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This Grad Student’s Finances and Mental Health Were Stuck in a Negative Feedback Loop

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Haley Sanderson, a postdoc at the University of Saskatchewan. Haley was dramatically underpaid during graduate school and discouraged from working on the side. While many of her peers lived hand to mouth, Haley’s situation was made more dire by her at-the-time undiagnosed and untreated mental health disorder. Haley entered a negative feedback loop in which her finances, mental health, and physical health deteriorated together. Emily and Haley discuss what her program could have done to ameliorate this negative spiral and why it’s vital to sufficiently financially support PhD trainees. Haley concludes with her very practical financial advice for anyone at a career transition point.

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Teaser

00:00 Haley: My suggestion would be, if somebody’s in my situation, to go get the help you need and get the financial help that you need, even if it means taking out loans. Because it’s much better to have the financial debt than the mental health debt.

Introduction

00:22 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 12, Episode 4, and today my guest is Dr. Haley Sanderson, a postdoc at the University of Saskatchewan. Haley was dramatically underpaid during graduate school and discouraged from working on the side. While many of her peers lived hand to mouth, Haley’s situation was made more dire by her at-the-time undiagnosed and untreated mental health disorder. Haley entered a negative feedback loop in which her finances, mental health, and physical health deteriorated together. We discuss what Haley’s program could have done to ameliorate this negative spiral and why it’s vital to sufficiently financially support PhD trainees. Haley concludes with her very practical financial advice for anyone at a career transition point.

01:44 Emily: I have set a super audacious goal for my business and our U.S. PhD community broadly. It’s actually a bit difficult for me to even speak it out loud! My goal is for every graduate student, postdoc, or postbac in the U.S. who is not having income tax withheld from their stipend or salary to be offered training on how to 1) estimate their future income tax liability, 2) determine if they are required to pay quarterly estimated tax, and 3) prepare to pay their tax bill or bills through setting up a system of self-withholding. I am passionate about this topic because surprise tax bills, high tax bills, and fines are an almost completely preventable source of financial strife for my community, and all that’s needed is a bit of education delivered at the right time. I provide just such a training, which is my asynchronous workshop titled Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. Most of you have heard me talk about it before, and some of you have taken it. The perfect time to give PhD trainees access to this workshop is when they start or switch onto non-W-2 income, which often happens near the start of the academic year, i.e., the near future.

03:08 Emily: If you share my passion—or maybe it’s more of a frustration for you—and know that your university is not already providing sufficient training in this area, would you please recommend that your graduate school, postdoc office, graduate student association, or department sponsor my workshop for those interested in taking it? You might want to take it yourself, or perhaps you just want to save the entering cohort the time and energy it took you to figure this all out on your own. To make this recommendation, simply email the potential sponsor with the reason you are recommending the workshop and this link: PFforPhDs.com/sponsorqetax/. If you’re comfortable with it, you can Cc me [email protected], and I can pick up the conversation. Thanks for participating with me in trying to reach this goal! I know it will prevent a lot of people in our community from experiencing tax-related financial emergencies next spring.

You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s12e4/.

Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Haley Sanderson.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

04:33 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Haley Sanderson, who is a postdoc at the University of Saskatchewan, and she is coming on the podcast to talk about a really sensitive topic, which is living on a very low graduate student stipend while dealing with mental illness. So, Haley, I’m really pleased that you volunteered to be on the podcast to talk about this important topic. So, would you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the listeners?

04:58 Haley: Hi, I’m Haley. I have a PhD in environmental studies where I specialize in environmental microbiology and biotechnology. I finished my PhD in five years defending and graduating in fall 2018, since then I’ve completed postdocs with the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Dalhousie University, and I’m now a postdoc in the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan. And I’m currently applying for more full-time permanent gigs <laugh>.

05:37 Emily: Well, best of luck with that. Okay. So we’re going to go back to your grad school years, and most of my listeners are going to be in the U.S. So, could you please explain, give some context for how you are funded during your PhD?

Funding During the PhD

05:53 Haley: So, during my PhD, I started as a master’s student, so I actually started on a much lower stipend of about $14K Canadian. So, to get that money, I had to TA for about two semesters every year and then do a research assistantship in the summer. I was a master’s student for a year, and then I bumped up to be a PhD. I ended up getting three provincial scholarships in Ontario that bumped my stipend up to $25K, which is only a little bit higher than the base stipend for a PhD student. So, with that stipend, we actually have to pay tuition out of it. So, not all of it gets to go to living. You also have to pay your tuition out of the money that they give you. So, the actual amount that I lived off of was much smaller than the stipend that I got <laugh>.

07:14 Emily: Yeah. Well, let us know, do you remember the numbers on that? Like after paying the tuition, what amount were you living off of? And then give us some context for, like, how does that compare to the local cost of living?

07:26 Haley: I don’t know the exact numbers, but tuition was about $2,000 a semester, I would say, for about $6,000 a year. So, when I was on my original master’s stipend, I only had maybe $8K <laugh>, which is a little <laugh> insane. I had a lot more to live off of once I was in the PhD program. So, when I was a master’s student, I actually had to work, but there were some problems with the department not wanting me to work and kind of threatening to take away the stipend that was paying like my tuition and my rent.

Challenges to Supplementing the Stipend

08:09 Emily: Yeah. I mean, the numbers that you’re throwing out there sound incredibly low. It’s not surprising at all to me that you would, you know, seek other sources of income. Was that something that your peers were doing as well? Was the department also like threatening other peers who were working, or how were they making ends meet?

08:27 Haley: A lot of the other people in my department had like side gigs that they’d only do every once in a while. A lot of people hid if they had part-time jobs. Unfortunately, I worked close to the university and some of them saw me working, so that didn’t work out too well <laugh>.

08:48 Emily: How was that resolved? Did you have to give up the side job?

08:53 Haley: Some of the admins helped me apply to the provincial scholarships. And once I got the provincial scholarships, I was kind of told to get rid of the part-time job.

09:03 Emily: And would you say that when you had that higher $25K minus, okay, let’s say $19K per year stipend during the latter part of your PhD, was that enough to survive, or did you feel like you would’ve worked more if you were allowed to?

09:18 Haley: I probably would’ve worked more, but I think I would’ve had trouble doing that with the mental illness, because there were a lot of things that that impacted. Like my eating, my sleeping, my social life were also impacted by finances, and moreso by the mental health problems.

Mental Health Impact on Money Mindset

09:41 Emily: Yeah. Let’s talk about that more now. So, you had an undiagnosed slash untreated mental health condition at that time. So, how was that affecting how you handled your finances?

09:54 Haley: So, I have a psychotic disorder that causes me to have delusions and hallucinations that are usually really disparaging and kind of controlling. So, let’s say, for instance, when I got accepted into the master’s program, my mom made a comment that my brothers paid for their second degrees. And that kind of morphed in my mind to my parents won’t help me at all, so don’t ask them. Even when I tried to apply for like student loans, I kind of got it in my head that I would never be able to pay them back. So, it was kind of like a brick wall to actually apply for that. There were other things in my life, like I couldn’t eat certain foods because I thought I’d get really sick and stuff like that. So, it was essentially that I couldn’t really do anything to help my situation because my brain would tell me, like, you can’t actually do this.

10:58 Emily: Wow. Yeah. I had not like, thought about that or realized that was a potential, you know, symptom that some people could be experiencing. So, thank you for sharing that. I do a lot of like, how do we find workarounds on this podcast? Or like breaking through like your money mindset stuff. But like when you’re dealing with a serious mental health condition, that’s simply not an option without higher-level treatment, right? Which you eventually got, and we’ll get to that. And so, how then also did having such a low income during graduate school affect your ability to get diagnosed or treated?

