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
- Dr. Gabrielle Filip-Crawford’s LinkedIn
- Recovering Academics Email Address
- Dr. Gabrielle Filip-Crawford’s Website: Next Draft LLC
- PF for PhDs Tax Workshops (Sponsored)
- PF for PhDs S22E2: How to Negotiate Your Salary Post-PhD
- PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
- PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
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.
