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Best Practices in Side Hustling During Graduate School

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In this episode, Emily interviews Lourdes Bobbio and Meryem Ok, two PhD students who work on this podcast as virtual assistants. Today’s conversation is all about side hustling! Lourdes and Meryem each give their perspectives on why and how they started side hustling, how they manage their time, and how they handle their self-employment income with respect to taxes and budgeting. Throughout the interview, you’ll get a behind-the-scenes perspective on how this podcast is produced. The end of the interview is a discussion of the unexpected benefits Lourdes and Meryem have experience from working on the podcast.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

side hustle grad school

Teaser

00:00 Meryem: Every once in a while, if I need to make an extra purchase or a gift, I will kind of rationalize with myself, “Okay, I was able to make some extra income this month with the side hustle so it’s okay to spend that extra money.” And essentially that’s not a super cut and dry method, but it sort of helps me at least to rationalize my additional expenses and not get too anxious about finances during grad school, which is really, really nice to have that cushion outside of my usual budget.

Introduction

00:36 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast and higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season six, episode 18 and today my guests are Lourdes Bobbio and Meryem Ok, who are both PhD students and work with me as virtual assistants on this podcast. Today’s conversation is all things side hustling. Lourdes and Meryem each give their perspectives on why and how they started side hustling, how they manage their time, and how they handle their self employment income with respect to taxes and budgeting. Throughout the interview, you’ll get a behind the scenes perspective on how we produce this podcast. We close the interview discussing the unexpected benefits. Lourdes and Meryem have experienced from working on the podcast. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Lourdes Bobbio and Meryem Ok.

Will You Please Introduce Yourselves Further?

01:31 Emily: I’m bringing you a little bit of a different interview today. This is the first time on the PF for PhDs podcast. We have had three people on the call at once, that is two guests interviewees, and it’s really special to me because the people I’m interviewing today are my virtual assistants who work on the podcast with me, Lourdes Bobbio and Meryem Ok, and they’re both PhD students. We’re going to get into more about side hustling today, like the side hustle that they do with me and their experience with that, maybe their experiences side hustling with other people. So yeah, we’re talking side hustling today and I have my two guests with me. I’ll have you introduce yourselves, so Lourdes, why don’t you go first?

02:10 Lourdes: Hi everyone. My name Lourdes Bobbio. I’m a fifth year PhD candidate at Penn State University in the Department of Materials Science, and I work on additive manufacturing of metallic materials.

02:23 Emily: Yeah. Lourdes was actually a guest on a previous podcast episode and we will link that from the show notes. We did a budget breakdown with Lourdes, so we talked through her budget there in State College and Meryem, please introduce yourself.

02:35 Meryem: Hi, my name is Meryem. In 2016 I started the MD PhD program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — go Heels. After completing the first two years of med school in 2018, I started my PhD in UNC-NC State’s joint Department of Biomedical Engineering. Currently I am working in the Magnus Lab, developing tools to better understand human intestinal STEM cell fate. And I’m happy to say that I’m officially a PhD candidate as of two days ago.

03:05 Emily: Yes. Congratulations! We will record and release this in August 2020, so it’ll still be fresh news by the time this episode comes out. I’m just delighted to have you both on.

Why Side Hustle In Grad School?

03:17 Emily: First question here is why did you decide to start side hustling in graduate school? Why don’t we still go with Lourdes first?

03:25 Lourdes: Financially, I was doing actually pretty okay with my stipend. As Emily mentioned, I was previously on an episode where I discussed my NDSEG fellowship, and so I generally have a somewhat higher stipend than my peers and State College has a generally low cost of living. So financially I was doing, in terms of I had enough money to live on and for extras and to save, but the reason that I got into side hustling was so that I could have money to contribute to a Roth IRA. I think Emily has done an episode on this earlier in the year, but as of this current year 2020, fellowship recipients are now eligible to contribute to a Roth IRA, but previously they were not. I started one before I was being paid on fellowship and I wanted to try to contribute at least a little bit of money monthly to that, so having that side hustle, self employment income helped me to be able to do that and continue to contribute, even though I couldn’t with my general fellowship income.

04:32 Emily: That’s so strategic. I love that. It is the advice that I was giving out for people who had multi-year fellowships, is to consider that self-employment side hustle. Meryem, why’d you decide to start that side hustling.

04:44 Meryem: For me, I guess coming into medical school, I had actually taken a gap year and was able to transfer a lot of those funds into starting an IRA, so for me, it was less of a strategic approach and more just that I’ve really always had a lot of interests in gaining new skills and collaborating with other people outside of my primary career interests. I think specifically, actually, as far as video and podcast editing, I was inspired by my dad who is always the one recording all of our family memories and making home videos. And he actually founded and produced a public access TV show called Turkish American TV. That’s been going on for 15 years, completely as a passion, volunteer project. I remember many times he’d rope me into his projects and show me how to use video and editing software, and I really just felt lucky to have his guidance. I feel like I inherited his eye for detail since that’s helped me be more confident in marketing myself as a freelancer who just really genuinely enjoys editing. I guess for me, just as someone who needs to have hobbies and tasks outside of work, I wanted to try something new and also make a little extra income in line with my career development goals.

06:03 Emily: Maybe we should say what you all actually do for me with the podcast, to give you credit where credit is due. As the listeners know, I conduct the interviews for the podcast, but kind of everything that happens after that, I hand off to you two. So you do all the video and audio editing of the interviews, and you compile the show notes, which are actually full transcripts. It’s more work than it sounds actually. We use an automated tool to generate the first transcript, but then you go through with a careful listen and make it actually readable, which I really appreciate. And you also write the social media posts that we do for each episode, and you schedule things. There’s a few other tasks in there too, but those are the major pieces of work. It’s been an amazing help for me.

How did you find your current and previous side hustles?

06:44 Emily: I know how you two landed this side hustle, which is that I reached out to my mailing list when my last VA decided to leave the position. Thankfully, she gave me a lot of notice. I reached out to my mailing list and said, “Hey, podcast listeners, do you want to work on the show?” And you two both volunteered to do a trial episode and ultimately your work was great, so I hired both of you. But I don’t know if that’s the first side hustle you’ve had in graduate school, or whether you were even particularly looking for that kind of side hustle, or really how it came about kind of from your end, so why don’t you tell us. Lourdes?

07:19 Lourdes: I had done a couple of side hustles through freelancing websites. There was actually one particular one that was captioning and transcription of usually short audio files through this company called Rev. It’s basically just pick and choose these audio files and you get paid. It’s a very low paying job, but it was something that I did just sort of in my spare time. When I heard about the opening on this podcast, I was like, “Hey, this is perfect. This is like what I was doing before, but on sort of like another level and sort of a next step up.” It seemed like a perfect fit for what I like to do in general anyway, just on a higher level.

08:07 Emily: Yeah. Meryem, how about you?

08:09 Meryem: Yeah, that’s so funny, because actually that’s the first time I’m hearing this. For those who don’t know Lourdes and I actually went to undergrad together, so the fact that we serendipitously ended up as virtual assistants for the same podcast and kind of working together was phenomenal to experience and to find out. For me, I also was trying to look into doing these things independently through similar websites, but it was not really a sustainable effort or something that was really worth the rate that they were paying. And I felt like it’s so much more useful to be able to use these skills and also benefit from all of the knowledge that I’m gaining as I’m editing these episodes, which is relevant to us as graduate students trying to better our personal finances. Really it was a no brainer when I saw that email from Emily and reached out and I’m just so glad that it worked out and that we were able to take turns, Lourdes, and still have an activity shared together despite the distance and the years since college.

09:15 Emily: Yeah, that’s why I reached out to my list first, to try to hire for this position. I hoped that there would be people who would actually be interested in the material as well as having the skill set to work on the episode, instead of going with an independent agency or something, which I could have done, maybe if it hadn’t worked out, initially. I wanted to go to people who I sort of had a relationship with, and actually it happens to be the fact that I had corresponded with both of you over the years before that — we mentioned Lourdes had been on the podcast and Meryem has been on my mailing list for a long time, so we had exchanged emails and I think had call or two in that time. It was really helpful that I knew your names at least, when it came time for people to apply for that position. Meryem you have, since we started working together, taken on another podcast editing position, why don’t you talk about how that came about?

10:08 Meryem: Yeah, that’s right. Actually, I owe it to you, Emily, for alerting me to another side hustle opportunity in podcast editing with the AcaDames podcast, which is another awesome podcast focusing on women in academia. Earlier this year, I remember Emily sent an email to us, letting us know that AcaDames was looking for help since their previous student executive producer was graduating soon, and they wanted to have somebody to overlap during that period of transition. I reached out to them about that position and thankfully we were a good fit. Now I just feel really lucky that I get to work with these two amazing podcasts. My work with them partially involves editing, but also involves a little bit more of administrative and social media management work. I’ve just learned so much from both podcasts and I’m excited to be involved. And also again, benefit from all of the career development advice that I’ve been receiving just by working with both of them.

11:09 Emily: Yeah. I think it’s kind of interesting that for these positions, this podcast virtual assisting position and the AcaDames one, it sounds like we’re looking for someone who’s going to be doing a multiplicity of different things and you come in with maybe some subset of the skills, like Lourdes, you had the transcription type experience, but then we’re asking you to learn a bunch of other stuff which expands your skillset overall, even if you’re not going to be career podcast editors. I assume you’re going to do something with your PhDs, but it’s nice to have that kind of side work, I think.

Balancing Side Hustles, Grad School, and Personal Life

11:36 Emily: Between the side hustle, your graduate work, everything else that’s going on in your life. I know you two are both in relationships — Meryem, you recently got married. Lourdes, you’re engaged. You have a lot of stuff going on in your lives. And so how do you fit in this side work that you’re doing, along with everything else? Lourdes?

11:55 Lourdes: I guess for me, what attracted me to the side hustle specifically was that it’s something that I can work on from home. I don’t have to go anywhere to do anything, and I can kind of fit it into my schedule. It’s very flexible. Emily is super nice, in that she gets us a lot of heads up time between when we get audio files and when they’re going to be released. So there’s a lot of flexibility in the position, which is definitely something that I was initially looking for in side hustles, as well, when I was doing the more freelance, low paying transcription job, it’s something I could do just in my own time, so that’s been helpful in terms of being able to work it into my schedule, work my schedule around it.

12:38 Lourdes: Also, like Emily mentioned, I’m engaged, but for the last year I’ve also been long distance, and so I’ve had a little bit more free time. It’s also been really great during this work from home time, to have something else to do. Now that you’re pretty much primarily at home, we’ve all been at home, things can get a little bit stale, but having a lot of different activities to do has been really helpful in managing my own mental health. I don’t feel like I’m only at home to do work and I get to sort of have some variety in my day, so that’s been nice.

13:22 Emily: How about you Meryem? How do you do the time management aspect?

13:25 Meryem: Yeah, I want to echo everything that Lourdes said. I think it’s really nice, even without a pandemic, but especially during a pandemic, to just have something else to turn to when you need a break from grad school or just want to use a different skill set for a bit, or just kind of escape from the world. And right now, especially because of COVID, I tend to work a later shift in lab, and my understanding is Lourdes does as well, so the rest of our work is pretty much done remotely, which makes it easier, but also I have to be a little bit more diligent about priority setting and setting boundaries, because it is so easy to kind of just switch between projects both between my main job as a grad student and then my side hustles and leaving room for my personal life.

14:07 Meryem: Usually I’ll try to do this by reserving chunks of time to work on the podcast editing, either in the mornings or late in the evenings after my shift and maybe the weekends to kind of catch up, which is very useful for particularly busy weeks. I think just like setting deadlines and trying to stay organized to prioritize all the things that are going on is helpful. I will say that I recognize that it’s probably easier for me to manage everything that I have to do given that I don’t have too many responsibilities outside of my work and extracurriculars right now. I don’t have any human babies, but I do have a fur baby named Sabine, but she’s pretty self sufficient. I think overall it is pretty much managing expectations with myself and now with my husband, but overall I think, much like Lourdes said, you get into a workflow and we do have a lot more time at home so that does help a lot.

15:06 Emily: I’m just thinking how I would answer if I asked this question of myself, of how do I manage my time? Because I do have two human babies and no childcare in a pandemic and it is definitely more challenging now than it was a few months back to be handling my schedule. But I think what Lourdes brought up initially, the fact that in our schedule we have basically a two week cycle from when I get the raw interview to you two and then we have a two week process before publication, and Ithink that really helps. I know a lot of side hustle jobs are really quick turnaround, like super short deadlines, and it’s not even really so much on your end, like I’m giving you guys a lot of time. I need a lot of time to do my part of the process as well, because I can’t necessarily jump on a response right away, because it’s just a busy long day every day right now.

Commercial

16:00 Emily: Hey, social distancers, Emily here. I hope you’re doing okay. It took a few weeks, but I think I have my bearings about me in my new normal. There is a lot of uncertainty and fear right now about our public and personal health and our economy. I would like to help you feel more secure in your personal finances and plan and prepare for whatever financial future may come. You can schedule a free 15 minute call with me at PFforPhDs.com/coaching to determine if financial coaching with me is right for you at this time, I hope you will reach out, if only to speak with someone new for a few minutes. Take care. Now back to our interview.

Budgeting Side Hustle Income

16:46 Emily: Okay, so personal financial show — let’s talk about the money that’s associated with the side hustle income. What are you doing with the money from your income? Does it have a particular job to do in your budget or how are you handling it generally? Lourdes, why don’t you go first?

17:01 Lourdes: In general, I put most of my side hustle income into savings, whether that be more long-term savings or shorter term savings, kind of depends. If I have an upcoming trip, it might go a little bit towards that. In general, how I work my budget is that, I pay myself first, in that I put money aside for savings first, and then any money leftover is my money that I get to spend for the month.

17:31 Lourdes: One of the tips I learned from the first episodes I edited was a side hustle episode, I think it was Allie Judge, and she mentioned how she holds off on paying herself her side hustle income until the month after she’s earned it. So sort of working on a delayed schedule, in terms of using the money that she’s earned. After I heard that, I’m like, that’s a great idea, so ever since then, I’ve been doing the same thing, where I count basically any money I earn in August goes towards my September monthly budget. That helps me in terms of planning and not using the money before I’ve actually earned it. That’s how I mainly handle it in terms of budgeting.

18:22 Emily: Yeah. Thank you. Meryem, how does it work in your budget?

18:26 Meryem: I’ll be totally transparent in that I don’t necessarily have a specific allocation for my side hustle income, because for me it was primarily a chance to essentially have a hobby and use a different skillset. But I kind of do try to visualize it in a way that permits me to have those extra side expenses during the course of the month that you might not otherwise be able to do. For me, it’s kind of a mental exercise, and I do have the money go straight into a savings account that I don’t really touch, but every once in a while, if I need to kind of make an extra purchase or a gift, I will kind of, I guess, rationalize with myself like, okay, I was able to make some extra income this month with the side hustle, so it’s okay to spend that extra money and think of my extra purchases outside of my needs in terms of how much of my work and effort that is worth. And essentially that’s not a super cut and dry method, but it helps me at least to rationalize my additional expenses and not get too anxious about finances during grad school, which is really, really nice to have that cushion outside of my usual budget.

19:41 Emily: Yeah. That trick, that mental framework of translating the cost of a purchase into your time, or maybe number of episodes, or however you want to structure it, is a really powerful one, a really common one for people sort of were advanced in their personal finance skills to think about really carefully, like whether they want to make a purchase and how they want to spend and so forth to translate into time. That’s a really good tip.

20:07 Emily: I’m particularly thinking about this question of how to handle your irregular income with respect to your budget because, so in August 2020, I launched a community PFforPhDs.com/community, if you want to find out more about that, but every month I’m creating new content for it. Right now I’m working on the September content, which is on how do you handle your irregular income with respect to your budget?

20:28 Emily: Lourdes, the tip that you gave is basically the first one that I’ve already put into this, which is count up your income from one month and put it towards the next month budget, that you got from Allie. It’s absolutely perfect, because you never know when something could go wrong with your side-hustle income. Like if one of you became ill, for example, maybe you need to skip an episode. That’s not a problem for us, but it would be a problem for your budget if you’d already spent the money that you expected to come in. That’s number one, baseline tip for handling side hustle income is give it a delay. Meryem, you’re doing a similar thing by putting it directly into savings, and then later on thinking about, well, how do I want to spend it, or do I want to keep it here? Different articulation, but kind of the same principle there. I’m really glad to hear that.

Side Hustle Income and Taxes

21:13 Emily: Now we come to one of my favorite subjects within personal finance, which is taxes. So you two are both self-employed, you are contractors for me, and Meryem, now you have this other contractor, essentially you’re like a real true contractor working for multiple people with the same skillset. Self employment taxes are kind of a whole other ball of wax. You’ve been doing this for a year, do you have any systems that you’ve put in place or just what are you doing with it, with respect to your taxes? Lourdes?

21:40 Lourdes: For me, it’s a little bit of two different things. I generally set aside about 30% of my self employment income for taxes. That’s taking into account the about 15% self employment tax and then income tax being around 12%. But also, I am on a fellowship that requires me to pay estimated taxes quarterly, and so at the beginning of every year, I basically estimate how much — well, I know how much I’m going to earn from my fellowship, and then I basically estimated how much I anticipate earning from doing this virtual assistant for the podcast. Basically, I have ahead of time, I know how much I have to set aside each month for both my fellowship income and this side hustle income. I immediately put that into savings and I just don’t touch that money. It’s not even money that I think about. And then I tend to over save just a little bit in terms of taxes, just because I’d rather have a cushion. Last year, I think I was off by like $150 just because of other things. I also have some investments that will change throughout the year and change my tax situation, but I do tend to oversave just so I have that little extra cushion and I don’t have to take it out of other pockets of my savings. Then if I have extra money left over, I kind of use it as my own personal tax refund. So the government isn’t giving me any, but I have some extra money left over in my tax pot. I use that and just reallocate it usually to different savings categories.

23:23 Emily: Yeah. I handle my income from my business exactly the same way, so it sounds like you’re just incorporating the self employment tax issue into your existing structure for paying quarterly estimated tax. Meryem, I want to give you a chance to answer that one as well, because I know this is shifting for you right now,

23:39 Meryem: Actually I’m absorbing all of Lourdes’ tips because for me, I just, in the month also started receiving fellowship non-W-2 income. Prior to that, I wasn’t really thinking about estimated quarterly taxes as much because I didn’t have to deal with all of that. But now moving forward for tax year 2020 into next year, I will have to kind of be thinking about that. Even though the actual amount of taxes that I’ll from the side hustle income will be less than the amount that is necessary to be able to pay estimated quarterly taxes — so my original strategy was just to collect all of the receipts that I’ll receive from PayPal and then make sure that I back calculate the amount that I have to pay for the self employment tax and pay that come tax season. That original plan is fine if you know that you’re not going to owe the amount that you would need to, to not have to pay fees for not paying estimated quarterly taxes, but I like the strategy of kind of building it in so that by the time tax season does roll around, you’ve already paid everything.

24:45 Meryem: I actually think that I’m going to adopt that policy rather than shifting it and waiting until tax season. And as for my other side hustle with AcaDames, their structure is also changing since they’re recently going through the process of incorporating and becoming an LLC. Previously, and currently during the transition, I’m being paid through W2 income because it’s very easy to me to be able to do that as a UNC student and the cohost, or at least one of the coasts now is based at UNC, so it was really easy to deal with that through payroll and not have to worry about freelancing or independent contracting. But I imagine that that will also shift within the next year as they’re making this transition into becoming an LLC. So having all of these strategies in place now will probably be really useful moving forward.

25:38 Emily: Yeah, that’s good for me to know. Interesting. I should mention also, I just brought up the Personal Finance for PhDs Community, but for the last several years, I’ve had a workshop available for individuals on quarterly estimated tax and helping them fill out their estimated tax worksheet and form 1040. That workshop is now coming under the umbrella of the community. So anyone who’s wondering about how do I file quarterly estimated tax on my fellowship, that’s where to go for that particular workshop PFforPhSs.com/community. And I just told you, I’m thinking about in September, the training that I’m going to release on handling your irregular income with respect to your budget. Later on this fall, I’m planning on doing another full workshop on the self-employment side hustle that is so common for graduate students and PhDs, and how to handle that for your taxes, so a whole other tax workshop just on this topic of self employment taxes. That’ll be available if anyone needs help with that sort of thing. I’m really excited about creating because I’ve been doing my own taxes as a self employed person for a number of years, so I have a basic familiarity with it and I’m excited to do a bit more research to figure out how it works for other kinds of businesses as well. That’s where to find out more info there.

Unexpected Benefits from Side Hustling

26:54 Emily: As a second to last question here, have there been any benefits to doing a side hustle that you didn’t anticipate when you first took on the position? Lourdes?

27:05 Lourdes: Specifically for this podcast, Emily interviews a wide range of guests and a lot of them also have social media that they promote. I’ve been able to connect with some of the different guests on social media, just as a result of sometimes promoting the episode. They’ll see that I promote it, and then we connect, we end up talking, following each other on Twitter. That’s been like something I didn’t really expect to happen, but it’s been really cool because q lot of them are fellow grad students, and then just getting into that academic sphere of Twitter has been really interesting just to see all these different graduate experiences from people all over the country and all over the world. That’s been one of the most unanticipated benefit from this particular side hustle.

27:57 Lourdes: And then also, as has been brought up multiple times, I think Meryem brought this up, just learning a different skillset that’s something very different from what I do in my normal day to day graduate work. And I, in particular, am starting to figure out what I want to do after grad school. I’m a fifth year student going into my sixth year, so I’ve been leaning towards maybe some more like alt-academic jobs, and being able to have this completely different skill set is definitely something that I think adds to my resume and adds to potential job options and sort of also gives me ideas of what other type of work is out there. Along with what I was mentioning before Emily does have so many different types of guests on the podcast, just seeing what opportunities are available to graduate students after they’ve defended and after they graduated, has been really interesting and something that I hadn’t even considered or even thought of prior to really getting to know some of these guests through the podcast.

