Personal Finance for PhDs

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Emily

PhD Job Transitions Are an Opportunity to Break Negative Financial Habits

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Pursuing a PhD and post-PhD jobs usually means frequent professional and personal upheaval. Changing jobs/”jobs” and moving are typical for each stage of training and possibly career: posbacc programs or jobs, master’s/PhD programs, postdocs, and Real Jobs. Every time you change jobs or move, your routines and habits are upended, including those that affect your finances. The upside of these frequent transitions is that each time you give yourself a clean slate upon which to write new habits. That’s great news for anyone with a degree of dissatisfaction with their current habits.

transitions financial habits

I recently read Better Than Before* by Gretchen Rubin, which is about how to create and maintain habits. The quotes included in this article are from the chapter “Temporary Becomes Permanent: Clean Slate.” While it is not a financial book, the strategies included in Better Than Before can be applied to your financial life, and the Strategy of the Clean Slate struck me as particularly useful for PhDs.

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

Why the Clean Slate Works

A great proportion of our decisions each day are not ones we make consciously but rather are part of our routine or standard responses to stimuli. This is great when you have cultivated positive habits or at least are not in any negative habits. But a negative habit can be incredibly challenging to break under normal circumstances.

Any beginning is a time of special power for habit creation, and at certain times we experience a clean slate, in which circumstances change in a way that makes a fresh start possible–if we’re alert for the opportunity.

Experiencing a clean slate – a wiping away of your previous habits in part or much of your life – can greatly benefit you if you had any negative habits or even a desire to start new positive habits. The old stimuli that prompted you into your negative habit are no longer there, and instead you can tie your new stimuli to positive habits. There is also an opportunity for a strong change in your self-conception, such as “In my new job/city, I am a person who ___.”

There’s a magic in the beginning of anything. We want to begin right, and a good start feels auspicious… Because we’re creatures of habit, the first marks on that slate often prove indelible. We should start the way we want to continue.

When you experience a clean slate for whatever reason, you should very intentionally start practices that you want to become positive habits and keep yourself from falling back into old habits. This will likely take some preparation in advance of the occurrence of the clean slate. You should devote some time to brainstorming the positive habits you want to begin practicing and the negative habits you want to drop so that you’re ready to hit the ground running when you have that clean slate.

I now pay very close attention to the first few times I do anything because I know those decisions will shape my baseline habits; to deviate from them will feel like a deprivation or an imposition.

Job Transition and Moves Are Perfect Clean Slates

The slate may be wiped clean by a change in surroundings: a new apartment, a new city, even rearranged furniture. Or some major aspect of life may change: a new job, a new school, a new doctor.

Job changes for PhDs come relatively frequently throughout training and sometimes following, and many or all of those job changes may very well involve a move. A new job in a new city is just about the cleanest slate you can get when it comes to your habits (not including changes in the members of your family): new home, new job, new co-workers, new commute, new city to learn.

Not only are you in a different environment with your old triggers and routines wiped away, but the people surrounding you are no longer reinforcing your prior habits and associating you with them. You have a chance to forge relationships without succumbing to any negative habits.

What Kinds of Financial Habits Should You Lose with a Clean Slate

Mindless Spending

The entire point of a habit is that it takes little to no conscious decision-making to carry out. If you are aware of any mindless spending that you currently engage in, resolve to drop it with your upcoming clean slate (if not before!).

Mindless spending is spending that you neither need nor even truly want to do. Perhaps it gives you some satisfaction, but it’s all too fleeting. You pick up a coffee every day during your commute because that’s what you always have in your hand on your way in. You browse a certain store and make a purchase on the same day of the week because that’s how you kill time in between work an an evening activity. You go out with the same people to the same bar/restaurant/club every weekend because that’s where you went when you first met them. Somehow these actions became habits even as your desire to do them faded. You may not have even realized the cumulative effect they were having on your finances.

With your clean slate, you have the opportunity to drop these old habits and begin how you want to continue, e.g., brewing coffee at home, taking a route that doesn’t pass any shops, and meeting people through fun and less expensive activities.

Living Beyond Your Means

In many graduate programs and at many places, limiting your spending to the means provided by your stipend/salary is not possible or at least not palatable. In those cases, accruing debt, usually student loan or credit card debt, is a necessary evil. Still more PhDs (in training) accrue debt because of a lack of sufficient motivation to avoid it.

Living beyond your means is a negative financial habit, necessary or not. When you start a new, higher-paying job, make a clean break with that habit. In your new job, you are A Person Who Lives Within Your Means. In fact, you should not only resolve to not accrue any new credit card (or similar) debt, but you should start repaying your accumulated debt. If credit cards were your debt of choice, stop putting new charges on them entirely.

