraging that as an academic.

Defining Personal Branding

06:32 Emily: Okay. So let’s start with a little bit of a definition, because it’s not a term that’s necessarily familiar to everyone. What is personal branding?

06:39 Gee: Right. And I think, you know, there is no one strict definition for personal branding except to say your personal brand is how you want people to perceive you or how you want to be known. And that’s the simplest way I can describe it because we could go into all the technical definitions of branding and all that. But the easiest example that comes to mind is every time you drive into a city and you see those two yellow golden arches that signify McDonald’s, you know it’s McDonald’s. Nobody needs to tell you that a McDonald’s exists there. You just know from seeing that big yellow M that there’s a McDonald’s close by, right? And that’s because over the years McDonald’s has done a great job of branding who they are, what their symbols are, and so on and so forth. And so bringing that to a more personal side, right, where you’re saying, okay, here I am. Here are my qualifications, here are my degrees, here’s my personality. And this is what I would like to be known for and to be hired for potentially if you plan on working in the corporate world. And even if you plan on building a business online or having a side hustle, it is important to build that personal brand, I believe, because it is a foundation that opens the door for many things. And as we go along in this discussion, hopefully I’ll be able to share some stories myself that will be helpful.

Personal Branding in Academia and Beyond

08:07 Emily: Yes, please do. So I think it’s pretty maybe obvious why someone who’s starting their own business would want to cultivate a personal brand. But what about for someone who is a scientist or another kind of academic who wants to either stay in academia or get another kind of employee job, you know, doing what they were trained to do for their PhD? Why is personal branding relevant for that person?

08:27 Gee: Yes. And I realized that this is such a newer concept in the world of academia, right? But I think it’s become important for a few reasons. The reason its become important is because there are a lot of people just like you, even though, you know, those of us that have PhDs only make up about 2% of the population worldwide, right. There is an increasing and growing number of people who are graduating with the same degrees as you. People who have the same qualifications, who have the same educational background, and so on. Right? So, it’s all the same. So I see personal branding as a way for PhDs and academics to stand out from the crowd, right? Because these days when recruiters receive resumes, all they receive is a piece of paper that rattles off your qualifications, right? But then here’s the thing. A lot of recruiters go on places like LinkedIn to check you out before they even give you a call.

09:26 Gee: Right? And imagine being that recruiter, put yourself in the shoes of the recruiter going on, you have 10 resumes, you go onto LinkedIn, and then you find that there’s this one person that’s super active in the topic that, you know, they’re looking for employment in. They’re sharing articles, they’re making very intelligent comments, they’re engaging in conversation. And then the other nine are nowhere to be found, even though they may have a LinkedIn profile, they’re nowhere to be found, right? Just put yourself in the shoes of that recruiter. Which one of these people would you tend to go with? Especially if all their resumes, everything being equal, what makes one of these individuals, I don’t know, of course there’s the interviewing process, which helps, but to be honest, at the very beginning, people are skimming through resumes. People are skimming through your LinkedIn profile or any other online profile you have and personal branding can really help you set yourself apart. Even if you think you’re working in a super boring topic and nobody would be interested in, I really do think that by building that personal brand and building that brand, that people begin to recognize in your field, you can set yourself apart and set yourself up for success as an academic slash PhD, whether you want to stay in academia or not.

Personal Branding Will Make You Memorable, Online or In-Person

10:50 Emily: What I’m taking from that description is that personal branding will at minimum help you be memorable to anyone who comes across your, well, hopefully resume as well, but definitely LinkedIn profile. Or even like in-person networking, maybe when that happens again, or Zoom networking, we’re recording this in December, 2020. Even with in-person networking, I’m sure there’s a way to express your personal brand, even, you know, verbally or with your business card, do people use still use business cards? I’m not sure, but in the way that you interact with someone at like in a networking like capacity, you know, people talk about having like an elevator pitch ready for, you know, what you do, like a one-sentence and you know, a one minute and so forth, that probably also all plays into personal branding. Right?

11:35 Gee: Absolutely. Absolutely, Emily. So like you said, you know, when, as we’re recording this, we’re in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and nobody is going anywhere, right? We’re not going to do any networking meetings anywhere. And so we don’t even have that opportunity right now. And so I think that this is actually the perfect time for you to start building that strong online brand, because now you don’t have that opportunity. So, you know, in a way, building that run online is your way of networking until we can get back to in-person networking, but yeah, absolutely. A personal brand doesn’t necessarily have to be online. You know, online tools are just easier to access these days in general. But yes, for sure, even as a person that you meet, you know, as somebody that goes in-person networking, you can absolutely establish that personal brand with in-person meetings. Yes.

How Do You Start Developing a Personal Brand?

12:32 Emily: So I really love the idea of using this, you know, COVID-19, the stay at home order period to cultivate specifically your online, personal brand. And then once other opportunities are available to you, you know, take what you’ve developed there and figure out how to express it, you know, in other ways, once in-person, you know, stuff is available again. So would you say that’s the first and like kind of most accessible way to start developing a personal brand is, you know, your website, your LinkedIn profile, and so forth?

13:01 Gee: Well, I think, I think that there’s a step before that. And the step before that is really figuring out what you want your personal brand to be. Now, I believe in building an authentic personal brand, but you know what I mean by what do you want to be known for? What do you, you know, determining what your personal brand is going to be is really thinking about the topics for instance, that you want to establish yourself in. So let’s say that you’re working on lung disease at a major, you know, medical research center, right? And you are on your way out about to get that PhD. What other, have you published papers on the topic? What did you find, you know, as long as your PIs is willing to share after you publish, after you publish, you absolutely share. Right? I know PIs are very protective of research ideas when it hasn’t been published yet.

Think About Your Personality

13:52 Gee: Right? So but if you really want to stay in that lung research lane, then that’s one thing that you can write down. I want to, I want people to associate me with lung research, for instance. Also another thing that I like to think about is your personality, right? Are you an extrovert? Are you an introvert? Are you somewhere in between? Right? It’s good to let that shine through. I know that as academics were really trained to kind of hold back on the personal part of our lives and not share that, but if there are causes you care, you know, you want to, you want to show that. And then if there are causes you care about, you know, you want to share that as well. So, you know, before you even jump into a website, before you even jump onto LinkedIn, sit down and actually write down, what do I want my personal brand to represent?

14:44 Gee: Do you know, there are people that have built a whole brand, not necessarily in academia, a whole brand around very brash talkers, right? And then there are people that have a more softer approach. There are people in between. So which one are you, and is that actually true to who you are? So once you sit down and determine what you would like to be known for so that you can leverage that to getting that dream rule and to getting those interviews and getting, you know, building those relationships with key people in your industry. You really want to sit down and think, what do I want to represent online? Right? And then once you determine that, you can craft everything else around that.

Create a Tagline or Value Proposition for Yourself

15:31 Emily: So I’m thinking, as you’re, as you’re speaking about this, tell me if I am going in the right direction here, I’m thinking of a person almost identifying like a tagline for themselves. Maybe you can give a couple of examples of that, but like I’m Dr. Emily Roberts. I, so for me, I guess my personal brand with Personal Finance for PhDs is I help early-career PhDs make the most of their money. So something really short and simple, easy to remember. Is that kind of what you’re thinking? Like, maybe give a couple examples of that, but then everything else can kind of support that tagline that you’ve identified for yourself.

16:07 Gee: Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. So it’s, you know, you’re calling it a tagline and I like to think of it in business terms as a value proposition. Like, what do you, what value do you bring to the world, right? And so, I like to say that I write sizzling content for million-dollar health brands. Like that’s my little tagline that I have, because that’s what I do. I write, I write content for million-dollar health brands. Right. And so you know, whatever it is, you could have a tagline that says, you know, award-winning lung research, or upcoming excited, enthusiastic lung researcher or something. So yes, absolutely. You can choose a tagline for yourself, but it shouldn’t be a tagline that we have to like sit down and have to figure out it should, it should clearly communicate what value you bring to people, right?

17:01 Gee: So in my case, like in your case, you, you talk about Personal Finance for PhDs. It’s absolutely clear what it is that Emily talks about. So if I wanted to find a podcast or resources that help me as an academic with my personal finances, and especially knowing that academics tend to be not paid very well, you know I would go find Emily’s podcast, right? So you want to, you don’t want to be what’s the word you don’t want to be fancy about it. You want to be clear, you can make it a little cute, but make it clear as to what people can expect from your brand and what problems that you potentially solve.

The Power of Power Words

17:41 Emily: Yeah. And I think also going along with that, and this is something, I guess I’ve learned a little bit from like marketing is to give like some kind of intrigue or like a little bit of an open loop or something within that initial one second, you know, face that you’re presenting to the world. Right? Like you said, the word sizzling. Ooh, what does that mean? What does it mean to sizzle? I want to find out more about that, right? So does that like play into it as well? Like enticing people into engaging with you further.

18:09 Gee: You know, in marketing, going back to marketing, they are power words, right? And so, you know, throwing one power word into your value proposition is helpful because like you said, it creates some kind of intrigue and like, Oh, I want to, I want to know more about that. So for me, that power word was sizzling because when you get sizzling, it’s kinda like, Ooh, something really like delicious, or I don’t know, but you usually think about that. So definitely you know, coming up with a power word within that value proposition, within that tagline can be helpful as well. But not always necessary, though.

Don’t Wait Until You Have Your PhD, Start Now!

18:45 Emily: Okay. I feel like you’ve given us a lot to chew on already with this, with this topic of personal branding. Was there anything else you wanted to add onto that?

18:54 Gee: Yes. I wanted to add onto that, that you know, don’t wait. I see, because I teach at a community college. I get to interact with a lot of up and coming, brilliant students. And I recently actually did a presentation on essentially starting to build your personal brand as a student on LinkedIn. And I was amazed at how shocked they were that they could do that as students. And so this is something that a lot of students don’t know, whether they are undergraduate students, PhD, students, even people who have finished their PhDs don’t know about this. And I’m going to kind of plug in LinkedIn here. That LinkedIn is a really powerful place for you to start building your personal brand. It’s, it’s moved on past the days where LinkedIn was sort of like a place you went to dump your resume, and you hope that a recruiter would find you.

19:44 Gee: It is now a place where you can create content, for instance. You can share ideas. You can comment on other people’s blog posts. Twitter is another great place. That’s how me and Emily met. And you know, there’s Academic Twitter and stuff like that. And so getting involved in these niche communities that are discussing topics that you’re interested in and you’re researching can really begin to get you noticed. So don’t wait until, you know, you have your PhD. Start right now. There’s a lot of conversation happening and you should jump into those conversations right now.

Opportunities Once You Develop a Personal Brand

20:21 Emily: And just to kind of add onto that. Once you kind of develop a personal brand and are starting to be known in some niche area, what kinds of opportunities might come your way? You know, maybe you can give an example of how that’s worked for you when you developed your personal brand.

20:38 Gee: So, so good. So once I developed, I’m still developing my personal brand, but once people begin to know you and begin to know that you talk about, you love to talk about certain things. They essentially file you in their heads as that thing. Which is why, again, I talked about the McDonald’s double arches, that the moment you see that, you know, it’s a McDonald’s. So people file that away in their minds. And so when, for instance, an opportunity comes for you to be interviewed on a podcast that is relevant in your niche. People begin to recommend you, right? If there’s an opportunity to speak on a subject, and that opportunity is a paid speaking engagement, people are going to refer you and say, Oh, I know a great person that talks about personal finance, specifically for PhDs. I’d love to refer you to her, right?

Recruiters Pay Attention to Your Social Media

21:27 Gee: When you begin to build those networks and you begin to get known for a specific topic, people file you away in their minds. And when opportunities come, they will refer you without you even asking, without you even knowing that somebody referred you, you know, or somebody mentioned you. So those are some opportunities. Also, as far as jobs go, when you begin to build your personal brand and begin to establish yourself in the minds of people, recruiters do take notice of this. You know, don’t believe the hype that nobody’s watching your social media. People are constantly watching it. And especially on a place like LinkedIn where there may be recruiters looking for people like you to fill positions.

22:11 Gee: And so once you begin to speak on a specific subject or to be a thought leader. I don’t like to use that word very much, but become part of the conversation, I would say, in a particular niche, the recruiters in that niche begin to take notice, because as you begin to build networks online networks with other people, those people can also refer you. All those recruiters can discover you as somebody that is super active, because when people go on LinkedIn to search and LinkedIn has a search algorithm, for instance, and it pulls up people that are maybe relevant to who they are looking for. The more active you are on a platform like LinkedIn, the more likely you’ll show up in the first few search results. So if they’re looking for somebody like you to fill a position, guess what? You get first dibs because you showed up earlier up in the search. So those are just a few of the opportunities that can come. I definitely got some speaking opportunities, opportunities to be on podcasts, even job opportunities have come to me because of the personal brand. So it’s really powerful.