29:04 Emily: Yeah. That’s really great for me to hear. I know that this too was an unexpected benefit for me of doing the podcast is I didn’t expect it to be such good networking. I knew some things that would happen from it, but not the networking aspect, so I’m really glad that you’ve been able to tap into that as well. So Meryem, how about you?

29:24 Meryem: Yeah, I agree completely with the networking component as this amazing side benefit of being involved with editing the podcast. And I think for me also, I just find it inspiring how relevant the episodes have been in my own personal journey as a student, often in real time. In fact, I’ll never forget that the very first trial episode that I edited was with Dr. Katie Wedemeyer-Strombel about her decision to change labs and how to prepare for the unexpected in grad school. And it just so happened that that exact same week that I was editing that episode, my former PhD advisor surprised that our lab with an announcement that she would be leaving UNC and moving across the country, and all of this was happening while I was trying to plan a wedding with my fiance, and now husband, who had just moved down to Chapel Hill to start a new job, to be with me after we’d been long distance for so many years. And anyways, it ended up working out and I was able to switch into an amazing collaborating lab and stay at UNC, but unbeknownst to Katie, her advice at that time was so timely for me and helpful for me as I was going through that transition. So I always rave about the podcast to pretty much every grad student I come across and I try to send along helpful episodes and resources to them if it sort of just happens to come across in conversation. It’s just amazing to me how many times that, that has just happened, where I’m editing an episode and realizing, wait, I really need to pay attention. This is really relevant to my life right now.

31:00 Emily: That’s really good to hear. Of course you told me at the time that that episode was striking you in that way and I’m so glad that I could help. I think that, as Lourdes, as I was saying earlier, I’ve been doing this podcast for about two years now and I have quite a few interviews under my belt and it’s not always the same type of person, as you were saying. It’s a lot of different kinds of personal finance stories coming from a lot of different sorts of people who have been in academia for a time at least. There is a good trove of episodes there, that you might find something useful to your current situation, if you do a little diving into the archives.

Best Financial Advice for Early Career PhDs

31:34 Emily: Last question here, which, you know, I ask of pretty much all the guests who come on the podcast. I’ll give you a chance to give your answers as well. What is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And we’ll go to Lourdes first again.

31:48 Lourdes: For me, I think one of the best things for me is having a yearly budget. At the beginning of the year, and I’ve been doing this for quite a few years now, I lay out my plan for the year financially on a spreadsheet, and it really helps to be able to see a longer term plan for my money for the year. I think, especially with self employment income, side hustling, it kind of gives you an idea of…Maybe I have a trip planned later in the year, or I have some big event that I’m going to need to save up money for, and being able to more strategically allocate your money on a larger scale rather than just month to month. I think that’s been one of like a strategy that I’ve been employing for a couple of years now, and it’s just been super helpful for me, and it’s something that I will see myself doing like far into the future

32:44 Emily: That is, I think, typically a good piece of advice, but I want to know how it’s going in 2020.

32:50 Lourdes: It’s been interesting to say the least. There have been a lot of…I had some trips planned that have gotten canceled, so I have this extra money, but also different expenses that I didn’t anticipate come up. And it’s been a little bit of am eye-opener in terms of plans change as the year goes on, but I think sort of having that framework to begin with helps me realize that even if…I go back to this budget every month, it’s the same spreadsheet I use for my monthly budgeting, so it changes and updates and it’s a very fluid document, but just having that outline there to begin with has also been something that provides some structure, especially when the year got so different than what everyone anticipated.

33:43 Emily: Yeah, I also use the year as the sort of standard timeframe when I talk about irregular expenses, so expenses that come up non monthly, and you and I talked about this in our interview from a year or so ago. I think it’s a great strategy to think about what budgetarily is coming up for you — trips, as you mentioned earlier, or maybe some other kinds of irregular expenses, so you can anticipate them over the course of about a year. So yeah, I like that time frame as well. Meryem, how about you? What’s your best advice?

34:12 Meryem: Yeah, so my best advice is probably to be honest with yourself and keep an open mind about your personal finances. A wise friend once told me that disappointment happens when our expectations don’t match up with our reality, which was really helpful for me to hear at the time, as an optimist, because I used to feel a lot of guilt or disappointment if I couldn’t maintain an unrealistic budget, or if I couldn’t resist making an impulse purchase on something that maybe wasn’t necessary, but made me or someone else really happy. But I also think it’s really important for our mental and physical wellbeing to work towards a healthy relationship with money, which I know can be particularly challenging on a grad student’s stipend. So with that in mind still, I think as best as you can try to be honest with yourself and set realistic goals for yourself, not based on anybody else’s priorities or spending habits, but whatever matches your needs. That being said, if something really isn’t working for you, that’s probably a good time to have an open mind and try to adapt, effective strategies from others. I guess I would say it’s okay to experiment and even take calculated risks, while figuring out what works best for you, but being honest yourself and keeping an open mind is probably my best financial advice and general life advice as well.

35:44 Emily: I love that as well. I often think about the mismatch between expectations and reality, and how that provokes us, so I try to keep my expectations low, basically. I really love that advice and I think that’s unique. I don’t think we’ve heard that on the podcast before, but I think it’s perfect. And something that graduate students can sometimes be discouraged around their finances because they are working with such a low income, it’s for such a long period of time, and I talk a lot about investing and saving stuff and that’s just out of reach for a lot of graduate students, but they can implement your advice, Meryem. They can like learn to just figure out what’s going to work for them in managing their own finances right now and carry that skill set and that habit, whatever it is that they determined as the right system or whatever, forward into their career and post-PhD income, and hopefully have a lot of financial success at that time, having been honest with themselves and really using the time in graduate school to get to know what their preferences are with respect to managing their finances. That’s good advice for anybody, anytime. You can always implement it.

36:46 Emily: I’m so glad to have had you two on the podcast and thank you so much for volunteering to do this. Thanks for coming on.

36:53 Lourdes: Thank you, Emily.

36:54 Meryem: Thanks Emily.

Outtro

36:56 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPhDs.com/podcast is the hub for the personal finance for PhDs podcast. There you can find links to all the episode show notes, and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, please consider joining my mailing list for my behind the scenes commentary about each episode. Register at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe. See you in the next episode, and remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is stages of awakening by Poddington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

This PhD Candidate Paid for Her Wedding with Her Research Side Hustle

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In this episode, Emily interviews Rebecca Brenner Graham about side hustling to pay for her wedding while a PhD candidate in history at American University. In addition to working on her own dissertation and serving as a teaching assistant, Rebecca used her skills as a history researcher in a self-employment position assisting an economics professor at another university. Rebecca had to quickly learn how to manage her time and energy well across all her different professional roles and her personal life. If you are planning a wedding as a graduate student, you’ll also enjoy hearing wedding planning and budgeting tips from both Rebecca and Emily.

Links Mentioned

side hustle wedding

Teaser

00:00 Rebecca: The piece of advice that I’m just learning and wish I had known sooner was that unpaid opportunities are almost always not worth it. Full stop.

Introduction

00:20 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season six, episode 14, and today my guest is Rebecca Brenner Graham, a PhD candidate in history at American University. Rebecca has always side hustled to supplement her stipend, but she kicked it up a notch in her fourth year to pay for her wedding. We discuss how Rebecca balanced her time and energy among her own dissertation work, her teaching assistantship, her self employment gig as a researcher for an economics professor, wedding planning, and the rest of her life. Listen through to the end here, how Rebecca’s wedding went and some wedding planning tips from both of us. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Rebecca Brenner Graham.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:07 Emily: I am so delighted to have joining me on the podcast today Rebecca Brenner Graham, who is going to be discussing with me, her wedding, her recent wedding, and how she ended up paying for that on her Grad student stipend, and actually on more than just her grad student’s stipend. So Rebecca, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today and will you please tell us a little bit more about yourself?

01:27 Rebecca: Thank you so much for having me, as I was telling you. I’m a long time listener and it just occurred to me that I might have something useful to add. I went to college at Mount Holyoke in Western, Massachusetts as a women’s college. There, I double majored in history and philosophy, and then I went straight into my history graduate school. I’m now starting my fifth year of the PhD. I was able to do the public history master’s combined with my doctoral coursework, which is one of the reasons that I love my department at American University. My dissertation, if anyone’s interested in that, is on Sunday mail delivery from 1810 through 1912 as a lens into religion, state relations. Because I got my masters in public history, I’ve also had some museum gigs on the side, on top of working as a TA in the American University Department of History. That’s about it.

Side-Hustling as a History PhD

02:27 Emily: Yeah. Is that typical for people in your department to be taking on museum jobs or outside gigs like that.

02:33 Rebecca: It’s typical in the sense that being atypical is typical. So there’s not one way to do it. There’s not one way to make it work. Like one of my classmates does a bunch of oral histories of basketball players for money. Some of them are like older and married or have houses. For me, especially brcause I came straight from undergrad, in order to have enough money to not be worrying about it constantly, I have had part time work every year on top of the TA-ing.

03:06 Emily: Okay. That’s good to know. So basically what you’re saying is the stipend that you’re receiving is not sufficient across the board. No one is doing this on just the stipend. They either have outside sources of income from a spouse or something, or maybe past savings, or they’re currently taking on side hustles. Right?

03:22 Rebecca: So I can think of two classmates who, and this is not a coincidence, they’re the two in the department that are younger than me, that haven’t had that much part time work. One of them is extremely frugal and the other one decided to take out loans on top of the stipend. I adore my department, like I am so happy to be there, at the same time we do have the second lowest stipends of all history departments in the greater DC area.

03:49 Emily: Okay. Yeah. Glad to hear that balance of like, Hey, it’s worth it, we’re doing it, but this is what it takes to get it done. Side hustling for you, other solutions for other people, but glad to hear that.

Getting Engaged During Grad School

04:01 Emily: Okay, you’ve given us a little bit of a brief career history, coming straight from college into graduate school, doing your master’s and PhD right in a row. Where does your relationship factor into this?

04:12 Rebecca: Going way back for a second, we actually met in a summer program in Washington, DC when we were 16, like for high school students. We ended up at college near each other. His name is Brandon, and Brandon went to UMass Amherst. We were together for the first half of college, and then we broke up, just seeing other people, didn’t think or know that we’d get back together. We ran into each other a couple of years later and the summer after graduation, we ended up getting back together. Then six months after that, he moved from New York to DC in order to be with me. And even before Brandon and I got back together, I had to facetiously told friends that I need to pass my dissertation proposal, even before I get an engagement proposal. And this was even before I was in a PhD program, this is when I knew I wanted to do a PhD.

05:04 Rebecca: So third year of graduate school, toward the end of the year, I was about to become all but dissertation, ABD, and we had already gone ring shopping. I thought we might be getting engaged soon. And then I ended up getting engaged a few weeks before my prospectus defense. So at the end of my third year of grad school, I was ABD and also engaged.

05:30 Emily: Yeah. I really love that you were, I know you said facetiously, but you were thoughtful about this, right? You had an idea of how you wanted your career to play out and also how your relationship, whoever that was with, how you wanted that to play out. And it’s good to hear really that, um, your husband made that sacrifice when he was your boyfriend of moving to where you were so that you could prioritize your career and he was going to figure it out and it’s not necessarily common story. I’m really glad to hear that.

06:00 Emily: I’m reminded of when I got engaged which was also during graduate school. My husband, we had sort of decided together that we were going to get married, moving towards that direction, but he wanted to wait to propose until he also achieved candidacy. So I was further away from that. That actually didn’t happen for me until my fourth year of graduate school, I think, just the way my department works. But he was like, no, I got to get, I have to get my prelims out of the way, and then I can think about the engagement. So he had the same thought process as you, but from the opposite perspective, in our case.

06:34 Rebecca: I think it’s an autonomy of time thing because even if it’s the same work across the board, you have, I think in most programs, you have more autonomy of time after that ABD mark.

06:45 Emily: Yeah. I think for my husband, it was that, but also just the stress of preparing for the prelim and writing whatever he had to write and doing whatever we had to do, like oral defense or something, I don’t remember the details for him, but just to get past that stressful thing, he wanted it off his plate, so he could enjoy the process of being engaged and planning the wedding and not having to juggle those two things simultaneously and know that, yeah, there’s going to be a few more years here until we have to repeat that process for the dissertation and ultimate defense. With respect to your actual timing of your wedding, like how long were you guys engaged for?

07:25 Rebecca: We got engaged in March, 2018. For about a month, we were actually planning with my parents, and my mom in particular is quite traditional and they were generously willing to pay for it, but it became clear, especially to me very quickly that coordinating with them and negotiating priorities was more labor, and especially more emotional labor, than actually making money myself and working towards paying for it. We also decided in between that March and April period that the things that we cared most about relating to our wedding were not that expensive. Like making the ceremony go how it was important to me was a higher priority than venue or the number of people who were coming. So eventually, I guess around April, when we started planning and paying for it ourselves, we got a date on the calendar. We got married a year and I guess two or three months, not great with numbers, I guess a year and three months later on June 30th, 2019.

08:43 Emily: Okay. So yeah, we are recording this in August, 2019, so this is really fresh for you and that’s exciting. This is definitely a tip for other people who are going into the wedding planning process of anyone who contributes gets a say. If you don’t want that party to have that say in that particular way or whatever, if there are strings attached to that gift, sometimes it is easier to simply take on all of the finances on your own. That’s the decision that you made.

Paying for the Wedding through Side-Hustling

09:12 Emily: We’ve already kind of gone over that your stipend was not really enough to live on, at least in the lifestyle that you want, and you were already side hustling. Did you have a plan for like how much more money did you need to bring in either in total or on a monthly basis to be able to pay for the wedding?

09:28 Rebecca: We looked at it a little backwards, in retrospect. It was more like however much money we have to delegate toward this, that is how much that we could pay. Brandon and I split it almost exactly evenly between us with a few exceptions. If there was something that was really important to him or really important to me. I paid for Ketubah the Jewish marriage contract. I paid for our pre rabbinical counseling. He paid for our entire rehearsal brunch because that was not something that I was tied to doing. On my end, my stipend from American when I started was $19,000 per year, and now currently thanks to our union it’s $22,000 per year, which is actually a huge difference just in the four years or whatever that I’ve been a TA. I really didn’t give it that much thought about, will I be able to afford this? It was more if I can’t afford it, then I won’t do it, and we love each other, and we want to get married, and that’s the most important thing. I have another classmate in my program who literally eloped at one, but I don’t really know the details on that. Also around this time, I was reading those books by Jen Sincero, have you ever read her books? The first one is called “You Are a Badas” and the second one is called “You Are a Badass at Making Money” and they’re —

11:00 Emily: Actually, I’ll interrupt you just for a second. I literally just finished “You’re a Badass At Making Money”, like last week. So I’m a little late to the Jen Sincero game, but I did read it and enjoyed it. I’m trying to figure out what I want to incorporate. So yeah, please go on.

11:15 Rebecca: Oh, that’s so exciting. I’m glad you liked it. In spring 2018, this was when her money book came out, the green one. She’s a little bit more, I don’t know if the word is capitalist than I am, but she’s also in line with my feminism. A central takeaway from Sincero’s work is that sometimes you have to jump and then create the net for yourself. That’s what happened when we decided to pay for our own wedding. So around the time that we had made that decision, I was reading a bunch of Jen Sincero. A major advantage of doing a history program in DC is that a lot of people email the department to offer work opportunities. So then in May, 2018, I heard about a summer job working for an economics professor at George Mason to do research on 19th and early 20th century labor history. My dissertation is on 19th century and early 20th century religion-state relations, and there was a lot of overlap with that labor history. I ended up working for her over the summer and then she offered for me to stay for the coming school year, like this past school year 2018-19. My advisor helped me negotiate a 50% salary increase for that, so that was my side gig that took a lot of time and essentially paid for my wedding. But it was also a completely pleasant experience working for this economist.

12:55 Emily: Yeah. I want to hear more about the logistics of how this side hustle worked. For you with American, because you’re a TA, does that mean that you’re not working/not being paid over the summer?

13:07 Rebecca: Oh yes.

13:09 Emily: Okay, so you’re already dealing with an academic year only stipend. So —

13:13 Rebecca: Last year I had a fellowship from my department for summer research. This year I did not, which was my why my reaction was “Oh yeah”, because that was the situation. But last summer I had a $3,500 fellowship from my department and then $5,000 from this professor George Mason.

13:35 Emily: Okay, so in your summers, at least last summer, you had a balance of working on your own dissertation and also doing this other work for this other professor, but I’m wondering, because you guys are at different universities, what was the actual relationship between you and this professor or the grant? Were you a W-2 employee or was this a self-employment situation?

13:58 Rebecca: It was a self employment situation, so I got taxed on it pretty heavily.

Researching as a Side-Hustle

14:04 Emily: Yeah. So that’s definitely a couple of things I want to talk further about with that, because I don’t really know that well, how this works. I think you’re the first person I interviewed for the podcast who has done research, like very similar skill set and everything to what you’re doing for your dissertation, and as a graduate student, but as a self employment project. Can you just talk to me a little bit more about what the differences are between that self-employment gig and maybe what you typically do as a graduate student?

14:36 Rebecca: In terms of the content itself, it was really just teaching versus researching. This past year I TA-ed class about the presidents and then I TA-ed History of Memory, and that whole time I was researching 19th century labor history. The biggest difference in terms of how much it affects me is that the side gig did not withhold any taxes. So as a graduate student, I’m cobbling together a bunch of opportunities to approach like 40[K per year, which is really great for grad school, I paid $4,000 in taxes last year, and that was most of my money.

15:23 Emily: I’ll make a couple elaborations on that for anyone who is looking into self-employment, which, if you’re going to do a side hustle, I kind of think self-employment is the way to go, because you have a lot more control over your schedule over how much you’re going to work. But the flip side of that is you have to take a lot more responsibility yourself when it comes to the financial side of things. One of the main things is that you need to pay a lot of tax and no one is withholding that tax for you, so two notes there. The first is that, with self-employment stuff, it’s not like income tax and you know that, so I’m speaking to the audience, but it’s not like income tax where you’re not taxed on the first chunk of income you take in, then you’ll have a low tax rate on the next chunk, then you’ll have a higher tax rate on the next chunk. That’s the graduated income tax system. You will still pay income tax as a self employed person, so just add that on top of whatever the rest of your income is. It’s going to be in the 12% or maybe even the 22% bracket, depending on how much money you make. But in addition, you have self employment tax, which is, I believe 15.3% on everything. The first dollar that you make as a self employed person, 15.3% of everything. So it’s not like that graduated system. It ends up feeling like you pay a lot and you do pay a lot in tax because of these two different types of tax that you end up paying income tax and self employment tax.

Emily: For anyone who is making a significant self employment income like you did, you have to set money aside for tax. You have to prepare for that. You have to do the calculations because you don’t want to be surprised at the end of the year with…I mean, you can be very pleased that you made all this money through selling employment, that’s amazing, but you have to be prepared for the tax side of things. One thing I’ll recommend actually for anyone who is either self employed or who has a fellowship who doesn’t have income tax withheld, I have resources on my website about paying quarterly estimated tax. You can go to the site and search for quarterly estimated tax. You’ll come up with like my main article on that. It’s designed for people who have fellowship income, but people with self employment income can take a lot out of that as well. And if you want a little bit further help I’ll link from the show notes, actually have a workshop on helping people pay quarterly estimated tax. Again, to not be surprised at the end of the year with a huge tax bill. It helps you estimate the amount of tax you’ll have to pay and also pay through it quarterly.

17:37 Emily: Okay, so Rebecca, that was a little bit of a diversion just because this is my wheelhouse about taxes.

17:41 Rebecca: That’s very helpful. Yeah.

17:44 Emily: I actually was a little bit for curious, because I think what I was asking, I didn’t phrase quite right earlier, was about, so the difference between your dissertation work, which you are either receiving a fellowship for, or maybe not being explicitly paid to do in your primary role as a graduate student versus the self employment relationship, this contractor relationship you have with this professor. I guess what I’m asking about is like intellectual or academic ownership over that work. Are you going to be on papers? Just because it’s an unusual way to be doing research, as a self employed person, but still in an academic setting, but it’s at a different university. So that’s why it was sort of interesting and complex.

18:24 Rebecca: I find it to be really common, particularly in Washington DC where we have a lot of federal archives. Since I started grad school in 2015, I’ve honestly lost track of the number of professors who’ve emailed the department literally from as far as Australia and asked our grad students to do work for them. Now I don’t do it unless it’s $30 per hour, but I used to do it for like $12, $15 per hour before I knew better. And as far as I know, we never get even an acknowledgement because we’re a human in the right location who has used archives before, and isn’t going to mess it up when researching.

19:12 Emily: Gotcha.

19:13 Rebecca: For my dissertation, I am the author.

19:16 Emily: Right. So it’s really just by virtue of where you’re attending graduate school and the skill set that you have,that you have access and people, as you were saying from all of the world want some access and they’ll use you, hire you to be a conduit for helping them with that work. But in terms of the academic ownership, because you’re being paid and again, as a contractor, it sounds like you sort of relinquish that. They’re going to be completely in control of the scholarship side of things. You’re not apparently even getting an acknowledgement, which I feel like it definitely deserves an acknowledgement at minimum, but okay.

19:50 Rebecca: That’s just the random people from California or whoever who can’t fly into DC.

19:54 Emily: Yeah, totally. Okay. So now I have a better idea about this.