Hiding Your Head in Sand

Sometimes a negative financial habit is simply the absence of a good financial habit. Your financial state during grad school or after can be so discouraging that you stop looking at it entirely. You might slip into being unaware of the balances in your checking and savings accounts, the balances on your credit cards, the total of your student loan debt, the value of your investments (if any!), etc.

At some point and after some healing, you’ll start looking at your finances again – perhaps when you have a higher income and the future looks rosier. With your clean slate, leave behind your habit of hiding your head in the sand and put in place a new habit of regularly looking over your finances comprehensively, even if it’s painful at first.

Keeping Up with the Joneses

Keeping up with the Joneses is a negative financial habit for anyone, but it’s particularly impossible for PhDs on trainee income. You don’t want to be in that habit when your higher income rolls in, as you might actually be able to make a go of keeping up. Do whatever you need to do to (leave/filter social media, stop watching HGTV) to keep the Joneses out of sight and out of mind.

What Kinds of Financial Habits Should You Implement or Maintain with a Clean Slate

The Strategy of the Clean Slate can help us launch a new habit with less effort.

With your clean slate, adopt a new identity as a person who practices positive financial habits and is actively working to improve your financial health.

Tracking/Budgeting Your Spending

Tracking your spending and creating a spending plan (a budget) are fundamental tools for managing your finances well.

Tracking can be done relatively automatically with software, so the easiest way to implement this habit is to sign up for Mint/You Need a Budget/similar, hook up your bank accounts, and check on your spending periodically (at least once per week).

After you have an idea of your expenses, you can start projecting them with a budget, which will help you be mindful about your spending in your trouble areas. You may have to update your budget frequently if you’ve recently moved, but after some time checking in with it once a month or more will become automatic.

Track Your Net Worth

When my husband and I transitioned to our first post-PhD Real Jobs, I started manually tracking our net worth. Yes, our Mint account has it, too, but I liked my own formatting. Once per month on the 1st, I copy all of our account balances into an Excel spreadsheet and update my graph. You don’t need to check frequently for the habit of tracking your net worth to be valuable. After all, “That which is measured, improves.”

Negotiating

That a candidate will attempt to negotiate a job offer is almost always expected. (Grad school offer letters are an exception, though some students do attempt to negotiate. Negotiating a postdoc offer is more common than you might think.) If your clean slate comes with a new job, be sure that you negotiate that job offer (and every one that follows). You may make an exception if the offer is clearly and objectively on the generous side of appropriate, but even then you can still try to negotiate some benefit. A raise gained through negotiation is the easiest money you’ll ever earn, and it compounds throughout your career!

Automatic Saving and Being “a Saver”

Post-clean slate and with a higher income, you are a saver, no matter what you were before. Enforce this positive financial habit by setting up automated transfers to your savings account, loans, or investments, depending on your goal. Incrementally increase your savings rate over time.

Investing can be very intimidating to someone just starting to get their finances in order. It’s doubly intimidating for someone who doesn’t have access to a 401(k)/403(b)/similar like a grad student and some postdocs. With your clean slate, put in place the positive financial habit of investing (if that’s an appropriate financial goal). If your new job offers a retirement account match, by all means take full advantage, and invest beyond that up to your goal amount. Never leave match money on the table!

It’s a shame not to exploit the power of the strategy of the Clean Slate when it presents itself. For instance, the time of moving introduces so much upheaval into our customary habits that change becomes far easier. In one study of people trying to make a change–such as changes in career or education, relationships, addictive behaviors, or health behaviors including dieting–36 percent of successful changes were associated with a move to a new place.

The Downside to a Clean Slate

While the clean slate offers tremendous opportunity for forming new habits, it can disrupt a person’s existing good habits by eliminating a useful cue or breaking up a positive routine.

To this point in the article I have largely assumed that you have some negative financial habits that can be eliminated by a Clean Slate, and I’ve suggested positive financial habits to fill the vacuum. But you also may well have positive financial habits that will be jeopardized by the Clean Slate. It’s understandable that you habits will be disrupted by a Clean Slate as dramatic as a move and job change, so as soon as possible (before you feel settled and ready) jump right back into your old positive habits so you don’t slide into negative habits in their absence. As much as possible, maintain monitoring your habits through your transition so you have an accountability system urging you to return to them as soon as possible.

Travel and Savings Are This Frugal Grad Student’s Top Priorities

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This podcast episode is a budget breakdown with Latisha Franklin, a third-year graduate student in biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State University. Latisha works to keep her housing and especially food spending low so that she can spend more on experiences, such as her yearly international vacation. She employs several powerful strategies in her frugality and budgeting to enable her saving, such as taking out cash for variable spending, prioritizing a “me” budget category, vegan meal prepping, and actually reading her email to find free food on campus. Emily and Latisha discuss how establishing a routine schedule lends itself well to developing frugal practices.