23:17 Emily: Yeah. And I would say, I, I have never done a lot with my like branding, but I think as you said, because the branding, the name of my business is so clear already as to what it is. There’s no ambiguity there. And because I’ve been working in this space for several years, I have also seen all the same things that you just mentioned of, you know, networks, my network, working for me to, you know, bring more opportunities my way, which is incredible. And I’m really thankful for that. So I can see that this, you know, this advice is wonderful for a job seeker, but it’s something that has to start much, much earlier than that. As you were saying, you know, while you’re a student, not too early, go ahead and start cultivating this. Now, maybe you don’t have to be like the most active on LinkedIn.

Pivoting to Something Adjacent

23:59 Emily: Like, you’re just saying, if you, if your goal is not at the moment to show up at the top of searches, but once you’re starting to think in that direction that you need to step it up, right? You need to, you know, become even more active in these ways to show up so that people can find your profile and so forth. But yeah, I can definitely see how this, start cultivating it immediately, basically. And I also have a sense that it’s okay to pivot this a little bit, you know, if your goals change or if you need to, you know, adjust what you’re looking for or what you want to be known for. I think that’s okay, actually. Like people might still have you filed away in their mind as one thing, but going to something adjacent is not too big of a switch, I think.

24:37 Gee: At all, you know, and, and I’ve been, you know, I’m both, you know, in the corporate world, as well as I have a side business. I’m writing and, you know, even creating eBooks and online courses. And I’ve made micro pivots all along that path, right? So I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t even think it’s such a big deal. I’ve even seen people switch completely, switch topics completely. And that’s fine. As long as you don’t switch up on us every six months, right? You know, stick with something for long enough for us to file you away in our minds. But yes, if your goals change, if let’s say, you know, you were working in biotech industry and now you want to go work, you know, as a lawyer. And so you’re pursuing a law degree, that’s fine. You know, it’s like you said, I love the word you use adjacent. Adjacent, but slightly different. It’s fine. It’s absolutely fine to change directions. And over time, people begin to fall in love, not just with your topic, but with you, too. And so they’ll follow along for the journey as well, even if it’s no longer relevant to them.

Commercial

25:45 Emily: Emily here, for a brief interlude. If you know that you want support in accomplishing a big financial goal this spring, I recommend my group coaching program, The Wealthy PhD. You and I will meet one-on-one to identify and plot a course toward your big financial goal. Past participants have opened IRAs, set up systems of targeted savings, started budgeting, systematically implemented frugal tactics, and more. Every week for eight weeks, you’ll participate in a small accountability group that I facilitate. The group will help keep you on track to meet small weekly goals that add up to your big goal. Prospective grad students, this would be a perfect cycle to join as I and the other participants can give you a ton of support and financial insight as you interview and ultimately choose your PhD program. The deadline for registration for The Wealthy PhD is Saturday, February 13th, 2021. Visit pfforphds.com/wealthyPhD to learn more and register today. Now, back to our interview.

Gee’s Side Hustle: Writing

26:56 Emily: I’d love to pivot to talking more about your writing business and you enticed us earlier. So of course, we want to learn more about it. You know, when did you start doing that as a side hustle? How did it become, you know, one of your main things that you do now?

27:09 Gee: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I told you in 2015, I graduated from my PhD and we moved to San Diego, California from Philadelphia PA. And for those of you that don’t know the geography of the United States, Philly and San Diego are on two completely different ends of the U.S. Okay. And they’re also different in terms of the economics. And so when we moved here, we realized really quickly how everything was three or four times more expensive. So even the salary I was going to be getting as a post-doc, I was like, wow, I don’t think this is going to be enough. So, and it wasn’t, to be honest. And so I wanted to find a way to make some extra money. So, because I had been blogging for about a year at that point, I decided to, to somehow, you know, become a freelancer of some sort.

28:04 Gee: So the first thing I did was actually sell social media services. If you’ve listened to me talking on this interview so far, you can tell I’m quite the enthusiast when it comes to social media. I think it’s a powerful tool to build brands. I think it’s a powerful tool to sell your services and products, whatnots. You know, it’s a powerful marketing tool. Anyway, so I began to sell social media marketing services, and I was helping local businesses who are not even in the sciences. They were just local mom and pop businesses that I was helping to build a social media presence. I did that for about two years and then pivoted to freelance writing in 2017. So in 2017, I pivoted to freelance writing and I began to write content for actually personal finance. I wrote content for healthcare companies. I wrote content for e-commerce stores. And so anything I could get my hands on to write, I would write and I would get paid for it. And that became a great side business that allowed us to take care of the financial deficits we were facing with how expensive San Diego was. And, you know, the meager pay I was getting, I was grateful for the pay, but it was meager compared to the living standards here in San Diego. So that’s how I got started.

Wearing Many Hats as a Postdoc: Time Management

29:25 Emily: Yeah. I think that story will probably be familiar to a lot of people in my audience. It is, of course, something I cover quite a bit is in these transitions, how do you figure out is that pay going to be sufficient? Or what am I going to have to do to, you know, make ends meet in a city I’ve never lived in before? That’s a really difficult, you know, kind of nut to crack. And so I think you mentioned, you know, when you introduced yourself that you are, you’re teaching at a community college, you have this freelance writing business, did you wear any other hats, remind me?

29:55 Gee: Oh man, I’m a mom, I’m a wife, you’re all these, and those are full-time jobs. So, so yeah, absolutely. I did wear other hats. And I think maybe this kind of segues into talking about time management.

30:09 Emily: Yeah, please.

30:10 Gee: As far as side hustles and your job are concerned. Yeah. So I don’t think it’s fair to be working on your employer’s time. I think you should carve out time on your own time to do your side hustle. And by and large, I stuck with that. And so usually what would happen would be because I’m mom, because I’m post-doc, because I’m writer and wife, I would allow my, at that time, my son was younger, so he tended to go to bed early. And so by nine, he was in bed. And so between nine and about 11:00 PM or 12 midnight, I’d be working on on writing projects. I’d go to sleep, wake up around six or seven the following day, get ready to go to my postdoc job and then go do that, you know, shindig and then come back and then do the whole thing again.

31:00 Gee: So in those early years it was a lot of, it was, I didn’t have any free time. I hardly had free time. I was using every bit of time I could to to build up some side income so that we could, you know, keep up with the bills. Now, I will say that over time. Yes, it gets tiring, but it’s not going to be like that forever, you know, some motivational speech here, but it’s certainly not always going to be like that where you have to work around the clock. But I do believe that there are seasons of life where you have to make some sacrifices. And for sure, that was a season of life where I made some sacrifices so that, you know, that the bills and everything could get paid at home. So that’s how I manage my time, is I find, I usually worked at night on my side business whilst I worked my regular job during the day.

Time Management in the Present

31:54 Emily: Yeah, I think that is a function of the postdoc position is a full-time job, and it’s not paying you that well. So, you know, for your particular goals of living in a high cost-of-living area, you know, you had to put in the hours. And of course, when you were just beginning with your, you know, the social media stuff and then the freelance writing, you know, I’m sure you’ve increased your rates since then. So your pay was, you know, the lowest for the side for the side income at that point, since you were just starting, and you had the not very well-paid post-doc position. I imagine things look a little bit more rosy now for your time management. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

32:27 Gee: Yes. So right now, because we are, you know, with stay at home orders and, you know, having to social distance because of the pandemic, I’m mostly working from home. So now that dynamic is definitely different. I still work really hard. And I think even a little harder because you have to homeschool as well, right? but I am finding that it’s hard with time management, especially when you’re starting, but nowadays it’s not so hard. Because when I wake up in the morning, I know, like today I know I have this podcast. I know I have to upload certain documents because I have a book bundle sale coming up, you know? So, I do intentionally sit down and plan my days, because I realize if I don’t have anything on a, if I don’t put it on a calendar, it does not exist in my mind. It really doesn’t. So, I use my Google calendar religiously. You know, I also have a bullet journal that I use very diligently and I write down like top three things I want to do in a day. Do I always get everything done? No, but at least having it written down reminds me that it needs to get done. And even if it has to be a day late, I’ll get it done. But being organized in that sense, having Google calendar and then having my bullet journal has been life-changing to say the least. Yeah.

33:47 Emily: Yeah. I would also say for me, my time management skills have leveled up during the pandemic with the kids being at home. And yeah, I find the same thing that I need to assign myself tasks to do certain, you know, block scheduling, right. Like block out time for different things, because it does help keep me on track.

Future Plans for Gee’s Writing Business

34:05 Emily: So, Gee, what are your future plans for your writing business?

34:12 Gee: Yeah, absolutely. So actually this is so interesting because recently I recorded an episode where I was talking, a podcast episode where I was talking about pivoting away from freelance writing in 2021. So I am pivoting away from it because, first things first, I did get a new position with a company writing content still. So I’m still going to be doing that, still be writing content, just not in a freelance capacity anymore. But, I still have the personal brand that I built online. I still have my YouTube channel. I still have my podcast. There are people that are very tuned into that and very avid listeners and watchers of my content. So I’m going to keep doing that, producing my content. But one of the things that, you know, producing podcasts and creating YouTube videos or any kind of content online does for you is when you build this audience, usually at the point they want to buy things from you. So I do have e-books and digital products currently, and also, I, you know, they do ask for coaching and they like, okay, Gee, you’ve been doing this and I want you to coach me too. So I’m moving more into just selling digital products and doing coaching in the time that I do have where I’m not writing for the company that I’m going to be working with. But I am pivoting away from freelance writing, but not away from writing itself. And I’m excited for those new opportunities. Yeah.

Where Can People Find You?

35:40 Emily: Yeah. Congratulations on the new position. I mean there are definitely advantages to freelancing, but the stability is nice as well to know where your paychecks are going to be coming from. Will you please let people know where they can find you if they’ve really, you know, loved this interview?

35:55 Gee: Absolutely. So if you want to find me, I actually, the first place you can find me is I have a free newsletter that I send out every week. You can go to GeeNonterah.com/newsletter and you can download a free checklist of how to, if you’re interested in becoming a freelance writer, even if you’re not, you can sign up still. But one of the freebies I give away is this checklist whereby you can get your first paying client. I’m also very active on LinkedIn. So if you just type in my name, Gertrude Nonterah PhD, you’ll find me and also on Instagram. So @GeeNonterah you’ll find me there.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD?

36:34 Emily: Perfect. And Gee, I conclude all of my interviews with asking my guests, what is your best personal finance advice for another early-career PhD?

36:45 Gee: Oh man. I wish. So this is such a great question. It’s going to be slightly different from everything I just talked about, but I wish I knew more about investing when I was an early-career PhD. I wish I did. And so ask about your 401(k)’s ask about, you know, find out about IRAs, read about it, you know, listen to Emily’s podcasts, but investing is such a great way to make money that I feel like it’s the best hidden secret that is out in the open, you know? And so, don’t sleep on that. Even as, you know, your paycheck from your job is great, but really looking, and then your 401(k) is also good, but look into even investing for yourself and learning the ropes of investing because those can pay huge rewards. So that’s one thing I wish I knew and something I’m currently doing and something that I’m always telling people to, to look into, especially for those of us that are PhDs and you know, in our early careers as academics.

37:48 Emily: Yeah. Thank you so much for that. Obviously investing is one of my favorite topics to talk about. So I love that you brought it up. I’ll actually tell people who are interested in the crossover between what we’ve talked about today. If you are a side hustler, if you are a business owner, if you are self-employed and you were interested in investing for retirement and your IRA is not sufficient, and maybe you don’t have a, you know, 403(b) or 401(k) through your workplace, please check out my Community, Personal Finance for PhDs Community, because I have a course in there on retirement investing vehicles for self-employed people. So if you’ve maxed out your IRA because you have this fantastic side income going on, but you want to do more, I discuss the different options available to you as a business owner for retirement investing. So pfforphds.community, if you want to check that out.

38:35 Emily: Gee, this has been a fantastic interview. Thank you so much for giving it. I’m so glad we found each other on Twitter. Yes. Thank you so much for coming on.

38:43 Gee: Thank you so much, Emily.

Listener Q&A: Paying Off Debt vs. Investing

38:44 Emily: Now, onto the listener question and answer segment. Today’s question actually comes from a survey I sent out in advance of one of my university webinars this past fall. So it is anonymous. Here is the question. What is the balance between paying off debt now and investing some money elsewhere? I love these questions that are like, what is the most optimal financial step for me to take? It’s definitely a good sign that the questioner has some cashflow available to do one of these two things, investing or paying off debt. To answer these kinds of questions, I refer to the financial framework that I developed for early-career PhDs. So I’ll tell you what the framework has to say about this question, but just so you know, when I do work one-on-one with individuals, the framework is only a guideline and we do often find a more individualized solution. So this question presupposes that the thing to do with the money right now is paying off debt or investing.