19:57 Rebecca: It’s not even taxed sometimes, because it’s not enough money to be taxed, but I’ve done that a lot of times. And then my research gig at George Mason, I have a relationship with this person now. I don’t know when her book will be done, but I’ll be in communication with her. And I definitely felt like I was a part of the project, even though for the argument of the book, that’s entirely her argument, I’m just providing the facts that she then integrates into her analysis.

20:29 Emily: Yeah. I guess I’m also wondering like maybe you know for her situation, why wasn’t she working with a graduate student at our own institution? Like her advisee or something like that.

20:39 Rebecca: She wanted a historian. She’s in an economics department and she specifically reached out to history departments because she wanted reviews of historical literature by historians. And then also just that change over time analysis that my department trains me to do.

21:01 Emily: Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. This is really, really interesting to me.

Commercial

21:06 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. I am just bursting with this news. I have launched a community for personal finance for PhDs. The community is for PhDs and people pursuing PhDs who want to level up their practice of personal finance by opening and funding an IRA, starting to budget, aggressively paying off debt financially navigating a life or career transition, maximizing the income from a side hustle, preparing an accurate tax return, and much more. Inside the community, you’ll have access to a library of financial education products I’ve made in the past, and I’m going to add new trainings that library every month. There is also a discussion forum, a monthly live calls with me, a book club, and progress journaling for financial goals. Basically, the community is going to help you reach your financial goals, whatever they are. Go to PFForPhDs.com/community to find out even more. If you’re listening to this in real time, you have the opportunity to become a founding member of the community at a discount. The price is going up on August 15th, 2020, so don’t delay. Go to PFForPhDs.com/community for all the details. I can’t wait to help propel you to financial success. Now back to the interview.

Research Side-Hustles and Career Advancement

22:29 Emily: I guess the other sort of big picture question I wanted to ask you about side hustling is, so the side hustling is necessary financially — for the wedding, for living your life — do you think it’s giving you more than that? Like is this actually advancing your career in some way?

22:46 Rebecca: That’s a fantastic question and I really hadn’t thought about it. I mean, the economics people at George Mason, like their department is a completely different environment than mine, so it’s educational, just in that sense to meet more people in different places. Overall, the research work definitely was not expanding my skillset. It probably expanded my content knowledge a little bit, but it wasn’t that much more than whatever I had to be familiar with for comprehensive exams, because I did all of that time period. For the George Mason people I earned, what was it? For the whole year it was $15,000. And the previous year, before I was engaged, my side hustle, during my third year of graduate school paid $1,500, so literally take off a zero, and that was writing an exhibit for a museum. That was fantastic experience that definitely advanced my CV/resume and what I know how to do.

23:56 Emily: Gotcha. So there may be a little bit of a trade off there. This is not surprising that the things that benefit you more as an individual, there may be a trade off on the money there. You’re being paid more, but —

24:06 Rebecca: In my experience, that is correct.

24:08 Emily: Yeah, so I mean, hopefully that’s not the case. I wish for everyone to have a side hustle that pays really well and advances your career and all that, but sometimes you may have to trade off one or the other, but it sounds like at least at the very, very minimum you’ve expanded your network, right? You’ve met more people. You’ve worked closely with this one individual. So maybe that’ll come into play later on. Who knows about that.

Time Management and Side-Hustling

24:31 Emily: So I want to move now to talking about how you, how you manage your time. You’re obviously a long time side hustler, but it sounds like you really maybe stepped it up, maybe stepped up your hours to make this additional money in this past year to be able to fund the wedding that you wanted. Can you talk to me a little bit about how you balanced your dissertation work, your TA role, the side hustle, maybe multiple side hustles, if you’re still doing other ones, and then of course, just the rest of your personal life.

24:59 Rebecca: I have noticed for a while that it comes down to two things. One is time management, which I’m sure seems pretty straight forward. And the second is the kind of energy that the opportunity is giving you. I have felt for a long time, this is also just my personality, that if an opportunity is giving me a lot of positive energy and genuinely feel like I can do anything, but if it’s not, and sometimes things take away from my energy, then that becomes a real challenge. I remember at the beginning of last school year, last fall, actually around this exact time, last year, I majorly had not figured out how that balance was going to work. I was so stressed that I ended up giving up caffeine for several months, even though coffee is my favorite thing, because I was just so energized and stressed all the time that it was just miserable. And just not knowing how I was going to balance my time all year.

26:03 Rebecca: Also, the way that we ended up doing our wedding, and I’m sure we’ll talk about this later, it ended up working out great, but we accepted a lot of favors from people. Like a friend did the photography, a friend did the flowers, a family friend officiated our service. And when you rely on people, even if they’re really close friends and family, it’s just really stressful to maintain the relationships. I never wanted to feel like I was a burden on people. That created a lot of stress and the most challenges very early on, but over the course of the year, I think I just adjusted. Also second semester, I had this past TA assignment for a fantastic, really supportive enthusiastic professor. She’s Eileen Finley at American University and she was just a breath of fresh air twice a week, and that made a huge positive difference in my ability to find positive energy and manage my time well.

27:08 Emily: I think that’s an excellent, excellent point that you’re making. I wonder to make it any more applicable for the listener, can you tell in advance what kinds of activities are going to give you energy? So you can kind of filter, like I’m not gonna accept this opportunity because it seems like it’ll be draining. Have you figured out any kind of framework around that or is it just have to try it and then see?

27:31 Rebecca: I’m definitely not an expert on that in the sense that I am still figuring that out. So this is not what you asked, but I could break down what an average week was like. I think both semesters my TA at AU, that was Tuesday and Friday, so then I would often go to George Mason where they gave me a desk, which was nice. And that way I felt like I had community there. I almost always went once a week. I didn’t go more than once a week, very often, but it was typically on a Monday, Wednesday or a Thursday really. And then one or two days I would actually get to do my own work on my own dissertation. And I ended up, um, drafting one chapter out of six first semester and one chapter out of six second semester, but I really have much higher hopes for this coming academic year when I’m not planning and paying for a wedding. I hope to be able to draft more than one chapter each semester.

28:31 Emily: That actually does sound like really good progress to me. I take it you are going to take the side hustle down some. You’re not trying to make as much money in the upcoming year as you did last year.

28:41 Rebecca: I ended working for George Mason at the end of the school year, because it was an academic school year position, but also during second semester, I allocated some time toward applying for fellowships just because everyone told me that that’s what you do when you’re going into fifth year. I actually got three out of four of the ones that I applied for. One of them is through the same people at George Mason, so that ties into what you said about like making connections helps. One is from Mount Holyoke College where I did my undergrad work. It’s specifically from the history department. There that’s the biggest fellowship. They’re basically paying my rent for the coming year. And that will hopefully really allow me to focus on my actual dissertation work. Then the third is a research grant from my department at American. I’m really trying not to take on side hustle work like I did last year. Though, I did have a potentially paid opportunity fall into my lap for this coming year, but it hasn’t fully developed yet and I need to prioritize my dissertation because I wasn’t always able to work on it as much as I wanted to this past year.

29:58 Emily: Yeah. Congratulations on winning those three fellowships. Are you continuing to TA in addition to accepting those fellowships?

30:05 Rebecca: This coming year is my last year of TA-ing.

30:08 Emily: Yeah, it’s a great point for anyone who is looking to side hustling during graduate school and especially for you where your progress on your dissertation is up to you. You’re ABD, it’s at your own speed. There is a danger of devoting too much time to making money on the side and not enough time to actually progressing through your current career stage so that you can get a full time job and have an actual salary.

30:33 Rebecca: It’s a balance to strike for a few reasons. One is I get the most work done when I can take myself out to the pizza place next to my apartment and buy my favorite pizza, or get coffee and a bunch of different coffee shops, or buy a nice new planner for myself to organize my life. You have to have some cash flow, at least in my experience in order to be your best student.

31:00 Emily: Gotcha.

31:01 Rebecca: And I think the other reason is that I actually want to go into public history and museum work rather than academia. So in order to get more relevant job experience, that’s also a balance to strike for me.

The Financial Side of Wedding Planning

31:15 Emily: For sure. Yeah. Thanks for pointing that out. So we’ve been talking about the side hustles and the wedding you added, you know, $15,000 to your wedding fund. It sounds like more or less for this past year and it just was a month or so ago. So how was it, how did the wedding go?

31:30 Rebecca: We got married at the Hamilton Restaurant in downtown Washington, DC. It’s around the corner from the White House and it’s both a restaurant and a concert venue. And I would highly recommend to anyone looking to have a great wedding at a minimal cost to get married at a restaurant that has a concert venue because under one contract we had our venue, the food, they provided the cupcakes, they included the open bar. There was a guy that was — so, I thought we had a lights guy and then a sound guy, and I just realized when I was telling my husband about this interview, that those were actually the same person. So it came with a lights guy and the sound guy. The venue was really great.

32:18 Rebecca: I was really happy with my dress. I found it for $130, which I’m really proud of. One of my bridesmaids asked me what I was envisioning and I described sort of a shorter dress, but also a sun dress, but also beautiful. And she pulled up one on Pinterest and was like, “do you mean like this?” And I was like, “yes, that’s exactly what I’m looking for.” Then, a few days later she texted me that it was 75% off online. So that’s how I got my dress from $130. A different bridesmaid took me veil shopping and I got one for $30. I would say for any brides out there, don’t spend a lot of money on the veil because you’re only going to wear it once. One of my aunts bought my shoes for me at Macy’s or something as a gift.

33:09 Rebecca: The most important part of the whole wedding experience to me was the ceremony and it’s hard to describe why that is. I guess, I mean, it’s a Jewish life cycle event and I did not have the traditional bat mitzvah, but I identify very strongly with Judaism, and my husband’s one of his parents is Jewish, but he didn’t grow up with a lot of religion, so I would describe it as Jewish with an interfaith twist. The way I think back on our ceremony is that there are a few events in life that are really deeply, very important, and for one of those to go so well, I appreciate that it went flawlessly so much. I think the ceremony itself, which we have a link to the video, actually that I can send you if you’re interested, I’m just so happy with how it went. We had a family friend officiate and play guitar and sing. My cousin, who is also a bridesmaid, did the Hebrew. An aunt and uncle made our chuppah for us as a gift to us. My dad sang a song during it, actually. It was like everything I could have imagined, and I’m so grateful for that, and we made it happen ourselves.

34:31 Emily: Yeah, that’s something to be really, really proud of, obviously. What I’m hearing, as someone who has also planning a wedding, is that it sounds like you DIY-ed, in terms of accessing your community and asking people to contribute, the parts of the whole experience that were most meaningful to you, but also the ones that their contribution was particularly, again, meaningful or personal, like singing a song, for example. And also not particularly a ton of work, versus your choice of venue, where you combined the restaurant and the venue and all the staff is there and everything is, as you said, under one contract. That was a way that you made a really simple decision that made the planning a lot, lot easier. I did the opposite thing with my wedding, so I know that it’s a lot of work and a lot of money to do things the other way. So anyone who’s thinking about planning a wedding, I think that you went about this in a very positive and thoughtful and way that paid off, it sounds like, really well.

35:34 Rebecca: What was your wedding venue, if you don’t mind me asking?

35:36 Emily: Yeah. So we had two, first of all, because one, we got married in the church and two the reception was at a different location. So it’s already dealing with two different locations, right? We actually had our reception at a museum of natural history in Raleigh, North Carolina, which was awesome.

35:52 Rebecca: I’ve been there, actually.

35:55 Emily: Yes, it’s a fantastic museum. I was so excited. I grew up outside DC, so I’ve been in love with the natural history museum as part of the Smithsonian forever, so to have a chance to do that in a similar museum in Raleigh was so much fun. The venue was really, really fun, but it was an outside caterer. It’s a lot of work. Rentals were a whole separate thing. Getting it all done in one place, I think, was really smart. It saves a lot of time, saves a lot of money. And as I said, then you chose to DIY the parts where people could actually really contribute instead of, for example, asking for people to contribute on the food or, you know, there’s other ways to do this kind of thing that could be a little bit more work for everyone rather than just, oh, I’m giving you this wonderful gift of a song or the shoes or whatever it turns out to be. I appreciate hearing that. And it sounds like you had a wonderful time and I’m happy that everything worked out with the side hustle and everything. Any final comments on the wedding and the side hustle?

36:50 Rebecca: Just a quick, funny thing that came to mind is that one of my closest friends who did our flowers, she was literally a few days away from getting her doctorate. Her name’s Arlisha and she got her doctorate in history a few days after my wedding. Her final year of dissertating, she literally texted me and was like, I’m taking up flower arrangement as a hobby while I finished my dissertation, can I do this for your wedding? And I had not previously cared about the flowers, but I was like, yes, if you want to, go for it. She did an amazing job. Just the aesthetics of the room, I think looked so much better because Arlisha’s dissertation side hobby was flower arrangement.

37:34 Emily: Yeah. I think in the academic space, we talk a lot about mental health and self care and so forth, and that’s a really fun, healing, stress-relieving thing to potentially do that, hey, can also help out a friend or even become a side hustle , if you want to. I had an interview recently with someone who decided to turn her baking hobby, as a graduate student, into a business. So it’s the same kind of thing, right? You have something you enjoy doing, it’s a stress reliever for you, why not turn it into something a little bit bigger?

Final Words of Advice

38:02 Emily: Final question here, Rebecca, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career?

38:08 Rebecca: The piece of advice that I’m just learning and wish I had known sooner was that unpaid opportunities are almost always not worth it. Full stop.

38:20 Emily: Yup.

38:20 Rebecca: Also, as a PhD student, you have to do your doctoral requirements and dissertation, but there’s really nothing else that you have to do. And if you have different wedding preferences from your parents, just do it your own way. And if some customs from your religion are meaningful, just stick to those. If others aren’t…our wedding was really a growth opportunity for me and I’m proud and thankful for how it went.

38:50 Emily: Wonderful. No need to elaborate any further on that, Rebecca. Thank you so much for sharing the story on the podcast with me.

38:56 Rebecca: Thank you so much.

Outtro

38:58 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPhDs.com/podcast is the hub for the personal finance for PhDs podcast. There you can find links to all the episode show notes, and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, please consider joining my mailing list for my behind the scenes commentary about each episode. Register at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe. See you in the next episode, and remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is stages of awakening by Poddington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

How Work Experience Outside Academia Can Bolster Your Academic and Non-Academic Career

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Gillian Hayes, the Vice Provost for Graduate Studies and Dean of the Graduate Division at UC Irvine. Throughout her career as a computer scientist, Gillian has moved back and forth between roles in academia and industry; she argues that the division between the two is more porous than is commonly perceived inside academia and should become even more so for PhDs. Gillian consulted and completed internships as a PhD student and engaged in an even broader range of side hustles as a faculty member. We discuss the real and perceived barriers to side work that PhD trainees encounter in other disciplines. We conclude with why PhD trainees should consider non-academic careers and how to prepare for them.

Links Mentioned

non academic work experience

Teaser

00:00 Gillian: They’re not linear. People take all kinds of curving paths and I would very much like to see the university and academia in general, be a sort of lifelong learning and scholarship partner to people, for moments when they’re both in and out of where we are. Academia will always be here. Go do interesting things, come back. Let’s reconnect. And let’s find ways that we can make those boundaries a little bit more porous.

Introduction

00:32 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season six, episode six and today my guest is Dr. Gillian Hayes, the Vice Provost for Graduate Studies and Dean of the Graduate Division at UC Irvine. Throughout her career as a computer scientist, Gillian has moved back and forth between roles in academia and industry. She argues that the division between the two is more porous than is commonly perceived inside academia and should become even more so for PhDs. Gillian consulted and completed internships as a PhD student and engaged in an even broader range of side work as a faculty member, and we discussed the real and perceived barriers to side work that PhD trainees encounter in other disciplines. Don’t miss a minute of this fascinating conversation recorded in February, 2020. Without further ado. Here’s my interview with Dr. Gillian Hayes.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:31 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Gillian Hayes, who is a Vice Provost and Dean at the University of California at Irvine. We’re going to be discussing side hustling and career development, both what Gillian has done in her own professional development and how she works with students on the same subject. It’s really pleasure to have you on today, Gillian. Will you please introduce yourself a little bit further to our audience?

01:55 Gillian: Sure. Thanks so much, Emily. I’m so glad to be able to be with you all today. I think you’re doing a wonderful service for our students. Just some quick background on me. My training is actually as a computer scientist. Both my undergraduate and PhD work was in computer science. I have a lot of background in working in industry and other places that I’m sure we’re going to talk about later. And the bulk of my research is actually focused on how do we help people who may not be included in the tech world, normally — so kids, underrepresented groups, elderly individuals — how do we help them get involved in the design process and really make responsible, ethical technologies. Here at UCI, since September, I have taken on the role of Vice Provost of Grad Education and Dean of the Graduate Division, which is a very long, convoluted way of saying that I get to be in charge of all the grad students here on campus and help them be as successful as they can be.

02:54 Emily: Yeah. So one big component of that is not only academic success, but success in their future careers. Obviously it reflects very well on your university and program if people go on to have careers success.

Career Path: Grad School to Faculty

03:06 Emily: Let’s start talking a little bit more about your own personal journey. Can you talk us through the work experience that you had prior to graduate school, if any, and then the side hustling that you did during graduate school?

03:18 Gillian: Yeah, absolutely. I should confess, I’m the child of two academics. Both have doctorates, were professors, so I understood academia in a way that I think, it’s important to contextualize the kind of privilege that comes with that. I think I always knew I wanted to go do a doctorate at some point, but beyond that, I was deeply confused when I finished undergraduate and I didn’t know what to do. And I did like all people who don’t know what to do and I went and worked for Deloitte, and sort of got the basic training of how do you be a consultant? How do you be a professional out in the world? I then worked for another company called Avanade, which was a spin-off of Accenture and Microsoft at the time, and just spent a lot of time learning the basics of being a professional before I went back to grad school. Then, while I was in grad school, I also continued to work. I’ve sort of, throughout my career, had this one foot in academia, one foot in industry kind of life. I worked for both Intel and IBM in internships. I also had a side gig driving the golf cart that serves people beer at a wonderful golf course in Georgia called Chateau Alon, which is probably my favorite job that I had in grad school. And then did some additional consulting for a company called Roundarch. So that was sort of all what I was doing while I was in grad school and before grad school, and I think they were all great experiences and can’t recommend it all enough.

Side Hustling During Grad School

04:44 Emily: Yeah. Let’s take a pause there because I think you were in not only a unique position because of your familial upbringing, but also because of your field, computer science, which is so highly employable with just a bachelor’s. Maybe the most of any academic field of any of my guests. So you got some great jobs right after undergrad, and then also continued to side hustle in graduate school. Now I’ve noticed — this is anecdotal, you can tell me if this has been in your observation as well — that computer science is the field that is maybe tied with engineering, but most likely to allow internships and encourage internships and other kinds of consulting and side work during graduate school. So there’s a very big, in my opinion, cultural difference between computer science and perhaps engineering, and then like the biological sciences, the humanities. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

05:37 Gillian: Yeah. I think that’s a great observation, Emily, and it’s actually something I didn’t even realize was unique until I became a professor because I just thought, well, of course that’s what you would do. You go off to industry. It’s very much encouraged. It’s very much a part of the culture. There are industrial research labs, which I think is a piece that helps alot. So when you talk about interning as a PhD student in computer science or information science or other related fields, you’re typically going to a company that’s going to allow you, and in fact, encourage you to publish the work that you do while you’re there. And so not only are you making lots of money, typically more money in the summer, then you’ll make throughout the entire rest of the year, working at the university, but you’re also doing it in a way that advances your career and helps you publish and helps you build a network with researchers outside of the Academy. And I do think that you’re right, that’s quite unique, although growing a little bit more in other fields, but certainly not to the extent that you see in computing.

06:35 Emily: Yeah. And I don’t mean at all to set this up, like this can only happen inside computer science and never happens elsewhere. I just think that, yeah, in other disciplines, we need to take a page out of what’s going on inside computer science and engineering. And maybe it’s not formal internships, like maybe the structure isn’t quite there yet inside academia to allow for that. Like you said, maybe there aren’t publishing opportunities outside of academia in other fields, the way there possibly is in computer science, but I just think that people in other disciplines, it helps to open your mind a little bit to what’s possible in terms of internships or, you also mentioned consulting, like, can you elaborate a little bit more about that? These kinds of things that are potentially possible, even for people in other fields, if they seek out the opportunities. It might not be presented to them in the way that it is inside computer science, but doesn’t mean it’s not there.

07:21 Gillian: Yeah, I think that’s a great point. What I typically hear from faculty who are worried about their students interning, and this is true by the way, within computer science as well. There are some faculty who don’t like their students to intern, although it’s much more rare than other disciplines. But what I typically hear is, “well, how are they going to get their work done? How are they going to finish their dissertation?” All of those kinds of things. What I have seen in my career, and I’m actually trying to collect the data right now to do a study on this at UCI, to see if we can see if my anecdotal experience holds out across more people, is that actually, not interning or interning it doesn’t slow you down or speed you at particularly much. I did three internships at anywhere from three to five months while I was in graduate school and still finished in five years and did not have a master’s going in. And that’s not to say that I’m somehow special or so fast and so wonderful. But actually what I think is happening is you give your brain a little break from the dissertation and it’s amazing how much more quickly you can actually work on it.

08:25 Gillian: When I see students, and I do have them here, who they can’t intern, they can’t go away for whatever reason, perhaps they have family obligations or other things, and they’re not going to just move to the Bay area for the summer, things like that. Those students they’re not any faster. They really aren’t. And what I see them doing is churning a little bit, and really thinking through their dissertation almost too much. So I would encourage people in any field to seek out those consulting opportunities, even if it’s just do something for a few hours a week, write copy for somebody. Do some beautiful graphic design, if you’re an artist. Do some statistics. I mean, the amazing thing is how much people out in industry need consultants to just do basic statistical analyses, which most of our students in both the behavioral and physical sciences are very skilled in doing. Give your brain that break away from the dissertation and I actually think it speeds you up.

