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This Grad Student Interrogated Her Budget and Worked on the Side to Financially Thrive

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In this episode, Emily interviews Alyce Viens, a 4th-year PhD student in communications at the University of Connecticut. On the eve of her defense, Alyce looks back over her time in graduate school to share the strategies that have help her pay off her student loans, invest for retirement, and save a down payment on a home. We discuss how Alyce budgeted, practiced frugality (including with conference travel), and supplemented her stipend.

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Teaser

00:00 Alyce: You know, I was able to just not have to wait until I graduated and got, you know, quote unquote, a real job to start my financial journey. You know, not having to delay those things, you know, having that healthy emergency fund, but also being able to, you know, build up investments and, you know, have the down payment for a house and no debt. It’s just, it’s been very, very freeing and liberating.

Introduction

00:31 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is Season 11, Episode 2, and today my guest is Alyce Viens, a 4th-year PhD student in communications at the University of Connecticut. On the eve of her defense, Alyce looks back over her time in graduate school to share the strategies that have helped her pay off her student loans, invest for retirement, and save a down payment on a home. We discuss how Alyce budgeted, practiced frugality (including with conference travel), and supplemented her stipend. I have a gift for you if you’re not yet subscribed to the Personal Finance for PhDs mailing list. At the end of every interview, I ask my guest for their best financial advice for another early-career PhD. 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. The document is even organized by topic so you can easily see which type of advice is most popular. I invite you to join the mailing list to receive access to this document through PFforPhDs.com/advice/. I hope this quick, powerful resource will help you up-level your finances in this new year! Without further ado, here’s my interview with Alyce Viens.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:02 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today Alyce Viens. She is wrapping up her time in graduate school, finishing up her PhD very soon. And she’s here to give us a retrospective on the finances of her PhD. Where she was when she started, where she is now, what she did in between. So Alyce, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. And welcome, please tell the listeners a little bit more about yourself.

02:24 Alyce: Yeah, thank you for having me. I’m really excited to be here. So I am, I guess now a fourth-and-a-half year PhD finishing up. I’ll be defending two weeks from today, actually. So I’m very excited about that. My PhD will be in Mass Communication from the University of Connecticut. So I’ve been studying media effects and things like that for the last four plus years. But I now work as a market researcher for a consumer and brand research company that’s based in DC, but I work remotely. I live in upstate New York. So that’s what I’ve been doing for the last six months is going on to the industry side, the dark side, as I know some people in academia call it.

Budgeting Lessons for Grad Students: Tracking Spending

03:12 Emily: I do want to circle back and hear more about that decision to take that job prior to actually finishing up. But we’ll save that for the end of the interview. What lessons would you like to impart on the grad students and PhDs listening about budgeting, particularly during grad school or maybe in general?

03:28 Alyce: Yeah, so I mean, the reality is that as grad students we’re just not making a ton of money, but we still have a lot of the expenses that we would consider to be sort of adult expenses. We still have to pay for our housing, potentially cars, and we have to buy our food and all of those things that we have to pay for now that we’re adults. But we don’t have income necessarily to match all of those things. So the one thing that I would recommend to anybody, whether you’re a grad student or not, is to spend your first month before you ever build a budget and just look at any time money is leaving your pocket, whether it’s cash or debit card or an automatic subscription, a student loan payment, regardless of what it is, write it down, categorize it.

04:14 Alyce: Like don’t just say I spent, you know, $10 on food today. Well, did you spend $10 at the grocery store, or did you spend $10 at Starbucks on food? And then do that for a month. Don’t change your habits, just make it a regular month. And I think that’s the best place to start because you can really start to see, where am I spending all my money? I find that when I had less income, it wasn’t the large expenditures that I was doing. Like I wasn’t going out and buying myself a new iPhone every few months. Like I wasn’t making any large purchases. It was those little ones that time where, you know, I forgot to pack myself lunch and I had to go to a restaurant to get it. Or I had to go to the grocery store to buy something quickly. You know, it’s a lot of those really little things that can catch up with you. And as grad students with that limited income, that has to be the first place I think that you start is looking where you’re spending your money, and then we can start to assess where you can maybe make some cuts.

05:17 Emily: Did you use like software or an app? Or do you like to do things manually, and what do you recommend to other people?

05:23 Alyce: Yeah, so I would just have like a notes file going in my phone just to kind of, so for those moments where, you know, you kind of spontaneously spend money, I would throw all my receipts in my wallet for those times that I forgot to write it down. And then I would honestly just put them into an Excel sheet because you know, it makes it nice and easy, you know, when all is said and done for you to just kind of group them and see what those totals are.

Frugality is Worth it to Avoid Debt

05:53 Emily: Is there anything else that you want to add about budgeting?

05:58 Alyce: I would say, you know, I fully recognize that that 30% housing threshold may be very hard to reach. And so, you know, reach it as much as you can, get those housing costs down as much as you can, but also recognize if you spend a little bit more on housing. Okay. Well that just means we maybe need to make a little bit extra side income, or we need to just adjust our budget accordingly and maybe we spend less on something else. So I think, you know, there are opportunities, you know, depending on where you end up. Sometimes your graduate school is going to be in Southern California and you’re gonna be paying a fortune in housing. But where can you cut? Or where can you add as much as possible? And the same thing goes with really any aspect of your budget.

06:50 Alyce: You’re going to have to cut somewhere. You know, frugality and, you know, really making it as being financially well and not putting yourself further into debt as a grad student, it is going to involve some small sacrifices. I’m not going to lie and say, it’s all sunshine and rainbows all the time. There are going to be times where you have to say no to yourself, or you have to maybe get something that’s a little bit less than what you maybe wanted to. But it’s all about finding the balance. And it doesn’t have to be this miserable existence where you, you know, live in a tiny, tiny room and live on ramen noodles, but there are ways to make it work. You have to be willing to put in the work to find out where those places are. Because it’s easier to just fall into debt.

Strategies for Minimizing Expenses

07:40 Emily: Okay. So you mentioned earlier, like, okay, cutting expenses and also increasing income. And I want to ask you about both of those things. So, what are some strategies that you used in terms of decreasing expenses or minimizing expenses?

07:52 Alyce: Yeah. So the first thing that you have to do is just, like I said, cut those small unnecessary expenses. You’re going to have to buy gas for your car. You’re going to have to pay for insurance. You’re going to have to pay rent. But what you don’t have to do is buy lunch on campus every day, because you didn’t have lunch. What you don’t have to do is order pizza because you got home late. Those are things that you don’t have to spend money on. So look for opportunities to not do that. So I always kept snacks in my my drawer just, or like a loaf of bread and some peanut butter or like Graham crackers and peanut butter or something that I could kind of default to when I was on campus longer than I intended, or I didn’t have anything at home that I could make as a lunch or a dinner. You know, we’re there sometimes for a long time, I get it.

08:44 Alyce: You run out of meals. So have those emergency meals in your desk at work or in your backpack or in your car, wherever you need to keep them. Also, I like to make emergency meals for my house. So I always, like I’ll, you know, make a lot of something, you know, if I cook chicken, I’ll cook two or three extra pieces of it. So it’s done, freeze them in the individual packages, and then it’s just a microwave away. Or have emergency kind of food ready. So when you do get home late and you don’t feel like cooking, you always have that can of soup in the pantry. You always have something that you don’t have to spend money on. You can, you know, evaluate things that you are spending your money on that you do need to, or, you know, you would like to, but are there ways that you can reduce it?

09:33 Alyce: You know, do you need the, the fanciest Wi-Fi plan for your home internet? Probably not. I can tell you, I have a very cheap one now and it works just as well as any other one. Just don’t have seven devices going at a time. You know, do you have a subscription to Netflix, Hulu, Spotify? Do you have all of these and are you actually using them? Can you share expenses with somebody else? You know, I know it’s only, you know, $12 a month, but you know, those things they add up when you’re talking about how they compound on each other. So I think it’s just realistically looking at what are you spending your money on and are there ways that you could reduce that spending if not eliminate it completely?

10:21 Emily: Yeah. I like the process that you’re outlining here, like first tracking all expenses, and then interrogating each one of those expenses. I would say even, you know, the necessary expenses are also worth interrogating. There are a little bit of, well, for example, you mentioned gas in your car. Okay. So like figure out what’s the station that you’re always going to go to that consistently has like the cheapest price that’s not too far out of your way or whatever. Like just figure that out, make the decision one time, and then you’re always gonna be getting gas from that station. It’s always at the best price that you know about. So anyway, the necessary expenses are worth interrogating. You just like go down your entire list. Like you were saying, ask yourself for every one, how can I reduce this? How can I share this? Can I go without this? I really like that strategy. And it does matter, like you said, even those small few dollar expenses per month, they do matter in a grad student budget, whereas they might not in a normal salary kind of budget.

Know What’s a Good Sale Price

11:14 Alyce: Yeah, certainly. And I think I worked at a grocery store when I was in college and it was by far probably, you know, it’s retail, so it’s miserable. But in terms of life lessons, probably the best experience that I had in terms of life lessons of learning how much things should cost. Because the reality is, if you walk into a grocery store willy nilly just to buy whatever you want that day, whatever you decide that you need that week, you’re going to end up spending more than you should. You know, know what chicken breast should cost. I’ll give you an example. You should never spend more than $1.99 a pound on chicken breast. That might vary if you live in a really more expensive state. And I know we’re in inflation right now, but knowing, you know, what’s a good sale price and being willing to, you know, freeze something because you can have it later.

12:09 Alyce: Buying in bulk. You know, if that’s applicable to you. If you have roommates, there’s no reason why you can’t buy, you know, the Costco size toilet paper, you’re probably going to use it. And you’re probably going to save a lot of money in doing so. So learn how much things should cost. You know, look at the sales fires, use coupons. I’m a big proponent of coupons and people think they’re, you know, it’s challenging and you have to be like the TLC coupon moms. You really don’t. Every grocery store now has an app that you can load the coupons right onto your app, or right onto your store card. Coupons.com is a really great place. You know, if you’re going to spend the money anyway, why not save the money on it?

12:56 Emily: I love that you brought up couponing because it’s actually not something I don’t think we’ve discussed in detail on the podcast before. But as you said, I found it also like, I coupon at a very minor level. Like what my grocery store sends me, my grocery store learns my spending patterns because of whatever I’ve signed up for with them. And then they send me coupons on the stuff I actually buy, which is awesome. And then double awesome is when you can pair a coupon with like something already being on sale and that being, you know, you’re able to like stack that or whatever. Give me another like more advanced strategy. Like for instance, how are you using coupons.com?

Advanced Couponing Strategies

13:29 Alyce: Yeah. So I will check coupons.com anytime before I go shopping just to see what is available. And the trick with coupons is don’t buy something just because you have a coupon for it, because chances are, you’re probably not getting a deal. Just because you, you know, save 55 cents on that, doesn’t mean it was necessarily a good deal, especially if it’s something that you weren’t going to buy anyway. So it’s important you only use it on things that you were intending to buy, but also, you know, compare to, you know, maybe the store brand, if that’s applicable. Sometimes, you know, if it’s not on sale, you know, using a coupon on a brand name, it’s still not going to save you anymore than if you had just bought the generic brand of it. So I’ll check coupons.com just to kind of see what’s available and take the ones that I want.

14:21 Alyce: And again, only using on things that you’re going to. I’ll check the app of the store that I’m going to be shopping at to see, do they have coupons that I might want to use? I also will Google. So sometimes like, you know, P&G might have their own separate coupons that they don’t publish on like a public platform like coupons.com, and it might just be linked to their website. And you just have to put in an email. I have a burner email just for specifically that purpose. Like I don’t ever check it. It’s just for putting in to get any kind of special codes and deals. And that’s really for everything. It’s not just for for groceries. Like Kohl’s, for example, if you need to go buy new conference clothes or whatever you might need to get at Kohl’s, almost always, if you go on their website, they have at least a 15% off coupon that you can print out or show on your phone.

15:18 Alyce: You know, stores are desperate to get people actually in stores now because you know, we’re moving so much to online. So, I find that coupons are more often available than not. So if you need something, just do a little bit of searching. The other thing I would recommend is an app it’s called Ibotta. I B O T T A. And you go onto this app, and you just select what store you’re shopping at. And it will show you just a plethora of coupons available that you’ll get cash back on. And you just add it to your list. You upload your receipt afterwards, and they put this money into your kind of Ibotta account and you can withdraw that money once you reach, I think it’s $20. So I’ve saved over two, probably over $300, by using this app. And it’s often for things that, again, I’m already buying. So if I’m going to buy that box of pasta, I’m gonna buy it and save a dollar on it because I can.

16:20 Emily: All right, I have homework now. Great ideas for me to implement.

Commercial

16:25 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! Taxes are weirdly, unexpectedly difficult for funded grad students and fellowship recipients at any level of PhD training. Your university might send you strange tax forms or no tax forms at all. They might not withhold income tax from your paychecks, even though you owe it. It’s a mess. I’ve created a ton of free resources to assist you with understanding and preparing your 2021 tax return, which are available at PFforPhDs.com/tax/. I hope you will check them out to ease much of the stress of tax season. If you want to go deeper with the material or have a question for me, please join one of my tax workshops, which are linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. I offer one workshop on preparing your annual tax return for graduate students and one workshop on calculating your quarterly estimated tax for fellowship and training grant recipients. The first live Q&A call for the annual tax return workshop is coming up on Sunday, January 23rd. For fellowship and training grant recipients, please be aware that the deadline to make your quarter 4 payment, if applicable, is January 18th if you are not planning to file your tax return by the end of January. It would be my pleasure to help you save time and potentially money this tax season, so don’t hesitate to reach out. Now, back to our interview.

Conference Travel Frugality

18:01 Emily: Now, you mentioned earlier, you had a lot of thoughts on conference travel. So how have you employed frugality in that area?

18:07 Alyce: Yeah, so conferences, you know, are the bane of grad students’ financial existence, because they are so expensive. So the first thing I would recommend is looking to funding sources. And these aren’t always going to be available, but you really never know. So ask your department, you know, hopefully you’re aware by that point if they have options, but just ask them. Sometimes they’ll pay your registration fee at the very minimum. Sometimes you’ll get a travel stipend, whatever it might be. So, you know, certainly look to your department, look to the university. Sometimes, I know my university one time during your PhD, you could apply for a travel grant and it was $750. You can only use it once. But it was nice because it paid for, you know, a bulk of one of the trips that I had to make. So starting there, and then look to the conference itself.

19:03 Alyce: Sometimes they give away money to graduate students. I know one that I was attending every year, all you had to do was just check off when you registered that you were interested in graduate student funding. And when you got to the conference, you got a check for $150. Sometimes certain like caucuses, I don’t know how every you know, conference in every field runs, but at least at the communication conferences, there were different caucuses. And sometimes they would offer travel funding of, you know, $75, $150, whatever they had available. So start with those funding sources. The next thing that I would recommend, and I will preach this until the ends of the earth, do not use the conference recommended hotel or the conference recommended airline, if you do have to travel by air, as we so often do. They almost always are more expensive.

20:02 Alyce: You know, you’ve got think, when a conference is picking a hotel, they’re picking something very nice that can accommodate a lot of people, has all the conference rooms, things like that. So the room and prices are going to be more expensive. So I always, when I went to conferences, stayed no more than a quarter mile, something I could easily walk to, down the street. There’s always going to be a cheaper hotel available for you to stay at. I even did the math once. It was cheaper, even if it was a little bit further to even like take an Uber back and forth every day than it was to stay at the conference hotel. So that’s a great option that you can save money. Same thing with airlines. You know, they give you the group code, certainly check it, but also, you know, use Orbitz, use Southwest, because they’re not linked to Orbitz, and they often have really cheap prices. You know, and find the best deal. There’s no reason that you have to go with Delta airlines because that’s what the conference said you should use. If there’s a better deal on a flight, then take it. There’s no reason you have to spend more money.

Have a Conference Buddy

21:13 Emily: That’s all great stuff. And another thing you mentioned to me in our prep for this interview was to have a conference buddy. So what does that mean?

21:21 Alyce: Yeah. And I also recommend having a conference buddy. So this was somebody in my department that I traveled with. I knew we were going to be attending the same conferences most of the time. So what we would do is we would book our flights together. We would always plan to share a hotel room. It was somebody I trusted and I knew, you know, wasn’t a random stranger that’s going to steal my stuff in the middle of the night. And then we would, you know, split the cost of transportation to and from the airport, you know, we’d share the Uber. We would split the cost of parking, whatever it was, pretty much everything was, you know, minus the flight because obviously we had to pay for our own tickets, but it was all cut in half. And that, you know, saved us so much money. There was one conference we went to, we were actually able to drive to, me and my conference buddy, we actually made money on the conference based on the amount of funding that we were able to get from the conference itself and us splitting our costs.

22:20 Alyce: I think we both ended up netting like $30 each. So definitely find a conference buddy as soon as you can, somebody who you are connected with in your department or even outside of your department, if you make a friend in another school. It’s really a great way to save some money. I will also add some kind of silly ways to save money at conferences. So one, book a hotel that offers free breakfast, because that covers one of your meals. One of the biggest expenses of conferences is you’ve got to buy all of your meals while you’re there. So get your free breakfast every day. That’s one less meal that you have to pay for. And it’s a meal you’re probably never going to sit down and eat with anybody anyway. And if, you know, that free breakfast, sometimes I would, you know, take a couple extra apples or something and put them in my bag and I would bring like single serve peanut butters or something.

