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Money Is a Good Enough Reason to Leave Academia

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Gabrielle Filip-Crawford, the founder of the peer support network Recovering Academics. Gabrielle left her tenure-track position after discovering she was vastly underpaid with almost no room for salary growth even after promotion. Gabrielle shares the common financial questions and mindsets that she sees within the Recovering Academics community, such as not understanding what different careers pay and feeling guilty for needing to earn more money. Gabrielle and Emily discuss how graduate students and postdocs can improve their money mindsets prior to pursuing academic or non-academic positions post-training.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Money Is a Good Enough Reason to Leave Academia

Teaser

Gabrielle (00:00): That was kind of my mindset going from grad school to postdoc to faculty position. Each one paid more than the last. And so that faculty role that didn’t pay enough for me to really live on was the most I’d made up to that point. And it didn’t occur to me for a ridiculously long time. That didn’t mean it was a good salary just because it was more than my postdoc.

Introduction

Emily (00:34): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (01:03): This is Season 22, Episode 5, and today my guest is Dr. Gabrielle Filip-Crawford, the founder of the peer support network Recovering Academics. Gabrielle left her tenure-track position after discovering she was vastly underpaid with almost no room for salary growth even after promotion. Gabrielle shares the common financial questions and mindsets that she sees within the Recovering Academics community, such as not understanding what different careers pay and feeling guilty for needing to earn more money. Gabrielle and I discuss how graduate students and postdocs can improve their money mindsets prior to pursuing academic or non-academic positions post-training.

Emily (01:44): I’m delighted to share that I will join the Recovering Academics weekly call on Tuesday, November 18, 2025 for a 60-minute Q&A call. If that group is a good fit for you and you’d like to join in time for that Q&A, get in touch with Gabrielle via LinkedIn or [email protected]. If you’ve been enjoying this podcast and want to see it continue, would you please help spread the word? Take a minute to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, text a recent episode that you enjoyed to a friend, or give it a shout-out on social media. Any of those actions helps me to grow Personal Finance for PhDs and continue finding amazing guests for the interviews. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s22e5/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Gabrielle Filip-Crawford.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:49): I’m delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Gabrielle Filip-Crawford, who is the co-founder of Next Draft LLC, and the founder of the Peer Support Group, Recovering Academics. And Gabrielle is a former academic, and we’re gonna be talking a lot about that journey as well as the journeys that she’s observed among others. And Gabrielle and I met actually at the graduate career consortium annual meeting that happened last June. We’re recording this interview in September 2025, and we were both sponsors of the conference. And so of course, I love to meet the other sponsors and get to know how they support the academic community as well. And so we decided this was worth a whole podcast interview. So Gabrielle, welcome to the podcast, and will you please introduce yourself further for the audience?

Gabrielle (03:32): Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. It is a pleasure to be here and chat with you. Um, so I am, uh, as you said, co-founder of Next Draft LLC. My background is in social psychology, graduated with my PhD in 2015, and I went straight into academia, so I was a postdoc for a year and then, uh, on the tenure track at a liberal arts college for six years after that. And I ended up transitioning out of, uh, my academic position and moving into the world of program evaluation and applied policy research. And that’s what I’ve been doing for the last few years now.

Emily (04:12): Tell us more about the decision to leave your tenure track job, because I understand that finances played a heavy role in that.

Gabrielle (04:20): They definitely did. So I think one of the things that kind of caught me up around finances is nobody ever really talked to me about what normal people earn <laugh>. Um, I have a lot of friends who work in the tech industry, work for Google, Microsoft, Facebook, who make just massive amounts of money, and I didn’t wanna work in big tech. And so I thought, well, I’m just never gonna earn a salary like that, and what I’m earning is normal. And I earned 56,000 as a tenure track professor with PhD, and nobody really pointed out the discrepancy between that and what PhDs were earning outside of academia and outside of tech. And there were kind of two financial nails in the coffin to my decision to leave. One was, uh, the APA, the American Psychological Association published salary data, and they published the mean salary for people with a bachelor’s in psychology, a master’s in psychology, and a PhD in psychology. And I was right there at the average salary for a bachelor’s. And then I found out that a colleague who had been my department chair was tenured, had been there for more than a decade, was making 60,000. Um, and I just saw this future of, man, I’m gonna be here for my whole career and I’m gonna be lucky if by the time I retire I hit 70,000 a year. And it just wasn’t feasible. I have a family, I have a child, and, um, childcare costs, school costs, uh, everything’s pretty expensive and just not doable on a salary like that.

Feeling Financially Dissatisfied in Academia

Emily (06:12): Now, it would be one thing if you saw that you were under earning compared to what you could potentially earn elsewhere, but you were okay with it, right? The finances still worked in your own personal life. We’re not saying everybody needs to make as much money as they possibly can in their field, but as you were getting to at the end of your answer, like it was not personally satisfying to you to stay at that level and you could see the future. Like it wasn’t gonna, you know, sometimes professors can expect decent leaps up in salary as they go through the, the, you know, professor process with their promotions, but that apparently was not the case for you. So can you tell me a little bit more about like the financial maybe dissatisfaction that you had? Not just the comparison, but for yourself?

Gabrielle (06:54): Yeah, definitely. I think that we hear a lot in academia about, you know, we’re not being, we’re not in it for the money, right? It’s not about the money. And so I think there was sort of a internal unwillingness to look at that for a long time and feeling like almost guilty for considering money. Like it shouldn’t be a career consideration. I am here, I am able to do this amazing job that so many people want, and I’m unhappy with it for a material reason, which felt, um, felt like it wasn’t okay to admit. And, um, but that just bumped up against financial reality, right? Of, of trying to pay childcare costs. And I don’t live, I am, I’m in Minnesota, I’m in the Twin Cities. It’s not a super high cost of living, but it’s also not a super low cost of living. Um, and I need to be able to make ends meet. I need to be able to meet the needs of my family. And when I started really thinking about it, it was clear to me that, you know, it was like, money can’t buy happiness, right? But there’s like, but it can <laugh> be a really big factor. It can pay for, it can be the difference between, you know, your car breaks down and it’s a huge crisis for the family for months and causes a massive amount of stress. Or you go to the mechanic and you get car fixed and you move on with your life and it’s okay and you can afford what you need to afford to make your life work. So I think that that was kind of eye-opening when I kinda gave myself permission to start really thinking about it and, and opening up that question of, well, what do I actually need? And how can I get that?

Recovering Academics Peer Support Group

Emily (08:50): Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that more detail in your perspective on this, because I’m sure it’s really valuable for you to say, I was in this mindset, this is what we are told in academia, and I had to really reexamine that. Um, and that gets me to like, let’s talk more about this peer support group of recovering academics ’cause it sure, like this conversation that we’re having right now is one of many types of conversations you have in that group. So can you tell us more about recovering academics?