09:25 Emily: Yeah, I actually really agree. I did not intern or anything where the long monotony of the six years I spent in graduate school was not broken up by periods of fresh, different work in any way. That is one of my semi regrets of that time. I want to throw another like possibility in here, not just internships, not just consulting, but something that may be a little bit more palatable to academics, which is a fellowship. Doing a professional fellowship is also sometimes possible and may be something that your advisor is more likely to look favorably upon than some of these other kinds of work. For example, after I finished graduate school, I did a three month science policy fellowship at the National Academies in DC. That fellowship is available to current graduate students, as well as recently graduated PhDs. That’s just another kind of thing you can consider. I had a previous interview, which I’ll link in the show notes with Vicky Johnson from Pro fellow. She runs a database where you can look for these kinds of opportunities for professional fellowships, as well as fellowships that might fund you. Go check that out if you’re looking for something, something else to do that’s going to give you this wider network, this different kinds of experience to stimulate your brain in a different way than just the research you’ve been doing.

10:37 Emily: Okay, so very exciting what you were able to do, what other students could potentially be able to do. Can you say a few more words about how these opportunities for side hustling and interning that you took in graduate school, built your career and set you up for your post PhD job or jobs?

10:54 Gillian: Absolutely. They’re really essential and are a big part of my career story. One of my mentors at Intel actually wound up being on my thesis committee in the end and has continued to be a really wonderful mentor to me throughout my time. Lots of other interns — one of the things that’s great about interning is you meet a bunch of other people who are PhD students at other universities, or sometimes undergraduate or master’s students as well, and they become a part of your professional network. Often companies really roll out the red carpet for interns over the summer. And so you’re going to these fun events and you really get to know a lot of other people. That becomes a really essential part of who you are 20 years later, and I look back now and people that I met as part of an internship that aren’t in my field, that I never would have met otherwise, are some of my good friends now and they’re also professional colleagues.

11:51 Gillian: The other thing I would say though, is it’s not just the industry or the research internships or the fellowships or the kinds of things we’ve been talking about. I sort of joked earlier that my favorite job in grad school was driving the beer cart at the golf course. And I think sometimes we can tend to look down on those kinds of jobs or feel like, well, the only reason you’re doing that is to make a little extra money because we don’t pay grad students enough. Sure. Those things are probably all true, but it’s also the case that I drove around in the most beautiful setting you can imagine and brought all of my books and journal articles with me and parked on the side and read. And again, just got a head break. Just got out of my home, got out of my lab, all of those places. Meet interesting people. You never know who you might get to know and think about in these places. So whatever this sort of side hustle is, I think it’s really good for your brain and for your mental health and for your network.

Side Hustling Post-Grad School

12:49 Emily: So in the jobs that you’ve had after your PhD, have you continued to work on the side and still develop and maintain those networks? Or have you been an academic and solely focused on that?

12:02 Gillian: I am apparently not able to focus on one thing at a time ever. I think that’s okay in academia, actually. It’s part of what makes life so interesting. But no, I’ve absolutely continued to do variety of side hustles. So one of the things is, I took a break. As soon as I got my shiny, new assistant professor job, I went and went back to Roundarch and worked as a consultant again, and just really got to…I always talk about it as cleaning my brain. I was in the slog of writing this dissertation and it’s so painful. You finally get it over the line, and back then we had to measure the margins and do all of this painful stuff, and turned it in and went and got to fly around and talk to people about building websites for a while. That felt really good.

13:53 Gillian: Then I remembered why I left consulting in the first place, because I got kind of bored with it, and got to start my assistant professor position. That cycle has been really important throughout my career. I’ve continued to do consulting on the side, in terms of both technology-related consulting and user experience, and so on. But also because of my research in the autism space, I’ve been able to consult with a lot of folks in K-12 and in special education and help shape where the state of California is going in terms of our care and support of people with autism and related conditions. That’s been valuable both in terms of feeding my research and really understanding what’s out there practically, but also in terms of feeding my own ability to exercise different parts of my brain.

14:40 Gillian: I would also say, academics, they won’t always refer to it as a side hustle — we like to be very pure — but writing books is basically the ultimate side hustle, as far as I’m concerned. We get judged on it because it’s part of the tenure and promotion process. But if you write the right book, that generates all kinds of interesting things — speaking opportunities, consulting opportunities, other things that I think can continue to be important no matter what field that you’re in.

15:11 Gillian: I took it a little further than most in terms of side hustling, which is I started out doing a little bit of consulting for a couple of founders that I knew well from a startup and wound up running the entire company. That’s probably more than most people will do, but I did spend a couple of years as a CEO. What I’ll say there is sometimes your side hustle becomes your main gig for a little while. I took some leave from the university so that I could do that. And I would say to people, if that happens, go for it. You can take a leave of absence. So often people think, “Oh, I can’t get off the grad student treadmill” or “I can’t get off the tenure treadmill” or whatever. You can take a leave of absence for a couple of years and academia will always be here. It’s obviously not for everyone, but I really value the time that I had being able to run a small company and watching them now at a distance under someone else’s leadership and continuing to excel is so pleasurable for me.

16:10 Emily: I’m really glad that you brought up there can be these blurred lines between what is your job as an academic and what is stuff you do on the side, because all of it can be related to your area of expertise and just expressed in different ways.

Commercial

16:28 Emily: Hey, social distancers, Emily here. I hope you’re doing okay. It took a few weeks, but I think I have my bearings about me in my new normal. There is a lot of uncertainty and fear right now about our public and personal health and our economy. I would like to help you feel more secure in your personal finances and plan and prepare for whatever financial future may come. You can schedule a free 15 minute call with me at PFforPhDs.com/coaching to determine if financial coaching with me is right for you at this time, I hope you will reach out, if only to speak with someone new for a few minutes. Take care. Now back to our interview.

How Side Hustles Are Viewed in Academia

17:14 Emily: Can you talk to me about structurally, how this has worked for you? You just mentioned you’ve taken official sounds like full time leaves of absence from your job, but do you have, for instance, like an 80% position or have you at some points to allow time for these side things or have you always been kind of a hundred percent at the job and just pursued these outside of…I don’t know, how does this work, time management wise and also official position wise?

17:42 Gillian: Yeah. So official position wise, it really depends as a grad student, it’s fairly easy to sort of zoom in and of things. I did, what’s called an off cycle internship one year and was away for fall semester. Just a matter of filing some paperwork with the university to allow me to do that. That allowed me to be at my internship for five months instead of just sort of the normal three of the summer, which was really, really valuable. It also allowed me a lot of access to people who get a little maxed out in the summertime because there’s so many interns around. I would definitely recommend thinking about being creative with those kinds of things.

18:19 Gillian: Many universities, even if you’re a full time, faculty member have consulting allowances. You can maybe consult X number of hours per year and the university’s not bothered by it. If you do more than that, then they’ll typically want you to take some sort of reduced time or leave of absence, things like that. I would encourage people to really find out what the rules are at their different universities. It may be highly variable. Then the final thing is, my mother always says to me, if you don’t ask, you know, what the answer is. I really tried to take that to heart, and when I was starting working at AVIAA, I was aware that I was also running a master’s program that I was quite attached to, and I didn’t want to let that go. I sort of sat down and tried to think about, okay, if I keep running the master’s program, teach this little bit that will go with that, and I keep supervising the PhD students I have, because you don’t let your PhD students drift, even if you go off to do something else, what does that kind of look like time-wise? I went to my Dean and my department chair and said, I’d like to take a reduced workload. So basically these are the things I’m going to do and not going to do anything else. What does that look like percentage wise? And I’ve talked to a lot of different people who’ve done this. Anywhere from they’re employed at the university 5% time to maybe they’re employed 50%, 80%. You sort of get to different levels and whatever you think is appropriate. My Dean and my Chair looked at that and said, “yeah, that seems about right, we’re good with that,” so I was able to take reduce time, but not a full leave away.

20:02 Gillian: I would just say to people, you never know if you don’t explore it. So think about it and investigate it because you may well be able to do these things, partially. I also was always very upfront with our board of directors and with the founders of the company that I was still going to be doing XYZ things affiliated with the university. And they were good with that. From all of their perspectives, the idea that I would maintain a connection with this wonderful place of scholarship that would potentially bring us excellent new hires and other kinds of people was great. On the surface of it, and before I made those requests, lots of people said to me, “Oh, you can’t do this or you can’t do that,” but I thought, well, maybe. Let’s just ask and find out. So I would encourage people to ask.

20:47 Emily: Yeah, I’m so glad you brought this up and I want to take kind of a grad student or postdoc, spin on that question. Because what I hear a lot from especially graduate students is “I’m not allowed to have a side job or a side income,” and either that’s because of the terms of the assistantship that they have, or the terms of the fellowship that they’ve accepted, or it’s just something cultural that they’ve absorbed, or maybe their advisor said something more explicitly, but I think there’s a range of like, what’s actually permitted, either legally or contractually. And of course, for international students, that’s a whole other discussion of what the visa allows, which is nothing except for like official OPT kind of stuff. But for citizens or residents in the US, can you just talk around this a little bit of is it worth asking, even if you think the answer is going to be no, look at your contract, or what?

21:44 Gillian: I think it’s always worth asking. And I’ll answer that in a couple of ways. One of them is, and I saw some really interesting research, I’ll try to dig it up and send you the link if I can find it. But essentially, if you ask grad students, what do they think their advisor wants of them? They’ll essentially say to get an R1 tenure track position, to have this like life of the mind, to be a mini version of their adviser. And then if you ask the advisors, what do they want of their students, broadly, in a very generic, hypothetical, meta kind of way, they’ll say the same. But if you ask the faculty, think about your last X number of students — I forget what it is, two, three, four, whatever — who’ve graduated with you. What do you think you want for them? Suddenly you start to see industry jobs, government jobs, community colleges, other kinds of two and four year opportunities. Not these sort of tenure track PhD granting institution kinds of jobs. And it’s because we’re sort of inculturated in a broad way to think, yes, we want to create more little faculty that look just like us. But if you think about specific students, you often recognize, well, actually their passion and their strengths lie elsewhere.

23:02 Gillian: It’s that disconnect that I think many of the students are feeling. They know that their advisor, in a broad sense wants this thing, but maybe it’s not for them. If they really open up that conversation, I think most faculty really do want to support them and be open to that. I think it’s always worth asking. Also, the truth is, if you’ve got one of those few faculty that just aren’t interested and aren’t going to want to support you, no matter what, for me, I would want to know that because maybe I need to find a different person to work with, or maybe they stay my primary supervisor, but I find some additional mentorship on the side that can help me get to the places I need to go and that I want to go. I think it’s always worth asking.

23:46 Gillian: The other thing I would say is you can interpret contracts in all kinds of ways, and I’m not an employment lawyer, but what I can say is even if officially our ruling, as the University of California, is that people don’t have jobs outside, we don’t own your life. If I worked at Google or I worked at Deloitte again, or I worked wherever, they don’t get to tell me that I can’t go out on a Saturday morning and be a barista, if I want to. It’s the same here. We don’t own your personal time and your free time. So if it’s not disrupting your job here as a grad student researcher or your job here as a TA, I don’t see that we have a whole lot of standing to tell you that you can’t do it.

24:30 Emily: I’m really glad to have your perspective on, because I think this is something that students…I’ll call it a limiting belief. Like it’s a limiting belief that students have. I can’t, I’m not allowed to have a side job, have a side income. And I, like you, think it’s more important to examine this spirit of that rule or that cultural norm, because really the point is you want to be making progress on your dissertation. You want to put really good energy towards that on a consistent basis. And yeah, your advisor, or you, probably don’t want to be leaving at 5:00 PM every day to go to your second job as a whatever. But there’s so many jobs that you can have now in the internet age that you can do on your own schedule. That’s flexible. It’s not going to interfere with your work. As we talked about earlier, that will give you different kinds of energy and different kinds of stimulation that you aren’t getting through your primary position. I do like to think about the spirit of this. Like, is it interfering with your work? Does are advisor even really need to know about it, if they would never find out naturally. Now for these professional development opportunities, and especially something like interning, obviously you need to involve your advisor, potentially some other people in that conversation, but for a side gig, that’s a few hours a week, maybe they don’t need to know, if it doesn’t interfere.

25:44 Gillian: And you know, you never know. It’s not just that they don’t necessarily interfere, but they can also be argumentative in ways that you could never expect. Actually here’s a great example. I went to grad school with a woman who was a quilter on the side, made absolutely beautiful quilts. And I think sometimes she sold them, but just gorgeous. It takes a lot of time to be a quilter, but it didn’t interfere with her work. In the end, she actually developed this really incredible piece of software that helps teach children geometry, using quilting as a metaphor because of this thing she was doing on the side. Now, if someone had told her stop quilting, it takes up too much time, then she never would have done what she did for her dissertation.

26:29 Emily: Yeah, it is so, so beneficial to have these other areas of your life to give you not only balance, but to help you think about your work in different ways, and just to be like a whole person. You can still be a whole person during your PhD training, while on the tenure track, it’s all encouraged.

Non-Academic Careers

26:44 Emily: So let’s pivot a little bit to talking about non-academic careers. You’ve obviously had an academic career, as well as nonacademic aspects of your career. How can students who, as we were talking about earlier are statistically unlikely to end up in a tenure track position, even if they want to keep their hat in the ring for that sort of thing, how can they simultaneously prepare for a career outside of academia?

27:10 Gillian: Yeah, that’s a great question. The first thing I’ll say is, I think we need an educated workforce and an educated society, and the idea of having loads and loads of people with PhDs that work in places that are not universities is really appealing to me. I think it’s good for the world. I just want to sort of admit to my positionality there. But what I’ll tell you is I know a lot of CEOs of both big and small companies. I know a lot of executive leaders and they come to me and they ask me, where can they find people who can quickly digest an enormous amount of information, write up interesting, analytical thoughts about that. Talk about it with other people, teach it to them, explain it to them and figure out what we do next. And I’m like, that’s someone with a PhD. They’re looking all over business for people with those skills. It’s exactly what we teach, no matter what your field. It’s absolutely the case that the market needs it.

28:10 Gillian: Now we have some work to do to translate and help people understand and help people be marketable and all of those things, but that kind of work and the kind of critical thinking skills that people develop doing a doctorate is absolutely what the highest levels of leadership in the corporate world need desperately. Obviously also in government and nonprofits and other places like that. What I would say to people is just be thinking all the time about how do I translate what I do into something that other people can understand. And I spend a lot of time with people who want to translate an academic CV into a more typical resume, just helping doing that translation work. I would encourage people to seek out people like myself, who’ve had these different kinds of careers. I’m happy for podcast listeners, you can feel free to reach out to me. I might not respond right away, but I’m happy to look at things, and just figure out how do you explain yourself out into the world? That’s the first thing I would say.

29:12 Emily: I actually want to jump in there and plug a colleague of mine, Beyond the Professoriate, Jen Polk and Maren Wood’s business. This is the kind of space that you can join and learn these types of skills, see examples of how other people have made exits from academia into other interesting careers, and have community with other people who are going through the same process. Beyond Prof is one of the places where you can do that.

29:37 Gillian: Absolutely. I direct people to Beyond Prof all the time. That’s actually a better resource than me. They will respond to you more quickly. Definitely check those out. The other thing I would say is, and I’m going to pick on you a tiny bit, Emily, is even using that phrasing of exiting the university, right? One of the things that I sort of bounce up and down on a lot around here is the language of alt-ac, and post-ac, and academic exits, and these kinds of things. I don’t want to take away from people’s feelings. If that’s a helpful way for people to express what they’re going through, then by all means, go ahead, but we don’t have that same language for undergraduates who finish an undergraduate degree. We don’t have that same language for lawyers who finish a JD or medical doctors who finish an MD or any of these other folks.

30:30 Gillian: One of the things that I think is important in culture change, and we need to do this internally at the university, for sure, but also I’d like to do it everywhere is to say careers, they’re not linear. People take all kinds of curving paths and I would very much like to see the university and academia in general be a sort of lifelong learning and scholarship partner to people for moments when they’re both in and out of where we are. Now, I recognize I’m in a place of privilege. This is a much easier thing to do in my field than in others. That is what it is. But I think we need to start with changing some of our language and some of our culture around this notion of, if you don’t get that tenure track job or get that right postdoc right after you’ve finished, that the world is ending for you. No, academia will always be here. Go do interesting things, come back, let’s reconnect, and let’s find ways that we can make those boundaries a little bit more porous.

31:28 Emily: Yeah. I really appreciate that. I totally agree with you. I’ll just leave it at that.

31:34 Emily: Sort of along those lines, what about de-stigmatizing these nonacademic careers? You’ve just mentioned language changes, but are there any other ways that people inside and outside academia cannot be looking down on non-academic careers as the consolation prize for not getting a tenure track position, which for the record is definitely not how I feel about them.

31:59 Gillian: Yeah. Well, you know, I will tell you, again, this is a case where being in computing or engineering is a bit easier. My students go off and make two to three times what I will ever make, and more if they get the right stock options, and money goes a long way for de-stigmatizing all kinds of things. That’s one thing to just kind of know, but I think that’s also true in other fields. There’s lots of ways in which you can have a very healthy, productive, happy, and financially successful career outside of the Academy, and that’s an important thing for people to recognize, and to say that you’re not selling out or failing or any of these other things, if you choose to take that kind of path.

32:43 Gillian: The other piece, I think is academics, faculty tend to the people who’ve been really successful in a very particular model of existing. We’re really good at school, the way school was built. The same is true, by the way in K-12. People who become K-12 teachers are often people who were really good at school, and so it’s very hard to reform a system that’s run by people who are really good at that system. We sort of self select for this reinforcing behavior. Some of it is us taking good, long, hard looks at ourselves. And you start to see this, I think, in the undergraduate and master’s curricular reforms that we’re starting to see, where people are recognizing, hey, maybe Sage on the Stage isn’t the best way to teach. And maybe we should be thinking about active learning. Or in the graduate curriculum for master’s students, maybe we should be thinking about modular learning. That you can do pieces of it now and another piece in a couple of years and so on, and put together a collection of experiences that make the right professional degree for you.

33:50 Gillian: I think that gives me hope that if we’re starting to make reforms in K-12, and we’re making reforms in undergrad, we’re making reforms in our professional degrees, it’s only to some degree a matter of time until we can make some reforms in the PhD world and help people to understand that there are different ways to complete a doctorate, and there are different ways to have a career afterwards. It does take activity. It does take bringing back. We have an alumni speaker series here that we bring back people who did their PhDs here, who have exciting, really cool careers, running science museums, or doing policy or running a startup. And we need to show off more of those success stories too.

34:29 Emily: Yeah, I do see, as I visit universities and speak there for the financial stuff, I’m often included in their conversations around this sort of thing. Well, Emily, you’re in entrepreneurship, how do we encourage our students to consider this path as well? And they show me what they’re already doing. It’s percolating. The idea is there. It’s popping up different places. I don’t know how much it still needs to be included actually in the standard path to doctorate rather than just some side extra thing you might engage in. That would be really great.

Best Financial Advice for PhDs

35:01 Emily: Gillian, I love the ideas you’ve presented in this interview. Thank you so much for giving it. I’m just going to conclude with a question that I ask of all of my guests, which is what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? Could be related to something we’ve talked about today, or it could be something entirely other,

35:19 Gillian: That is a great question, and I thought this was your hardest question, by the way, that I really had to think about. But I think the first thing I would say is get through whatever you’re going through as fast as you can. You will never recover financially from being out of the workforce for however many years it takes you to do a PhD, even if you are the fastest PhD student in the world. The faster you can go time to degree, get done. I always say the only good dissertation is a done dissertation. Get into the workforce as quickly as you can. And the same thing is true for tenure, or for becoming a full professor, for becoming whatever. Yes, these things take time, but just get through them and don’t worry about making it perfect. Each of these things in academia, it’s a pass/fail exam, so pass and move on to the next thing. That’s the first thing I would say.

36:15 Gillian: The second is make sure your summers are paid. Whether you’re a junior faculty member or a PhD student or whatever, that’s a quarter of your year. And I’m always amazed at how many people take it completely unpaid. There are a variety of ways to get it paid. Whether it’s summer teaching, writing grants, internships, consulting, any of these side hustles we’ve been talking about, but the idea that you would lose a quarter of your income at a very young age, when people are in grad school, postdoc-ing, or as assistant professors, those are your prime earning years, and you’re setting yourself up for the future. So figure out a way to get your summers paid. You work for 12 months, so you should get paid for 12 months, is my general thing.

37:00 Gillian: Then the last thing I would say is be mindful of what free labor you give away. Academia is just chock-full, and I know you’ve talked about this on your podcast before, of free labor. We review for free. We give talks for free. We write for free. And that’s okay. That’s a certain amount of the culture and we should be doing certain things voluntarily, but some things you really should start thinking about getting paid for. And you just need to think about that before you decide, am I going to give up however many hours of my time to this? Well, your time is really, really valuable, so treat it like it’s really valuable.

37:36 Emily: I think it goes back to a point you made earlier, which is just asking. If you’re being asked to do some special thing, like speaking, for example, if you were going to agree to do it for free, like you were just talking about why not just ask, Hey, what can you give me an exchange? Pay, expense reimbursement, some other thing of value to you. Just inquire and know that you’re worthwhile. This goes to imposter syndrome as well. Within academia, we tend to feel that we’re not special. Our skills are not that valuable. Everyone else has the same skills and the same knowledge. That is definitely not true, first of all, even inside academia, but definitely, definitely outside, you will be seen as a unique, special thing, as you were talking about earlier, with your PhD and the skills and knowledge that come along with it.

