audio

Which Postdocs Get Health Insurance and Retirement Accounts?

June 29, 2025 by Emily Leave a Comment

In this episode, I share what I’ve learned recently about the landscape of postdoc benefits in the US, specifically with respect to health insurance and workplace-based retirement accounts. This discussion of employees and non-employees or fellows may be familiar territory to some of you, but I also know I’m reaching people who have never heard it before. I hope that this episode helps more postdocs access more benefits, but I will not present a single universal solution that can be immediately adopted. Please take what you learn today back to your peers at your institution to converse about what they’re doing for their benefits and what may be possible for all of you.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Which Postdocs Get Health Insurance and Retirement Accounts?

Teaser

Jamie G: “As a postdoc, I mean, yes, your benefits are important, but you’re so, uh, worried about all of the work that you have to get done scientifically. So I think doing all this extra administrative stuff falls by the wayside more often than not.”

Introduction

Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily: This is Season 21, Episode 3, and today is a mostly solo episode from me plus some short interview segments on what I’ve learned recently about the landscape of postdoc benefits in the US, specifically with respect to health insurance and workplace-based retirement accounts. This discussion of employees vs. non-employees or fellows or trainees may be familiar territory to some of you, but I also know I’m reaching people who have never heard it before with some bright spots. I hope that this episode helps more postdocs access more benefits, but I will not present a single universal solution that can be immediately adopted. Please take what you learn today back to your peers at your institution to converse about what they’re doing for their benefits and what may be possible for all of you together.

Emily: If you’ve been enjoying this podcast, would you please take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts? I just caught up on the reviews on Apple Podcasts after a few years, and they really put a smile on my face. Leaving a review also helps other PhDs and PhDs-to-be find this podcast. Thank you very much! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s21e3/. Without further ado, here’s my episode on postdoc benefits.

First Encounters with Postdoc Employee/Non-Employee Differential Benefits

Emily: I’ll start today’s episode with how I first personally encountered this postdoc employee/non-employee differential benefits weirdness. After my husband defended his PhD, he wanted to get a couple more papers published before applying for jobs or other postdocs, so he arranged to stay in his PhD advisor’s lab as a postdoc until he could finish those up. As his graduate appointment was ending, his advisor gave him three choices as to how he could be hired as a postdoc. All three paid the same gross income.

Emily: First, he could be hired as a fellow aka non-employee. That meant he would have to pay for his health insurance premium out of his income and he would not have access to the university 403(b). Second, he could be hired as an employee. That meant his health insurance premium would be paid on his behalf and he had access to the university 403(b). Third, he could be hired as a contractor. That meant he would have to pay for his health insurance premium out of his income and he would not have access to the university 403(b). The tax implications are also different across these three appointments with respect to the employee and employer sides of FICA aka Social Security and Medicare tax, each 7.65% of his income. As a fellow, neither he nor the university would pay FICA tax. As an employee, his employer would pay their half and he would pay his half. As a contractor, he would pay both halves.

Emily: We thought this was such a strange offer! Since the gross income was held steady across all three, it was clear that the employee position was superior due to the cost of the health insurance, and we definitely wanted the 403(b) benefit, even though there was no match. If he had been offered more money for the fellow or contractor positions as compared to the employee position, maybe we really would have had to weigh the choice, but not as it was presented. It was such a stark difference that we wondered if we were missing something—why wouldn’t he choose the employee position, why was this even under discussion?

Emily: Now, when I look back on this offer, what I find remarkable is not the lack of benefits for the non-employee positions or that the same amount of money was offered, it’s that my husband’s advisor gave him a choice at all. Up until recently, I perceived the postdoc position as falling into one of two broad categories. This was based on my examinations of the benefits offered to postdocs at universities that hired me to speak, if the subject matter included a discussion of retirement accounts. Postdocs could be employees with all the attendant benefits such as employer-provided health insurance, access to the workplace-based retirement account, perhaps an employer-provided retirement account contribution, formal vacation and leave policies, etc. These might be the same suite of benefits offered other staff or faculty members or a modified one. Or postdocs could be non-employees who did not have access to the workplace-based retirement account, had to pay for their health insurance premium out of their own pockets—which was not a tax-deductible expense—and probably did not have the protections that a regular employee would. The only monetary upside to being a fellow over an employee is that your income is not subject to FICA tax, meaning that you don’t have to pay 7.65% of your income in that particular payroll tax. However, the flip side is that you don’t get Social Security credit for those quarters either, so that’s really a double-edged sword.

Postdoc Benefits Examples From the Academic Community

Emily: Way back in Season 2 Episode 3, Dr. McDowell, who at that time was the executive director of Future of Research, shared his observation that

Gary M: “Benefits is just a whole minefield with postdocs, even within the same institution. There can be all sorts of different benefits categories for all sorts of different titles of postdocs.”

Emily: I also thought that your funding source completely determined your status—that postdocs who won individual fellowships or were on institutional training grants had to be classified as non-employees. This view was supported as I heard from postdocs who were shifted from one classification to the other within the same institution; for example, postdocs who started out as employees and then were switched to non-employees when they won a fellowship or were put on a training grant.

Emily: Dr. Jamie Lahvic gave us an example of this occurrence during our interview in Season 14 Episode 3:

Jamie L: “And then as a postdoc, I did have a retirement account offered. However, I started out by like not really contributing very much to it at all because I was living in this really high cost-of-living area with not a lot of income. And then I actually found out as I was going through the fellowship application process that I was going to be losing that retirement contribution once I got a fellowship coming in. So then I sort of, at the last minute just before my fellowship came in, I like maxed out all my contributions as best as I could for like the last few months and tried to top it off. But then the fellowship came in and those accounts kind of sat stagnant for the rest of my postdoc. So that was a frustrating thing to see.”

Emily: For this episode, I spoke with Dr. Jamie Garcia, who is the Associate Director of Scientific Partnerships and Engagement at the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research. She confirmed that

Jamie G: “More often than not, we do see that once they’re awarded the fellowship. There is this shift from university employee to like a trainee classification, which is seen on a training grant or if you are awarded an f, you know, you, you suddenly lose your employee status. And unfortunately with that. A lot of times things such as contributing to retirement is no longer on the table. Medical and dental can be compromised in some way, shape or form. And even being able to park on university campus. So we’ve really seen a wide array of employee benefits get stripped away.”

Emily: However, in recent years, I’ve realized that the postdoc benefits landscape is much more varied than my initial impression. Postdocs care a lot about receiving benefits, and in some cases they and their institutions have found ways to mitigate the issues caused by being classified as a non-employee or even changed the classification altogether. I do want to point out before we start that term employee is a bit tricky and used differently in different contexts, such as tax vs. labor. For myself, I’m tax-focused, so I go by IRS-related classifications. If you are a US citizen, permanent resident, or resident for tax purposes, and your income is reported on a Form W-2 and you have access to a workplace-based retirement account, perhaps after a waiting period, I would call you an employee. For nonresidents, your tax reporting might be on a Form W-2 or a Form 1042-S with income code 19 or 20. If your income as a US citizen or resident is reported in some other way and you don’t have access to the workplace-based retirement account, I would call you a non-employee, at least with respect to that income. For nonresidents, if your tax reporting is on a Form 1042-S with income code 16, I would call you a non-employee. Income tax withholding for US citizens and residents falls similarly: if you’re an employee, your income tax will be withheld on your behalf, and if you’re a non-employee, it might not be withheld on your behalf. If you’re a nonresident, it’s going to be withheld either way.

Emily: I need to define another term here: workplace-based retirement account. I’m using this as a catch-all term for 403(b)s, 457s, and state-sponsored retirement plans, whichever applies at a given institution. An IRA, individual retirement arrangement, is not tied to your workplace. The postdoc benefits situation is considerably different than the grad student benefits situation, even though either might be classified as employees or non-employees. Grad student benefits are more similar across the board, whereas for postdocs there can be a vast difference between being classified as an employee vs. non-employee. I’m painting with a broad brush, but it seems to me that grad students are always offered student health insurance. If they opt in, the health insurance premium is typically paid in full or in large part on their behalf, and it is not included in their taxable income, and that applies whether they are employees or non-employees. For postdoc employees, their employee health insurance premiums are paid at least in part by the employer, and the premiums are not included in their taxable income. For postdoc non-employees, the premium might be paid for from a separate stipend or they might pay for it out of their regular income, but either way the money that pays the premium is supposed to be included in their taxable income. I’ve even come across postdocs who are not offered a reasonably priced health insurance plan by their universities, so they go through the marketplace to purchase insurance.

Emily: Grad students are not typically given access to their university’s retirement account, whether they are employees or non-employees. In certain circumstances, grad student employees are granted access, like Eun Bin Go, whom I interviewed in Season 8 Episode 10, but it’s quite rare that any grad students actually contribute to the plan. I have never come across a full-time grad student who receives a retirement contribution match. Postdoc employees are typically given access to their university’s retirement account, sometimes after a waiting period, and they sometimes receive an automatic or a matching contribution from their employers. Postdoc non-employees are not given access to their university’s retirement account. When it comes to FICA tax, grad students virtually never pay FICA tax, regardless of their classification, whereas postdoc employees pay their half of the tax and postdoc non-employees don’t pay the tax. Grad students may have little awareness of whether they are considered employees or non-employees, because the benefits difference is negligible to non-existent. In fact, if anything, it’s preferable to be a non-employee on fellowship, because that typically translates into a larger stipend. Speaking for myself, I barely registered when my status changed back and forth during grad school because it didn’t impact my pay, benefits, or day-to-day work. However, postdocs absolutely notice these differences in benefits when they are hired or when they switch, and all too often, the pay is held constant between the two classifications.

Commercial

Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2025-2026 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, medical school, postdoc office, or postdoc association? My workshops are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Orientations, postdoc appreciation week, or close to the start of the academic year would be a perfect time for tax education or general personal finance content. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

How Can Postdocs Who Are Classified as Non-employees Gain Some Employee Benefits?

Emily: First, I’m going to address how postdocs gain benefits at institutions where they are by default classified as non-employees based on their funding source. Second, I’m going to point out that some institutions classify all postdocs as full employees regardless of their funding source. Part 1: How can postdocs who are classified as non-employees gain some employee benefits?

Emily: My curiosity into this question was piqued within the last year when I independently conversed in detail about benefits with two different postdocs at Emory. Both were funded by fellowship/training grant-type funding, so both were primarily classified as non-employees. However, they both accessed a workaround available at Emory, namely being given a very part-time employee appointment so that they could maintain their health insurance benefit and access to Emory’s 403(b). The second postdoc I spoke with, Dr. Celina Jones, asked me if I knew of postdocs on NIH fellowships and training grants who received a retirement contribution match from their institutions, and I offered to ask my mailing list about it. This is the text of the email I sent on January 16, 2025:

“Do you receive a retirement match and if so HOW?

I had a request for information come in from Dr. Celina Jones, who is a postdoc at Emory on an F32.

Celina started off as a postdoc employee at Emory with all the attendant benefits. When she switched onto her F32, she and her PI created a workaround so that she can still access employee health insurance and the 403(b)… but her efforts to retain her retirement match have been stymied.

Celina and I want to know: Do any other postdocs on NIH training grants receive a retirement match from their institutions? She would love to bring some examples back to Emory to advocate for this benefit.

It’s a no-brainer to me that postdocs should not LOSE benefits (read: money) when switching from employee to non-employee status—if anything, they should receive a pay increase or bonus—so I really want to know if solutions are out there!

Please email me back if you have a relevant example!

Emily”

Emily: The responses I received from postdocs underlined that the workaround these Emory postdocs used was not known to everyone. Several respondents confirmed that they had lost their benefits when switching from employee to non-employee status, with no workarounds offered. A couple of grad students replied with outrage and concern that this was an issue their peers were facing and that they might face in the future. Dr. Richard Remigio, a postdoc at NIH, replied “If matching is considerably important, I often hear awardees declining their award so they can remain on their university’s payroll and list the offered award in their CV.” What a sad situation when an award offers prestige but not only no material benefit but actually a material detriment. Jamie Garcia with the Jane Coffin Childs Fund explained how she’s seen this workaround applied at numerous universities:

Jamie G: “We’ve also had a little bit of restructuring of the award such that 80% of the money coming from us goes to the individual and then 20% comes from the lab. And so since it’s split up, that’s sufficient to keep an individual as an employee.”

Emily: I asked Jamie if she had yet come across an institution that would not set up this workaround, if requested, and she said she had not, which is very encouraging. However,

Jamie G: “Every single individual appointment it’s on a case by case basis. We have not become efficient enough yet with our fellows, at least to have this blanket application. So it is a lot of work on the front end with each individual to make sure that they’re getting what they need to be getting to not only be successful in the lab, but in their personal life as well.”

Emily: But something else I’ve realized, and that Jamie Garcia confirmed, is that not all postdocs are left to workarounds vs. staying as complete non-employees.

Where Are All Postdocs Classified as Employees?

Emily: As I said earlier, I originally thought that the source of a postdoc’s funding determined their employee or non-employee classification, and that receiving funding from an NIH fellowship or institutional training grant meant that you had to be a non-employee. However, two years ago, the NIH made a splash with this innocuously phrased notice. Notice number NOT-OD-23-111 is titled “NIH Policies for NRSA Stipends, Compensation and Other Income” and reads:

“The purpose of this Notice is to remind the extramural community of the policies surrounding stipends, compensation and other income for trainees and fellows supported under Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) grants.

In accordance with 42 CFR Part 66, NIH provides stipends to NRSA fellows and trainees as a subsistence allowance to help defray living expenses during the research training experience. NIH does not provide stipends as a condition of employment with either the Federal government or the sponsoring institution (See NIH Grants Policy Statement 11.2.9.2 and 11.3.8.2).

While stipends are not provided as a condition of employment, this policy is not intended to discourage or otherwise prevent recipient institutions from hiring NRSA trainees and fellows as employees or providing them with benefits consistent with what the institution provides others at similar career stages.”

Basically, the NIH was saying, “Hey universities, we never said that you couldn’t hire NRSA fellows and trainees as employees—you totally can if you want to.” Even the end of the notice seems like a nudge to universities to provide benefits to NRSA recipients that are commensurate with those provided to other postdocs. After seeing that notice, I wondered whether any institutions had already been hiring NRSA postdocs as employees or started after the reminder. So at this year’s National Postdoctoral Association Annual Conference and Graduate Career Consortium Annual Meeting, I asked people I met who work in postdoc offices about postdoc benefits and whether all of their postdocs were hired as employees. I actually did meet a few people who confirmed that all of the postdocs at their institutions were hired as employees. For one example, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX. At the Graduate Career Consortium Annual Meeting, Briana Mohan, the Program Manager of Recruitment & Special Programs in the Office for Postdocs, spoke with me at length about all the postdocs being employees. Dr. Ryan Udan, the Program Director for Academic Operations in the Office for Postdocs described all their benefits. The following audio clip will also appear in a forthcoming podcast episode about on-campus resources.

Ryan U: “In terms of resources that my postdocs can access that would improve their finances, I would simply say it is the benefits at our institution. Our employees and trainees have equal access to these benefits. These benefits include things like free mental health counseling through our MDLive, also counseling through our employee assistance fund. We also have an employee assistance fund that our postdocs can apply to receive extra funds for any kind of specific situations. Other benefits are health related benefits, we have a very amazing fitness facility that they can join for free. They can also join programs through our UT Blue Cross insurance. So they can have a hinge health for free for people that have joint issues. There’s several weight loss programs. We also have child care coverage, that’s through a program called Bright Horizons. It’s actually a backup dependent care system, it’s not supposed to be used on a regular basis but you get at least 100 hours per year for backup dependent care. And I know that there’s a couple extra resources but I can’t think of them right now.”

Emily: Amazing! It’s great to hear that some institutions are looking out for all of their postdocs and trying to give them a really positive workplace experience.

Conclusion

Emily: So now I’ve learned, and perhaps you have as well, that being awarded an NIH NRSA or similar fellowship or grant as a postdoc does not mean that your position will lack the benefits that your postdoc employee peers have. At some institutions, the funding source makes no difference as all postdocs are employees. At others, you can be hired as a part-time employee to get some of the benefits. However, there are apparently still a lot of postdocs who are dealing with being classified as a non-employee and not receiving benefits. If you’re in this situation currently or you’re anticipating taking a postdoc position in the future, what can you do to give yourself a better chance of getting the same or almost the same benefits as the postdoc employees?

Emily: First, if you’re searching or interviewing for postdoc positions, consider targeting institutions where all postdocs are hired as employees or where there is an established workaround. Second, again during the interviewing process or after being hired, try to find the right administrator at the institution who can help you with your classification or a workaround.