Gabrielle (09:18): Sure. So when I was looking to leave my position, there were several of us from my university who were job hunting at the same time, and we kinda ended up finding each other. And, uh, we started meeting every week. And it just started out as, you know, our little internal group within our university supporting each other through the job application process, talking about the challenges. And through that it became clear that there were a lot of people in the same position we were of, we, we landed the coveted tenure track jobs. Some of us had tenure and, um, for a variety of reasons that just wasn’t, it didn’t fit with what we needed in our lives anymore. And so I put a call out on LinkedIn just trying to reach out and see if there were other folks in that same position. A bunch of people responded. We held a Zoom meeting with maybe a dozen people that first time. Um, another member of the group dubbed us recovering academics and the name stuck. And, um, what we did is built a Slack community and, uh, we meet weekly on Zoom, and we have done so now for more than three years. And the group grows almost weekly. Uh, word of mouth, generally, we don’t have, uh, a website for the group. We are a very private group because leaving academia can be a really sensitive process for a lot of people. And we don’t want, we don’t want anyone to feel unsafe seeking out help and support. Um, originally the goal was to kind of bring together people leaving tenure track or tenured roles, and almost immediately we expanded beyond that. So we have people leaving from every career stage you can think of from every type of institution. Uh, we have academic staff including, um, like student affairs staff, uh, academic librarians. Um, it’s a really wide variety of people. It’s cross disciplinary. Uh, there are people from nursing, engineering, chemistry, English, um, media studies, ethnomusicology, psychology. We’re kind of across the board. And a big value of the group is breaking through a lot of the isolation that happens when people think about leaving academia and providing a safe place for people to ask questions and to bring up things like salary and, um, and financial struggles and all of this, um, all of the issues around money that get wrapped up in this process,

Emily (12:03): I can so see the value of that kind of group. Um, I don’t, I don’t wanna call academia a cult, but like <laugh>, you’re, you’re like, not, okay, I’m reading a book right now. <laugh>, it’s science fiction. It’s a dystopian, you know, but like, if you speak out like you, if you even question their like society, you’re immediately killed like death penalty now. Okay. Academia is not that extreme, but there are consequences for you to be very open about potentially leaving in a way that other kinds of industries are not that way. Um, and so I, I’m definitely hearing like that value of privacy and being able to ask those questions in that setting that you. Could not ask in your workplace, or you might not even be able to ask among your peers at other institutions because what if you decide to stay and they knew you had doubts. You know, like, um, so I, I see that now given that this is so, such a, um, a closely held group and you don’t have a website. How do people find out how to join? Because I’m sure somebody listening is like, I need this in my life right now, <laugh>.

Gabrielle (13:04): Yeah, absolutely. So, um, so despite being a very, very private group, we have over 480 members now. So people find us, um, generally people find us either through me on LinkedIn, people are more than welcome to message me or connect with me on LinkedIn. Um, and then I will share information about the group. And I do also wanna be clear that this is a free group that no one pays to attend this. Money’s not a part of that picture. Um, because I couldn’t afford <laugh> coaching resources when I was leaving. And I know a lot of us are in the same boat if we’re leaving for financial reasons or if that’s a contributing factor, then we probably can’t spend thousands on a coaching program, even if that would be amazing and valuable. Um, so this isn’t a substitute for coaching, but it’s definitely, it’s sort of crowdsourced, um, coaching in a way. Um, so people can reach out to me directly. Um, there are other group members, uh, we get a lot of referrals from other group members as well. Um, but for folks who might not be connected or know that they are connected with members, I’m probably the easiest, um, place to look. And we are hopefully soon gonna set up a, a webpage attached to my business webpage, just so I have a place to direct people more easily.

Common Limiting Beliefs Among Recovering Academics

Emily (14:29): Yeah, that sounds good. So I would like to hear more about, you know, in you sharing your personal story about the decisions leave academia, you brought up, you know, um, the salary comparisons between what you could make with your degree inside versus outside of academia. Um, you brought up like, oh, we’re not supposed to be in this for the money. Um, but I’m wondering if there are any other like, common questions or limiting beliefs or mindsets that you’ve noticed, uh, within the recovering academics community beyond those ones that you’ve already brought up.

Gabrielle (15:02): Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yeah, I think, um, I mean, I think the first thing that strikes me in just hearing how people talk about money in the group is just, um, for such a highly educated group of individuals, we are kind of astoundingly ignorant <laugh> when it comes to financial issues. Um, people don’t have a good sense of what salaries look like and you know, what other people make with the skills that they have. So they have no idea what they should be looking for. They don’t know how to ask for the appropriate salary. They don’t know anything about salary negotiation or anything like that. Um, and one place that also carries over is there’s a lot of people who move into some form of, um, entrepreneurship, uh, or do some level of consulting. And so then there’s also this whole how do you value your skills and how much do you charge and what is appropriate.

Gabrielle (16:11): And then a third bucket is, um, for those of us who move out and do make more money in our new position, what the heck do we do with the additional income that we have and how do we manage that? And that is definitely something that has come up. People don’t know how, what kind of accounts their money should be in. They don’t really know how to manage that. They don’t know how to, um, they’ve never really been able to think about, what if I was able to put this much money into retirement, should I, how do I do that? Do I pay down my debt first? Do I do that? Like, we don’t really know, um, how to, how to manage, um, because it’s a good problem to have. Right? But, um, but definitely still an issue. And I think a lot of us probably are not making the best financial decisions because we just are a little, uh, a little bit at sea with having those decisions to make.

Emily (17:09): Yeah, I can see not only, ’cause I’ve thought before about like the catch up that PhDs at some point when their income does increase, I mean, hopefully it does at some point increase a lot <laugh>, um, what they can do in terms of their financial goals to like, ’cause a lot of ’em feel like they’re behind, whether they leave academia when they’re 30 or 40 or 50 or whatever, a lot of people feel that they’re behind. Now whether that’s true or not depends on who you’re comparing yourself to, but, um, they feel behind. And so I have thought about like, what are those, if, if there’s any special considerations that group should have, um, once, you know, exiting academia. But what you brought up that I think is really interesting is not only is there kind of a, an actual dollars and cents monetary catch up, but there can also be a little bit of a catch up needed just in education around like norms. And like what your goals should be. Um, I I’m even thinking about like benefits, like benefits inside academia can be really different. They actually should be pretty generous in some ways, and they could be quite different when you’re looking at positions in industry or in other sectors. And so just knowing that like, oh, my employer is no longer gonna pay for this, or like, I don’t have a pension, or, you know, these other kinds of questions might come up too. And making that kind of industry shift as well. So, uh, you’re making me wish that I didn’t just specialize in graduate students, postdocs, <laugh>, because I can see that the questions can continue in, in certain environments for a long time afterwards.

Gabrielle (18:35): They definitely can. And I also think that the more advanced someone is in their career, um, the more awkward they feel about asking the questions, they feel like they should know, I’m 45 years old, I’m leaving this career that I’ve been in for decades, and I should know how retirement works. I should know how I should be investing my money. I should know what kind of savings account I need. And so people are embarrassed to, to ask these questions.

Emily (19:07): One of the reasons that I do specialize in the way that I do, um, is because I think that the vast majority of graduate students and postdocs, as you were saying earlier, like coaching is expensive. At the career coaching option. Yes. You might spend thousands of dollars on, if you’re working with an individual or you could buy a course that’ll be, you know, less expensive. Um, what I perceive is that, like, I specialize where I do because, um, these people have no ability to do anything, a course a coach, anything. But the good thing is that once you get that higher salary, like once you can actually make the transition, whether that’s within academia or, or leaving academia. Um, you do have the money once a transition is made to hire professionals. But it can still be intimidating psychologically, like what you just said. Like, okay, I could afford to hire professional, but like, are they gonna help me with my, like, really basic questions that I feel embarrassed to even ask? So I can see why that would be a barrier as well.

Gabrielle (20:06): Yeah. And not even necessarily knowing what kind of professional you need. There are a lot of different, um, a lot of different players in the financial industry. And so it’s, do I need a financial advisor? Do I, how much money do I need to have to make it make sense? To hire someone who’s like to manage things versus just consult with somebody on a one-off basis, um, versus just hire somebody to do taxes. There, there’s a lot of, um, options and, and it’s not always clear what makes sense to invest in.