11:33 Haley: I started to have psychotic episodes during my third year of my undergrad. And at that time, I went to go see a doctor and that doctor gave me antidepressants, which there was a co-pay for. And he wrongly sent me home without doing any more assessment and essentially told me, you might be developing schizophrenia, we’ll see <laugh>, which is not the best thing <laugh>. So, I was already on a very small budget when I was in undergrad. My parents paid for like my tuition and my rent. So, I was never in a situation where I would be homeless, but I was still in a situation where I didn’t have that much money. If I were in that situation now where I’m on my antipsychotic and my antidepressant, the antidepressant is maybe a couple dollars a month, but if I didn’t have benefits my antipsychotic would be over $200 a month.

12:43 Haley: So, part of the reasons why I stopped taking the medication at that point was, one, that it caused pretty severe hallucinations, more than I had before I got on the medication, because it was the wrong one. And the other thing was that I didn’t necessarily want to pay for it <laugh> because it was making me feel worse. So, I was kind of in denial that I needed them when I was in grad school, because I could no longer tell if I was feeling well, or if I was sick. Everything just kind of melded together. So, in terms of the impact of having a really low budget in grad school, I couldn’t eat properly. I maybe spent $30 a week on food, and I pretty much ate the same things all the time. Like rice, lentils, beans, and apples.

13:48 Haley: I was so worried about things that I also didn’t sleep. And by that I would mean I would be in the lab for maybe 16 hours a day and I’d go home and sleep for four to six hours. And one of the big things about controlling psychosis is that you need to get enough sleep. So now, I actually need close to eight to 10 hours on average. So, that was a pretty big impact. And it certainly didn’t help the delusions that I couldn’t get financial help <laugh>. It was kind of like a feedback loop.

14:27 Emily: I was just going to say that sounds exactly like a negative spiral, right? Like you are having tight money issues, so you forgo the medicinal and also other forms of self-care that maybe were somewhat available to you. And then your mind is also telling you that you can’t access or don’t deserve those things. And then it loops around again. So yeah, that sounds horrible.

Financial Stress and Sacrifices on a Low Stipend

14:56 Emily: You just mentioned living off of a really small, like food budget, for example. So, were there other things that you didn’t spend on that you forwent spending on to make that really low stipend work?

15:10 Haley: I didn’t go out very often and kind of avoided any social situation where I might have to pay for stuff. Particularly in my first two years. After my first two years, I moved somewhere with a better cost of living. I kind of filled my time only with work because I couldn’t really afford to have hobbies <laugh>. At one point when I decided to move in my second, third year, I had to give up a cat that was kind of my emotional <laugh> animal at that time, because I couldn’t move them across the country to where I was working. I didn’t go home for Christmas, and I barely saw my family because I really couldn’t afford to go on a bus or go on a plane. I didn’t take a vacation throughout my entire PhD. I didn’t date anyone during my entire PhD. And I avoided buying anything other than food. So, I would wear clothes until they like physically fell apart. Same with shoes. I’d wait until I really, really had to. So, I essentially forgo like anything that would be making me kind of happier <laugh>. So, it really wasn’t ideal.

16:39 Emily: Yeah. I realized that I kind of phrased that question as like, “Oh, what are the great strategies you used?” Not that I meant it that way, but this is not at all a laudable list, right? This is all a list of things that caused you to become even more unhealthy. And again, in that spiral that we were just talking about, and to not be able to break out of it. Like having an injection of some extra money, I mean, it would also help if your mind were, you know, allowing you to spend on these things, but having some extra money would’ve helped your general mental health, but also specifically your condition so much. It’s so obvious that that would be the case. I’m just like hearing a picture of you like drowning during graduate school. Financially, mentally. And I’m wondering about the people around you, like your advisor or other people in your department. Like, was there anything that they could have done? I’m asking this in a way of like, what can other people listening to this, take away if they see a peer or someone in their program that is to say, maybe they’re a faculty member or someone else who has a bit of power in the situation too. Like what, what should they have been doing or what could they have done to help you out of this spiral?

What Could Have Helped?

17:59 Haley: In some ways, there wasn’t really much people could do. In terms of what the department did, they tried to help me get scholarships, which did make the situation a lot better. There is an opportunity to do like graduate assistant work that I did for two summers. That was really helpful. Maybe having like emergency funds that are easy to apply to would be very useful too. But a lot of the time, I didn’t think that my, I couldn’t tell that my situation wasn’t normal <laugh> because a lot of my peers had similar problems. Probably not to the same mental extent, but in terms of money, it was pretty common. And maybe just increasing the stipend would make a big difference. I checked the department’s website and it looks like the PhD stipend has increased, but the master’s stipend is still quite low. But that would be what I would think of when I think of what the department could do to help people.

19:09 Emily: Absolutely. I think pay graduate students more. Pay graduate students enough that they don’t experience the things that you mentioned, like not being able to go home and visit your family members, never going out socially if there was, you know, a possibility you might spend money. In addition to just being like the compassionate thing to do for students who are under your charge, as well as, especially if you’re not going to allow them to work or whatever, they’re not developing. You were not developing as a scholar in the way you could have. You could have blossomed even more, had you been sufficiently financially supported. Same goes for your peers too. So, it’s just really, it’s very hard for me <Laugh>, I’m sure for the listeners as well, to hear how much you were struggling and how big of a difference, you know, a few more thousand dollars a year from your department would’ve made, and what exactly is tying their hands to make that not happen? If their goal is to develop scholars and PhDs, they could do that even better by financially supporting them better. That’s how I view it.

20:12 Haley: Yeah.

Commercial

20:15 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. I have set a big goal for my business and our U.S. PhD community broadly. My goal is for every graduate student, postdoc, or postbac in the US who is not having income tax withheld from their stipend or salary to be offered training on how to 1) estimate their future income tax liability, 2) determine if they are required to pay quarterly estimated tax, and 3) prepare to pay their tax bill or bills through setting up a system of self-withholding. I provide just such a training, which is my asynchronous workshop titled Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. Now, some universities, institutes, or funding agencies already offer such a training, and they have no need to work with me. But others won’t allow their employees to touch the topic of taxes with a 10-foot pole, and that’s where working with me can really benefit everyone. Would you please send me an email and tell me which camp your university falls into—or if it’s somewhere in between? You can reach me at [email protected]. Furthermore, let me know if you want to take Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients for free or think that the cohort coming in this fall should, and I’ll reply with how you can help make that happen. I look forward to hearing from you! Now back to our interview.

Ending the Negative Spiral

21:56 Emily: So, how did you ultimately end this spiral that you were in? Did you get on medication? Did you see different doctors? Was it a matter of graduating? Like what happened?

22:06) Haley: Graduating was actually the worst thing that happened <laugh>. So, I had to pay for my ticket to do my defense because I was living in Alberta at the time and I had to come back to Ontario, and that actually completely depleted my bank account. If I hadn’t gotten a job pretty much right away, I would not have had a place to stay and I wouldn’t have been able to go home at all. I ended up going through an even bigger spiral where I entered like acute psychosis. Like the CRA is after me <laugh> kind of psychosis or people are actively following you and you’re hearing complete conversations and more disparaging comments and so on. I essentially kept working for almost six months with acute psychosis. And then I finally hit a point where I couldn’t do it anymore and I realized that there was something incredibly wrong.