Emily: Jamie Garcia shared that she helps her fellows do this:

Jamie G: “ I think if you can identify the right people to talk to, which is easier said than done, I believe that people want to help the postdocs, I don’t think that they’re out to make their lives harder. It’s just following protocol.”

Emily: However, Jamie observed that this is a bit easier for an outside funder acting as a liaison to do because they have more experience and ongoing relationships, plus

Jamie G: “As a postdoc, yes, your benefits are important, but you’re so worried about all of the work that you have to get done scientifically. So I think doing all this extra administrative stuff falls by the wayside more often than not.”

Emily: Third, if you’re already in a postdoc position as a non-employee, talk with your peers about their funding sources and benefits, such as through the postdoc association or union. You may find that a workaround can be put in place for you and your peers in a similar situation. This becomes more and more likely the more people speak up about this issue and point to solutions at other institutions. Jamie Lahvic from Season 14 Episode 3 also spoke to this approach during our interview:

Jamie L: “Great groups to kind of connect to for that are unions. Within the UC system, we have a strong postdoc union. And I think they had done a lot of pushing, both on how much you get paid, but also a lot of these minute policies about how you get paid. Even outside of a formal union, I’ve seen a lot of success from graduate students and postdocs just banding together and working together on these things. Whether that is kind of peer-to-peer advice and providing resources, or working together as a group to request something from your department, from your university.”

Emily: Fourth, if you can’t be hired as an employee and no workaround is available, you can attempt to negotiate for more money. Calculate the amount of money that you are losing compared to your employee peers with respect to your health insurance premium and its tax payment and the retirement account match. Ask for that much or more to be added to your salary. Honestly, if you’ve won an individual award and are bringing outside money to your institution, you should be paid even more than employees after normalizing for all benefits, and this does happen sometimes, although it may not be typical. Gary McDowell from S2 E3 observed that:

Gary M: “A lot postdocs are negotiating salaries a lot more than I think people know. I think there’s disparity in who’s asking who’s not asking.”

Emily: If all postdocs at your institution are on a set pay schedule and individual negotiations are not permitted, that’s all the more reason to get together with your peers to argue that all postdoc non-employees should receive a pay increase and/or additional benefits. Please let me know your reaction to this episode! Tell me about your workarounds or which institutions hire all postdocs as employees. You can reach me at [email protected].

Outro

Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

How to Live on Time to Maintain Margin in Your Financial Life

June 16, 2025 by Jill Hoffman 1 Comment

In this episode, Emily explains how to live on time with your finances. Living on time means maintaining financial margin in your life to be able to absorb unexpected occurrences in your income or spending. When you’re behind in your finances, your income is going out the door right after you receive it, you have balances on your credit cards that you can’t pay off until your next paycheck comes, and/or you are unprepared for the next manual tax payment that is required of you. This may be true even if you’re not experiencing financial consequences such as interest payments on debt. The good news is that it’s very simple, though not necessarily easy, to transition to living on time once you know what it means.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

How to Live on Time to Maintain Margin in Your Financial Life

Introduction

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

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

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

This is Season 21, Episode 2, and today is a solo episode from me on how to live on time with your finances. Living on time means maintaining financial margin in your life to be able to absorb unexpected occurrences in your income or spending. When you’re behind in your finances, your income is going out the door right after you receive it, you have balances on your credit cards that you can’t pay off until your next paycheck comes, and/or you are unprepared for the next manual tax payment that is required of you. This may be true even if you’re not experiencing financial consequences such as interest payments on debt. The good news is that it’s very simple, though not necessarily easy, to transition to living on time once you know what it means.

I am delighted to announce that I am now offering one-on-one financial coaching! If you are a PhD or PhD-to-be in the US, I would be happy to serve as your financial coach. I can help you prioritize your financial goals, brainstorm and refine ideas for reducing spending, manage your side hustle income, start investing, prepare for tax season, set up a functional budget, evaluate a stipend or salary offer against your expected living expenses, and much more. What I can’t do is give you individualized investment or tax advice, but beyond that, it’s really open. As of now this coaching is structured as one-time appointments, so there’s no big commitment and you can book just one session or multiple at whatever interval makes sense to you. You can view my rates and book a free 15-minute initial call at PFforPhDs.com/coaching/. During that call, you’ll introduce yourself and your financial questions to me, I’ll let you know if we’re a good fit for a coaching relationship, and we’ll decide how you can best prepare for our first session together.

You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s21e2/.

Without further ado, here’s my solo episode on living on time.

Living on time is a concept I touch on in some of my financial education workshops, but I don’t always have time to expound and explain it completely, and it can be confusing. I decided to create this episode to go into detail about what I mean by it and how to enact it in your financial life. Also, this isn’t a concept that I really see other financial educators cover in depth so I can’t refer you to a book or similar resource. It’s not that mysterious or anything, as you’ll see, it’s probably more that the educators don’t have lower-income people front of mind for their teaching.

What Does It Mean to Live on Time Financially?

The basic concept here is that you shouldn’t unintentionally obligate your future income to pay for your current or past expenses. Basically, I’m encouraging you to not slide unknowingly into debt, although the debt I’m cautioning you about doesn’t always look like you might expect. I’ll share in a moment the three main ways this can easily happen.

The reason that I bring this up is that funded graduate students and others who live paycheck-to-paycheck, either habitually or occasionally, are particularly susceptible to not living on time and experiencing related consequences, such as overdraft fees, credit card interest, and financial stress.

What I’m going to suggest to you is a new way to be aware of your cash flow, i.e., your income coming in and your expenses going out, and that you exercise discipline to align with this concept of living on time. If you aren’t currently living on time, you are living with little or no margin in your financial life. When your financial life is going okay, do your best to live on time and create margin, so that the margin is there for you to access when your financial life is not going okay. In a way, this is an extension of the common financial advice to build an emergency fund.

Two more notes before we dive into what it means to live on time:

First, debt is a financial tool that is available to you. It’s not immoral or wrong to take out debt or be in debt. Debt is to various degrees financially damaging, so you should certainly carefully consider the type and amount of debt you take out. So when I said earlier that you shouldn’t unintentionally obligate your future income to pay for your current or past expenses, I’m not speaking about debt that you have intentionally taken out, such as student loans, a car loan, a mortgage, etc. In fact, I would rather you have a little more well-considered debt than to habitually live behind.

Second, I’m not at all shaming you for not living on time, if in the course of this episode you discover that you aren’t. I would venture that the vast majority of Americans do not practice what I’m about to outline. There are frequent instances in my own life when I’m not living on time and am eating into margin that I created in the past. That’s okay, that’s what it’s there for, but when you emerge from that tougher period, you should try to get back to living on time. Going back to the analogy of an emergency fund, your emergency fund is available for you to use, and after you spend some of it down, you should work gradually to build it back up so that it’s there for you the next time you need it.

Okay, enough beating around the bush, let’s get down to what I define as living on time financially.

1) All your income from one month goes to funding the next month’s spending.

In my view, monthly budgeting cycles make the most sense because so many of your bills are due once per month, including, virtually always, your largest bill, your rent or mortgage payment. A month is also long enough to average out most of your more frequent consumption-based expenses like groceries, car gas, eating out, etc. So if we are going to use a monthly cycle for our expenses, I also suggest that you create a monthly cycle for your income. Specifically, all the income that you bring in the course of a month funds the next month’s expenses. All of the income you receive in June should go toward funding your July expenses. That means that on July 1st, you should have sitting in your checking account all of your income from June, plus any buffer amount of money that you might like to keep in your checking account. That June income will be spent down over the course of July. All of the income you receive in July should be preserved for your August expenses.

If you are paid a monthly or bimonthly salary, this is a really simple and natural cycle to adopt. Things get a little more interesting when you are paid biweekly, weekly, or at some other cadence or have an income that varies with number of hours worked or amount of work accomplished. In those cases, the amount of money you take in over the course of a month will change, perhaps every month. I’ve seen people adopt really complex and confusing systems for handling their bills when their paycheck dates and amounts move around from month to month. They do this because they are using their income as soon as it comes in to pay expenses. In my view, it’s much simpler to wait. Collect all the income in the course of a month, know how much it is, and then use it in the subsequent month. You can even plan a unique monthly budget for every month if this happens a lot, but it’s all going to be based on money already received, not money you expect to receive.

If you are paid less frequently than monthly, which happens with some fellowships, your version of living on time does not include all income in one month funding the next month’s expenses because you don’t have income in every month. Tune back in later in this podcast season for a whole episode devoted to managing your unique income frequency.

In fact, the more of a time buffer you can create between when you receive your income and when you start spending it, the better, up to a point. When I was in graduate school, depending on my funding source, I was paid either on the 25th of the month or the last day of the month. I didn’t have much of a buffer because I was turning around and starting to pay expenses from that income within a day or a few days. After I finished grad school, I set up my business to pay my salary on the 15th of each month so that I could let that money rest, so to speak, for about two weeks before I started spending it in the subsequent month. My husband is currently paid bimonthly on the 15th and last day of the month. We’ve backed up our time buffer even a little further so that we let those paychecks rest for between half a month and a full month before we start to spend them, meaning that the money we will spend in July was received on May 31st and June 15th.

2) Use credit as debit and don’t slide into buy now pay later.

We’ve discussed living on time with respect to your income, and now I want to turn to living on time with respect to your expenses. The biggest danger in this area is the use of debt to delay actually paying for your expenses. This, too, can make budgeting much messier than it has to be.

The principle here is to use credit cards, if you choose to use them at all, as if they were debit cards. That means that every time you make a charge on a credit card, you already have the money to pay for that purchase in your checking account. You could pay the expense in cash, with debit, or with credit.

It’s all too easy with credit cards to push forward actually paying for the purchases you make for a few weeks or over a month. The same goes for buy now pay later schemes like Affirm and Afterpay.

To go back to our example from the last section, the money that you receive in June funds July’s expenses. Those July expenses can be put on a credit card, but you should be able to pay off the credit card in July with that June money. In fact, if you haven’t paid much attention to this before, I suggest that you pay your credit cards off completely at the end of each month to make sure you aren’t carrying any charges forward.

Getting behind with credit cards looks like making charges in July that you actually pay for in August or even September. If you combine it with using your income as soon as you receive it, you might be using August or even September income to pay for charges you made in July. That’s what I mean about unintentionally obligating your future income. You’re behind. And you didn’t even mean to be.

3) Keep up with your tax obligations.

This point only applies to people who are not having income tax automatically withheld from their paychecks, such as grad students, postdocs, and postbacs paid by fellowships or training grants who are US citizens, permanent residents, and residents for tax purposes.

Automatic income tax withholding by employers is very convenient for the individual. A more or less appropriate fraction of each paycheck is set aside and sent to the IRS and your state tax agency on your behalf to pay your annual income tax obligation. You never receive the money in your paychecks.

However, if you are not having income tax automatically withheld from your paychecks, that doesn’t mean you don’t owe the income tax. You will have to pay it at some point, whether it’s when you file your annual tax return or throughout the year via estimated tax payments.

For these individuals, I recommend setting up what I call a system of self-withholding, which means that from each paycheck, you automatically transfer the amount of money you expect to pay in income tax to a savings account dedicated to sequestering this money from the money available to you to spend. When it comes time to pay the IRS and your state tax agency, you pull the payment from this particular savings account, which has been pre-funded with the amount due.

Therefore, this is one more component of ‘living on time.’ If you don’t set aside the money for these tax payments, and perhaps spend it or allow it to leave your bank account for some other purpose, you will be caught out when the payment comes due and need to set up a payment plan with the IRS if you can’t pay—once again, sliding unintentionally into debt.

Living on time means preparing for your income tax bill with every paycheck that you receive, just like when you had an employer doing it for you.

I actually didn’t plan it this way, but it turns out that the day this episode drops, Monday, June 16, 2025, is the estimated tax payment deadline for quarter 2. And that is strange because June is the sixth month of the year, not the seventh. You would think that each quarter, for estimated tax purposes, would be three months long, with the payment due date coming midway through the following month, but you would not be correct. For whatever reason, the payments are due in mid-April, mid-June, mid-September, and mid-January, implying quarter lengths of three, two, three, and four months. Oh, but you still owe one-fourth of your calculated annual obligation on each due date. So to live on time, not only should you save a fraction of each paycheck for your future tax obligations, but you need to make sure that you save extra in quarter 2 or prior quarters to meet that early deadline.

Commercial

Emily here for a brief interlude.

Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2025-2026 academic year.

If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, medical school, postdoc office, or postdoc association? My workshops are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Orientations, postdoc appreciation week, or close to the start of the academic year would be a perfect time for tax education or general personal finance content. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process.

I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation!

Now back to our interview.

Why Attempt to Live on Time

So why should you endeavor to live on time the way I have defined it, even if you don’t always live up to the ideal?

Think about what could happen if you don’t live on time—if you spend your paycheck the day after it comes in and put charges on a credit card that you aren’t able to pay off for a month or two?

First, the income side. If anything goes awry with your income and you don’t receive a paycheck when you expected it in the amount that you expected, immediately you’re overdue on bills or unable to buy gas or food without accessing debt. If you get sick and miss work and either don’t have paid sick leave or you run out, your next paycheck will be smaller than usual or nonexistent. If you depend on side hustle income, but it dries up suddenly, you may find yourself in a bind. If you are on fellowship, your university might play fast and loose with your paycheck date as they don’t have the same legal obligation to stick to a schedule that they would if you were employed. I’ve seen this happen over multiple years to fellows in the University of California system, for example, who expected a stipend disbursement on September 1, but it didn’t come until over a week later. And earlier this spring, the paychecks of NSF postdoc fellows arrived late because of interference by the Trump administration. Of course, none of that is the fault of the individual, but they are the ones to suffer the consequences of a late paycheck, so it’s best to be proactive to build in some margin. When you live on time, a paycheck coming late or in a smaller amount than anticipated is still a problem, but you’ve bought yourself some time to figure out how to pivot.

Second, the expenses side. If you’re spending money you don’t already have in your bank account on a regular basis, what happens when an unexpected expense arises or an expense is larger than you anticipated? You have no margin to absorb these expenses on a temporary basis so that you can figure out your next move. Maybe you’ll put the expense on a credit card, but that tips you into carrying credit card debt instead of managing to pay it off by the due date to avoid interest accruing. If you maintain margin on your credit cards through the habit of living on time, breaking that habit once in a while by making a charge you can’t pay for immediately gives you a handful of weeks to adjust your spending in other areas so that you can ideally pay it off by the due date.

You can see from these examples that it’s not a terrible thing to eat into this margin when you need to to buy yourself time. But if you never maintain the margin in the first place, sliding unintentionally into a type of debt, it can’t serve its purpose when you hit a speedbump in life.

Of course, if you do have an emergency fund, you could access it to handle a small or missed paycheck or an unexpectedly high expense. I just consider the emergency fund to be the backup layer to the margin that’s created by living on time.

In fact, I think you should get on time with your finances even before starting to build your official, separate emergency fund.

How to Start Living on Time

If you are not currently living on time in the most ideal sense, how do you start moving in that direction? The answer is perhaps disappointingly simple. You have to spend less than you earn—even more so than what you’ve been doing to this point.

The ultimate outcome I want for you is to start each month with zero balance on your credit cards and a checking account balance equal to all of your income from the prior month. You can also add a buffer of $500 or $1,000 if you feel more comfortable with that, and I would recommend that if you are operating off of a once-per-month paycheck that arrives late in the month.

As a variation on this, you don’t actually need to clear the balance off of your credit cards at the end of each month as long as you have enough in checking to cover the balances on top of your prior month’s income and you have all the cards on autopay. However, that means your target checking account balance will vary every month.

How do you get from where you are to your target checking account balance and zero balance credit cards? You have to save money. I suggest first trying to do so inside of your checking account because that is where the money ultimately needs to go. You basically need to see your checking account balance gradually increase month over month until you reach your target. But that process can be difficult to track with money cycling in and out all the time, so alternatively you can save money in a separate savings account until you reach your goal and then transfer it into checking and pay off your credit cards in one fell swoop. I would only recommend this method if you’re not accruing interest on credit card debt. After you reach your target checking account balance, all you have to do is maintain the correct balance. Or, if you use the margin for one reason or another, restore it as soon as you’re able to by, you guessed it, saving money.

How do you save money? It’s not really the topic of this episode, but your choices are essentially to earn more, spend less, or redirect your existing savings rate. Your mileage will definitely vary on which of those options is most accessible.

If you are currently saving money for a different goal, I would suggest pausing progress on that goal until you’re living on time. The exception would be if your goal is to repay high interest rate debt, in which case that can take precedence. Whatever goal you’re working toward would get disrupted anyway if you had a loss of income or an unexpected expense.

If this is a goal that can be accomplished in the short term, the most immediate way to increase your savings rate is likely to spend less, so try some temporary fasts from discretionary spending such as eating out, alcohol, and entertainment and re-evaluate your small, fixed expenses like subscriptions.