Links mentioned in episode

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, Stitcher, or Spotify.

Give your feedback on Season 1 and influence the direction for Season 2 through this form.

frugal grad student travel saving

0:00 Introduction

1:14 Q1: Please Introduce Yourself

Latisha Franklin is a third-year graduate student in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology program at Penn State University. She moved to State College, Pennsylvania, for graduate school from her hometown Mobile, Alabama.

Her stipend is $1,996 per month after taxes.

2:27 Q2: What are your five largest expenses each month?

Latisha’s top expense categories are rent, car insurance, food, bills, and “me,” in other words, money she can spend freely on herself. She shares that she budgets much of her income for her Roth IRA and savings.

3:57 #1 Expense: Rent

Latisha lived in a one-bedroom apartment with her dog at the time of the interview. However, she had plans to move. Her rent was $820 per month and the rent in her new place is $710 per month. Originally, she wanted to move to a new place with a roommate. When those plans fell through, her realtor helped her find the new apartment.

Her new apartment is attached to a house. She has access to a backyard for her dog, which was appealing to her. Her new apartment is closer to Penn State, a 5 minute drive and 20 minute walk from campus. The neighborhood is family-oriented. This is in contrast to her former neighborhood that had a good mix of graduate students, young families, and late-career adults.

Latisha thinks Penn State graduate students living alone pay about $900 or more for rent. She thinks that $700 is the low end of the range for rents. In her estimates, she is not taking into account possible lower rents in shared housing with roommates.

8:29 #2 Expense: Car Insurance

Latisha has a 2016 Hyundai Tuscon. She bought the car new in winter 2015 and paid it off completely within two years. She used savings she had been building since middle school to buy the car new. Her monthly insurance payment is $159.

10:22 #3 Expense: Food

Latisha spends $150 per month on food. She spends $20 each week for food that she’ll eat during the week, and $50 each month to buy items she’ll use throughout the month. Her strategy to keep food expenses low is to meal prep and cook in bulk.

During her first year, she found herself cooking every other day. Cooking was too time-intensive, so she read articles about meal prepping. Now, she uses Sundays as her meal prep and cooking day. She makes enough to last the week and portions food into six or seven containers.

Latisha didn’t have any dietary restrictions or considerations during her first year in graduate school. She has now removed meat and dairy from her diet. She uses many kinds of beans, rice, nuts, and fruit in her meals. She buys fruit from the farmers markets and from her share of community supported agriculture (CSA).

Her meals include muffins, which she eats every week, salads, soups, and pastas. Additionally, Latisha eats free meals on campus as often as three times a week. She takes ten minutes each day to read her university emails to find events with free food that also match her interest. She rarely eats take-out or at restaurants, and this expense is from her “me” category.

18:54 #4 Expense: Bills

Latisha’s pays for electricity and wifi, because heat and water are included in her rent. Her parents pay for her cell phone bills. The electricity bill is $13 per month and wifi bill is $32 per month. To keep electricity costs down, Latisha makes the most of daylight for work. During the evening, she relaxes and minimizes her electricity use.

In her new apartment, she will have to pay for all utilities separately. She’ll have more bills, so she has planned to increase this budget category.

21:38 #5 Expense: “Me,” or Variable Spending

Latisha budgets about $20 a week, or strictly $100 a month, to spend as she wishes on herself. Typically, she uses this money to go to the movies, go out to dinner, or try something new. She bought herself a microscope because she enjoys using it to look at everyday items. Overall, she prefers “experiences, not stuff.”

Latisha’s strategy is to keep her “me” budget in cash. Using cash is strategy to keep variable spending in check. She mentions that credit cards didn’t suit her.

25:17 Q3: What are you currently doing to further your financial goals?

Latisha prioritizes savings. Since her teenage years, she kept savings for undetermined large purchases. For example, she bought her new car with her savings, even though she hadn’t intentionally planned the purchase.

She contributes $150 per month to a Roth IRA for retirement. She saves $50 per month in her savings account. This is about 10% of her net income. She is focused on building her Roth IRA

She started savings with a CD, about three years ago, without much knowledge of savings or investing. Her dad encouraged her to get a Roth IRA. Latisha read Emily’s emails and is now working on better managing her Roth IRA.

Latisha has set a goal to take one big trip a year. Here she discusses saving for her trip to Iceland. She has budgeted about $100 per month and has $1,200 saved at the time of the interview. She likes to travel and wants to get out and see the world while she has minimal responsibilities. Iceland is the first big trip that she has initiated on her own.

33:24 Q4: What don’t you spend money on that might surprise people?