Emily (20:41): Hmm. And since we’re in this environment right now, I’ll just go ahead. And let people know all the options that you just said are available. So like, you don’t need a million dollars, you don’t need half a million dollars to hand off to an investment advisor to manage for you. Yes, you could do that if you had that kind of money. But as you said, there are so many more people in the last like 10 years offering more of a fee for service model. Um, that’s more about paying someone for their time rather than paying someone to manage investments for you. So you can pay someone for a package. Like it might even be as low as a thousand dollars, maybe a few thousand dollars, um, for okay, you create a plan for me and like it’s on me, the client to execute it. Like that’s not the advisor’s responsibility ’cause they’re just working with you for a limited period of time. But they can answer those questions. And I, I actually, my perception of the industry is that people who have that model of like, you’re just paying for their time, you know, you might work together once, twice or maybe over the course of a year, there’s different models, they’re much more willing to answer those kinds of, like, I feel like I should know this already, but can you just tell me like, what is a 401k like, you know, um. How much should I be, you know, prioritizing my retirement versus my kids’ college? You know, tho- those kinds of questions are, they’re much more open to that than someone who’s strictly focused on managing investments. They might not answer a question for you, like, should I pay off my mortgage faster? You know, they, that might be outside their sort of area of operation, but people who you’re just paying for their time should use that time, however you the client want to use it, if that makes sense. So I think whatever sense, yeah, whatever your level of wealth, whatever your income, you should be able to find someone at that level to help you. Um. But again, it’s getting over the, can I even reach out for help <laugh> part of it?

Commercial

Emily (22:28): Emily here for a brief interlude! I’m hard at work behind the scenes updating my suite of tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2025. These educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2025 tax season starting in January 2026, I’m offering live and pre-recorded workshops for US citizen/resident graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they host one or more of these workshops for you and your peers? I’d love to receive a warm introduction to a potential sponsor this fall so we can hit the ground running in January serving those early bird filers. You can find more information about hosting these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Now back to our interview.

The Problem With Academia’s “Not in It for the Money” Mindset

Emily (23:46): Do you have anything else you wanna add to, you know, the common like questions or, or like mindsets that you’ve seen within the group, you know, relating to finances?

Gabrielle (23:55): Yeah, I mean, I do wanna mention again that the, that mindset of we don’t, um, we’re not in it for the money because that is transitioning out of academia involves like a lot of psychological transitions, a lot of identity shifts. And that is a really central one. And it’s just so difficult for people. And the number of people who, when they introduce themselves, we have an intro channel on our slack, and their written introduction of themselves includes essentially some sort of apology for pay being part of their decision making process to, to us, to other people who are in the same boat. Like there’s nobody from the outside looking at this and there’s still this, this, um, guilt that they had to consider something as ordinary as money <laugh> in their, in their, you know, making decisions about their life. So that shows up on a very regular basis of just this feeling of like, there, there needs to be some higher calling reason why I’m changing careers. I can’t just say, you know what, this isn’t enough money for my family to live on and I need to earn more <laugh>. So we try to reassure people that’s enough. If you need that, you need that.

Emily (25:19): Absolutely. What an indictment of academia, right? That they’ve, we’ve been brainwashed by the culture of these institutions that I mean, it’s a racket, honestly, <laugh> like make people grateful for the job that they have so that the pay doesn’t matter, even if the pay is so low that they can’t reasonably afford to live in the city where the institution is located, you know? Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. I’m so glad that you all are, are doing that work, um, in that moment for those people. Like yeah, it can be enough. And not to say that you can’t find mission driven work elsewhere that is still reasonably compensated. Like just Absolutely. It’s because of that, that tie to like the tenure track because they say it’s a one way street and you know, all that kind of stuff. And it’s not true. Like yeah, it’s true sometimes, but like, it doesn’t have to be true for everybody. Anyway. Okay. Thank you so much for bringing that up again. ’cause it is so important. So like same message going out to my audience. Like, I mean, okay. They’re probably already listening to this podcast. They probably understand that money is a factor <laugh> in like living a good life. Um, and if it gets, if the pay is low enough, it might be the only factor telling you. Like, it’s, it’s time to move on from this position or this type of work. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Yeah.

Developing a Healthy Relationship With Your Salary

Emily (26:36): So let’s pull back a little bit from like the people that you usually work with of these, you know, academics or people who work in academia, um, considering a transition out, pull it back to my more typical audience of prospective graduate students, current graduate students, postdocs, people who are still, um, in the academic system, and maybe they’ll stay long term or maybe they won’t. But they’re earlier in their careers. So how can this audience of people start to work on their money mindset so they can have a healthy relationship with their careers and with their earnings wherever they end up? What are your thoughts about that?

Gabrielle (27:13): Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a great question. And what I encourage grad students to do is start doing informational interviews as early on as they can. So talk to people in careers they think they might be interested in, talk to alumni of their program who’ve either are in academia or aren’t. Um, either way, I, I have no skin in the game of whether people stay in academia or leave. I want people to pursue careers that are a good fit for them. And that could be either. Um, so talk to people and ask about money. People are, are generally have the idea that it’s taboo to talk about much more than the reality is that it’s a taboo. People generally are okay answering money, answering money questions, and you don’t have to say like, how much do you make? Um, what I asked people when I was doing informational interviews was, um, how, how, what’s a typical salary for this kind of role? Or, you know, here’s the experience that I have, what’s a reasonable starting salary for me to aim for? Um, so it’s not like you have to come out and just be like, what’d you earn last year? Um, which might feel awkward to ask a stranger. So I would say talking to people and getting kind of just a baseline idea of what, uh, of what people make. And then we tend to approach if, if people are aiming for an academic career, they tend to approach it with this mindset of not what do I need in order to thrive in my life and have all of my needs met, but, um, like, what can I stand to put up with in order to win this prize of having a tenure track position? So I encourage people to start from thinking about their needs and their values. So for example, if somebody values their family and it’s important to them to be near family, where does family live? How much money do you need to earn to live near family? Then that is a filter in your job search process, A baseline filter. You’re not gonna look at jobs that earn less than that because you can’t meet your need of living near your family if you don’t earn at least that amount. Um, so yeah, so I encourage people to, to start not from this sort of almost this end point of what job do I wanna end up in, but what do I want my life to look like? And finances is a big part of that because you need to earn enough to live where you wanna live and to have everything in your life that you want to have in your life travel’s important. You need to think about, well, how much do I need to budget for that? How much am I gonna need to earn to be able to budget that?

Emily (30:06): Yeah, it’s been a minute since I brought up Cal Newport on the podcast. I know I’ve done that a lot in the past, but he has this term that he uses, I believe it’s lifestyle centric career design. And so that’s kind of the, what you just mentioned is like the start of lifestyle centered career design. And I think that even someone who has just finished their PhD, Cal Newport uses a term called career capital. The more career capital you’ve built up, the more you can design your career to fit the lifestyle that you desire. But even someone who’s just finished their PhD has a degree of career capital. It’s not as much as they’ll have five or 10 years later, but they have some <laugh>, um and so that’s a perfect starting point for doing exactly the exercise you just mentioned of like, let’s just baseline, what do I need geographically? Maybe not necessarily a specific geography, but like type of place that I want to live. Um, you can think about your lifestyle too in there. Actually I did an interview, it was published, um, I put it out at the beginning of season, um, 22 of the podcast with, um, Dr. Kate Sleeth from EduKatedSTEM. And we talked about figuring out a minimum salary number in a certain location, kind of what you were just talking about. But one of the elements we added there that I wanna bring to this conversation is don’t just take like your current postdoc salary or you know, wherever, whatever stage you’re at, and then like translate that to a different city. Really think about what you need to add on to that salary to make your life, um, enjoyable. And so of course you’ll have some extra responsibilities of taxes and maybe your student loan payments. Those will be added on as like a baseline. But beyond that, do you wanna take some vacations? Do you wanna buy a home? Do you want to just spend more on entertainment than you have been the last, you know, x many years, um so really think about like intentionally what you want to add into your life when you’re thinking about those minimum requirements of the next job. And I also wanna go back to your first point about informational interviewing, which I think is so powerful. And actually, even if you were staying in academia, I feel like you should still do informational interviews because your one observation at your one institution or your one pi or whatever is not, you know, everything that happens in academia. And I had this, um, I did a very short term fellowship after I finished my PhD in science policy. And it was very intentional. Like it gave us work experience, but there was also a set aside time for like professional development, like a certain number of hours per week we were supposed to spend on that. And part of that professional development was we had to a, conduct a minimum number of inter- informational interviews like it, you know, with other people in science policy. And it was so valuable. And I wasn’t even asking that much about salary and these kinds of things that you’re talking about. Which are very important. But it gave me a much better idea that, oh, actually I didn’t want to stay in science policy and I wanted to pursue this business that I was, you know, starting at that point personal finance for a PhDs. And so it’s such a valuable process and it, and going through that policy fellowship gave me permission to do it. It was like, oh, it’s a requirement. I can just tell people like, I’m doing this fellowship and it’s a requirement that I interview you, you know, or at least that ask, I ask you for an interview. Um, and so it gives you like that permission. So I just wanna tell everyone listening like, you’re required, you’re required to conduct five, 10 informational interviews in these career fields that you want to go into. I think it’s absolutely necessary before you start applying for jobs.