23:21 Haley: So, I ended up going to the doctor who tried to put me on an antipsychotic, but I essentially spiraled further when I got onto the antipsychotic because it was essentially too late to be putting me on it in an outpatient location. So, I ended up having to go to the ER twice. The first time there wasn’t a psychiatrist. So, they sent me home. The second time, I was essentially really dehydrated, only weighing 80 pounds and completely out of reality <laugh> essentially. So, the psychiatrist put me into inpatient care and I stayed there for a month where they put me on medication and I essentially slept because I was burnt out from work and the PhD. So, it’s taken probably two and a half years to get on the right medication and recover fully from that.

24:23 Haley: Starting a postdoc that actually pays me enough to live has been pretty helpful <laugh> in that because I’ve been able to start eating more healthy. I’m not as worried. And I have the psychosis under control between medication and therapy. So, I’m sleeping a normal amount. I’m eating a normal amount. I’m exercising because I can afford to go to the gym and like go to spin class and stuff like that. One of the weird things is I actually got out of the grad school with absolutely no debt because I couldn’t actually apply for the loans. Like my head would not let me apply for them. So, I ended up getting out with absolutely no debt, but also absolutely no money <laugh>. So, I was really lucky that I was offered a job right away. After I was hospitalized, I had to take three months off. So, I actually lost the job that I had gotten and I had to find another job, which I had to move across the country for. And then after that job, I had to move across the country again, which has always been kind of a financial burden, but that’s just kind of how my job goes <laugh>. But I’m doing much, much better than I was doing in grad school and have a lot of things more under control.

Paying Off the Mental Health Debt

25:57 Emily: I am so glad to hear that you’re in a much better place right now. Although it does seem to me that it’s taken a long, long time to get there. I mean, you mentioned that you came out of graduate school with no financial debt, but you had a debt to yourself of another kind, right? Of having not taken care of yourself and had been on the medication and doing the sleeping and the eating and all that stuff. So like, you still had to come out of that depth of the, you know, of care that you needed to get back up to the point you’re at now, the stable and healthy point.

26:32 Haley: I would say that I would’ve rathered have the financial debt than the mental debt. So like, my suggestion would be if somebody’s in my situation to go get the help you need and get the financial help that you need, even if it means taking out loans. Because it’s much better to have the financial debt than the mental health debt.

26:57 Emily: I totally agree. And I’m really glad to hear you say that. I don’t want to criticize other people either in their financial situations, but when you’re in a unique time of life, like being a graduate student and it is ideally time-limited and you’ll move on to having a better-paying job later on, it can, in some situations make sense to take out debt and some people feel so debt-averse that they, and I’m not saying you did this because you had this mental health condition, but they put themselves into debts of these other kinds. They’re not eating properly. Maybe they are not living in a safe situation. Again, I don’t want to sound like I’m criticizing them, but they do as a graduate student, at least in the U.S., have the option of taking out debt and alleviating some of that.

27:43 Emily: And so, I just want them to think about that as a legitimate option and not something that’s completely off-limits to them to help this short-term cash crisis that they’re in during graduate school. Again, the responsibility for that as we were talking about earlier falls much more on the programs underpaying people. That’s on them, rather than the people who are being underpaid. But that is a way out of a very difficult short-term situation. And like you said, you would’ve rather had a bit of money to pay off than having these years and years that it’s taken you to recover from the state that you were in by the end of graduate school.

Save Money and Study the Financial Side of Grad School

28:20 Emily: Do you have any other advice for prospective graduate students who are walking into programs like you did your master’s, your PhD program, who are potentially being radically underpaid compared to the local cost of living?

28:37 Haley: I would mostly work for a while and save money before you go to grad school. I wasn’t in a situation where I thought I could do that, but if I could do it again, I probably would’ve started working right away and then decided if I wanted to do grad school after I’ve made a little bit of money <laugh>. Make sure that whatever program that you want to go into does have a fair stipend. I didn’t even think of that when I joined grad school, but that should have been a much bigger consideration than what it was for me because I’m first-generation. I didn’t think that they would give me a stipend that I couldn’t live off of <laugh>.

29:17 Emily: Misplaced trust.

29:19 Haley: Yeah <laugh>. I would maybe do a little more digging on the financial side before starting grad school.

29:27 Emily: Yeah. I think those are great suggestions for someone considering graduate school. Definitely look into the stipends versus the local cost of living. I have a website that helps with that. At least if you’re in the U.S., which is called PhDstipends.com. So you can see what other graduate students actually report as being their income, not what the programs tell you they’re paying. Those might be two different things until you get the offer letter, at least. So you can kind of do some pre-research on the programs that you’re planning on applying to, to see if they’re paying a living wage or not. And like you said, I think a lot more people should be considering working for a decently-paying job for a year or two or three before they start graduate school to build up some kind of financial safety net so that they don’t have to do things like you were just mentioning, the cost of moving multiple times across the country.

30:13 Emily: That’s very significant. And if you end up paying for that, let’s say with like credit cards, because you don’t have the savings or cash to do it, then you’re kind of starting graduate school like already knocked back, already knocked onto your back foot, like financially, because you’re now having to pay down credit card debt in addition to living on this very, very small stipend. So instead, if you can have that savings, so, so helpful to just kind of get out ahead of these issues. So, that’s great advice for prospective graduate students. And thank you for giving that.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

30:43 Emily: I do end my interviews with a standard question that I ask all of my guests, which is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be something that we’ve talked about in the course of the interview, or it could be something completely new.

30:55 Haley: If you’re a postdoc, I’d start saving and get a retirement fund and maybe a rainy day fund. Because postdocs are fairly short for most people, and you’re probably going to have to move again and things come up. So, it’s good to start saving once you can start saving after grad school. And kind of the same advice for looking at a postdoc. Make sure the salary is enough to live comfortably on before you agree to do it. It’s not a nice thing to accept a salary and then get to the city and realize that you can’t really live there <laugh>. And maybe try to negotiate your salary if you can.

31:45 Emily: All wonderful advice. I’m recalling actually, when my husband got a postdoc offer in Boston, we were living in Durham, North Carolina at the time. So kind of moderate cost of living to high cost of living. And we calculated it after accounting for the cost of living change between those two cities. He was actually being offered effectively less money than he had made as a graduate student with that postdoc position in Boston. And he did try to negotiate and he got them to increase the offer very, very slightly. And ultimately did not take that offer and finances were, you know, a part of that decision. And so, I totally agree with you, especially if you have not yet lived in a city, whether it’s for grad school, for postdoc, anything else. You need to really investigate what the cost of living is because you just don’t know until you actually live there. And by the time you accept an offer and move, it’s too late <laugh>. You need to do as much as you can in advance. So, Haley, thank you so much for being willing to give this interview. I think it was a really important conversation that the listeners are going to benefit so much from. So, so glad to hear you doing well. And thanks again for volunteering!

32:50 Haley: Thanks for having me!

Outtro

32:58 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? I have collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance…but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

Financial Advice for Newly Hired Academics and PhDs

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Inga Timmerman, an associate professor of finance and financial planning at Cal State Northridge and financial planner specializing in academics. Emily and Inga discuss in depth the financial transition from graduate school/postdoc to faculty member (or into anther type of post-PhD job), from maximizing benefits to optimizing taxes to budgeting for a new city. Inga shares excellent tactical advice and mindset shifts for someone experiencing a large income increase. She advises everyone to work with a financial planner and ballparks how much it will cost to get the right type and amount of advice for that stage.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

Image for S12E3 Financial Advice for Newly Hired Academics and PhDs

Teaser

00:00 Inga: The best time to address those is before you get your first paycheck. Because somehow once you start getting money, that money disappears. And we used to live on so little money in the PhD, and somehow we survived. And now we make 3, 4, 5 times as much, and we still don’t have enough. So, you do have to make a few decisions.