23:20 Alyce: And then that covered me for a lunch as well that I didn’t have to pay for. Because again, you know, you’re going from you know, panel to panel. You don’t always have time to go sit and eat a lunch anyway. So, you know, instead of spending, you know, the $10 on a small sandwich, you know, eat the stuff from the free breakfast or pack protein bars. Pack things that you can have just as kind of a go-to, because you may have to, you know, go out to eat for dinners, for networking purposes. You’re going to have to spend money for meals at conferences, but cut it where you can. Also, attend the free receptions. There’s almost always food. It’s a great opportunity for networking, but there’s always going to be food at these things or, you know, our conferences, a lot of the bigger schools would host party receptions. You obviously shouldn’t go there and just like stuff your face and leave. Like, integrate it into a networking opportunity, but there’s food. And honestly that’s, you know, a big expense at conferences that I initially found when I first started going to them was how much money I was wasting on just eating out every meal. And so I just started packing my own food as much as I could and just found opportunities to cut those costs.

24:40 Emily: Those are great suggestions. And I love the way you kind of, the outline you just gave of, you know, finding funding at your university level, finding funding at the conference level. How can you frugalize these larger expenses within the conference? How do you frugalize the smaller expenses within the conference? So clearly again, you’re sort of interrogating every step of that process and finding how to optimize it. So I just love that. Is there anything else you want to add about frugal strategies used during grad at school?

Ask for Practical Gifts

25:08 Alyce: The other thing I think I would add is just to, when you know there are going to be things that you need to have, you know, you need to buy textbooks, you need, you know, those flights, use holidays and birthdays and things like that strategically. You know, you probably really don’t need, you know, a new bag or a new pair of shoes or whatever it is that you might normally ask for for Christmas, but you may need, you know, an American airlines gift card to help you get you to that conference. You know, your life’s not going to be less fulfilled without that pair of shoes, but your life might be a heck of a lot easier if you don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars for a flight. You know, if you’re going to have to buy textbooks, ask for an Amazon gift card because you’re going to be able to buy those books and share them. I can’t tell you how many times, you know, again, my conference buddy, you know, I had sort of class buddies too. We would just buy as a class one copy of the required textbook, and we would just pass it around and have designated days that we used it. You know, there are just, if you really interrogate, like I like that word, you keep using, interrogate your expenses, there are ways to find those cuts.

26:26 Emily: Yeah. And another thing that you’ve brought up a couple times, you know, the conference buddy, now the class and textbook buddies and so forth, like use your fellow graduate students as a resource. You know, they’re in the same spot as you, more or less, right?

26:37 Alyce: They’re just as broke.

26:39 Emily: Yeah. So whatever you can share, whatever tips you can, you know, share with them, maybe you’ve taught one of them how to coupon and they’re going to teach you how to do this other thing. You know, you all are kind of a wealth of resources, a wealth of knowledge, in terms of how to manage your finances during graduate school. And again, you’re coming on the podcast, you’re sharing with everybody. That’s awesome.

Increasing Your Income

26:57 Emily: Okay. Let’s move on to increasing income then. So what strategies did you use to bring in extra income, increase your stipend, during grad school?

27:07 Alyce: Yeah, so you know, I fully recognize, you know, while we’re in the thick of it, you know, sort of that nine-month span where you’re TAing or maybe you’re an RA, it’s hard to find those opportunities to increase income. So, I would try and always make the best of those three months that I did have off. So I really did a variety of things. So the one that was probably the most lucrative was I would grade AP exams. So they’re looking for subject matter experts in, you know, these AP subjects. And, you know, I did communication, so there’s not an AP communication course, but there is a course called seminar, which is basically they learn how to evaluate and write arguments and, you know, conduct research, you know, write a research paper. And so they needed people to grade those.

28:00 Alyce: So that was something I did for the last know, six years or so. And it was one week online. So I could work from my home and, you know, you just read paper after paper and you score them. It’s certainly not fun, but I can tell you, it pays like $26 an hour. And so, one week of work was able to cover me for almost all of my entire expenses for the summer where I had no income coming in. So that’s a really great opportunity. I think you go to readap.com I think is the website for it. Or if you just Google AP scoring opportunities, it should come up.

28:44 Emily: Yeah. That’s an amazing suggestion. I think it would be applicable, most graduate students are probably going to find some kind of AP exam that they’re qualified to grade.

28:52 Alyce: I mean, they love graduate students because we’re available. You know, they’re often recruiting college professors or high school teachers, but that’s, you know, it’s a little bit harder for them. But grad students, we’re readily available and we’re desperate for money. So they know they can squeeze a lot of hours out of us. So like I said, it’s not a fun week, but you know, you can knock it out and again, you can pay for most of your expenses. And, you know, as I did it more and more, I started to get promoted to leadership positions on it. So I was able to get more hours and make more money. So it is something you can stick with long-term. Unfortunately, now that I work full-time, I won’t be able to do it anymore. But it was a great opportunity.

Balancing Summer Research and Side Hustles

29:36 Emily: Okay. So you mentioned the one week of AP grading can cover your expenses, more or less, for the whole summer. How were you spending your summers, since you didn’t have a stipend during that time? Were you trying to focus on research, or did you get other jobs aside from this AP one?

29:51 Alyce: I would do a little bit of both. So I didn’t want to spend, you know, the entire summer working all of the time. You know, I think that’s, you know, such an important time for graduate students to recharge, but I also recognize this is an opportunity for me to make a little bit of extra money when I’m not as busy. You know, you’re not going to do research for, you know, 24 hours a day, every day during the summer. You’re just not. So you know, where I could, I tried to find, you know, those additional opportunities.

30:23 Emily: Yeah. So what were some things that you did during your summers that you would recommend to someone else, like the AP grading? And then also, did you do anything during the academic year?

30:32 Alyce: Yeah, so one summer, so it was about six weeks because obviously, you know, our summer is a little bit longer than the regular school year summer. I went and substitute taught at a middle school in my town, you know, especially in COVID right now. They’re really desperate for substitute teachers. And I actually really liked it because it was such an easy job because most of the time, you know, as a substitute teacher, you’re putting on a movie or you’re giving them a worksheet to do. And so I brought my laptop and I would do work, I would do my research. And so I think, you know, I probably would’ve even considered doing that during the year if I was able to, just because it didn’t require a ton of like cognitive effort on my part. And I still was able to kind of dedicate some time. Just make sure you check with your university first.

31:26 Alyce: They usually have a policy about working any kind of supplemental income as a graduate student. You do usually have to get it approved. So make sure you check with those policies. I know some people got burned by that. So I did that. I think those were the two main ones that I did. I also would just do like little things here and there, especially during the academic year, like I would take online surveys. You know, we know how much we pay people for research. And so I would, you know, find opportunities to take those. My fiancé and I ate many a free dinner based on these online surveys and just, you know, getting the free gift cards from those things of that nature. So those were kind of the main ones that I did. I knew some people who, you know, when grocery stores have to change over all of their price tags, there was somebody I knew who would go on Saturday night, they work from like 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM, just one night a week, changing over all of the price tags. And that was the only extra job that they had, but it was enough to kind of, you know, pay for, you know, maybe one week pays for your cell phone bill, the next week pays for your electric bill. You know, when you’re accumulating 50, 60, $70 for that one night, you know, you can then apply it to a specific thing.

Financial Accomplishments During Grad School

35:13 Emily: So we’ve talked about a ton of different strategies. But I want to know for your financial picture, what did this all amount to? You know, how much did, if you wanna express that as net worth, you want to express that as not going into debt or, you know, what did you sort of accomplish financially using these strategies over the course of graduate school?

35:32 Alyce: Yeah, so you know, I’m happy to say that because of that frugality and because I was so strategic with, you know, the money that I saved, you know, if we want to quantify this, I was able to pay off all of my student loans before I ever graduated. So I’m going to graduate completely debt-free. And I didn’t have an assistantship for my master’s. I didn’t know that a thing, if anybody’s listening to this as a potential master’s student, look into those funding options, I didn’t know that was even a thing. So I was able to graduate or will graduate completely debt-free. My fiancé and I were able to buy a house. So we actually just moved into our first house a few months ago, you know, again, before graduating, which was really exciting. And in terms of, you know, if I’m quantifying this on a net worth perspective, you know, I’m sitting pretty well.

36:27 Alyce: You know, probably over $60,000, you know, in investments or in sort of cash assets, not including, you know, obviously any equity we’re building in our house, but you know, I was able to just not have to wait until I graduated and got, you know, quote unquote, a real job to start my financial journey to start building, you know, that down payment towards a house or, you know, start building my retirement income. You know, it’s so, so important. You know, the more we delay our retirement savings, the less opportunity we have to make those grow. And so, you know, not having to delay those things, you know, having that healthy emergency fund, but also being able to, you know, build up investments and, you know, have the down payment for our house, no debt, it’s just, it’s been very, very freeing and liberating. And so, I certainly encourage everybody to, you know, strive to get to that place.

37:31 Emily: I love that. I’m really glad that it amounted to all of that for you. I mean sometimes graduate students need to do everything we’ve talked about out just to break even, right? The stipends are just that, you know, dismal. But I’m really glad that for you, all that effort added up to an actual net worth increase and, you know, paying off the student loans and all the great things you’ve been able to accomplish. It’s amazing. So congratulations! Congratulations also on the job, and the upcoming defense and the house and all these wonderful things that are going on. So where can listeners find you? And I understand that you have written a book.

38:05 Alyce: Yeah. So this was kind of just a little mini passion project that I wrote because I didn’t have enough to do with working full-time and writing a dissertation that I also decided to write a little bit of a book, it’s called Financial Wellness 101: Everything You Wish You Learned in School About Saving Money, Building a Budget, and Growing Wealth as a Young Professional. And I wrote it with the intention of it really just being for those people who are kind of fresh out of college or even out of graduate school who just, you know, don’t have any idea. It’s the first time we’re really managing our money on a large scale. We don’t understand what is a 401(k), what’s a Roth IRA? What do all these letters mean? Do I really need to be saving for retirement? How do I set up a budget?

38:51 Alyce: You know, where am I spending more money than I should be? So it’s a very, you know, no frills, it’s self-published so it’s not fancy, it’s not edited by any extent. But it is available. So users can find, or your listeners can find me on Twitter @Alyce_Viens, and on that, you’ll see the link for, it’ll take you to the ebook version. If that’s something you’re interested in. And I actually set up for your listeners, if they use code GRAD, G R A D, they’ll get $5 off the cost of the book. And I will also email you an additional section that I wrote of the book that’s specifically for graduate students and some of those ways that you can save money with conferences and funding and all kinds of things like that. So it’s sort of an added perk that you would get for free, and it is also available on Amazon if you prefer Amazon.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

39:52 Emily: Okay. Yeah, we will put all of those links in the show notes, that is a great offer to get that additional chapter or whatever it is. Lovely. Well, Alyce, it was so good to have you on the podcast. I ask all of my guests one final question, which is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be something that we have touched on already in the interview, or it could be something completely different.

40:15 Alyce: I would say, my piece of advice is to avoid accumulating any additional debt.

40:23 Emily: Yes, very simple and very powerful advice. So that is so great. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast!

40:28 Alyce: Thank you for having me! This was fun.

Outtro

40:35 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? I have collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are 3 ways you can help it grow: 1. Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. 2. Share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with a email list-serv, or as a link from your website. 3. Recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and increasing cash flow. I also license pre-recorded workshops on taxes. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

How to Pursue FIRE in Graduate School

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In this episode, Emily shares the first section of a written guide she recently added to the Personal Finance for PhDs Community, titled How to Pursue FIRE in Graduate School. FIRE stands for Financial Independence / Retire Early, and it’s a big movement among personal finance enthusiasts right now. At first, Emily didn’t believe graduate school and the pursuit of FIRE were compatible, but the many interviewees she’s had on the podcast who are pursuing a PhD and FIRE simultaneously changed her mind. In the introduction, Emily introduces FIRE and the general ways people pursue it and lists the four biggest levers a graduate student could pull to pursue FIRE right away.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

Introduction

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

This is Season 10, Episode 19, and today I’m going to read to you the introduction to a written guide that I recently added to the Personal Finance for PhDs Community, titled How to Pursue FIRE in Graduate School. FIRE stands for Financial Independence / Retire Early, and it’s a big movement among personal finance enthusiasts right now. I have to admit that at first I didn’t think graduate school and the pursuit of FIRE were compatible, but the many interviewees I’ve had on the podcast who are pursuing a PhD and FIRE simultaneously changed my mind. In the introduction, which I’ll read to you momentarily, I introduce FIRE and the general ways people pursue it and list what I think are the four biggest levers a graduate student could pull to pursue FIRE right away.

If you are pursuing FIRE or are interested in it, I’d love to hear from you. Please join the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community right now, today. Once you’re a member, you can do two things:

  1. Read the rest of the guide, which goes into detail about all the financial opportunities graduate students have to pursue FIRE, from increasing their incomes to building assets to mindset work.
  2. Join me and other Community members for a special live discussion and Q&A call on Wednesday, December 15, 2021 at 5:30 PM Pacific Time. We have live calls like this once per month, and this month’s is dedicated to the topic of FIRE. I really want to hear from you. I’m going to continue to expand and edit the guide based on the ideas and experiences of Community members and future podcast interviewees.

In case you’re listening to this after December 2021, no worries. You can still join the Community to read the current incarnation of the guide and chat with us about FIRE in the Forum or the next upcoming monthly call. Again, go to PFforPhDs.community to sign up!

One last note. I reference a bunch of previous podcast episodes in the introduction. All these episodes are linked in the show notes, which you can find linked from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/.
Without further ado, here’s the introduction to How to Pursue FIRE in Graduate School.

How to Pursue FIRE in Graduate School: Introduction

I was in graduate school when the current incarnation of the FIRE movement started picking up steam. At that time, the acronym FIRE (financial independence / retire early) was not yet in use, and people focused mostly on the “retire early” goal—not retiring at 55 like some Boomers had, but retiring by 30 or 40. Pete Adeney of Mr. Money Mustache was one of the leading voices, having achieved early retirement at age 30 by combining a well-paid engineering career with rigorous frugality.

At first, I found the idea of early retirement to be largely unappealing. The chief reason was that graduate school was supposed to be the foundation for a long, meaningful, fulfilling career… Why would I plan to retire early from that already? Why would any PhD (a group I was growing more interested in creating content for)? I couldn’t get behind that idea.

Thankfully, my disinterest in FIRE in my mid-20s didn’t diminish my passion for personal finance writ large, and I still invested, practiced frugality, and attempted to increase my income to the best of my ability and knowledge at that time.

My view is different now, a decade later. While I still don’t consider myself part of the FIRE movement, I do see its appeal, even for PhDs.

1) I’ve changed: I’m ten years older. I have children now. I’ve switched careers, and I’m a business owner. I earn and spend much more money than I did during graduate school. My and my husband’s parents have retired (at a traditional age). I better understand why having the financial ability to downshift, change, or stop active work before age 70 is attractive.

2) The FIRE movement has changed: There’s a greater emphasis on financial independence rather than early retirement. The featured voices are more diverse. There are numerous well-documented paths to achieve FIRE, not just the earn-a-lot/spend-very-little model from Mr. Money Mustache.

3) Most importantly, I’ve met numerous graduate students and PhDs who do identify as part of the FIRE movement. They don’t see a contradiction between pursuing a PhD-type career and financial independence simultaneously. I’ve learned from their philosophies and methods. The Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast interviews I’ve published that touch on FIRE have been with:

In this guide, I won’t attempt to convince you to pursue FIRE—because I haven’t fully convinced myself. I will show you how you can pursue FIRE as a funded PhD student. We will explore multiple potential strategies, and I am confident that you will be able to adopt at least one of them.

How you pursue FIRE during graduate school will look different than how you pursue it when you have a post-PhD “Real Job,” but you can get started right here, right now.

What is FIRE?

FIRE stands for Financial Independence / Retire Early. FIRE is a movement within the broader personal finance community that has gained popularity in the last decade, roughly coinciding with the long bull stock market post-Great Recession.

Being financially independent (FI) means that you no longer need to work for an income to maintain your lifestyle and that you expect to maintain this status until your death. Once you cease working to generate an income, you have retired. The early part of the name refers to achieving financial independence earlier than the typical retirement age of 70-ish. Some superstars in this movement reach FI by age 30, while others set their sights on age 40 or 50.

Broadly speaking, there are three common ways to achieve FIRE, and some people use a combination:

  1. Purchase a portfolio of paper assets (e.g., stocks and bonds) from which you can draw an income
  2. Buy or build an asset or set of assets that generate income, such as a business or real estate portfolio
  3. Qualify for a pension, e.g., after 20 years of military service

I’m going to omit the option of a pension from the remainder of my discussion because 1) it’s not common for people in my audience to qualify for one, 2) within the FIRE movement it’s typically combined with another strategy as well, and 3) there are other good resources on pensions specifically.

How you determine that you have achieved FI is beyond the scope of this guide. Our focus is on the start of the journey, the pursuit of FI, and how to do it during graduate school.

However, to give you a rough idea, to know that you are FI you must have a good grasp on how much money it takes to sustain your lifestyle, i.e., how much you spend yearly. For example, FatFIRE is considered a yearly spend of $100,000 or more, while LeanFIRE is considered a yearly spend of $40,000 or less.

If you have a pension or own a business or real estate portfolio, the amount of income it generates should be more than the amount of money you spend for you to be considered FI. With respect to paper assets, a popular rule of thumb based on the Trinity Study is to have a portfolio of twenty-five times your yearly spend. For example, if you want to live on $40,000 per year indefinitely, adjusted for inflation, your portfolio should be valued at $1,000,000 or more.

How do you pursue FIRE?

How exactly you will pursue FIRE depends a great deal on your personality, career goals, and lifestyle desires.

At some point, you must create or purchase assets of the type I listed above. While you can start on that during grad school, creating or purchasing assets does not have to be the first step on your journey to FIRE, depending on the rest of your financial picture. If you are in debt, your first step may be to repay debt. If you have no savings or little savings, your first step might be to save up cash. If your income is low or unreliable, your first step might be to increase your income so that you don’t rack up any debt.