Latisha spends very little on food. Many of her peers claim to not have the time to cook, so they get take out or eat out more often. She found the time on the weekends to prepare all her meals for the week, so she saves time during the week. Emily and Latisha agree that in reality, getting take out or going to eat can take just as much time as preparing your own meals. Prioritizing cooking your own meals is a great frugal strategy.

35:34 Q5: What are you happy with in your spending and what would you like to change?

Latisha is happy that most of her money goes to experiences, not things. She wants to add money to food, because she believes trying new kinds of foods is a good experience. Joining the CSA is one way she is trying new foods. She is interested in new fruits, like dragonfruit. Additionally, she is happy has “cushion money” so she is prepared for anything.

36:48 Q6: What is your best advice for someone new to your city who is budget-conscious?

Latisha recommends over estimating your budget so you have cushion money. This reduces stress and helps even out irregular expenses. One strategy that Latisha uses is to set up separate accounts for her money. For example, she moves her income out of her spending account into a reserve account. This restricts how much money is available for her to spend, but the money is still accessible if she really needs it.

Latisha also recommends personalizing your budget. She has had financial training that emphasizes certain income percentages for budget categories, but this advice doesn’t suit her lifestyle. She realized this when she went through the process of purchasing a home but ultimately could not get approval. During the process to buy a home, she found that financial advisors insisted that 50-60% of income is budgeted to living expenses. Though she was frustrated she couldn’t buy a home, she is glad she went through the process and would recommend the experience to other graduate students.

44:46 Q7: Would you like to make any other comments on what it takes to get by where you live on what you earn?

Latisha takes the bus for her commute. She does not use her car for every day commuting, just for irregular driving, like taking her dog to the groomer. Penn state has a graduate students bus ridership program that Latisha says is a $180 one time fee, then free riding for the entire year. Just a few rides each month would make the pass pay off. She says this is definitely worth it.

Latisha says her budget is possible because she manages her time carefully and sticks to a routine. Her budget is a result of her focused lifestyle. Emily and Latisha agree that budgeting is easier and more accessible when you recognize the patterns you have in place in your life.

48:30 Final Comments

Latisha and Emily hope listeners learned more about frugal strategies for living on a graduate stipend.

48:45 Conclusion

How Much Tax Will I Owe on My Fellowship Stipend or Salary?

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If you have recently started receiving a fellowship for your graduate or postdoc stipend or salary, you are likely aware that income tax is not being withheld for you. While your fellowship income is taxed as ordinary income at the federal and usually state levels, only in rare cases do universities actually offer you automatic tax withholding. Therefore, it falls to you to manually pay your own tax due either quarterly or once per year. But how do you figure out how much tax you will owe on your income?

Further reading:

monthly tax fellowship

When you start receiving a fellowship and in January of every subsequent year, you should first determine whether you are required to pay quarterly estimated tax both at the federal and state levels. Whether the answer is yes or no, your next step is to calculate how much you should set aside from each paycheck to pay your ultimate tax bill(s) for the year and set up your own system of tax withholding (e.g., an automated transfer to a dedicated savings account following your receipt of each paycheck). Then, you will be prepared to make the necessary payment when the due date arrives.

Further reading:

This post details three methods by which you can calculate the approximately amount of federal tax you will have to pay on each month of fellowship stipend or salary income that you receive.

Method 1: Use Form 1040-ES

Form 1040-ES that you previously filled out is very useful for figuring out how much you should set aside from each paycheck to pay your federal income tax bill. Form 1040 Line 11c tells you the amount of tax you have estimated that you will owe for the year (above what you and/or your spouse will have withheld). Simply divide your value in Line 11c by the number of fellowship paychecks you’ll receive in the calendar year; that is the amount of money you should set aside for federal income tax from each paycheck.

(Note: You might be tempted to divide your value in Line 15, which is how much you’re required to pay in estimated tax in each quarter, by the number of pay periods in each quarter. However, doing this will cause you to owe additional tax when you file your yearly tax return of at least 10% of the total estimated tax.)

Method 2: Use My Super-Simple Spreadsheet

Instead of referring to Form 1040-ES to calculate the amount of money you should set aside in tax, you can instead use a spreadsheet I made (sign up below to download it). It works for monthly and once-per-term fellowship income. (Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for your tax calculations!)

Method 3: Use the IRS’s Withholding Calculator

The IRS also provides a withholding calculator that has been updated for 2018. It asks you to enter your filing status, dependency status, job transitions, which credits you plan to take and their amounts, income, tax withholding, and amount of itemized deductions (if any).

This calculator is much more thorough than my simple spreadsheet above. If you have a complicated tax return, this is the more appropriate calculator to use to determine how much money you should set aside for federal income tax payments.