If this is a longer-term goal, you can try to increase your income through side hustling, if that’s permissible, by winning a fellowship or grant, or negotiating. I also recommend re-evaluating your large, fixed expenses such as housing and transportation and creating new habits to reduce your grocery spending.

In closing, I want to emphasize that living on time is an ideal, and I don’t expect you and you shouldn’t expect yourself to live up to it 100% of the time. However, if you make it a general practice to reserve all of your income from one month to fund the next month’s spending, use your credit cards as if they were debit cards, and keep up with your tax obligations, you will have financial margin in your life to absorb the smaller shocks that you might experience like a late paycheck or unexpected expense. To get to living on time, you just have to save money so that your checking account balance grows to your target level at the start of each month.

Outro

Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode!

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

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

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

Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual.

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

Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

How to Reduce Financial Anxiety as a Limited-Income PhD

June 2, 2025 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily presents five suggestions for reducing financial anxiety that you could use alongside your general anxiety management strategies. These five suggestions are designed to be used by graduate students, postdocs, and PhDs who are in objectively stressful financial situations. They include choosing just one financial goal, taking a small step, creating a recurring appointment, thinking through the worst case scenario, and talking with others.

Links mentioned in the Episode

How to Reduce Financial Anxiety as a Limited-Income PhD

Introduction

Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

This is Season 21, Episode 1, and today is a solo episode from me with five suggestions for reducing financial anxiety that you could use alongside your general anxiety management strategies. These five suggestions are designed to be used by graduate students, postdocs, and PhDs who are in objectively stressful financial situations. They include choosing just one financial goal, taking a small step, creating a recurring appointment, thinking through the worst case scenario, and talking with others.

I recently created a new workshop, the topic of which dovetails pretty nicely with this episode. The title is Create Your Financial Emergency Response Plan. As the name implies, during the workshop, I guide you through creating a plan for handling the type of financial emergency you’re most likely to encounter at the moment, which is the loss of your primary income. The idea is to really think through the resources that you would rely on if your grant gets cancelled, your funding runs out, you’re laid off, or you can’t land a job as quickly as you expected. Then, you’ll decide what steps you can take in the immediate future to bolster your plan’s likelihood of success. I piloted this workshop with subscribers to my mailing list, and it was very well received. I’m offering this workshop in two formats. The first is as a live workshop for university clients, so if you’d like to learn more about that you can go to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/. I would really appreciate you recommending the workshop to an appropriate host at your institution. The second is as a pre-recorded workshop for individuals. You can read more details about this option and purchase it via PFforPhDs.com/financialemergency/.

If you perceive that there’s a reasonable chance that you might lose of your primary income in the next year or so, I hope that you will find a way to take this workshop, either via your institution or individually, so that you can create your plan and experience a bit of relief from the financial anxiety and stress that our academic and research community is currently experiencing. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s21e1/. Without further ado, here’s my solo episode on reducing financial anxiety.

Disclaimer

I have to get this out of the way up front: I’m not a psychologist or anything similar—my PhD is in engineering—so the strategies I’m sharing with you today don’t necessarily have a medical or clinical basis or backing. Also I personally am not a generally anxious person and I’ve never sought treatment for anxiety or anything like that. I have experienced financial anxiety and financial stress at times, particularly when I was in graduate school, because money is obviously important to me and objectively that was a financially challenging time, and I did become too preoccupied with it for a while. However, I’m more so coming to this topic from my position as a financial educator, someone who is thoughtful about finances, reads and listens widely, and talks with people. And I have noticed that many people in our PhD community experience some degree of financial anxiety as well as financial stress.

What Is Financial Anxiety?

One conversation in particular inspired this episode. This past spring, I gave away a bunch of one-on-one money coaching sessions as part of my Giveaway Spring initiative. One of those coachees, a graduate student, came to me with the chief question, “How do I reduce my financial anxiety?” The person shared that they also experience climate anxiety and had found a body of suggestions for reducing it that were helpful, and so were looking for something similar in the financial realm.

I thought this was a fantastic question, but I wasn’t very well-prepared to answer it during that coaching session. I did make a couple of suggestions and gave a podcast recommendation, but promised to look into the topic further. This podcast episode is my follow-up for that coachee and all of you.

Let’s start off with a definition of financial anxiety, because it is distinct from stress, and I want to at least try to not conflate the two.

I pulled this definition of anxiety from the American Psychological Association’s website: “Anxiety is an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts, and physical changes like increased blood pressure. Anxiety is not the same as fear, but they are often used interchangeably. Anxiety is considered a future-oriented, long-acting response broadly focused on a diffuse threat, whereas fear is an appropriate, present-oriented, and short-lived response to a clearly identifiable and specific threat” (https://www.apa.org/topics/anxiety).

Furthermore, I pulled this summary of financial anxiety from an article from Healthline: “Money anxiety, in basic terms, happens when you worry about your income or fear something bad could happen with your finances. To put it another way, it’s an emotional response to your financial situation… A few signs your anxiety around money is becoming a more serious concern are aches and pains, avoidance, analysis paralysis, no work-life balance, rigidity, rumination, and trouble sleeping” (https://www.healthline.com/health/anxiety/money-anxiety#signs).

If you are experiencing financial anxiety, you should put into practice general anxiety-reducing advice to the extent of your ability, things like getting enough sleep, eating well, exercise, meditation and mindfulness, etc. You should also consider therapy, if that is accessible to you, such as through your university. In this episode, I’m going to focus on ideas for reducing anxiety long-term that are more specific to your finances. These strategies are ones that I pointed to during that coaching session and that I teach in my workshops. I’m going to avoid strategies that will primarily reduce your financial stress, like earning more or spending less, to focus more on the anxiety reduction. Of course, not all these strategies may work for you since anxiety is caused by and manifests differently in everyone.

Suggestion #1: Choose Just One Financial Goal to Work on at a Time

Here’s something I like to say in my financial goals workshop: There are a lot of good things you could be doing with your money. When you’re living on a limited grad student stipend or postdoc salary, you can’t work on all of them at once. You have to pick and choose the most optimal single goal. When you focus all of your available savings rate on just one goal at a time, you make relatively quick progress, which helps you to stay motivated and even get creative about how you might reach your goal even faster. When you split your available savings rate across multiple goals, you make slow or even imperceptible progress toward all of them, which can be very demotivating, and you’re more likely to abandon your plan.

How I think this principle can help with anxiety is that you give yourself permission to set aside all of your potential priorities save for the single one you’ve decided to work toward in the present. Instead of spinning your wheels in your mind telling yourself that you should be addressing every single aspect of your financial life or potential financial life, you can feel calm and settled that you are working toward the one most important thing you should be doing at the moment. The rest can wait until later.

In my workshops, I teach a financial framework that guides you in selecting that singular goal that’s most appropriate for you at any given time. I get a lot of questions like should I repay my student loans while they’re in deferment or start to invest? Should I save up cash or pay down my credit card debt? The framework answers those questions. If you can accept that it’s best to work on just one goal at a time and have confidence that you’ve chosen the most optimal goal to work toward, hopefully your mind can rest easier that you’re doing everything you need to right now and that those other goals will be addressed when the time is right.

While I can’t present my whole financial framework in this podcast episode, I will get you started on it: Step 1 is to create a starter emergency fund in a separate, named, high-yield savings account. Previously, in normal times, I suggested a starter emergency fund size of $1,000 to two months of expenses. Since academia and research are currently under attack in the US, I’ve revised the target size for the starter emergency fund to three months of expenses.

The good thing about having a target for this goal is that there is a defined end point. I have actually seen a tendency to over-save among some PhD trainees, and that is potentially financial anxiety manifesting itself. Having an emergency fund is vital, but there are other great financial goals to work toward as well, namely steps 2 through 8 of my framework, so it’s important to move on once you’ve fulfilled the first step. Excess savings are not actually serving any practical function for most people most of the time.

Suggestion #2: Take Just One Small Step

Related to that first suggestion of picking just a single goal, even a goal can be too overwhelming sometimes. For example, Step 2 of my framework is to pay off all high-priority debt, which includes credit card debt, IRS debt, and high interest rate debt. That’s a lot! So you really have to break it down further to make it manageable; it’s still far too intimidating as a group of debts.

Pick just one of these various debts that you want to work on first. Let’s say it’s a credit card balance. Break it down even further. What’s the one very first smallest step you can take to start to clear this debt? Maybe you could set up autopay on that card for more than the minimum, unsave the card from your online shopping portals and wallets, or eliminate one recurring expense so you can shift the money over to repaying the debt. Maybe you need to simply log in to the account and look at the balance if you’ve been avoiding that! Choose something readily accomplishable in just a few minutes.

Taking that very first small step might help to alleviate some anxiety because you are starting to take appropriate action. Again, you don’t have to do everything all at once, and in fact trying to tackle everything simultaneously can be counterproductive. Don’t beat yourself up about not going from A to Z immediately. It’s better to take one small step and then another than to stay stuck at the starting line.

Commercial

Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2025-2026 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, medical school, postdoc office, or postdoc association? My workshops are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Orientations, postdoc appreciation week, or close to the start of the academic year would be a perfect time for tax education or general personal finance content. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

Suggestion #3: Create a Recurring Appointment with Your Finances

My next suggestion is one that I came up with spontaneously during the coaching session that I mentioned, and it’s a variation on a commonly recommended tactic. The idea is to create a recurring appointment to address your finances, perhaps 30 to 60 minutes 2 to 4 times per month. In a couple, this is often referred to as a money date, but I think it would work very well for a person managing financial anxiety, whether single or coupled, and that’s how I’ll speak about it now.

During your money appointment, you should run through a few potential action items.

1) What do I need to decide regarding my finances? This is your time to think through and possibly research decisions you need to make. Maybe you want to open a new type of account and you’ll use this time to review your options. Maybe you have an upcoming spending opportunity and you need to figure out whether it’s possible and how you’ll pay for it. Updating your budget is a type of decision as well.

2) What do I need to do regarding my finances? This might involve carrying out a decision you just made or made previously. It probably involves minor recurrings tasks, like recording your net worth, updating your tracked expenses and comparing them to your budget, or manually paying a bill.

3) What do I need to learn regarding my finances? I think that you should make financial education a regular part of your life, and you might devote a portion of each appointment to it. Perhaps you can read a book in installments, listen to a podcast episode, or catch up on a financial creator’s social media content. This learning could be targeted to a certain topic you want to bone up on or be general.

4) What do I need to celebrate regarding my finances? Take some time to acknowledge when you’ve accomplished a goal or reached a milestone. Your celebration might just be an internal “good job!” during your appointment, or you could commit to a more visible celebration, like treating yourself or sharing your good news with a family member or friend.

What this strategy, when practiced regularly, could do for your anxiety is two-fold:

First, you will do things within your finances. Because of the regular attention you’re giving your financial decisions and tasks, your to-do list will get whittled down and you will make positive strides. It can help you get out of the procrastination-perfectionism cycle that is so common among PhDs. After a while, you start to trust yourself that you are appropriately handling your money—because you are! This can reduce anxiety in some cases.

Second, with this meeting, you have created a time container for your financial energy, whether that’s positive energy or negative. When you start to experience more acute financial anxiety, part of how you can alleviate it is to tell yourself that you will think about and/or deal with the matter during your next appointment. You can even keep a running agenda so items don’t slip through the cracks. You might also want to limit your consumption of financial content, like this podcast, to this appointment window only. This can help you calm your mind outside of those meeting times so you aren’t ruminating 24/7 about financial matters. You have already marked on your calendar when you’re going to address it so you can have confidence that it will be addressed at the appropriate time.

One final tip: Occasionally, you may need to call or chat with a financial institution during business hours. So, while your regular appointment time does not need to be during business hours, it might be helpful to identify a secondary time that falls within that window that you can use for that purpose when necessary.

Suggestion #4: Think Through the Worst Case Scenario

During another recent coaching session, not specifically related to financial anxiety, the coachee shared with me that they had an impulse to hold on to grant money they received and not spend it on research. Their reasoning was that they could keep the money in reserve for future research expenses in case they never won another grant. However, they had already told me during the session that in the past spending grant money on research expenses produced results that, as you would expect, made their subsequent grant applications stronger.

So I asked that coachee, “Well, let’s say that your worst-case scenario came to pass and you never won another grant. What would happen? Would you still be able to finish your PhD?” We talked through that for a few minutes, and the coachee realized that they had ways to pivot if they didn’t get any more grants and that the proper course of action would be to spend the already received grant money instead of holding onto it.

The coachee had been held up by this decision about what to do with the grant money for some time before we met. Yet all that really needed to happen was to face the dragon, so to speak. Once they looked the dragon of not winning another grant full in the face, they realized that it wasn’t so scary and was in fact manageable.

Other scary potential scenarios that might cause anxiety could be funding being cut off or running out, a soft job market in your chosen field, rising cost of living, or a personal or familial emergency.

Now, realizing that the scenario is manageable is not always going to be the outcome when you decide to address the source of your financial anxiety or stress. However, I think often it is the case that you’ll feel better having fully faced the possible worst case scenario rather than trying not to think about it.

I saw this with the pilot version of Create Your Financial Emergency Response Plan. I asked participants to self-report their financial anxiety on a scale of 1 to 5 at the beginning and end of the workshop, and they reported a 1-point reduction over that span of time. What we did, in part, was face up to the possibility that the participants could lose their primary incomes and created a plan for what resources to draw upon if that happened. The participants left the workshop with a few next steps to carry out or research to increase the chance of their plan successfully helping them navigate a loss of income.

Suggestion #5: Talk with Other People about Money

The last option I’ll put forward for reducing your financial anxiety is to talk with other people about money generally or your financial anxiety in particular. It can really help to know that you’re not alone in your struggles, stress, and anxiety. In fact, these coachees that I’ve been mentioning were taking this exact step when they signed up for a session with me, and several of them spontaneously expressed at the end of our time how much it had helped them emotionally just to talk and hear from me.

Of course, financial coaching isn’t the only way you can accomplish this. You can broach the topic with a friend or family member. Polling shows that financial stress and anxiety are very common among Americans generally, and I have to imagine it’s only increased in our current financially uncertain times. It may help to speak with someone who knows more intimately what’s going on right now in academia and research, like a friend who’s also a peer. I certainly found it easier to talk about money with my fellow grad students back when I was in that stage of life because I knew all of our incomes were within a tight range so we could all relate to one another.

If even speaking with a friend is too much, going back to the small step suggestion, perhaps consume some public financial content. Not if it worsens your anxiety of course, but if you find it helpful. You already know about this podcast. Another podcast that might help is called Money Feels, and I would suggest in particular the early episodes, where they speak often about money trauma. Again, you might find that particular podcast helpful or super not helpful, but there are lots of financial content creators out there on every platform for you to choose among.

That’s it from me for this episode! I hope that if you are experiencing financial anxiety that you will try out one of these suggestions alongside your other general management strategies. If you do, please let me know how it goes!

Outro

Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

How This DDS/PhD Student Purchased a Condo in San Francisco

May 5, 2025 by Jill Hoffman

In this episode, Emily interviews Hannah Takasuka, a 3rd-year PhD/DDS student at the University of California, San Francisco. Hannah is in the process of purchasing a condo in San Francisco as part of a governmental program to provide affordable housing. Hannah overcame multiple hurdles in the journey to home ownership, including being rejected by mortgage lenders over her fellowship income. Several puzzle pieces have to come together for any graduate student to purchase a home, and Hannah shares all the numbers and details for how it happened for her.

Links mentioned in the Episode

How This DDS/PhD Student Purchased a Condo in San Francisco

Teaser

Hannah (00:00): I’m thankful being a PhD student has taught me to normalize, “Oh shoot, I’m in trouble. Let’s ask for help.”

Introduction

Emily (00:19): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (00:49): This is Season 20, Episode 9, and today my guest is Hannah Takasuka, a 3rd-year PhD/DDS student at the University of California, San Francisco. Hannah is in the process of purchasing a condo in San Francisco as part of a governmental program to provide affordable housing. Hannah overcame multiple hurdles in the journey to home ownership, including being rejected by mortgage lenders over her fellowship income. Several puzzle pieces have to come together for any graduate student to purchase a home, and Hannah shares all the numbers and details for how it happened for her.