Gabrielle (33:19): Yeah, I completely agree. And my experience has been particularly in reaching out to PhDs that they, at worst, they’re too busy to talk, they’re never offended that you’ve reached out. They’re usually very happy to give their time and, and meet with you. So I think people are very nervous about reaching out to strangers, but folks who’ve left academia are really looking for ways to give back and are generally on board <laugh> with meeting with grad students, postdocs, other faculty looking to transition. There’s a lot of, um, generosity in the community. And I also wanted to come back to one thing that you said, which is one of, I think people overlook the importance of learning what you don’t want to do. Um, and that is incredibly valuable with, with, um, internship experiences, with informational interviews, trying things and finding out it’s not a good fit is fantastic. You’ve, you’ve ruled out a whole area, you don’t have to think about that. Um, you’re narrowing in on what, what you do want. I tend to conduct any job search kind of, I never know what fields exist out there and I don’t wanna accidentally rule things out that might be a good fit. So I tend to rule out the things I know I don’t wanna do and look at whatever is left <laugh>.

Emily (34:40): You know, you just brought up I think another strategy for, um, you know, improving your money mindset even while you’re inside academia, which is going beyond that informational interviewing and going to internship, which you just mentioned. Or any type, any type of work experience. It could be paid work, it could be volunteer work, but anything that exposes you to other workplaces and other missions and other environments and other people like so valuable while you’re a graduate student or postdoc in helping you clarify, as you were saying, what you do, what you don’t want to do going forward. And again, if you’re asking those financially pointed questions like you mentioned, what, what would you suggest as a starting salary? You know, I should ask for a starting salary for, you know, this type of work, um, that can break you out. Because one of the big, big issues with PhDs is that we’ve, we’ve the process of getting that education and the training takes so long that we become anchored at this like stipend or like this postdoc salary, like level of income. And so you’re going into that next position like, oh, well if I just make like a little more, that would be great. Instead of like, I need to realistically understand what this market pays and what I, I can ask for keeping in mind what we talked about earlier about like discovering your own minimum requirements as well and what, what fields are gonna fit with that and what fields maybe aren’t, you know?

Gabrielle (35:57): Yeah, absolutely. That was kind of my mindset going from grad school to postdoc to faculty position. Each one paid more than the last. And so that faculty role that didn’t pay enough for me to really live on was the most I’d made up to that point. And it didn’t occur to me for a ridiculously long time. That <laugh> that didn’t mean it was a good salary just because it was more than my postdoc.

Emily (36:25): I know it’s because we forget, like when you enter graduate school again, it might, it might be your first job, you know, your first full-time position. And like, you again, become anchored at those levels. And unless you’re talking to your peers, you know, maybe who you went to college with who didn’t take that track, unless you’re talking with them, you may forget that you’re vastly underpaid as a graduate student. Yeah. Pretty well underpaid as a postdoc as well. And then depending on what you go into afterwards, still could be underpaid even as a full-time big girl job, you know, academic <laugh>, um, for sure.

Emily (36:56): Okay. Any other strategies that you can think of to, you know, for those trainees just to be working on their money mindsets? 

Gabrielle (37:03): I mean, I think any, any kind of opportunity to educate yourself on what we were talking about earlier of like what people don’t know, right? Of the basics of just what, how do retirement accounts work, <laugh>, where should I prioritize my savings? How do you approach paying down debt? Just any kind of education that they can gain around that. It’s easy to write that off because you’re stuck in this low salary stipend situation. And, um, it’s like, well, that doesn’t apply to me. I, I barely have money for groceries, much less investing, but it is still, you won’t always be there. And so the more kind of prep you can do ahead of time, so you’re not very confused when you do eventually make more money, um, I think is really valuable.

Emily (37:53): I totally agree. And like also you just advertised for my podcast, so like, hello listener, if this is your first time listening to this podcast, like please subscribe, keep here because we talk about all this stuff and like you just said, like maybe it’s not actionable right now, but it could be in just next year, three years from now. And you wanna be prepared for that. But I would say don’t, just don’t just listen to my podcast. Maybe if you’re interested in this topic, find a few other, uh, long distance mentors so to speak, you know, gurus or educators that you can listen to. Maybe it’s some other podcasts or maybe it’s, you know, YouTube creators or books that you wanna read. Like there’s so much excellent financial education material out there. Um, yeah. None of it’s tailored for, you know, graduate students, students in postdocs except for mine. But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from it and learn from lots of different people. So like, create like a panel in your mind, maybe there’s like five different people who you wanna listen to, to learn from about this topic because as you said, it will become relevant and actionable like before you know it.

Gabrielle (38:51): Yes.

The Recovering Academics Community and Next Draft LLC

Emily (38:52): Wrapping up here, um, you mentioned how um, people can get access to the recovering academics community. Which is through you on LinkedIn. So great place to look for you. Any other places that people can go to follow up with you about anything we’ve talked about today?

Gabrielle (39:06): The group has a, an email address so folks can reach out to me that way too. It’s [email protected]. So anyone can send an email that way. And, um, and I will get back to you with more information on the group. Um, and once we do have websites set up, I can share that with you if you wanna, um, add the link with the description of this, of this episode or anything.

Emily (39:32): Do you wanna tell us more about Next Draft LLC?

Gabrielle (39:35): Sure. Yeah. So one of the things that came out of Recovering Academics was, uh, you know, years of working with a lot of people leaving mid-career who were, uh, essentially having career existential crises and had no idea what else they could do and we’re, you know, mid forties associate professors who were panicking. So part of the idea for next draft, um, came from the idea of, of stepping in earlier in the pipeline. Again, we don’t, we aren’t pushing people to leave academia or to stay. The idea is to provide grad students with the tools that they need to make informed values-based decisions about the career paths that they want to explore so that they can, uh, it kind of building on what we were talking about before, right? Make sure that they are making decisions that keep their actual needs in mind and their deal breakers in mind, and that they’re not just, um, pursuing an academic role at all costs because it’s the only thing that they know that they can do. And this is especially relevant for folks in the humanities and social sciences where the connections between academia, uh, their academic research and industry are, um, not always as clear. So, uh, we do workshops and so our, uh, website is nextdraftllc.com. Um, we do, uh, workshops that individuals can sign up for to work on, um, various aspects of the job search process. We also work with universities to offer those workshops. And we are planning in January to launch a small group mentoring program where people can, uh, get support and thinking through their job search process from somebody who, uh, from their same discipline who has kind of been through the transition themselves. And the mentors that we’re working with have all worked in faculty roles and in non-academic roles. I can kind of speak to both and support grad students who are thinking about whether or not to make that transition.

Emily (41:44): Incredible. Okay. Nextdraftllc.com. Is that right?

Gabrielle (41:47): That’s right.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (41:48): Beautiful. Okay. Last question that I end on with all of my guests. Um, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on already in the interview, or it could be something completely new.