If you have a complicate financial life (e.g., a spouse with income, no income or a much higher income earlier in the year, extra credits or deductions), you should use either Form 1040-ES or the IRS calculator to help you determine how much money to set aside for tax from each paycheck because they take into account many of the elements that will be present on your yearly federal tax return. If you are a single-income household and have a simple financial life, my spreadsheet will get you the answer of how much money to self-withhold from each of your fellowship paychecks faster.

Whichever way you do the calculation, be sure to follow through on setting up your automated self-tax withholding. It’s the next best solution to having tax automatically withheld from your income by your university!

P.S. If you want to estimate how much you will pay in state tax as well as federal, try the Smart Asset calculator. (As of this writing, the calculator primarily reflects tax year 2017.) This calculator is also very simple, so it does not allow for the input of credits. It also includes FICA tax, which does not apply to graduate student fellowships and likely does not apply to postdoc fellowships. If you are using it specifically for estimating your state tax due, keep in mind that fellowship income is not always taxed as ordinary income at the state level. (For example, fellowship income is exempt from tax in Alabama.)

This PhD Side Hustler Maintains a Healthy Work-Life Balance

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Today’s podcast guest is Dr. Caitlin Faas, an assistant professor of psychology and perennial side hustler. We discuss her history with side hustling and her motivations for pursuing it. Caitlin’s current side hustle of academic coaching dovetails so well with her primary role as a faculty member that she’s even planning to include that work in her tenure packet. Her work involves coaching and teaching about time management, productivity, and overcoming psychological barriers to academic success, so listen through the episode and check out her website to learn the tips that work well for her and her clients.

Links Mentioned in Episode

healthy work life balance

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, Stitcher, or Spotify.

Give your feedback on Season 1 and influence the direction for Season 2 through this form.

0:00 Introduction

1:09 Please Introduce Yourself

Dr. Caitlin Faas is an assistant professor at small liberal arts college in Maryland. She’s had her job for five years, and soon she is submitting tenure packet. She went to graduate school at Virginia Tech, where she studied human development and family studies. She’s the developmental psychology professor in her department. Her research focus is emerging adulthood.

For her side hustle, Caitlin runs a business to coach busy professionals as they try to integrate school and academics into their daily life. She provides career direction and productivity tips to her clients, as well as offering advice on her blog and social media. Her clients are associate professors, graduate students, and professionals considering applying to graduate school.

3:17 Did you have a side hustle as a student?

Caitlin has always valued hard work and earning her own income. As an undergraduate, she worked while being a full time student. Then as a graduate student, Caitlin worked at the local yarn shop during the summer and had a couple corporate retail work experiences. Having extra spending money was her motivation for her side hustle. She’d usually spend her income from the yarn shop on yarn for her knitting hobby. She also used her money for non-funded academic opportunities, like going to conferences.

Caitlin and Emily both agree that having outside activities, whether paid or hobby, helps you personally while you’re a graduate student. A side hustles is a valuable way to learn other skills and discover what you enjoy doing.

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8:10 How did you transition into self-employment as your side hustle?

Caitlin went from graduate school directly into her assistant professor position. For the first two years, she focused on her productivity, time management, and personal values. She decided that she wanted to work 9-5 and use her non-work time as she chose. She trained for a half marathon and on her runs, she listened to Nick Loper’s Side Hustle Nation podcast. The stories she heard on the podcast inspired her to start her own business on the side. Starting a coaching business seemed like a way for her to take more control of her career trajectory in the face of an uncertain economy. In contrast to other professors who may do consulting on the side, Caitlin decided to create her own platform to reach the general public. She wanted to help people beyond her students and outside her own academic network.

15:13 What do you do in your business and how does it complement your primary job?

Caitlin is a personal coach, working with clients to improve their productivity, time management, writing and academic life. To get started, she took coaching classes and offered her expertise to a broad audience. Most clients needed help determining if they should leave their job to go to graduate school, so Caitlin’s work has evolved to focus on that audience.

She spends about 8-10 hours per week on her business during the academic year and 20 hours per week during the summer. This time is spent coaching clients, collaboratively editing writing and teaching writing skills, speaking at conferences outside of her field, engaging her audience on social media, and on networking calls. She recently began working with corporations to help bridge generational differences. For instance, she has advised business how to help baby boomers and millenials work better together. She’s been paid to give webinars in a corporate setting.

Caitlin and Emily comment that academics are trained to view much of their work as voluntary service. Academics do many tasks, like reviewing papers, as a service for no extra money. Yet through a side hustle, Caitlin is paid for these tasks, generating income for her valuable skills.

20:50 What benefits have you experienced from your side hustle?

Caitlin benefits from flexibility with her finances that come from her side income. She has student loan bills, so this income helps her make those payments. She dreams of financial freedom. Also, Caitlin likes that her side hustle gets her outside of the ivory tower. She enjoys getting to know other people and helping people. Her goal is help people feel empowered to make decisions about their career and be productive. Through her business, she feels in control of her career, where she can learn lessons and grow opportunities.