I recommend following the eight-step Financial Framework that I developed for use by graduate students and early-career PhDs. It will help you decide which financial goal is best to pursue at any given stage in your financial journey. You can find this Framework detailed in several resources inside the Personal Finance for PhDs Community, including the ebook The Wealthy PhD and the recorded workshop Optimized Financial Goal-Setting for Early-Career PhDs.

In brief, the Framework Steps are to:

  1. Save a starter emergency fund
  2. Pay off all high-priority debt
  3. Prepare for irregular expenses
  4. Invest a minimum percent of your income for retirement
  5. Pay off all medium-priority debt
  6. Save a full emergency fund
  7. Invest more for retirement and/or other goals
  8. Pay off all low-priority debt

The Framework is fully compatible with the pursuit of FIRE, though a FIRE adherent will likely move through the Framework steps faster than the average and may pursue additional financial goals such as purchasing real estate.

There are two less tangible but no less important ways that I recommend that you pursue FIRE starting in graduate school, both of which involve your own development.

1) Your career. I am confident that one of the major reasons you entered graduate school was for career development. Using your time in graduate school to set yourself up for a fulfilling and well-paying career is vital. Do not lose sight of this goal in your pursuit of FIRE. Your future, higher income is going to play a major role in how fast you will achieve FIRE. On the flip side, if a PhD no longer figures into your vision for your future, do not stay in graduate school; jump ship for a higher-paying job.

2) Your mindset and systems. To achieve FIRE, you must have a certain kind of money mindset and well-established systems and habits. You will continually develop these in your pursuit of FIRE. Even if you are unable to increase your net worth much during graduate school, pursuing your career and mindset development now is worthwhile to pay major dividends later.

What makes grad school different?

Your pursuit of FIRE during grad school is likely to look quite different from how you would pursue it if you were not in grad school or how you will pursue it post-PhD.

Generally speaking, PhD students accept a low stipend in exchange for training that—we hope—will qualify them for more lucrative jobs later on. They could be making more money right now in another job, but graduate school is a long-term career investment. Blanket personal finance advice to switch jobs or negotiate to increase your income does not apply well for graduate students (although there are many ways to increase your income, which I cover later in this guide).

In non-pandemic times, most graduate students are required to live in close proximity to the university they attend, although some may be permitted to finish their degrees remotely. For the former group, geographic arbitrage is not available. Geographic arbitrage, a common FIRE strategy, is when you choose to live in a low cost-of-living area while maintaining an income more suited for a high cost-of-living area so that you can boost your savings rate.

Finally, graduate school is a major time commitment. Few PhD students consistently cap their work weeks at 40 hours. You may have less time for outside income-increasing or asset-creating pursuits during grad school in comparison with other times of life.

My Personal Favorite Steps

In the second half of this guide, I will explore numerous possible strategies to further your FIRE journey during grad school. Some of them are what I call “big levers,” which are strategies that are virtually guaranteed to greatly increase your available cash flow and are possibly unusual choices for a graduate student. This increased cash flow can then be saved, invested, or used to repay debt. In your pursuit of FIRE during grad school, I think it will be very helpful for your psychology to pull one of these big levers if you’re able to. It will be clear to you that you are serious about your commitment to FIRE, which will help keep you on the path.

I want to give you a quick preview here as to what I believe these big levers are before we go through all the strategies in much more detail.

Big lever #1 is to choose a graduate program that provides a 12-month stipend that is well above the local living wage. If you’re a prospective graduate student, simply don’t consider any offers that fail to meet that bar, even if they are good fit for you otherwise.

Big lever #2 is to commit to applying for awards like it’s your part-time job—everything from multi-year, full-stipend fellowships to small poster competitions.

Big lever #3 is to radically reduce or eliminate your housing expense. Two potential ways you can achieve that are to house hack or serve as a resident advisor.

Big lever #4 is to start a side business with the potential, at least, to pay you a high hourly rate. You’re most likely to generate a high pay rate by employing the skills and knowledge you’ve developed during your graduate program.

If you can’t pull one of these big levers in your remaining time in graduate school, that’s fine. Put in place one of the smaller strategies from this guide, and if possible keep stacking those up throughout your time in graduate school.

Personally, even though I hadn’t committed to FIRE when I was a graduate student, I was putting a lot of effort into my personal finances. I didn’t know about these big levers or most of the other strategies I’ll discuss in the second half of the guide. I pulled just one big lever by accident, which was to attend Duke for my PhD in biomedical engineering. I wasn’t at all considering the stipend when I made that decision, but I realized later what a boon it was. My stipend was approximately 30% higher than the local living wage, which meant that with careful budgeting I could sustain a decent savings rate.

Over our seven years of PhD training, my husband and I increased our combined net worth by over $100,000. You can hear all about how we did that in Season 1 Episode 1 of the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast. Now, seven years removed from when we defended, I can clearly see that the time value of money continues to honor those early efforts, even though we earn and save much more post-PhD. That money forms the bedrock of our current financial security.

By applying just one of the big levers or a few of the smaller strategies in this guide, I firmly believe that you also will accelerate your progress toward FIRE, even as a graduate student. Many of the people I’ve interviewed on the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast have far exceeded my own degree of financial success using the strategies I’ll share with you next.

Conclusion

It’s Emily again! That is the end of the introduction to How to Pursue FIRE in Graduate School. If you liked what you heard and want to read about all the strategies and join the live call on Wednesday, December 15, 2021, please join the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community. I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Outro

Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode!

pfforphds.com/podcast/ is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. On that page are links to all the episodes’ show notes, which include full transcripts and videos of the interviews. There is also a form to volunteer to be interviewed on the podcast. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved!

If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are 4 ways you can help it grow:

  1. Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use.
  2. Share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with a email list-serv, or as a link from your website.
  3. Recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and effective budgeting. I also license pre-recorded workshops on taxes.
  4. Subscribe to my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe/. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs.

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

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

Podcast editing and show notes creation by me, Emily Roberts.

This PhD’s Money Mindset from Childhood Has Served Her Well Through Multiple Phases

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Judy Chan, a PhD and staff member at the University of British Columbia. As a child of immigrants to Canada, Judy learned early on the virtues of hard work, saving, and the value of a dollar. She applied these principles consistently while she earned her PhD, started her business, and became a parent—to great effect.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

Teaser

00:00 Judy: And it was hard. I do feel that I have more advanced knowledge than my average colleague or my friend, and even going to the bank, they didn’t really take me seriously when I asked them questions. Or they assigned a very junior financial advisor to me when I actually knew all the answers myself. But I didn’t have enough money to get more experience. I don’t know. Is it just my money, my net worth, or my look, or my age, but I was never able to talk to someone who’s more experienced. So I had to do a lot of my own learning.

Introduction

00:49 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is Season 9, Episode 5, and today my guest is Dr. Judy Chan, a PhD and staff member at the University of British Columbia. As a child of immigrants to Canada, Judy learned early on the virtues of hard work, saving, and the value of a dollar. She applied these principles consistently while she earned her PhD, started her business, and became a parent—to great effect. We have a special event coming up on Sunday, July 18, 2021! It’s the second installment of my Wealthy PhD Workshop series, and it’s on everyone’s favorite subject: investing! This workshop is for you if you want to learn how to start investing, particularly if you are a grad student or postdoc who is not covered by a workplace-based retirement plan like a 401(k) or 403(b). I will also teach you about passive investing, which is the most effective, least expensive, and most time-efficient manner of investing. Even if you’re not a novice investor, you can use this workshop to double-check that your current investing strategy is appropriate for your goals. Furthermore, we will discuss the relative merits of discount brokerage firms, roboadvisors, and microinvesting platforms. This is going to be a value-packed session, so please join us on July 18th. You can register at PFforPhDs.com/WPhDinvest/. That’s PF for PhDs dot com slash W for Wealthy P H D I N V E S T. By the way, after you register, you’ll be asked if you want to upgrade into a membership in the Personal Finance for PhDs Community. I do recommend this upgrade because you will have access to the recording of the previous workshop in the Wealthy PhD series, among other things. That workshop on financial goals will help you figure out if now is the right time to start investing or whether you should instead be focusing on saving up cash or paying down debt. Again, please go to PFforPhDs.com/WPhDinvest to register for the workshop this coming Sunday.

Book Giveaway Contest

03:19 Emily: Now onto the book giveaway contest! In July 2021 I’m giving away one copy of Get Good with Money: Ten Simple Steps to Becoming Financially Whole by Tiffany ‘The Budgetnista’ Aliche, which is the Personal Finance for PhDs Community Book Club selection for September 2021. Everyone who enters the contest during July will have a chance to win a copy of this book. Over the last year or so, I’ve become quite a fan of Tiffany’s. I am a loyal listener of her podcast, Brown Ambition, which she co-hosts with Mandi Woodruff, and we read one of her self-published books last September in the Book Club. I was thrilled when her first traditionally published book became a runaway bestseller this past spring, and I knew I had to schedule it into the Book Club. I hope you will join us inside the Community in September to follow The Budgetnista’s plan to become financially whole. If you would like to enter the giveaway contest, please rate AND REVIEW this podcast on Apple Podcasts, take a screenshot of your review, and email it to me at emily at PFforPhDs dot com. I’ll choose a winner at the end of July from all the entries. You can find full instructions at PFforPhDs.com/podcast. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Judy Chan.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

04:43 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Judy Chan. She’s a staff member at the University of British Columbia, and she is going to kind of tell us about her life through a financial lens. So we’re going to start with her childhood, we’re going to go all the way up to now. It’s a real pleasure for me to speak with Judy today because, you know, I interview a lot of grad students and recent PhDs on the podcast, and I love it, but I also love getting to hear from people who are more than a few years removed from that because they have a perspective on, you know, the post-PhD stages as well. So I’m really happy to welcome Judy to the podcast. Judy, will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

05:20 Judy: So my name is Judy. I am a staff member at my university, UBC, and I have a side business and I am also a busy mom of two kids. Parents around in the city, so yes, busy, and that’s me.

05:38 Emily: Yeah. Great. Well, we’re going to hear your kind of whole life story coming up and we’re going to insert some financial advice for anyone, you know, coming up on that stage as we go through. So Judy, as everyone in therapy will do, let’s start with your childhood. You know, tell us about your childhood and how it, you know, helped you develop a money mindset.

06:00 Judy: I think I grew up in a very hardworking household. My dad was a restaurant owner back in Hong Kong and I remember him. We would hardly see him. He worked 18 hours a day. I remember him sleeping in the back storage area. But he worked really hard. And we didn’t see him. He doesn’t take days off. I remember we are the only business that opened on Chinese New Year day in the whole entire street. We can go in the middle of the road and play. So that’s how I grew up. I remember not spending any time off meaning that I was actually helping early in the restaurant throughout the Chinese New Year.

Childhood Memories and Life Lessons in Canada

06:45 Emily: Yeah. Tell us about what happened upon your parents immigrating to Canada.

06:49 Judy: I think I also learned big lessons because we are very fortunate that growing up, like we were able to move to Canada in a pretty good, solid financial stage. I remember we got a house. In Hong Kong, we lived in apartments, so we got a house here. Everything was good. My parents, my dad was telling us that he’s retired now. So looking back, it was like he worked really, really hard for 15, 20 years, and then he was able to enjoy his retirement in Canada. He also opened a restaurant for a very short amount of time. We helped out. But it was all very good and fun memories. It’s hardworking, but it was a really good memory for us. Every time when I see people who, other people who also grew up in the restaurant, I think we have some shared memory there.

07:41 Emily: I see. However, you did not take that route in your own life. So I’m wondering, you know, looking back on your childhood, I’m glad you have such positive memories, but what have you taken from that about how, you know, you’re raising your own children?

07:56 Judy: Raising my own children, we just have to work really hard and be very sensitive to money. I remember back then getting wholesale, on average, is actually more expensive than trying to get your cans of pops from the super market, from the big retail supermarket, where the retail price is lower than the wholesale price. So my dad would take us to the big supermarket and we would be loading, like hand carry, trays and trays of pops and juice to bring it back to the restaurant. So my dad got us helping all the time and he would tell us, this is how much we are buying. This is how much we are selling, and this is the price difference. And this is how we mark up, or he doesn’t say it, he just said, look, this is how people do business.

08:49 Judy: And people might pay $10 for a burger, but it may only cost us a dollar. But if we can find ways to cut the cost down to 80 cents, that’s an extra 20 cents for us, for the family. So when we go out, my kids are very lucky. They grew up, I think they are in a very privileged space, but we will continue to remind them that things that we get, there’s a huge markup out there. And we may be able to make it on our own, or like clothings or other things, at a lower cost. So telling them the value of the product that we are getting every day.

09:31 Emily: Yeah. So, it sounds like you had some real, you know, organic lessons around cost and value and the value of the dollar and what, you know, what you can add to the situation because you grew up in that entrepreneurial family, and that’s also something that you’re instilling in your children.

Funding During Grad School

09:47 Emily: So let’s move on to your university days. You were at UBC for undergrad and grad school. Tell us about your funding situation during grad school.

09:56 Judy: Oh, grad school was amazing. I didn’t know that there’s so much funding available for grad students. There’s scholarship and fellowship and TA ship. There’s also a lots of smaller scholarship that I never realized. I think in the way, undergraduate in order to get scholarship and fellowship it’s very competitive. My experience is that grad school is so much easier. And so there’s funding and scholarship everywhere, just apply to them and start saving. So again, in my situation, I was lucky enough that I started as early as six years old, I was able to continue to see the numbers in my bank book, bank account, grow. But I do feel that for most grad students that, hopefully, you will get enough fellowship and scholarship for your basic needs. And there are other source of income around campus. Like I work at UBC now. So I see there’s actually a lots of employment opportunities out there and use them to start building your own wealth, your own saving. Those are extra income that you don’t need now. The basics should be covered by your fellowship, scholarship, and the extra money should go towards the savings, if possible.

11:24 Emily: Yeah, I totally agree that probably there’s going to be a lot of work in the life of a graduate student. You know, there’s going to be your work and your dissertation. There may be an assistantship that you’re performing. Hopefully you’re applying for fellowships and winning some of them on top of that. Maybe you have a side job. There’s a lot of different opportunities. Now, some of those opportunities might be restricted by the, you know, the rules of where you’re living. So one, you know, in the U.S., international students, they’re not going to be allowed to have those side jobs, right? It’s only the, you know, 20 hours per week on campus that they’ve been granted. That’s it. Another thing would be like, if your university, or rather your department, restricts outside work in some manner. So you of course have to check into your, you know, specific situation there. But yes, there are a lot of opportunities in theory for graduate students. I also want to ask you, so did you continue to live with your parents during graduate school, or did you get your own place?

12:16 Judy: I continue to live with my parents.

12:19 Emily: So I ask this because I know that Vancouver is an incredibly high cost-of-living city, and that a grad student stipend may not be enough to support someone if they are living independently. And so that’s a real boon to your finances that you stayed in the same city, I’m sure it was partially by design that you did that. Yes. And you had that opportunity. So that’s wonderful. So you were able to work and save and, you know, live with your parents and yeah. Any advice that you have for a current graduate student or an entering graduate student aside from just apply, apply, apply?

12:56 Judy: I also worked really hard. Like I did my research during the daytime, and then I definitely carved out time to do my teaching assistantship, of the fellowship. There are times that I was doing more hours than what my department allowed. But I did work six days a week, seven to seven sometimes or later into the evening. And I was very disciplined. Any money that I earned on the side, I would spend it, you know, let’s go out for a drink, but they would go straight into my savings account.

Side Business as a Franchisee

13:34 Emily: I also understand that, you know, you mentioned during your college years, you were doing a lot of tutoring as a side job, but you also started a business during graduate school as a tutor. Can you tell us about that and why you decided to take that on?

13:46 Judy: Everything is luck, but then it’s also an opportunity. Like I was doing a lot of tutoring, and I noticed there’s a gap and there’s something that is not available here. And a friend introduced me to a franchise, and I think my friend actually asked me, wanted me, was asking me to be a manager to help him out. But I looked at the franchise, I love it. I like it. I really, I really felt the gap that I noticed myself. So I started a franchise, and at that time with my boyfriend then, he always wanted his own business. It doesn’t matter what it is. That boyfriend is now my husband. So, it worked out quite well. And to be honest, now that I look back, I take risks, but it’s all very calculated risk. Running a tutoring center has minimal cost. There’s no inventory. You just need to rent a space, very minimal decoration and renovation. So, I started a tutoring center when I was in the middle of my PhD.

15:00 Emily: Wow. And, you know, you said that a friend initially approached you about this opportunity. Was that a friend who was also in grad school or somebody from another, oh, wow. Okay. So, did he also have a tutoring center locally?

15:12 Judy: So he started, he looked into the franchise and then he started, he became a franchisee. So, then I asked him, well, how can I be one too? So he was also a grad student at that time.

15:27 Emily: Wow. This is a fascinating idea. I’ve never thought about people becoming franchisees during graduate school, except I’m now remembering that I actually knew someone who did that in a different business. So when I was in graduate school, I was friends with someone who was a franchisee for PhD Posters. I don’t know if they’re still in existence, but they had multiple locations around the U.S. And it’s a poster printing service. And so it wouldn’t be, you know, it would be grad students usually affiliated with the university and they would, you know, drop off posters that people ordered to the various lab spaces. And anyway, it seemed like a great kind of business model for a grad student wanting to run a side business. And it sounds like your business was also, you know, in a similar way, a little bit of overhead for the space, but I’m imagining you paid contractors, right? To do the tutoring. So that’s not any, you know, serious payroll costs. Yeah. Interesting.