39:48 Emily: However, my framework has three types of steps: debt, repayment, investing, and saving up cash. So the first thing for this questioner to do is to assess all these different areas of finances. How much cash do you have on hand right now, and what is it for? What are the different types of debt you have, including the interest rate and the payoff balance? And do you already have some investments going for you, or is this something you’re starting for the first time? The very first step in my financial framework is to put in place a starter emergency fund. That’s the fund that’s going to help you pay for life’s minor emergencies that happen on, you know, maybe like a yearly basis. Basically, it’s the fund that’s going to keep you from racking up credit card debt. So that amount of savings should be somewhere between $1,000 and two months of expenses, depending on how large your financial footprint is and your risk tolerance.

40:42 Emily: Step two in the framework is to pay off all of your high-priority debt. In my book, high-priority debt is credit card debt, even if it’s at a 0% promotional balance, IRS debt, and any debt that is above somewhere between six to 8% in interest rate. Where you fall in that six to 8% is up to you and your risk tolerance. Now, if your debt includes student loans that are currently in deferment, I would not put those in step two. I’d push them off to a later debt repayment step. So if the person asking this question has any kind of debt that is high priority, the answer to the question is pay off that high-priority debt completely. As soon as you can. Now, let’s say that person doesn’t have that type of debt or has already taken care of it. Step three, in the financial framework is to save up for near-term irregular expenses.

41:35 Emily: This would likely include setting up a system of targeted savings, which I talked about in season seven, episode 15. Once you have that cash savings in place, we’re ready for step four. Step four is to start to invest for retirement or to resume investing for retirement if that was on pause during those first three steps. Now, in most of the steps in my financial framework, you have to do a discreet thing, save up X amount of money, pay off XYZ debts. Step four is different because in step four, you’re going to get your savings rate up to a certain percentage, and then you can move on to step five, but you’re going to keep saving that percentage into your retirement accounts going forward. So let’s say that the questioner has paid off or never had any high-priority debt, and they’re investing up to a minimum level in step four.

42:25 Emily: Once they’ve done those two things, it’s time to move on to step five, which is another kind of debt repayment step. And as I said, there are eight steps overall in the framework. But most people I work with do tend to fall somewhere in those steps one to four range. So I hope this answer provided you with some insight into my process of deciding on which financial goal is optimal at any given time. You can find an ebook that I wrote all revolving around this financial framework called The Wealthy PhD inside the Personal Finance for PhDs Community. You can find the Community at pfforphds.community. So if you join there, you can read the ebook, The Wealthy PhD, and read all about this framework and how to use it. And if you want to go even further, we’re enrolling for my group coaching program, The Wealthy PhD, and the deadline to enroll is February 13th.

43:17 Emily: I do use this framework when I help everyone in the program decide on what their big financial goal should be during the program. Although, as I said earlier, when it comes down to working with an individual, we often, you know, tweak this framework for their personal preferences. If you would like to submit a question to be answered in a future episode, please go to pfforphds.com/podcast and follow the instructions you find there. I love answering questions, so please submit yours.

Outtro

43:45 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. Pfforphds.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast. On that page are links to all the episodes show notes, which include full transcripts and videos of the interviews. There is also a form to volunteer to be interviewed on the podcast and instructions for entering the book giveaway contest and submitting a question for the Q&A segment. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. If you leave a review, be sure to send it to me. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email listserv, or as a link from your website. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in like investing, debt repayment, and taxes. Four, subscribe to my mailing list at pfforphds.com/subscribe. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode! And remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the free music archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

This PhD Candidate Paid for Her Wedding with Her Research Side Hustle

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In this episode, Emily interviews Rebecca Brenner Graham about side hustling to pay for her wedding while a PhD candidate in history at American University. In addition to working on her own dissertation and serving as a teaching assistant, Rebecca used her skills as a history researcher in a self-employment position assisting an economics professor at another university. Rebecca had to quickly learn how to manage her time and energy well across all her different professional roles and her personal life. If you are planning a wedding as a graduate student, you’ll also enjoy hearing wedding planning and budgeting tips from both Rebecca and Emily.

Links Mentioned

side hustle wedding

Teaser

00:00 Rebecca: The piece of advice that I’m just learning and wish I had known sooner was that unpaid opportunities are almost always not worth it. Full stop.

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 six, episode 14, and today my guest is Rebecca Brenner Graham, a PhD candidate in history at American University. Rebecca has always side hustled to supplement her stipend, but she kicked it up a notch in her fourth year to pay for her wedding. We discuss how Rebecca balanced her time and energy among her own dissertation work, her teaching assistantship, her self employment gig as a researcher for an economics professor, wedding planning, and the rest of her life. Listen through to the end here, how Rebecca’s wedding went and some wedding planning tips from both of us. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Rebecca Brenner Graham.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:07 Emily: I am so delighted to have joining me on the podcast today Rebecca Brenner Graham, who is going to be discussing with me, her wedding, her recent wedding, and how she ended up paying for that on her Grad student stipend, and actually on more than just her grad student’s stipend. So Rebecca, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today and will you please tell us a little bit more about yourself?

01:27 Rebecca: Thank you so much for having me, as I was telling you. I’m a long time listener and it just occurred to me that I might have something useful to add. I went to college at Mount Holyoke in Western, Massachusetts as a women’s college. There, I double majored in history and philosophy, and then I went straight into my history graduate school. I’m now starting my fifth year of the PhD. I was able to do the public history master’s combined with my doctoral coursework, which is one of the reasons that I love my department at American University. My dissertation, if anyone’s interested in that, is on Sunday mail delivery from 1810 through 1912 as a lens into religion, state relations. Because I got my masters in public history, I’ve also had some museum gigs on the side, on top of working as a TA in the American University Department of History. That’s about it.

Side-Hustling as a History PhD

02:27 Emily: Yeah. Is that typical for people in your department to be taking on museum jobs or outside gigs like that.

02:33 Rebecca: It’s typical in the sense that being atypical is typical. So there’s not one way to do it. There’s not one way to make it work. Like one of my classmates does a bunch of oral histories of basketball players for money. Some of them are like older and married or have houses. For me, especially brcause I came straight from undergrad, in order to have enough money to not be worrying about it constantly, I have had part time work every year on top of the TA-ing.

03:06 Emily: Okay. That’s good to know. So basically what you’re saying is the stipend that you’re receiving is not sufficient across the board. No one is doing this on just the stipend. They either have outside sources of income from a spouse or something, or maybe past savings, or they’re currently taking on side hustles. Right?

03:22 Rebecca: So I can think of two classmates who, and this is not a coincidence, they’re the two in the department that are younger than me, that haven’t had that much part time work. One of them is extremely frugal and the other one decided to take out loans on top of the stipend. I adore my department, like I am so happy to be there, at the same time we do have the second lowest stipends of all history departments in the greater DC area.

03:49 Emily: Okay. Yeah. Glad to hear that balance of like, Hey, it’s worth it, we’re doing it, but this is what it takes to get it done. Side hustling for you, other solutions for other people, but glad to hear that.

Getting Engaged During Grad School

04:01 Emily: Okay, you’ve given us a little bit of a brief career history, coming straight from college into graduate school, doing your master’s and PhD right in a row. Where does your relationship factor into this?

04:12 Rebecca: Going way back for a second, we actually met in a summer program in Washington, DC when we were 16, like for high school students. We ended up at college near each other. His name is Brandon, and Brandon went to UMass Amherst. We were together for the first half of college, and then we broke up, just seeing other people, didn’t think or know that we’d get back together. We ran into each other a couple of years later and the summer after graduation, we ended up getting back together. Then six months after that, he moved from New York to DC in order to be with me. And even before Brandon and I got back together, I had to facetiously told friends that I need to pass my dissertation proposal, even before I get an engagement proposal. And this was even before I was in a PhD program, this is when I knew I wanted to do a PhD.

05:04 Rebecca: So third year of graduate school, toward the end of the year, I was about to become all but dissertation, ABD, and we had already gone ring shopping. I thought we might be getting engaged soon. And then I ended up getting engaged a few weeks before my prospectus defense. So at the end of my third year of grad school, I was ABD and also engaged.

05:30 Emily: Yeah. I really love that you were, I know you said facetiously, but you were thoughtful about this, right? You had an idea of how you wanted your career to play out and also how your relationship, whoever that was with, how you wanted that to play out. And it’s good to hear really that, um, your husband made that sacrifice when he was your boyfriend of moving to where you were so that you could prioritize your career and he was going to figure it out and it’s not necessarily common story. I’m really glad to hear that.

06:00 Emily: I’m reminded of when I got engaged which was also during graduate school. My husband, we had sort of decided together that we were going to get married, moving towards that direction, but he wanted to wait to propose until he also achieved candidacy. So I was further away from that. That actually didn’t happen for me until my fourth year of graduate school, I think, just the way my department works. But he was like, no, I got to get, I have to get my prelims out of the way, and then I can think about the engagement. So he had the same thought process as you, but from the opposite perspective, in our case.

06:34 Rebecca: I think it’s an autonomy of time thing because even if it’s the same work across the board, you have, I think in most programs, you have more autonomy of time after that ABD mark.

06:45 Emily: Yeah. I think for my husband, it was that, but also just the stress of preparing for the prelim and writing whatever he had to write and doing whatever we had to do, like oral defense or something, I don’t remember the details for him, but just to get past that stressful thing, he wanted it off his plate, so he could enjoy the process of being engaged and planning the wedding and not having to juggle those two things simultaneously and know that, yeah, there’s going to be a few more years here until we have to repeat that process for the dissertation and ultimate defense. With respect to your actual timing of your wedding, like how long were you guys engaged for?

07:25 Rebecca: We got engaged in March, 2018. For about a month, we were actually planning with my parents, and my mom in particular is quite traditional and they were generously willing to pay for it, but it became clear, especially to me very quickly that coordinating with them and negotiating priorities was more labor, and especially more emotional labor, than actually making money myself and working towards paying for it. We also decided in between that March and April period that the things that we cared most about relating to our wedding were not that expensive. Like making the ceremony go how it was important to me was a higher priority than venue or the number of people who were coming. So eventually, I guess around April, when we started planning and paying for it ourselves, we got a date on the calendar. We got married a year and I guess two or three months, not great with numbers, I guess a year and three months later on June 30th, 2019.

08:43 Emily: Okay. So yeah, we are recording this in August, 2019, so this is really fresh for you and that’s exciting. This is definitely a tip for other people who are going into the wedding planning process of anyone who contributes gets a say. If you don’t want that party to have that say in that particular way or whatever, if there are strings attached to that gift, sometimes it is easier to simply take on all of the finances on your own. That’s the decision that you made.

Paying for the Wedding through Side-Hustling

09:12 Emily: We’ve already kind of gone over that your stipend was not really enough to live on, at least in the lifestyle that you want, and you were already side hustling. Did you have a plan for like how much more money did you need to bring in either in total or on a monthly basis to be able to pay for the wedding?

09:28 Rebecca: We looked at it a little backwards, in retrospect. It was more like however much money we have to delegate toward this, that is how much that we could pay. Brandon and I split it almost exactly evenly between us with a few exceptions. If there was something that was really important to him or really important to me. I paid for Ketubah the Jewish marriage contract. I paid for our pre rabbinical counseling. He paid for our entire rehearsal brunch because that was not something that I was tied to doing. On my end, my stipend from American when I started was $19,000 per year, and now currently thanks to our union it’s $22,000 per year, which is actually a huge difference just in the four years or whatever that I’ve been a TA. I really didn’t give it that much thought about, will I be able to afford this? It was more if I can’t afford it, then I won’t do it, and we love each other, and we want to get married, and that’s the most important thing. I have another classmate in my program who literally eloped at one, but I don’t really know the details on that. Also around this time, I was reading those books by Jen Sincero, have you ever read her books? The first one is called “You Are a Badas” and the second one is called “You Are a Badass at Making Money” and they’re —

11:00 Emily: Actually, I’ll interrupt you just for a second. I literally just finished “You’re a Badass At Making Money”, like last week. So I’m a little late to the Jen Sincero game, but I did read it and enjoyed it. I’m trying to figure out what I want to incorporate. So yeah, please go on.

11:15 Rebecca: Oh, that’s so exciting. I’m glad you liked it. In spring 2018, this was when her money book came out, the green one. She’s a little bit more, I don’t know if the word is capitalist than I am, but she’s also in line with my feminism. A central takeaway from Sincero’s work is that sometimes you have to jump and then create the net for yourself. That’s what happened when we decided to pay for our own wedding. So around the time that we had made that decision, I was reading a bunch of Jen Sincero. A major advantage of doing a history program in DC is that a lot of people email the department to offer work opportunities. So then in May, 2018, I heard about a summer job working for an economics professor at George Mason to do research on 19th and early 20th century labor history. My dissertation is on 19th century and early 20th century religion-state relations, and there was a lot of overlap with that labor history. I ended up working for her over the summer and then she offered for me to stay for the coming school year, like this past school year 2018-19. My advisor helped me negotiate a 50% salary increase for that, so that was my side gig that took a lot of time and essentially paid for my wedding. But it was also a completely pleasant experience working for this economist.