Gabrielle (42:01): I think we’ve touched on, I think really open communication around money is, is key of just learning about what, what are people earning, what is a reasonable salary? So you have some sense of, of reality to counter that feeling of being stuck in the stipend that you’re making or that mindset of, um, we’re not in it for the money. Um, so I want people to really open up the sources of information that they’re learning from and give themselves permission to think about money and that it is okay to think about we, for better or worse, live in a capitalist society where we all have to earn money to pay our bills, um, and get all of the other things that we actually want in our lives. So it’s okay to think about that and it’s okay for it to be a key piece of decision making. And there’s nothing, you haven’t done anything wrong as an academic to be keeping money in mind.

Emily (43:08): So well said. Thank you Gabrielle, so much for this wonderful interview.

Gabrielle (43:12): Yeah, it was a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Outro

Emily (43:24): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Which Postdocs Get Health Insurance and Retirement Accounts?

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

Links mentioned in the Episode

Which Postdocs Get Health Insurance and Retirement Accounts?

Teaser

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

Introduction

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

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

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

First Encounters with Postdoc Employee/Non-Employee Differential Benefits

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

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

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

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

Postdoc Benefits Examples From the Academic Community

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

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

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

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

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

Emily: For this episode, I spoke with an employee of an organization that issues fellowships who prefers to remain anonymous. She confirmed that sometimes

Anonymous: “We do see that once they’re awarded the fellowship. There is this shift from university employee to like a trainee classification, which is seen on a training grant or if you are awarded an f, you know, you, you suddenly lose your employee status. And unfortunately with that. A lot of times things such as contributing to retirement is no longer on the table. Medical and dental can be compromised in some way, shape or form. And even being able to park on university campus. So we’ve really seen a wide array of employee benefits get stripped away.”

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

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

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

Commercial

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please email me back if you have a relevant example!

Emily”

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

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

Where Are All Postdocs Classified as Employees?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

Emily: Our anonymous contributor shared that she helps her fellows do this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Outro

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

Can You Earn Money from Publishing a Scholarly Book?

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Laura Portwood-Stacer, a developmental editor with Manuscript Works specializing in authors publishing with scholarly presses. Laura has personally published two books with university presses and has a third under contract and has worked with hundreds of other authors. Laura describes why a prospective author would choose a scholarly press over a household-name publisher or self-publishing. Laura and Emily systematically discuss how publishers earn money, how authors earn money (directly and indirectly) from their books, and the costs of publication. While publishing with a scholarly press is primarily a labor of love, Laura gives ranges and examples of how much an author might earn from royalties and an advance, if any, depending on the type of book they publish.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Can You Earn Money from Publishing a Scholarly Book?

Teaser

Laura (00:00): But if you have research that is applicable in industry or policy, or places that have kind of other kinds of funding, you can command more money than you ever would make from the book itself, in speaker’s fees, or consulting fees or things like that. So, you can sort of think of the book as a strategic investment in your reputation and your platform that then would allow you to expand higher goals In other venues.

Introduction

Emily (00:34): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (01:02): This is Season 17, Episode 5, and today my guest is Dr. Laura Portwood-Stacer, a developmental editor with Manuscript Works specializing in authors publishing with scholarly presses. Laura has personally published two books with university presses and has a third under contract and has worked with hundreds of other authors. Laura describes why a prospective author would choose a scholarly press over a household-name publisher or self-publishing. Laura and I systematically discuss how publishers earn money, how authors earn money (directly and indirectly) from their books, and the costs of publication. While publishing with a scholarly press is primarily a labor of love, Laura gives ranges and examples of how much an author might earn from royalties and an advance, if any, depending on the type of book they publish.

Emily (01:53): The tax year 2023 version of my tax return preparation workshop, How to Complete Your PhD Trainee Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!), is now available! This pre-recorded educational workshop explains how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. Whether you are a graduate student, postdoc, or postbac, domestic or international, there is a version of this workshop designed just for you. I do license these workshops to universities, but in the case that yours declines your request for sponsorship, you can purchase the appropriate version as an individual. Go to PFforPhDs.com/taxreturnworkshop/ to read more details and purchase the workshop. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s17e5/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Laura Portwood-Stacer.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:58): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Laura Portwood-Stacer, who’s the owner of Manuscript Works. Laura and I kind of met on Twitter. She was recommended to me by another past podcast guest Dr. Katie Peplin. And Laura is a developmental editor of sorts. And so we’re gonna get into more of that line of work. And actually in preparation for this interview, I read her excellent book, the book proposal book, which is all about people publishing books with scholarly presses. So that is the subject for our interview today. Laura, would you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

Laura (03:30): Yeah, I’m so happy to be here. Um, so yes, my name is Laura Portwood-Stacer. For the past nine years, I have run a company called Manuscript Works, where I help authors, um, navigate the book publishing process, specifically scholarly authors. Um, building on my background as an academic, um, I got a PhD. I published my dissertation as a book. Um, and now I’ve moved on to helping others navigate that process, which can be very anxiety provoking and you know, there’s not a lot of guidance out there, so I’m trying to fill in that gap.

Scholarly Publishing, Trade Publishing, and Self-Publishing

Emily (04:02): Yeah, and so any listeners who want to go down this route, certainly again, I’m recommending the book proposal book. I found it very, very enlightening. Um, but we’re actually gonna be talking more today about the financial side of this because of course this is a personal finance, um, podcast. And because, um, that was left a little bit vague, I think, in your book, so I’m gonna see if you’re willing to share some, uh, more specific numbers or number ranges with us, um, as we’re going through the interview today. Um, so first of all, I just wanna help the listener understand the distinction between what we’re calling a scholarly press and then the publishing industry that they may be more familiar with, and then the self-publishing industry. So can you just tell us a little bit about how someone who thinks they would like to publish a book at some point, how they might know which is the right route for them to go?

Laura (04:47): Yeah, so I’ll say, uh, scholarly publishing is, um, sort of a narrow subset of the larger sort of traditional publishing industry, and it’s really focused on a certain segment of reader and a certain, um, distribution channel. So your readers, if you’re publishing with a scholarly press, your readers are going to be other scholars, um, people who are doing research, who are citing previous research in their own research, who are building on your research to write their own books or their own articles or, um, grants or whatever it is they’re doing. Um, and, and the distribution would be mostly directly to other scholars who might, you know, purchase from a publisher or purchase from an online retailer. Um, and institutional libraries, public libraries, um, uh, places that are sort of invested in furthering scholarly knowledge, right? So the focus is on scholarship, not necessarily on entertainment or, um, you know, personal improvement or the kind of things that you might pick up a book from Barnes and Noble for. Um, it’s really has sort of a professional scholarly bent to it. Um, whereas probably most of the publishers you’ve heard of that are household names that are not university presses. Um, they’re gonna be more focused on commercial books that people are, you know, just gonna wanna spend money on buy as gifts. They’re not necessarily serving that, um, intellectual purpose in the same way. There are some books that cross over from like scholarship to, um, a more broad audience. Um, and we can talk about where those kinds of books get published. Um, uh, but, but yeah, so that’s sort of the distinction between a trade publisher and a scholarly publisher. And a trade publisher, of course, is gonna be mostly selling in bookstore online retailers. They’re focus is not gonna be libraries or universities. Um, and then self-publishing is sort of a totally separate avenue. Um, and you know, I guess the difference there is that the, the distribution is kind of all up to you as as the publish as the writer. So you would need to find your readers. Um, you’re not sort of tapping into that built-in infrastructure of a scholarly publisher or a trade publisher.

Emily (07:19): I see. That makes total sense. And what really, I mean, maybe this is obvious to other people, but what impressed me with reading your book was like, oh, I’m really seeing how much work the publisher is putting into each one of these books that goes out. And of course, the audience that they have in mind, like you were saying earlier, and that is in the self-publishing realm, completely up to the author whether or not you’re going to invest in other people to help improve the work and and so forth. But that’s all part of the, the process when you go with, um, either a scholarly press or a trade press, right?

Laura (07:51): Yes. Yeah, and I’ll say that’s, you know, often there’s a perception among scholars that, you know, presses just profit off of our work and, and we provide this for free and we don’t make any money off of our books, so what are we getting out of it? But one of the big things you get out of it is that infrastructure that is already in place at the publisher where they know how to peer review the books, improve the content, um, produce the book so they look nice, then distribute it to the places that are most likely to buy it. All of that stuff is like, happens on the publisher’s end. Yeah.