Emily (01:22): Because we in academia and research are experiencing such precarity in our finances and careers at the moment, I’m doing as much as I can on the financial education side to help you. I’m calling this initiative Giveaway Spring. I’m giving away 60-minute group Q&A calls, 30-minute individual coaching sessions, books, and digital resources—all completely for free—and I’m also sharing the best free financial and career resources I come across for PhDs. Register for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/giveaway/ to receive all the details of the current giveaways and an update every other week. By the way, this is the last episode of Season 20 of this podcast. We’ll be back with Season 21 on June 2, 2025. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s20e9/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Hannah Takasuka.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:36): I am delighted to have on the podcast today, Hannah Takasuka, who is a third year graduate student at the University of California San Francisco. And I’m really especially delighted to have Hannah on because she actually helped bring me out to campus for a workshop earlier in 2025, and that was a great experience. So here we are recording in March, 2025, and Hannah is actually under contract for her first home in San Francisco. And that is shocking. And so we’re gonna find out in the course of this interview, um, how exactly that happened. So Hannah, welcome to the podcast. I’m so glad to have you on. Um, and will you please introduce yourself a little bit further?

Hannah (03:13): Yes. Um, it’s great to talk with you, Emily. Uh, my name is Hannah. I am a third year DDS PhD student. Um, so after getting my PhD I’ll go to dental school and it’s a similar funding mechanism to the MD PhDs,

Emily (03:27): Emily here breaking in during the editing process. Following our interview recording, Hannah sent me some additional audio contextualizing our conversation and I thought it would fit well here.

Hannah (03:38): Hi, Emily and listeners of her channel. Something that I wanted to express in the podcast but I didn’t have a chance to, was a sense of humility. I do wanna give the disclaimer that, um, being able to buy a home as a third year PhD student is a huge privilege that not everyone has. Um, and people might make certain assumptions about a third year PhD home buyer, um, that like I’m someone who has everything together with my finances, um, and I wanna put down others. Um, or just that there’s this Instagram idea that you see, um, people who seem to be doing everything right in the world and you compare yourself and you think, oh, because I’m not there, I’m not sufficient enough. Um, and so as a point of humility. I still have a lot to improve in my personal finances as well, even with the basics. So at Emily’s budgeting workshop that she hosted at my university, I learned how important it is not to only forecast, um, what your budget should be, but to actually have an automatic tracking system to see how you spent your money compares to what you had projected. Um, and so that’s something that I’m still working on implementing. Um, I’m, I’m part of the way there, but not, not fully there. Um, and so again, I just want to encourage you all to make the steps that make the best sense for you. Um, and home buying in San Francisco is not going to be, is not gonna probably make sense to most, um, PhD students, but I hope that I demonstrated, um, that it is a possibility, um, for some and that it might make sense for you.

Emily (05:41): Alright, back to the interview. Now, did you move to San Francisco when you started graduate school and and what year was that?

Hannah (05:48): I did, uh, that was July, 2022.

Considering Home Ownership as Graduate Student in a High Cost of Living Area

Emily (05:51): And when you moved to San Francisco or, you know, sometime after that, obviously you started considering home ownership, which honestly is something that I would completely write off for a graduate student in San Francisco. And honestly, a lot of even professionals in San Francisco don’t own their own homes. They don’t necessarily see the math as making sense for that. So I’m just really curious about, um, why you even started considering purchasing a home.

Hannah (06:17): Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So I know I wanna be here long term. Um, at least for the next 10 years. Being a DDS PhD student means that I’m here for eight years and I’m, high cost of living cities come with pros and cons. Uh, one of the great pros though is that there’s great career opportunities. Um, and for me, I’m also blessed that I have a lot of family nearby. And so for me it just makes sense to be staying here long term and looking at market rate places. Uh, you’d be correct, Emily. The math doesn’t make sense most of the time. Um, I was going for a walk one day in my neighborhood and I saw this huge sign that said, um, middle income housing available, um, condos are $260 to $500,000. Um, and so decided to call my dad and say, Hey, I saw this sign, like 260,000 is probably way too much. ’cause I had no idea what that number meant at the time. Just sounds like a big number. Um, but my dad says, oh no, Hannah, like, you need to look into that. I’m like, okay, no, no uncertainty there that I need to look more into it. So, um, decided to look more into it and, uh, thankful that it worked out.

Emily (07:34): What does this mean? What is this middle income housing? Is the housing different than other housing or is it just that the loans are structured differently? Or what is this?

Hannah (07:45): Mm-hmm <affirmative>. It could be a combination of both. San Francisco has their permitting for housing, such that 10% of any new construction needs to be designated as below market rate housing, and then you need to fall under a certain income bracket in order to qualify for that. Um, below market rate housing, um, there is also a fee, uh, that new construction can opt out of, uh, building that 10%, uh, below market rate housing. And that fee will go towards, um, affordable housing projects. And so in my case, my entire building is, um, below market rate and run by the city.

Emily (08:26): Wow. What an incredible opportunity. Had you known anyone else who, who purchased a home as a PhD student? Like with the same sort of program?

Hannah (08:37): I do not, no.

Housing Costs and the Home Buying Process in San Francisco

Emily (08:38): Okay. So it was really just you saw a sign and you had to look it further. Amazing. Um, and also just really good on you that and your father too, for pointing you in that direction of like, oh no, like, let’s, let’s go ahead and start, you know, down this road and start investigating this. Maybe we should talk a little bit about the, the sale price of the, of the home that you’re now under contract for. Um, just so we can get an idea of like your income, how that compares to your new mortgage, and also how that would compare to maybe where you were renting before or other similar place that you might rent. Can you just give us a sense of what’s going on with these numbers? Numbers?

Hannah (09:14): Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, yeah, so my purchase price is gonna be 260,000, um, and my graduate student stipend is four, uh, $4,200. Um, not including the health insurance, um, but we do need to take taxes out of that. Um, and currently I rent at UCSF housing for $1,350 per month.

Emily (09:41): And your UCSF housing, um, do you have like a studio one bedroom place or do you have a roommate?

Hannah (09:47): Uh, I have a roommate and it’s a two bedroom.

Emily (09:50): Okay. And is that, would you say that that is a subsidized cost or that that’s pretty standard for what you’re getting?

Hannah (09:56): It’s a subsidized cost for sure.

Emily (09:59): Okay, interesting. So you have making the, you’ve made the decision then to move out of subsidized housing into your own owned place. Amazing. And can you tell us, is there anything else you wanna add about this, you know, this opportunity, this program that you’re participating in? Obviously what I’ve heard so far is that these builders have to make the housing available to you. Um, but is there any like special, um, way that you have to, uh, you know, submit bids on the house? Or is it just kind of like regular now that it’s made available? The, in terms of the buying process,

Hannah (10:36): There’s limitations to it. Um, and then there’s also a lottery process, um, both of which are a bit exhausting to think through, um, but can be worthwhile depending on your situation. And I’m thankful that, yeah, I worked through the different, um, thought about the different limitations. Um, so in terms of the lottery system, there were 115 units available in my building. There ended up being 400 people who applied. However, at the workshop they were letting us know that for previous below market rate buildings, um, they’ve gotten to the end of their applicant list because people would decline by the time that the offers came through. For me, I ended up, uh, being fortunate in looking into the different lottery preferences. Um, so if you’re a veteran or um, if you’ve been displaced by a fire, those are a couple of the lottery preferences. The last one is live or work in San Francisco before it goes to general population. Um, and so that’s where most of the people fall. Um, for me, because my family actually came to San Francisco in, um, the early 19 hundreds, um, my great grandmother qualified me, uh, to be considered a descendant of, uh, someone who was affected by unjustified San Francisco gentrification. And that put me in the top bracket such that I had first choice for the units that were 260,000, um, for a one person, uh, one bedroom, um, condo.

Emily (12:18): Amazing. Yeah. You clearly did a bit of legwork on this and it sounds like also you mentioned a workshop, so they’re also kind of offering a lot of information about how this process works kind of upfront, is that right?

Hannah (12:29): Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes.

Emily (12:30): And you mentioned an income limitation also. Do you recall what that was? Obviously you were under it, but you, do you know what the ceiling was?

Hannah (12:37): Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, it’s 80% of the area median income, uh, which I believe is about $84,000.

Explaining Graduate Student Income to Mortgage Lenders

Emily (12:43): Yeah, you’re well under that. Super fascinating. Thank you very much. This of course, will be left up as an exercise for the listener, whether their own city has anything, you know, similar in terms of affordable housing being, you know, built and all of that. So that’s awesome that you’ve brought this like to our attention. Okay. But as a graduate student, you may have income, the type of income may be unfamiliar to the lenders who were involved in this. So can you tell us that story?

Hannah (13:12): Sure. Yeah. So there’s, um, a list of maybe 20 lenders that are approved through the city. Um, and you have to pick from that list of 20 for these programs. And so I just reached out to three of them, um, sent them my income and, uh, filled out the application in which you say your employer and how much income that is. And then the next step is that they request your W2. And so I uploaded my 1098T and immediately everyone, all of those three people were confused, like, what is this? I think they’re assuming that I could be an undergraduate student with just a lot of scholarships. And so I was trying to send them a letter saying, Hey, I’m actually union protected, um, I have health insurance year round, here’s a letter from my PI. And just each lender has their different guidelines and knowledge of whether, and also whether they’re willing to look into those guidelines is kind of, um, the vibe that I was receiving. Um, and so I reached out to, uh, your brother Sam to ask how to get help with this because I didn’t seem like I could resolve it on my own.

Emily (14:29): Yeah. So for the listeners, my brother Sam Hogan is a mortgage originator. And because of our relationship, because I had told him years ago how many issues people in our community like Hannah are running into having fellowship income not documented in a way these, you know, lenders expect. Um, he started looking into it now he like specializes in this area. So plug for Sam if you have any, you know, um, questions about getting a mortgage as a first time home buyer especially, and especially, especially if you’re on fellowship, um, please reach out to him. We often do live, um, ask me anything. So if there’s one coming up, you can go to pfforphds.com/mortgage and see if there’s one coming up that you can join and chat with him. Um, but kind of like back to the story. So what happened <laugh>? Like, did you ask him questions? He gave you information to help work with the lenders? Or how did this end up resolving itself?

Hannah (15:20): I was able to learn from Sam and his videos, the language to use towards the other lenders. And so I was just very upfront in the first email saying, hi, I’m Hannah I’m a graduate student researcher. I have a 1098T I don’t have significant W2 income. Um, I know that under Fannie Mae guidelines I need to show three years continuance. And so here’s a letter that I have supporting that, which was great to know in comparison to the exhausting process of filling out the entire mortgage application and then hearing later as if it was a surprise to them.

Emily (15:58): Yeah, absolutely. And that has been, unfortunately the experience of numerous, numerous graduate students and postdocs who have this unusual income type is like, you know, the, the lenders, they look at your number, they look at your annual salary or whatever, and they’re like, oh yeah, we’re good to go. And then once it gets to the documentation stage. That’s where they pull back. And like you said, it can take quite a bit of legwork even just to get all the information over to them. So that can be really disappointing when that happens. And for other people, I know sometimes they’re under contract by that point and it’s like they’ve got a ticking clock kind of timeline that they’re working on and their lender has just said, no, we can’t work with you. Right. So that’s, that’s what ends up, um, Sam, it’s called rescuing mortgages. That’s what Sam ends up doing for a lot of PhDs is he kind of comes in like late in the process because the other lender has just figured out they’re not gonna be able to actually follow through <laugh> the way that they thought. So that can be really scary. Um, I’m glad that it sounds like you weren’t under that kind of time pressure, but you know, in searching for a lender, it, it took, um, a bit of legwork on your part. Okay. Is there anything else that you need to add to the lender aspect of the story or regarding your income?

Hannah (17:02): It took a lot of work, but I’m thankful that I did it. Um, so I, you know, I reached out to the city saying, Hey, I’ve reached out to 11 lenders on your list and they’ve all said no or ghosted me. Um, and I don’t want to, I don’t know what to do. This is the same time I was reaching out to Sam. Um, I think that I’m thankful being a PhD student has taught me to normalize, oh shoot, I’m in trouble. Let’s ask for help. Um, and I think that I’ll be able to achieve great things, um, with the help of others.

Saving for a Down Payment as a Graduate Student

Emily (17:37): Absolutely. What a great observation and attitude to have about this process. And of course you didn’t wanna let this opportunity slip you by, right? Like, this is an amazing, especially as you said, because you plan on living in San Francisco long term, what an incredible, um, time to be able to purchase. Um, I wanna hear a little bit more about the purchase details, if you don’t mind, because a lot of things have to come together for a graduate student to be able to purchase a home. So your income we’ve already discussed and how this program is particularly helping you, but you also have to consider like your debt load. Um, and you also have to consider like your credit score and down payment, although all those kinds of things. Would you be able to provide any details about how it worked in your situation?

Hannah (18:21): Sure. Um, so I’m super fortunate with a combination of, um, my family situation and my own actions that I came out of college without any debt, um, and saved about 15,000 with my first couple of years of just working. Um, and then my last year of college I had an engineering industry internship and so I was able to save about $30,000 with that by, um, living with family and not having significant housing costs. Um, yeah, and so then with a couple of years of my PhD, um, and investing with the past couple of years, uh, was able to save a hundred thousand dollars to put down for my down payment. Um, so there, there were a lot of puzzle pieces that had to come together as you mentioned. Um, and there’s a small time window in which it would work out in the sense that I need to be able to save enough to put down a decent down payment, um, to be able to afford a mortgage within the certain loan to debt ratios that the mortgage lenders require. Um, but then my income needs to be low enough and I still need to have three years of continuance <laugh>. So I don’t know if it would’ve worked if I tried a year later ’cause I don’t know if I would’ve had the three years continuance.

Emily (19:53): Right. Well that’s incredible. What an amazing accomplishment to be able to save up that much, especially starting as a college student, um, and also, you know, to invest it and so forth. Like so glad that worked out for you. Was there like a minimum down payment required or like why did you choose that number to put down? I guess did it have to be that high to make the mortgage numbers work on your income or what, what was the choice behind that?

Hannah (20:19): I learned that our health insurance part of our income isn’t considered income to the mortgage lender. And so it’s about the maximum that I can take with the mortgage and being within the debt loan ratio, which I think is about 30%. Yeah. Yeah. So that, that was the number I, I could put more of a down payment if I wanted to. Um, but I couldn’t put down too much less, um, with the HOA being $400 and then, uh, which is low for San Francisco, HOAs and San Francisco are usually about a thousand dollars. And a lot of times that’s what makes, uh, the below market rate condos that are in 90% that it’s market rate not worthwhile. Um, because for a graduate student having an HOA of a thousand dollars, that’s just like practically our whole rent.

Emily (21:10): Okay. So it sounds like, and this is something I’ve heard from Sam as well, that like, as you said, it’s a, it’s like a needle you have to thread <laugh>, like, um, you need the maximum loan it sounds like, that you could take out on your income with the interest rates available at the moment was about $160,000. That was how much they were willing to extend you. And so you needed to come up with that other a hundred thousand, um, to get to the purchase price does. Is that correct? Yeah. And that’s something that I do hear from Sam quite a bit. Like, yes, I can create a mortgage on this type of income, but the income is obviously low and especially in other areas of the country, it’s gonna be significantly lower than yours. Um, you know, there’s only so many multiples of that <laugh> you can get to until you have to get to like the housing price. And then a larger down payment can sometimes help help in this, but where does that down payment come from? In your case, you did the savings early on and obviously you’ve been very diligent to build that up. Other people, they might ask for gifts from family members to make up the difference, something like that. So there’s, you know, someone has to have the resources, but there’s a couple ways to kind of solve it. Um, incredible, incredible.

Commercial

Emily (22:20): Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats. This is a perfect time to book me for a workshop at the end of the current fiscal year or at the beginning of the upcoming academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

Similarities Between Buying a Home and Pursuing a PhD

Emily (23:45): By the way, I, I forgot to ask you earlier, but when did you start this process? Like when did you walk by the sign <laugh> and see, you know, $260,000 for a condo?

Hannah (23:54): Uh, what was it, a month before the deadline, which I think was like May 5th. So probably around early April.

Emily (24:01): Okay. So we’re coming up on a year that you’ve been in this process. Wow. Okay. But clearly getting like such a discount. Hopefully it’s, it’s been worth all this all this investment of time. Amazing. Um, were there any surprises that came up in the course in this whole process of, of pursuing this purchase?

Hannah (24:20): Uh, so it’s kind of like pursuing a PhD in my opinion, in the sense that there are gonna be challenges and you have to decide, um, if you’re gonna try to overcome them yourself by talking directly with the mortgage lender, talking directly with the city who represents the seller in this case. Um, or if you’re gonna go and ask for outside help, like from Sam for example. Um, so in my case, um, deciding to look into the lottery preferences, um, I thought that was gonna go nowhere. I just submitted my dad’s birth certificate and then I get a call from the city saying, oh, your dad doesn’t qualify, but because he’s in the neighborhood that generally does qualify, you know, there are other family names that you can run. And so, um, gave them my grandmother’s maiden name, which is how I discovered that my great-grandmother would qualify me. Um, and with a new construction place, there are a lot of government permits that need to go on. Um, that’s been exhausting in the sense that they first pitched that the first move in dates were gonna be fall 2024, uh, and I wasn’t under contract until winter. Um, and I think there’s just so much uncertainty that they don’t wanna pitch certain timelines to you ’cause they know they’re probably gonna let you down. Um, so originally they said that the close of escrow would be, um, mid-March. Um, and then due to LA fires there was, um, a delay with I think the Fannie Mae permit. Uh, so then they said it was gonna be another six weeks. Um, so all this is to say that the move in date is pretty uncertain. It’s difficult to challenge, uh, it’s difficult to balance that with the moving interest rates, even with the 30 day loan lock that they require you to do. Um, and managing that with your current lease because you wanna give your landlord the notice that they require without you being penalized heavily. Um, yeah. ’cause then they could just, if they delay it again, then I’m without housing or I need to find short-term housing.