12:55 Emily: Yeah. I want to hear more about the logistics of how this side hustle worked. For you with American, because you’re a TA, does that mean that you’re not working/not being paid over the summer?

13:07 Rebecca: Oh yes.

13:09 Emily: Okay, so you’re already dealing with an academic year only stipend. So —

13:13 Rebecca: Last year I had a fellowship from my department for summer research. This year I did not, which was my why my reaction was “Oh yeah”, because that was the situation. But last summer I had a $3,500 fellowship from my department and then $5,000 from this professor George Mason.

13:35 Emily: Okay, so in your summers, at least last summer, you had a balance of working on your own dissertation and also doing this other work for this other professor, but I’m wondering, because you guys are at different universities, what was the actual relationship between you and this professor or the grant? Were you a W-2 employee or was this a self-employment situation?

13:58 Rebecca: It was a self employment situation, so I got taxed on it pretty heavily.

Researching as a Side-Hustle

14:04 Emily: Yeah. So that’s definitely a couple of things I want to talk further about with that, because I don’t really know that well, how this works. I think you’re the first person I interviewed for the podcast who has done research, like very similar skill set and everything to what you’re doing for your dissertation, and as a graduate student, but as a self employment project. Can you just talk to me a little bit more about what the differences are between that self-employment gig and maybe what you typically do as a graduate student?

14:36 Rebecca: In terms of the content itself, it was really just teaching versus researching. This past year I TA-ed class about the presidents and then I TA-ed History of Memory, and that whole time I was researching 19th century labor history. The biggest difference in terms of how much it affects me is that the side gig did not withhold any taxes. So as a graduate student, I’m cobbling together a bunch of opportunities to approach like 40[K per year, which is really great for grad school, I paid $4,000 in taxes last year, and that was most of my money.

15:23 Emily: I’ll make a couple elaborations on that for anyone who is looking into self-employment, which, if you’re going to do a side hustle, I kind of think self-employment is the way to go, because you have a lot more control over your schedule over how much you’re going to work. But the flip side of that is you have to take a lot more responsibility yourself when it comes to the financial side of things. One of the main things is that you need to pay a lot of tax and no one is withholding that tax for you, so two notes there. The first is that, with self-employment stuff, it’s not like income tax and you know that, so I’m speaking to the audience, but it’s not like income tax where you’re not taxed on the first chunk of income you take in, then you’ll have a low tax rate on the next chunk, then you’ll have a higher tax rate on the next chunk. That’s the graduated income tax system. You will still pay income tax as a self employed person, so just add that on top of whatever the rest of your income is. It’s going to be in the 12% or maybe even the 22% bracket, depending on how much money you make. But in addition, you have self employment tax, which is, I believe 15.3% on everything. The first dollar that you make as a self employed person, 15.3% of everything. So it’s not like that graduated system. It ends up feeling like you pay a lot and you do pay a lot in tax because of these two different types of tax that you end up paying income tax and self employment tax.

Emily: For anyone who is making a significant self employment income like you did, you have to set money aside for tax. You have to prepare for that. You have to do the calculations because you don’t want to be surprised at the end of the year with…I mean, you can be very pleased that you made all this money through selling employment, that’s amazing, but you have to be prepared for the tax side of things. One thing I’ll recommend actually for anyone who is either self employed or who has a fellowship who doesn’t have income tax withheld, I have resources on my website about paying quarterly estimated tax. You can go to the site and search for quarterly estimated tax. You’ll come up with like my main article on that. It’s designed for people who have fellowship income, but people with self employment income can take a lot out of that as well. And if you want a little bit further help I’ll link from the show notes, actually have a workshop on helping people pay quarterly estimated tax. Again, to not be surprised at the end of the year with a huge tax bill. It helps you estimate the amount of tax you’ll have to pay and also pay through it quarterly.

17:37 Emily: Okay, so Rebecca, that was a little bit of a diversion just because this is my wheelhouse about taxes.

17:41 Rebecca: That’s very helpful. Yeah.

17:44 Emily: I actually was a little bit for curious, because I think what I was asking, I didn’t phrase quite right earlier, was about, so the difference between your dissertation work, which you are either receiving a fellowship for, or maybe not being explicitly paid to do in your primary role as a graduate student versus the self employment relationship, this contractor relationship you have with this professor. I guess what I’m asking about is like intellectual or academic ownership over that work. Are you going to be on papers? Just because it’s an unusual way to be doing research, as a self employed person, but still in an academic setting, but it’s at a different university. So that’s why it was sort of interesting and complex.

18:24 Rebecca: I find it to be really common, particularly in Washington DC where we have a lot of federal archives. Since I started grad school in 2015, I’ve honestly lost track of the number of professors who’ve emailed the department literally from as far as Australia and asked our grad students to do work for them. Now I don’t do it unless it’s $30 per hour, but I used to do it for like $12, $15 per hour before I knew better. And as far as I know, we never get even an acknowledgement because we’re a human in the right location who has used archives before, and isn’t going to mess it up when researching.

19:12 Emily: Gotcha.

19:13 Rebecca: For my dissertation, I am the author.

19:16 Emily: Right. So it’s really just by virtue of where you’re attending graduate school and the skill set that you have,that you have access and people, as you were saying from all of the world want some access and they’ll use you, hire you to be a conduit for helping them with that work. But in terms of the academic ownership, because you’re being paid and again, as a contractor, it sounds like you sort of relinquish that. They’re going to be completely in control of the scholarship side of things. You’re not apparently even getting an acknowledgement, which I feel like it definitely deserves an acknowledgement at minimum, but okay.

19:50 Rebecca: That’s just the random people from California or whoever who can’t fly into DC.

19:54 Emily: Yeah, totally. Okay. So now I have a better idea about this.

19:57 Rebecca: It’s not even taxed sometimes, because it’s not enough money to be taxed, but I’ve done that a lot of times. And then my research gig at George Mason, I have a relationship with this person now. I don’t know when her book will be done, but I’ll be in communication with her. And I definitely felt like I was a part of the project, even though for the argument of the book, that’s entirely her argument, I’m just providing the facts that she then integrates into her analysis.

20:29 Emily: Yeah. I guess I’m also wondering like maybe you know for her situation, why wasn’t she working with a graduate student at our own institution? Like her advisee or something like that.

20:39 Rebecca: She wanted a historian. She’s in an economics department and she specifically reached out to history departments because she wanted reviews of historical literature by historians. And then also just that change over time analysis that my department trains me to do.

21:01 Emily: Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. This is really, really interesting to me.

Commercial

21:06 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. I am just bursting with this news. I have launched a community for personal finance for PhDs. The community is for PhDs and people pursuing PhDs who want to level up their practice of personal finance 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 I’ve made in the past, and I’m going to add new trainings that library every month. There is also a discussion forum, a monthly live calls with me, a book club, and progress journaling for financial goals. Basically, the community is going to help you reach your financial goals, whatever they are. Go to PFForPhDs.com/community to find out even more. If you’re listening to this in real time, you have the opportunity to become a founding member of the community at a discount. The price is going up on August 15th, 2020, so don’t delay. Go to PFForPhDs.com/community for all the details. I can’t wait to help propel you to financial success. Now back to the interview.

Research Side-Hustles and Career Advancement

22:29 Emily: I guess the other sort of big picture question I wanted to ask you about side hustling is, so the side hustling is necessary financially — for the wedding, for living your life — do you think it’s giving you more than that? Like is this actually advancing your career in some way?

22:46 Rebecca: That’s a fantastic question and I really hadn’t thought about it. I mean, the economics people at George Mason, like their department is a completely different environment than mine, so it’s educational, just in that sense to meet more people in different places. Overall, the research work definitely was not expanding my skillset. It probably expanded my content knowledge a little bit, but it wasn’t that much more than whatever I had to be familiar with for comprehensive exams, because I did all of that time period. For the George Mason people I earned, what was it? For the whole year it was $15,000. And the previous year, before I was engaged, my side hustle, during my third year of graduate school paid $1,500, so literally take off a zero, and that was writing an exhibit for a museum. That was fantastic experience that definitely advanced my CV/resume and what I know how to do.

23:56 Emily: Gotcha. So there may be a little bit of a trade off there. This is not surprising that the things that benefit you more as an individual, there may be a trade off on the money there. You’re being paid more, but —

24:06 Rebecca: In my experience, that is correct.

24:08 Emily: Yeah, so I mean, hopefully that’s not the case. I wish for everyone to have a side hustle that pays really well and advances your career and all that, but sometimes you may have to trade off one or the other, but it sounds like at least at the very, very minimum you’ve expanded your network, right? You’ve met more people. You’ve worked closely with this one individual. So maybe that’ll come into play later on. Who knows about that.

Time Management and Side-Hustling

24:31 Emily: So I want to move now to talking about how you, how you manage your time. You’re obviously a long time side hustler, but it sounds like you really maybe stepped it up, maybe stepped up your hours to make this additional money in this past year to be able to fund the wedding that you wanted. Can you talk to me a little bit about how you balanced your dissertation work, your TA role, the side hustle, maybe multiple side hustles, if you’re still doing other ones, and then of course, just the rest of your personal life.

24:59 Rebecca: I have noticed for a while that it comes down to two things. One is time management, which I’m sure seems pretty straight forward. And the second is the kind of energy that the opportunity is giving you. I have felt for a long time, this is also just my personality, that if an opportunity is giving me a lot of positive energy and genuinely feel like I can do anything, but if it’s not, and sometimes things take away from my energy, then that becomes a real challenge. I remember at the beginning of last school year, last fall, actually around this exact time, last year, I majorly had not figured out how that balance was going to work. I was so stressed that I ended up giving up caffeine for several months, even though coffee is my favorite thing, because I was just so energized and stressed all the time that it was just miserable. And just not knowing how I was going to balance my time all year.

26:03 Rebecca: Also, the way that we ended up doing our wedding, and I’m sure we’ll talk about this later, it ended up working out great, but we accepted a lot of favors from people. Like a friend did the photography, a friend did the flowers, a family friend officiated our service. And when you rely on people, even if they’re really close friends and family, it’s just really stressful to maintain the relationships. I never wanted to feel like I was a burden on people. That created a lot of stress and the most challenges very early on, but over the course of the year, I think I just adjusted. Also second semester, I had this past TA assignment for a fantastic, really supportive enthusiastic professor. She’s Eileen Finley at American University and she was just a breath of fresh air twice a week, and that made a huge positive difference in my ability to find positive energy and manage my time well.

27:08 Emily: I think that’s an excellent, excellent point that you’re making. I wonder to make it any more applicable for the listener, can you tell in advance what kinds of activities are going to give you energy? So you can kind of filter, like I’m not gonna accept this opportunity because it seems like it’ll be draining. Have you figured out any kind of framework around that or is it just have to try it and then see?

27:31 Rebecca: I’m definitely not an expert on that in the sense that I am still figuring that out. So this is not what you asked, but I could break down what an average week was like. I think both semesters my TA at AU, that was Tuesday and Friday, so then I would often go to George Mason where they gave me a desk, which was nice. And that way I felt like I had community there. I almost always went once a week. I didn’t go more than once a week, very often, but it was typically on a Monday, Wednesday or a Thursday really. And then one or two days I would actually get to do my own work on my own dissertation. And I ended up, um, drafting one chapter out of six first semester and one chapter out of six second semester, but I really have much higher hopes for this coming academic year when I’m not planning and paying for a wedding. I hope to be able to draft more than one chapter each semester.

28:31 Emily: That actually does sound like really good progress to me. I take it you are going to take the side hustle down some. You’re not trying to make as much money in the upcoming year as you did last year.

28:41 Rebecca: I ended working for George Mason at the end of the school year, because it was an academic school year position, but also during second semester, I allocated some time toward applying for fellowships just because everyone told me that that’s what you do when you’re going into fifth year. I actually got three out of four of the ones that I applied for. One of them is through the same people at George Mason, so that ties into what you said about like making connections helps. One is from Mount Holyoke College where I did my undergrad work. It’s specifically from the history department. There that’s the biggest fellowship. They’re basically paying my rent for the coming year. And that will hopefully really allow me to focus on my actual dissertation work. Then the third is a research grant from my department at American. I’m really trying not to take on side hustle work like I did last year. Though, I did have a potentially paid opportunity fall into my lap for this coming year, but it hasn’t fully developed yet and I need to prioritize my dissertation because I wasn’t always able to work on it as much as I wanted to this past year.