Emily (08:23): Absolutely. Thank you so much for clarifying that. Okay. Now I wanna hear a little bit more about your books that you’ve published. Sure. What the process is kinda like, and then also what you do now for clients.

Laura’s Book Publishing Journeys

Laura (08:33): Yeah, so I have published two books to date. Um, I have a third under contract. Um, so my first book was a revision of my doctoral dissertation. Um, pretty typical straight straightforward process there. Um, I pitched it to a small independent publisher that got, um, absorbed by a larger commercial academic publisher. Um, so it was ultimately published with that larger publisher. Um, you know, it went through peer review. I did not receive an advance for that book. It has made minimal royalties, you know, a little bit over time, but not much. Um, but I wrote it for, you know, career reasons to just sort of get my research out there to make me more attractive on the job market. You know, kind of the typical reasons that a scholar would try to publish their dissertation. Um, my second book, which uh, was published, let’s see about eight years later, was the book proposal book, um, which is, um, it’s, you know, it’s a practical how to kind of book, uh, it’s, it is sort of research based in that it draws on my own sort of personal experience helping authors get their books published and write book proposals that impress the publishers they want to impress. Um, and you know, I did some research into the publishing industry to sort of inform that, the advice that’s in that book. Um, but, you know, it’s a different kind of, readership has a different kind of purpose. That book has been much more lucrative than the dissertation based book. Um, and we can talk about some of the reasons why, uh, if, if you want to get more into that. Um, and then my third book is currently under contract, so that means that I’ve written a proposal, I’ve pitched it to my publisher. Um, they have accepted it based on the strength of the proposal and on my previous, um, book with them. Um, and I have received part of an advance for it. I will receive the advance in installments, um, but I have not received any royalties for it yet because the manuscript has not been completed, uh, completely revised and approved and accepted for publication. So the book is not in production yet. We’re still a ways out from that.

Emily (10:48): Yeah, that’s fascinating. Um, I definitely wanna talk to you more about the financial aspects of this in a moment, but now I just wanna hear tiny bit more about how you serve your clients because I think it helps the listener to understand that you’ve not only had this personal experience, but you now have like the professional experience of helping, um, shepherd other people through this process.

Supporting Authors From Proposal to Publication

Laura (11:05): Yes. Yeah, so I mean, of course the personal experience is really helpful because I know the emotions that an author goes through. I have all those same anxieties, um, you know, about pitching my work to publishers and making a good impression and all of that. But I would say, um, the, the help I’m able to offer really comes from having been through this process with other people, um, in a wide variety of disciplines. Um, so I, uh, I basically help authors kind of distill what their book is supposed to be into a book proposal, help them write it in a way that is going to connect with publishers, that’s gonna speak to what publishers are looking for, which is not necessarily the same thing that academics are thinking about, um, when they’re thinking about their research. Um, and then, uh, you know, then I’ve, I’ve seen the process follow through where they actually get the contract and the, the offer and then get their book published. So, you know, I do online programs, so I’ve worked with hundreds of authors, um, who have been through this process. So getting to see sort of the different nuances and how it works at different publishers and, and all of that has been really helpful for getting that broad view of how it works.

The Financial Side of Publishing a Book

Emily (12:16): Awesome. So I wanna dive into a little bit more of the, the money aspects now, because that, of course your, your book is taking people step by step through the whole process. Um, but I want to just get some more details about like what people can expect if they <laugh> for financially if they decide to publish a book through this kind of press. I wanna start on how these books make money and how authors make money from them. So am I correct in assuming that money is made from these books by selling these books? Is that the direct way money is made by the publisher?

Laura (12:48): Yes.

Emily (12:48): Okay.

Laura (12:49): Yes.

Emily (12:50): Now, what do the authors get <laugh> after the publisher sells you books? You’ve mentioned advances, you’ve mentioned royalties. Can you define these a little bit further and talk about sort of the scope of what these contracts look like? ’cause some people get advances, some people don’t, maybe the royalties are different amounts for different authors. Like what’s the range here?

Laura (13:06): So yeah, so publishers, you know, even university presses, which are nonprofits, um, so, so they’re not necessarily trying to make a profit, um, but they are trying to stay open and they do rely on book sales to stay open. You know, I think there’s a misconception that they are just funded by their universities and some receive some funding from their universities, but that amount is of course shrinking, uh, with austerity and everything, um, you know, in university administration. So they really do rely on selling their books in order to stay open and keep performing their service to the scholarly community. Um, so, so that’s one reason why they are looking for books with a readership of hopefully hundreds of people, maybe thousands of people will wanna read each book that they put out. Um, so, and, and they are investing tens of thousands of dollars in producing each book. Um, and a lot of that goes toward the labor or the editorial labor, the production labor, um, but also materials, um, you know, everything that goes into making the book as a product. So, um, they are recouping that investment, um, in the form of the, the sales of the book. And in most cases they will share some of that, you know, recoup with the author in the form of royalties. Um, so the author would typically get of small percentage of whatever profit the book makes. So, so yeah, so they’re always sort of calculating, um, projecting profits and losses for each book. And based on that, they may think about, okay, what can we afford to share with the author and still break even on this book, or still even make a little bit of money that we could invest back into our press to help publish maybe some of the books that aren’t gonna sell as well. Um, and that’s where they’re figuring out, you know, how much money they’re gonna share with the author. And, and in advance is, um, the amount of money the, the publisher would give an author upfront before the book even starts selling copies. Um, and that is basically just an incentive to get the author to publish with that press. Um, so that is most likely to come into play when the press believes they have to compete for the book with other publishers. Um, and they’re also going to have to project pretty significant profits from the book, you know, so they’re not sinking even more into it without some prospect of getting it back out. Um, so, so advances, you know, scholarly publishers do sometimes offer advances again under those conditions where they think the book’s going to be profitable and they think they have to compete to land this author. Um, and the range of those advances varies a lot. It could be just in the low hundreds, more of like a token kind of thing. It could be a thousand dollars a and I’m speaking from experience of having worked with people who got advances for their dissertation books. Um, so it does happen. Um, but I would say the range has been from like a thousand, maybe 2,500, maybe $5,000. Um, that would be an advance that might be available. Not common, I would say, but available, um, depending on the project. Um, for, you know, people who are more established in their careers, they have a big name they could choose to publish with a trade press, but they have chosen a university press instead. Um, people who are writing a textbook or something that is likely to be widely adopted, not just read by a few hundred people but read by tens of thousands of college students, um, or, you know, scholars who are gonna use this book for some practical purpose. Um, that’s where you can get a higher advance maybe more in the five figures. Um, it’s not unheard of for a six figure advance to come from a university press, but that would be pretty rare. That would be them competing with a trade press that might be more used to dealing in those kinds of numbers. And they’re gonna expect that book to really pay off for them to help them keep the lights on for all the other books that they sell.

Emily (17:45): So, fascinating. Thank you for telling us those like orders of magnitude for the, the different types of books. That’s really, really helpful. Um, so let’s say, um, whether or not an advance was given, um, I think you said something like when the book sales exceed the costs that have been invested, then royalties are shared with the author. Is, is that correct that royalties don’t come from book number one, but only once costs have been recouped?

Laura (18:11): No.

Emily (18:11): Okay.

Laura (18:12): Um, not exactly. Um, so yeah, it’ll be written into the author’s contract, uh, and, and I’ve seen various types of offers. Uh, some university presses will say, okay, no royalties on the first 500 copies, say, um, ’cause they know they’re not gonna break even until they’ve sold 500 copies. Um, I would say that’s a less common than a royalty from copy one. Um, but you know, the press, it might not break even until later on, but they’ve factored in the fact that they are going to compensate the author something for sales of the book. Um, so, so yeah, it’s really hard to know what that break even point is, but, but publishers are like, you know, they have a lot of data points and they are really projecting out into the future optimistically hoping they’re gonna get to that break even point. Um, but the author will likely seal some money before that point. Probably won’t be a lot of money, but some money.