Introduction

00:23 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 12, Episode 3, and today my guest is Dr. Inga Timmerman, an associate professor of finance and financial planning at Cal State Northridge and financial planner specializing in academics. Inga and I discuss in depth the financial transition from graduate school/postdoc to faculty member (or into another type of post-PhD job), from maximizing benefits to optimizing taxes to budgeting for a new city. Inga shares excellent tactical advice and mindset shifts for someone experiencing a large income increase. She advises everyone to work with a financial planner and ballparks for us how much it will cost to get the right type and amount of advice for that stage.

01:42 Emily: As a listener to this podcast, I’m guessing that you listen to other podcasts as well, perhaps even other podcasts targeted to graduate students and PhDs. I’m a big podcast listener as well, and I’d love to hear your recommendations in that category. You can reach me over email, [email protected], or on Twitter, @PFforPhDs. In fact, if you would like to hear me interviewed on another podcast or another podcaster interviewed on my podcast, please set up an email or Twitter introduction for us! Thank you! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s12e3/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Inga Timmerman.

Would You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:37 Emily: I am so excited to share today’s interview with you. We have on the podcast today, Dr. Inga Timmerman. She is an associate professor of finance and financial planning at Cal State Northridge, and she is also a financial planner. And she has a PhD herself, so she’s like triply qualified to be on the podcast. So, Inga, it’s such a delight to have you! Would you please give the audience a little bit more background about yourself, your education, your career?

03:01 Inga: Very happy to be here, Emily. Thanks for having me here! So, I had a real job out of college at 22. I used to work 80, 90 hour weeks and discovered pretty fast that a career in corporate finance and investment banking is not really what I want to do in life long-term. I did for about five years. And then the school where I did my undergrad called me and said, “Hey, would you like to teach for us? Do you have an MBA?” Like, yeah, I do. “Okay. Come and teach a few classes.” And I really, really liked it, but I realized that to really make a living out of being a professor, I needed to get a PhD. So, when I was 27, I quit my job. I looked at all the PhD programs I got into, and it was 2008 financial crisis, 2009, everybody under the sun was going to get a PhD.

03:46 Inga: So, there’s a lot of competition. And I decided to go to the school that would get me out the fastest, because I was like, every year I’m not working, I’m losing like a whole bunch of money, so we’ve got to get out of here. So, I went to Florida Atlantic University in South Florida in Boca Raton, and I did my PhD there. And afterwards, my first placement was as an assistant professor at Oregon State University. My husband was working in Los Angeles at the time. The commute was too much. So, two years later, I moved as an assistant professor to Cal State Northridge, which is in the Los Angeles county. And I’ve been there since. So, it’s been about seven, eight years.

04:22 Emily: Wow. We’ve already learned a lot just from that background story. So many good financial insights that you just shared. Incredible! And tell me a little bit more about the being a financial planner side of things, not just being a professor.

04:34 Inga: So, about when I moved to Cal State Northridge, I was hired to do financial planning. It’s a very long story on the side about how finance and financial planning fight and what’s going on there. Not worth it now, but I ended up teaching in the finance department, financial planning. And one of the things I always wanted to do is practice financial planning. So, I decided to open my own firm back in 2016, and I’ve been running it for the last five, six years, and I specialize in financial planning for academics. So, a lot of my clients are current academic academics.

Financial Profile of Academic Clients

05:05 Emily: So perfect. And the reason that we met was that another podcast interviewee, Dr. Leslie Wang, you’re her financial planner, and she recommended that you also come on the podcast. So, I don’t know if that episode’s going to air before or after this one, but check that one out as well. So, that is how Inga and I were referred to one another. So, this is really, really exciting. I’m so pleased to learn that you, you know, specialize in academics. I say PhDs here a lot on the podcast, that that’s kind of my specialty area. So, when you’re working with academics, is there like a rough, like financial profile that you have discerned from the people who come to you, maybe versus like the average person who would seek out financial planning? Like how are academics and PhDs financially different?

05:48 Inga: Well, there are two different types of academics who will come to me. The ones who are about to graduate and are getting their first job. For some of them, they’re going from like $20,000 to $150,000. It’s a huge jump in income. And they’re like, what am I going to do with all this money? What do I do? So, that’s really a good point to come. The other ones are people who’ve been around for a while and they accumulate enough assets. So, they have a lot of complicated situations to solve and they’re just coming, “Okay, tell me, am I okay to retire? Am I okay here? What am I doing? So, those are the two big buckets, and you do want to go to somebody who actually understands your lifestyle and what’s going on. Because when you go from assistant to associate, there’ll be a bunch of money coming in.

06:26 Inga: There’ll be some decisions to be made. When you first get your job, a lot of the systems are still on the dual pension versus 403(b) type, and you have to make the decision. And once you miss it, there’s no going back in most cases. So, there are a few very specific things associated with academics. I think it’s important to find somebody who actually knows those. The second part of it is that I’m always willing to provide you all kinds of advice you didn’t ask me about outside finances. Like you should move to a different place because your life would be better and cheaper if you do that. So, I think it just, it’s easier for me to work with people just like me, which happens to be somebody who is in their forties, has a few kids, and just trying to go through the financial academic life path.

07:11 Emily: I love that you mentioned, in particular, those two sort of time points when it really makes sense to seek out financial planning. That like, I’m about to start my high-earning career and want to make sure I’m set up to go forward in the right way. But also you get to see people and the decisions they’ve made, right? And the accumulation of those decisions by that point. So, I’m sure that your younger clients are benefiting from you working with your older clients as well to sort of steer them in the right way.

Money Mindset During Academic Career Transition

07:37 Emily: So, you mentioned you yourself have been through like this massive income decrease to go to graduate school and then a massive, I hope, income increase coming out of graduate school, and that that’s something you advise, you know, PhDs and people entering academia as, you know, with a full-time job on. So like, when you’re looking at people in that transition from graduate student or postdoc into like a professorship, have you seen any like money mindset issues, commonly, in those people that you’d like to tell our audience more about like what they are and maybe how to address them?

08:08 Inga: There are a few things that come to mind immediately, and the best time to address those are before you get your first paycheck. Because somehow once you start getting money, that money disappears. And we used to live on so little money in the PhD, and somehow we survived and now we make 3, 4, 5 times as much, and we still don’t have enough. So, you do have to make a few decisions. And I think the one most important decision you can make is sit down and do a budget before you show up to work. You know how much you’re going to be making, you know, approximately, what’s going to happen. So, figure out how much money is left after all the bills are going to be paid and where that money is going to go. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the YNAB budgeting software, because they always tell you that every dollar has a job.

08:51 Inga: Like there should be no floating money there. Everything should be allocated before you start. If you do a really good budget and you stick to it, you should have a very comfortable lifestyle. All the decisions will be just fine. And if you do this for 25 years, you will be okay. That’s really the one big thing that I tell people. The other one that is really worth mentioning is the housing situation. We go into these jobs, not knowing are we going to get tenure? Are we not going to get tenure? What’s going to happen? Am I going to like it? And it really should be more about, is this a good cash flow house to buy or not, regardless what happens to me? If I go, like, when I went to Oregon, I didn’t know if I was going to be there for a long time.