38:19 Gillian: Absolutely. And every time I say to people, whatever number you’re thinking in your head that you’re worth to give that talk or to consult on that project, double it, and you might be close to the number that’s actually what you’re worth.

38:32 Emily: Yeah. Great, great advice again. The worst they’re going to say is no, or maybe they’ll try to negotiate you down, but if you were going to do it for free or little anyway, hey, that’s not too bad. Gillian, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. I really, really enjoyed this conversation.

38:47 Gillian: Thank you, Emily. I did as well, and I look forward to hearing many more wonderful podcasts from you in the future.

38:52 Emily: Oh, thank you so much.

Outtro

38:55 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPhDs.com/podcast is the hub for the personal finance for PhDs podcast. There you can find links to all the episode show notes, and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, please consider joining my mailing list for my behind the scenes commentary about each episode. Register at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe. See you in the next episode, and remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is stages of awakening by Poddington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

This Grad Student Didn’t Let a $1,000 Per Month Stipend Stop Her from Investing

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Rachel Blackburn, an assistant professor at Columbus State University. Rachel’s PhD stipend at Kansas State University was approximately $1,000 per month and her rent claimed half of that, but she resolved to do more than scrape by financially. Emily and Rachel discuss in detail how Rachel optimized her pay rate in her side hustles, generated extra income through credit card churning, and travel hacked her personal and professional trips. By combining these techniques, Rachel not only contributed to her Roth IRA during grad school but also paid down student loan debt. You won’t want to miss the excellent insight she shares at the end of the interview.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

00:00 Rachel: Don’t underestimate your own creativity. One of your strengths and skills as a PhD student is researching, so why not take that same skill and apply it to your financial life?

Intro

00:18 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season five, episode 12, and today my guest is Dr. Rachel Blackburn, an assistant professor at Columbus State University. Rachel’s PhD stipend at Kansas State University was approximately $1,000 per month, and her rent claimed half of that. But, she resolved to do more than just scrape by financially. We discuss in detail how Rachel optimized her pay rate in her side hustles, generated extra income through credit card churning, and travel-hacked her personal and professional trips. By combining these techniques, Rachel not only contributed to her Roth IRA during grad school, but also paid down student loan debt. You won’t want to miss the excellent insight she shares at the end of the interview. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Rachel Blackburn.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:17 Emily: I have with me on the podcast today, Dr. Rachel Blackburn, and she has a really exciting story to tell us from back when she was in graduate school, how she managed to generate extra income so that she was able to start a Roth IRA which is just an amazing goal and I’m so excited to hear more about the story. So, Rachel, thank you so much for joining me today, and would you please introduce yourself to our listeners?

01:40 Rachel: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. So, I am Dr. Rachel Blackburn, and I am currently an assistant professor at Columbus State University, which is in Columbus, Georgia.

01:51 Emily: Great. And where were you in graduate school?

01:55 Rachel: So, I did a Master of Fine Arts degree at Virginia Commonwealth University, and then I did my PhD at the University of Kansas.

02:04 Emily: Excellent. So, you’ve moved around quite a bit, it sounds like.

02:08 Rachel: Yeah, I have.

02:11 Emily: Tell me about your stipend during graduate school and why you needed to look outside of that–why you ended up generating extra income.

Grad School Stipend at Kansas University

02:20 Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. So, during my MFA program, it was all student loans. That’s all it was. And when I got to my PhD at KU, I was really determined to not take out any more loans no matter what my stipend was. And my stipend was basically $1,000 a month, and my rent was of course about half that. And so, I realized that if I ever found myself in a situation where–it was okay to scrape by, like if I budgeted really carefully, I knew I’d be okay. But I was worried about unforeseen elements like a car breaking down, a major hospital visit. You know, something that would really require me to come up with a lot of money at once. And that’s what I was concerned about.

Balanced Money Formula: Necessary Expenses = 50% of Pay

03:08 Emily: A couple of points in there that I just want to follow up on it because I think it’s a great example for anyone who’s maybe looking at a stipend offer letter or maybe you’ve just started graduate school and you’re kind of still figuring out what your budget’s going to be. So, you just mentioned your rent was about 50% of your pay, which is sort of widely considered to be too high. Right? So, according to the balanced money formula, which to me is a good reference point, all of your necessary expenses should be about 50% of your pay. So, not only rent but also utilities and paying any contracts that you’re in and your transportation and your basic food–all of that stuff is supposed to be within 50%, which is actually a high bar for many graduate students to reach, but it’s just kind of a good reference point.

03:53 Emily: So, you knew seeing rent at 50%, this is going to be pretty challenging. And like you said, you also were anticipating having occasional large, hard to cashflow expenses, which is so, so commented. Anyone who lives for about a year or longer, you’re going to realize you have these large expenses sometimes. So, that’s why you turned to generating extra income outside of your stipend. So, did you start that right from the beginning of graduate school–or, rather at the beginning of your PhD program–and I’m wondering, was this a common thing among your peers? Did your advisor know about it? Was this a thing that people did and they were open about or was it more kept quiet?

Side Hustles and Financial Situation Often Kept Quiet

04:34 Rachel: You know, it was really kind of kept quiet. I don’t know how many students revealed to faculty that we were all taking on side hustles. I think maybe later on it did when push really came to shove and things like my advisor saying, “I think we need to look to defend your dissertation in the following semester instead of this one.” And me being like, “I literally cannot afford another semester of tuition. You’re going to have to help me get this done now.” So, things like that. I think when push came to shove, we probably revealed a little bit more about our financial situation, but really the only people that were doing okay in grad school and didn’t need to side hustle were frankly people that had two-income households. So, most often married couples. Yeah.

05:25 Emily: Yup. Super common there. I mean, really, paying $1,000 a month. The faculty should be aware–I mean also living in the same city, right? And presumably having a much higher income. They should be aware that that is not enough to live on without either taking out student loans, which as you said, people have enough experience with student loans to know that they should avoid them if at all possible. No, it’s really not enough to live on. So, it should be no surprise to anyone that this is going on. Yet, as you said, most of the time, it’s not really something that is talked about very openly, at least between students and their advisors or students and the administration. Maybe students, among themselves, talk to each other. Okay. So, thanks for giving us kind of the picture for being on the ground there. So, just give me a quick overview. What were your methods of generating extra income that we’ll then dive into?

Primary Side Hustles: House and Pet Sitting

06:15 Rachel: I would say, primarily, my side hustles were housesitting and pet sitting. Those were easy to do, and what was great about them is that if you did a decent job with one, that professor would recommend you to other professors. And professors are always going out of town for guest lectures and conferences. A lot of them have pets. If you have a halfway decent sense of compassion as a human being, you’ll be fine taking care of a pet. Some just want their plants watered or some just want their home to look lived in while they’re away. So, falling into that circle is a really great thing. And that was a lot for me. Also, I did some teaching online and there are various ways to do this. So, I actually taught online for a community college in just outside of Lawrence (KS). And also, another hack about this is that if you’re interested in possibly teaching English online, for whatever reason, there are a lot of companies specifically for Chinese and Korean and Japanese students who will advertise their online teaching English programs, but they will do so on the New York City Craigslist. At the end of the day, you only need be online. You don’t have to live in New York City, but they’re targeting those bigger markets because they’re just expecting to have more people that they can interview. And so, I honestly went on to New York City’s Craigslist a number of times and found online teaching that way as well.

Secondary Side Hustles: Online Teaching and Waiting Tables

07:43 Emily: Just to jump in there, I have another interview where another grad student is currently side hustling with VIPKid, which is one of the companies that you just described that offer that kind of work. So, if anyone’s specifically looking for a company that’s going on right now and we’re recording this in July, 2019, check out VIPKid and check out that other interview. Yeah. Any other online teaching besides that, that you did?

08:08 Rachel: Those mainly comprised what I did online. Now, some people are a fan of waiting tables. This is also something I did. And, really, the only hack there is that if waiting tables is something that really takes it out of you, energy-wise–and it can, you’re on your feet the whole time–I recommend if you can only do it like once a week, do it on a Friday or Saturday night when the restaurant is busiest, that’s when you’re going to make the most tips. Doing a Wednesday lunch is not going to help you out. Doing a Friday night dinner might actually cover your groceries that week, or what have you. So, that’s the hack there. Try and get signed up for the busiest times.

08:48 Emily: Get that hourly rate up as high as you possibly can so you can minimize the number of hours you actually have to do it. Okay.

Side Hustling Apps

08:56 Rachel: I will just add really quickly that there are a few apps out there that can help you generate income as a side hustle. I made a list of some that I’ve used. So, Rover is a pet sitting app, so sign up to petsit. TaskRabbit is basically anything. So, somebody in the neighborhood needs help painting a fence. That’s TaskRabbit. Turo, you can rent your own car out to other people. That’s T U R O. Fat Llama is where you rent out your own possessions. So, say you have a Nintendo Wii sitting around not being used. You could rent out your Nintendo Wii for a weekend to some kids. So, there’s that. Also, Instacart is where you shop for other people. So, anyway, those are some of the ones that I’ve tried.

09:44 Emily: That’s awesome. Thank you so much for adding those specifics. In fact, I guess I talk about side hustling a lot on this podcast because in fact we have another interview where someone’s talking about using Rover and another interview where someone is discussing Instacart. That’s season three, episode two with Shana Green. That one’s already out. So yeah, to follow up on any of those, but thank you so much for giving those specifics. That’s a really great next step for anyone looking to those side hustles. And we also wanted today to talk about credit card churning and travel hacking. So, the listeners may not be very familiar at all with what credit card churning is, what travel hacking is. So, can you start with some basic definitions here for, let’s say, credit card churning first?

Credit Card Churning Fundamentals

10:29 Rachel: Yeah. So, credit card churning is the idea that you take advantage of credit card signups who are offering major big signup bonuses for when you sign up for that credit card. Now, let me preface and say that I’m really just a beginning level churner, like beginner-level churner. Some people are really sophisticated with how they’re tackling this. And I’ve seen spreadsheets of multiple cards when you’re signing up, when you’re canceling the card and things like that. In a nutshell, that’s credit card churning.

11:10 Emily: There’s suddenly a huge subculture within personal finance that is specifically about credit card churning and maximizing credit card rewards. So, if people want to dive, dive, dive into this, that is available. We are fine with the beginner level here. So, whatever you’ve been doing is great. I want to specifically point out that there’s a difference between credit card churning and having credit cards on a longterm basis that give you ongoing reward. So, what we’re specifically discussing today is getting, as you said, those signup bonuses. And so signing up for new cards fairly frequently, doing whatever you need to do to get the signup bonus. And then usually either moving on–keeping the card open, but not using it anymore–moving onto the next card in your churn list, or, potentially closing it pretty quickly. So, just wanted to clarify that for the listeners. So, can you tell us how you got started with this? What was the first credit card you opened for this purpose, for example?

12:06 Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. So, my first year in my PhD program, I was friends with a guy who was an entrepreneur and he was opening his own business. And he fell into the credit card turning scene because he was starting to try and figure out, “How can me and my business partner fly around the US? Because we anticipate that we’re going to fly a lot. So, how are we going to cover all of those tickets?” And so, he really introduced me to the world of credit card turning. So, I should say from the very top that if you’re someone who has trouble paying off your credit cards every month, if you have not so good credit, it’s not the best thing. It’s really ideal for someone who’s really good at paying off the full amount every month, who’s really good at not spending a credit card on things that either you don’t need or things that may be superfluous to your daily life. And so, the one that I opened was Chase.

Disclaimer: Use Credit Card Churning Wisely

13:10 Emily: I want to jump in a second and just emphasize that point because credit card churning and using credit card rewards is really a fairly advanced strategy. I would not recommend this for anyone who is new to using credit cards. My personal rule on this would be use credit cards in your life, in your regular budgeting for at least one year before you even attempt something like this. Because you need to have a lot of confidence in yourself, as you were just saying, that you’re going to be paying off that card in full every month, that you’re not going to be spending any extra money just for convenience factor or whatever it is because you’re excited about the rewards. You need to be a super, super good budgeter and super, super organized before you jump into this world. And it can be really lucrative, as we’ll get into in a moment. So, it’s very tempting, but show restraint. Hold back. Be sure you have your budget totally aligned before you try to attempt it. I’ll link in the show notes, I have an article that I wrote previously called, “Perfect Use of a Credit Card.” So, that will outline what you need to master in terms of using a credit card before you jump into what we’re talking about now. So, thank you so much for emphasizing that. Now, you were just mentioning that you opened a Chase card, first.

14:18 Rachel: Yeah. So, when I first started to get into this–now, like I said, I just wanted to take baby steps. I have used credit cards for most of my adult life, and I feel pretty confident with my use of credit cards that I don’t really have an addictive personality. I don’t go gambling or drink alcohol very much. I’m just kind of pretty unattached that way. So, I felt confident starting to do a baby churn with just one card. I should also mention by the way, that if you open too many cards within the space of 12 months or 24 months, some credit card companies will take note of that and they’ll say, “Okay, don’t give them any more cards.” And it can damage your credit that way. So, that’s just something to be aware of.

15:03 Rachel: So, I recommend, personally speaking, I would probably top out at three in the space of one year. I think that’s plenty to keep up with. So, Chase, for example, had a credit card, and often what they are is that there’s a signup bonus and in order to achieve that signup bonus, which is usually in the value of points and then those points can be exchanged for either travel points, like they can translate to air miles. They can translate to gift cards. Sometimes they can translate to cash back. With Chase–and I did this a few years ago, so I can’t speak to what it is now, but–when I took the Chase card a few years ago, I crunched the numbers and I basically found that gift cards was my biggest bang for my buck. So, I exchanged my signup points all for gift cards for things that I would spend money on regardless, like grocery stores, gas stations, things like that, Walmart, those kinds of things.

Credit Card Churning: Timing is Everything

16:05 Rachel: A lot of these signup points are dependent on you spending a certain amount of money within the first three months, that’s often the typical amount of time. So, I would time my opening a credit card with an event in my life where I knew that I’d be spending more money than I typically do. So, say for example, I think mine was $1,000. I had to spend $1,000 within the first three months of opening this card. And if I did, I was given a reward of 50,000 points, which ultimately translated to my plane ticket to a conference I was presenting at. So, I timed this for when I had been to the doctor and I’d had a hospital visit and I knew I was going to be paying off a lot of doctor’s bills. So, I knew I’d be spending that money anyway. So, that’s how I timed it.

16:53 Emily: We use the exact same strategy–I wouldn’t say we were credit card churning, but signing up for signup bonuses from time to time–doing the exact same thing as you did, like looking at our upcoming six months or a year, whatever, and identifying a few points in the year where, “Okay, we are going to pay our car insurance once every six months.” So, that’s like a pretty big bill, we can put that on the card. “Oh, we’re going to have to buy a flight to here or there. We can put that on the card.” All within a window that was the window that we needed for achieving the signup bonus. So, we did the exact same thing. I think that meeting those minimum spending requirements can be, very typically, a challenge for someone who lives on a lower income, right?

17:31 Emily: Because you don’t have a lot of spending that goes on in a given month, let’s say. Most people will not be paying their rent with a credit card. Usually you have to pay a fee or something to do that. So, if you’re going to exclude rent from this calculation, then there are not that many other things, maybe, that will help you achieve this minimum spend. So, definitely looking your calendar and anticipating upcoming expenses, signing up for a card that’ll give you the right window when you’re going to have to pay those expenses. There’s a little bit of a trick to it when you have a lower-spending lifestyle.

18:00 Rachel: Absolutely. Timing is everything. I also didn’t realize, even for myself, how much I spent cash on lots of things. When I started really concentrating and focusing and saying, “Okay, I could pay cash for this, but I could pay a credit card. Let me just pay with a credit card.” I’m starting to realize that there are very few instances in which it benefits me to use cash, to be honest. Now, I do keep cash on me at all times, just in emergencies. Who knows. But I did start using a credit card for a lot more things than I had. And I find that the rewards do come back to me. Yeah. But no, that’s a fair point. Timing is everything with the credit card churning. When you open the card, when you decide to cancel the card, that kind of thing. Yeah.

Credit Card Points for Gift Cards and Air Miles

18:50 Emily: So, you said that for you, you probably max out at about three cards per year. That’s what you’ve decided you can handle in your personal spending and tracking everything. Other people do a lot more, but that’s what works for you. And that, when you first started doing this, you would trade these points you generated for gift cards because that was what you figured was going to be maximizing those points. Has that continued to be the case? So, do you always do gift cards, or have you redeemed for other types of rewards?

19:18 Rachel: At one point, I did redeem for travel points because, like I said, I was paying for a plane ticket. So, it was easy to translate those to air miles and to do that. What I have found, in my experience–what’s helpful is letting life happen and determining, “Oh, okay, you know what? This month, I have a lot of unexpected expenses. So, actually what I could do to save myself some money this month is go ahead and redeem some points for, say, a grocery store gift card or a gas station gift card. Because that helps offset the unexpected expenses that I’m having.” However, later on down the year, I might find like, “Oh, I really need to take a trip to this conference,” or, “I need to go on this research trip.” And at that point, maybe the air miles are more helpful.

20:10 Rachel: So, it just depends. The nice thing about gift cards too is that if you want to, dare I say, splurge, and get yourself a gift card to like AMC Theatres so you can see a movie, or something that’s like a small, not too expensive luxury. Later on, when you go use that gift card to go see that movie, you don’t really feel as guilty about it because you’re not spending your own money. You’re actually just spending the rewards that you’ve already incurred from paying on your credit card. So, that’s kind of a nice thing that I feel like is a guilt-free way of treating yourself to the occasional movie, or what have you. Because, as we all know, grad school is so stressful. Yeah.

Credit Card Churning: Spreadsheets Are Your Friends

20:53 Emily: I really like that strategy that you’re using the points or whatever that you build up as almost kind of a piggy bank that you can then deploy as needed in the future. And of course, using it for lifestyle upgrades, like going to the occasional movie or whatever you want. When you have your stipend paying your baseline expenses, then you can use your side hustle money, the credit card rewards, whatever it is, for big expenses as they come up to ease your stress or just more of life’s pleasures. So, I really like that strategy. Any other things you want to share with us regarding credit card churning?

21:27 Rachel: I really do recommend keeping a spreadsheet with all of your information, just to make sure that you’re keeping track of what you’re spending, you’re keeping track of, “Is this really for sure financially benefiting me? Am I getting rewards?” Versus, “Am I tempted to spend more money just because I’m trying to meet some kind of signup reward, or something.” Also, don’t be afraid to cancel credit cards. A lot of these cards start off free the first year, but then have an annual fee that they’ll charge you. And sometimes those annual fees hit you and you go, “Oh no, I didn’t realize I was already a year out from when I started this card.” So, you know, make sure that you keep a tally of dates of like, “Okay, I need to make sure I cancel this card by this date,” and so on and so forth. Just to keep yourself on the straight and narrow with the churn.

22:18 Emily: Totally. Totally agree. I have to admit myself, just last month I had an annual fee for one of my cards hit, and I was kind of like, “Oh I guess I’m keeping that card another year.” I mean, I could probably still call and get out of it, but I was kind of debating, “Should I cancel it before the year is up or should I keep it?” And then the year was up before I had my bearings about it. So, I’m going to start a spreadsheet and put that in because I’m definitely canceling it by the end of the second year. In fact, it’s already on my calendar as a reminder to do that. So yes, being very organized, super, super crucial with this strategy.

Commercial

22:57 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Tax season is upon us, and while no one loves this time of year, it’s particularly difficult for post-bac fellows, funded grad students, and postdoc fellows. Even professional tax preparers are often thrown for a loop by our unique tax situation. And don’t get me started on tax software. I provide tons of support at this time of year for PhD trainees preparing their tax returns, from free articles and videos, to paid at-your-own-pace workshops, to live seminars and webinars for universities and research institutes. The best place to go to check out all of this material is pfforphds.com/tax. That’s P F F O R P H D S.com/T A X. Don’t struggle through tax season on your own. Visit my website for the exact information you need in the most efficient form available. Now, back to the interview.

Let’s Talk More About Travel Hacking

24:01 Emily: So, let’s talk more about travel hacking. And you already mentioned using the credit card signups to then generate points that can be translated to different airlines depending on the card and who their partners are. So, that’s definitely one way to go about travel hacking. But you said you had a few other travel hacks that you like to use.

24:19 Rachel: Yeah, I do. So, okay. So, some of these are really simple and kind of a onetime thing. Some of these are a little bit more “shady,” if you will. Not shady, I’m not going to recommend anything illegal, but a little sneaky. So, one of the sneaky things that I did, and I’m sure I can’t be the first person to do this or come up with this, but I would be very careful about timing my applications for funding within the university, because some funding applications will say, “Are you receiving funding for many other source?” And I want to be able to say, “No, I’m not.” And that’s true if I have not yet received official funding from another source. So, I was very careful to time my applications in such a manner that allowed me to always be able to say, “No, I’m not receiving funding from another source.” And if I then applied to another source after I submitted that application, well you know, who could have foreseen that I would do that. So, that’s one. Yeah. Another smaller hack is that a lot of us, I think, forget that as grad students, we’re still entitled to student discounts. So, things like STA Travel, which is the Student Travel Association. They have a website where you can look up airfares and all kinds of things. That’s something to take advantage of in addition to all of the sort of usual suspects like couchsurfing and Airbnb, and things like that.

25:52 Emily: I don’t know about Student Travel Association. Can you say more about that?