Emily (26:53): So at this point, do you have a move out date scheduled with UCSF housing?

Hannah (26:59): I decided to take the risk, um, and set my move out date to be a month after, um, April 18th. Um, because if I didn’t schedule a move out date, then I would be charged likely until July 1st. Um, ’cause that’s generally when the, that’s their default contract end date. Um, and so I’ll need to look for a short term sublet if um, the housing doesn’t end up working out, which is yeah a risk that I’m taking.

Emily (27:34): Yeah, like you said, this is, uh, a common thing with new construction, um, that these kinds of timeline issues can come up, but yeah, it sounds like you’re working with the information you have as best as you can. Um, any other surprises you’d like to share?

Hannah (27:49): Insurance is difficult to buy in California. Um, so that was another challenge. I’m thankful that, um, AAA was still taking people, at least with the agent that I had called, ’cause apparently there were some others in my building that AAA was not writing new policies for. Um, and there are very few who are willing to insure in California.

Emily (28:15): So you said earlier that your long-term plan is to live in San Francisco. Um, how long do you think you’ll stay in this particular condo?

Hannah (28:25): I would love to stay 20 years, but it’s a good question. Will, will my life priorities change in 10 to 20 years from now? Maybe. Um, but I am thankful that my neighborhood is being zoned as a biotech hub. And so even if I do wanna leave the university, there should be great, um, job opportunities within walking distance. Um, and for me being in California and close to family, um, and being in a neighborhood that is walkable, um, instead of owning a car, um, or being reliant on a car is important to me. And, um, San Francisco is the only place that, uh, meets all those criteria.

Emily (29:09): That sounds wonderful. And certainly because of your, you know, dual degree program, you’re gonna be at UCSF presumably for, I think you said eight years total, is that right? So like five more years. Um, awesome. And let’s say if there is ever a time that you do decide you want to no longer live in this condo, are you permitted to sell it? Does it have to be to another qualifying resident or are you permitted to let, to rent it out? Like what are your options?

Hannah (29:37): Um, yeah, so that’s one of the limitations. Um, affordable housing is created, uh, so that it can be affordable for you to live there. Um, not so that apparently there was someone who found a loophole, um, that if you could just rent it out at market rate, you can make a profit off of the city program that is being funded by bonds. And so that’s just not right. Um, so they’ve made the rule that generally you can’t rent it out. Um, but there is, there are certain exceptions, um, like if you get a job offer that’s a decent distance away, um, I’m not sure if they have there, there must be a control under what you can set the rent to being so that it’s an affordable rate to someone else. Um, and then when I sell, if I were to sell the place, um, I need to sell it at the 260,000, uh, plus any documented improvements that I have made to the place, um, I don’t think that I make interest unfortunately. Um, and it needs to be to someone who is below 80% of the area meeting income.

Emily (30:53): So this home is not going to appreciate,

Hannah (30:57): Correct.

Emily (30:58): It’ll be sold at the same price plus improvements. Interesting. And do you mind sharing what your mortgage payment is going to be? Especially how that compares to like what you were paying, what you’re paying currently in UCSF housing?

Hannah (31:11): My mortgage payment is gonna be $950. Um, combined with HOA property tax utilities, I am expecting to pay 1800 a month.

Emily (31:23): So somewhat higher than your current rent. But you get to live on your own. Um, and you get that stability. Yeah. So this really seems like the impression I’m getting from our conversation is this, for you is a play to be able to stay in the city in a neighborhood you like in a place that’s, that works for you. Um, and just to have that assurance that you’re an owner and you get to be there long term. Is that right?

Hannah (31:47): Yes. Yes. Uhhuh

Emily (31:49): Very good. Um, and you said when you applied for the podcast that you had kind of a message for other PhD students regarding home ownership. Would you like to express that now?

Hannah (32:00): You know, just like when I was playing soccer, I would say you miss a hundred percent of the goals of you don’t take. Um, so you know, you could shoot a soccer ball to try to be a homeowner, um, and it might be totally off the first time. You might look at a market rate place and say, oh my gosh, the HOA is way too expensive. Um, but you know, you’ve learned something, you’ll shoot the ball better next time. And um, maybe it’ll make it to the goal or maybe it won’t. Um, but, uh, personal finance, um, even outside of home ownership is something that you can take in small steps. Um, and it’s okay that the first steps that you take aren’t gonna get you 90% of the way there. Um, but with endurance, um, uh, you’ll be able to be in a much better position than if you were paralyzed, um, with the idea of starting nowhere.

Emily (33:02): I totally agree. I’m glad that you expanded that beyond home ownership to personal finance in general. ’cause that’s exactly how I feel about it. Like, um, as you said, don’t, don’t be paralyzed. Just start taking the steps that you can take and you’ll be better off for it a year or five years or whatever from now. Um, and especially once your income increases post PhD, um, you’ll have the skills, you’ll have the mindsets, or at least you’ll be in a better spot with respect to the skills and mindsets to be able to manage your money at that time when the stakes are a bit higher. Um, exactly. So yeah, I’m so glad you said that.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (33:31): Um, what is your, this is the question I conclude all my interviews with what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And it could be something we’ve touched on in the interview already, or it could be something completely new,

Hannah (33:44): Turning unpredictable costs into predictable costs, um, by budgeting a certain amount per month so that you’re able to spend your money in the ways that are valuable to you.

Emily (33:58): Very good, very well put. And you are definitely gonna be putting that to use as a homeowner <laugh>, turning those unpredictable home maintenance and repairs costs into something manageable for your budget. So awesome. Hannah, it’s been lovely to you again and get this story. I’m so excited for you in this new, um, phase of your financial journey and congratulations and thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Hannah (34:20): Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Emily.

Outro

Emily (34:32): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Business Class Flights and Hotel Elite Status on a Grad Student Stipend

April 21, 2025 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Brendan Henrique, a fourth-year PhD student in education at the University of California, Berkeley. Brendan leverages his conference and research travel plus personal spending into free luxury travel by amassing credit card points and elite status at hotel chains. He breaks down how he pursues the points and miles hobby even while living on a grad student stipend and how it’s motivated him to work hard so he can play hard. Brendan’s travel habits might seem out of sync with his income or ‘student’ status, but it’s achievable for many grad students who are free from credit card debt and have a small degree of savings.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Business Class Flights and Hotel Elite Status on a Grad Student Stipend

Teaser

Brendan (00:00): There is a little cognitive dissonance sometimes, um, to the point that through Instagram, some of my friends thought I just had a pile of money in the corner. Part of the reason I’m kind of talking more about it is there’s not any money in the corner, there’s no treasure chest. It’s just really using points effectively. It’s kind of a big disparity sometimes where like for a conference hotel, I’m staying under the university minimum and you have to be this like very responsible steward of like a grant. And then when I do leisure travel for less money because it’s effectively free, I’m at five star luxury resorts.

Introduction

Emily (00:41): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (01:11): This is Season 20, Episode 8, and today my guest is Brendan Henrique, a fourth-year PhD student in education at the University of California, Berkeley. Brendan leverages his conference and research travel plus personal spending into free luxury travel by amassing credit card points and elite status at hotel chains. He breaks down how he pursues the points and miles hobby even while living on a grad student stipend and how it’s motivated him to work hard so he can play hard. Brendan’s travel habits might seem out of sync with his income or ‘student’ status, but it’s achievable for many grad students who are free from credit card debt and have a small degree of savings.

Emily (01:52): Because we in academia and research are experiencing such precarity in our finances and careers at the moment, I’m doing as much as I can on the financial education side to help you. I’m calling this initiative Giveaway Spring. I’m giving away 60-minute group Q&A calls, 30-minute individual coaching sessions, books, and digital resources—all completely for free—and I’m also sharing the best free financial and career resources I come across for PhDs. Register for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/giveaway/ to receive all the details of the current giveaways and an update every other week. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s20e8/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Brendan Henrique.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:55): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Brandon Henrique. He is a fourth year PhD student at University of California Berkeley and we are here talking about travel hacking or the points and miles hobby or stacking travel rewards. We don’t have a really firm term for this, but that’s our topic for today and Brendan’s gonna tell us all about how he does this as a graduate student. So Brendan, thank you so much for volunteering to come on the podcast. Will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

Brendan (03:23): Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. I’ve been a fan of kind of the website and everything for a long time. So I am a fourth year student out in sunny California. I study uh, computer science education, um, at the school of Education at UC, Berkeley and I’ve been, I’m in my fourth year.

Using Travel Rewards for Once in a Lifetime Trips

Emily (03:39): Excellent. For you as a graduate student, what kinds of travel rewards stacking strategies do you use? This is a big question, it’s what we’re gonna talk about for the whole interview, but let’s get a high level intro and then we’ll kind of dive into some different ones.

Brendan (03:54): Yeah, so my kind of claim to fame in this is I use a variety of credit card points, whether it’s signup offers, hotel points, conference days where I can generate points to kind of stay in these amazing once in a lifetime resorts, flights, and were kind of redeem these points for really amazing experiences. And that’s kind, I think if I had to summarize in like one paragraph, that’s kind of what I do.

Emily (04:18): Okay. There’s the part of this process where you are um, gaining points and like amassing the rewards and then there’s a part of it where it’s like deploying the rewards and the points and stuff that you’ve amassed. So I wanna talk about both of those. Um, but first do you stay within like a certain um, family of types of points or certain airlines that you use or do you kind of spread everything all over the map? Tell us about that selection process.

Brendan (04:50): Yeah, and this is actually one of the kind of cool parts about points is depending on what credit card family you want to join. So if you’re an Amex person or a Chase person, a lot of those points transfer. So for me the best value for my chase points is transferring it to Hyatt. So I’ve become a really big Hyatt person to the point that I’ve been able to gain the top status with Hyatt where I get the upgrades, I get the free breakfast, kind of the bells and whistles. And so what I recommend to grad students is pick a hotel brand and stick to it. So the big ones are being Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton, and then when you go to those research meetings you have to do field work for a month and they have you at the Holiday Inn, well it might be great to join IHG collect those points. And all of them really have great luxury properties that you can kind of spin the points from the casual stay to the super stay.

Emily (05:39): It makes sense to me that if your university is sending you somewhere for a period of time, they might control, they might choose which brand you’re staying with, it might depend on exactly the location, what’s available and so forth. Um, do you, have you in your experience had agency over that? Um, like when I go to conferences I just try to stay at the conference hotel, but I know some people stay you know, down the street or whatever. So like do you exert control to like stay within your preferred rewards family or do you just go with wherever they wanna send you?

Brendan (06:10): I’ve had both experience. So sometimes it’s like where we have to go to Philadelphia, stay within a mile of the conference center and at that point I do try to go outta my way. Like where’s the nearest Hyatt, my backup kind of family is Hilton so if there’s not a Hyatt, there’s probably a Hilton and that kind of rings true most of the time. There’s been a couple of times where I did like a two week research project where I was on the road and we had to say like a motel, I tried to pick one that had a super family. So for this one it was Wyndham, I forget the sub-brand and Wyndham points can be transferred to Caesar rewards in Las Vegas at one point percent. So I got to eat a great steak dinner because of my two weeks in a motel.

Accumulating Travel Rewards Points

Emily (06:53): I see, okay. You’ve picked a preferred brand but also you try to have some flexibility depending on you know, the location that that’s calling you or what have you. Let’s talk more about the accumulation of rewards. So it sounds like when your university is paying for you to go and stay somewhere that somehow benefits you personally. Can you tell us how that works?

Brendan (07:13): Yeah, so what I make sure I do is I book direct. So if you book through expedia, booking.com, you don’t collect points. So what I recommend to every grad student, I would honestly sign up for the top five hotel brands, make a loyalty account it’s free and then when you do get sent to conferences you can just plug in your rewards number and even if you have to book through like the travel agency or like the conference booking page, every time I’ve had one it allowed me to put in my number and then on the backend they were sync up. So I’m welcomed as like an elite member or loyalty team member. Usually you get better service, especially with a conference hotel, they’re sold out so if there’s a way to split the difference, they’re gonna look who’s a member who’s not and it’s free to join. So that’s kinda one way to personally benefit is to just kind of sign up and make sure you’re using um, kind of the family you want to stick to, whether it’s you know, your Hyatt or Hilton.

Emily (08:05): Okay. So we have our very easy applicable tip number one which is just sign up for the, you know, the loyalty programs for all the hotels that you interact with in your uh, daily, you know, yearly life. Um, so just sign up for ’em all. Great. Let’s talk more about um, amassing points to yourself. Um, you mentioned Chase earlier, so tell us about your, the credit card like aspect of this strategy.

Brendan (08:31): Yeah, so using credit cards you can get a return on the point. So like I think the Chase Sapphire preferred is kind of your typical, most people will say it’s like your introductory travel card. It gets like two or three times on travel. Those points are transferrable to Hyatt. So let’s say you spend a hundred dollars on a hotel for a conference, you get 200 Hyatt points that you could transfer from Chase to Hyatt. You can also use it a few different ways That is kind of a slow grind but it helps you kind of slowly accumulate points. The big leaps are signup offers. So the Chase Sapphire, I think the signup offer right now is 60,000 points. That’s a significant amount of Hyatt points or you can transfer to I think United Air France, a few other partners. That’s a lot of points for Amex. Their offers tend to be a little more generous I think I’ve seen on the platinum card 175,000 Amex points with 1 cent up offer With them though you have to spend a certain amount of money in a certain amount of time. So for Amex I think it’s 8,000 in three months, which is a massive ask Chase. I think it’s a little bit lower, it’s like 4,000 in three months and some are six months. So you kind of have to play what’s that public signup offer and with what those points are worth for you and can you hit that bonus.

Emily (09:46): I think that’s the real key there. Like I just barely started dipping my toe into credit card rewards when I was in graduate school and I mostly stuck with the cash back offers because of two reasons. One, I was nervous about meeting those minimum spends required to get you know, the big sign up bonuses. Um, and two, I really didn’t wanna pay an annual fee ever <laugh>. I didn’t wanna do the math on whether or not it was worth it. I just didn’t wanna pay fees. So can you speak to both of those kind of like objections?

Common Travel Rewards Concerns: Minimum Spending and Annual Fees

Brendan (10:13): Yeah, so I think it’s also a very valid objection if you’re like, you know what, I don’t really like to travel, I like I would rather put the money in a cash back and just kind of pay myself back then there’s cards meant for that. Like I would still recommend you look into it and there are cards that offer great cash back offers where you spend X amount of money and you immediately get it back. So maybe you wait until the end of the year to pay your taxes, you have that sum or estimated taxes, you kind of time it right, you pay with a credit card even with a 2% fee, if the cash back is significant enough it might offset that. And then in regards to I think your other, oh the annual fees, those are a lot trickier. What I like to tell people is we’re graduate students, we’re really good about spreadsheets and like details make a map of it’s gonna work out for you. Some of like my top annual fee card is the platinum card, it’s like 700 a year. I’m very meticulous about extracting every dollar of value on every cent. So there’s a way to get, they have one part of it is a $200 airline fee, so you can’t use it for airfare, you can use it for incidentals. The backdoor hack is the United Travel Bank where you like fill up your travel bank counts as an incidental which you can use for a flight and I find SFO is a United hub, um, as well as like a bunch of other kind of major airports around the country that you can totally one united flight a year that’s paid for.

Emily (11:36): Going back to my, my first objection about like meeting the minimum spends, um, and my comment about like sort of sticking with cashback cards which are usually have lower minimum spends and typically no annual fee. What I’ve learned since then <laugh> since I was in graduate school and had those kinds of objections was that using points for cash back versus using them for travel. There’s a massive um, ROI difference, it’s something like five times, six times, maybe even more of a difference between using those points for travel and points for cash back. So if you are really frugal like I am and especially was in graduate school, I actually would’ve been better served probably by um, using those points that I was accumulating through my normal spending and so forth, um, for travel purposes instead of for cashback purposes. But you know, I didn’t have the bandwidth at the time to understand the whole system. So that’s what you’re, what you know, what you’re helping us do here, which is really fun. Okay, so we talked about collecting points through signup bonuses through ongoing spending on certain cards, whether an annual fee is worth it, do the math, um, figure that out. Tell us a little bit more about the spending of the points and how, how you’ve done that in a really worthwhile way.