09:30 Inga: I realized really fast I won’t, but I still bought a house because I knew that the duplex can rent for an extra thousand dollars over my mortgage. So even if I leave, it’s a good financial decision. When you show up in Los Angeles and the condo is a million dollars, not so much. So you really have to think about, is this a decision good for my long-term financial implications? Or am I just buying a house because now I have to buy a house, I moved somewhere else? Those are two big things that I would definitely consider before starting the job.

Personal Factors in Real Estate Decision-Making

09:58 Emily: I’d like to stay on this like real estate question a little bit more, because I’ve become much more interested in real estate since I bought my first house at the age of like, how old am I, at the age of 35, last year in the hype of the market craziness. We bought in a high cost of living area. So like, I’ve kind of been through this recently and it makes me very interested in this. So like, what I really like about what you said is that I read this book in the last year called First-Time Home Buyer: The Complete [Playbook] to Avoiding Rookie Mistakes. And in there they have this really interesting sort of way of approaching the decision about real estate, which is what you just mentioned is what are my exit strategies of this house or whatever kind of property?

10:35 Emily: And do they make financial sense? So like, yes, I’m going to live in this house. It’s going to be my primary residence. Or maybe we can even talk about house hacking, you know, but it’s probably going to be your primary residence. But when you are exiting this house, whether that’s you sell it or you keep it as a rental or that’s <laugh>, I guess that’s it, you know, you go to another area of the country or whatever, like, is it going to be an okay financial decision too, at that point? Does it still make sense? So, that’s a little bit like what you were saying, right? And I think that added element to what you were just saying is that, when you’re looking at your first like appointment and you’re going to be there for you don’t know how long. It could be a few years, it could be a lot of years. At what point, I guess if you decide that you do want to stay, like not for you, you left that first position relatively rapidly, but if you do want to stay like, “Oh yeah, I can see myself having my full career here.” Does it make sense to buy then? Even if like the cash flow is not going to be good?

11:29 Inga: Ooh. So, this goes outside of money and now into our personal things we have going on in our heads. Some people are totally fine being renters. And in some markets like a San Francisco, Los Angeles market, it is perfectly fine to be a tenant for the whole life. You can always go and buy another vacation home, an investment property somewhere else. You don’t have to just have one place. But other people cannot sleep at night when they know that I’m throwing money away into the wind and it’s rent. So for those people, it’s not really about the cash flow, but about, can I sleep at night? And it is okay, totally okay, to make decisions that are not based on dollars, as long as you are aware what you’re getting into. I personally tried to avoid that because like I was like, “Oh, I just wasted some money. I can just take that cash and I can put it, invest it and don’t do anything and make 9% somewhere else.” But if you’re going to buy a house and you really want this house, because that’s your dream, it is totally okay to buy it. Even if it doesn’t make sense.

12:28 Emily: Yeah. I definitely think you’re describing me with the house purchase that I just mentioned. I’m always saying like, this is more of a lifestyle decision than like a financial decision. Like yeah, it’s okay financially, but really it’s because I want like stability in my life. Like I want to know I have this house, I’m going to be living here. I know what school my kids are going to go to, that whole thing. So yeah, it’s much more of like a peace of mind and stability thing for me.

12:48 Inga: I mean, to give you a perspective, I have three houses now in three different places. The latest one I bought last week. So, you know, at the height of the height, because it made sense.

Spend Time on Your Benefits

12:59 Emily: Yeah. Congratulations on your new acquisition! Okay. Any other like mindset stuff you want to talk about in this, you know, transition into the first post-PhD full-time job?

13:11 Inga: Spend some time on your benefits, because when you go to a university job, it usually comes with a really good package. And some people tell me, yeah, I’ve made my choice in 30 minutes. 30 minutes? I spent 70 hours on my benefits, like trying to understand them, to see how to optimize them, what you can get to pay less in taxes. And if you are not really sure how to do it, find somebody who will do it for you for 500 bucks. Pay somebody two hours of work and do it because you’re going to make so much more money if you take advantage of what’s offered to you.

13:39 Emily: Can you give us a couple examples of some of those benefits that people might not be aware of?

13:43 Inga: Like even the choice of having a dependent care spending account, healthcare spending account. So, if you have kids and they go to daycare, you have some expenses for them. Like it should be a no-brainer. We are going to max out the $5,000 because we are going to probably save a third of that in taxes. But people are like, well, I don’t really have the cash to pay for it. You’re still paying for daycare. You just have to pay less if you do it through the dependent care spending account.

14:07 Emily: Yeah. Good example. And that applies for everybody, even outside of academia, if they have that kind of benefit through their work.

Financial Goals: Kids’ Education and Retirement

14:13 Emily: Okay. So, again, talking about this like point you’re like launching your career post-PhD. What are some financial goals that people at that stage might want to be considering? We already talked about real estate. We don’t have to go over that. What are some other financial goals?

14:26 Inga: Kids and kids’ education, if you have kids. And a lot of it comes with where they go to college, where they go to school, that’s also a decision that needs to be made. I would say that’s less important than your retirement. Retirement should go on top of that. And retirement is really a big decision because if you do it right and you do it from the very beginning, you’ll just have to work so much less when you’re 65 years old. What you can save at 35 to 45 is like saving 30 years later down the line. So, please make sure you’re not just saving a little bit, but trying to figure out how to max out that 403(b) or how to take advantage of your pension, how to make the optimal decision for that. That’s another one. And then the third one actually comes before you even get a job as you’re deciding. In some cases, obviously, you have one offer and a job is better than no job. But if you have a few different offers to decide, or if later in life you’re going to move to a different place, it’s not just about the base pay. There is so much more to think about in terms of where you live, the state income taxes, what else you can negotiate. That makes a huge difference in the financial package.

Maxing Out the 403(b)

15:32 Emily: I want to stay on the retirement goal for a second. Do you often end up saying to your clients, try to max out that 403(b)? Like, is that something that comes out of your mouth?

15:43 Inga: Yep. That is like the number one thing. There are a few exceptions. In some cases, obviously the emergency fund in general will come before, but with a few exceptions where people are not, they have other things going on where the 403(b) is irrelevant, I cannot think of a better thing both for taxes and retirement than maxing it out.

16:01 Emily: I was also thinking about like that goal of maxing out. So like for a personal example, when my husband and I first finished our PhDs and like our incomes are starting to increase, but they’re not like I don’t know as high as they are now, for example, multiple years later. We at first were not, even though we were like really good retirement savers, we were not trying to max out because we had like this real estate purchase goal and we had, you know, other things going on. And so we sort of set like a percentage of our income. It was 20% that we wanted to save. And then after we ended up buying our house, which I’ve already mentioned so many times, then we were like, okay, this is our year. We can finally max out. We can finally like all, you know, pull out all the stops, like try to max out as much as we can. So for us, we were trying to balance a few different goals, but yeah, so maxing out didn’t happen immediately. It was a few years down the line for us.

16:46 Inga: And you know, that’s very typical because once you want the house and you have kids, there’s a lot of competing priorities. So, not in every case, you’re going to max out. But even if you started at 5% this year and every year you go up by 1%, eventually max it out. Worst case when you become an associate professor, well, now you have this huge chunk of money coming in you don’t really need most likely, that can go to the maximization. And if you’re a professor, you actually potentially could have a double maximization between the 403(b) and the 457. So you could just go wild in there, if you had nothing better to do with the money and put in $40,000 aside.