29:58 Emily: Yeah. Congratulations on winning those three fellowships. Are you continuing to TA in addition to accepting those fellowships?

30:05 Rebecca: This coming year is my last year of TA-ing.

30:08 Emily: Yeah, it’s a great point for anyone who is looking to side hustling during graduate school and especially for you where your progress on your dissertation is up to you. You’re ABD, it’s at your own speed. There is a danger of devoting too much time to making money on the side and not enough time to actually progressing through your current career stage so that you can get a full time job and have an actual salary.

30:33 Rebecca: It’s a balance to strike for a few reasons. One is I get the most work done when I can take myself out to the pizza place next to my apartment and buy my favorite pizza, or get coffee and a bunch of different coffee shops, or buy a nice new planner for myself to organize my life. You have to have some cash flow, at least in my experience in order to be your best student.

31:00 Emily: Gotcha.

31:01 Rebecca: And I think the other reason is that I actually want to go into public history and museum work rather than academia. So in order to get more relevant job experience, that’s also a balance to strike for me.

The Financial Side of Wedding Planning

31:15 Emily: For sure. Yeah. Thanks for pointing that out. So we’ve been talking about the side hustles and the wedding you added, you know, $15,000 to your wedding fund. It sounds like more or less for this past year and it just was a month or so ago. So how was it, how did the wedding go?

31:30 Rebecca: We got married at the Hamilton Restaurant in downtown Washington, DC. It’s around the corner from the White House and it’s both a restaurant and a concert venue. And I would highly recommend to anyone looking to have a great wedding at a minimal cost to get married at a restaurant that has a concert venue because under one contract we had our venue, the food, they provided the cupcakes, they included the open bar. There was a guy that was — so, I thought we had a lights guy and then a sound guy, and I just realized when I was telling my husband about this interview, that those were actually the same person. So it came with a lights guy and the sound guy. The venue was really great.

32:18 Rebecca: I was really happy with my dress. I found it for $130, which I’m really proud of. One of my bridesmaids asked me what I was envisioning and I described sort of a shorter dress, but also a sun dress, but also beautiful. And she pulled up one on Pinterest and was like, “do you mean like this?” And I was like, “yes, that’s exactly what I’m looking for.” Then, a few days later she texted me that it was 75% off online. So that’s how I got my dress from $130. A different bridesmaid took me veil shopping and I got one for $30. I would say for any brides out there, don’t spend a lot of money on the veil because you’re only going to wear it once. One of my aunts bought my shoes for me at Macy’s or something as a gift.

33:09 Rebecca: The most important part of the whole wedding experience to me was the ceremony and it’s hard to describe why that is. I guess, I mean, it’s a Jewish life cycle event and I did not have the traditional bat mitzvah, but I identify very strongly with Judaism, and my husband’s one of his parents is Jewish, but he didn’t grow up with a lot of religion, so I would describe it as Jewish with an interfaith twist. The way I think back on our ceremony is that there are a few events in life that are really deeply, very important, and for one of those to go so well, I appreciate that it went flawlessly so much. I think the ceremony itself, which we have a link to the video, actually that I can send you if you’re interested, I’m just so happy with how it went. We had a family friend officiate and play guitar and sing. My cousin, who is also a bridesmaid, did the Hebrew. An aunt and uncle made our chuppah for us as a gift to us. My dad sang a song during it, actually. It was like everything I could have imagined, and I’m so grateful for that, and we made it happen ourselves.

34:31 Emily: Yeah, that’s something to be really, really proud of, obviously. What I’m hearing, as someone who has also planning a wedding, is that it sounds like you DIY-ed, in terms of accessing your community and asking people to contribute, the parts of the whole experience that were most meaningful to you, but also the ones that their contribution was particularly, again, meaningful or personal, like singing a song, for example. And also not particularly a ton of work, versus your choice of venue, where you combined the restaurant and the venue and all the staff is there and everything is, as you said, under one contract. That was a way that you made a really simple decision that made the planning a lot, lot easier. I did the opposite thing with my wedding, so I know that it’s a lot of work and a lot of money to do things the other way. So anyone who’s thinking about planning a wedding, I think that you went about this in a very positive and thoughtful and way that paid off, it sounds like, really well.

35:34 Rebecca: What was your wedding venue, if you don’t mind me asking?

35:36 Emily: Yeah. So we had two, first of all, because one, we got married in the church and two the reception was at a different location. So it’s already dealing with two different locations, right? We actually had our reception at a museum of natural history in Raleigh, North Carolina, which was awesome.

35:52 Rebecca: I’ve been there, actually.

35:55 Emily: Yes, it’s a fantastic museum. I was so excited. I grew up outside DC, so I’ve been in love with the natural history museum as part of the Smithsonian forever, so to have a chance to do that in a similar museum in Raleigh was so much fun. The venue was really, really fun, but it was an outside caterer. It’s a lot of work. Rentals were a whole separate thing. Getting it all done in one place, I think, was really smart. It saves a lot of time, saves a lot of money. And as I said, then you chose to DIY the parts where people could actually really contribute instead of, for example, asking for people to contribute on the food or, you know, there’s other ways to do this kind of thing that could be a little bit more work for everyone rather than just, oh, I’m giving you this wonderful gift of a song or the shoes or whatever it turns out to be. I appreciate hearing that. And it sounds like you had a wonderful time and I’m happy that everything worked out with the side hustle and everything. Any final comments on the wedding and the side hustle?

36:50 Rebecca: Just a quick, funny thing that came to mind is that one of my closest friends who did our flowers, she was literally a few days away from getting her doctorate. Her name’s Arlisha and she got her doctorate in history a few days after my wedding. Her final year of dissertating, she literally texted me and was like, I’m taking up flower arrangement as a hobby while I finished my dissertation, can I do this for your wedding? And I had not previously cared about the flowers, but I was like, yes, if you want to, go for it. She did an amazing job. Just the aesthetics of the room, I think looked so much better because Arlisha’s dissertation side hobby was flower arrangement.

37:34 Emily: Yeah. I think in the academic space, we talk a lot about mental health and self care and so forth, and that’s a really fun, healing, stress-relieving thing to potentially do that, hey, can also help out a friend or even become a side hustle , if you want to. I had an interview recently with someone who decided to turn her baking hobby, as a graduate student, into a business. So it’s the same kind of thing, right? You have something you enjoy doing, it’s a stress reliever for you, why not turn it into something a little bit bigger?

Final Words of Advice

38:02 Emily: Final question here, Rebecca, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career?

38:08 Rebecca: The piece of advice that I’m just learning and wish I had known sooner was that unpaid opportunities are almost always not worth it. Full stop.

38:20 Emily: Yup.

38:20 Rebecca: Also, as a PhD student, you have to do your doctoral requirements and dissertation, but there’s really nothing else that you have to do. And if you have different wedding preferences from your parents, just do it your own way. And if some customs from your religion are meaningful, just stick to those. If others aren’t…our wedding was really a growth opportunity for me and I’m proud and thankful for how it went.

38:50 Emily: Wonderful. No need to elaborate any further on that, Rebecca. Thank you so much for sharing the story on the podcast with me.

38:56 Rebecca: Thank you so much.

Outtro

38:58 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPhDs.com/podcast is the hub for the personal finance for PhDs podcast. There you can find links to all the episode show notes, and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, please consider joining my mailing list for my behind the scenes commentary about each episode. Register at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe. See you in the next episode, and remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is stages of awakening by Poddington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

This Grad Student Didn’t Let a $1,000 Per Month Stipend Stop Her from Investing

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Rachel Blackburn, an assistant professor at Columbus State University. Rachel’s PhD stipend at the University of Kansas was approximately $1,000 per month and her rent claimed half of that, but she resolved to do more than scrape by financially. Emily and Rachel discuss in detail how Rachel optimized her pay rate in her side hustles, generated extra income through credit card churning, and travel hacked her personal and professional trips. By combining these techniques, Rachel not only contributed to her Roth IRA during grad school but also paid down student loan debt. You won’t want to miss the excellent insight she shares at the end of the interview.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

00:00 Rachel: Don’t underestimate your own creativity. One of your strengths and skills as a PhD student is researching, so why not take that same skill and apply it to your financial life?

Intro

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 five, episode 12, and today my guest is Dr. Rachel Blackburn, an assistant professor at Columbus State University. Rachel’s PhD stipend at the University of Kansas was approximately $1,000 per month, and her rent claimed half of that. But, she resolved to do more than just scrape by financially. We discuss in detail how Rachel optimized her pay rate in her side hustles, generated extra income through credit card churning, and travel-hacked her personal and professional trips. By combining these techniques, Rachel not only contributed to her Roth IRA during grad school, but also paid down student loan debt. You won’t want to miss the excellent insight she shares at the end of the interview. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Rachel Blackburn.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:17 Emily: I have with me on the podcast today, Dr. Rachel Blackburn, and she has a really exciting story to tell us from back when she was in graduate school, how she managed to generate extra income so that she was able to start a Roth IRA which is just an amazing goal and I’m so excited to hear more about the story. So, Rachel, thank you so much for joining me today, and would you please introduce yourself to our listeners?

01:40 Rachel: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. So, I am Dr. Rachel Blackburn, and I am currently an assistant professor at Columbus State University, which is in Columbus, Georgia.

01:51 Emily: Great. And where were you in graduate school?

01:55 Rachel: So, I did a Master of Fine Arts degree at Virginia Commonwealth University, and then I did my PhD at the University of Kansas.

02:04 Emily: Excellent. So, you’ve moved around quite a bit, it sounds like.

02:08 Rachel: Yeah, I have.

02:11 Emily: Tell me about your stipend during graduate school and why you needed to look outside of that–why you ended up generating extra income.

Grad School Stipend at the University of Kansas

02:20 Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. So, during my MFA program, it was all student loans. That’s all it was. And when I got to my PhD at KU, I was really determined to not take out any more loans no matter what my stipend was. And my stipend was basically $1,000 a month, and my rent was of course about half that. And so, I realized that if I ever found myself in a situation where–it was okay to scrape by, like if I budgeted really carefully, I knew I’d be okay. But I was worried about unforeseen elements like a car breaking down, a major hospital visit. You know, something that would really require me to come up with a lot of money at once. And that’s what I was concerned about.

Balanced Money Formula: Necessary Expenses = 50% of Pay

03:08 Emily: A couple of points in there that I just want to follow up on it because I think it’s a great example for anyone who’s maybe looking at a stipend offer letter or maybe you’ve just started graduate school and you’re kind of still figuring out what your budget’s going to be. So, you just mentioned your rent was about 50% of your pay, which is sort of widely considered to be too high. Right? So, according to the balanced money formula, which to me is a good reference point, all of your necessary expenses should be about 50% of your pay. So, not only rent but also utilities and paying any contracts that you’re in and your transportation and your basic food–all of that stuff is supposed to be within 50%, which is actually a high bar for many graduate students to reach, but it’s just kind of a good reference point.

03:53 Emily: So, you knew seeing rent at 50%, this is going to be pretty challenging. And like you said, you also were anticipating having occasional large, hard to cashflow expenses, which is so, so common. Anyone who lives for about a year or longer, you’re going to realize you have these large expenses sometimes. So, that’s why you turned to generating extra income outside of your stipend. So, did you start that right from the beginning of graduate school–or, rather at the beginning of your PhD program–and I’m wondering, was this a common thing among your peers? Did your advisor know about it? Was this a thing that people did and they were open about or was it more kept quiet?

Side Hustles and Financial Situation Often Kept Quiet

04:34 Rachel: You know, it was really kind of kept quiet. I don’t know how many students revealed to faculty that we were all taking on side hustles. I think maybe later on it did when push really came to shove and things like my advisor saying, “I think we need to look to defend your dissertation in the following semester instead of this one.” And me being like, “I literally cannot afford another semester of tuition. You’re going to have to help me get this done now.” So, things like that. I think when push came to shove, we probably revealed a little bit more about our financial situation, but really the only people that were doing okay in grad school and didn’t need to side hustle were frankly people that had two-income households. So, most often married couples. Yeah.

05:25 Emily: Yup. Super common there. I mean, really, paying $1,000 a month. The faculty should be aware–I mean also living in the same city, right? And presumably having a much higher income. They should be aware that that is not enough to live on without either taking out student loans, which as you said, people have enough experience with student loans to know that they should avoid them if at all possible. No, it’s really not enough to live on. So, it should be no surprise to anyone that this is going on. Yet, as you said, most of the time, it’s not really something that is talked about very openly, at least between students and their advisors or students and the administration. Maybe students, among themselves, talk to each other. Okay. So, thanks for giving us kind of the picture for being on the ground there. So, just give me a quick overview. What were your methods of generating extra income that we’ll then dive into?