Investing and Self-Learning Personal Finance

16:17 Emily: Okay. So when, you know, you’re getting to the end of graduate school, it sounds like you had a healthy savings account at that point. Do you want to tell us, you know, what your net worth was? Or were you doing any, like investing, or was it strictly just cash savings?

16:31 Judy: It was, oh, whoa. I started looking into mutual funds. Someone introduced me to the idea of mutual funds. My dad did a lot of stock trading. So I understand the buy low sell high idea. But he only knows about the trademark that’s in Hong Kong. He has no idea how the Canadian or the American system work. So I wasn’t able to get any support from him. Like, he doesn’t understand the system. And he’s, I don’t know, he doesn’t share much about how he managed his finances. So I had to learn everything on my own. And it was hard. I think, I do feel that I have more advanced knowledge than my average colleague or my friend, and even going to the bank, they didn’t really take me seriously when I asked them questions.

17:23 Judy: Or they assigned a very junior financial advisor to me when I actually knew all the answers myself. But I didn’t have enough money to get like more experience. I don’t know if it’s just my money, my net worth, or my look, or my age, but I was never able to talk to someone who’s more experienced. So I had to do a lot of my own learning. But I was lucky during our grad years, one of our technicians in the lab, he’s a very advanced investor. So there were a few of us, we would spend our afternoon tea time. Oh, by the way, I studied food science. So we would spend our ice cream time talking about finance. So there are a few of us who would exchange ideas on what can we do with our money, stocks, mutual funds. But I had to do a lot of my own learning.

18:30 Emily: And so that process did start during graduate school.

18:33 Judy: Yes. Officially start in graduate school. I’ve always been curious and interested about trading, buying stocks, but I just didn’t have enough confidence as a high schooler. I think in high school, I was already keen to know more, but it was, no, I would say I started in undergrad, in college, that I wanted to know more.

18:57 Emily: Yeah. That’s a really kind of interesting combination of like, seeing an example from your parent and getting some of the mindset of the importance of investing from your parent, yet not being able to receive the practical help because of being in a different context. I hadn’t heard of that before, but yeah. So it’s actually for you maybe a little bit the best of both worlds, because you got to be inspired by your parents, but still had to do all the legwork on your own to figure it out. Which of course means you really internalize what you’re learning.

19:25 Judy: I also learned how to do my own income tax when I was in high school. I had to help my parents because English is not their first language. My parents actually relied on me to look for an accountant. And I am someone who loves numbers and money. And so actually read into personal income tax when I was in high school. And so yeah, I had to do all that education on my own. So till today I still do my own income tax.

19:52 Emily: Yeah. They certainly, you were forced to grow up, and it’s benefited you. Right?

19:57 Judy: Thank you. Yes.

Commercial

20:00 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! This announcement is for prospective and first-year graduate students. My colleague, Dr. Toyin Alli of The Academic Society, offers a fantastic course just for you called Grad School Prep. The course teaches you Toyin’s 4-step Gradboss Method, which is to uncover grad school secrets, transform your mindset, uplevel your productivity, and master time management. I contributed a very comprehensive webinar to the course, titled “Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School.” It explores the financial norms of grad school and the financial secrets of grad school. I also give you a plan for what to focus on in your finances in each season of the year that you apply to and into your first year of grad school. If this all sounds great to you, please register at theacademicsociety.com/emily for Toyin’s free masterclass on what to expect in your first semester of grad school and the three big mistakes that keep grad students stuck in a cycle of anxiety, overwhelm, and procrastination. You’ll also learn more about how to join Grad School Prep if you’d like to go a step further. Again, that’s the academic society dot com slash e m i l y for my affiliate link for the course. Now back to our interview.

Finances Post-PhD: Real Estate Advenures

21:27 Emily: Okay. Let’s talk about the post-PhD phase. But we’re not going to quite get to kids yet. So let’s talk about your finances, you know, after you finished grad school.

21:37 Judy: Yes. So it was time to get married. Looking back, my boyfriend then, my husband now, he said I was crazy. Because we just started a new business. We were still very young, and before we got married, because we were in a very stable relationship, we knew we were going to get married. It’s just a matter of Judy finishing her PhD. Everything was on hold until I was able to finish my PhD, and my choice.

22:06 Emily: I think that’s a common story.

22:09 Judy : And then sometime around that, after the business, before my PhD, before we got married, I said, “Let’s get an apartment. We need to get into the real estate market.” The real estate market in Vancouver has been crazy for the last 15, 20 years. It’s been always up with a little dip, a little dip, but it’s always up. So I said let’s go buy our first apartment. So we got our first apartment, and one of my criteria is we need to have a tenant in the apartment. It will be a bonus if there’s an existing tenant in the apartment. We would just carry over the rental lease. So we did that before my PhD was done, before we got married.

22:58 Emily: Wow. So I’ve learned that this, this term is house hacking. Buy a property, live in it with your tenant. And whether that is, you know, in an apartment where you’re sort of, it’s a roommate situation. That could also be like a multi-family if you went that route. But yeah, really glad to hear that you used that strategy. It’s one I’m very excited about, learning more about this spring. We did a focus on, well, I’m not sure when this will be published, so it’s either in the past or upcoming, but in March, 2021, we are reading The House Hacking Strategy in our book club, inside the Personal Finance for PhDs Community. So if that hasn’t happened yet, listeners check that out if this strategy interests you. I’d like to know some of the numbers on that. Like how much did having a tenant there help you out? You know, was it worthwhile to sacrifice, you know, the privacy and so forth?

23:47 Judy: Yes!

23:48 Emily: And how many years did you do that for?

23:50 Judy: So we had the tenant for less than a year, and then we got married. So we moved into, we asked the tenant to leave because we need to get into, that’s our place. So that’s when I officially moved out from my, our parents, same for him. He was living with his parents. And then, so we got married, I finished my PhD. Finished PhD, got married, and you know, all those orders are important in Chinese culture. So, and then I was pregnant. And then when I was pregnant, I was in the elevator in the apartment, and I go, no, I don’t want my kids to grow up in an apartment. I want my kids to grow in a house. You know, this is why we come to North America. We want to live in a house. And then I did like very quick, it wasn’t too hard to find out that we can actually afford a house. If we rent out the basement, that fits into what you just told us now, the house hacking, because the tenant will basically be able to pay for the difference that we have to pay in our mortgage. That’s it? Why not? Right? We got to sell our apartment, get a bigger house. The rental that we can get from our basement will pay for the difference. So it was a very logical change or purchase for us, for me.

From House Hacking to House Upgrading

25:14 Emily: Yeah. It enabled you to upgrade your housing situation, get more space and so forth without having the full, full burden of the cost solely on your incomes. And so how long did you stay in that arrangement?

25:26 Judy: We stayed in that arrangement for about four years. That was after my second kid was born. And, again, I’m so lucky. I have a girl and a son. A girl and a boy. And then at that time I had that illusion, because I came to Vancouver, Canada when I was 14 and my parents put us in the basement. I was happy. Like my sister and I, we were just happy to be in the basement. So I had that illusion that I can put my kids in the basement. So we can ask our tenant to leave. They can go into the basement. But I forgot that in between five years old and 12 years old, I cannot put them in the basement. So we, at that time in the main floor, we had two bedrooms. So, we really need a third bedroom, because you know, two kids. So, and then we were really lucky again. We were looking for, it was about time to upgrade, oh, by the way, my money advice, any extra money we have, we put it into our mortgage. So, when I shop for mortgage, I really look for a very flexible repayment method. So any extra money goes in, we actually, every month we pay more than we need to. And then at the end of the year, we also put all the savings into the house.

26:51 Emily: That’s on top of investing though. Right? Because you’re still, were you doing any like retirement stuff through your work?

26:57 Judy: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Retirement stuff. Take advantage of the retirement pension plan at work and then putting any extra money into the mortgage. So we were able to, four years into the house, we were able to upgrade to a bigger house.

27:17 Emily: So that strategy, it sounds like is because you knew that you would be not in that house for decades, you knew you’d be changing. And so you get the mortgage paid down. So you have a lot of equity to go into your next property. Is that the idea?

27:29 Judy: No, no. We didn’t know that. Like, when I purchased the house with the, I call that a smaller house with the two bedroom in the main floor and two bedroom in the basement, I really thought that my kids would grow up in the basement because I enjoyed it as a teenager, but I forgot about that “in the middle” time. And so, when it was time, when I needed to have two bedrooms, one bedroom for my son and one for my daughter, I felt that we need, to upgrade the house. And having so much of the mortgage that’s been paid down, helped us upgrade our house.

28:06 Emily: Gotcha.

28:07 Judy: I paid it then, what was the reason, I just don’t want to own that much money. I have extra money, then just pay down the mortgage because everything that I pay then will go straight to the principal, and then I don’t have to pay interest on them.

28:24 Emily: Yeah, absolutely. I’m inquiring about this because, you know, we are in a super low interest rate environment right now.

28:32 Judy: Yes.

28:33 Emily: What was your interest rate at that time?

28:36 Judy: 2.5. It was super low. Yeah. It was super low. Yeah.

28:40 Emily: So this was really about you, as you just said, not being comfortable with holding that much debt and as you know, I’m tracking through your story, this is the first debt that you’ve actually taken out, right?

28:50 Judy: Yeah.

28:50 Emily: Yeah. So you’re just, you’re just a naturally debt-averse person. And this is part of that.

28:58 Judy: But at the same time, it doesn’t matter. Okay. Let’s say just pick a number. 3%. 3% is pretty low. I see where you’re going, why don’t I put the money into the stock market? I have to earn 6% return because I have to pay tax on that return in order for me to earn that 3%. And so to me, and the stock market is known to be volatile. It’s not a guarantee. So on one hand I feel that I am getting that guaranteed 3% saving instead of putting the money in a stock market that I need at least just like rough number. Right. I need at least 6% because I have to pay tax on my, on my earning. And I don’t want to do that calculation. I don’t want to worry about that.

Business Updates and Additional Family Expenses

29:53 Emily: Yeah, no, the guaranteed return on debt repayment is very attractive. I agree. So we’ve talked about, you know, real estate changes. Let’s get an update on your business, you know, from that time period.

30:08 Judy: Business was going well. It was going well, we were happy, word of mouth. We were able to generate the money that we forecast. It was going well. Until the pandemic. I have to admit, pandemic has a huge impact on our finance right now. But it’s okay because I do have a stable job at the university.

30:30 Emily: Yeah. So you have your full-time position. Was your husband’s full-time job the business, or did he have a job in addition to that?

30:35 Judy: No, very soon once we made the decision to go into the franchise, and as we were doing our renovations and as we’re getting the prep work going, he had a full-time job at that time. He felt that he needed to dedicate, and he wanted to. And I said, sure. Because I knew he always wanted to be a business owner, and I was doing my PhD. So it made sense that there’s a dedicated person at the business. So he’s full-time there.

31:06 Emily: Gotcha. And let’s talk then about the addition of the children. And you’ve already mentioned that that’s caused some real estate, you know upheavals, but you know, how else have your finances changed upon having children?

How Have Your Finances Changed Upon Having Children?

31:20 Judy: A lot. A lot. Children are very expensive for financial life. Yeah. It’s like daycare. Daycare is expensive in Canada. You know, every month is one TV, right? Every month is one iPhone, if you have to compare it to material. Also because, in Canada, the illusion is we can get a whole year off, but the whole year off for me also means a significant pay cut, right? Yes. Legally, we can get the time off, and then we will go back to having a job, but there’s a difference in income. So, that was okay. Because I think the business was doing well, and I have enough savings. I never need to worry about that. But I have to say that every month that the childcare, the daycare fee, was hard to swallow in the beginning. Whoa, that’s another iPhone. That’s another TV. So, it’s expensive to have kids.

32:26 Emily: So then what happened with your finances overall? Does that translate to a lower savings rate or, you know, did you change your lifestyle during that period?

32:36 Judy: I think we had to change our saving strategy. Like we just have to put more expenses, and less saving. Yes.

32:45 Emily: Yeah. So I have two children, they’re ages four and two. Of course, pandemic year is a weird year, and we’re not paying for childcare right now, but I am looking forward to my daughter turning five and starting kindergarten. And maybe there’ll be some, you know, before or aftercare, I don’t know, but I’m really looking forward to that state-sponsored childcare that’s coming. I’ll still have to pay for the little one for another, you know, few years, but yeah, it’s a really, really significant bite. And so it’s kind of a, you know, it’s a phase of life, right? When you have to pay for childcare, it’s a phase of life you have to accept. Yeah. Your savings rate is going to be lower than it would have been, but Hey, once the expense goes away, you just can put all that money back into savings and your rate will shoot up.

33:28 Judy: Oh, Emily, I don’t know when that will be, when we can get into that stage. Because when they are four and two is the daycare. When they are five to nine is all the extra curriculum activities. My daughter, she dances. Her first dance dress that she needs for her performance was more expensive than my wedding dress. That’s it. That’s it. That’s expensive.

33:57 Emily: Yeah. I’ve heard that too. Both about expenses with kids, is that, yeah, the daycare is a lot of the beginning, but also just shifts later on to being other things. And then also, you know, the intensity of the parenting is much more like it’s physical when they’re young, but it’s very emotional when they’re older and you just have different kind of roles to play as they age. And how old are your children now?

34:18 Judy: They are 10 and 12.

Financial Advice for First-Time Parents

34:19 Emily: Okay. And so what is your advice for someone, you know, anticipating the birth of their first child or who has young children, you know, financial advice for that person?

34:30 Judy: For kids stuff? I would say, I feel a lot of people, they would like to invest into one thing like a car seat, a stroller. I would say, go ahead, buy that luxurious thing that you really want for your kids. But everything else, get hand-me-downs. Get it from your friend. Because they grow up so fast. They grow up so fast. They don’t need all these fancy little cute dresses. And by the time you actually can fit into the dress, we live in Vancouver. So the summer time we only have three sunny days ever. Like hot sunny days. I mean, I remember we had so many cute little dressed that we really couldn’t use them. So, hand-me-downs. Get hand-me-downs.

35:11 Emily: Yeah. I think we followed your advice for our children. The one big, nice expensive thing that we bought was a Bob stroller. Right. Jogging stroller. And then everything else, we did buy new cribs, but we bought like Ikea, like bottom of the line, like so simple, stripped down Ikea cribs and tons and tons of used clothes. We were so fortunate to be, you know, sort of passed used clothes and then we pass them on to the next family afterwards. That’s exactly it worked. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a wonderful boon, if you can get into a parenting community that does that sort of thing. But yeah, I do think we followed your advice. We picked one thing that we wanted and everything else was just really just as cheap as we could get it.

35:49 Judy: And then the other one advice, well, for me that works really well, is I told my kids that I would pay for their education, for their readings, and everything. Because I think my mom was really frugal to a point that looking back, there are moments I go, mom, you know, you could have spent a little bit more money on my education. Because I think we have PhDs. So we care about education. So I really wanted to let my kids know. I am willing to spend money on things that are important to me. And the thing that is important to me is your education. So they know, they know that they can go into the local bookstore, we call it the bookstore. They can buy almost anything in the bookstore, including toys, you know, the bookstore has so many other gadgets. But they take advantage of it. And I actually allow them to, you know, as a bookstore, we will buy something educational. So I don’t, when it comes to book, I have no limit for my kids. Yes.

36:52 Emily: And is there any other advice that you want to add in at this stage for new parents or parents of littles?

36:59 Judy: The phone is a very attractive thing. You know, it’s just one phone. You have so many toys in there, but stay away from it as much as possible. Get your toys from your friends. Get your free toys from your friends. That costs very little money. And, for me before the pandemic, I’ve been strictly using cash in front of my kids. I carry cash. I really want to show them the exchange of money. But during the pandemic it was a lot harder, but they are older now. I think they understand the money, they have some understanding of money, but before the pandemic, I strictly used cash, especially in front of the kids.

37:44 Emily: Yeah. I think that’s a really good tip. Actually, so I mentioned, my daughter is four, she turned four during the pandemic. And at four we were like, okay, we’re going to start really teaching her about money. Like, what is this concept? You know? But because it was during the pandemic, there was no way that we wanted to handle cash coins, anything. So we did get a toy that, you know, represents money, but it’s something that I feel she’s missing out on a little bit now. And I want to somehow, you know, establish that for her later.

38:11 Judy: Well, four is still young. Right? So you still have a lot of time. There’s no hurry. And yeah. She still has a whole lifetime to learn about money.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

38:22 Emily: Yes. So Judy, thank you so much for this interview. I loved hearing about kind of your journey and your advice. To wrap up my interviews, I always ask my guests, what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? It could something that we haven’t mentioned so far in the interview or something you just want to circle back to and emphasize.

38:40 Judy: You don’t really need to spend money on things that you need to impress other people. You know, just really know what is important to you and what you need. Really understand what you need and what you want, the difference between the two. I mean, I’m not saying that you cannot get the thing you want, but knowing that this purchase is what I need, and this is a purchase that is what I want. And have that differentiation in your head, in your mind. I think that’s already a very good start.

39:11 Emily: Yeah. I think that’s an incredible insight. Especially, to me, I always think about this when it comes to recurring expenses like recurring, fixed expenses. So, you know, we talked about housing a bit earlier. So what in your housing cost is a need, and what is an upgrade to that, a want? And I think it’s important just to keep in mind in case you ever come upon a situation where, you know, you want to cut back, you’ll know, okay, well, you know what, the house actually is bigger than what we needed at this point, or the car, or whatever it is. Like if you differentiate between, okay, well, I could have this, I can afford this, you know, more of a want thing right now, but just to keep in mind. Yeah. There is a way that I can scale this down, you know, should it come to it in the future. Like you said, to differentiate in your mind, I really like that advice. And will you let us know, you know, about your business and you said, you know, it’s a little bit on the skids during the pandemic, give us kind of an update on that and where people can find you if they’re interested in learning more about it?