Brendan (12:47): Yeah, so it ends up being this kind of complicated optimization problem where you know the points are worth about a penny a piece, some are a little bit less, some are a little bit more and you want to track the maximum value. The best way I found to do that is if you’re trying to redeem it for kind of the lower end of the spectrum. So like a southwest flight, a basic hotel say you’re really only gonna get a penny, a penny 0.5 per point. Where this starts to really get exponentially bigger is your business class flights. Your five star hotels are like, uh, one of the hotels that I’m hoping to stay at is in Paris, the minimum is like 1300 a night but it’s, it’s 45,000 Hyatt points, which is a massive amount of points but point per dollar. It’s an incredible return on investment. And same thing for business cost flights, some of them are like three or $4,000 or international where if you use the points that way I’m getting five to 6 cents per point, which is five times then if you just used it regularly. And that’s kind of the hack is knowing those optimal um, utilization and when to kind of u- hit that value. And that’s the complicated part I would argue.

Emily (13:56): So it sounds like your, is your preference to redeem these points for like the more the step up the little, little luxury travel and not go for economy class and basic hotels and so forth? Or do you do both or like how are you using them?

Brendan (14:11): I kind of aim to get like a minimum value on my points. So for chase points I try to aim to 2.5. So if I do the math that the cents per point redemption isn’t gonna gimme that, I’ll kind of make a hard decision of like do I have to stay at this hotel? Can I find another way to stay there? Like not through, maybe it’s not Hyatt this time, maybe I’ll go to Hilton and check it out and then that’s kind of my cutoff for Amex points. I’m a little more, I kinda held them close because I knew I wanted a business class flight for Europe on a upcoming big trip. Um, so I kind of held them until I saw the moment and then I knew that that value would be there if you watch closely and it popped up on my computer and I snagged it.

Emily (14:52): Okay, this is a bit of a weird question, but you’re a grad student, how does it like feel like psychologically to be traveling in an upgraded way?

Brendan (15:06): Yeah, it, it’s kind of a big disparity sometimes where like for a conference hotel I’m staying under the university minimum and you have to be this like very responsible steward of like a grant. So it’s kind of a, and then when I do leisure travel for less money because it’s effectively free, I’m at five star luxury resorts, it, there is a little cognitive dissonance sometimes, um, to the point that through Instagram some of my friends thought I just had a pile of money in the corner and I had, part of the reason I’m kind of talking more about it is there’s not any money in the corner, there’s no treasure chest. It’s just really using points effectively so that we can, my uh, fiance and I have been able to say at some incredible places from Arizona to Florida and do some incredible stuff because of all these hacks and like tricks.

Gaining Elite Status at Hotel Chains

Emily (15:53): Now you mentioned earlier like stacking deploying of points with like having status at like Hyatt for example. Can you tell us how that works?

Brendan (16:02): Yeah, so what’s great about it is when you redeem the points it’s free to like, or the hotel becomes free. When you then have status, you still get your status benefits. So for Hyatt it’s a little bit harder to get status but when you hit their top, if there’s a suite available that’s in their basic suite, you’re guaranteed to get upgraded to it. Granted some front desk give you a little bit of a hard time, but there’s been times where I’m like, Hey, is there a suite available? I saw one on the app and they’re like, oh my bad. And then all of a sudden I’m in a 800 square foot room, two bathrooms and that’s the fun times at conferences when it’s like you have the massive room because every other room gets sold out and then in the morning for, Hyatt at least, you get to eat breakfast in the lounge or there’s not a lounge, they give you a voucher for the restaurant. So it’s been actually at conferences it’s helped a lot because I’ll fill up at the free breakfast and not have to pay lunch out of the grant money. So it kind of actually I’ll pick a Hyatt and like I’ve argued with like in present an argument to the like whether I’m getting reimbursement, like no, no, by booking this hotel I actually saved you money by the free breakfast and lunch. It allowed me to kind of offset the cost.

Emily (17:11): So I’m so attracted to this idea because I, I know just from my light study of the travel reward space that as you said that Chase redeeming chase points at Hyatt is like a really great value. Um, overall. So I just wanna know how do you get status at Hyatt?

Brendan (17:28): So for their top status you have to stay 60 nights in a year, which is an absurd amount of years. Um, not years, uh, nights there’s some kind of short cuts to get that number lower. One way is if every conference I pick Hyatt, I go to two or three conferences a year, three or four nights, that’s already kind of 10 to 12 nights. So already out of pocket I’m down to like what 50, 48 nights, use point and when you use points, nights count as qualify nights. So then I lower the pay like paid nights even more. When you have the Hyatt credit card, which is their credit card, they give you free, um, what is it, five free qualify nights. So that’s five more nights to hit the 60. And then there’s a few other kind of backdoor hacks where I can gift my status to someone and when they stay I get the night and that allows me to kind of lower, I don’t actually stay 60 nights a year in a hotel because that would be like twice a month, you know. Um, so you’re able to lower that number through some credit card hacks, some of, and then some taking advantage of the Hyatt loyalty program structure itself.

Emily (18:35): Okay. And is this something you have to do every year?

Brendan (18:38): Uh, to some degree the year you earn it you earn it through the rest of the year. And then so if you were to earn Hyatt globalist, I guess you couldn’t hit it now because we’ve only had 28 days. But let’s say you stayed 60 days, you hit it early February, I mean early March you would have it for the rest of this year and the following year. Um, so when I hit globalist, you keep it for the kind of, it’s 12 months plus the remaining of the year.

Emily (19:04): I can see this is a great um, program on their end to retain loyalty <laugh> from you know, frequent travelers and so forth. I think you also mentioned that you use um, travel hacking strategies for rental cars as well, which I’ve like never heard of. So how does that work?

Car Rental Strategies Specific to Grad Students

Brendan (19:18): So this isn’t so much a travel hack as taking advantage of what grad students may not know and if you’re at a large university system, your corporate like office for travel at the university negotiates a ton of travel deals. So I found out recently at Berkeley that because they’re part of the University of California system, they negotiate hundreds of thousands of deals. We have tons of travel offers that just by being an employee of the university you get one of which is uh, tr uh, renter cars. So we get I think 35 to $45 a day rental cars anywhere. What’s amazing about kind of stacking the university discount with a credit card is the Amex platinum gives you top hertz status which allows you to pick any car in like their luxury lane. So when I go to an airport and I need to rent a car, I don’t pick the car that I booked, I go straight to the lane and see what’s available and I’ve done everything from like a Mustang convertible for like 37 a day in San Diego to like we were going to the Grand Canyon. And I wanted like a supped up SUV, there was this like really nice all-wheel drive Buick, but I still paid the same base rate that I paid based off the university discount. And I’ve seen most public big university systems have something like this, whether it’s a travel portal or like just kind of your standard corporate discounts.

Emily (20:36): I had no idea about that. So like I’m not affiliated with the university anymore but I wish I had known that <laugh> back when I was at Duke ’cause yeah, probably they had something if you’re saying that. Um, most do but that’s, that’s like easy tip number two is just check out is there a travel portal for a university that you’re, you know, permitted to book through and yeah see what kind of deals you can get. And it sounds like you can use it for personal travel as well as university business.

Brendan (21:00): Most of them are, they’re tell you you can’t on the travel portal. So for Berkeley there’s some that are very clear that they actually get a, I think the corporate contract gets a kickback and they don’t care whether it’s leisure or for business. With business there’s some more benefits but with leisure you can use the corporate code at lease.

Emily (21:16): Okay, wow. Alright, this sounds really great

Commercial

Emily (21:21): Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats. This is a perfect time to book me for a workshop at the end of the current fiscal year or at the beginning of the upcoming academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

Using Travel Rewards for a $30,000 Honeymoon

Emily (22:46): Now you’ve mentioned your fiance a couple of times. I understand you’ve been gearing up for a honeymoon on you know, using these strategies. Can you tell us about what you’ve booked?

Brendan (22:55): Yeah, so I kind of have been in like points slumber mode where I’m just accumulating hidden and sign up bonuses, asking my fiance if she would also apply to get double the the bonus and you can usually backwards transfer and we’re gonna do a couple weeks in Europe. I’ve never actually been to Europe so I’ve always dreamed of going. Um, so I’m really excited to kind of stay in Europe for a very long time for essentially no money because every hotel has been on points. We got business class flights to and from for about a quarter of a million Amex points, which is like a big number but um, we’ve been kind of saving up for a while with our points to make this once in a lifetime trip possible.

Emily (23:39): Give us like a scale on how many points this took

Brendan (23:44): I actually, I wrote it down just because I knew that this might come up. So it’s about 280,000 chase or Hyatt points kind of. I had to combine them three Hyatt. They have these things called suite upgrade awards where you take your basic book reservation upgrade to the suite three Hilton free night certificates, 800,000 Hilton points and about 350,000 Amex points. So a lot across multiple brands, multiple credit cards.

Emily (24:13): Yeah those are like eye popping numbers um, to me. So how, how long would you say that this took to generate all the points for this trip?

Brendan (24:23): I would say depending on the card, three to four years depending on some were accidents. We were gonna do a big stay at a Hilton so I had started to get into the Hilton ecosystem, decided not to go on the trip so I just had this leftover treasure chest from like three summers ago. Then I was like oh this might be useful on a rainy day and it just kind of kept growing as different Hilton offers came out with different um, signup and you were able to kind of stack them and so I would say we’ve been Hyatt, I tend to use ’em more quickly. So the Hyatt I would say was more than like a year, year and a half.

Emily (24:59): And it sounds like even though you know, you’ve been, the points have been accumulated for around three to four years, but you’ve still been traveling some during that time. You said most recently you’ve been quieter on the travel front to like finalize all of this, but it’s not like it took you all of your spending devoted for three to four years just for this one trip.

Brendan (25:17): No, this involves multiple, like I’ve definitely stayed at Hyatt quite a bit in the last two years. Hilton, I haven’t touched the points I very much like that was kind of don’t touch and then Amex I didn’t touch because I knew, I knew I wanted us to fly to Europe in business class so I kind of wanted to have this kind of flexible chest of points to be able to find the right value and find the right flight route for us to get home.

Emily (25:40): Okay, so you’re staying for essentially free, it sounds like you got all the nights, you got all the flights covered, those, that aspect of the travel. Um, if you would have paid cash for that, how expensive is this trip?

Brendan (25:54): So I have a spreadsheet where I kind of track the value of like the hotel room, what suite we got upgraded to the business class might, when you add it all up plus or minus a little bit, it’s around $30,000 which is, I was almost shocked when I did the math. I checked it twice because I couldn’t believe that the amount of value we were able to extract and we’re averaging anywhere depending on the point like three to 6 cents a point, which is incredible value sometimes I think at the, the Park Hyatt in Paris, the suite goes for 3000 a night. So that was an incredible value for $0. Um, and 45,000 Hyatt points isn’t like normally a lot but at that cash rate, which I certainly would never pay $3,000 for a suite, but that’s what they’re charging someone for it. Um, so I was very amazed that it’s pretty much a brand new car of points.

Emily (26:44): Yeah, a brand new car, uh, I’m assuming over half your stipend for the year. Yeah, I mean it’s, it’s a remarkable, yeah, again, you wouldn’t have paid that but somebody would have for some of all these, for the some of all these components. So, uh, that’s so interesting and again that to me the cognitive dissonance is coming up of like, oh but you’re a grad student. Like you know, do you, you know, not do you deserve but like is it within your realm and understanding of the world to be traveling this way? But that’s the amazing thing that points makes this possible. My goodness

Brendan (27:21): And my fiance is a uh, she was a teacher and now she’s an instructional coach. So we’re both in a similar kind of like highly educated that middle class kind of group or like that it, there is a dissonance of coming back from a couple of really incredible resorts but it’s gone to the point that our friends know were the points people and they’re like, oh where are you off to now? How much did it cost you? Zero. And it’s almost an ongoing joke.

Teaching Other Grad Students about Travel Hacking

Emily (27:46): Yeah. Well on that topic, have you been teaching any of your peers about this? Are they receptive?

Brendan (27:52): So that actually led me to start a Substack, which is my weekly newsletter. I get a lot of questions from a lot of friends like we’re going to Italy, can you help us? So I was like, why don’t I just share everything I know in a way that’s kind of meant for grad students. Um, so every week I post a new post, um, every Wednesday and it’s some either hack some trip report and kind of different ways I’ve come to learn points and I’m trying to kind of write it in a way where to help graduate students understand um, and hopefully like I can kind of help people do this in their own lives with some of the hacks are very low lifts and it’s very much just sign up, search for the travel agency, get this one credit card sign up and you can do this end of year summer amazing dissertation celebration.

Emily (28:37): Yeah, I would say especially for graduate students who do a lot of travel or a decent amount of travel in the course of their work, like it’s kind of, I guess the impression from like travel hacking maybe from like the nineties or something was it was like, oh this is possible if you’re like a consultant who travels every single week on the same airline so you can you know, get the status or whatever. Um, and it’s just changed so much over the decades that this actually is accessible um, even for people who are making like a grad student stipend but especially if travel is a component that your work does pay for to some degree.

Brendan (29:10): Yeah, I think the reimbursable cost part is a really big part that even if you’re at like a Hampton Inn for 100 a night on field work, those are Hilton points. If there’s a Hilton double point promotion, you have the Hilton card, all of a sudden you can add such a big multiplier on something you’re getting, you have to do anyways for your research so why not go to that resort once summer break hits, you know?

Emily (29:33): Yes, wonderful idea. Okay. Earlier you mentioned some example minimum spend levels maybe $4,000 in three months, maybe $8,000 in three months. Um, how do you work it with your like typical level spending as a graduate student to meet any signup bonuses or maybe more like the more aggressive signup bonuses?

Brendan (29:54): Yeah, so let’s, if I, let’s use the 8,000 for the Amex Platinum as kind of like, that’s the highest one I’ve attained. Some tricks that I’ve used is you can pay your taxes with a credit card. They charge like a 2% fee. So if you use estimated taxes you could do time it right? Or if you kind of have the end of the year you have that big lump sum that probably might be able to allow you to hit at least half of it a quarter of it. The other hack I’ve been able to use for smaller ones is if you know you go to Starbucks once a month, 10 times a month, whatever that number is, you can prepay your year for credit like and gift cards. Same thing with Amazon. You can, if you know for uh, the holidays you’re buying a ton of gifts for both you and your friends or family, you can just load your Amazon account a little bit ahead of time and it’s all about the timing. So I wouldn’t sign up with the platinum card with 8,000 and just hope you’re gonna make it. I’d be very intentional with, oh we have the holidays in December, then taxes, maybe I’ll try to do them really quickly in February and then I can kind of get in that three month window or a big conference. If you have a international conference in France, you’re gonna spend a pretty penny. Why not use that towards a signup bonus?

Getting Started with Travel Hacking

Emily (31:08): My goodness. Yeah, most of the conversation around, you know, um, having to front travel expenses and conference fees for graduate students is around complaining rightfully so about you know, having to pay interest on it if they’re not able to pay off the cards and how it actually costs them money and so forth to do it. But you’re completely flipping this on its head and saying, actually use this to your advantage now it does take some savings, right? If you wanna prepay expenses, you have to have the money to do that. So like for you, is this a general savings fund that you have? Do you kind of tap your emergency fund? Like where is the money coming from for you?

Brendan (31:43): I kind of have a small revolving fund that I know that like I’m gonna get reimbursed for the conference or I know that this thing is gonna kind of come and go. So I typically would kind use it almost as like a flex fund that when I need to hit that signup bonus, it goes into it, then the tax or not tax a conference happens, I’m gonna get refunded a month later. Um, if that’s not possible for you, depending on your stipend structure, I would recommend credit cards are probably not a good because you don’t want to, as soon as you hit a penalty at interest charge, all of the point value really starts to get washed away really quickly that if you spend a couple hundred dollars in interest, even that $300 Hyatt Hotel, you’re not gonna break even anymore. So I’m really intentional about staying below and never, never missing a payment.