23:02 Can you tell us about your website?

Caitlin’s website provides free content for interested people. She includes a blog with posts about productivity, self-improvement, and deciding whether to go to graduate school. Every two weeks, she sends an email newsletter. She provides videos with a transcript and worksheets.

Her first website was very simple and didn’t have much content. Having a website was an important first step to establish her business and build an audience. As she earned more money, she could put some of that money back into her business. Now, she hires a graphic designer and video editor to improve the quality of her online products.

25:34 How do you manage your time between your primary job, side hustle, and other commitments?

As a productivity coach, Caitlin practices what she coaches. She is serious about working her primary job 9-5 and having free time on evenings and weekends. She is super strict about sleep, so she always make sure she has 8 hours of sleep each night. She encourages people to start with getting enough sleep. Caitlin critically considers how she likes to spend her time, so that she spends it on activities she enjoys. For instance, she has decreased the time she spends editing papers, because she finds more fulfillment from coaching clients in person. She read Gretchen Rubin’s books for inspiration, and suggests that others look for productivity role models to follow.

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30:48 How does your side hustle interact with your primary job?

At first, Caitlin kept her business idea quiet. Now that she has established her side hustle, she is open about it with people in her department. She says typically people don’t think too much about what she’s doing, but colleagues ask her about time management.

Coaching clients has made Caitlin a better professor, because skills she learned while she trained to be a coach showed her how to be a better teacher. She’s including information about her coaching business in her tenure package. She is making the case that her coaching business has improved her performance as a professor.

33:38 Would there be a situation where your side hustle became your primary job, or alternatively, you would stop it?

Caitlin has other goals that are fulfilled through her professor position. For example, one of her goals is travel, and her professor position gives her the opportunity to take her students abroad. She took her students to Greece, and her travel was paid for. She sees this as a perk of being a professor.

She is in a growth mode in her coaching business. She has 8-10 hours each week, so she’s examining how she can grow even though her time is limited. Additionally, Caitlin and her partner will be foster parents for teenagers soon. This family life transition may change her priorities and time management.

37:12 How could someone with a PhD find a side hustle that complements their primary work?

Caitlin recommends completing “What’s your purpose?” and “What are the things you like to do?” activities offered on several entrepreneur websites. Even though the entrepreneur path may not seem like an intuitive one for many with a PhD, Caitlin suggests plugging into the entrepreneur network to find support.

Through a side hustle, you can truly explore what you want to do and find something you love to work on. When you find something that you love, Caitlin says you have energy to overcome road blocks and make it grow. If you don’t love the work, you have the freedom to change direction.

39:40 Final Comments

Caitlin and Emily are both part of a self-employed PhD network led by Dr. Jennifer Polk. The network is very supportive and includes a diversity of people. Caitlin and Emily welcome people to reach out to them directly.

40:55 Conclusion

Code Maintenance Consultant

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Name: Carolyn Chlebek

University: Cornell University

Department/Program: Biomedical Engineering, PhD student

 

What is your side or temporary job?

I work as a consultant for a Gait Analysis Laboratory on campus. I maintain the code that provides the interface and analysis packages for the laboratory.

How much do you earn?

I earn $18/hr.

How do you balance your job with your graduate work?

I set aside 5 hours per week in my schedule. Typically, I look at my weekly schedule Sunday night and find some time that I physically block off – I ensure that I work 9 hr/day in total, therefore ensuring I give enough time for my research (minimum 40hrs/week).

Does your job complement your graduate work or advance your career?

Yes, this job can definitely influence my career. Much of my research requires me to create and maintain code, so this side hustle is good practice. Additionally, the graduate student who held this position before me went into consulting and found that this position was a great talking point in interviews and demonstrated his skills that made him a great fit for a consulting position.

How did you get started with your job?

Another graduate student in my lab held the position before me and recruited me to take over from him after he graduated.

Is there anything else you would like to share about your experience?

I enjoy the challenges of this position, and the more translational nature of this work – the lab uses this data to evaluate the healing progress of pet dogs after surgeries. They also use this data to guide future surgical decisions – as a dog lover, this is very motivating!

An Emergency Fund Is Essential to Good Financial Health

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Having a dedicated emergency fund is a vital component of good financial health. An emergency fund is a sum of money set aside to use in case of an emergency. An emergency fund stands between: a) something bad happening in your life and b) something bad happening in your life and there being significant financial consequences. It’s inevitable that sooner or later something bad is going to happen in your life, and the best way to prepare is by saving an emergency fund. The subject of this article is how large that emergency fund should be, when to use it, where to keep it, and how to balance funding it against fulfilling other financial goals.

emergency fund

Motivation for Having an Emergency Fund

When an emergency occurs in your life, what is the best source of money to draw from to help resolve it? A credit card? A family member or friend? A withdrawal or loan from your investments? A payday loan?