40:06 Judy: Well, my business is more catered to kids. And so it’s a reading center, we specialize in fostering reading and writing. We have lots of books. Good levels from the state. And so it’s called Reading Town, it’s a franchise and, and I love reading with kids. And we have programs that are good from Kindergarten all the way to grade 12. Lots of readings. Yes.

40:38 Emily: Yeah. Thank you so much for letting me know about that. And thank you so much for joining me today.

40:41 Judy: Thank you, Emily.

Outtro

40:43 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! pfforphds.com/podcast/ is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. On that page are links to all the episodes’ show notes, which include full transcripts and videos of the interviews. There is also a form to volunteer to be interviewed on the podcast and instructions for entering the book giveaway contest. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved! If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are 4 ways you can help it grow: 1. Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. If you leave a review, be sure to send it to me! 2. Share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with a email list-serv, or as a link from your website. 3. Recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and effective budgeting. I also license pre-recorded workshops on taxes. 4. Subscribe to my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe/. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

This PhD Got a Late Start Financially But Is on Track to Retire Early

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In this episode, Emily interview Dr. Sean Sanders, Director and Senior Editor for Custom Publishing for the journal Science and Program Director for Outreach. Sean came to the US for a postdoc position with little savings. Living in the DC area on a postdoc salary was financially challenging; he didn’t start to make real progress with his finances until he left his postdoc for an industry job, which more than doubled his salary. Sean and Emily discuss the strategies he has used to build wealth in the last decade, from moving to reduce housing expenses to retirement investing to purchasing real estate. They go into great detail about Sean’s passive investing strategy and the mistakes he made in the past. Sean lists his favorite books and podcasts on personal finance that he has used to improve his knowledge over the years.

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

Links Mentioned

PhD early retirement

Teaser

00:00 Sean: When I was thinking about being a scientist, I always had the impression that scientists are poor. We never make money, and that you did research because you loved it. You know, when I moved over to the USA, I really didn’t have much in savings, so I didn’t really think about it very much. I had to learn from scratch once I moved to the US and once I had a little bit of income to invest, that’s really when I started thinking about what I wanted to do with it.

Introduction

00:33 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season six, episode eight, and today my guest is Dr. Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for custom publishing for the journal Science and program director for outreach. Sean came to the US for a postdoc position with little savings. Living in the DC area on a postdoc salary was financially challenging. He didn’t start to make real progress with his finances until he left his postdoc for an industry job, which more than doubled his salary. Sean and I discuss the strategies. He is used to build wealth in the last decade or so, from moving to reduce housing expenses, to retirement investing, to purchasing real estate. We have a particularly involved and enjoyable discussion of Sean’s passive investing strategy and the mistakes he made in the past. We also swap recommendations of personal finance websites, books, and podcasts. Sean is now on track to retire early, and I’m sure his story will give hope to other PhDs who have, or will enter their thirties without any appreciable savings. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Sean Sanders.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:50 Emily: I’m delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Sean Sanders. Sean works for AAAS and actually we met recently and did an event together at the end of 2019, Fiscal Fitness for Scientists. We’ll link it up from the show notes is a great event that Sean moderated and I was part of the panel. That’s how we first connected, but as we talked more and more at that event, I realized that Sean has an amazing story of his own to tell with respect to his own personal finances, so that’s what we’re going to be discussing today. Sort of how his career has evolved and also his finances, alongside those. Sean it’s really a pleasure to have you joining me here, and will you please introduce yourself further for the audience?

02:29 Sean: Hi, Emily. Thank you so much for inviting me, for the opportunity to talk to your audience. It really is a great pleasure for me to be here. I think we had some fantastic conversations when we met and I’m so pleased to share a little bit more of my story. I’m currently the director and senior editor for custom publishing at Science, here in Washington, DC. I’ve been in this position about 13 years now, but I actually started out as a research scientist. To give you a very overview of my career arc is I started my studies in South Africa. I grew up in Cape Town. I did my undergrad at the University of Cape Town. I then did a one year what we call an honors degree, which is equivalent to a one year masters. I took a break for a while and then I did a PhD actually at University of Cambridge in the UK. I was very fortunate to get in there. Following that, I moved over to the US to do a postdoc at national institutes of health, doing cancer research. I then moved on to a second postdoc at Georgetown University. I was there for about a year and a half, and then a few things happened, which we’ll probably get into a little bit later in the podcast, and I ended up moving into industry, into a small biotech company where I was for about three and a half years. Then got laid off from that, and that’s another story in itself. Then I moved into publishing and I joined the journal BioTechniques for a couple of years. Then, I finally got an offer at Science and I’ve been here for 13 years now. It’s quite a convoluted journey, but it’s been really interesting. And obviously I’ve learned a lot of things along the way.

Early Career Money Mindset

04:09 Emily: Yeah, love it. We’ll be hearing about a few of those as we go forward. Going back to your days in training during your PhD and your postdoc, was your plan to stay in academia and that changed during that second post doc. And then alongside that, with your plan to be in academia, how were you handling your finances at that time? And what was your view of finances generally?

04:29 Sean: When I was thinking about being a scientist, I always had the impression that scientists are poor. We never make money and that you did research because you loved it. And that’s what I wanted to do. I really had just a great passion for research. I really enjoyed investigating. So that’s what I wanted to do. When I was doing my undergraduate, I didn’t really think about finances. I didn’t have much money, even when I moved over to the US I, I really didn’t have much in savings. I didn’t really think about it very much. I had to learn from scratch once I moved to the US and once I had a little bit of income to invest, that’s really when I started thinking about what I wanted to do with it.

05:15 Emily: You’re referencing your move to the US, is that a thing in and of itself, your move to the US, or is it more that you were just advancing in your career and it was a later stage and you were earning more money?

05:26 Sean: I think it was a little bit of both. I was a student through the time that I was in the UK at Cambridge University. As a student, I had a very generous scholarship from the Welcome trust, and I actually managed to save a little bit of money to bring over to the US, but it wasn’t more than a few thousand dollars, so I really was starting from scratch. I didn’t have any income to save and at that point, I didn’t even know what a retirement account was.

05:54 Emily: Yeah. I mean, the transition to the US also comes getting used to a whole other financial system, which I think we’ll talk about more in a moment. So your view was that scientists are always poor. That was your plan. Did you think that would even be the case once you got the tenure track job? You just really thought that was going to be your whole life?

06:13 Sean: Yeah. I didn’t think that scientists earned more than like $70,0000 or $80,000. And, you did it for the love of it. You were working off grants, so you never really made a lot of money. I didn’t ever think that I would be able to retire any time before 65, 70.

Changes in Finances Leads to Changes in Money Mindset

06:31 Emily: Got it. But you mentioned earlier that sometime during your second postdoc, something happened, something changed. Can you tell that story please?

06:38 Sean: Sure. As I said, I was at NIH for about three and a half years, and then I moved to Georgetown University. One thing that I should share with everyone is coming from South Africa, when I moved to NIH, I was on a J-1 visa. I’m not sure if your audience are familiar with this, some probably are, but it’s a training visa. While you’re on a training visa, you’re essentially like a student. You don’t pay taxes like a worker does, and you don’t pay social security. You don’t pay Medicare. Any of that. Now, the advantage of that is there’s more money in your pocket. The disadvantage is you don’t have that social safety net. When I moved to Georgetown University, I got into an H visa, which is what I wanted, because that’s a working visa and enabled me to stay in the country for longer and also progress to a green card, which I eventually did. But what comes along with that is all these other taxes. I had to pay federal tax. I had to pay state tax. I even had to pay county tax in Montgomery County, which was a huge surprise. When I was thinking about this job and looking at the finances and seeing what they would pay me, I didn’t even think about all these additional taxes and I didn’t do my due diligence, and that really came back to bite me.

07:53 Emily: I want to add in there that this is not even necessarily a story that’s unique to someone switching visa types or anything, or becoming a resident. This is something that can happen. I think even moving from graduate school to the postdoc level, or postdoc to another type of job. The reason is not regarding income tax, but regarding payroll tax. As graduate students, generally speaking students, don’t pay payroll ta, that is for social security and Medicare. They have a student exemption. Also anyone who’s not receiving wages, so anyone on fellowship, non W2, they also aren’t paying payroll tax. So getting out of those kinds of training stages, that payroll tax can be, it’s like 7.65% on the employee side, so if you weren’t expecting that, it can be a shock. For you the shock was bigger, because it is not only payroll, but it’s also income taxes and other things, but just wanted to point out like other people need a little heads up about this as well.

08:45 Sean: Right. I wasn’t completely ignorant to the federal taxes I’d had have to pay, but it was just everything at the same time. On top of that, I found out that I had to pay for parking on campus, which I didn’t know about and that was an extra hundred dollars a month or something. All of these things sort of piled on top of each other and then I’d been there for about a year and I read a story in the local paper about what garbage collectors or sanitation engineers, I guess they call them, were being paid, and it was actually a couple of thousand dollars more than I was being paid as a postdoc. Not to take anything away from any kind of employment, it’s all honest work, but I felt that with all the work that I put in to get these higher degrees, I really wasn’t doing myself any justice by being in a position where I wasn’t getting paid, what I thought I was worth.

09:39 Sean: I made a decision at that point to start looking around and I started doing a search for a job in industry, and I was very fortunate to find something up in Massachusetts. The thing is it’s something that probably affects a lot of your listeners is that you can’t always make easy moves, geographically. Some people have families, they have kids, they have spouses. I was in the fortunate position that I could, so I looked very broadly around the country. I looked on the West Coast, I looked up in New England, and I found a great position in Massachusetts, and almost instantaneously I’m more than doubled my salary. I’ve heard of some people calling this geographic arbitrage where you’re willing to move to a different place for our highest salary, and that’s what I did. And although I didn’t love living in Massachusetts, the snow was horrendous, but it was worthwhile for me, and it really set me off on a new financial path, where I could actually save some money and invest in my future.

Making Lifestyle Changes to Increase Savings

10:38 Emily: Yeah. Please elaborate on that. What were the changes that you started making in that time with the higher salary?

10:45 Sean: Well, I think probably the biggest thing was just starting to put away money in savings. As I’m sure you’ve talked about, the first thing I did is I started an emergency fund. I brought up about three months of savings. I also put money into my company’s 401k, immediately. It was as soon as I could, I think it was six months before I could vest. There were also some stock options, which ended up not being worth anything because the company to go under, but it was, it was things that I needed to think about and learn.

11:18 Sean: I started really focusing on living below my means because actually when I was at Georgetown University, I actually found that from the numbers that I looked at, I was actually losing money. So I was spending more than I was earning. Part of that was living in Montgomery County, which was expensive.

11:37 Emily: If you don’t mind, just how were you financing that. If you were actually losing money, was it savings previously built up that you’re drawing down or were you accumulating consumer net?

11:47 Sean: No, it wasn’t debt. I just couldn’t come out on what I was earning. At the time was paying about $800 or $900 a month in rent and that was about 40% or 50% of my income. I didn’t go out that much, but you want a little bit of spending money and I was paying all these other things. I was paying for parking. And I was managing to save a little bit, but really not much. It just made it clear to me that I needed to find some way to focus a bit more on my financial future and get the kind of position where I could actually save and have something in retirement.

12:27 Emily: Yeah. One thing that I discuss during the seminars that I give at universities, one of the points I try to make is that there’s a lot that you can do within your finances while in training, regarding frugality and finding the low rent place to live or what have you. But ultimately, the best thing you can do for your career is to finish that training, be out of graduate school, be out of the post doc, and get that your full salary. The point that I’m trying to make is, although I love to talk about frugal strategies and I love to talk about side hustling and all that stuff, none of that should distract you from just progressing in your career and moving on and getting that higher salary. When you did that, when you achieved that, and you decided, okay, we’re ending this postdoc, I’m getting another type of position, you said that you were focusing on living beneath your means, but I wonder how that compared to your lifestyle when you were at Georgetown. When you got the new job, did you consciously increase your lifestyle in any way, yet still live beneath your means, or were you trying to keep it pretty much feeling like you had during your postdoc?

13:30 Sean: No, I was very focused on saving as much as I could because, at that point I was in my thirties already and I really had very little savings to speak of, and I knew that I really had to start doing something, because I didn’t want to reach 35 or 40 and not have any savings. I’ve always focused on living beneath my means. I can tell you, just an interesting story. When I was up in Massachusetts, I had a coworker who I remember was talking about leasing a car with her husband, and they turned in their previous car. They were paying something like $500 a month or something exorbitant like that. They turned in the car and they could’ve got a cheaper car, but instead they got a better car, a fancier car for the same payment. And that made absolutely no sense to me. Why wouldn’t you get the same car or similar car that’s cheaper and pay $350 a month. That was a mentality that I never understood and I didn’t want to fall into that trap. The way I looked at it is I’m going to get the cheapest car I can. I buy a second hand car, drive it into the ground. I’m going to spend as little as possible on rent. And in fact, what I did is I moved three times in five years while I was up in Massachusetts, both to get closer to work, so my commute was shorter, but also to save on rent. The one move that I made was into a new condo unit that had just been refurbished and they were giving a special for the year and two months of free rent. I stayed there for the year and then I moved. Again, if you’re able to do something like that, you can save quite a lot of money. And I mean, it probably saved me about $5,000.

15:08 Emily: Yeah. This is a strategy that I also try to mention because it’s one I used during graduate school. For example, I moved a couple of times specifically because okay, our rent is increasing, we know what else is around, that’s available. Can you talk about how you actually executed that though? Because it is a really daunting thing to both research a new place to live and then actually execute the move, and it can be expensive too. How did you do this, and still come out ahead financially?

15:32 Sean: As far as moving, you just got to have very patient friends who are willing to help you move. And I always depended on them. I tapped into my network and I’d hire a U-Haul and throw everything in there and move to the next place. Actually, just to add a little bit to the story, once I I’d been at this company for about three and a half years, the company ran out of funding, we were venture capitalist funded, and I got laid off along with the rest of most of the rest of the business. I decided I’d have to move. I couldn’t afford the apartment that I was in. I moved from a two bedroom apartment to a one bedroom, a little bit away from the main part of the city, so it was cheaper. The commute was a little bit longer, but it was definitely worthwhile. Again, I saved quite a lot of money that way. To your question about how I did it, I would just always be keeping a lookout for new places. Both as I drove around and online, I’d constantly be researching, see if there were any deals. And to this day, I do things like that with for instance, CD rates. I look every couple of months just to see where the certificate of deposit rates are, see if I can get a better deal some way. If there’s a good savings account that I can move my money into, my emergency fund, just to get maybe a half a percent or percent more.

16:55 Emily: Yeah. It sounds like you’re just kind of keeping a pulse on the market. Whatever markets you’re involved in, you’re keeping an eye on it to see if there’s a better deal available.

New Financial Goals

17:03 Emily: Okay, so when you increased your salary, you moved to Boston, eventually, of course, you found yourself back in the DC area, you mentioned using the 401k available to you through work, you mentioned living beneath your means consciously. It sounds like you didn’t have any debt or no significant debt to work on. Were there any other financial goals that you’ve set for yourself, with this higher salary?

17:31 Sean: Not really. I’m not much of a goal setter, and that’s probably one of my downfalls. I don’t have a budget. I feel that I just spend as little as possible. I would do things like I would eat out very seldom. I’d rather get takeout or cook at. I was not married, I didn’t have kids, and I know that definitely adds complications to everyone’s stories. I was very fortunate, from that point of view. And I really just wanted to build up as much savings as I could and put the maximum into whatever retirement funds that I could, just to really build up a nest egg for myself in retirement. And also, my parents were aging at that point and I wanted to make sure that if necessary, I could provide for them.

18:20 Sean: Then the other thing that I had in mind is that I did eventually want to buy a property to live in. That was sort of one of my goals. I wasn’t saving consciously towards that as in, I didn’t set aside a separate bank account and put in money for a down payment, which some people say is a good way to do it, sort of use the bucket mentality. I was thinking about the future, but not in any specific way, but I did know that eventually I wanted to be a homeowner and have a place that I could call my own, that I knew I couldn’t get kicked out of because somebody wanted to raise the rent.

18:57 Emily: And has that happened? Have you purchased a home?

18:59 Sean: I did. When I moved back to Washington to my, my position at Science and AAAS, I decided…well, actually my thought process was, I think you’re old enough now you should get a place of your own, so I bought a condo in an area called Columbia Heights, which is an up and coming area in DC. I was quite strategic in doing that. I wanted an area that had recently been revitalized and that was not too expensive, but that I saw some opportunity. Also DC, as you probably know, is a city that will always have people coming to live there. It’s a huge itinerant population that are coming to work for government, for law firms, et cetera. I thought having a place there would be good because when I eventually upgraded or got married or moved out, I’d be able to rent it. That’s actually what I’m doing. I lived in the unit for eight years and I’ve been renting it now for five years, and basically my rent covers my mortgage payment and the condo fees with a little bit of extra. It’s worked out really well.

20:01 Emily: Nice. Have you bought another property or are you renting again your primary residence?

20:05 Sean: No, I actually, I got married, and I moved into my now wife’s house, up here in Silver Spring. I’m looking to possibly buy another rental property, an investment property, but this area is really, really expensive and you need to find just the right place to make it worthwhile, and it’s really tough. I’ve been looking for over a year now and it’s very difficult.

Commercial

20:34 Emily: Hey, social distancers, Emily here. I hope you’re doing okay. It took a few weeks, but I think I have my bearings about me in my new normal. There is a lot of uncertainty and fear right now about our public and personal health and our economy. I would like to help you feel more secure in your personal finances and plan and prepare for whatever financial future may come. You can schedule a free 15 minute call with me at PFforPhDs.com/coaching to determine if financial coaching with me is right for you at this time, I hope you will reach out, if only to speak with someone new for a few minutes. Take care. Now back to our interview.