Emily (32:29): Yeah, this is definitely not an entry level strategy. If you’re a first time listener to this podcast, this is not, okay, go ahead and sign up for the loyalty programs. But like don’t try the credit card stuff until you have, you have all your credit card debt paid off, you have some savings like you said, a flex fund to be able to prepay some things or the conference expenses or, or what have you. Um, this is a level two <laugh> or further like kind of strategy. Um, yeah, I’ve noticed in my own life, um, I, I talk about irregular expenses quite a bit in my uh, teaching but now that I have a higher income than I used to when I was in graduate school. Um, but I also have different expenses. I have kids now I have a house, blah blah. So like I actually just sat down a few months ago and was like, okay, let me look at the cycle of my year. I can figure out like when are these higher expense, you know, periods it’s like March and April for me are like really high spending for some reason. It’s like kids camps, car insurance, like all this stuff. Um, okay now I know February let’s apply for a new card. Hit that sign up bonus. So I’ve just been more intentional about like looking at my year and figuring out okay, these are the key months when it’s a great time to sign up for something

Brendan (33:33): In February works really well because if you hit the bonus around April you can start thinking summer vacation that kind of gives you a three month window when resorts start to, not every hotel releases point availability the same. So three months out is a great time start looking. So that’d be, that’s actually a great timeline.

Emily (33:48): Yeah, Okay. We were just talking about some things you have to have set in your finances to play around with credit cards <laugh>, but let’s say someone is ready for that, they have all the credit card debt paid off or they’ve never had credit card debt, they have some savings. What’s like the first, the next first step after signing up for those loyalty programs after checking with their university’s travel portal? Um, what’s a good first step after that?

Brendan (34:10): Yeah, I think I would decide what you want to use the points for and then that’s a really great kinda decision tree. So if you’ve heard today you’re like, I really wanna stay at Hyatts, that sounds awesome. I would really recommend the Chase Sapphire preferred. The annual fee is like 95 a year. If you book once through the Chase portal, I think you get $50 back, which offsets annual fee pretty much immediately. The signup offer anywhere from 60, I’ve seen as high as like 90,000, but that hasn’t happened in a while. 60,000 Hyatt points gets you four nights at some like really nice hotels. It could also be two nights at an incredible once in a lifetime hotel depending on how you want to use the points. And I would say find that entry level card if you’re like, you know what I, I don’t mind paying for the hotel, I want an incredible flight experience. American Express points are great for business class flights to Europe, um, or even going west, I’ve seen some amazing deals to like Tokyo from the west coast, from like Seattle or LAX, you wanna fly in first class. There’s some incredible deals to be had that way and if you know that’s you or you want to visit there for leisure or for family or anything, then that might be the route that you want an introductory Amex card, which might be like the American Express Gold, which is kind of your dining and grocery reward card.

Emily (35:25): Yeah, and I would say my tip that I’ll add onto this, it’s just, it’s something you mentioned earlier, but just like staying organized <laugh>, um, staying on top of this. So like try one card, get a spreadsheet set up or whatever system you’re gonna be using to keep track of like, you know, the date that you sign up, the date you have to finish spending, the amount of the spend, what you’re gonna get for it, um, what those extra rewards categories are for ongoing spending. The little um, you know, $50 here, a free night there, all that stuff that can come like with your annual annual fee and so forth. Like just get your system going <laugh>, um, from that first card and then you can kind of layer on and add to it over time.

Brendan (36:01): Now I tell people to kind of get your sea legs with your first travel card and then once you’re like, oh I know how to use points, I know how to transfer, then it’s time to maybe think about a different one but try it out and um, take that first day and see how great if it was to not pay for it.

Emily (36:15): Yeah, I agree. I’ve been like just very slowly making my way into the travel rewards points and miles hobby kind of space. I’ve like, I feel like I know like the Chase Southwest system for that free budget <laugh> flight kind of situation. And the next thing I have my sights on is like international travel. Now I don’t know that I’m gonna be able to go business class ’cause I have a family of four, but we’ll see.

Brendan (36:39): That makes it a little harder.

Emily (36:40): Yeah. But just to be able to take those longer flights to that, you know, the further destinations again for free or you know, low, low fees, you know, depending on the taxes and whatnot. Um, so I’m excited about expanding my own like practice in this area. So I’m talking to myself too as well during this interview. Um, so what’s been kind of the overall like effect on your financial mindset, on your stress, on your, how you spend your time of like pursuing this hobby?

Brendan (37:09): Yeah, I think for me in terms of financial, it’s made me think about return on investment a lot more because now every time we go out as a lab or I take friends out or grad school, I’m the first one to say I’ll pay just venmo me. And you can kind of think about it as a return on investment that it might end up paying your dinner actually, if you think about the points that you get in terms of personal kind of enjoyment of life, knowing that there’s this kind of once in a lifetime stay coming up at the end of the year really has helped motivate me to work harder in my like day-to-day life as a PhD student knowing that as soon as I finish this conference I’m flying to Florida for this really amazing to stay. Um, and kind of, you know, that’s coming up that allows me to kind of stress a little bit more so I, because I know the de-stress has coming where I can just sit pool side for a couple days.

Emily (37:58): I think that’s such an important point because probably a trait that’s pretty common among PhD students is not, um, giving yourself the kudos that you deserve for all the great work that you do and not taking the rest and the rejuve rejuvenation and so forth. Um, and what a great way to sort of enhance that experience to be anticipating it, you know, while you’re collecting these points, planning the trip, working really hard as you said, and then be able to actually, you know, take the vacation and do that relaxation that you need. And it’s, it’s cyclical, right? So like that’s so helpful. I know I didn’t take enough like vacation or personal uh, time, you know, when I was a graduate student and it’s really, um, it’s, it’s not that healthy to live that way. So I’m glad you’re kind of an example here of like a different way to like work hard, play hard, work hard, play hard,

Brendan (38:45): And especially we have to to work hard a lot of the time. So like why not get that reward at the end of the tunnel, especially like whether it’s yearly at the end of the milestone. Kind of give yourself that reward.

The Grad Student Travel Substack and Other Travel Hacking Resources

Emily (38:57): Absolutely. First of all, share with us the name of your substack and then tell us some other great resources that you use in this space.

Brendan (39:03): Yeah, so my substack is gradstudenttravel.substack.com so when you go to that, you’ll be able to subscribe as soon as you put your email in, you have access to my archive of every post that I’ve ever written and every Wednesday you get an alert with, there’s a new post and it’s kind of a trip report, a new hack, a new trick and so on. And then the things that kind of got me into this space, um, there’s a lot of great blogs and kind of guides that get you in. One is MilesTalk, um, it’s a Facebook group that became, I think it’s a blog that became a Facebook group and now it’s kind of back and forth. He’s been really instrumental in kind of teaching how you can go from one thing to another and just stack all the rewards. And then Frequent Miler is another one. They do some awesome trip reports of, we use Amex points on this business flight to France. We didn’t like this so you should try this, another hack with Amex and kind of even like you read trip reports that people doing what you hope to do. So it’s been able to kind of gimme one aspiration of I want to be that guy on that plane or two how to get there.

Emily (40:07): It’s so much fun. Okay. When should we tune into your substack to see the trip report on your honeymoon?

Brendan (40:13): Yeah, so that trip report should come out probably next fall. Um, so I’ll be able to kind of write it up fully in the meantime. I’m going to, I started a kind of a six part post of like every little piece that went into it. So that would be every month or every two months I’m gonna kind of give a glimpse of how do we find the flight home, how did I use the points, how did I collect that? And then I’ll do a retrospective probably in like maybe a year from now where I say, this is the whole trip, these are the pictures, um, this is all the upgrades we got and everything.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (40:46): Awesome. Well we will look forward to that. Okay, Brendan, thank you so much for this interview. I’m so like inspired <laugh>. Um, but I wanna end with the standard question that I ask all of my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And it could be something that we’ve touched on on the interview already or it could be something completely new.

Brendan (41:05): I would say the best advice outside of like kind of dipping your toes in the water and like travel on points would be Roth IRA it. When I was a, I used to be a teacher, a older teacher kind of took me aside and said, Hey, you’re 22, you don’t know what you’re doing. Get a Roth IRA like first day. And I was like, oh, okay. Um, my mom had mentioned it too, so I should have listened to her in the first place. Um, but it really, if you think about what it affords you and there is kind of an opportunity cost for the PhD sometimes with retirement access that it really for me changed how I thought about retirement and finances and even invest in period.

Emily (41:43): Awesome. You know, I have to co-sign that. Love the Roth IRA for graduate students and really for everybody. Um, okay. Well Brendan, thank you so much again for volunteering to come on. It’s been wonderful talking with you.

Brendan (41:54): Thank you so much for having me. This has been awesome.

Outro

Emily (42:07): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Are PhDs in a Financial Emergency?

April 7, 2025 by Jill Hoffman

In this episode, Emily shares her thoughts on whether PhDs are in a financial emergency. It’s possible that you are facing a financial emergency because you’ve been laid off or your grants have been terminated or interrupted or there’s some risk of that happening in the future. In this episode, Emily explores 1) what she learned from attending the National Postdoctoral Association’s Annual Conference in March, 2) what steps she recommends that you take in your personal finances and your career if you are in a financial emergency, and 3) what she’s giving away this spring to help you in this turbulent time.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Introduction

This is Season 20, Episode 7, and today you’re getting my thoughts on whether PhDs are in a financial emergency. It’s possible that you are facing a financial emergency because you’ve been laid off or your grants have been terminated or interrupted or there’s some risk of that happening in the future. In this episode, I’m going to share with you 1) what I learned from attending the National Postdoctoral Association’s Annual Conference in March, 2) what steps I recommend that you take in your personal finances and your career if you are in a financial emergency, and 3) what I’m giving away this spring to help you as best I can.

The tax year 2024 version of my tax return preparation workshop, How to Complete Your PhD Trainee Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!), is now available! This pre-recorded educational workshop explains how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. Whether you are a graduate student, postdoc, or postbac, domestic or international, there is a version of this workshop designed just for you. I do license these workshops to universities, but in the case that yours declines your request for sponsorship, you can purchase the appropriate version as an individual. Go to PFforPhDs.com/taxreturnworkshop/ to read more details and purchase the workshop. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s20e7/. Without further ado, here’s my episode on whether PhDs are in a financial emergency.

I attended the National Postdoctoral Association Annual Conference in March, and it was quite valuable for me to get to speak with postdocs and postdoc office personnel about what’s happening on their university campuses and with their jobs. Everything has been so chaotic this spring in terms of the actions of the new administration and the responses from the judicial and legislative branches, it’s really hard to keep up with. Thankfully, some of the presenters pivoted their planned sessions to address what’s been happening and academia’s response, and the conference helped me to clarify a few of my thoughts, which I’ll share with you in this episode. Part 1 is what I took away from the NPA conference. Part 2 is what you can do in your personal finances to best weather the present storm, and I’m going to include specific advice for different stages of PhD training and employment. Part 3 is what I’m giving to you over the next couple of months and why and how you can access everything.

Part 1: My Take-Aways from the National Postdoctoral Association Annual Conference

This was my first time attending NPA, and I attended as a sponsor, and I thought it was a wonderful conference. I attend conferences both for networking with potential clients and my own professional development, and in this case the timing was really good for me to get a sense of how universities are responding to the funding cuts and so forth. Because this conference was focused on postdocs, I didn’t hear much specifically about graduate education, but I’m sure I will learn more when I attend other similar conferences later this year. At this conference, I especially appreciated the talks from Tom Kibis from the NPA and Nicholas Dirks from the New York Academy of Sciences, the session co-led by Meagan Heirwegh from Caltech, Sofie Kleppner from Stanford, Julia Parrish from the University of Washington, and Zoe Fonseca-Kelly from Harvard, and my conversation with Alberto Roca of Diverse Scholar, as they most directly addressed the current situation.

My overall take-away from the conference is that everyone is bracing for a tough time economically. The tough time has already started but will get worse in the next fiscal year, which typically starts in July, if we continue on the track we’re on. Some universities have instituted hiring freezes, which may or may not extend to postdocs and graduate students. I’m sure we’ve all seen reports of graduate programs rescinding offers and just generally admitting fewer graduate students than has been typical in recent years. Positions that are funded by soft money, which means external grants and contracts, are most at risk of being eliminated.

Tom Kimbis, the CEO of the NPA, referred to the results of a survey of NPA members conducted in February; the survey results and an op-ed by Tom are linked in the show notes. The headline numbers from that survey are that 43% of postdocs say their job or position is threatened and 35% say that their research is delayed or otherwise in jeopardy.

The overall climate of the conference was of great concern for the postdoc workforce, particularly international postdocs. If we don’t see major pushback from Congress or via the judiciary, there will be a lot fewer postdoc positions available next year. Again, we’ve already seen the reduction in PhD program offers, and this is honestly the responsible step for PIs to take as they face uncertainty regarding their grants. So the postdoc itself as a training step is in jeopardy. And, broadening beyond this specific conference, the research enterprise as a whole in the US is under threat.

A lot of current postdocs will need to find new positions in the near future. Again, the highest level of concern is for international postdocs if temporary visas are harder to come by and fewer jobs are available overall. Will those positions be in academia or the federal government? We all know how few people were being hired as tenure-track faculty members before this attack on research, and that market is only going to get tighter, and I think hiring for non-tenure track academic and governmental jobs is also going to be quite limited. Understandably, institutions feel most responsible for their current employees and probably won’t want to extend themselves too much in hiring.

I don’t mean to give the impression that the conference attendees were throwing up their hands in defeat. There was plenty of talk about what people generally and postdocs offices specifically can do to meet the moment, and I heard some creative ideas about how to keep people on payroll to at least give them more time to find another job.

However, from what I heard, most of the discussion was around helping PhDs prepare for and land jobs in “industry.” What I didn’t hear enough discussion about was the likely upcoming recession and how that is already affecting hiring in the private sector. While the pain might be less acute in the private sector in comparison with government and academia, again, if we continue on this route, there will be an overall contraction in the labor market. PhDs typically have a very low unemployment rate, but I am definitely skeptical of industry’s ability to provide jobs to a glut of PhDs exiting the federal government and academia in the coming months. Some private companies are already conducting layoffs, even when not directly or substantially funded by the federal government. Of course, this will be worse in some sectors and not so bad in others, and I expect the most pain will be felt by PhDs in areas of research that are more dependent on funding from the federal government.

So the conclusion is: A lot of PhDs are going to lose their jobs, whether that’s called a layoff or a firing or a contract not being renewed. I suspect the unemployment rate or at least underemployment rate among PhDs is going to go higher than we’ve seen in recent recessions because academia is being targeted, and that PhDs are going to land in jobs that are different from their previous career aspirations. Many PhDs on temporary visas will have to exit the country, even if they would like to stay, because they can’t find an appropriate position fast enough when their current one ends. I’m not much one for prognostication and it really pains me to report such a grim outlook, but that is how I see it.

Part 2: Financial Steps You Should Take Right Now

I want everyone who works in academia or research to consider that they may now or soon be in a financial emergency and to take appropriate steps. Since the main threat at the moment is loss of income, rather than being underpaid or experiencing rapidly rising expenses, the steps are to serve both your finances and your career.

First, I’ll share some steps I think everyone should take, and then I’ll share some stage-specific suggestions. To begin with, please assess your finances holistically. What are your assets: bank account balances, investments, property, etc.? What are your liabilities: credit card debt, buy now pay later debt, student loans, a car loan, a mortgage, medical debt, IRS debt, etc.? What is your current income? What are your current expenses? Specifically, I want you to focus on one type of asset and one type of debt. What I’m sharing next is an abbreviated form of the financial framework that I teach in my live workshops.

The asset is your emergency fund. The best practice is to have a separate, named high-yield savings account for your emergency fund so that you can be super clear about the money available to you in the case of an emergency vs. the money available to spend on a monthly basis on regular expenses or annual basis on irregular expenses. Based on your current expenses, for how many months could your emergency fund support you if you were to lose your primary income? If your answer is that you don’t have an emergency fund or it’s smaller than three months of expenses, please make it your top financial priority to build the fund to that level. This is a slightly larger recommendation than I have made in the past specifically because of the unique threat we are under. You should consider yourself to be in a financial emergency until you reach this goal—more on this in a bit.

The debt is credit card debt. The best practice is to carry no balances on your credit cards, and in fact to use your credit cards as if they are debit cards, only making a purchase if you could pay for it right then with the money already in your bank account. If you could not immediately pay off all your credit cards and switch to using only debit cards, you are in credit card debt—even if you never pay interest. Following the creation of your 3-month emergency fund, your next financial goal should be to clear this credit card debt. However, I recommend that you keep the credit cards open as long as they don’t have an annual fee; you may need these lines of credit in the future if you do lose your income or incur a large, unexpected expense such as a move. Holding debt of this kind also puts you in a financial emergency.

If you’re a little further along in your financial journey, I want you to increase your emergency fund size to six months of expenses. That would be if you have no credit card or other high-interest debt, have other savings for near-term expenses, and have started investing. If all those elements are in place, you’re not in a financial emergency, but you should put some extra financial effort into building your emergency fund to six months of expenses. Once you’ve achieved that goal, you’re in a very strong financial position and don’t have to be quite so intense about keeping a high savings rate.