17:21 Emily: Yeah. The amount that you can stash away when you have both a 403(b) and a 457 is like really a startling amount of money. It’s very impressive you can manage to do all of that.

Commercial

17:32 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2022-2023 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/speaking/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

Choosing Where to Live

18:55 Emily: So, the third kind of decision that you mentioned is if you had, you know, competing offers, ideal scenario and you get to choose where to live. I end up talking about this a lot at like the grad student level with like, okay, you need to make sure that your stipend is going to actually like pay for your life in X, Y, Z city that you’ve never lived in before. Like how do you kind of assess that? So, are there any, like, what are the considerations for someone at that stage in deciding where to live? And I want to also like throw in something you told me before the interview, which is that you do not live in California, you have moved elsewhere and are working remotely. So like, what are the things that go into that decision when we’re talking about geographic arbitrage?

19:30 Inga: The two big things are cost of living, buying, or renting a place and the state income tax. So, it really comes down to that. So for example, when COVID hit and everything went online, I move from Los Angeles to Florida, and I’m still here commuting to LA once a week to teach my class because the price of the tickets and what I need to do is still so much lower than the cost of living I’m giving up. And some of the income being shielded from the California state income tax, which is very expensive. So as you’re making these two decisions, think about $1 in Los Angeles is like having $2 in Florida, and nobody’s going to double your salary to go to Los Angeles. So you really have to think about that and decide, “Okay. If I really don’t care that much about a specific location and I have a Boise, Idaho, and some North Carolina, like which one makes more financial sense when it comes to buying a house or renting plus the state income tax?”

20:22 Emily: Yeah, that’s really, really good to think about. We touched on this a little bit in a previous interview with Dr. Amanda back in, I don’t know, season one or season two. Listeners can look that up if they’re interested, but she said kind of the same thing. Like she was looking at multiple different academic offers and saying, “Wow, you know, they’re not adjusted that much based on the cost of living.” It made a lot more sense. She wanted to live in the Midwest anyway. So that made a lot of sense for her to like, accept that kind of offer, both lifestyle and financial decision in that case. So yeah, that’s really interesting to hear that your offers might not be too different. And it’s the same thing actually with grad students’ stipends. Like, yes, they generally will hopefully pay more in high cost of living areas, but it’s not as much as it would be to make up the real difference between those low cost of living and high cost of living areas.

Financial Tactics Beyond Budgeting

21:03 Emily: Let’s get down to a little bit more tactical stuff. What are some financial like tactics that you end up recommending to your clients? We already talked about budgeting a little bit. Is there anything that goes beyond that?

21:15 Inga: Tax planning is normally a big deal, but it comes later in life when you’re making more money. When you’re making 60, $70,000, let’s just say like immediately as a postdoc, tax planning is really not going to save you that much money. Once you’re making $200,000, you have two people making the same. It is a big deal. So you do want to figure out what is the least amount of tax I want to pay, whether it be from retirement, from where you live, from how you shield some of the benefits, it’s worth the consideration. And really making the decision, if you decide to go the 403(b), or one of those investment type accounts, 457, 401(k), you really have to make sure the investments you have make sense. Because sometimes you have multiple choices. Let’s say you have a 403(b), and now you have options between Fidelity and lawyer and somebody else, make the best decision based on the investment choices, and then make sure your portfolio building actually makes sense.

22:09 Inga: And it’s so crazy how nobody gives you this training. The only people you end up talking to are the reps from these companies, and their sole purpose is to get you into their hands. So, they’re not going to tell you, “Oh yeah, Fidelity is better than Vanguard,” or whatever it happens to be. You have to make the decision because I think at one point the calculation is like a $600,000 calculation if you max out your 403(b) for the next 40 years. It’s a huge difference what funds you choose, how you invest. And that is also a good place to probably look for some help if you don’t have the skills and knowledge.

22:43 Emily: I think some of my listeners, you know, they’ve probably heard me talking about like a Roth IRA ad nauseum, because a Roth IRA is like, kind of, well, the IRA is like the only game of town, pretty much for graduate students. And the Roth makes so much sense when they’re that young. But as you mentioned, you know, tax optimization and tax planning, as your income starts to increase, I’m learning that it makes a lot more sense of course, to use like traditional versions of these accounts in many cases. What I’m literally working with right now with my financial planner is on asset location. So, like what’s going to be in the traditional accounts, what’s going to be in the Roth accounts, what’s going to be in the taxable brokerage. She’s figuring all that stuff out for us because it can get pretty complicated at that point.

23:21 Inga: And in the end, you have to have all three. You have to have some rough money, you have to have some traditional, and some of the brokerage, if you want to, when you are old, try to take money out to make the most sense of it. So, I’m a big fan of the Roth IRA. If you can do it and you’re not maxed out and you have, yeah. Do it. But putting $6,000 in a Roth is not going to be enough for retirement. You’ll have to do more than that. And even at work, you have an option between a Roth versus traditional 403(b) for example, how do you make the choice? It needs to be thought through because that’s a huge implication down the line.

General Rules of Thumb

23:52 Emily: So, let’s assume that somebody listening is not going to work with you or another type of financial planner at this crucial point that we’re talking about when they’re deciding on their benefits. Can you give them any other like, pointers about how to make these decisions that are general rules of thumb or that most people would be able to apply?

24:08 Inga: Okay. So the first decision, if you have a pension versus a 403(b) type account, because a lot of the systems do, if you see yourself staying in the system and investing and being there for the long-term, take the pension. It’s normally a better deal. If you think this is a two-to-five year deal, take the 403(b), it comes down to that. And if you’re not sure, take the pension because you can always convert the money later on and take it with you. For the 403(b) type accounts, investment accounts, a Roth versus traditional. I mean, I have rules of thumb. Again, disclosure, they don’t always work, but if you are making less than $80,000, the Roth is the way to go. You are not getting killed by taxes. Most likely you’re going to end up with more taxes down the road. So, take the Roth.

24:50 Inga: Over $120K, and that’s for single, so double it for married, maybe traditional makes more sense depending how much you itemize, how much deductions you have. And between $80K and $120K is a very gray area. Once you are at the point where you make $250K plus, and you have plenty of money and you’re thinking, “Well, now I need to have a 403(b) and a 457. Then you can do a little bit of both. But in the beginning, if you’re making the typical 150 salary for a lot of the majors, the traditional 403(b) usually makes more sense.

25:23 Emily: Yes. Thank you so much for that general landscape of, you know, how one’s financial life may play out in this respect. Are there any financial challenges or financial opportunities that academics have that are not commonly discussed in personal finance circles? Like the wider personal finance community or financial planning community?

Financial Benefits of Job Changes

25:46 Inga: I think the job change is a little stickier or harder to change. Like a lot of the clients I work with who are not academics to them like, “Oh yeah, somebody offered me $15 more. I’m taking a new job. I’m jumping ship” because there’s always that kind of mentality. Academics don’t really think about money as much as they should. And I understand that some of them really never been exposed, who had never thought about this. And they may have a PhD that has nothing to do with money. But at the end of the day, I feel like it’s extremely important to think about this, because no matter what you do in life, you still have got to do all these things. You still have to buy a house. You still have to optimize your money. So, think about potentially changing your job, even though you might have tenure, even though life seems okay, can you make your situation better if you are to go somewhere else? Or if you got to go on the job market again? You’ll never get as much money as you do when you go in the job market again and again. Like your current job may offer you a match once or twice, may give you some more money, but the only real way to jump in pay once you’re full professor is to go somewhere else. So think about leaving or getting a new job, even though you’ve been here for maybe 15, 20 years.