Financial Strategies and Advice

21:20 Emily: Okay. Yeah. So I think we’ve gotten a good landscape of the goals that you had — saving cash, using your 401k, buying property, and some of the strategies that you use, but were there any other strategies that you’d like to throw out there for the audience? Anything you’ve tried and found works really well for you?

21:37 Sean: As I mentioned, I’m as frugal as I can be. I try to live below my means and save as much as I can. The other thing that I learned in the last few years is that…Well, let me take a step back. When I moved to the NIH and I started investing, I had a little bit of extra money, I got advice from the banker who was at the local Crest Star branch, which is, I think became SunTrust eventually. There was a little bank at the NIH and he recommended some stocks that I could invest in, some mutual funds, and I didn’t know any better, so I put some money into that, but I learned over the years about what kind of fees are involved, especially with mutual funds.

22:21 Sean: I started reading and listening to podcasts, and my strategy now really is all index fund investing. I invest in ETFs, exchange traded funds. They have very low expense ratios, usually less than 1%, and I have no doubt on your show, you’ve talked about the power of compounding. If you start early and save, by the time you get to retirement, you’ll have a good nest egg. The same applies for expenses, sort of in reverse. If you have very high expenses on your investments, you’re going to lose a lot of that money. I recognized that I had not done my due diligence on the type of funds that I was investing in. There’s a few people that I follow that I’ll maybe mention some of the podcasts that I listened to who talk about index fund investing and how much more efficient it is than investing in especially managed mutual funds, where you’re paying 1%, 2%, sometimes 3% or 4% in the expense ratio.

Investing Strategies and Tips

23:22 Emily: Yeah. I do want to elaborate on that because investing and the specifics, like this, are not something that we talk about on the podcast, as much as I would like to, because I love the subject. Expense ratios, for those who don’t know, it’s just kind of a catch all number representing how expensive it is to own that fund. And basically whatever amount of return you’re getting, you have to subtract those fees, those expenses right off of it. So if over the long-term, you might expect like an 8% average annual rate of return, if you have a 1% fee that you’re paying, it knocks you down to 7%. And while that doesn’t necessarily sound like a lot, like 1% doesn’t necessarily strike you as very high, I’ve seen calculations on this, where it can result in a net worth decrease over the decades of hundreds of thousands of dollars ,for just paying something like a 1% fee, where you could have gotten with an ETF or an index fund, maybe 0.1%, maybe 0.05%, maybe 0% in some cases. So there are much less expensive funds out there, and the expense of owning an actively managed mutual fund is one of the reasons why index funds and ETFs are actually, in the long-term, better investments in the sense that you end up with more money in your pocket, usually, when you invest in those kinds of vehicles, rather than actively managed mutual funds. Expenses are one of the big reasons why that is the case. Do you agree, would you like to elaborate at all?

24:40 Sean: Absolutely. I think we’re singing from the same hymnal. I completely agree and for the scientists out there, as much of your audience is, there is a lot of good research that shows that investing in managed mutual funds is not beneficial to you. You actually end up making less money than if you invest in exchange traded funds. The reason is that the management of the funds will sometimes be good for a few years, but then they always going to have downtimes, and the success of the fund really has very little to do with the manager. There are very few people in this world who actually know how to invest well in the stock market, and maybe just a few people like Warren Buffet and Jack Bogle are ones that maybe it would come to mind. But really for the majority of us, we don’t have the time or the resources to really understand every single stock that we invest in.

25:39 Sean: Just to talk a little bit more about ETFs, essentially what you’re doing with an ETF is similar to a mutual fund, where you are investing in a basket of companies. So instead of just investing in a single stock, so say I buy Amazon or Apple, I invest in the broad market. Say I have a Vanguard total stock market ETF, and that basically encapsulate the entire stock market, and that way it protects you against volatility and risk. You’re not going to make the same returns as if you invested say in Facebook 10 years ago, and now it’s worth 20 times as much as it was, but slow and steady wins the race as far as I’m concerned. You’re not going to lose your pants by investing all your money in a company, or in Bitcoin, or something scary like that.

26:27 Emily: Yeah. Lots of good long-term investing principles and philosophies that we’re throwing out there. Anything more that you’d like to say about investing or other strategies you’ve been using?

26:37 Sean: Maybe I’ll just talk a little bit about some of the other ETFs invest in. I will mention before the end of the podcast, a few resources that I really like. But from the advice that I’ve read, really the methodology that I follow is to get broad market funds. I invest in the total stock markets. Then I have a little bit of money in small cap and medium cap ETFs, or mid cap ETFs. Then I also have some in an international equity ETF, and all of these actually are through Vanguard. I did want to mention this because you did mention that there are some expense ratios that are zero, and there are companies now, including Vanguard and Fidelity that are offering some of their ETFs at a zero expense ratio, which is fantastic. And a lot of them also offer free investing so that there’s no charge to purchase these ETFs, and I think that’s a great deal.

27:37 Sean: Then the other two areas of the market that I do invest in are a total bond market ETF, as well as a REIT which is a real estate investment ETF. Basically, it’s very similar to the other ETFs that invest in companies that are invested in real real estate. And the reason I do that is just to diversify. Generally, REITs don’t move with as much volatility as the rest of the markets, so they’re a little bit more stable, but they’re not quite as as low return as bonds are. They’re kind of between stocks and bonds. I have it a little bit, maybe about 10 or 15% of my portfolio in that.

29:19 Emily: I think what you’re describing, it might for the uninitiated listener, sound a little bit complicated. You’ve thrown out maybe five, half a dozen different ETFs you’re invested in, but to my ear, what this is, is a well diversified and an appropriate asset allocation for you and your investing goals. And you need a few different ones of these buckets to make those two things happen. But the actual investments that you’re in are all in themselves well-diversified and across market sectors. You are not for example, picking individual stocks. As you mentioned, you had done that in the past, or your advisor was telling you how to do that in the past. You’re also not picking market sectors. I didn’t hear you say, Oh, well, I’m invested in a special biotech ETF, or a special some other one. You’re going for something that’s representative of full market sectors. You are really avoiding the kind of psychological traps that we can easily fall into around investing, of thinking we know where the market’s going or one segment of the market, so I appreciate that approach. Are those kinds of things that you’ve done in the past and that you’ve learned from and changed your approach, or did you avoid some of those pitfalls entirely?

29:23 Sean: I think it’s been an evolution over the years that I’ve sort of moved more and more towards ETFs as I’ve become more comfortable with them. Really, I went from investing in individual stocks to investing in mutual funds and then into ETFs. I did want to make the point though, that I don’t want to tell you shouldn’t invest in individual funds or in more narrow market ETFs, but just do your due diligence. And also, one of my mantras is I don’t invest money that I can’t afford to lose. If there is money that I need say in the next couple of years, that is not money that’s going to be in the stock market. I’m investing long-term. In fact, in my investment account, I’ve sold very few of my stocks. I’ve sold some of the original ones that were high expense ratios and some of the individual stocks, but I really haven’t sold much except to rebalance. I’m investing for the long-term. I’m putting money in, I’m not taking much money out. If you think you’re going to need to buy a house in the next five years, that money shouldn’t be in the stock market, that should be in something safer.

30:30 Emily: Yeah, I totally agree with you. You mentioned earlier using your 401k — are all of your investments inside that 401k, or do you use other kinds of vehicles as well, like an IRA or a taxable investment account?

30:42 Sean: I try to max out my 401k. I actually have a 403b, which is essentially the nonprofit version of a 401k because I work for a nonprofit, AAAA. I do also put as much money as I can, as I’m allowed, into a traditional IRA. There’s also a Roth IRA that’s available to some people. There is a cap on your income where you can no longer invest in a Roth IRA, but if you are able to I’d recommend that as well. And then I also have just a straight brokerage account where I put in after tax money. Anything that’s left over goes into that.

31:24 Emily: I do want to mention, because this is a conversation about investing, at least it’s part of it, that earlier, 2019 and prior, graduate students and postdocs who are on fellowship, who did not have W-2 income, they were not able to contribute that non-W-2 fellowship income to IRAs, but starting in 2020, that law has changed and you are now able to contribute non-W-2 fellowship income to IRA. So anyone who had learned about that old system, but hadn’t yet heard about the update, I want to throw that out there for them, that you are able to now use that kind of vehicle, even if you have non-W-2 fellowship would come during graduate school or your post doc.

32:01 Sean: That is great news.

Financial Literacy Resources

32:03 Emily: What we’ve come to, I think is kind of a very…I don’t necessarily want to see sophisticated because it’s also simple, but a well-tuned practice of your personal finances. You’ve mentioned a couple of times, maybe you can take a little bit more time now to say, how did you actually come to this point? How did you learn about all these different strategies and start to implement them? Because it’s not something that many of us would get from our mother’s knee, for example.

32:33 Sean: When I moved to this country, I was very fortunate to meet somebody who already worked at the NIH, who kind set me on the right path. His name is Chi Kang and he’s still a good friend of mine. We’ve known each other for more years than I can count. He gave me some really great advice to start off. One that I remember is as soon as you come to the country, start building up a credit history. Even if you don’t need credit, take out a small loan for a car or something like that, because you really need that later on in life, if you plan to stay in the country.

33:03 Sean: Really, I just enjoyed reading articles, online reading books. I’m something of an autodidact, so I like to learn myself. I don’t necessarily like being taught things. I just love to read as widely as possible. I kind of got into a little bit of the wrong track early on when I started reading magazines like Money. They used to make my head spin because they’re always jumping around from the latest thing to the next latest thing that you need to invest in. And I realized when I learned a bit more, that they’re really just selling a magazine. I don’t think there’s really good information there. Once more articles started getting online and more podcasts became available, that really became my primary source. There’s a really fantastic series that it gets quite deep into the weeds, but you can take away what you want from it. But there’s a guy named J.L. Collins who you’ve probably heard of, Jim Collins, who did a fantastic series on stocks, it’s called the stock series and it’s available at jlcollinsnh.com and I’m sure you’ll link to that in the show notes.

34:10 Emily: I will. It’s a very famous, very well-known stock series.

34:13 Sean: Yeah. I’m probably about three quarters of the way through that, and it is quite dense, but you get so much information from that. It’s really amazing. That could be your single resource for investing for the rest of your life, and you’d probably be just fine. He actually has a couple of really nice, different types of investment portfolios from a single ETF through to, I think, a seven or nine ETF portfolio. And that’s actually one of the portfolios that I followed. I sort of took the four stock portfolio and I’ve based my investing on that. I didn’t come up with all of this myself, just so that everybody knows. As I think Einstein said, “we stand on the shoulders of giants.”

34:55 Emily: Just to add, J.L. Collins published a book based on that stock series called The Simple Path to Wealth in either 2018 or 2019. We’ll link to that as well in the show notes, if you prefer book over blog post form.

35:08 Sean: Yep, that’s a great one as well. And then a few other books that your listeners might be interested in is The Four Pillars of Investing, that I’m sure you’ve heard of, that’s William Bernstein, and A Random Walk Down Wall Street, which is also a really great book. Right now I’m actually reading for the first time in my life, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, which isn’t necessarily about investing, but it’s a really great book about how to think about your life and how you’d like to be in your life. It definitely can be applied to your investment strategy.

35:45 Sean: Then if I can, I’d love to mention some podcasts that I listened to.

35:50 Emily: Of course, I am a great podcast lover!

35:54 Sean: Of course. I’m sure you’ve heard of, of a number of these. One of my favorites at the moment is Afford Anything with Paula Pant. She covers quite a broad range of investments and investment strategies, but what I like about it is it’s just very accessible. The way she talks about these things, she explains things really well. Every other week, she has a guest and on the alternate week, she answers questions from her audience. I always come away from every single podcast with some nugget of information that I can apply. Another one that I like is the Mad FIentist. That’s like scientists with an F instead of the S-C. It’s called the Financial Independence Podcast. I haven’t seen any new podcasts since October last year, but I think he’s still going.

36:44 Emily: He has an irregular publishing schedule, but what he does is everything he publishes is so high quality. It’s fantastic. Yes.

36:53 Sean: Yeah, no, he’s great. And I also love the graphic that he has for his podcast. It’s a crazy guy in a lab coat. Then the other one is The White Coat Investor with Dr. Jim Dahle. Now this is actually specifically for medical doctors, but I think a lot of what he talks about is applicable to everybody and also specifically to scientists. And then of course there’s Planet Money and The Indicator from NPR, which I think are just really great podcasts about the broader macro economic principles and really very interesting, accessible content that can help you learn about sort of how the financial world more broadly works.

37:32 Emily: I like those two. They’re not exactly well, The Indicator more so, but they’re not exactly like breaking news, but it sort of keeps me up to date on what’s going on the economy more broadly without being overwhelmed by daily content. I used to listen to Marketplace, for example, when I had more time, and I liked it, but it’s a lot every day to take all that information. Not all shakes out to be really that important in the long run, so I really like Planet Money and The Indicator for that.

37:59 Sean: And I like the way that they sometimes take a different look at the economy, or they’ll take something that you think has nothing to do with the economy and apply economic principles.

38:10 Emily: I think I cut you off a little bit, but I think you were going to mention ChooseFI, as well.

38:15 Sean: Yes. ChooseFI was the last one. So this is a new one to me. I haven’t really had much of a chance to listen to it. I’ve binged on a few episodes. I find that I have too many podcasts that I want to listen to, but I get to it when I can. They also really have some fantastic information and if folks don’t know this FI term refers to financial independence. Some people call it the FIRE movement, financial independence retire early, and this is something I’ve only started learning about it in the last few years, but it really resonates with me. Sort of harking back to what I said previously about thinking that I would just have a straight career path and retire when I was 65 or 70, this really gave me some insight into how I can change up that story, and I’m actually on the path and intending to retire hopefully within the next five years. So I’m hoping by the age of 55, which will give you a clue to how old I am. It gave me some confidence to look at my finances and say, you know, maybe I can do this.

39:21 Emily: Yeah, I’m glad you mentioned the FIRE movement, because as you were talking and telling your story, I could tell that you would find a home within that movement, if you hadn’t already, which it sounds like you have, as it’s become more popular. You were on this path before it really exploded. I also really love ChooseFI. We’re recording this in March 2020, and I just a couple of weeks ago, finished listening through their entire archive, which was like an eight month project as I was, of course, listening to new episodes as well. It was a big thing to tackle, but I think it was really worthwhile. Even though I don’t necessarily consider myself part of that movement, I got a ton out of all of that content. And actually what you said earlier reminded me of one of the hosts, Brad Barrett’s little mantras, which was, he basically says he doesn’t keep a budget either. He just says, “well, I just default to not spending money. I’m just going to save a hundred percent until I decide that something is worth spending on.” So that reminded me of sort of your philosophy as well.

40:16 Sean: Yeah, absolutely.

40:16 Emily: Since we’re swapping podcast recommendations, I will add one more, which is So Money with Farnoosh Torabi. She does three episodes a week. Her Friday episodes are Q&A’s ,and then she has guests on Mondays and Wednesdays. She has a little bit more of a women in money and women in entrepreneurship spin on the personal finance content, but still very strong in personal finance. So I really love that one, as well.

Final Words of Advice

40:38 Emily: I think we’re now down to our last question, which is what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD?

40:46 Sean: I think we’ve probably touched on all of these. I would say that the top four that I have is, remember the awesome power of compounding. Start early, save as much as you can. I know there’s, there’s plenty of calculators out there that you can play with online and see if you save even $20 a month, or $50 a month, when you you’re doing a PhD, and I know it sounds like a lot, but if you just save whatever you can, when you get to retirement age, you will have a good nest egg.

41:19 Emily: The way that I like to phrase that in my seminars is never discount whatever small amount of money it is that you can put towards investing when you’re early on in your twenties or your thirties. Never discount that because it will add up and compound being just a startling amount of money.

41:36 Sean: Yeah, absolutely. And I completely agree. The other one is educate yourself and do your homework. We all make mistakes. I certainly made my share, but I guess I’ll add to that, one of my other mantras, which is that the perfect can be the enemy of the good. There’s never going to be a perfect investment strategy. Things are going to change. You’re going to learn as you go, but just start, do something, start investing, even if it’s very small. There’s plenty of apps out there now, like Robinhood is a really great way to just start investing in small amounts of money. So yeah, start now. Don’t wait until you know everything.

42:14 Sean: Then the last one is really just live below your means. It’s kind of like if you’re trying to lose weight, you’ve got to take in fewer calories than you expend, and your body will lose the weight. It’s the same — if you spend less money than you bring in, you will save. It’ll be automatic.

42:32 Emily: Yeah. And I like to turn that on its head a little bit. I think this is probably a strategy you use, although we haven’t articulated it, is to pay yourself first. That old personal finance chestnut, but to live beneath your means, give yourself less means. Save first, give yourself less means to live on, if you are tempted to spend your checking account down to zero, as I am. What I have to do is get that money out of my checking account, out of my mind first, and then I know that I can safely spend the rest if I want to.

43:03 Sean: Right. And there’s so many ways to do that now. Even my bank will do automatic sweeps from my checking account into a savings account. I just set the amount and it does it automatically every month, so you don’t even see the money.

43:14 Emily: Absolutely. Well, Sean, I enjoyed this conversation so much and I think the listeners will have gotten a lot out of it, especially our discussion about investing, so thank you so much for joining me.

43:22 Sean: Oh, it’s such a pleasure. I really appreciate the invite and hopefully we’ll stay in touch and swap some more podcasts

Outtro

43:30 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPhDs.com/podcast is the hub for the personal finance for PhDs podcast. There you can find links to all the episode show notes, and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, please consider joining my mailing list for my behind the scenes commentary about each episode. Register at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe. See you in the next episode, and remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is stages of awakening by Poddington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

How to Improve Your Finances While Social Distancing

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Now that we’re a few weeks into our new normal of social distancing / isolation / quarantine, you may find yourself with the time, ability, and willingness to work on your personal finances*. Below are my top suggestions of activities you can engage in while social distancing that are highly likely to improve your finances in the short or long term, helping you to save money, pay off debt, and invest more money.