Primary Side Hustles: House and Pet Sitting

06:15 Rachel: I would say, primarily, my side hustles were housesitting and pet sitting. Those were easy to do, and what was great about them is that if you did a decent job with one, that professor would recommend you to other professors. And professors are always going out of town for guest lectures and conferences. A lot of them have pets. If you have a halfway decent sense of compassion as a human being, you’ll be fine taking care of a pet. Some just want their plants watered or some just want their home to look lived in while they’re away. So, falling into that circle is a really great thing. And that was a lot for me. Also, I did some teaching online and there are various ways to do this. So, I actually taught online for a community college in just outside of Lawrence (KS). And also, another hack about this is that if you’re interested in possibly teaching English online, for whatever reason, there are a lot of companies specifically for Chinese and Korean and Japanese students who will advertise their online teaching English programs, but they will do so on the New York City Craigslist. At the end of the day, you only need be online. You don’t have to live in New York City, but they’re targeting those bigger markets because they’re just expecting to have more people that they can interview. And so, I honestly went on to New York City’s Craigslist a number of times and found online teaching that way as well.

Secondary Side Hustles: Online Teaching and Waiting Tables

07:43 Emily: Just to jump in there, I have another interview where another grad student is currently side hustling with VIPKid, which is one of the companies that you just described that offer that kind of work. So, if anyone’s specifically looking for a company that’s going on right now and we’re recording this in July, 2019, check out VIPKid and check out that other interview. Yeah. Any other online teaching besides that, that you did?

08:08 Rachel: Those mainly comprised what I did online. Now, some people are a fan of waiting tables. This is also something I did. And, really, the only hack there is that if waiting tables is something that really takes it out of you, energy-wise–and it can, you’re on your feet the whole time–I recommend if you can only do it like once a week, do it on a Friday or Saturday night when the restaurant is busiest, that’s when you’re going to make the most tips. Doing a Wednesday lunch is not going to help you out. Doing a Friday night dinner might actually cover your groceries that week, or what have you. So, that’s the hack there. Try and get signed up for the busiest times.

08:48 Emily: Get that hourly rate up as high as you possibly can so you can minimize the number of hours you actually have to do it. Okay.

Side Hustling Apps

08:56 Rachel: I will just add really quickly that there are a few apps out there that can help you generate income as a side hustle. I made a list of some that I’ve used. So, Rover is a pet sitting app, so sign up to petsit. TaskRabbit is basically anything. So, somebody in the neighborhood needs help painting a fence. That’s TaskRabbit. Turo, you can rent your own car out to other people. That’s T U R O. Fat Llama is where you rent out your own possessions. So, say you have a Nintendo Wii sitting around not being used. You could rent out your Nintendo Wii for a weekend to some kids. So, there’s that. Also, Instacart is where you shop for other people. So, anyway, those are some of the ones that I’ve tried.

09:44 Emily: That’s awesome. Thank you so much for adding those specifics. In fact, I guess I talk about side hustling a lot on this podcast because in fact we have another interview where someone’s talking about using Rover and another interview where someone is discussing Instacart. That’s season three, episode two with Shana Green. That one’s already out. So yeah, to follow up on any of those, but thank you so much for giving those specifics. That’s a really great next step for anyone looking to those side hustles. And we also wanted today to talk about credit card churning and travel hacking. So, the listeners may not be very familiar at all with what credit card churning is, what travel hacking is. So, can you start with some basic definitions here for, let’s say, credit card churning first?

Credit Card Churning Fundamentals

10:29 Rachel: Yeah. So, credit card churning is the idea that you take advantage of credit card signups who are offering major big signup bonuses for when you sign up for that credit card. Now, let me preface and say that I’m really just a beginning level churner, like beginner-level churner. Some people are really sophisticated with how they’re tackling this. And I’ve seen spreadsheets of multiple cards when you’re signing up, when you’re canceling the card and things like that. In a nutshell, that’s credit card churning.

11:10 Emily: There’s suddenly a huge subculture within personal finance that is specifically about credit card churning and maximizing credit card rewards. So, if people want to dive, dive, dive into this, that is available. We are fine with the beginner level here. So, whatever you’ve been doing is great. I want to specifically point out that there’s a difference between credit card churning and having credit cards on a longterm basis that give you ongoing reward. So, what we’re specifically discussing today is getting, as you said, those signup bonuses. And so signing up for new cards fairly frequently, doing whatever you need to do to get the signup bonus. And then usually either moving on–keeping the card open, but not using it anymore–moving onto the next card in your churn list, or, potentially closing it pretty quickly. So, just wanted to clarify that for the listeners. So, can you tell us how you got started with this? What was the first credit card you opened for this purpose, for example?

12:06 Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. So, my first year in my PhD program, I was friends with a guy who was an entrepreneur and he was opening his own business. And he fell into the credit card turning scene because he was starting to try and figure out, “How can me and my business partner fly around the US? Because we anticipate that we’re going to fly a lot. So, how are we going to cover all of those tickets?” And so, he really introduced me to the world of credit card turning. So, I should say from the very top that if you’re someone who has trouble paying off your credit cards every month, if you have not so good credit, it’s not the best thing. It’s really ideal for someone who’s really good at paying off the full amount every month, who’s really good at not spending a credit card on things that either you don’t need or things that may be superfluous to your daily life. And so, the one that I opened was Chase.

Disclaimer: Use Credit Card Churning Wisely

13:10 Emily: I want to jump in a second and just emphasize that point because credit card churning and using credit card rewards is really a fairly advanced strategy. I would not recommend this for anyone who is new to using credit cards. My personal rule on this would be use credit cards in your life, in your regular budgeting for at least one year before you even attempt something like this. Because you need to have a lot of confidence in yourself, as you were just saying, that you’re going to be paying off that card in full every month, that you’re not going to be spending any extra money just for convenience factor or whatever it is because you’re excited about the rewards. You need to be a super, super good budgeter and super, super organized before you jump into this world. And it can be really lucrative, as we’ll get into in a moment. So, it’s very tempting, but show restraint. Hold back. Be sure you have your budget totally aligned before you try to attempt it. I’ll link in the show notes, I have an article that I wrote previously called, “Perfect Use of a Credit Card.” So, that will outline what you need to master in terms of using a credit card before you jump into what we’re talking about now. So, thank you so much for emphasizing that. Now, you were just mentioning that you opened a Chase card, first.

14:18 Rachel: Yeah. So, when I first started to get into this–now, like I said, I just wanted to take baby steps. I have used credit cards for most of my adult life, and I feel pretty confident with my use of credit cards that I don’t really have an addictive personality. I don’t go gambling or drink alcohol very much. I’m just kind of pretty unattached that way. So, I felt confident starting to do a baby churn with just one card. I should also mention by the way, that if you open too many cards within the space of 12 months or 24 months, some credit card companies will take note of that and they’ll say, “Okay, don’t give them any more cards.” And it can damage your credit that way. So, that’s just something to be aware of.

15:03 Rachel: So, I recommend, personally speaking, I would probably top out at three in the space of one year. I think that’s plenty to keep up with. So, Chase, for example, had a credit card, and often what they are is that there’s a signup bonus and in order to achieve that signup bonus, which is usually in the value of points and then those points can be exchanged for either travel points, like they can translate to air miles. They can translate to gift cards. Sometimes they can translate to cash back. With Chase–and I did this a few years ago, so I can’t speak to what it is now, but–when I took the Chase card a few years ago, I crunched the numbers and I basically found that gift cards was my biggest bang for my buck. So, I exchanged my signup points all for gift cards for things that I would spend money on regardless, like grocery stores, gas stations, things like that, Walmart, those kinds of things.

Credit Card Churning: Timing is Everything

16:05 Rachel: A lot of these signup points are dependent on you spending a certain amount of money within the first three months, that’s often the typical amount of time. So, I would time my opening a credit card with an event in my life where I knew that I’d be spending more money than I typically do. So, say for example, I think mine was $1,000. I had to spend $1,000 within the first three months of opening this card. And if I did, I was given a reward of 50,000 points, which ultimately translated to my plane ticket to a conference I was presenting at. So, I timed this for when I had been to the doctor and I’d had a hospital visit and I knew I was going to be paying off a lot of doctor’s bills. So, I knew I’d be spending that money anyway. So, that’s how I timed it.

16:53 Emily: We use the exact same strategy–I wouldn’t say we were credit card churning, but signing up for signup bonuses from time to time–doing the exact same thing as you did, like looking at our upcoming six months or a year, whatever, and identifying a few points in the year where, “Okay, we are going to pay our car insurance once every six months.” So, that’s like a pretty big bill, we can put that on the card. “Oh, we’re going to have to buy a flight to here or there. We can put that on the card.” All within a window that was the window that we needed for achieving the signup bonus. So, we did the exact same thing. I think that meeting those minimum spending requirements can be, very typically, a challenge for someone who lives on a lower income, right?

17:31 Emily: Because you don’t have a lot of spending that goes on in a given month, let’s say. Most people will not be paying their rent with a credit card. Usually you have to pay a fee or something to do that. So, if you’re going to exclude rent from this calculation, then there are not that many other things, maybe, that will help you achieve this minimum spend. So, definitely looking your calendar and anticipating upcoming expenses, signing up for a card that’ll give you the right window when you’re going to have to pay those expenses. There’s a little bit of a trick to it when you have a lower-spending lifestyle.

18:00 Rachel: Absolutely. Timing is everything. I also didn’t realize, even for myself, how much I spent cash on lots of things. When I started really concentrating and focusing and saying, “Okay, I could pay cash for this, but I could pay a credit card. Let me just pay with a credit card.” I’m starting to realize that there are very few instances in which it benefits me to use cash, to be honest. Now, I do keep cash on me at all times, just in emergencies. Who knows. But I did start using a credit card for a lot more things than I had. And I find that the rewards do come back to me. Yeah. But no, that’s a fair point. Timing is everything with the credit card churning. When you open the card, when you decide to cancel the card, that kind of thing. Yeah.

Credit Card Points for Gift Cards and Air Miles

18:50 Emily: So, you said that for you, you probably max out at about three cards per year. That’s what you’ve decided you can handle in your personal spending and tracking everything. Other people do a lot more, but that’s what works for you. And that, when you first started doing this, you would trade these points you generated for gift cards because that was what you figured was going to be maximizing those points. Has that continued to be the case? So, do you always do gift cards, or have you redeemed for other types of rewards?

19:18 Rachel: At one point, I did redeem for travel points because, like I said, I was paying for a plane ticket. So, it was easy to translate those to air miles and to do that. What I have found, in my experience–what’s helpful is letting life happen and determining, “Oh, okay, you know what? This month, I have a lot of unexpected expenses. So, actually what I could do to save myself some money this month is go ahead and redeem some points for, say, a grocery store gift card or a gas station gift card. Because that helps offset the unexpected expenses that I’m having.” However, later on down the year, I might find like, “Oh, I really need to take a trip to this conference,” or, “I need to go on this research trip.” And at that point, maybe the air miles are more helpful.

20:10 Rachel: So, it just depends. The nice thing about gift cards too is that if you want to, dare I say, splurge, and get yourself a gift card to like AMC Theatres so you can see a movie, or something that’s like a small, not too expensive luxury. Later on, when you go use that gift card to go see that movie, you don’t really feel as guilty about it because you’re not spending your own money. You’re actually just spending the rewards that you’ve already incurred from paying on your credit card. So, that’s kind of a nice thing that I feel like is a guilt-free way of treating yourself to the occasional movie, or what have you. Because, as we all know, grad school is so stressful. Yeah.

Credit Card Churning: Spreadsheets Are Your Friends

20:53 Emily: I really like that strategy that you’re using the points or whatever that you build up as almost kind of a piggy bank that you can then deploy as needed in the future. And of course, using it for lifestyle upgrades, like going to the occasional movie or whatever you want. When you have your stipend paying your baseline expenses, then you can use your side hustle money, the credit card rewards, whatever it is, for big expenses as they come up to ease your stress or just more of life’s pleasures. So, I really like that strategy. Any other things you want to share with us regarding credit card churning?

21:27 Rachel: I really do recommend keeping a spreadsheet with all of your information, just to make sure that you’re keeping track of what you’re spending, you’re keeping track of, “Is this really for sure financially benefiting me? Am I getting rewards?” Versus, “Am I tempted to spend more money just because I’m trying to meet some kind of signup reward, or something.” Also, don’t be afraid to cancel credit cards. A lot of these cards start off free the first year, but then have an annual fee that they’ll charge you. And sometimes those annual fees hit you and you go, “Oh no, I didn’t realize I was already a year out from when I started this card.” So, you know, make sure that you keep a tally of dates of like, “Okay, I need to make sure I cancel this card by this date,” and so on and so forth. Just to keep yourself on the straight and narrow with the churn.