26:57 Emily: Wow. I didn’t realize that academia was so I guess, similar to the private sector in that respect, in that you need to change employers to really make massive salary jumps. I have heard of the tactic of like getting another offer and then negotiating your current one with your hopeful intention is to stay. But it sounds like what you just said is that that, mm, it might work a little bit, but not as much.

27:19 Inga: Yeah. And I have clients who do that very successfully. Like somebody brought two different offers in the last five years and they matched the offer, but now they told her we’re done here. A third offer is not going to get matched and she can get so much more in the open market. So, depending where you are and how happy. And then again, if you are super happy and your life is awesome, who cares about the money? If you want to stay where you stay, you do not have to do it. But if you are okay with moving and thinking about money a little bit more, then there is nothing wrong giving up your tenure and starting somewhere else.

Finding a Financial Planner

27:50 Emily: Since we’ve been mentioning so much in this interview talking about like financial planners, sometimes people come to me with like, what is the type of financial planner or financial advisor I should seek out? And we’ve also talked about like the timing of seeking out that kind of advice. Can you give maybe people who are like finishing up grad school soon or finishing up their postdoc soon, some sort of reference point on like, how much is it going to cost them to work with someone like you like to make a comprehensive plan? Or how does the pricing work? Because I’m sure when they haven’t started that, you know, they haven’t gotten that first paycheck from the new job, they’re still counting their pennies. And this may be a concern and a barrier for them to working with someone at a crucial point in their career.

28:29 Inga: And so, this should not be a barrier. Find somebody who wants to help you, and then you can pay them a little bit later. There’s always arrangements to be made. So I would not stop myself for looking for one. There are different types of plans. Some planners charge even hourly, some do this quick start or focused plans. Like I do those, we focus on two, three big areas and I charge $1,500 for them. So, it’s a limited engagement for two, three months to get you through the most important things. A full financial plan will probably cost you between two and $5,000. I charge $300 a month for 12 months. So it’s a one year engagement. So we get through everything, but I’ve seen prices it’s typical between two and $5,000. I don’t know if it’s worth it for you to have a full financial plan to start with.

29:13 Inga: If you’ve been a PhD student and now you just have a few questions about the work benefits, a focused plan is probably the way to go. And those will range between $500 and $2,000, depending on who you go to. When you’re looking for a planner, XYPN is my favorite place to go because everybody there is a CFP, and everybody’s fee-only. And there’s a lot of debate about fiduciaries. No, not everybody’s a fiduciary who tells who they are. So fee-only is my requirement, which means that only the clients can pay you. Nobody else can pay you. And the CFP with probably five years of experience. Otherwise, these problems are pretty typical unless you have something very specialized that needs to be discussed, almost everybody there can help you.

29:57 Emily: I’m really glad you mentioned that. So, I just independently, you know, Inga and I did not plan this, but I also went through XY Planning Network to find my planner.

30:04 Inga: Oh, really?

30:05 Emily: Yes, absolutely. Because I know that everybody in the Network is a CFP. My planner, I made sure that she’s not being compensated by anybody else. You know, we have the, you know, fee model where like we paid upfront a little bit for like an accelerated plan. And then we also have like a monthly subscription. So it’s sort of a combo of those two to work together for one year. So like, yes. So I totally like cosign what Inga just said. And this is a great place to find someone who is willing to work with you and is going to be competent to do so. What I like about the XY planning network is that you can search for all kinds of different, like special scenarios that you might be encountering.

30:36 Emily: So, I really wanted someone who was going to help me specifically on tax planning and tax advising as like our main like focus. So that’s what I kind of look for. And also people who are familiar with like self-employment and all that stuff, because that’s what I am. But if you had other things going on in your life, you know, you’re an academic or you’re in the military or you’re receiving an inheritance or whatever, there’s a lot of different, you know, types of people who specialize in different things. You can easily find them through the search tools in that network, which I really like.

31:00 Inga: And they have over a thousand advisors now. So I mean, you can find advisors who like the color purple. I mean there are so many possibilities, and they’re all virtual. So you don’t need to have somebody local. It is really the best place to find somebody who’s unbiased and a CFP.

How to Connect with Inga

31:14 Emily: Love it. Inga, if listeners want to follow up you, learn more about you and your work, where’s the best place for them to go?

31:21 Inga: Probably on my website, attainablewealthfp.com. And I’m not taking any new clients for the next six months at least. But if you have questions, like you went to XYPN and narrowed it down to two people and you don’t know who to choose, I’ll be very happy to provide someone unsolicited advice from what I know. So, feel free to reach out. If you have questions, maybe I can just send you like a copy of a book. I teach personal finance, so I have a very short book I wrote for the students. I can just send you a copy and try to help in any way possible.

Best Financial Advice for Current Graduate Students

31:49 Emily: Oh, that’s a wonderful offer. Thank you, Inga. That’s very generous. Okay. We’re going to end with the question that I ask all of my interviewees, which is what is your best financial advice for current graduate students? So we’re thinking a little bit earlier than the population we’ve been talking about up to this point. It could be something that we’ve mentioned already in the interview, or it could be something completely new.

32:09 Inga: I want to say get a financial plan at this point, but that’s a given. So, the other thing is get a budget. If you do not have a tight rein on your budget when you’re making 20,000, it’s only going to get worse once you make $120K. So, sit down and figure out how you can get a budget and have a percent go into savings, no matter how little you make right now.

32:31 Emily: I love that advice. I say this a lot about kind of graduate students in that phase of life, like you’re sort of building up your muscles in terms of like your financial practices, the money management, the, you know, the knowledge that you have and you’re really going to apply them. And it’s going to make a big difference once you have that big paycheck coming in. But right now is the time to like practice so that as you said, you don’t get to the big paycheck and say, “Whoa, all the money disappeared. <Laugh>. What do I do about that?” So, I love that advice. Well, Inga, it’s been wonderful to talk with you. Thank you so much for volunteering to come onto the podcast. And I’m really glad to have met you.

33:04 Inga: Same here.

Outtro

33:11 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? I have collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

This Grad Student’s Side Business Pays Twice What Her Assistantship Does

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In this episode, Emily interviews Natilie Williams, a PhD candidate in communication at the University of Missouri, keynote speaker, and author. Natilie established her business prior to starting her PhD and was up front about it with the director of graduate studies from the beginning, which has been to her benefit. At times, her business has brought in double or more what her assistantship pays, which has been vital for her financial health and security during graduate school. Natilie manages her time and schedule fastidiously using a planner to excel in her graduate program and business.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

S12E2 image for This Grad Student's Side Business Pays Twice What Her Assistantship Does

Teaser

00:00 Natilie: I was able to, once you added in book sales, you added in speaking, yeah, I was able, at some point, I made maybe like two and a half times my assistantship, almost three, by being able to do these things and elevate my speaking career. Expand it, so not just speaking, but then also a book.

Introduction

00:25 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 12, Episode 2, and today my guest is Natilie Williams, a PhD candidate in communication at the University of Missouri, keynote speaker, and author. Natilie established her business prior to starting her PhD and was upfront about it with the director of graduate studies from the beginning, which has benefitted her. At times, her business has brought in double or more what her assistantship pays, which has been vital for her financial health and security during graduate school. Don’t miss Natilie’s description of how she manages her time and schedule to excel in her graduate program and business.