*If this sounds preposterous to you, this article isn’t for you right now! Keep taking care of yourself, your loved ones, and your community. If you want to know how I’m getting on without my regular childcare, listen to this podcast episode.

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

social distancing finances

Read a Personal Finance Book

Reading (or listening to) a book is the most time-efficient way to consume high-quality, curated personal finance content. I started my personal finance journey with a few cornerstone books (some of which appear on the list below) before moving on to blogs and podcasts. Reading a book is a great way to get a firm foundation—if you choose the right book.

In normal times, I would suggest that you check your local or university library first for the books you are interested in before considering purchasing. Personally, I know my local library branches are closed, but ebooks are still an option.

The list below includes some of my personal favorites and suggestions I received in response to a Twitter prompt. The knowledge you’ll glean from any one of these books is worth incalculably more than you would pay for them if you do decide to purchase!

Catch Up on a Podcast

For fascinating interviews with financially successful people and in-depth discussions of particular financial strategies, I turn to podcasts. (Podcasts are the one thing I have more of in my current life than I do in my regular life!)

Personally, I am a Completionist, so I prefer to listen through the full archives of most podcasts that I decide to subscribe to. Now that you have the time, here are a few of my favorite personal finance podcasts and other popular ones in the space. Listen to a couple of the recent episodes; maybe you’ll decide to commit to the archive!

File Your Tax Return

I am a major tax return procrastinator. My husband and I usually start working on our tax return in April and submit it barely under the deadline. Confession: This year, with the filing deadline extension to 7/15, we haven’t even started yet.

I do think that preparing your tax return is a good social distancing activity if you have the capacity. You can put an evening or two’s worth of uninterrupted time blocks to work with your tax software or even manually prepare your return (that’s our preferred method).

If you are expecting a refund, file ASAP to receive your refund ASAP. It’s your money! It should be working for you, either by paying expenses if you’ve experienced an income drop or going into savings, debt repayment, or investing if you income has stayed steady.

My tax workshop, How to Complete Your PhD Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!), comprises videos, worksheet(s), and live Q&A calls. Please consider joining through the appropriate link:

Network

One of the upsides of physical social distancing for some people is the chance to connect remotely with a different set of people than usual. (I am highly envious of this! I had high hopes to reconnect with old friends during this time… My children’s insistence on derailing all adult conversations has dashed those hopes.)

Instead of limiting your Facetime/Zoom calls to your family and friends, consider reaching out to people in your professional network.

In a general sense you should be networking like this all the time, but the motivation intensifies if you are coming up on an expected transition point in your PhD career or you think your job/position is at risk and you might need to look for another soon.

An excellent, low-risk group to network with right now is people who graduated from (or otherwise left) your PhD program in recent years. You can reach out over email to see what they’re up to and schedule a call if that is mutually agreeable.

If you reach out to someone and don’t receive a response, don’t take it personally! People are dealing with a lot right now. Just cast a wide net, and appreciate the people who are able to give you some of their time right now.

Oh, and always ask at the end of an interesting conversation if the other person can recommend one or more people for you to connect with next!

Explore Career Options

As a spin off of networking, right now is also an incredible time to work on exploring your career options. Yes, the academic job market looks abysmal right now, but—upside?—it’s been trending that way for decades, so there are lots and lots of PhDs established in non-academic careers that might be of interest to you.

A great first place to go for resources is your university’s career center. (Check on this even as an alum—you may have access to resources from all the universities/colleges you’ve graduated from.) The robustness of their resources for PhDs in particular might be strong or weak, but some of their resources for undergrads will still be helpful.

The career center may have assessment tools, instructional resources for job seekers, recordings of past live events, and opportunities to meet one-on-one with staff. If you know they have a resource that is not currently available online, submit a request that it is made available.

Two platforms for PhD job seekers in particular are Beyond the Professoriate (Aurora) and Versatile PhD. If your institution has a subscription, access the platform through its login mechanism, but if not you can sign up as an individual. Beyond the Professoriate has an upcoming online career conference as well.

To combine networking with exploring career options, set up informational interviews with people in careers you’d like to learn more about. From my experience on both sides of informational interviews, they can be quite enjoyable and beneficial for both parties!

Invest in a Frugal Strategy

Most of us are practicing forced frugality these days in a few areas of our budget. I’d wager that your discretionary spending was down in March from where it was February and that April will be lower than March. There are lots of possible uses for that freed-up cash flow, but consider one more: investing in a frugal strategy.

One of the major, legitimate complaints about frugal practices is that they take some capital to get started with. I’ve heard “Frugality is only for the rich,” for example. This is not the case for every frugal strategy, but it is for some. Well, now that you have some capital, what frugal strategies can you ‘invest’ in that you know will pay off with decreased spending over the long term?

I’ll give you one tiny example: Last December, I ‘fessed up—to myself—that my family (which includes two tiny children, one of whom is still in a high chair) was consuming paper towels at a positively alarming rate. We were buying the huge packs from Costco for $20 each half a dozen times per year. This didn’t sit well with me from a financial or an environmental perspective, so I purchased these microfiber cloths (12 for $12—now I wish I had doubled it!). They work far better than paper towels, our paper towel consumption rate dropped like a rock (we’ve probably made up for that initial investment twice over by now), and they haven’t substantially added to our laundry load. (Again, two tiny children—we already do a ton of laundry, including cloth diapers.) These towels were absolutely a frugal investment. Bonus: Not having the pressure right now of needing to buy this particular paper product before we run out when it is in short supply is a load off my mind!

Ask yourself: Are there any frugal strategies I’ve wanted to try but haven’t yet because of the up-front investment of capital? Can I use my newfound cash flow right now to establish one of the strategies? And if it wasn’t money but rather time was your limiting factor before: What frugal strategy did you never have time to initiate, but you can put in the time now to make it a habit?

Here are a few ideas for similar frugal/environmental investments, gleaned from this Twitter thread:

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Clear Out Your Closets, Etc.

My mother, a retired empty nester, has undertaken as her social distancing project clearing out the basement storage area of the home my parents have lived in for 30 years. It’s a massive project, and it is made more difficult by the closure of some of the places you might normally go to resell, donate, recycle, or trash your old possessions.

I do think a spring cleaning/clearing out is a good activity for right now. This might positively affect your finances if you are willing to hold on to the valuable items long enough to resell them. (You might be able to resell currently, but I suspect the demand will be relatively low.) If nothing else, it will benefit your mental health and will reduce the amount of work you’ll need to do leading up to your next move.

Close Old Financial Accounts (and Open New Ones?)

Spring cleaning can apply to your finances as well as your home!

You may very well have old banking or credit accounts that you no longer use or have need for. If you can close the old bank accounts without going anywhere in person, do so! Some people like to keep old credit card accounts open because length of credit history and utilization ratio play into your credit score. However, if you have a high credit score already, you should consider closing the accounts you don’t need; maybe just keep the single oldest account open. The suggestion to close old accounts goes quintuple for any accounts that charge you a fee.

In the same vein, now is a great time to join (aspects of) your financial accounts with your spouse or partner if you have decided to keep joint money. My husband and I decided to join as much as we could after we got married, and the months-long process involved researching and opening new accounts, waiting for money to transfer, and closing old accounts. Again, it’s a great social distancing activity as long as you don’t have to go anywhere in person. (Another reason online-only banks are my preferred institutions!)

If you’ve never looked into it before, you could put your free time into figuring out how to generate extra income from credit card or banking rewards. Please keep in mind that offers might be somewhat different during social distancing than they were before (or will be again). Before you open any new accounts, triple-check that you can meet the minimum spending requirements or transfer amounts given your (presumed) lower level of current spending.

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

Plumb Your Values/Dream

If you’ve been able and willing to slow down and reflect, this pandemic might have granted you new insight into what you want for your life. I don’t think you should be making any life-altering decisions in this stressful period, but lean into your different perspective and deepen your introspection.

What is truly important to you? What are the aspects of your life that make you feel fulfilled? What can you change about how you manage your finances to better support those aspects?

Further Reading: Determining Your Values and Financial Goals While in Graduate School

Get Coaching, Take a Course, or Join a Community

One way you can invest in yourself right now is to establish a relationship with a coach, join a community, or take a course focused on an area of personal or professional development. Spending money on this kind of endeavor makes it much more likely that you will actually take the necessary steps to ensure your financial success.

If your chosen area is finances, consider how you and I could work together. I offer one-on-one financial coaching, and I am also going to open up the doors to my program, The Wealthy PhD, in May 2020. Through both avenues, you will have individualized access to actionable knowledge, inspiration, and accountability. If you feel confident in your income security, this is the perfect time to firm up your financial plans and even take advantage of the unique opportunities this period affords.

If finances aren’t your preferred area of focus right now, I also recommend checking out the services offered by my colleagues:

  • Dr. Jen Polk coaches PhDs on their careers
  • Dr. Katy Peplin’s community Thrive PhD supports graduate students around the mechanics of graduate school and their mental health
  • Dr. Katie Linder offers podcasts with actionable tips, coaching and courses for academics on productivity and related topics
  • Dr. Echo Rivera offers courses and coaching on effective presentation design & presenting with data for academics, scientists, and researchers (grad students through PhDs)

If you do commit to working on your professional or personal development in one of these other areas, I’m confident that there will be an indirect positive effect on your net worth! Perhaps at that point you’ll be ready to directly work on your finances with me.

How have you improved your finances while social distancing?

Combatting Climate Change with Your Finances, Individually and Collectively

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In this episode, Emily interviews Jewel Tomasula, a graduate student at Georgetown University in biology, specifically ecology and evolutionary biology. Jewel participates in climate change collective action through the Sunrise Movement, through 500 Women Scientists, and at her university. Emily and Jewel discuss how people can combat climate change as individuals and collectively through the lens of personal finance, covering frugal and environmental strategies, socially responsible investing, and leveraging our affiliations with universities. You do not need to be a homeowner or in command of massive capital to explore the advice in this episode.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

climate change investing

Teaser

00:00 Jewel: I think people are maybe a little quick to discount the power that you have as an individual in these collective action movements and just being a body that’s part of this protest really makes an impression on the people who are making the decisions. People we’ve elected can’t ignore you when you were physically sitting in their office or physically outside the building and you’re part of a mass group of people.

Introduction

00:28 Emily: Welcome to the personal finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season five episode thirteen, and today my guest is Jewel Tomasula, a graduate student at Georgetown University in biology, specifically ecology and evolutionary biology. Jewel participates in climate change collective action through the Sunrise Movement, through 500 Women Scientists, and at her university. We discuss how people can combat climate change as individuals and collectively, through the lens of personal finance, covering frugal and environmental strategies, socially responsible investing, and leveraging our affiliations with universities. Listen on for actionable strategies that do not require you to be a homeowner or in command of significant capital. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Jewel Tomasula.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:24 Emily: I am so happy that Jewel Tomasula is joining me on the podcast today. This is a really special one for me because Jewel was the person who worked with me on editing the podcast and creating the show notes in the first three seasons, so really happy to have her back on now as a guest even though she’s moved on from the editor role. And today we are actually talking about kind of one of Jewel’s areas of special interest, which is climate change and climate change collective action. And we will get into how this intersects with personal finance momentarily. But before we do, Jewel, would you please introduce yourself to the audience?

01:50 Jewel: Hi. Thanks Emily. So I am a PhD student at Georgetown University. I’m working on a biology PhD and more specifically my discipline is ecology and evolutionary biology. The ecosystem that I focus on is the salt marshes. And they’re an ecosystem that is really affected by human activities, as well as really important for us adapting to climate change in dealing with sea level rise and salt marshes are important for carbon storage. I look at the resilience of this ecosystem and so I have a very ecology perspective, but I also think about climate change a lot because of the setting of my research.

02:47 Emily: Yeah, that’s perfect. So very strong professional connection as well. What is it that you’re doing outside of your professional capacity in terms of climate change collective action?

02:57 Jewel: I would call myself an active participant in the Sunrise Movement, and also a mobilizer of the 500 Women Scientists network. I wouldn’t say that I’m like a big leader in any sorts, but I’m someone who closely follows along and participates when I can. With the sunrise movement, I participated in a December 2018 action, where we visited out members of Congress and talk to them about supporting a Green New Deal resolution, which hadn’t been formally introduced yet, but it was an initial talking about ramping up climate action and taking on more stringent goals than just the Paris agreement and saying we want a stronger plan for climate action. And then it was a sit in of Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer and McGovern — representatives of the top Democrat offices. That was a really powerful experience, just to be one of hundreds of people that joined together and are taking this action and really showing our representatives that people care about this. And they can’t avoid it when we’re all sitting in the hallway or sitting outside their offices.

04:18 Jewel: I’ve tried to keep up with Sunrise Movement and participate when I can, not that often because I’m doing my PhD work as well. Then with 500 Women Scientists, with other leaders in that organization, we wrote an op ed for Scientific American called “Scientists Must Speak Up for the Green New Deal” and we outlined why scientists should be interested in this resolution and should take it seriously and advocate for it. And then that’s the group that when I go to, and just participating in in strikes or protests, that I usually kind of group up the DC pod of 500 Women Scientists to go together to these actions and support the leaders. And I try to amplify in my offline and online networks what the leaders of the youth climate strikes…their message, and the Sunrise Movement message as well.

05:24 Emily: Yeah, I think you have this interesting crossover identity that you are, identity-wise, compatible with these various friend groups. And it’s nice that you can be an intersection point between them and be, as you were just saying, amplifying messages from one to the other. And back and forth. So that’s great. Thank you for detailing that.

Climate Change and Personal Finance

05:50 Emily: I think that now we’ll get to the point where I want to say a couple of words about why we’re even talking about climate change on a personal finance podcast. Because maybe, you know, you say, well, Emily, this isn’t a good fit. This is about money, why are you talking about this? Or like, Emily, this is too political, why are you covering this topic? You don’t usually cover politics. And that’s not at all my intention, but the reason that I think about climate change in the way that it intersects with my business is because within personal finance and what I do a lot is thinking about the long-term — in my own life and the lives of my clients. When I talk about like investing and the power of common interest, I’m throwing out 50 years as a timeline that we should be looking over to think about our money. And over 50 years, over many decades — as you said, we’re already seeing effects of climate change and certainly over to 2030 and beyond that point, this is something that I think should be factored into our financial plans. As well as whatever motivation you might have to care about this as a human being specifically, it intersects our finances in this longterm planning aspect and also short-term planning.

06:56 Emily: There is this wonderful sort of synergy between frugality and conservation, or environmentalism and minimalism. A lot of the strategies that you might use to reduce your carbon footprint or be more environmentally focused in general are also ones that dovetail really, really well with being frugal in general or being a minimalist in general and not consuming so much. And so I just think whether you’re focusing first on reducing your carbon footprint or focusing first on frugality, you’re going to end up probably doing a lot of things that will benefit both facets, just naturally by the choices that you make. Because, as we’ll go through in a few minutes, there are a lot of things you can do that are good for your wallet and good for the planet. That’s kind of why I wanted to bring this up because there’s just this wonderful overlap. Not only should you be thinking about your own finances and what’s best for you in the long term. Maybe you can also direct your finances and your life choices in a way that’s compatible with being more sustainable long-term, as well. Jewel, can you just start, just make a couple of comments here — what can people do as individuals to reduce their carbon footprint?

08:13 Jewel: I think you outlined that so well about how we have to think about our personal finances in the long-term and that’s good for us, that’s a healthy thing, but if we’re going to be doing that, we also need to be thinking about the state of our environment and how sustainable our economy is as a whole and how that might be changing over the long term. I would hope that our economy is going to look really different in 50 years, that’s what my big hope is. And so this question of the individual carbon footprint and your responsibility there, it really centers on the power you have as a consumer. That’s often what you see in articles. If you can just Google how to go green and you can find lots of options and lots of suggestions, but I feel like they hardly ever take into account what power you actually have as a consumer and your dollar. If you’re someone with a constrained income and you only have a few hundred dollars of discretionary spending every month, if even that, it looks really different than somebody who has a lot of discretionary income, and the power you have with that.

09:33 Emily: Can I just jump in to ask — something I see for example in these how to go green suggestions is make your home more energy efficient. And so I’m thinking, okay, well I’m a renter, I have absolutely no influence over this. When I become a homeowner, I would love to think about that, but it’s not something for me in the here and now. Is that the kind of thing that you’re talking about that people just have differing degrees of influence over their own lives in terms of especially how much discretionary income they really have?

09:58 Jewel: Yeah, exactly. I live in the state of Virginia and there’s essentially a monopoly with Dominion Energy and you don’t have very much choice over where your power comes from. You see a lot of these lists and it’s like install solar panels or make your home energy efficient. And I’m like, I live in an apartment. But it is really empowering to think about, even if you have a constraint income, where you do have power in your budget and your spending and trying to direct that as much as you can towards the way we want the world to look like — a more ethical world with healthier and safer communities. I think part of that is if you are living in an apartment, there’s only so much you can do, but maybe you can live closer to work and you can take out that transportation part of the carbon footprint because you’re walking or you’re taking public transit.

The Impact of Individual’s Choices

10:58 Jewel: With individuals, the big things I think for anyone are your diet and transportation. If there’s ways that you can alter those to have a smaller impact, a smaller footprint, then those are two big things. Meal planning is one that I’ve been engaging with more recently, especially since starting grad school. My partner and I found that that’s also part of frugality and really making a difference in our personal finance wellness. Meal planning makes a difference and also really reduces our food waste. It made a big difference in how much for wasting, not just in food but also in the plastic that comes with food. If you’re not having take out all the time or just getting pre-prepared meals, there’s like a lot of packaging waste that’s produced there.