STA Travel and Hostelworld

25:56 Rachel: Oh yeah, sure. Student Travel Association. I discovered them when I was in college, actually, because I was studying abroad and I was looking into airfares and things and wondering if, “Is there a way I can hack my way into traveling more beyond my study abroad semester?” So, that’s when I discovered STA Travel. STA Travel covers a lot of things. They also, and I could be wrong on this, but I believe they are the same company that issues international student identification cards. That’s the ISIC card, International Student Identity Card. And that has some benefits to it. In fact, recently they’ve started making them like a credit card so you can even add money onto them and use them as a form of payment. But yeah, STA Travel has a lot of different options. And some of the airfares might be, the stipulation is merely just that you’re a student. Some of them might be, you need to be 35 years and younger. So it kind of depends. You have to check it out. But it’s at least another source.

27:00 Emily: This reminds me, and maybe this is part of that association, but just about hostels–like some of them are only open to students or maybe people of a certain age; not super common in the US. But abroad, much more. So, is that kind of the same idea?

27:14 Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. And actually when it comes to hostels, if you haven’t discovered Hostelworld–hostel W O R LD.com–they’re a great source for housing. And I’ve used them abroad a lot. But in the bigger cities in the U S you’ll find Hostelworld locations, too. And it’s amazing how cheap you can get. A lot of people say, “Well, I don’t feel comfortable sleeping in a room with 10 other people that I don’t know for $10 a night.” A lot of properties on hostelworld.com do offer private rooms, and they’re still cheaper than what you would find on Airbnb.

27:54 Emily: I actually used Hostelworld–I think it was through Hostelworld–when I traveled to Chicago one time when I was in graduate school. And my husband and I, who had no interest in staying in separate rooms with many other people, were able to book a private room together at the hostel, which worked out really well for us. It was very inexpensive. So yeah, thanks so much for mentioning that. And also STA Travel. I spent 10 years in college and graduate school and I’m really kicking myself that I did not know about this. So, thank you so much for mentioning it. What’s the next travel hack on your list?

Budget Airlines, Driving, and Incognito Browsing

28:26 Rachel: Yeah. Okay. So, some of those websites also worth mentioning briefly if you ever are traveling abroad. Ryanair and EasyJet are budget airlines and they’re really inexpensive. That’s helpful to know. But unfortunately, those seem to be limited to Europe. Okay. So, I’ve also crunched the numbers on this, and if it’s possible to drive and if you are receiving funding for say a conference or a research trip, driving actually optimizes the money that you’re spending because you might actually get more back. A lot of universities have a really nice high mileage reimbursement for driving. And so if you can drive but you were thinking of just taking a plane just because, it might actually be worth your while financially to drive. Another thing is, I don’t know if this is widely known, but browsing “incognito” on your browser when you’re looking at flights and hotel rooms and things like that.

29:27 Rachel: So, with most browsers, you just go to the settings. I use Google Chrome. So, for Google Chrome, it’s the upper right-hand corner, and you pull down the dropdown menu and you just say that you want to browse incognito. And what that does is it sort of erases all of the memory and cookies that are stored in your browser. And for whatever reason, say like Orbitz for example, if they know that, “Oh, Rachel Blackburn comes to us and she buys plane tickets through Orbitz a lot, we can probably charge her just a little bit more because she’s likely not going to look at any other sites for fares.” And so browsing incognito takes away their ability to do that.

30:12 Emily: Yeah, really good tip. Anything else in that travel hacking list?

For the Bold and the Brave: Motel Pricing Negotiation

30:18 Rachel: Okay. So, one thing I’ve done–and this might be a little on the riskier side, and I certainly would never, ever blame anybody for not wanting to do this–but, let’s say I’m driving long distance and I know that I’m going to have to crash somewhere. If you feel comfortable, and especially as a single woman, maybe you feel more comfortable doing this if you have a friend with you or something like that. A lot of hotels that are these kinds of like motels that you see on the side of the highway when you’re driving long distance and you’re kind of in the middle of nowhere. They will lower their fares quite a bit if you show up late at night and you’re like, “Hey, I need a room.” And they’ve only got like maybe 10 other people in the hotel and they’ll say, “Okay, it’s $99 for the night.” And I’ll say, “Oh, you know what? I’m sorry. That’s a little bit more than I was wanting to spend. So, I’m just going to go on.” And then they’ll say, “No, no, no, no, wait.” Because who else is going to drop by late at night to stay? So, a lot of them will actually negotiate fare with you, and they’ll drop it down, say like, “Okay, well can you do 75?” “Yeah, that’s better.” Okay. Now, that does mean that you’re not making a reservation ahead of time. You also run the risk that they may not negotiate with you. That can happen too. So, if I’m taking this route, I try to always stop off in a town that’s large enough to have at least three or four off-the-highway motels where I can try that tactic.

31:52 Emily: I’m really glad you mentioned that because we have so few opportunities for negotiation in the US for these types of sales. So, yeah, that never occurred to me, but I really like this strategy. I can’t say I’ll necessarily do it, but I like the idea.

32:08 Rachel: Yeah, it’s for the bold and the brave for sure.

32:11 Emily: I mean, if there is a town where there are two, three, four of these, then they know that you can just walk down the street and try the same tactic. It’s not going to cost you hardly any more time. So, why not? How late is late at night by the way, for you, after what time?

32:25 Rachel: Hmm, that’s a great question. Most people, especially thinking of highway driving, a lot of people like to be in a motel before it gets dark, especially people with families and stuff like that. So, I would say any time after sunset you’re good to negotiate. Yeah.

32:44 Emily: Yeah. Sounds good. Any more travel hacks?

Inviting (non-PhD) Friends to Conferences

32:49 Rachel: One thing I have done, and I wouldn’t exactly call this a hack, and anytime I have done this, I’ve been totally upfront with my friends about it. If I’m going to, say, a research conference or a research trip or something. I’m going somewhere, I can anticipate I’m going to need a hotel room or an Airbnb. I will often invite my friends along, and not friends who are PhD students, but just friends of mine. And I’ll be upfront and I’ll say, “Listen, would you want to come hang out with me in this city for a weekend? We can split an Airbnb, and when I’m at my conference, you can do your own thing. And when I’m not at my conference, we can hang out together.” And I’ve done that before and it’s great. It’s a double benefit of getting to see friends that you wouldn’t otherwise see. But also, you have someone to share the conference with who’s not necessarily associated with the conference. So, I did a research trip to LA at one point and I invited two of my girlfriends along, and I said, “Hey, I’m going to be in LA for a long weekend. Come hang out with me. There’s going to be times when I’ll have to be at this conference, but most of the time I’ll be free to hang out.” And so they shared an Airbnb with me and immediately split my Airbnb three ways instead of one way. So yeah, that’s another hack, sort.

34:06 Emily: Yeah, why not? If you’re going to a desirable location and you like your friends and like to hang out with them, no harm in suggesting it, certainly.

34:13 Rachel: Yeah. I mean, I know so many people that go, “Oh no one else is going to this conference. I guess I’m footing the bill for the whole hotel room by myself.” And it’s like, “No, you might have some friends who like to travel and who would love the excuse to just get away for a weekend.” So, yeah.

34:33 Emily: Yeah. I like that idea.

Prefixes: To Doctor, or Not To Doctor

34:35 Rachel: Okay. Last one. This is the last hack. I often, when I’m booking a hotel or a plane, I have read that specifying your prefix as doctor can make a difference. Even if you’re not a doctor yet, what are they going to do? They’re going to go find your transcripts? Probably not. I don’t think American Airlines has time for that. So yeah, start using doctor as a prefix. It couldn’t hurt.

35:03 Emily: So, when you say that it can help, what do you mean? Would that actually change the rate that you’re paying, or what difference would it make?

35:13 Rachel: Yeah, well I’ve read stories of people saying that they got a better seat or they got a better rate. Sometimes it might just be like, “Oh, you’re a doctor? Continental breakfast is free for you,” or whatever. Or maybe it’s just a few dollars off your bill, or something. But my guess is that this only leads to really minute differences, but again, every little bit helps. Why not? Worst-case scenario, somebody calls you Doctor?

35:44 Emily: Yeah, I think I may try this out. I’m trying to remember. I think in most cases when I travel, I don’t use doctor as a prefix because I don’t want to be approached with a medical situation on a plane. Of course, I’ve never even seen that happen. So, the chances that it would are really, really, really tiny. But I think that’s been my reason to shy away from using my proper title. But now that I know that I may actually get something out of it, I might try using it consistently going forward. Okay. So, we’ve talked about your side hustling. We’ve talked about how you’ve generated other extra income and how you’ve reduced expenses with your associated travel and so forth. And you told me when we started preparing this episode that all this allowed you to open a Roth IRA during graduate school, which, if you told me I’m being paid $1,000 a month and I’m going to be living in Lawrence, Kansas, I’d be like, “Good luck with that.”

36:46 Emily: You know, who would ever think that that would be possible? Yet, it sounds like through these different mechanisms that you were able to. So, tell me more about why you decided to start saving for retirement while you were in graduate school and why in particular you used a Roth IRA?

Why Start a Roth IRA in Graduate School?

37:00 Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. So, I’m in the humanities. I was a theater professional, theater artist for many, many years professionally before I decided to go back to school, years later. And because of that, I was a freelance contractor for a lot of my life–a lot of my working adult life. So, I was never hired on a permanent full-time basis. I was often hired on a full-time basis for the next three months, you know? And then I was again hired somewhere else for the next three months. And I think in the back of my mind, I kept hoping, one of these days, surely, I will get a job that will offer me benefits and savings plans and things like that. And after a few years, I realized, that’s not going to happen. And then when I went back to school, I didn’t know what my options would be there, either.

37:54 Rachel: I knew it was going to be a tight budgeting situation. I was not under any illusion that I would be–I mean, the idea of like saving for an IRA was completely out of my mind. But somewhere during the PhD–and at this point in my life, I’m like early thirties, 32, 33–and I thought, “If I don’t make this happen for myself, it might never happen.” We all know the statistics about finding a tenure-track job after you graduate. And I just thought I can’t keep telling myself, “Don’t worry. One day you’ll get that job. Don’t worry, one day you’ll get those benefits.” I thought, “Okay, it’s up me. It’s up to me to do it. So, I just need to really be creative and smart about how I’m saving money.”

Know Yourself to Choose Which IRA Works For You

38:42 Rachel: I was able to open a Roth IRA with Vanguard. Now, there again–and for those listening, PhD students who are great at research–just research around, figure it out. One thing I liked about Vanguard was that they seem to have, I believe–and I don’t want to misspeak because I could always be wrong. There could be information I don’t have–they seem to have kept their nose clean, relatively, through the recession. And that was one thing that really attracted me to them. I also spoke to friends and family that were involved in business and they all said, “Oh yeah, Vanguard’s a great company.” So, that’s how I chose them. I also just researched financial products and I said, “Okay, what makes the most sense to me?” I wanted something that would hold onto my money and wouldn’t let me at it. Because if I could pull it out without penalty, I probably would. And that’s just a personality assessment on myself. So, I wanted a financial product that I could put money into anytime. I wasn’t worried about being taxed on it. So, that’s why I chose the Roth IRA that I did. And, it would give me incentive to not take the money back out. So, yeah.

39:53 Emily: That sounds perfect. I think you had great insight there. If you don’t make this happen for yourself, it may not happen. Now, we know that you now have that tenure-track position. You’re one of the lucky few, right? But so many people, so many people currently in grad school or maybe in a postdoc or something–yeah, you don’t know what your job is going to be in the future. And kind of the way things are trending is, not only are pensions in many cases a thing of the past, even having what would be full-time benefits, like having access to a 403(b) or 401(k) or whatever, that is disappearing too as more and more people are entering the freelance market, as you said, or doing contract work. So, really, at some point, as you just said, you just need to make it happen for yourself because you can’t necessarily rely on an employer to do this for you anymore.

40:50 Emily: So, it’s a hard realization, but it’s one that if you do have it early on, like you did prior to graduate school or maybe during graduate school or during a postdoc for other people you know what, go ahead and get started. Because now is always kind of the best time to do it, right? Like best time to start saving for retirement. Well, that was 10 years ago, but the second best time is right now. So, go ahead and get started and don’t let, “Oh in the future things will be different hold you back from that.” So, I really love having the story from you of, “Yeah, my stipend was very small, not really sufficient for even a relatively low cost of living area. Yet, this is what I did to change this. I hustled in this way. I was super smart about deploying my credit score in this other way. I kept my travel expenses down in this way, and look at that. I was able to start saving for retirement based on all those strategies.”

Best Financial Advice for Early-Career PhDs

41:39 Emily: And now of course you have the full-time job and things are working out very well, it sounds like. So, love this story and thank you so much for this interview. And as we kind of sign off here, I just wanted to ask you, what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD?

41:55 Rachel: Don’t underestimate your own creativity. One of your strengths and skills as a PhD student is researching. So, why not take that same skill and apply it to your financial life? If you had told me when I was in my MFA program, “Hey, guess what? In a few years, you’re going to make up your mind that you’re bound and determined to open an IRA.” I would’ve said, “That’s crazy. How am I ever going to save for an IRA on a stipend that I have?” And my other best piece of advice, I decided that because your loans are deferred while you’re in school, if you can pay on your loans while you’re in school, you’re only paying principal. So, that was my other goal throughout grad school. Financially speaking, I was bound and determined, even if it was $10 a month, that was still $120 less on my principal at the end of the year. So, however small it is, just chipping away at those student loans while you’re in school will really help you by the time you’re out of school.

43:01 Emily: I love both pieces of advice. Deploying your creativity and your research skills to your finances as well as your academic interests. And then, just because your student loans are deferred doesn’t mean you have to ignore them. Go ahead and start paying on them to whatever degree you can or are interested in. And/or do this retirement investing. Both of them are going to greatly benefit you by the time you finish up with graduate school and start having to make payments on the student loans. So, Rachel, thank you so much for this interview. This is really, really insightful and I enjoyed speaking with you.

43:34 Rachel: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It was great talking to you.

Outtro

43:38 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. Pfforphds.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple podcast, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media or with your PhD peers. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars 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. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the free music archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

Learn From This Poor Kid-Turned-PhD Student’s Different Perspective on Frugality and Debt (Part 1)

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In this episode, Emily interview ZW Taylor (Zach), a PhD student in Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. As a child, Zach identified as a “poor kid” and never thought higher education was for him. His upbringing and winding path through community college and his bachelor’s and master’s degrees taught him lessons about money that he has carried into his life as a PhD student – for better and for worse. In this first half of the conversation, Zach shares the financial struggles his family experienced when he was a child and how he finally committed to higher education – without debt – as a way out. Living in Austin, Texas, with its rapidly inflating cost of living, has its own challenges, and Zach still employs some extreme frugal strategies that he developed earlier in his life.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

poor kid PhD frugality

Teaser

00:00 Zach: Whenever I submit to a conference, I will email the conference chair and try to arrange some sort of email conversation or phone call and ask to volunteer in exchange registration feeds. So there are probably 25 conferences that I’ve gone to in state and out of state. I have never been turned away.

Introduction

00:25 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season five episode ten, and today my guest is Zach Taylor, a PhD student in Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. Zach has such a unique perspective and so much wonderful advice that I’ve split our interview into two episodes, this one and next week’s. In this episode, Zach shares the financial struggles his family experienced when he was a child and how he finally committed to higher education, without debt, as a way out. Living in Austin, Texas with its rapidly inflating cost of living has its own challenges and Zach still employs some extreme frugal strategies that he developed earlier in his life. Without further ado, here’s the first part of my interview with Zach Taylor.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:20 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast today Zach Taylor, and this is a really special episode for me because we’re recording this in August, 2019 and Zach and I actually met at a conference just last month. We were both at the Higher Education Financial Wellness Summit and Zach was a keynote speaker. And he had just this incredibly compelling story to tell during that keynote, which he’ll tell us a shortened version of that during this podcast, of his own personal story. And then during that keynote he also talked a lot about his academic work and we’re not going to get into that so much in this interview, but rather how Zach’s upbringing and the money mindsets and lessons he learned as a child have affected how he handles his finances as a graduate student. And also some tips for other graduate students who may find themselves in a similar financial situation to Zach. Zach, I’m so happy to have you on the podcast today. Will you please introduce yourself a little bit further to the audience?

02:17 Zach: Absolutely. Thanks Emily. Zach Taylor. At this point, I’m a PhD candidate at UT Austin in Higher Education Leadership. I have done a lot of things in education. I’ve been an admissions reader, college instructor, high school English instructor, youth coordinator, mentoring program coordinator. I’ve kind o, been in education my entire life. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here and be talking about this because so many of my life lessons in living an educational life. My mom was also a teacher. It’s been constantly learning new things and ways to save money. I’m so excited to be able to share it today.

Early Childhood and Living in Poverty

02:58 Emily: Yeah. Perfect. So let’s go back to your childhood, your pre-college days and tell us what was going on with you around that time, what was going on with your family?

03:09 Zach: I grew up very low income in the Midwest. Kind of grew up all over the place. My dad had a really hard time holding a job and it came to a head when I was about seven or eight years old. I think my mom realized that she couldn’t just take care of my brother and I, she needed to work, because my dad just couldn’t do it. She became a teacher, and we lived on that teacher salary pretty much my entire adolescence until I was 13. Something kind of tragic happened in my family at that point, so my mom and I decided to leave and go make a life on our own. And if any listeners out there are children of divorce, you can know how financially crippling that is, especially on a teacher’s salary. My mom paid child support to my dad. We were very, very poor. We split a apartment together. She became kind of more than a mom to me. She was kind of my roommate and my best friend and someone who split expenses with me.

Zach: And that was happening during high school. I was an athlete in high school and I quit most all sports by junior year because I needed to work. I needed to make money. I wasn’t able to buy food and pay for transportation and feel like I could save any kind of money at all. And that mindset growing up, coming from the family, I came from — loved going to the library because the library was free. I loved riding the bus because the bus was free. It didn’t cost anything. It was always reliable. It was always there for me. And so as I was growing up, having lived with my mom and having worked really, really early on, a lot of those behaviors really carried into college. I still, to this day, I love a good library. I love a good bus ride. I love having roommates. I’ve never really lived on my own because I’m so used to splitting expenses and living as frugally as possible. I’ve kind of foregone a lot of privacy in my life for that reason. I’m happy to share a lot of those experiences, and how they’ve translated in my college life because I’m again surprised how many habits were formed when I was a young kid that actually, I still practice to this day.

Path to the PhD

05:39 Emily: Yeah, we will definitely get into that in a moment. I also wondered if you could share for the listeners a little bit of your nontraditional path to the PhD. Because there may be some people in the audience who are thinking, well, they have some degree of imposter syndrome as many people do, but maybe a higher degree than others because of not going directly to college after high school or starting in a community college like you did. So can you talk about how you got to where you are now educationally?

06:08 Zach: Yes. I was not a good high school student. Like I said, kind of a broken home, working a lot. I never wanted to go to college. I actually didn’t think about going to college until my stepdad — I was living in my mom and stepdad’s basement working at a gas station and he had said, you’re a smart kid, you can probably go to community college. I was actually not fully admitted to community college. I had to take remedial courses. I had not taken even Algebra II at high school. I didn’t even pass Geometry. I was really credit deficient. I had no AP classes. I barely graduated when I did. And part of the reason I graduated was because my mom was a teacher and kind of helped me out doing summer school and getting and making up credits. I was extremely credit deficient coming in. Took the remedial coursework at my community college the first semester. I joked during the keynote that tuition at the time was $150 per class, but to me that was like food for months. That seemed so unaffordable. $150 per class was unaffordable to me and was initially a deterrent.

07:21 Zach: But I slowly came to realize that education was a way out of working at that gas station and being a poor kid. It was a a way out in many ways. I eventually finished about 18 credits or 21 credits at the community college. Got some really good academic momentum going. I applied to the cheapest in state public school that I could. I wasn’t looking at academic programs, wasn’t looking at what I was going to do. I solely looked at the tuition rates and I said, what can I afford to do as a part time student working part time so I don’t take out any loans? I was very debt averse and one of those things from childhood was if you couldn’t pay for it in cash, you didn’t buy it. And the same attitude translated to college. If I could not pay for tuition in cash, if I could not afford to support myself, I was not going to go. There were a couple of times then throughout undergrad where I stopped out and took a semester off and saved money and came back the next semester. I remember professors telling me, I hope I see you in the spring because they knew I wasn’t going to be there in the fall because I was going to take a a gap semester and make some money.

08:44 Zach: After seven years, I eventually finished. I transferred a few times trying to save money. My parents lost a lot of money in the housing collapse in 2008 so I ended up stopping out again and going back to work. But I was very persistent and also, another lesson from childhood was no waste. Don’t waste anything. And I had already had 80 or 90 credits. I didn’t want to waste those. I wanted to finish. So that was something that really propelled me forward was this investment. I already knew how many sacrifices, how much money, how much time I had already put into this thing, and I really wanted to finish.

09:24 Zach: I eventually did finish. Got a job as a mentoring program coordinator and teacher. I paid for master’s degrees with cash. I didn’t take out any debt. Granted, it took me five years to earn those degrees, but I didn’t accrue any debt because I paid as I was being paid. I was never able to save any money. To this day I have not had a savings account over a thousand dollars. however, I don’t have any debt. I don’t have any credit card debt. I don’t have any college student loan debt, specifically because I paid as I went. Now, that is not going to sound like how a lot of students do it. A lot of students go right from high school to college. They take off those loans, they get that degree as soon as they can. I took a much different path, but in looking back on it and hearing some of the stories that I hear from some classmates, some of them are a little envious of how I did it. And granted there were lots of sacrifices along the way, but being 33 years old, being in a really great PhD program, almost to the finish line and not having any debt is something I’m really proud of.

10:37 Emily: It’s a truly incredible story. And I hope that anybody who can relate to your path in any way, either about growing up as you said, as a poor kid and having some of the mindsets that come with that, or taking this sort of longer term route to get to the PhD to get to where you are now. But by the way, being 33 and being almost done with your PhD doesn’t sound too far behind to me. I hope that they’ll be able to follow up with you if they have anything that they want to you know, talk with you further about or learn from you about.