The next step is to assess your job security and career security. If you haven’t yet, this is the time to talk with your advisor or boss about the source or sources of your paycheck and the group, office, or company’s overall funding. You may learn that the source of your income is entirely or largely independent of federal funding, such as from a private foundation or tuition. You may learn that the source of your income is federal, but there are currently no concerns about its continuity. Or you may learn that the source of your funding is federal and is tenuous. We’ve already seen many grants cancelled or temporarily paused, and so you would probably know if you were in that group because you’ve either already lost your job or you’ve been switched to some kind of emergency or temporary funding. Or perhaps your advisor is currently funded but not optimistic about securing more grants due to the shifted funding priorities of the new administration. In those latter cases, assuming your emergency fund meets the levels I just outlined, throw your efforts into preparing for a job or career transition.

Now let’s get to some practical steps. We’ll do the financial first and then the career. If you’ve self-diagnosed that you’re in a financial emergency or have a financial goal that you should strenuously work toward, how should you do so? Let’s look first at expenses. Normally, when I teach about reducing expenses, I do so with a focus on long-term sustainability, so I talk a lot about right-sizing housing and transportation and other large, fixed expenses. Right now, I’m not so concerned about sustainability, because you have a short-term, highly urgent goal of increasing your emergency fund or paying off high-priority debt. That means slashing your discretionary expenses, essentially engaging in a limited-term fast from anything you can possibly spare.

The question you should ask yourself is: If I had no income right now, would I spend money on this? If the answer is no, don’t spend on it and put all the money you can free up toward your financial goal. I suggest that you stop spending entirely or as close as you can get on discretionary expenses such as restaurants, takeout, and delivery; entertainment; going out; travel; and shopping aside from the bare minimum. The exceptions are for expenses for your job search or career pivot, such as expenses related to interviewing or professional development. Delay every expense that you can delay, even what you might consider necessary expenses. Take a hard look at your subscriptions and cancel everything that you would cancel if you didn’t have an income. You can always restart them when you’ve reached your goal.

For me personally, it would be really hard, but if I didn’t have a fully funded emergency fund right now, I would cancel my gym membership, take my kids out of their pay-by-the-month extracurricular activities, cancel all our streaming services including Amazon Prime, skip my next haircut, and put off some much-desired-but-not-strictly-urgent home repairs.

You can also try to increase your income to reach your urgent financial goals. Normally, when teaching on increasing income, I say to focus on income-generating activities that also advance your career goals. That’s still great work if you can get it, but with our top-of-mind objective of adding to your emergency fund or paying off debt, you can pursue other types of work as well. Whatever gives you the best pay rate-to-time or pay rate-to-energy ratio is worthwhile. In fact, diversifying your income sources so that you are less directly or indirectly dependent on the federal government is a great idea in the short term.

Finally, I suggest planning where you would turn should you lose your income and deplete your emergency fund. If you would turn to debt, think through what is the least toxic type of debt available to you. Credit cards are an easy option, which is why I want you to pay them down but not close them, but as they come at such a high interest rate, they might not be your best option. If you have good credit, you might be able to get another type of loan like a personal loan or a home equity line of credit, but it’s going to be more difficult if you wait until after you’ve lost your income. If things got really dire, would it be possible for you to move in with a family member or friend until you get back on your feet?

Turning our focus back to your job or career, I suggest devoting serious time to professional development, and that goes whether you perceive your job to be at risk or not. Of course, the more unstable your job or career is, the more important it is to engage with this. If you don’t know already, you need to figure out, as I heard one person at NPA put it, your career plans B, C, and D and start setting yourself up to pursue them. If you are affiliated with a university, this means patronizing professional development events and the career center. Check if there are recordings of past events that you can catch up on as a full suite of topics is probably covered over the course of 12 to 24 months.

Networking is vital right now, and again that goes whether you anticipate a near-term job search or not. Yes, use LinkedIn and attend local meet-ups, but also make an effort to connect individually with people you know from past degrees or past jobs. It’s always great to catch up with an old friend or colleague, and it doesn’t have to be like “Can you offer me a job?” Just ask what they’re up to and if their industry has been impacted by the new policies. Then if you do need to come around again with a serious request, it won’t be so out of the blue.

By the way, when you’re networking, keep two things in mind: 1) What can you offer the person you’re speaking with? It could be continued friendship or information or access to your own network. 2) By keeping up with your network, you might very well be able to help a friend or colleague. So do this not just for yourself, but to help the people you know find great-fit jobs and careers. We should all increase our networking activities right now, not just if we have an urgent need.

So far I’ve only mentioned networking with peers and colleagues, but don’t forget that people outside of your profession can be part of your network and prove very helpful, especially if you are considering changing industries. To that end, speak openly about your career aspirations and industry concerns with people you know socially. In fact, it will be a great boon to your mental health if you lean into in person social groups and gatherings in this difficult time. Remember that you are much more than just a researcher; you are a well-rounded human being with unique hobbies, interests, beliefs, etc.

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Emily here for a brief interlude! Tax season is in full swing, and the best place to go for information tailored to you as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac, is PFforPhDs.com/tax/. From that page I have linked to all of my free tax resources, many of which I have updated for this tax year. On that page you will find podcast episodes, videos, and articles on all kinds of tax topics relevant to PhDs and PhDs-to-be. There are also opportunities to join the Personal Finance for PhDs mailing list to receive PDF summaries and spreadsheets that you can work with. Again, you can find all of these free resources linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. Now back to the interview.

Financial Advice for Each Stage of Your Academic Career

We’ve spoken in general terms to this point about assessing your finances and your career stability and some steps you can take to prepare for a loss of income. Nothing I’ve said so far is extreme, and you will improve your finances and career by following the advice, even if you never lose your income. Now let’s delve into some stage-specific advice for those who have lost their income or whose income is at higher risk. We’ll start with people earlier in the PhD career track and move to later.

A) Prospective graduate students: If you’re still interested in graduate school after all this, more power to you. Go ahead and apply next fall or whenever is appropriate for you. But please apply for jobs as well in case admission or funding doesn’t work out. Seriously consider whether a master’s or PhD is more appropriate for your career goals and whether it might be worth paying for a master’s, even if your original plan was to pursue a funded PhD. I can’t yet tell how the landscape will shift between those two types of graduate programs. It might be worth taking a couple of years to work before you head back to graduate school; you will have more clarity about your career goals and what academia can offer you and will also be in a stronger financial position to start graduate school if you use your income intentionally. When you apply to graduate school, please apply widely for fellowships. Consider programs abroad as well as in the US. Also, listen to my advice for rising and current graduate students.

B) Rising graduate students: Some of you have gotten a really raw deal, and I’m sorry. The fact that this attack went down literally during admissions season was the worst possible timing for you. If you’re still headed to graduate school, take a really critical eye to the stability of your funding, and do your best to build financial and career security if you do perceive your funding to be tenuous. More on that next in the section for current graduate students. Also, as you start graduate school, do your best to keep your large, fixed expenses like housing and transportation as low as is comfortable for you so that you can maintain a savings rate. Your emergency fund, etc. could become a lifeline if things go south.

C) Current graduate students: If your funding does not seem to be secure, layer in financial and career stability in other ways. 1) Apply widely for funding opportunities, focusing outside the federal government. 2) Establish at least one side stream of income, if that’s legally and morally permissible for you. Ideally, this would be from a career-advancing activity. 3) Treat every year of graduate school like it might be your last, because it very well might be if your funding evaporates. What I mean by this is that you should have at least one big accomplishment to point to within the last 12 months that will translate well to your resume. That could be completing practical classes, mastering skills, finishing your master’s degree, publishing or patenting, etc. You should also be ready on very short notice to conduct a job search, so stay up-to-date on your professional development, career exploration, and networking. This especially goes for international graduate students, who have a very small window of time available to find another position before they would have to leave the country. 4) Submit the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. I certainly hope it doesn’t come to this, but if a small student loan will bridge you to the end of your degree which itself would vastly improve your job prospects, it may be worthwhile. 5) Do your research now on the social supports that would be available to you if you did lose your funding or have to leave grad school abruptly. For example, does your department, school, or university offer any kind of bridge employment or funding? Do graduate students qualify for unemployment in your state, and if so under what circumstances? Does your university offer emergency loans or grants to graduate students? Are there programs through your city that would help you pay for rent or groceries if you lost your income?

D) Current postdocs: Much of the same advice for graduate students applies for you as well, although thankfully you have the security of your finished PhD. Take those steps to shore up your financial and career resources, especially if you are an international postdoc. You should also check into whether you would qualify for unemployment in your state should your position end; don’t assume you will, especially if you are a non-employee.

E) PhDs in government, academia, and nonprofits: You know your situation best, but stay frosty. Like everyone else, you should understand how your position is funded to ascertain its potential instability and be ready to transition out at any time. If you haven’t already, I suggest starting the process of separating your personal identity from that of your job. These can become especially intertwined for tenured or tenure-track faculty. If you do have to separate, it will probably be super painful. I suggest listening to the new podcast Academics and Their Money by former podcast guest, Dr. Inga Timmerman.

F) PhDs in the private sector: Your job is probably the most secure of any that we’ve discussed so far, which is not at all the case in normal times. You will be everyone’s best friend right now if you devote some of your time to networking, doubly so if your company is hiring. It may benefit you in the future, but it will almost certainly benefit your friends and peers.

I have a couple of concluding thoughts, and for these I need to thank the most recent episode of the new podcast Optimist Economy, titled Is This a Recession or Not?, and the financial independence movement.

First thought: During a recession, if you manage to keep your job and assuming you didn’t expect to retire super soon, you are going to be financially fine. You might have some anxiety, and perhaps I’ve fed into that today, but you will come through it in good shape. The pain of recessions is felt mostly by people who lose their jobs, and typically, it’s not so much the losing of the job that’s the worst, it’s the time it takes to get another job, which is lengthened during recessions. That’s why I’ve focused so much time today speaking about how you can prepare yourself for the loss of your income. It’s a low-probability but high-risk event.

However, we have the added wrinkle in the PhD community of being super specialized in our research or skills and perhaps even the sector in which we expect to perform that research or use those skills. For PhDs in academia and government and nonprofit research settings especially, losing your job is so much more than a temporary disruption in income. It’s a rupture of your identity because of how much of yourself you had to put into breaking into that career path. In another time, you might have been able to get a similar job, but that just might not be the case right now if your whole field is contracting. Losing your job might feel like the end of your career. It’s not, it doesn’t have to be, but if you feel that way, it’s going to take some serious inner work to decouple your career from your identity and move on. In this, we can take some inspiration from the financial independence movement. Many early retirees have modeled this process of finding yourself outside of your career. It will look different for someone who is still working, but it is a good example.

Second thought: One of the scariest aspects of losing your job in the good old U S of A is that you likely lose your health insurance as well. That part of it is almost as horrible as losing your income, especially if you are chronically ill or have dependents. There are solutions, however, and again these have been well explored by the financial independence community. It may help you alleviate some anxiety to think through what you would do specifically about health insurance if you were to lose your position.

You might be able to hop onto your spouse or partner’s insurance or your parent’s insurance, depending on your specific eligibility and the cost of doing so. Some insurance plans offer a program known as COBRA, in which you can continue with your same coverage for up to 18 months after you lose your job. Your workplace likely offers COBRA, but your student health insurance plan probably doesn’t qualify. If you are eligible for COBRA, you have up to 60 days to enroll in the program and it covers you retroactively, so you could wait up to 60 days to see if you actually need insurance before starting to pay any premiums. The premiums are going to feel high because you have to pay the portion that your employer was paying previously in addition to the portion you paid before. Another good option is to purchase a health insurance plan through the ACA marketplace in your state. This is the fallback plan for most early retirees who stay in the US, and it is a good one, especially since you likely will just be on the plan in the short term. Finally, another type of plan that’s popular with early retirees is a health care sharing ministry, which is not proper health insurance but serves some of the same functions as health insurance. People like it because it’s less expensive than proper health insurance. I will leave it to you to look into further and decide whether this is a viable or preferable option for you should you lose your job.

Part 3: What I’m Offering You for Free

A few weeks ago, I was feeling really despondent and powerless in the face of all these terrible changes, so I decided to embark on what I’m calling Giveaway Spring. I finished all my scheduled speaking engagements by the end of February, so I have an unusual amount of free time between now and the end of the academic year, and I’ve decided to give away a lot of it.

If you aren’t already on my mailing list and you want to sign up for any of these giveaways, please register through PFforPhDs.com/Giveaway/. You’ll receive an email with all the current giveaways being offered, and I’ll update my mailing list periodically as I add items. I’m planning on expanding the content I’ve shared in this episode into a full webinar, for example, and I’ll give a pilot of that webinar away to a limited number of people on my mailing list after I put it together.

Here are some of the items on offer as part of Giveaway Spring:

1) I’m offering free 60-minute Q&A calls to cross-institutional groups. This would be perfect for a professional society or interest group that has a lot of PhDs and PhDs-to-be. You don’t even have to be on my list to schedule one of those, just email me at [email protected].

2) I’m offering free 30-minute coaching sessions, four per week between now and early June. These are going fast so once you get the link, keep checking back as availability opens up on a rolling basis.

3) I’ve collected all my best free templates and downloadables into one easy folder.

4) I’m hosting a free AMA with Sam Hogan, a mortgage originator specializing in graduate students and PhDs, on April 8, 2025. You can register via PFforPhDs.com/mortgage/.

5) I’m giving away other people’s books! The first giveaway is for The Entrepreneurial Scholar: A New Mindset for Success in Academia and Beyond by Ilana Horwitz. I will keep cycling through my favorite personal finance and academia books throughout the spring. You can sign up for the book giveaway directly at PFforPhDs.com/BookGiveaway/.

6) I’m sharing free opportunities hosted by other groups or people as I find out about them. For example, Princeton’s GradFUTURES conference from a couple of weeks ago went out to my list, and right now via PFforPhDs.com/Giveaway/ you can sign up for an upcoming free webinar from AccessLex titled “Navigating Recent Updates to Student Loan Repayment and Forgiveness.” If you are hosting or know of free events or resources that are related to PhD personal finance or careers that you think I should pass along, please notify me—I would be happy to do so!

Again, the link to find out about all the current giveaways is PFforPhDs.com/Giveaway/. I would really appreciate you sharing that link with your peers. I’m trying to get two things out of these efforts: 1) goodwill within our community and 2) new mailing list subscribers. So you can really help me out with both of those goals by sharing PFforPhDs.com/Giveaway/ or any of the other links I’ve mentioned in this section.

I would be very happy to hear your reactions to the content of this episode if you would like to share them with me. Perhaps you’re hearing different messaging from your university or employer or you think I missed a good piece of advice. Please share any comments with me at [email protected]. Good luck this spring, this year, and this four years. I’m rooting for you.

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Links mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

Introduction

First Encounters with Postdoc Employee/Non-Employee Differential Benefits

Postdoc Benefits Examples From the Academic Community

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How Can Postdocs Who Are Classified as Non-employees Gain Some Employee Benefits?

Where Are All Postdocs Classified as Employees?

Conclusion

Outro

Links Mentioned in the Episode

Introduction

What Does It Mean to Live on Time Financially?

1) All your income from one month goes to funding the next month’s spending.

2) Use credit as debit and don’t slide into buy now pay later.

3) Keep up with your tax obligations.

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Why Attempt to Live on Time

How to Start Living on Time

Outro

Links mentioned in the Episode

Introduction

Disclaimer

What Is Financial Anxiety?

Suggestion #1: Choose Just One Financial Goal to Work on at a Time

Suggestion #2: Take Just One Small Step

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Suggestion #3: Create a Recurring Appointment with Your Finances

Suggestion #4: Think Through the Worst Case Scenario

Suggestion #5: Talk with Other People about Money

Outro

Links mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Considering Home Ownership as Graduate Student in a High Cost of Living Area

Housing Costs and the Home Buying Process in San Francisco

Explaining Graduate Student Income to Mortgage Lenders

Saving for a Down Payment as a Graduate Student

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Similarities Between Buying a Home and Pursuing a PhD

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Outro

Links mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Using Travel Rewards for Once in a Lifetime Trips

Accumulating Travel Rewards Points

Common Travel Rewards Concerns: Minimum Spending and Annual Fees

Gaining Elite Status at Hotel Chains

Car Rental Strategies Specific to Grad Students

Commercial

Using Travel Rewards for a $30,000 Honeymoon

Teaching Other Grad Students about Travel Hacking

Getting Started with Travel Hacking

The Grad Student Travel Substack and Other Travel Hacking Resources

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Outro

Links mentioned in the Episode

Introduction

Part 1: My Take-Aways from the National Postdoctoral Association Annual Conference

Part 2: Financial Steps You Should Take Right Now

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Financial Advice for Each Stage of Your Academic Career

Part 3: What I’m Offering You for Free

Outro

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