Emily (19:15): Okay. Let’s, I wanna get some orders of magnitude again. Sure. So let’s say for the example you gave earlier of like someone who’s trying to publish work arising from the dissertation that they wrote, um, that kind of book. How much money would they think they might make in the first year, let’s say? Are we talking two figures, three figures, four figures, five? Like where, what is the order of magnitude there in royalties?

Laura (19:41): Uh, uh, so it’s, um, it’s really hard to generalize, I’ll say. Um, but, so, uh, maybe some other numbers will kind of help this. So let’s say your book, um, retails for, I’m gonna say $20 just for simplicity’s sake, but most academic monographs are gonna be priced a bit higher than that. Um, but let’s say it’s $20, the way that the publisher calculates the royalty, you are likely going to see a dollar or less from each sale of that book. Um, let’s say there’s a, um, sometimes publishers have, um, a library version, a library edition that is, is actually priced at a hundred dollars. Um, ’cause they know only libraries are gonna buy it. They’re not trying to sell that to like your average academic reader, but they are gonna sell it to a library that’s gonna, you know, let dozens of people read it. Um, so they’re gonna sell that for a hundred dollars and the author might see $5. Again, it depends on the, the royalty structure that’s set up in the contract, but so you might see $5 from the sale of that book. So, you know, most academic monographs that begin as dissertations, they’re, you know, they’re gonna sell to a few hundred people realistically. Um, so, you know, let’s say a hundred libraries buy your book, that would be great. That’s a lot of libraries. Um, buying just, you know, a new monograph. Um, so let’s say like very optimistically, you’re getting $5 a copy that’s 500 bucks, right? Um, you know, let’s say 200 individuals buy your book, that was, you’re getting a a dollar a copy on there’s another 200 bucks, so that’s what, $700, right? And you’d be having a good year if you got $700 in your first year, um, you know, you’d be doing, you know, well for an academic monograph. So, uh, yeah, it’s not, not a lot of money.

Emily (22:02): Okay. I’m so glad we know like the order of magnitude, that’s exactly what I wanted. Uh, do you mind me asking, what about a book like yours that’s more, those this practical kind of guide? I know the, uh, what you wrote is part of a series from, uh, Princeton University Press, right? So like, can I have an example either of your book or, or similar books like that?

Laura (22:21): Yeah, yeah. So, um, and I do wanna say all of those numbers were just hypothetical and made up. So it’s not to say like the typical book sells makes $700 in royalties that I’m just, you know, putting it out there. Um, so yeah, so for a book like mine, which is sort of, um, positioned as, um, not, it’s not an academic monograph, you know, it’s not research based in that way. It’s going to be used by many more people than somebody who might just wanna read, um, a very specific, you know, narrow piece of research because it, you know, scientists could read it, humanity scholars, social science, people at all stages of their careers. You know, people who are, um, just finishing a dissertation and wanna publish their first book, people who wanna publish a second or third book, people who are mentoring those people, people who work at publishers, you know, so just have a much broader audience. So, um, the sales expectations for that are much higher, um, and have that it has played out that way, you know, compared to my dissertation book. Um, so I’m gonna try, I’m gonna try and think of, um, the numbers of sales. I think the first year it sold about 6,000 copies, I wanna say I don’t have the royalty statement right in front of me. Um, and the second year it, uh, I don’t think it sold quite that many, but it stayed up there. It was like four to 5,000 I wanna say. Um, and I’ve just gone into the third year, so I don’t have the, the numbers for that yet. So, so that’s a much higher number. And so that has led to, you know, higher royalties. It’s still not by any means the majority of my income. It’s still sort of supplemental income, but it is in the thousands of dollars as opposed to the hundreds.

Emily (24:16): Yes. Very, very good. Thank you so much for doing all this. Yeah. Like, um, order of magnitude and just like level setting and I, I really appreciate that

Commercial

24:25 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! Tax season is in full swing, and the best place to go for information tailored to you as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac, is PFforPhDs.com/tax/. From that page I have linked to all of my free tax resources, many of which I have updated for this tax year. On that page you will find podcast episodes, videos, and articles on all kinds of tax topics relevant to PhDs and PhDs-to-be. There are also opportunities to join the Personal Finance for PhDs mailing list to receive PDF summaries and spreadsheets that you can work with. Again, you can find all of these free resources linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. Now back to the interview.

Costs Associated with Publishing

Emily (25:16): I wanna talk more now about, um, not how the authors are making money, but the costs associated with publishing. You mentioned earlier that a publisher could be investing tens of thousands of dollars for each book that they’re putting out there. So can you tell us like, what, where are those costs coming from? Obviously I understand printing the book and so forth and there’s labor. What, what are the different maybe phases, uh, different types of people who have their hands on the book, what their different jobs are? And then I, I read in your book sometimes the publisher is gonna pay for these costs, but then also sometimes the author might pay some of the costs of, of this process. So can you kind of break that down as well?

Laura (25:52): Yeah, so, so the costs that the publisher is going to incur, you know, the, it’s the editorial labor, the editor that you’re emailing back and forth with the person who is, um, sending your manuscript to peer reviewers, wrangling those peer reviewers, then getting the reports. Then, um, you know, inside the publisher they’re making, um, presentations and pitches for your book that you might not even be aware of as the author, but the editor is doing all of that labor to get the publisher on board to say they wanna publish your book, all of that. Um, and that, that doesn’t even include like giving you feedback on the manuscript itself. Some acquisitions editors are able to do a little bit of that, um, but most don’t really have the time to give that kind of attention to the manuscript. Their, their role is more of a project manager, um, and, and an advocate for the project within the press. Um, so that happens within the press. Um, then, you know, there’s, uh, the, the production, so designing a cover, um, type setting the manuscript, so it looks like a book that can be printed on pages. There’s some design that goes into that as well. Um, most scholarly publishers do engage their own copy editors and proofreaders, um, where they would, you know, make sure the final version is like stylistically correct and grammatically and all of that. Um, uh, and then there’s the marketing and the publicity and, and all of that that goes to like making sure people know about the book and wanna buy the book. Um, and that’s not even getting into the, like the physical production of the book, which in my understanding is beyond the tens of thousands of dollars, the tens of thousands of dollars is just to get to that first proof electronically that they can then use to print the book and ship the copies and all of that. Um, so, so yeah, there’s a lot that’s going on there that is heavy on labor and so that just, um, incurs costs. Um, and of course none of that is what the author is also investing. So if you want deep feedback on your manuscript, that often doesn’t come from the publisher. It would come from a freelance developmental editor, um, somebody like myself, uh, or you know, my freelance colleagues. Um, and that money would come out of the author’s pocket usually. Um, and that could cost thousands of dollars, um, depending on sort of the level of feedback you’re looking for and how experienced of an editor you want and all of that. Um, there are also some costs associated with, um, the, you know, if you want images in your book, um, do you need to purchase the permission to reprint those images from whoever owns the rights? Um, if you want tables and diagrams, those have to be professionally drawn. Um, you might have a mockup, but then somebody’s going to have to draw that and make it look good enough to be in the book. So you might pay somebody to do that. Your publisher might hire someone to do that or have someone internal do that. They might pass that cost along to you. Um, since that’s sort of a choice you’ve made to include that in your book. Um, if you are citing, um, copyright protected material, you often need permission depending on how you’re using it. Um, that’s another thing the author is often expected to cover. Um, and then open access costs. Some publishers, you know, have, uh, infrastructure in place and they cover the cost of the open access. And when I say they cover the cost, they’re getting a grant or a subsidy or something to be able to do that. Um, um, but some will ask the author to pay a subvention, um, to, in order to make it possible to give the book away for free, essentially, thus, you know, reducing the revenue that might be expected from the book. Um, so, so i, I don’t know if that even covers everything that you asked about, but those are some of the costs that go into making a book and some of which are born by the author, some by the publisher.

