seminar descriptions

The Personal Finance for PhDs suite of talks is for PhDs-in-training at the undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral stages. The content is specifically tailored to cover what trainees need to know to take control of and improve their finances in the present.

Please note that for the graduate-level talks the primary audience is graduate students who receive stipends and tuition waivers.

Full descriptions of each seminar available in the 2019-2020 school year are below:

• The Graduate Student’s and Postdoc’s Guide to Personal Finance
• What to Do to Improve Your Finances this Academic Year
• Demystifying Taxes for Graduate Students and Postdocs
• Hack Your Budget
• Why and How to Passively Invest as a Grad Student or Postdoc
• Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Your PhD Program, Postdoc, or Post-PhD Job

Emily also creates custom seminars upon request.

 

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Title: Upgrade Your Budget with Financial Goals and Targeted Savings Accounts

Format: Live In-Person Workshop

Intended Audience: graduate students receiving stipends

Length: 60 minutes

Timing: Year-Round

Live Seminar Outline: Upgrade Your Budget with Financial Goals and Targeted Savings Accounts from Emily Roberts on Vimeo.

Summary: Graduate students face common challenges in their money management. While they may budget and/or track their expenses, their budgets are not maximally effective in helping them reach their goals and weather irregular expenses. This workshop challenges the status quo of each student’s budget by teaching him how to set and reach goals effectively and prepare for irregular expenses. Each attendee is asked to watch a video in advance of attending, bring her budgetary data with her to the workshop, and work through several collaborative exercises during the session.

Outline:

Background Video

• Define and identify values
• Identify current financial stage
• Calculate net worth
• The power of compound interest
• Budgetary data collection and categorization

Workshop

• Goals
  • How to move through financial stages
  • Creating SMART process-based goals
  • Brainstorming bite-sized goals
• Irregular expenses
  • How irregular expenses challenge a grad student budget
  • Identifying irregular expenses
  • The targeted savings solution to irregular expenses
  • Building individualized targeted savings categories, amounts, and timelines
• Adapt your budget
  • Creating a prioritized list of goals and targeted savings
  • Brainstorming how to cut back in budget categories
  • How to weigh uses of money against one another

Title: Decipher Your Stipend Offer Letter

Format: Live Lecture with Q&A (In Person or Remote)

Intended Audience: prospective graduate students receiving stipends

Length: 60 minutes

Timing: January to March

Live Seminar Outline: Decipher Your Stipend Offer Letter from Emily Roberts on Vimeo.

Summary: The stipend offer letters that graduate schools send out tend to be flattering to the recipients but difficult to understand. This presentation teaches prospective graduate students how to analyze their stipend offer letters to figure out what is truly being offered to them and what is expected of them. They will learn the key words to watch for in offer letters and what additional questions they need to ask of their prospective departments. Ultimately, they will compare their offers to one another directly by factoring in the local cost of living in each city.

Outline:

• Factors in choosing your graduate school
• Why money in graduate school matters
• What is a typical funding offer for your field? (research assistantships vs. teaching assistantships vs. fellowships, funding guarantees, part-year stipends)
• What is your stipend and why are you receiving it? (calculate take-home pay, work requirement)
• What does your university expect from you? (fees, fee amount trajectory, residency)
• What are your benefits? (health insurance, unions)
• Compare your stipend to the local cost of living

 

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Title: Why and How to Passively Invest as a Grad Student or Postdoc

Format: Live lecture with Q&A (in person or remote)

Intended Audience: Graduate students receiving stipends, postdocs

Length: 60 minutes

Timing: Year-round

Live Seminar Outline: Why and How to Passively Invest as a Graduate Student or Postdoc from Emily Roberts on Vimeo.

Summary: According to the Council of Graduate Schools’ Financial Education: Developing High Impact Programs for Graduate and Undergraduate Students, doctoral students seek information on investing at a higher rate than any other financial education topic (49%). Passive investing is not only the most effective form of investing, but it also fits well with the capital and time constraints that most trainees face. However, graduate students and postdocs often don’t realize that passive investing is within their reach while they are still in training because the method is not advertised. This presentation teaches trainees what passive investing is, why it is a great choice for them, and how to get started with it. It addresses practical considerations like where to open an investment account, which type(s) of tax-advantaged retirement account to use if any, and how to balance investing with other financial goals.

Outline:

• Why invest?
  • Compound interest
  • Inflation risk
  • Types of investments
  • Mutual funds
• What is passive investing?
  • Active vs. passive investing
  • Diversification
  • Index funds
• Why passive investing is a superior method
  • Effectiveness
  • Low cost
  • Low time commitment
• How to get started investing
  • Tax-advantaged retirement accounts
    • Workplace-based
    • Non-workplace-based (compensatory pay)
    • Roth vs. traditional
  • Choosing a brokerage firm
  • Choosing funds
    • What is your goal/timeline?
    • DIY passive investing
    • Lifecycle/target date funds
• Balancing investing with other financial goals
  • A healthy financial picture
  • Choosing how to increase your net worth (investing vs. debt repayment)
• The importance of savings rate

 

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Title: Demystifying Taxes for Graduate Students and Postdocs

Format: Live lecture with Q&A (in person or remote)

Intended Audience: Graduate students receiving stipends, postdocs

Length: 90 minutes

Timing: January to March

Live Seminar Outline: Demystifying Taxes for Grad Students and Postdocs from Emily Roberts on Vimeo.

Summary: Preparing a tax return can be daunting for a trainee, especially when fellowships and scholarships are involved, and it’s difficult to find resources that address this special situation. This presentation introduces how ordinary income is taxed and addresses how to calculate and report trainee income specifically.

Outline:

• Updates from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
• Federal income tax basics (deductions, credits, progressive tax brackets)
• Tax preparation methods
• Finding and categorizing your income
• Applying education tax benefits
• Where to report your higher education income and expenses
• Quarterly estimated tax for fellows
• State tax
• Tax repercussions of non-compensatory pay

 

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Money Management Basics explores in depth the basic techniques of handing money, which are unique to each individual.

The major sections of the presentation are:

• identifying values, setting goals, and choosing tactics
• budgeting methods
• banking and credit
• emergency funds
• savings and debt repayment

This talk is a great fit for grad student orientations because it puts grad students in the proper frame of mind for setting positive financial habits from the beginning of school.

(45 minutes plus time for questions)