The best place to turn in the case of an emergency is your own cash savings. (By cash savings, I mean cash equivalents, i.e., money in a checking, saving, or money market account, or actual cash.)
• A credit card or payday loan is going to cost you a pretty penny–or an arm and a leg–in interest.
• An investment loan or withdrawal unplugs your money from its potential to create a return and sometimes costs even more money in taxes, penalties, or lost contribution room.
• A loan or gift from a family member or friend is likely to strain your relationship and could possibly pass on the financial hardship.

If you want to contain your financial emergency to the primary event, you’ll save a dedicated emergency fund. Otherwise, the financial emergency could continue to ripple outward into other areas of your finances or relationships.

Employ These 10 Psychological Tricks to Supercharge Your Savings

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What Qualifies as an Emergency?

My definition of an emergency expense is one that is fully necessary but that you did not otherwise prepare for. This is a broad net, and qualifying emergencies differ from person to person depending on life circumstances.

For example, repairing a car that has become non-functional would be a qualifying expense if: 1) the car served a vital function, e.g., transportation to work when no long-term alternative was available, and 2) the money for the repair was not available from any other cash source.

If someone typically drove to work (or some other necessary destination) but other transportation options were available, such as public transportation, biking, carpooling, etc., the repair could be put off until the money could be found from somewhere other than the emergency fund.

Similarly, if car repairs were sufficiently saved for in a separate cash account, that expense is not an emergency even if it is a necessary expense. The emergency fund would only be tapped if the expense exceeded the amount of dedicated savings. It is a good idea to save for foreseeable (if not precisely predictable) expenses like car repairs as resources allow.

An emergency fund should never be tapped for a discretionary expense.

How Much Money Should I Have in My Emergency Fund?

While the existence of an emergency fund is vital for financial health, the exact target size depends on many factors in an individual’s life, such living expenses, competing financial goals, and personal disposition. There may also be a few distinct stages of emergency fund size as you build up to your target fully funded level.

Rules of Thumb

The common rule of thumb is that a fully funded emergency fund should contain between three and six months’ worth of living expenses. The rationale behind this figure is primarily for job loss. If you lost your primary income source, how long would it take you to replace it? The average is supposed to be between three and six months. However, you know your particular position and industry best.

If your skills are in high demand in your local area, perhaps it would take you very little time to find another position. It’s also easy to imagine that replacing your job could take a very long time if there is a low turnover rate in the position type you seek.

Being enrolled in a PhD program further complicates this estimation. Is your funding guaranteed? That doesn’t shrink your necessary emergency fund size to zero, but it may reduce it some. Is funding in your program patchy? That’s a great reason for a larger emergency fund or dedicated savings for underfunded terms.

However, if you have other financial goals you want to work on, you may not want to take the time to fully fund an emergency fund from the get-go. For example, in Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps, you keep your emergency fund size at $1,000 while you pay off all non-mortgage debt. While I’m not necessary advocating this position exactly, it is a good reference point. If part of the objective of an emergency fund is to keep you out of credit card debt, after putting in place a small emergency fund you should work on eliminating any credit card (or similarly high-interest) debt that you have.

Further reading: Why Every Grad Student Should Have a $1,000 Emergency Fund

Living Expenses

It makes sense that your emergency fund size should scale with that of your financial footprint, i.e., your spending rate. If you spend very little money each month to keep your life running, you can get away with a smaller emergency fund.

For example, if your household is only your or only you and another working adult (no dependents), you don’t own your home, you don’t own a car, and you generally don’t have many necessary expenses, your emergency fund can be on the smaller size.

Conversely, if you own a home and one or more cars, have dependents, and spend a lot to keep your life running, you need a larger emergency fund.

In the case of job loss, your emergency fund of ideally several months of expenses would keep your household running until you can secure another position. However, other types of emergencies can arise, often relating to your possessions or the people in your household, e.g., illness, home or auto repairs, electronics replacement, etc. The more people and possessions involved, the more likely an emergency is to occur or even multiple emergencies at once.

Competing Financial Goals

Emergency fund building is not the only worthwhile financial goal you could pursue. There is also debt repayment, investing, and cash saving for other purposes.

After building a small emergency fund (e.g., $1,000 or a few thousand dollars), you should pay off any high interest rate debt before choosing your next financial goal. Cash saving, investing, and moderate-interest debt repayment all rank alongside finishing building your emergency fund, so it’s up to each individual to decide which is most important.

Realistically, in the case of a large emergency, any regular saving/investing/debt repayment rate could be redirected to the emergency need. Therefore, generating a high monthly savings rate itself is a worthy pursuit, and which goal exactly you fund with the savings rate is less material.