Emily (30:07): Well, for example, in one of the later chapters of your book, you mentioned creating the index and you recommended yes, getting a professional to do that. That was something I was like, I never would’ve thought that was something that really would require like to do it. Well, it would require a professional. And so, and again, that’s a kind of cost I think you mentioned would probably be on the author most likely. Yes. So I was just kind wondering in general. Yeah, I mean you answered that very well. Thank you so much because it’s a little bit mind blowing just as a reader to understand all the different, um, people and elements that go into the production of a book.

Laura (30:39): Yeah, yeah. So the index thing, indexing thing is a great point. So yes, while presses often do cover a copy editor and a proof, not a proofreader, they’ll cover a copy editor. They will ask the author to proofread the proofs, the typeset proofs, and then the author might decide they wanna hire a professional proofreader or they might just do it themselves to make sure there’s no errors. Um, but the index is almost never covered by the publisher. It is something you can negotiate sometimes, again, if you have like an attractive project and they’re the publisher’s trying to get you to sign with them, um, sometimes they will cover it or um, charge it against your royalties. Um, but often you do, the author does need to provide the index, which again, you can DIY it and you get what you pay for kind of, um, or you can pay a professional indexer, which could cost a thousand dollars or more. Um, yeah, so it’s an investment the author makes in hoping it just makes her a better book product that people will use and cite and all those things we want for our books.

Emily (31:41): And I believe I also read in your book that sometimes this is what an advance is used for. Like the author might try to negotiate for an advance knowing that those are, there are cost coming down the line that they can use in advance to cover. It’s very different from the way I think of an advance, like in a, you know, larger household name publisher kind of situation. Um, and maybe that’s like just naive of me just not understanding much about the publication process. So I am getting the impression that we’re not making a living off of these books <laugh> maybe until you’ve published one every year for your entire career, maybe that layered by then you would have enough. Um, so given that, um, if authors are not really making that much money, you know, maybe hundreds or few thousands of dollars, um, per year directly from their books, how are they able to use those books to leverage into their careers, to earning more money, advancing their career in other ways? How does the books serve them in a, a less direct monetary way?

Laura (32:37): Yeah, I love this question because this is really what it’s about for scholarly books. It’s the book itself is an investment of labor, of time, of possibly money, um, that you’re hoping will pay off in some other arena, not necessarily directly through, you know, your royalties or in advance. And I do wanna say there’s a little sidebar, like commercial publishing is not that much more lucrative. Yes, we know about the celebrities who get the six figure advances or more, um, but most people who are writers who are just, you know, writing trade books also have another job. Like they’re not making their complete income off of writing their books. Much like academics who, you know, often if they’re writing academic books have an academic position, um, where they’re making some a salary, you know, that is their main source of income. And so the investment of writing an ac academic book is often for that job. It’s, you might need to write a book in order to um, you know, pass your three year review or go up for tenure. Um, a book might be an expectation in your field, so you’re not writing the book ’cause you’re gonna make money on the book, you’re writing the book because you hope you can keep your job, um, as a part of having published that book. Um, and you know, I’ve worked with authors who already have tenure but are wanna go up for full professor, which is a significant, um, raise, uh, in income, you know, in their salary and they can use the book toward that. So they see the investment of the book as paying off indirectly in that other way. Um, there’s also, um, you know, other sort of financial opportunities that could come from having written a book. So if you are invited to give talks based on your research, um, you know, giving talks at universities doesn’t always pay that much. It sort of depends on how in demand you are and, and how much funding those universities have to pay speakers. But if you have research that is applicable in industry or policy, um, or places that have kind of other kinds of funding, you can command more money than you ever would make from the book itself, um, in speaker’s fees, um, or consulting fees or things like that. So, um, you can sort of think of the book as a strategic investment in your reputation and your platform that then would allow you to command higher fees in other venues.

Emily (35:14): Yeah, I spoke with, uh, an author recently, actually, she was self-published, um, who described her book as like a business card, like going out into the world in front of her and opportunities come back to her because people are reading and using the book, right? So it’s not necessarily about that money that’s made directly. That’s nice, that helps. But as you said, there’s much more opportunity could be depending on, on the subject of the book on the backend through these other mechanisms. Um, but yeah, thank you for giving us that like wider picture of like why people would go through this process, which clearly is very time consuming and, and very full of labor and, and not, um, immediately seeing much ROI financially from it. Um, yeah, that’s great. Yeah.

Laura (35:55): Yeah. And I’ll say, uh, you know, many scholars, intellectuals, you know, they just have an intrinsic desire to share their knowledge and what they have found and what they’ve spent these years studying and discovering and concluding. Um, so I would say the majority of people I work with are, the money’s a bonus, you know, but what they’re really trying to do is just like, get the work out there. Um, and the book is the way they do that.

Emily (36:20): I’m wondering, do you ever work with people who are not academics? Like I sometimes hear people describe themselves as like independent scholars or something like that. Like are, would they still be a type of author who would publish with Yes. Scholarly process?

Laura (36:33): Yes, absolutely. I do work with many, um, independent scholars, people who have know, retired from academic careers or, um, just decided not to pursue one for whatever reason. Um, I would say, and those are the people who are sort of the most, I intrinsically motivated to share the work, um, because yeah, like what’s the gain for them? They’re not really getting paid to write the book, getting paid much. Um, and, and any payoff from it would come like later down the road. So, um, I, you know, I have many clients who are in that position. I will say it’s, it’s, you may have a bit less to invest in the book, you know, if you don’t have funding from a university, uh, you know, a research grant or something like that. Um, so, uh, yet you, everyone has to sort of make their own calculation of what it’s worth to them to invest in the book upfront.

Dr. Laura Portwood-Stacer’s Contact Information

Emily (37:29): I see. Well, Laura, this interview has been so insightful. I really appreciate you coming on the podcast and letting us know, um, all that you’ve learned and all that you’ve experienced through this publishing process. Would you please let people know how they can get in touch with you if they’d like to follow up?

Laura (37:44): Yeah, so I have a weekly newsletter, um, that’s probably the, the easiest place to find me. It’s the manuscript works newsletter. If you go to newsletter.manuscriptworks.com, um, you can get that, that shares lots of knowledge about scholarly book publishing and also some, you know, brief announcements of programs that I offer and um, ways that I support authors. Um, yeah, so that’s probably the best place to find me, but, uh, my more general home on the internet is just manuscriptworks.com.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (38:14): Excellent. And I’d like to conclude with the question that I ask all of my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for an early career PhD grad student, someone recently out of grad school or a postdoc? And that could be something that we’ve touched on in the course of this interview, or it could be something completely new

Laura (38:30): To understand the publishing ecosystem and where the money flows in and where it flows out and how much is gonna flow to you and be realistic about how that all works. Um, so I would not expect, I would not treat a book as, uh, a direct financial investment. You know, it may be a financial drain in many ways, but you think about the sort of broader context and, and what it might do for you.

Emily (38:54): Very good. I really think we’ve either done that in this interview or given people a really good head start on that process in the course of the interview. So Laura, again, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for agreeing to come on and um, I look forward to talking to you again soon.

Laura (39:06): Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Outtro

Emily (39:13): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Knowing Your Worth in an Environment that Devalues Your Work

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

Links Mentioned in this Episode

grad student know your worth

Teaser

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

Introduction

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

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

Book Giveaway

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

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

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

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

Funding During Graduate School

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

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

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

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

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

06:27 Sam: Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continuing to Apply for Additional Grants

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

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

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

Commercial

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

Understanding the Value of Your Work

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

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

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

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

Financial Transparency in Academia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Advice for Other Early Career PhDs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listener Q&A: Investing

Question

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

Answer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Outtro

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