Carrying Forward Financial from Growing Up Poor

11:08 Emily: What I wanted to ask you about now is some of the attitudes or mindsets that you have carried from your childhood that are, that you’re carrying forward. Whether they are mindsets that you think help you or whether there are mindsets that you think kind of hurt you. You’ve already mentioned a couple of them. One is you being extremely frugal. We’ll get into more of that in a few minutes. Being extremely frugal, not wanting to waste anything. The other one is debt aversion, which I learned at this conference that we both attended is a very common thing for people who grow up in lower income families is having debt aversion, which can be very helpful in some situations and can also, as you were just saying mean that it takes you more time to do certain things like finish your education. If you’re not taking out student loans, there are just trade offs. Are there any other mindsets that you can see from your childhood that are carrying over?

11:58 Zach: I’ll start with the positives. Having the work experience and the education has been so helpful in interpersonal communication and just professionalism. I waited tables and I stocked shelves at gas stations and grocery stores and that kind of manual labor. And working with other people, working your body, you’re really just kind of come to an understanding that there are a lot of different kinds of work out there, about the different kinds of people out there, and to respect all professions and be able to communicate with folks from lots of different professions. In a positive, feeling like I needed to avoid that debt and work my entire way through, I’ve got to meet a lot of people I would never get to meet. I’ve got to develop my communication skills to a degree where I feel as comfortable on a public bus or a shelter or a church or a tier one research institution. Talking with senior level administrators, same level of comfort because I’ve been around and lived amongst all those kinds of folks. So that has really, really helped me in terms of the negatives.

13:13 Zach: Growing up, never went out to eat, never vacationed. The longest vacation we actually ever took was a weekend trip to Minneapolis when I was, I think eight or nine years old and that was it. That was the only vacation. Never left my home town. My first plane ride was at age 30, coming and visiting UT Austin. We never took vacations, kind of with the idea that if you can’t pay for it in cash you are not going to pay for it. And then thrifting almost everything. In prepping for this podcast, I was trying to remember going school shopping and I don’t think I ever did. I don’t think we ever went school clothes shopping. It was either hand me downs from older kids in our neighborhood and cousins or it was going to St. Vincent DePaul and getting used clothes. And to this day when I need something, a chair, shorts, shoes — I just bought a really great pair of used shoes — I still go thrifting for a ton of stuff. That has stuck with me, for better or for worse. To this day, I also just seek out free stuff even if I don’t feel like I belong, like free food on campus. There are speaking events that I go to that if they fit in my schedule, I’ll go for the food and for the socializing, which is totally free sponsored by the university. Also though, with having a really kind of frugal mindset, I had still made some really bad choices. I still tend to eat spoiled food and expired food. It’s just a bad habit to break. It’s kind of the no waste. I buy in bulk as much as I can and then if it goes bad, I still eat it. I still, for better or worse, shop at Walmart. A lot of my classmates are hard on me for shopping at Walmart, but it was the only grocery store in my hometown. It is consistently the cheapest. They always have discounted poultry and meat and bakery. I always freeze things and can things when I can. Some people have thought that I’m kind of weird for doing that. Like buying day old bread and buying day old meat and freezing expired food to kind of stretch the eatability and the usability of the food.

15:42 Zach: That has actually been a little socially stigmatizing. I find myself kind of gravitating toward other folks who grew up poor and just understood that that loaf of bread should last you a week and a jar of peanut butter should last you two weeks. And those can be meals, every single meal if you need them to be. It’s also been a little stigmatizing being an Austin because there’s so much money in this town. There’s so much technology and a lot of folks do come from money and going out to eat twice a week. Living downtown in a $2,500 a month apartment isn’t anything out of the ordinary. It’s so foreign to me and it’s been hard to relate to some folks who grew up that way, especially if we’re in the same PhD program, because I just don’t have those experiences. I don’t feel good about doing those things. So there are some positives than, as you said, there’s obviously some negatives too.

16:43 Emily: Yeah. I’m so glad that you’re telling this story here. It’s really good for me to get your perspective because I did grow up very differently, and most people who I know grew up more middle-class like I did. Or maybe if they had a background more similar to yours, maybe they were sort of concealing that. It sounds like you don’t do that, at least not all the time.

Commercial

17:12 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Tax season is upon us and while no one loves this time of year, it’s particularly difficult for post-bac fellows, funded grad students, and postdoc fellows. Even professional tax preparers are often thrown for a loop by our unique tax situation. And don’t get me started on tax software. I provide tons of support at this time of year for PhD trainees preparing their tax returns. From free articles and videos, to paid at-your-own-pace workshops, to live seminars and webinars for universities and research institutes. The best place to go to check out all of this material is pfforphds.com/tax that’s P F F O R P H D dot com slash T A X. Don’t struggle through tax season on your own. Visit my website for the exact information you need in the most efficient form available. Now back to the interview.

Finances During Grad School

18:16 Emily: Okay. My question is around sort of the PhD program being kind of an equalizer in terms of income. Not that every PhD student or every PhD student at UT Austin makes the same amount of money, but more that you know, you’re kind of put on, let’s say within a factor of two, within your university, of one another. Now, some people coming into that situation are used to living a lifestyle that is higher than what they can afford on their PhD stipends. You, maybe, I don’t know, we’ll get into it, this may be have been a lifestyle increase to be able to have the stipend that you have, based on where you were coming from before that. But everyone has a choice to make when they hear the stipend that they’re receiving. They can choose to live within their means, at least semester by semester, sometimes funding changes, but they can choose to attempt to live within their means. Or they can choose to take on outside work or take out student loans perhaps and augment that stipend income with other sources of income or debt. I was wondering, maybe you could speak a little bit about what your finances are like right now — what is the stipend that you get at UT Austin and how did that compare is really briefly to cost of living? And whether or not you’re able to save on that or does anybody save on that?

19:35 Zach: In the college of education and most social sciences, the typical graduate research assistant or assistantship stipend is between $1,400 and $1,700 a month.

19:46 Emily: Not generous.

19:48 Zach: Not generous. And if you look around Austin, the typical one bedroom, entry-level, we’re talking no amenities, no garage, you might not have central air conditioning, you may have a box air conditioner, $1,500 a month, $1,700 a month, and if you want to live downtown and not have a car, it’s going to double and sometimes triple. It’s pretty ridiculous. The living stipend does not let you live comfortably whatsoever. And even really for my standard of living, you know, trying to find a one bedroom apartment on $1,500 a month, it’s incredibly hard to do and so incredible that I have had roommates my entire time here because there is no way that it would have been able to work. And in talking with other grad students in my program and, and in social work, and in psychology, sociology, linguistics, I don’t know anyone who lives on their own. They either live with family or they have roommates. Really in Austin there’s no other way to do it.

20:56 Zach: In terms of saving, there has been no saving. It has been avoiding debt. I’ve not had to take out any debt, but I’ve also not been able to save anything. And that’s common almost across the board. It’s just kind of four or five years of “I’m going to sacrifice earnings. I’m going to do my best to say at a debt, but I know I’m not going to save anything on the stipend”. Now at UT Austin, we do have healthcare paid for, so that is really great. It’s a great healthcare system. It’s really has really great coverage. There are other student benefits. We get to ride the bus for free. We get discounted food on campus. I mean there are lots of other perks of being a student. You are paid in other ways than just monetarily, but that money does not stretch far, that is for sure. In terms of being able to make ends meet and making enough money to be able to afford this town, I’ve picked up several other jobs, so I do work more than my assistantship for sure. I generally put in between 60 and 70 hour weeks. I also am an admissions reader. I teach courses part time at a nearby university. I edit dissertations part-time for about $75 an hour. And that has helped me make rent and pay for food some months. I also take automated surveys on Amazon Mechanical Turk during my bus rides. I’m a little bit car sick, so I can’t read a book and I can’t study, but I can be on my phone and take surveys. And through Amazon Mechanical Turk I can usually make $8 or $10 per commute, so I will drive my car to my park and ride for about 15 minutes. I’ll have about a 45 minute bus ride in, but in those 45 minutes I can make between $8 or $10 and that could be my food for a couple of days. I’ve been able to really stretch that out, but as you kind of alluded to debt aversion, but no savings whatsoever.

22:58 Emily: Yeah. Well I’d like to get now into more how you make it work. You mentioned what the stipend is at UT Austin, which I mean Austin is a rapidly increasing cost of living city, so I think what’s common in those cities is that the stipends that graduate students are paid and probably other people, the university, their salaries are not indexed at all to what the cost of living is increasing by. It’s a really tough situation to be in, especially as a graduate student, as you mentioned. Coming in and having maybe a five plus year path to the PhD, I mean in that five years, the cost of living can go up tens of percentage points, but your stipend is going to increase very little. So the situation that you sign on dotted line for when you start graduate school is not necessarily the situation that you’re in by the time you finish because your stipend is not going to be keeping up with cost of living. Just a word of warning there for prospective graduate students.

Frugal Strategies as a PhD

23:55 Emily: Now I would really love to talk about how how you make those ends meet. What are the frugal strategies? You mentioned extra income, which is fantastic, but on the side of being frugal, what are the strategies that you’re using that maybe you carried over from these mindsets from your childhood that you think are a little bit unusual? We already mentioned roommates. Okay. A lot of people have roommates. It’s kind of a necessity in most places. What are some other things that you’re doing that maybe other students wouldn’t think of? The idea behind this question is just so they can get some more ideas for other ways that they might be able to cut expenses. And also, with each tip or some of the tips, maybe say what you’re sacrificing to do things that way because there is always a trade off.

24:36 Zach: Absolutely. So, when I looked at moving here, I first and foremost looked at where the fastest public transportation was located and on which streets. In Austin, the big buses run on Congress and Lamar, so I knew I wanted to live off of those streets because I also understood that transportation was free with my student ID. First and foremost, before I even moved here, it was a very strategic move of I need to live on public transport and I also need to live near a grocery store because Austin is kind of known for having these food deserts and other major cities do as well, where there might be an entire swaths of the city where there is not a grocery store within walking distance or on public transport. Before I moved it was getting on transportation and getting on food and specifically living near a Walmart because I knew how much money I could save. Just being kind of a Walmart shopper, already having my budget from where I was moving from, I knew roughly how much I would spend so I could really budget my money really well.

25:48 Emily: With the first part, I just want to add that the selection, the location where you live determines so much about what you’re going to be spending during graduate school. You obviously are more highly aware, maybe then most students coming into graduate school. I really think this is something that other, you know, example that other people should follow.

26:05 Zach: And to your point about sacrifices, I do not live where the bars are or where the entertainment district is. I live miles and miles away from that. Right now, if I wanted to get to some place that had the live music venue, it’s a 12 mile bus ride. I do not live where all the action is in Austin and that’s a sacrifice. I lived on the bus line, I reserve myself to a 45 minute, one hour bus ride that was free. So those are are part of the tradeoffs. But I also went a step further specifically with Walmart and some thrift stores. And I asked, first of all, I would call the location and say to Walmart, when do you discount bakery? When do you discount meat? What day of the week do you put that out? And they’re happy to tell you like bakery and my Walmart is Mondays and the meat is Thursdays. So I know that I go Thursday morning, try to do grocery shopping on Monday and save a ton of money that way. And we’re talking, you know, ground beef that might be $12 is down to $4 and it’s the same amount of meat and you can still freeze it. So stuff like that.

27:14 Zach: Also thrift stores — when do you inventory and when do you give things away? A lot of folks who don’t shop at thrift stores don’t know that thrift stores throw out about 25% of the things that they get in donations and they tend to save those. So they’ll load everything in the back, they’ll sort through what is salable and then they’ll actually throw away everything that they don’t think is salable. A lot of good stuff is still in there though, so you ask thrift stores, down here it’s Goodwill. There’s lots of Goodwills and they are different in different places, but they’ll tell you when they’re going to chuck stuff and you can go on that day and not pay anything. You can go through and get good chairs, good tables. And especially in grad school, if you’re only going to be in a place for four to five years, a lot of that furniture can be just a rental, a four year rental. You go get a free set of kitchen table and chairs for free from a Goodwill, use them for a couple of years, and then give them away. Going the extra mile, especially knowing where I was going to live, but then the social services I was going to use — how could I maximize those? So that when I got here, it wasn’t a huge culture shock. I was doing a lot of same things back home that I had been doing here.

28:29 Emily: Yeah, I really love that combo, those first two tips of it’s not only where you shop, but when you shop. And I don’t think that second step when you shop is something that necessarily occurs to people right away. Thank you for that insight. What’s another tip that you have?

28:47 Zach: this is more along the academic side. in being a PhD student, there’s always pressure to publish and go to conferences and be an academic. But I have found that I am able to save quite a bit of money and do a lot of travel that I would never be able to do by one, when I do go to conferences, be extremely outgoing and friendly and —

29:11 Emily: I can attest to this, you are extremely outgoing and friendly. Yes.

29:14 Zach: And specifically try to meet people that are not from your state and those people become your friend network and those become people who have couches and floors that you can sleep on. So I have gone to a ton of conferences and not paid for a hotel or an Airbnb at all, just knowing someone in that spot. I’m going to Portland in the fall. I’m staying with someone. I’m going to San Francisco next spring. In San Francisco, the group hotel rates were $190 per night. I’m staying for free with a friend who I met at a conference and I have them return that favor. People who are coming to conferences in Austin, I always put them up, I keep a spare mattress, we throw it in the living room and they sleep on a mattress in the living room floor. That’s saving them hundreds and hundreds of dollars of conference hotels.

30:08 Zach: And then actually attending the conferences — I heard a lot of folks tell me they could never do this, but whenever I submit to a conference I will email the conference chair and try to arrange some sort of email conversation or phone call and ask to volunteer in exchange registration fees. So there are probably 25 conferences that I’ve gone to in state and out of state where I know when I will arrive and I’ll say, I can give you eight hours of my time before my presentation. I’ll help you at 5:00 AM and I’ll get the conference room set up. I’ll set up tables, I’ll put up projectors. TACAC is the admissions conference here in Texas and I have done check-in for the past three years in exchange for registration. I will happily volunteer a few hours of labor for a $200 registration fee that I don’t have to pay. And it also doubles as great networking, because they see a grad student who is eager to volunteer and help out and chip in, and I have never been turned away. I’ve never had anyone say, “no, we can’t support you in some way.” It’s not only saving the money in your personal everyday life, but in your academic life, there’s also some ways you can save some serious money and that money adds up over time. I’ve saved at this point over three years, thousands of dollars by doing those things.

31:34 Emily: Yeah, that’s a really incredible and powerful tip that I’m so glad you shared because I hear all the time, um, about how conference expenses are such a limiting factor in a grad student’s ability to network, ability to get their research out there and so forth and those fees and so forth are real barrier. Even if your department or your funding agency or whoever pays for part or all of it, it still is hard to have that money up front and what you’ve come to here is just a really brilliant solution, and I hope that a lot more people will start following your example. I mean the fact that you’ve never been turned down like when given that offer is just incredible. Well, I hope not too many people start doing it or else maybe you’ll have some competition for the volunteer jobs, but it’s a great, great idea and such an actual tip. Thank you.

Outtro

32:25 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPphDs.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple podcast, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media or with your PhD peers. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars covered the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and taxes. Four, subscribe to my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode, and remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

This Grad Student Is on the Lowest Rung of the Pay Ladder and Side Hustles to Compensate

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In this episode, Emily interviews Sarah ‘Frankie’ Frank, a grad student in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Frankie describes the hierarchy of grad student positions at UW; the positions she’s primarily held over her years in grad school, teaching assistantships, are on the lowest level in terms of hourly pay. To make ends meet, Frankie side hustles doing activities that she truly loves, chiefly tutoring and baking. She concludes the interview with excellent advice for a grad student who wants and needs to do it all.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

00:00 Frankie: You feel so subjected to whatever the institution tells you you’re worth–what you can do, what you can’t do–and the honest truth is that you have a little bit of bartering that you can negotiate. If you are in a position that you can make that kind of offer, you should because it’s possible that they find that money somewhere.

Intro

00:22 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season five, episode six, and today my guest is Sarah Frank who goes by Frankie, a grad student in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Throughout most of grad school, Frankie has been a teaching assistant, a position that receives the lowest hourly pay rate at her university. We discuss the various types of positions a grad student might have and the advantages of being paid through a fellowship or research assistantship. Frankie’s $15,000 per year stipend isn’t enough to make ends meet, so she is engaged in many side hustles, the best of which were tutoring NCAA student athletes and her cake business. You won’t want to miss the advice Frankie gives at the end of the interview to grad students who are juggling a lot of responsibilities and activities at once. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Frankie.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:22 Emily: I’m delighted to be joined today on the podcast by Sarah Frank who goes by Frankie. And we’re going to be talking today about TA-ing, having a teaching assistantship and how that compares to other jobs you might have on campus as a graduate student. So, Frankie, thank you so much for joining me today.

01:38 Frankie: Thank you, Emily. I really am excited to be here. I feel honored.

01:42 Emily: Oh, well that’s lovely to hear. Would you please tell us a little bit more about yourself, you know, where you go to school and so forth?

01:48 Frankie: Yeah. So, my name is Frankie. I am a PhD candidate and a lecturer now at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Department of Sociology and in the Department of Legal Studies. I’ve previously spent three years as a teaching assistant and lecturer. I’ve also worked for athletics. And yeah, I think I have about two years to go before I have a job somewhere, hopefully.

02:10 Emily: Sounds good. So, you’ve already mentioned you’ve had a few different positions, so let’s talk about what your current position is and what your pay is right now.

02:20 Frankie: Yeah, so current position for lecturers, right now it depends on how many students will be enrolled in the course, but at a 33% appointmentship for one course in the fall, I’ll make about $7,000. So, over the whole course of the year, that can fluctuate to about a $15,000 baseline salary. And then adding in other jobs thereafter, I don’t make more than about $22,000 a year.

Level of Pay Variation at UW-Madison

02:45 Emily: Okay. So, that gives us a good idea of the range. So at a 33% appointment, if you did that approximately for the whole year, it would be about $15 K. Plus, your side hustle and such, have other jobs on top of that, of course, to make that work, naturally. Okay. And how has that level of pay varied over your time in graduate school?

03:06 Frankie: Yeah. So, when I first came as a TA in 2016, University of Wisconsin had one of the lowest pay rates for TAs. So, in our tiers of graduate studentship, being a teaching assistant was at the very lowest, at about 15 and a half thousand dollars per year at a 50% appointmentship. And then the union here, there’s a teaching assistant union that put a lot of pressure on our administration to raise that salary. So, we have gotten substantial raises. And then just this year, lecturers also got another bit of a raise. So, it has increased a little bit as we’ve gone on. But we still pay student fees. So, we pay segregated student fees that go into like student clubs and student rec centers that are mostly undergraduate. So, we lose a little bit of our salary there to the tune of six or $700 each semester that you’re taking full load.

03:55 Emily: Yeah, that is a huge bite. Okay. So, I just want to add in like a couple of notes there for the listener. So, if you want to see what other people are being paid at Wisconsin or in other places, one of the websites I run is phdstipends.com. So, go there and check out what TAs and RAs and other types of grad students, fellows are being paid in various places and enter your own data. So, there are a couple of things you mentioned I want to follow up on. You mentioned that TA pay was the lowest among the different sort of options, the way graduate students might be paid. So, what are those other options at Wisconsin?

04:31 Frankie: So, typically the lowest tier would be teaching assistants. The next tier up would be research assistant, and the tier after that would be project assistant. And then the top tier is obviously fellowship. So, if you’re on fellowship, you make the most. After the raise, teaching assistant and research assistant are more in line with one another. So, this is the first year that they’re really in line.

04:54 Emily: Yeah. That was something curious that you said that I wasn’t really sure about, that TAs and RAs had been paid differently. Now you mentioned that the union was just a TAs union, or does it also cover RAs?

05:09 Frankie: Right, so it’s strange. It’s called the Teaching Assistant Association, so it would sound like it’s just for TA’s, but it’s actually for all graduate student workers. So, it includes RAs, PAs, and it includes people on fellowship actually as well. So, graduate student workers generally.

What is a Project Assistant?

05:23 Emily: Okay. That’s really interesting to hear. I would love to follow up more on that actually with you, but I actually have multiple episodes scheduled with other people talking specifically about unionization movements at their own university. So, I’m excited to dive into that more in other episodes. But I’ve never heard of this job title, project assistant before. Can you tell me what that is?

05:43 Frankie: So, there are research assistants and project assistants, and it depends wholly on the grant that a supervising faculty applied for or the amount of responsibility or ownership that the student is taking over the project. In the mix, there is something called a traineeship, which seems to be blended with both project assistant and research assistant. I think it’s a matter of just titles, honestly. Because I’ve heard very different projects, very different gamuts, it depends on the department, what they call a traineeship versus a research assistant or project assistant. To me it sounds like, as far as hours worked, I know that teaching assistants have the most, and then research assistants have the second most followed by project assistants and trainees, and then fellows should have the least amount of work. They’re not required to do any specific work activities.

06:34 Emily: Okay. So, you mentioned a 50% appointment for a TA position, so that’s ostensibly 20 hours per week, is that right?

06:42 Frankie: Yeah, it’s supposed to be 20 hours a week. Yeah.

06:43 Emily: Yeah. Well, we all know how that really goes. So, what is it for RAs and PAs then? Do you know?

06:49 Frankie: They’re supposed to be 20 hours a week as well.

06:52 Emily: But in reality…

06:54 Frankie: Yeah, so the common thread is people know that RAs and PAs don’t work that much. They usually do closer to like 10 or 15 hours a week, if that.

RA-ing Does Not Always = Dissertation Work

07:04 Emily: Okay. So, this is something that I and other people get a little bit confused or conflate together. So, are you talking about for an RA position, a research assistantship, is that distinct from the student’s dissertation work?