It’s a fine choice to split your efforts between continuing to build your emergency fund/cash savings and investing/repaying debt.

Disposition

Your personal disposition toward risk comes into play when deciding emergency fund size. This is an emotional or gut feeling issue rather than a logical or mathematical one. If you sleep better with a larger emergency fund, go that route! If you are not risk-averse regarding emergencies, keep a smaller (but non-zero) emergency fund.

Bottom Line

Your full emergency fund size is an incredibly individual decision based on your living expenses, competing financial goals, and disposition. You may also go through transitions in your emergency fund size: an initial smaller amount, gradual growth toward your full goal size, and fluctuations up and down as the fund is tapped and refilled.

Employ These 10 Psychological Tricks to Supercharge Your Savings

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Where Should I Keep My Emergency Fund?

Your emergency fund should be kept in cash-equivalents (or cash, partially). Cash-equivalents include checking, saving, and money market accounts.

The best solution for most people is to have a separate savings account dedicated as an emergency fund at the same bank where you hold your primary checking account. This allows for a clear distinction between regular and emergency funds while still keeping easy access in case the money is needed.

Some people may be able to keep their emergency fund in their primary checking account, but this method requires great discipline to keep from dipping into the fund for non-emergency purposes.

If you are inclined to inappropriately use your emergency savings, you could try keeping it at a separate bank from your primary checking (e.g., an online-only bank that pays higher interest rates). The delay in transfer time between the banks would discourage casual usage of the fund.

Can I Invest My Emergency Fund?

Some people desire to invest their emergency savings to try to make their money work for them and get a rate of return on it. For example, a popular place to stash emergency savings is in investments inside a Roth IRA because the contributions are able to be withdrawn at any time.

However, the true purpose of an emergency fund is not to earn money but rather to serve as a form of insurance. As Dave Ramsey says, “An emergency fund doesn’t make you money; it costs you money.” (The cost is the opportunity cost of not using the money for investing or debt repayment.)

The reason to not invest your emergency savings is that investing involves risk. There is a risk that your investments could drop in value and therefore the amount of money you have available for emergencies also decreases. According to Murphy’s law, your investment balance would drop at the same time your emergency occurs, forcing you to sell at a loss and have less money available to you than you expected. (These events are actually likely to be concurrent if your emergency is job loss tied to a weaker economy and market.)

If you are truly wealthy and have lots of cash and accessible investments, go ahead and invest your ‘emergency fund’, i.e., part of your savings. But if you’re just starting out, don’t risk your safety net for a few extra bucks.

How to Weigh an Emergency Fund Against Other Financial Goals

It’s not feasible to directly mathematically compare the goal of filling an emergency fund with other financial goals like investing or debt repayment. Investing and debt repayment ‘make’ you money, while an emergency fund ideally just sits there at the ready for you.

Anything you do to improve the asset side of your balance sheet is going to strengthen your financial position in the case of an emergency. (Debt repayment, while good for your balance sheet and eventually cash flow, does not strengthen your position in the case of an emergency unless you pay off one or more debts completely.) Cash savings are especially helpful, whether you call them emergency savings or something else. The more necessary expenses that you prepare for with cash savings, the narrower your definition of an emergency becomes, which makes it easier to keep a smaller emergency fund.

When you have low discretionary cash flow (total income minus necessary expenses), like during graduate school or your postdoc, it is more important to have a dedicated emergency fund. This is doubly true if you have a low amount of other available assets like cash and investments. Unfortunately, having low discretionary cash flow means that it is going to be difficult to build up significant cash savings in an emergency fund. In this case, you should move on to investing or debt repayment after working on the emergency fund for several months or a year.

If you ever do need to tap your emergency fund, refilling it should become your top financial priority.

Further reading: How to Prioritize Financial Goals When You Can’t Do It All

Example Emergency Savings Plan

While emergency funds are unique to each individual, you may use the following example as a model that you can tweak to your own purposes.

At his starting point, Andrew has no cash savings and some debt; he is living paycheck to paycheck. He works on increasing his income and/or decreasing his expenses so that he can start regularly saving.

His first goal is an emergency fund of $1,000. Once he achieves that, he turns his attention to repaying his high interest rate debt (> 10%). Then he returns to building his emergency fund to $3,000, which is approximately two months of expenses.

Now that his high interest rate debt is paid off, Andrew increases his savings rate even further. He would like to start investing alongside continuing to build up his cash savings, so he send half of his available savings rate into a Roth IRA and half goes into cash savings for irregular expenses. He considers the irregular expenses account full when he reaches $5,000.

Finally, Andrew switches his cash savings back to filling his emergency fund to what he considers a full size, 3 months of expenses. After that, he puts his full available savings rate toward his investments.