22:18 Emily: Totally. Totally agree. I have to admit myself, just last month I had an annual fee for one of my cards hit, and I was kind of like, “Oh I guess I’m keeping that card another year.” I mean, I could probably still call and get out of it, but I was kind of debating, “Should I cancel it before the year is up or should I keep it?” And then the year was up before I had my bearings about it. So, I’m going to start a spreadsheet and put that in because I’m definitely canceling it by the end of the second year. In fact, it’s already on my calendar as a reminder to do that. So yes, being very organized, super, super crucial with this strategy.

Commercial

22:57 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Tax season is upon us, and while no one loves this time of year, it’s particularly difficult for post-bac fellows, funded grad students, and postdoc fellows. Even professional tax preparers are often thrown for a loop by our unique tax situation. And don’t get me started on tax software. I provide tons of support at this time of year for PhD trainees preparing their tax returns, from free articles and videos, to paid at-your-own-pace workshops, to live seminars and webinars for universities and research institutes. The best place to go to check out all of this material is pfforphds.com/tax. That’s P F F O R P H D S.com/T A X. Don’t struggle through tax season on your own. Visit my website for the exact information you need in the most efficient form available. Now, back to the interview.

Let’s Talk More About Travel Hacking

24:01 Emily: So, let’s talk more about travel hacking. And you already mentioned using the credit card signups to then generate points that can be translated to different airlines depending on the card and who their partners are. So, that’s definitely one way to go about travel hacking. But you said you had a few other travel hacks that you like to use.

24:19 Rachel: Yeah, I do. So, okay. So, some of these are really simple and kind of a onetime thing. Some of these are a little bit more “shady,” if you will. Not shady, I’m not going to recommend anything illegal, but a little sneaky. So, one of the sneaky things that I did, and I’m sure I can’t be the first person to do this or come up with this, but I would be very careful about timing my applications for funding within the university, because some funding applications will say, “Are you receiving funding for many other source?” And I want to be able to say, “No, I’m not.” And that’s true if I have not yet received official funding from another source. So, I was very careful to time my applications in such a manner that allowed me to always be able to say, “No, I’m not receiving funding from another source.” And if I then applied to another source after I submitted that application, well you know, who could have foreseen that I would do that. So, that’s one. Yeah. Another smaller hack is that a lot of us, I think, forget that as grad students, we’re still entitled to student discounts. So, things like STA Travel, which is the Student Travel Association. They have a website where you can look up airfares and all kinds of things. That’s something to take advantage of in addition to all of the sort of usual suspects like couchsurfing and Airbnb, and things like that.

25:52 Emily: I don’t know about Student Travel Association. Can you say more about that?

STA Travel and Hostelworld

25:56 Rachel: Oh yeah, sure. Student Travel Association. I discovered them when I was in college, actually, because I was studying abroad and I was looking into airfares and things and wondering if, “Is there a way I can hack my way into traveling more beyond my study abroad semester?” So, that’s when I discovered STA Travel. STA Travel covers a lot of things. They also, and I could be wrong on this, but I believe they are the same company that issues international student identification cards. That’s the ISIC card, International Student Identity Card. And that has some benefits to it. In fact, recently they’ve started making them like a credit card so you can even add money onto them and use them as a form of payment. But yeah, STA Travel has a lot of different options. And some of the airfares might be, the stipulation is merely just that you’re a student. Some of them might be, you need to be 35 years and younger. So it kind of depends. You have to check it out. But it’s at least another source.

27:00 Emily: This reminds me, and maybe this is part of that association, but just about hostels–like some of them are only open to students or maybe people of a certain age; not super common in the US. But abroad, much more. So, is that kind of the same idea?

27:14 Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. And actually when it comes to hostels, if you haven’t discovered Hostelworld–hostel W O R LD.com–they’re a great source for housing. And I’ve used them abroad a lot. But in the bigger cities in the U S you’ll find Hostelworld locations, too. And it’s amazing how cheap you can get. A lot of people say, “Well, I don’t feel comfortable sleeping in a room with 10 other people that I don’t know for $10 a night.” A lot of properties on hostelworld.com do offer private rooms, and they’re still cheaper than what you would find on Airbnb.

27:54 Emily: I actually used Hostelworld–I think it was through Hostelworld–when I traveled to Chicago one time when I was in graduate school. And my husband and I, who had no interest in staying in separate rooms with many other people, were able to book a private room together at the hostel, which worked out really well for us. It was very inexpensive. So yeah, thanks so much for mentioning that. And also STA Travel. I spent 10 years in college and graduate school and I’m really kicking myself that I did not know about this. So, thank you so much for mentioning it. What’s the next travel hack on your list?

Budget Airlines, Driving, and Incognito Browsing

28:26 Rachel: Yeah. Okay. So, some of those websites also worth mentioning briefly if you ever are traveling abroad. Ryanair and EasyJet are budget airlines and they’re really inexpensive. That’s helpful to know. But unfortunately, those seem to be limited to Europe. Okay. So, I’ve also crunched the numbers on this, and if it’s possible to drive and if you are receiving funding for say a conference or a research trip, driving actually optimizes the money that you’re spending because you might actually get more back. A lot of universities have a really nice high mileage reimbursement for driving. And so if you can drive but you were thinking of just taking a plane just because, it might actually be worth your while financially to drive. Another thing is, I don’t know if this is widely known, but browsing “incognito” on your browser when you’re looking at flights and hotel rooms and things like that.

29:27 Rachel: So, with most browsers, you just go to the settings. I use Google Chrome. So, for Google Chrome, it’s the upper right-hand corner, and you pull down the dropdown menu and you just say that you want to browse incognito. And what that does is it sort of erases all of the memory and cookies that are stored in your browser. And for whatever reason, say like Orbitz for example, if they know that, “Oh, Rachel Blackburn comes to us and she buys plane tickets through Orbitz a lot, we can probably charge her just a little bit more because she’s likely not going to look at any other sites for fares.” And so browsing incognito takes away their ability to do that.

30:12 Emily: Yeah, really good tip. Anything else in that travel hacking list?

For the Bold and the Brave: Motel Pricing Negotiation

30:18 Rachel: Okay. So, one thing I’ve done–and this might be a little on the riskier side, and I certainly would never, ever blame anybody for not wanting to do this–but, let’s say I’m driving long distance and I know that I’m going to have to crash somewhere. If you feel comfortable, and especially as a single woman, maybe you feel more comfortable doing this if you have a friend with you or something like that. A lot of hotels that are these kinds of like motels that you see on the side of the highway when you’re driving long distance and you’re kind of in the middle of nowhere. They will lower their fares quite a bit if you show up late at night and you’re like, “Hey, I need a room.” And they’ve only got like maybe 10 other people in the hotel and they’ll say, “Okay, it’s $99 for the night.” And I’ll say, “Oh, you know what? I’m sorry. That’s a little bit more than I was wanting to spend. So, I’m just going to go on.” And then they’ll say, “No, no, no, no, wait.” Because who else is going to drop by late at night to stay? So, a lot of them will actually negotiate fare with you, and they’ll drop it down, say like, “Okay, well can you do 75?” “Yeah, that’s better.” Okay. Now, that does mean that you’re not making a reservation ahead of time. You also run the risk that they may not negotiate with you. That can happen too. So, if I’m taking this route, I try to always stop off in a town that’s large enough to have at least three or four off-the-highway motels where I can try that tactic.

31:52 Emily: I’m really glad you mentioned that because we have so few opportunities for negotiation in the US for these types of sales. So, yeah, that never occurred to me, but I really like this strategy. I can’t say I’ll necessarily do it, but I like the idea.

32:08 Rachel: Yeah, it’s for the bold and the brave for sure.

32:11 Emily: I mean, if there is a town where there are two, three, four of these, then they know that you can just walk down the street and try the same tactic. It’s not going to cost you hardly any more time. So, why not? How late is late at night by the way, for you, after what time?

32:25 Rachel: Hmm, that’s a great question. Most people, especially thinking of highway driving, a lot of people like to be in a motel before it gets dark, especially people with families and stuff like that. So, I would say any time after sunset you’re good to negotiate. Yeah.

32:44 Emily: Yeah. Sounds good. Any more travel hacks?

Inviting (non-PhD) Friends to Conferences

32:49 Rachel: One thing I have done, and I wouldn’t exactly call this a hack, and anytime I have done this, I’ve been totally upfront with my friends about it. If I’m going to, say, a research conference or a research trip or something. I’m going somewhere, I can anticipate I’m going to need a hotel room or an Airbnb. I will often invite my friends along, and not friends who are PhD students, but just friends of mine. And I’ll be upfront and I’ll say, “Listen, would you want to come hang out with me in this city for a weekend? We can split an Airbnb, and when I’m at my conference, you can do your own thing. And when I’m not at my conference, we can hang out together.” And I’ve done that before and it’s great. It’s a double benefit of getting to see friends that you wouldn’t otherwise see. But also, you have someone to share the conference with who’s not necessarily associated with the conference. So, I did a research trip to LA at one point and I invited two of my girlfriends along, and I said, “Hey, I’m going to be in LA for a long weekend. Come hang out with me. There’s going to be times when I’ll have to be at this conference, but most of the time I’ll be free to hang out.” And so they shared an Airbnb with me and immediately split my Airbnb three ways instead of one way. So yeah, that’s another hack, sort.

34:06 Emily: Yeah, why not? If you’re going to a desirable location and you like your friends and like to hang out with them, no harm in suggesting it, certainly.

34:13 Rachel: Yeah. I mean, I know so many people that go, “Oh no one else is going to this conference. I guess I’m footing the bill for the whole hotel room by myself.” And it’s like, “No, you might have some friends who like to travel and who would love the excuse to just get away for a weekend.” So, yeah.

34:33 Emily: Yeah. I like that idea.

Prefixes: To Doctor, or Not To Doctor

34:35 Rachel: Okay. Last one. This is the last hack. I often, when I’m booking a hotel or a plane, I have read that specifying your prefix as doctor can make a difference. Even if you’re not a doctor yet, what are they going to do? They’re going to go find your transcripts? Probably not. I don’t think American Airlines has time for that. So yeah, start using doctor as a prefix. It couldn’t hurt.

35:03 Emily: So, when you say that it can help, what do you mean? Would that actually change the rate that you’re paying, or what difference would it make?

35:13 Rachel: Yeah, well I’ve read stories of people saying that they got a better seat or they got a better rate. Sometimes it might just be like, “Oh, you’re a doctor? Continental breakfast is free for you,” or whatever. Or maybe it’s just a few dollars off your bill, or something. But my guess is that this only leads to really minute differences, but again, every little bit helps. Why not? Worst-case scenario, somebody calls you Doctor?

35:44 Emily: Yeah, I think I may try this out. I’m trying to remember. I think in most cases when I travel, I don’t use doctor as a prefix because I don’t want to be approached with a medical situation on a plane. Of course, I’ve never even seen that happen. So, the chances that it would are really, really, really tiny. But I think that’s been my reason to shy away from using my proper title. But now that I know that I may actually get something out of it, I might try using it consistently going forward. Okay. So, we’ve talked about your side hustling. We’ve talked about how you’ve generated other extra income and how you’ve reduced expenses with your associated travel and so forth. And you told me when we started preparing this episode that all this allowed you to open a Roth IRA during graduate school, which, if you told me I’m being paid $1,000 a month and I’m going to be living in Lawrence, Kansas, I’d be like, “Good luck with that.”

36:46 Emily: You know, who would ever think that that would be possible? Yet, it sounds like through these different mechanisms that you were able to. So, tell me more about why you decided to start saving for retirement while you were in graduate school and why in particular you used a Roth IRA?

Why Start a Roth IRA in Graduate School?

37:00 Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. So, I’m in the humanities. I was a theater professional, theater artist for many, many years professionally before I decided to go back to school, years later. And because of that, I was a freelance contractor for a lot of my life–a lot of my working adult life. So, I was never hired on a permanent full-time basis. I was often hired on a full-time basis for the next three months, you know? And then I was again hired somewhere else for the next three months. And I think in the back of my mind, I kept hoping, one of these days, surely, I will get a job that will offer me benefits and savings plans and things like that. And after a few years, I realized, that’s not going to happen. And then when I went back to school, I didn’t know what my options would be there, either.

37:54 Rachel: I knew it was going to be a tight budgeting situation. I was not under any illusion that I would be–I mean, the idea of like saving for an IRA was completely out of my mind. But somewhere during the PhD–and at this point in my life, I’m like early thirties, 32, 33–and I thought, “If I don’t make this happen for myself, it might never happen.” We all know the statistics about finding a tenure-track job after you graduate. And I just thought I can’t keep telling myself, “Don’t worry. One day you’ll get that job. Don’t worry, one day you’ll get those benefits.” I thought, “Okay, it’s up me. It’s up to me to do it. So, I just need to really be creative and smart about how I’m saving money.”