07:22 Frankie: So, this is a really good question. It can be. It may be that’s the way you are earning your income, working on a supervising professor’s work and using their data. And depending on your relationship with that professor or what you want to do for your dissertation, their data might be your dissertation. And in some cases it is, but in other cases it’s not. So, the way that those things help you out in the long run dissertation-wise varies. The variation is incredibly wide.

07:52 Emily: Yeah. Because it’s always seemed to me–so, I come from a STEM field, biomedical engineering. And so what was common in my field and others that I observed in STEM is that most of the time most people had RA positions, and their RA work was the same as their dissertation work. So, it was like, really, once your classes were done and so forth, your full-time efforts could go towards your dissertation. And, you were also being paid off of the grant to do that work. Now, that means you don’t have as much freedom in what you do because it depends on what the grant is, of course. And so it’s all worked out between you and your advisor. I do think that it was more rare in my observation to see someone have an RA position that was different from their dissertation work. But it sounds like that is maybe more common where you are. And I’m sure this is very like field-dependent, right?

08:40 Frankie: So, in sociology, because someone might be working on some specific project long-term, or like a demographic project that takes many years of data collection, people might use some part of a dataset. Or you know, they’re becoming really familiar with the general science survey through their research assistantship, and then they use another element for their dissertation. Or, they end up meeting their professor who will chair their dissertation based on that project or find out who shouldn’t be their advisor via those kinds of projects. But I mean it does vary incredibly widely. I have heard that sociology is one of the few disciplines where it’s not a direct relationship, like you are working on what you will dissertate on. But I know very few people who are earning their income on exactly what they’re dissertating on. They’re usually right next to it somehow. Particularly, in sociology here we have demography. So, you have a lot of quantitative people working together. As far as qualitative researchers, not one of them have I heard is working on the same data set that they will use in their dissertation unless they get some sort of fellowship or specialty grant or something or have access to a professor’s previously collected research.

Perspective on Assistantship Tiers

09:51 Emily: I see. This is really interesting for me to hear because it’s such a different field than where I’m coming from. So, it’s good for me to learn about this. So, what I’ve always found as the important distinction, let’s say as a prospective graduate student, when you’re looking at different offers and different programs, I’ve always found an important distinction to be what percentage of your time is going to be available for you to work on your dissertation versus doing some other thing. You know, classes, TA-ing, RA-ing not for your dissertation, whatever that might be. And I would think that the advantage would be going towards programs where you can put a higher percentage of your time towards your own dissertation work. Now, that’s not to say you can’t find value from these other activities, but I don’t know, that’s kind of what my thought has been. Do you agree with that or what’s your perspective on that?

10:40 Frankie: So, for me and where I’ve been located, the more lucrative offers coming into graduate school are the ones that have more money or the fellowships. So, it’s sort of like you have to be higher ranked I suppose, or like at a higher admit level. So, then you have to take classes, right? But you can only take so many classes if you’re a teaching assistant, especially for the first time. And you know you have the highest workload, but you have the lowest pay, so you have to take on more classes or you just have to stay in graduate school longer. So, the system seemed really backwards to me when I first got here. Like, why would TAs be your lower tier? Or like, you know, not your highest admit student. Not that the people who teach are necessarily not as smart or anything, but the grant money is really in that quantitative data that the demographers are collecting.

11:33 Frankie: But then you have to work really hard, possibly more years while you’re taking classes. And at the same time, the expectation to publish is exactly the same across the board. And some people are given data from professors or they have quantitative data, but then you have qualitative people who have to conduct their own studies from the ground. So, IRB approval, to recruitment, to interviewing. And so, the people who are teaching have to do far more hours, far more work, but they’re also the least paid, so they may also have to take on these outside jobs. So, I think that those are the people who I see being the most stressed out. I think that they have the highest turnover as far as dropout rates as well. I think it’s just incredibly stressful to have little money and not enough time to accomplish every single thing you’re supposed to accomplish. At the same time, you’re supposed to be applying for every grant in the book while you’re doing all of this.

12:20 Emily: Yeah, it does sound to me like we’re on the same page. If you can land a fellowship, either an outside fellowship or something that’s provided by your university or whatever, that’s going to free you from these other responsibilities, it’s going to pay you better and as many years as you can do that for, that’s amazing. Minimize your TA responsibilities. If that is the thing that has the highest workload at your university, it sounds like it’s the case for you. Not to say that teaching experience isn’t valuable. Maybe you need to have that for moving onto your next stage, but you don’t necessarily want to do that every single semester. That’s a lot of teaching. Anyway, so really glad to hear your perspective on those things. So, it’s a very complex issue, especially for prospective graduate students who may not be that familiar with the academic system.

Determine the Standard Offer in Your Field Ahead of Time

13:01 Emily: I mean, I’ve been through graduate school and I’m still struggling to understand the structure that you’re talking about, you know, in the fields that you come from. So, this is just kind of a plug to do as much field-specific research as you possibly can. Well, I actually wrote an article about this a little while ago. It was titled something like “before admission season starts, determine what a standard offer in your field is.” So, is a standard offer going to be, “Okay, you’re going to TA the entire time”? Or is a standard offer, “Well, you’ll TA a couple semesters and then you’ll be an RA and if you want a fellowship that’s cool”? Like, what is that standard? So, then you can know if any individual offer you receive is at the standard, a good offer, a really not good offer. It’s just something you have to do your homework on before you even start like looking at those offers, and it’s very difficult. It’s very field-specific. So, I’m really glad to hear from you about that.

13:50 Frankie: I was going to say I feel really lucky, actually. So, for two reasons. One, my program decided to fully fund five years. So, students who come to sociology at UW Madison will be funded for at least five years. After that, they cannot guarantee you funding. But the second piece is I came here to teach. I’m becoming a professor to teach, which is not always common at an R1. I have been discouraged from teaching multiple times, but I think I would have left graduate school without it. So, I feel really lucky that it’s in my heart because it makes it worth it. It’s still very challenging, but I feel luckier in some ways than I know other folks in other universities.

A Deep Dive into Frankie’s Side Hustles

14:24 Emily: Yeah, well it totally makes sense. If it’s part of your career path and you want to go that direction, it’s great to have that experience and for you to get better at your own craft before you move on to that next stage. So, totally valuable in that sense. For people who don’t want to stay in teaching, it’s something probably to be minimized. Yeah. So, are you ready to talk about your side hustles that you have to put on top of this graduate student stipend to make it?

Tutoring for the Department of Athletics

14:49 Frankie: Yeah. So, the first one I did was I worked for the NCAA, the Department of Athletics at UW Madison. Of course, this is a big school for athletics, so you might think that we’re the only place with money, but I actually did this in undergrad, too. And the money tends to be excellent, particularly if you already have your undergraduate degree, they can pay you more. And so this is to the tune of about $20 an hour for group tutoring, closer to $18 for single tutoring sessions. And you make your own schedule. It’s very flexible. You only tutor what you want to. It was really fun. I loved my students. Student-athletes are highly exploited by universities like Wisconsin. And so it was awesome to build relationships with them. And I mean, I absolutely loved that job. When I gave it up to finish my Masters, I was very sad. But that was probably my favorite side gig, and I recommend it to literally everyone. If you want to pick up extra tutoring hours, the Department of Athletics wherever you are has money. And they have a need for sure.

15:48 Emily: That is a great tip. I’m always really curious when people talk about having side gigs on campus. How does that play with your stipend? Were you actually a W2 employee or was it like an independent contractor position?

Self-Employment: Frankie’s Cupcakes

16:01 Frankie: Great question. So, it’s still a W2. So, you can only work 75%. That means that I had a cap on how many hours I could work at the same time as being a TA. So, then comes in my other side hustle. In the last 18 months or so, I’ve started a cupcake company. So, I now sell cupcakes and cakes to everyone in the Madison or surrounding area here in Wisconsin. It started as a self-care hobby and then I got good enough that people would start paying me. So, now that’s my side hustle and also my hobby and self-care at the same time.

16:35 Emily: That is so much fun. What is your business name? Do you have an Instagram?

16:39 Frankie: I do have an Instagram. You can find us @frankies.cupcakes, which is the name, as well. We just went to the state fair yesterday to find out that I won a bunch of first place ribbons. So, that’s feeling good. Wisconsin state fair representing. But so yeah, you can find me. It’s Frankie’s Cupcakes. We have a Facebook and an Instagram.

16:57 Emily: That’s awesome. And so that, of course, is your own business. That’s total independent, not even a contractor. It’s just self-employment kind of stuff. So, I have this framework for side hustles that I like to talk about, which is one type advances your career. That could be like the teaching or tutoring for you, for example. Another type is just something you really enjoy doing that you can monetize. That is exactly this cupcake thing. And then there’s stuff you don’t like to do so much, but it gives you money. So, you do it. That’s a third category. And then the fourth one is passive income, which is a whole other can of worms. So, I love to hear that the cupcake thing sort of hits different satisfaction areas in your life for you. So, that’s awesome to hear. Have you pursued any other side hustles besides those two?

Arbitrage via Poshmark

17:42 Frankie: Well, so as far as passive income, actually, there’s an application called Poshmark, which lots of young people are using and they’re installing themselves on college campuses. And I’ve made a couple of thousand dollars selling stuff on Poshmark. Homewares, jewelry, designer bags, whatever. I’ll go to Goodwill, buy something designer that someone donated and then sell it on Poshmark and keep the profit. Or if I grow out of something or gain or lose weight, which you do in graduate school, it’s a great way to replace/cycle out your clothing. But also make some good money, especially if you come across anything valuable.

18:16 Emily: So, that’s a cool side hustle. Anything else you’ve done?

GRE Tutoring and College Application Assistance

18:20 Frankie: I know that I’ve done like tutoring on the side. Or like, unofficial tutoring for entrance exams, GREs, college application essays, things like that. For sure.

18:29 Emily: Yeah, that’s another really accessible one for graduate students because presumably, you got into graduate school, so you’re probably good at taking tests. You may be able to help other people with that.

Commercial

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Prioritizing Valuable Side Hustles

19:46 Emily: When you are looking for a side hustle, what’s something that has really brought value to your life? In terms of like, what’s a really good pro of one of your side hustles? Where you’re like, “Yeah, this was a really great reason to be pursuing this particular one.” Or maybe, another one, “Hey, I stopped pursuing this side hustle because it turns out it wasn’t serving me that well for this reason.”

20:05 Frankie: Yeah. When I started with Poshmark, it was working really well for a while, but then it ended up being really time-consuming, and it’s not going to add anything to my resume. But tutoring for athletics–and then I ended up becoming a sociology and psychology tutor trainer, so I would help train other people–that’s going to look great on my resume. I ended up getting tutor-certified, and they pay for your training. So, they’re paying you to put lines on your resume. So, that ended up being wonderful. I wrote a couple of pieces about athletes and education. I ended up meeting some amazing people. It was great to meet people outside of my department. Not that I don’t love the people in my department, but it is nice to meet people who are not in the same building all the time with you who are also in graduate school. So, it was both personal and professional.

20:49 Frankie: Like what is it that you’re spending your time on that is good for you, your resume or your CV? But also, whether it’s because it’s something that you enjoy personally and the people you really like, or because you’re like, “Well this is a good way to make money that doesn’t like break my heart or soul somehow,” or like isn’t drawing you emotionally. The emotional drainage or some of the side hustles can be extreme. So, I knew that and needed to keep my emotional energy spent kind of low because I was spending so much of it teaching. I spend so much of it teaching. So, the cake thing is pretty much something I do by myself. And so it’s really nice because it’s something I pretty much do alone. You know, listen to a podcast or something on the radio and make cakes and it’s really good for my introverted side.

Managing Work-Life Balance

21:32 Emily: Yeah, I think that’s one really important thing. Just recognize about the whole, you know, work-life balance thing–like, the graduate school-“other things you do”-balance–is that it’s sometimes really, really wonderful to have an escape from research. I know for example, for me, if research was not going well, which it didn’t for like three years, it was great to have some things going on outside of that that I could find some success in or some satisfaction. So, how do you manage your actual dissertation work, your main job, your grad student job and all these side hustles and you know, taking time for yourself. Like, how do you make all that work?

22:11 Frankie: It’s a really good question. And I answer this question so many different ways and have answered it so many different ways. So, I think today my best response to you is that my work-life balance is less of a work-life balance. Just because my work is my life, and my life is much of my work and I have to be in love with everything I’m doing for it to be possible that way. So, I’m running these different organizations. I’m also committed to teaching. I’m deeply invested. I interview people about menstruation. And so, I have to love all of those things because I do them all the time or they’re always on my mind. So, I think for me, my work-life balance ends up being calming my mind or like finding good headspace. And for me, actually, it ends up being that my partner is not an academic.

22:57 Frankie: He is not part of academia at all. And that ends up being a blessing. And I put a lot of time into–we have wonderful cats and I do cat-sitting–finding peace in both cakes and cats. And also taking the time and being okay with not doing work for a minute or two. Not always having to do something–I have such productivity anxiety–convincing myself that it is okay to go see a movie, to just sit on Instagram for an hour and be okay with it and not judge myself. And so the first couple of years of graduate school, I had to learn to do that and know that that was actually self-care and healthy. I cannot recommend enough that anyone in graduate school go to therapy. Even if you don’t think you need it or if you’re like, “Well, I don’t need that yet.”

Benefits of Therapy in Graduate School

23:49 Frankie: It’s great to establish the tools you do need for when you need them. And I wouldn’t have made it, I don’t think this far, without having great support both at the university health system and in our own–I have this wonderful woman who I see in Madison–and sometimes it’s when I need it, and sometimes it’s when I don’t. And it’s a great tool that, like I said, I recommend to everyone in academia or any stressful life situation. It really is wonderful to have someone outside your department who won’t affect your resume, your hiring decisions, your teaching appointments, someone who you can really talk to. And you know, it’s hard to build friendships in graduate school. It’s hard to build really like noncompetitive community sometimes. And I recommend that people find spaces that they feel like they’re part of a community or they feel like they have friendship. And not that my therapist is my friend, but it’s someone who I can talk to candidly and not worry about anything. So, I definitely recommend that as a resource to anyone.

Best Financial Advice for Early-Career PhDs

24:46 Emily: You know, you put that so well. I really don’t have anything to add to that. I hope that everyone listening just kind of rewinds a couple of minutes and listens through all that again because I think what you said is so, so valuable. What really resonated with me was when you said that you have to love everything that you do. And I think that it’s something that we sometimes forget about in academia and in graduate school that, ultimately, you’re there by choice and presumably at some point there was some reason why you chose the field you did and the advisor that you did. And there’s something that you love about it, and you might be going through a really hard period. It might be a long period, but it should be something that you’re passionate about, right? Or else why are you doing it? And hey, go ahead and leave your program if it’s not your passion anymore. But it’s so refreshing to hear you say that you do love all these different aspects of what you do, even though it’s not paid that well and you have to string all these different things together. It’s something that you find great joy and satisfaction in in all these different areas. I’m really, really happy to hear that. And as we wrap up here, Frankie, what is the best financial advice that you have for another early-career PhD?

Save for Unexpected Expenses (E.g., Medical Emergencies)

25:52 Frankie: That’s also a great question. I have a little experience running into medical emergencies. I had two surgeries my first year of graduate school. That’s something I don’t recommend. If you can avoid it, don’t do that until the summer of any school year. I don’t recommend doing it over Christmas. And then again over spring break. That’s–don’t recommend. So, I was hit with some medical bills in a harsh way. And I wish that I had budgeted a little bit better, like my moving expenses my first year, and not spent money on cat trees and whatever else that I thought was necessary at the time. Because I was like, “Oh, I still have more money,” or, “Oh, I still have more money. I could spend a little bit more.” Or, “Oh, you know, I can make this $50, $100, $200 go a little bit further.”

26:37 Frankie: I wish that I had saved it and thought to myself, “If something does happen, I’m at a low enough income that I need to be collecting what I do have, even the pennies, so that if something bad does happen to me or if I do end up needing to take, I don’t know, a semester off, a summer off, something like that–which is totally normal–that I would be able to.” And I wish that I had prepared a little bit better for that because I spent the better half of my second year paying off medical debt from surgeries that, I mean my insurance plan “covered” so to speak, but I needed to more carefully plan that out my first year. I think I spent more money out of stress or thinking, “Oh, if I spend more money, I’ll feel better.” And then when I did need to have surgery and pay that off later, you know how medical bills work, they send you the bill after the whole thing’s over.

Own Your Negotiating Power (Yes, Even in Grad School)

27:25 Frankie: So it’s not like I could have avoided it. And I did fight the insurance companies. I did fight the doctors to get things lower. And then the other thing I would say is that I did end up going to my department one point and asking for more money for a certain job that I was being pushed to do. You can do that, and if you are a graduate student and you feel like you’re between a rock and a hard place, you can negotiate or ask for help or ask your university for help and put yourself in a place where you can say, “I need a little bit more for this semester or in advance or something.” And do try to work with the people around you just in case it does help you.

28:01 Emily: Two really amazing pieces of advice there. And thank you so much for those. On the first one, I totally agree. I mean, I think especially for someone who’s like a young adult, maybe you haven’t been navigating insurance on your own before. Maybe you’re new to budgeting, maybe you’re newly independent from your parents. These irregular events, these unusual events are not something that you necessarily budget in from the beginning. The thing is that, you know, maybe you didn’t know in particular you were going to have these surgeries or what the bills are going to be. Right? There is no way, really, as you said, that you can know that in advance. But the thing is that something’s going to come up in some category in some way at some time. You’re guaranteed that something’s going to happen like that.

28:40 Emily: So, as you said, just saving up in advance a bit as best you can. Obviously, it’s going to be challenging, but saving up in advance can really save you a lot. Both financially and stress-wise, like on the backend of whatever that emergency happens to be. So, thank you so much for sharing your story about that. And I am curious to hear a tiny bit more about your negotiation because it’s not something that I usually hear about, let’s say after the admissions process is done. So, can you say like what was the job that you’re being pushed to do?

Know Your Worth, and Advocate for Yourself

29:08 Frankie: Yeah, that’s a really good question. So, I was actually sort of between departments where one department had offered me a better-paying a job and one department really needed me to teach a job. Like, they were lower on teaching faculty and they needed someone to step in. And if they don’t admit enough people to teach each cohort year, then eventually they run into these issues where they don’t have enough people to lecture or people who have experience in the field. So, it was just this past year, and I had accepted this job in another department which would’ve been a lot more work, but they were going to pay me more. And I was excited about the opportunity. But then I had also said, “If I could work both jobs.” Well, UW intervened, the Dean’s office said, “You can’t work two lectureship jobs before you officially have dissertation status.”

30:00 Frankie: And I said, “Okay, so I have to choose one.” And so I was like, I’m going to choose the one that pays me more. And then basically I positioned to the other department and said, “This is less work for me. If you can match that salary and raise mine to meet the salary that this other department is going to pay me, I’ll take your job. And I’ll tell them that I’ll defer their job until next year.” And that’s exactly what happened. And people were like, “Well, I don’t think we can do that.” And I said, “Well, I don’t think I can take your job then.” So, I felt really lucky that I could sort of position that way. And it sounds very corporate, but the truth is that you feel so subjected to whatever the institution tells you you’re worth–what you can do, what you can’t do–and the honest truth is that if you have a little bit of bartering after a year or two that you’ve been part of a lab, part of a TA-ship, part of a union of some kind, to say, “I’m willing to do this for you. I’m willing to help out this department in whatever way.” You have a little bit of bartering that you can negotiate. If the department asks you to lecture and you can say, “Hey, I need about a thousand more dollars to really make that work or I can’t.” If you are in a position that you can make that kind of offer, you should because it’s possible that they find that money somewhere. Or they do this thing where they give you a top out scholarship where the department will just add on another thousand dollars in a scholarship fund to your tuition account and then you can refund, check it back to yourself. And that stuff happens and is possible. They can offer you greater hours. Like, they find little ways around the bureaucracy to help you. And I really recommend that students understand all of those different positions and also have those conversations.

Ask for Help: Get to Know Your Administrative Staff

31:33 Frankie: And if, if anything else, the administrative staff of your department are the people you need to know almost better than your advisor. Those are the people who have changed my life at the University of Wisconsin in every way. They know the system, they know the money, they know how I can get through the bureaucracy or challenges I’m facing. So, hats off to the administration at my university and my department and particularly in legal studies and sociology. They’re amazing people and they’ve made my life much, much easier on the financial end.

32:02 Emily: Yeah. Thank you so much for making that point. And I totally agree that they are the people to know. And it’s really good to hear that, you know, sometimes bureaucracy seems like this total juggernaut. It is what it is. It can’t be changed. It can’t be gotten around, whatever. But no, there are creative solutions. You just have to talk to the people who are familiar with their bureaucracy, who know all the tricks, who are going to be really advocating for you and working on your behalf to make whatever you need to have happen, happen. So, I’m really glad to hear that example of what was basically two competing job offers. Hey, you would have taken both of them if the bureaucracy had told you that it was possible. That wasn’t possible, but you were able to negotiate. That’s a perfect story, and I’m really glad that you shared that.

32:41 Emily: I’m glad to have another negotiation story that’s not right from during admissions season because that’s a really unusual one. So, Frankie, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast day. This is a wonderful interview.

32:52 Frankie: Yeah, Emily, thank you so much for having me. I feel really honored that I was able to talk to you and get to meet you. I recommend that everybody follow the advice given by other people who’ve spoken here. It really is valuable and it makes it so that everyone else’s life can be easier and everyone doesn’t have to experience it for the first time.

Outtro

33:08 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. Pfforphds.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple podcast, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media or with your PhD peers. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars 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. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the free music archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.