11:52 Jewel: I guess something that I care about with having that zero waste is that I have really minimized how much I use. That’s kind of in that minimalism that you talked about. Kind of that buy nothing new or going to thrift shops or just holding onto things and repairing them if they break. There’s still clothing alteration shops and shoe repair shops out there and so that’s something that I utilize. Those things aren’t always the most frugal, necessarily. Sometimes it is cheaper to just buy a new pair of shoes, but if I have a pair of shoes that I can get fixed, then that’s more in the mindset. Just because it is just as cheap to get a new pair, they are still a good pair of shoes. Those kinds of things I’ve really built into my budget and I think a lot of PhD’s could think in those terms as well and just rejecting our disposable consumer system that we have. Those are some of like the individual actions I think people could look towards.

13:02 Emily: Let me jump in there because I have a couple of comments about what you just said, which I thought was great. In terms of like the food that you eat, you’re talking about reducing waste, which is awesome. I think I read, years and years ago, I think there’s a book called American Wasteland*, which is about food waste. And I think it said that 50% of food is wasted, like that we grow in America doesn’t get into people’s stomachs. Most of that does not happen in your refrigerator, it happens prior to that point. Again, not something you necessarily have influence on, although I guess we can choose where we source our food from. So maybe getting it more from like local farmers or something rather than conventionally grown agriculture.

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

Emily: And also, I guess I’ve been seeing these advertisements for ugly produce and like similar sorts of services like that where it’s food that wouldn’t make it to the grocery store, you can still buy that and eat it because it’s perfectly good. It just doesn’t look pretty enough to be in the grocery store. There’s different sourcing things you can do around that as well, and you were just saying about packaging. That also reduces packaging, all that kind of stuff. You didn’t mentioned what you eat, but I know that one of the major things that you can do is reduce your consumption of meat and dairy, particularly beef. I think beef is one of those big offenders in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Food selection can also go into that. And it’s really difficult to change your diet, I know that. There’s all kinds of things that influence why you eat what you eat, but to the degree that you’re able to, think about addressing that in terms of less beef, lamb consumption, and dairy.

14:35 Jewel: It’s a really personal thing, that’s something that I’ve experienced. I would say I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life trying to be vegetarian. And it’s a really personal and often a cultural thing too. Food is how you connect with your family often. I get really excited with plant based diets. I have a special spot in my heart for plants and so I think it’s so cool what we can do with plants. I have like a personal excitement about plant based diets and then from the frugal side, meat is often more expensive, especially beef. When we do have beef every now and then, it’s always what’s on sale. If we’re getting it on sale, it’s not really part of the driving demand for beef, in a way.

15:30 Emily: I see what you’re saying.

15:31 Jewel: Right. That’s thinking about what’s the power of your dollar here and having beef is part of it. I have looked into what they say the average American consumption of beef is and it’s a little absurd. It’s not healthy for us as a culture to be eating that much beef, for our own bodies, as well as for our environment. That’s very justified and that’s one of the first things to cede. But if you’re someone really constrained in your income then you’re probably not eating very much meat anyway and I know there are calls for meatless Mondays and stuff. When we do meal planning — and this is me and my partner — my partner is environmentally minded, he still has the attachment to meat and that cultural element that we’re kind of working through.

Jewel: I’ll just be honest there, I’m the one that pushes more for plant-based foods and he’s still like, “Oh, but the meat, it tastes good. And it’s part of how I know how to cook.” That’s just the expectation that your plate has like a meat and then a veggie and a potato. It’s like a very ingrained American conception. But we’ve been looking at our weekly meal plans and it’s only meat for one meal a day typically and often the meat is a small part of the meal. That is something that has changed as we’ve started being more intentional with our meal planning. If you just think meatless Mondays, that’s three meals out of your week that don’t have mea. I would say for everyone, if you can have two meals a day without meat, that’s kind of a big win right there and you’re probably a lot less than the average American. We definitely do need to change this expectation that every meal should have meat in it.

17:39 Emily: Yeah. And I don’t actually think that’s a historically accurate view of the American diet. But anyway, you’re right in that it is sort of in the cultural zeitgeist. A larger point that I wanted to make about what you were just saying is that, as you were just saying earlier, as a consumer and especially if we’re talking to graduate students and postdocs and people who have a smaller degree of control over their finances and their lives — make the changes that you can and that you’re willing to and do what you can. It’s okay if for the time being you cannot change your diet because of whatever else is going on in your life, or you cannot change where you live to start taking public transit. Maybe you can choose one of these areas to make a big shift in and worry about the other ones later. It’s good like to make even a small change, like you were just saying with meatless Mondays or having two meals a day that are meaningless or whatever. It’s not that you have to become completely vegan or completely vegetarian to make an adjustment from where you are today. It’s just about making some degree of progress in that area. Were there any other individual actions that you wanted to discuss?

Being Mindful with Where You Keep Your Money

18:47 Jewel: Yeah, I have one more that I’ve been exploring recently, but I do want to mention two articles that I’ve found can really be like light bulb awakening for the nuance of this issue. One of them is titled “What We Should Really Do for Climate” by Samuel Miller McDonald and that’s published in The Trouble. The other is “I Work in the Environmental Movement. I Don’t Care If You Rrecycle” by Mary Annaise Hegler.

19:16 Emily: I think actually read that one.

19:17 Jewel: Yeah. And honestly, anything by Mary Hegler is on point. That one’s in Vox. Those are two I think that are really helping to increase awareness and making you understand how constrained this can be and how to feel that individual responsibility but also to channel it and grapple it with it better and understand how income plays in and how we kind of just need the whole system to change. How trapped you can feel, but also what personal empowerment you can find in it. Along those lines, something I’ve been looking at just this summer that kind of just slipped by me before was where my money is actually kept in my bank — who I’m letting have my money while I’m waiting to use it. And also looking into investing and trying not to be a typical like 20-something grad student who just puts off investing.

Jewel: I have been using Wells Fargo just because that’s the bank that my parents set up for me and I never really thought about it. Even when I was learning about how Wells Fargo is funding oil pipelines and doing other shady stuff, I just didn’t think about it and didn’t think about taking my money out of there. That’s something I’ve like just done and I’m transitioning to using a bank called Aspiration. They are an online bank that tries to make themselves an accessible option that’s not using any of the money for fossil fuels or gun manufacturing either. Those are two of their big things and building that social awareness into their whole model. It’s nice to have a bank that’s like thinking about this ethically. They also have sustainable investing options. I have $2,000 in there now, but I put in $1,500 and so over two years — I think it’s a little over $1,500 that I put in, so it’s grown like a few hundred dollars over two years. And you actually get to set your own fee for that. They have what’s called a pay what’s fair fee. I had it set pretty low and so over two years I’ve only paid just under $10 in the fees and you could set it to zero actually, if that’s something you really need to do, just to start trying investing.

21:52 Emily: That’s interesting. I hadn’t heard about that model before. And even Wells Fargo’s actions that you just mentioned — I know that they’re sort of blacklisted because of their like consumer protection fails, but I didn’t think before about the way that they’re using just the cash you have with them at any point. I’ll have to take a look at my bank and see how they’re ranking on this metric.

Commercial

22:21 Emily:

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

Socially Responsible Investing

23:24 Emily: Okay, great. So you thought about where your cash is. I know we also wanted to talk a bit about investing, about what’s called socially responsible investing or SRI. This is something that you’re learning about, that I’m learning about right now, so can you start making a couple of comments about that?

23:41 Jewel: My understanding is that there’s a spectrum. Maybe it’s with typical investing group like Fidelity or Vanguard and they just have options that are more socially minded and you can pick those options as well, but it’s still focused on growing your money. And then —

23:59 Emily: Oh, we should say more generally that socially responsible investing is not just about these environmental causes. It could be about like social justice or working conditions or the sort of sin areas, like tobacco and firearms and those kinds of areas. Depending on your exact social preferences, you can make different choices within these groups. But continue, I just wanted to say that SRIs they cover more categories than we’re talking about today. But yeah, go on.

24:31 Jewel: Yeah, kind of this overall ethical minded. Like “Is what I’m investing in doing harm to other people that I’m not necessarily seeing every day? Is there harm or sketchy things being done out in the world with where I’m investing my money?” And that empowerment say, “no, l want my money to be supporting the things that do good in the world and not the things that are doing harm.” And that’s bigger or more encompassing than just environment or carbon emissions. It’s about how the people are treated as well. There’s someone more typical — I guess I don’t know if that’s more typical options, like through Fidelity or Vanguard. They’re big investing options. But then there’s kind of the filter out options since that’s what I have, where it’s still performing pretty well.

Jewel: Through Aspiration, they have these pretty accessible investing options. The deposit you have to make is pretty low, they have where you can set your own fee. I think for someone starting out in investing it’s something accessible, and it’s also passive, like you’re not having to pick out each stock that you want to invest in. It’s a diversified portfolio already, but they do have, I think I was looking at it, Amazon and Facebook are part of their portfolio. Some people might think that those companies are a little sketchy, but then what they do have filtered out are anything with fossil fuels and gun manufacturing and some of these other big sin stocks, as you had mentioned before. And then with socially responsible investing, there is the option to pick out the specifics stocks, but then it’s not passive anymore, and that’s something that I don’t have any experience with and it’s a little like out of my realm at this stage in my life that I would look into.

26:38 Emily: Yeah. Long time listeners definitely know that I teach the strategy of passive investing versus active investing. And so when we’re talking about getting into the socially responsible realm, it is a bit more active, because you’ve decided, you the consumer, and also the person running the fund or whatever, have to look into, okay, it’s not just a strict definition on what are the biggest companies in the US, it’s more like, okay, we have some criteria that we’re evaluating these companies on and some are not going to make the cut. So it’s a little bit more active in that sense, but it can still be a fairly passive approach if you go with a managed fund, because their criteria can be rather fixed.

Emily: And again, they’re not trying to market time and they’re not like picking and choosing necessarily individual companies that are in or out based on whims. It’s all based on sort of an investing plan that’s been laid out in advance. So it can still be a fairly passive strategy, in terms of the important aspects of passive investing, like being well-diversified and not trying to market time and so forth. It’s a little bit more active than like classic passive investing strategies, but still fairly passive overall, or at least it can be. And really I think that it’s so difficult as an individual to do all the research that is necessary to pick individual stocks when you’re trying to evaluate them on these metrics that we’re talking about, that SRIs care about. So I do think it’s a really good idea to go in with a larger fund where there’s a professional, a set of professionals doing that kind of research for you. And as long as you are selective about which fund you go into and make sure that it matches up with your values, then you should be good to go and it’ll be fairly passive on your end.

28:18 Jewel: Yeah, and I’ve been trying to think in terms of like, I really appreciate that Aspiration just has a whole values model behind what they’re doing, as opposed to just being a bank that’s all about the money, no matter who or where is getting hurt, or just what’s good for business.I feel like it’s part of that system change. Let’s have institutions that are actually accountable, and that care about the well-being of communities instead of institutions that are about the bottom line with profit.

28:57 Emily: Before we started recording this episode, I sent you another podcast episode that I had listened to from “How to Money,” which is another great personal finance podcast that I’d definitely recommend. Episode 97, “Socially Responsible Investing” is where they went over this model that I was really learning about for the first time, that there are gradations within social responsible investing. And I think you’ve already covered two of them — what’s called ESG, environmental, social and governance, and then also SRI, socially responsible investing. Those are more about…They’re pretty similar to like your classic like mutual fund where it is largely driven by what’s going to be best in terms of like the profit and bottom line for the investor, with differing degrees of sensitivity towards these social issues that you might care about. And then the final category was impact investing where the goal of impact investing is not necessarily get a great return, although maybe that will happen, but the goal is really to influence the world through with the companies that you invest in. The profit thing is secondary to the mission. Do you do any impact investing at this point?

30:07 Jewel: No. It’s a little out of my realm, as someone who’s at the grad student stage, where I’m just trying to actually invest instead of not investing in. I could bring up here that if you go into the real job that offers the 401k, that’s a great plan and you need to do it, but I am trying to take this time in my life where I don’t have that option, where I don’t have employer match, I don’t have the 401k option and it opens me up to try other investing options. I’m trying to look at it that way, but still with that passive investing, where I can just pick a managed fund and make contributions to it. That impact investing is interesting and I don’t know if I would manage to get there in the future, because you have to really pay attention and do research.

31:06 Emily: Well I think there could still be impact investing funds that you go into. It’s just that they’re going to be composed differently than like the SRI or the ESG types of funds. But I totally agree with you, I think that’s an amazing point that when you have an employer and you’re being provided a 401k or 403b, especially if there’s a match involved, you really do need to use that in terms of your own personal finances. That is the best place for your retirement money to be. But when you have an IRA, either because you don’t currently have access to a 401k, or you haven’t in the past, but any IRA money that you have is completely self-directed. So if you want to invest inside SRIs with your IRA money and do whatever is offered to you through your 401k, that’s a really good balance that you can strike as an individual. And as graduate students, postdocs, we start out probably only having access to an IRA. So the core and the part of your investments that are growing the most over time because you started them the earliest, those are the ones where you can have like the most discretion over where they go. And every time you leave a job, you close out your 401k or 403b, you can roll that money into your IRA and still have that total discretion over how it’s invested. I really love that you made that point.

Collective Action

32:15 Emily: We’ve kind of moved from talking about individual actions and diet and transportation and so forth to now we’re talking about investing, which is something you can do as an individual, but you’re really banding together with other individuals when you go into these funds and you choose SRIs over conventional investments. What are some other things that we can do as individuals but that is joining together with other people for this collective action around climate change?

32:40 Jewel: With collective action, I think the understanding there is that there are some decisions made at the collective level with the idea that they’re accountable to you as an individual. We have voted people in that should be accountable to us as voters or there are people working on behalf of the community that should be accountable to the community members. Whether it’s elected officials or a board of trustees at university or at another institution that you are associated with, those people are making the decisions on behalf of everyone else, but they should be accountable to you and you have power in holding them accountable. That’s where you as an individual have the chance to use your voice and to pay attention.

Jewel: Maybe starting with, since we were talking about investing, there’s also the question with universities and where they have their investments and their endowments. If you’re a PhD, you have an association within a university, whether you’re currently there or you’re an alumni and you have power in influencing how the university is using their money. Especially I think when you’re an alumni, when you can say, I’m not going to donate to you. Or you can contact the university, or be part of a movement. I think people are maybe a little quick to discount the power that you have as an individual in these collective action movements. Just being a body that’s part of this protest really makes an impression on the people who are making the decisions. The people we’ve elected like can’t ignore you when you are physically sitting in their office or physically outside the building and you’re part of like a mass group of people. Paying attention to those and joining anyone you can and just even voicing support and talking about it amongst your coworkers and your family is an important thing. If you have the right to vote, where you are able to use your vote, in the US, paying attention to what kind of plans the candidates have and how firm they are in their belief and voting for those candidates and then not stopping at voting. Actually realizing that you have power as a constituent to go and meet with them and join as a group to go meet with them.

Jewel: I mentioned being part of the Sunrise Movement action in December. That started with us going to our representatives office. I went with a group of people who are Northern Virginians to representative Tom Steyer’s office and we talked with the staff there. Then about a month later we got an email that our representative had changed his attitude towards the green new deal because of what we had come and said to him. You can all see more immediate change and impact just by like stepping up a little and using your voice and being part of movements. But you could also look in your communities and see what kind of like actions are happening there and any time that you can like hold systems accountable or change systems and think about how can your community be more resilient. I think it’s part of that power that is a little under utilized by people in their 20s. It’s definitely growing. And that’s really exciting to me but I think we could use more people. We could always use more people at least paying attention.

36:34 Emily: I like what you brought up there and it goes back to what we said near the beginning of the episode of like you as an individual can be part of groups at different levels. You’re a voter and you have representatives at both the national and also the state and the local levels and you vote for the people that you want to be in office. But then also once they’re in office, you still have influence with them, to some degree, over the decisions that they’re making once in office. They’re still supposed to be representing you. And then not only are you a voter, but you’re also a member of an academic community with your university, maybe multiple different universities. And then you also are a person who lives in your community and like you, you’re using your identity in terms of what age you are, to be affiliated with one movement. And also like you’re a scientist, you’re affiliated with another movement. I think we can all think about the various facets of our identity, and where we live and so forth, and the different groups that intersects with, and to see, as you were just saying, sort of see what’s going on in our own communities at these various levels and start participating as you feel comfortable, or as you see there’s something to participate in to make your voice heard. I really appreciate that. It’s not something I’ve been involved with personally to this point, but I’m definitely now going to be looking for more of those opportunities.

37:50 Jewel: I think just following your representative on social media or signing up for their email is really enlightening and just like a way to see what are they actually saying about these issues or what kind of bills are they introducing? That’s a really simple way that raises your awareness by a lot and shows you the opportunities to go to a town hall or to call them up. That’s one really simple thing.

38:18 Emily: The larger point around a lot of the discussion we’ve had today is you can evaluate where you are now and what you’ve been doing and you don’t have to keep doing the same thing. You don’t have to give into inertia of “well, I’ve always eaten this way” or “I’ve always lived in this place” or “I’ve always kept my money here.” Now that you are aware, if you weren’t already, that these various different areas impact how sustainable your lifestyle is or where you’re putting your money and what it’s doing in the world, now that you have a little bit heightened awareness about that, you can reconsider and make changes where you’re able to.

38:52 Emily: Jewel, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. This is a real treat for me.

38:57 Jewel: Yeah. Thank you Emily.

Outtro

38:59 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPphDs.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple podcast, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media or with your PhD peers. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars covered the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and taxes. Four, subscribe to my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode, and remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.