Know Yourself to Choose Which IRA Works For You

38:42 Rachel: I was able to open a Roth IRA with Vanguard. Now, there again–and for those listening, PhD students who are great at research–just research around, figure it out. One thing I liked about Vanguard was that they seem to have, I believe–and I don’t want to misspeak because I could always be wrong. There could be information I don’t have–they seem to have kept their nose clean, relatively, through the recession. And that was one thing that really attracted me to them. I also spoke to friends and family that were involved in business and they all said, “Oh yeah, Vanguard’s a great company.” So, that’s how I chose them. I also just researched financial products and I said, “Okay, what makes the most sense to me?” I wanted something that would hold onto my money and wouldn’t let me at it. Because if I could pull it out without penalty, I probably would. And that’s just a personality assessment on myself. So, I wanted a financial product that I could put money into anytime. I wasn’t worried about being taxed on it. So, that’s why I chose the Roth IRA that I did. And, it would give me incentive to not take the money back out. So, yeah.

39:53 Emily: That sounds perfect. I think you had great insight there. If you don’t make this happen for yourself, it may not happen. Now, we know that you now have that tenure-track position. You’re one of the lucky few, right? But so many people, so many people currently in grad school or maybe in a postdoc or something–yeah, you don’t know what your job is going to be in the future. And kind of the way things are trending is, not only are pensions in many cases a thing of the past, even having what would be full-time benefits, like having access to a 403(b) or 401(k) or whatever, that is disappearing too as more and more people are entering the freelance market, as you said, or doing contract work. So, really, at some point, as you just said, you just need to make it happen for yourself because you can’t necessarily rely on an employer to do this for you anymore.

40:50 Emily: So, it’s a hard realization, but it’s one that if you do have it early on, like you did prior to graduate school or maybe during graduate school or during a postdoc for other people you know what, go ahead and get started. Because now is always kind of the best time to do it, right? Like best time to start saving for retirement. Well, that was 10 years ago, but the second best time is right now. So, go ahead and get started and don’t let, “Oh in the future things will be different hold you back from that.” So, I really love having the story from you of, “Yeah, my stipend was very small, not really sufficient for even a relatively low cost of living area. Yet, this is what I did to change this. I hustled in this way. I was super smart about deploying my credit score in this other way. I kept my travel expenses down in this way, and look at that. I was able to start saving for retirement based on all those strategies.”

Best Financial Advice for Early-Career PhDs

41:39 Emily: And now of course you have the full-time job and things are working out very well, it sounds like. So, love this story and thank you so much for this interview. And as we kind of sign off here, I just wanted to ask you, what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD?

41:55 Rachel: Don’t underestimate your own creativity. One of your strengths and skills as a PhD student is researching. So, why not take that same skill and apply it to your financial life? If you had told me when I was in my MFA program, “Hey, guess what? In a few years, you’re going to make up your mind that you’re bound and determined to open an IRA.” I would’ve said, “That’s crazy. How am I ever going to save for an IRA on a stipend that I have?” And my other best piece of advice, I decided that because your loans are deferred while you’re in school, if you can pay on your loans while you’re in school, you’re only paying principal. So, that was my other goal throughout grad school. Financially speaking, I was bound and determined, even if it was $10 a month, that was still $120 less on my principal at the end of the year. So, however small it is, just chipping away at those student loans while you’re in school will really help you by the time you’re out of school.

43:01 Emily: I love both pieces of advice. Deploying your creativity and your research skills to your finances as well as your academic interests. And then, just because your student loans are deferred doesn’t mean you have to ignore them. Go ahead and start paying on them to whatever degree you can or are interested in. And/or do this retirement investing. Both of them are going to greatly benefit you by the time you finish up with graduate school and start having to make payments on the student loans. So, Rachel, thank you so much for this interview. This is really, really insightful and I enjoyed speaking with you.

43:34 Rachel: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It was great talking to you.

Outtro

43:38 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 Grad Student Is on the Lowest Rung of the Pay Ladder and Side Hustles to Compensate

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

Links Mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

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

Intro

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

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Level of Pay Variation at UW-Madison

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is a Project Assistant?

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

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

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

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

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

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

06:52 Emily: But in reality…

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

RA-ing Does Not Always = Dissertation Work

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

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

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

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

Perspective on Assistantship Tiers

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

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

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

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

Determine the Standard Offer in Your Field Ahead of Time

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

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

A Deep Dive into Frankie’s Side Hustles

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

Tutoring for the Department of Athletics

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

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

Self-Employment: Frankie’s Cupcakes

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

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

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

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

Arbitrage via Poshmark

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

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

GRE Tutoring and College Application Assistance

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

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

Commercial

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Prioritizing Valuable Side Hustles

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

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

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

Managing Work-Life Balance

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

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

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

Benefits of Therapy in Graduate School

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

Best Financial Advice for Early-Career PhDs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Know Your Worth, and Advocate for Yourself

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

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

Ask for Help: Get to Know Your Administrative Staff

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

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

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

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

Outtro

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

This PhD Side Hustler Maintains a Healthy Work-Life Balance

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Today’s podcast guest is Dr. Caitlin Faas, an assistant professor of psychology and perennial side hustler. We discuss her history with side hustling and her motivations for pursuing it. Caitlin’s current side hustle of academic coaching dovetails so well with her primary role as a faculty member that she’s even planning to include that work in her tenure packet. Her work involves coaching and teaching about time management, productivity, and overcoming psychological barriers to academic success, so listen through the episode and check out her website to learn the tips that work well for her and her clients.

Links Mentioned in Episode

healthy work life balance

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Give your feedback on Season 1 and influence the direction for Season 2 through this form.

0:00 Introduction

1:09 Please Introduce Yourself

Dr. Caitlin Faas is an assistant professor at small liberal arts college in Maryland. She’s had her job for five years, and soon she is submitting tenure packet. She went to graduate school at Virginia Tech, where she studied human development and family studies. She’s the developmental psychology professor in her department. Her research focus is emerging adulthood.

For her side hustle, Caitlin runs a business to coach busy professionals as they try to integrate school and academics into their daily life. She provides career direction and productivity tips to her clients, as well as offering advice on her blog and social media. Her clients are associate professors, graduate students, and professionals considering applying to graduate school.

3:17 Did you have a side hustle as a student?

Caitlin has always valued hard work and earning her own income. As an undergraduate, she worked while being a full time student. Then as a graduate student, Caitlin worked at the local yarn shop during the summer and had a couple corporate retail work experiences. Having extra spending money was her motivation for her side hustle. She’d usually spend her income from the yarn shop on yarn for her knitting hobby. She also used her money for non-funded academic opportunities, like going to conferences.

Caitlin and Emily both agree that having outside activities, whether paid or hobby, helps you personally while you’re a graduate student. A side hustles is a valuable way to learn other skills and discover what you enjoy doing.

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8:10 How did you transition into self-employment as your side hustle?

Caitlin went from graduate school directly into her assistant professor position. For the first two years, she focused on her productivity, time management, and personal values. She decided that she wanted to work 9-5 and use her non-work time as she chose. She trained for a half marathon and on her runs, she listened to Nick Loper’s Side Hustle Nation podcast. The stories she heard on the podcast inspired her to start her own business on the side. Starting a coaching business seemed like a way for her to take more control of her career trajectory in the face of an uncertain economy. In contrast to other professors who may do consulting on the side, Caitlin decided to create her own platform to reach the general public. She wanted to help people beyond her students and outside her own academic network.

15:13 What do you do in your business and how does it complement your primary job?

Caitlin is a personal coach, working with clients to improve their productivity, time management, writing and academic life. To get started, she took coaching classes and offered her expertise to a broad audience. Most clients needed help determining if they should leave their job to go to graduate school, so Caitlin’s work has evolved to focus on that audience.

She spends about 8-10 hours per week on her business during the academic year and 20 hours per week during the summer. This time is spent coaching clients, collaboratively editing writing and teaching writing skills, speaking at conferences outside of her field, engaging her audience on social media, and on networking calls. She recently began working with corporations to help bridge generational differences. For instance, she has advised business how to help baby boomers and millenials work better together. She’s been paid to give webinars in a corporate setting.

Caitlin and Emily comment that academics are trained to view much of their work as voluntary service. Academics do many tasks, like reviewing papers, as a service for no extra money. Yet through a side hustle, Caitlin is paid for these tasks, generating income for her valuable skills.

20:50 What benefits have you experienced from your side hustle?

Caitlin benefits from flexibility with her finances that come from her side income. She has student loan bills, so this income helps her make those payments. She dreams of financial freedom. Also, Caitlin likes that her side hustle gets her outside of the ivory tower. She enjoys getting to know other people and helping people. Her goal is help people feel empowered to make decisions about their career and be productive. Through her business, she feels in control of her career, where she can learn lessons and grow opportunities.

23:02 Can you tell us about your website?

Caitlin’s website provides free content for interested people. She includes a blog with posts about productivity, self-improvement, and deciding whether to go to graduate school. Every two weeks, she sends an email newsletter. She provides videos with a transcript and worksheets.

Her first website was very simple and didn’t have much content. Having a website was an important first step to establish her business and build an audience. As she earned more money, she could put some of that money back into her business. Now, she hires a graphic designer and video editor to improve the quality of her online products.

25:34 How do you manage your time between your primary job, side hustle, and other commitments?

As a productivity coach, Caitlin practices what she coaches. She is serious about working her primary job 9-5 and having free time on evenings and weekends. She is super strict about sleep, so she always make sure she has 8 hours of sleep each night. She encourages people to start with getting enough sleep. Caitlin critically considers how she likes to spend her time, so that she spends it on activities she enjoys. For instance, she has decreased the time she spends editing papers, because she finds more fulfillment from coaching clients in person. She read Gretchen Rubin’s books for inspiration, and suggests that others look for productivity role models to follow.

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30:48 How does your side hustle interact with your primary job?

At first, Caitlin kept her business idea quiet. Now that she has established her side hustle, she is open about it with people in her department. She says typically people don’t think too much about what she’s doing, but colleagues ask her about time management.

Coaching clients has made Caitlin a better professor, because skills she learned while she trained to be a coach showed her how to be a better teacher. She’s including information about her coaching business in her tenure package. She is making the case that her coaching business has improved her performance as a professor.

33:38 Would there be a situation where your side hustle became your primary job, or alternatively, you would stop it?

Caitlin has other goals that are fulfilled through her professor position. For example, one of her goals is travel, and her professor position gives her the opportunity to take her students abroad. She took her students to Greece, and her travel was paid for. She sees this as a perk of being a professor.

She is in a growth mode in her coaching business. She has 8-10 hours each week, so she’s examining how she can grow even though her time is limited. Additionally, Caitlin and her partner will be foster parents for teenagers soon. This family life transition may change her priorities and time management.

37:12 How could someone with a PhD find a side hustle that complements their primary work?

Caitlin recommends completing “What’s your purpose?” and “What are the things you like to do?” activities offered on several entrepreneur websites. Even though the entrepreneur path may not seem like an intuitive one for many with a PhD, Caitlin suggests plugging into the entrepreneur network to find support.

Through a side hustle, you can truly explore what you want to do and find something you love to work on. When you find something that you love, Caitlin says you have energy to overcome road blocks and make it grow. If you don’t love the work, you have the freedom to change direction.

39:40 Final Comments

Caitlin and Emily are both part of a self-employed PhD network led by Dr. Jennifer Polk. The network is very supportive and includes a diversity of people. Caitlin and Emily welcome people to reach out to them directly.

40:55 Conclusion

Code Maintenance Consultant

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Name: Carolyn Chlebek

University: Cornell University

Department/Program: Biomedical Engineering, PhD student

 

What is your side or temporary job?

I work as a consultant for a Gait Analysis Laboratory on campus. I maintain the code that provides the interface and analysis packages for the laboratory.

How much do you earn?

I earn $18/hr.

How do you balance your job with your graduate work?

I set aside 5 hours per week in my schedule. Typically, I look at my weekly schedule Sunday night and find some time that I physically block off – I ensure that I work 9 hr/day in total, therefore ensuring I give enough time for my research (minimum 40hrs/week).

Does your job complement your graduate work or advance your career?

Yes, this job can definitely influence my career. Much of my research requires me to create and maintain code, so this side hustle is good practice. Additionally, the graduate student who held this position before me went into consulting and found that this position was a great talking point in interviews and demonstrated his skills that made him a great fit for a consulting position.

How did you get started with your job?

Another graduate student in my lab held the position before me and recruited me to take over from him after he graduated.

Is there anything else you would like to share about your experience?

I enjoy the challenges of this position, and the more translational nature of this work – the lab uses this data to evaluate the healing progress of pet dogs after surgeries. They also use this data to guide future surgical decisions – as a dog lover, this is very motivating!