01:35 Emily: I have a gift for you if you’re not yet subscribed to the Personal Finance for PhDs mailing list. At the end of every interview, I ask my guest to give their best financial advice for another early-career PhD. My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. The document is even organized by topic so you can easily see which type of advice is most popular. I invite you to join the mailing list to receive access to this document through PFforPhDs.com/advice/. I hope this quick, powerful resource will help you up-level your finances this summer! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s12e2/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Natilie Williams.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:38 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Natilie Williams. She is both a PhD student and a professional public speaker and author. And so I’m really excited to learn how she’s managing her business as well as her career as a graduate student. So Natilie, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for volunteering! And would you please tell the listeners a little bit more about yourself?

02:58 Natilie: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited. I am a fourth-year doctoral candidate. I’ll actually graduate in just two months, so I’m very excited about that. So, I’ll graduate in two months. I am at the University of Missouri in Columbia, where I am finishing up my PhD in Communication with a focus in Identity and Diversity, and also maintain an assistantship there. I actually recently accepted a professor position in the Midwest. And so I’m really excited about that. And I also have the privilege and the honor to serve as a keynote speaker across the country on student leadership, collegiate success, and academic and professional development. And then that wasn’t enough for me. I also wrote and published a book called Innerview (I N N ER): Lessons in Leadership. And so, really excited about the book. And so, it looks at how we can use moments of reflection in order to enhance ourselves as leaders.

04:00 Emily: Wow. I can already tell, I wish we had another interview to do all these other topics on like, and actually hear from you and your, you know, the main topics that you speak about because that sounds absolutely fascinating. We’re going to keep it more focused on like you as a graduate student and having this business and how you’re doing both of those things at the same time. Hopefully get some good gold nuggets for the listeners who also have businesses that they want to run as well as being graduate students or PhDs. But congratulations on your faculty position! That’s really, really exciting. And yeah.

04:29 Natilie: Thank you.

Getting Into Public Speaking

04:29 Emily: So, that’s awesome. Let’s kind of back up a little bit. And how did you start speaking professionally? Did this come like before graduate school or since you started graduate school? How did you come to that?

04:40 Natilie: Absolutely. So I started speaking professionally about three months after I received my master’s degree. So I had a really mind-blowing experience. I did my master’s thesis on a TV show called A Different World, which was a spinoff of The Cosby show. And it was a very much so like a staple in like the Black community. Like that show ended May of 1993 and it is still talked about now. People still dress up as the characters for Halloween. And so I did my thesis on that show, and I got surprised by The Steve Harvey show with actually meeting the cast because they did a reunion. I talked about my thesis and it was just like this big national, even international thing.

05:20 Natilie: And so where I went for undergrad, Central Michigan University was like, “Hey, we have this freshman orientation leadership program and we want you to come and serve as a keynote speaker. And we want you to talk about your old leadership experience you had on campus as an undergrad. And we know that you just had that really cool experience with A Different World. Do you think you could tie that in as well?” And so, I did it. I keynoted in front of about 300 plus people. And at the end of that keynote, I had lines and lines and lines of students waiting to talk to me afterwards. And that was the moment where I realized it was more than just me being good at speaking, but it was truly a part of my purpose. And then I eventually learned, maybe months after that, the business side of speaking and was able to start it as a business and turn it into a very much so awesome, successful career path.

06:13 Emily: And so, I understand from our prior conversation that you had some years in the workforce between when you finished your master’s and when you started your PhD. So that’s kind of when you were learning, as you said, the business of speaking and growing that part of it. Is that right?

06:27 Natilie: Absolutely. So with the master’s, I was working for a corporate organization part-time and then once I graduated, they actually hired me on full-time. And when they hired me on full-time, I worked there for about two and a half years. So during the time where I started my speaking career, I was working in corporate and I was actually teaching as an adjunct at night because I was still living in the same town where I got my master’s degree from where I also had had an assistantship that paid for my master’s degree. And they were like, Hey, we know you’re still here in town. You did really good work when you were teaching for us. You want to come do it at night? And so I was really able to use my corporate job to fund my speaking career to start funding the business, right? The website, the photoshoot, different things of that nature. And I had my adjunct position as well as some extra savings. And it got to a point where I was working corporate where I was like, I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m not a fan of this position. And I actually realized that I’m a geek. I love to read and write. I want to go back to school and get a PhD and still maintain and enhance my speaking career.

Speaking in the Collegiate Circuit

07:34 Emily: That’s a great thing actually about sort of side hustling or having your own business generally. It can be on the side of different full-time things. You can have transitions in your career and take your business with you as you go through this transition. So that is awesome. And so, your niche about speaking, you said you’re on the collegiate circuit. So do you speak mostly to college students? And you mentioned leadership earlier, like what are kind of the general topics that you speak about? And did it come from that initial engagement or how have you, you know, expanded since then?

08:04 Natilie: So yeah, it’s come from the initial engagement. It’s also come from my own collegiate experience that has really propelled me as a leader and have taken advantage of opportunities and so, and networking. So like mentorship, relationship building, leadership despite trauma, Greek leadership, Black and multicultural Greek leadership, first-year experience. So how do you even plan out your college career? Whereas you can take over the campus, what are some resources and opportunities that you should take advantage of as a college student? So studying abroad, pre-professional programs, networking with professors, and things of that sort. So those include some of the speaking topics, professional development, preparing yourself for your career path. What can you do in college to prepare you for post-graduation? So those are some of the speaking topics. And it’s on the collegiate circuit as well, but I also am starting to do more stuff with high schools and middle schools as well, including like that social and emotional learning component to leadership. So, it’s starting to expand greatly.

Time Management as a Grad Student and Business Owner

09:12 Emily: That’s awesome! Now I want to hear about you as a graduate student, and also as a business owner. And since you started the business back when you had a full-time job and another part-time job, you probably took some lessons from that in terms of time management and so forth. But I’d love to hear about how you’re applying them now as a graduate student. Like, how are you managing your time and your energy to make sure that you’re doing both these things well?

09:35 Natilie: Absolutely. So I believe it’s time management and also time prioritization and time stewardship. And so figuring out what’s important right now and how much time do I need to allocate to it. But for me, coming in as a graduate student, working on a PhD was really new to me because I had never done that before of course. And so my first thing was, I need to understand what’s the lay of the land. How much time do I need to dedicate to this because it was in-person and it was full-time? And so for me, I really had to figure out what I didn’t know. And I looked to upperclassmen to see how much time are you all spending on readings and coursework? What’s the writing load like? And so I actually sort of, kind of, when I first started the doctoral program, I took very few speaking engagements that first semester, because I was like, I need to focus on this program.

10:31 Natilie: And once I learned that I could balance my coursework and my speaking career, it was all she wrote after that. So it would get to a point where I knew my schedule perfectly. I knew when I had to teach. I knew when I didn’t have to teach. I knew how long it would take me to get to the nearest airport. So I was about two hours from the nearest airport and it would be sometimes I would literally get done with class as a doctoral student. I would have my suitcase packed in my car. I would drive two hours to the airport. I would fly out to go speak. That same day, when I got done off the stage speaking, I would fly right back, finish work as a doctoral student, maybe teach that morning as my assistantship, and I would do it all over again. So I really learned my schedule perfectly. And I would do my papers sometimes on the airplane, do my class readings in the back of the Uber as I was going to my hotel to speak. I would sometimes get to my hotel the night before, so I could do my coursework. And so I really got the timing down perfectly, and I always keep a planner with me. So I knew due dates for assignments as an instructor, and due dates for assignments as a graduate student as well.

Schedule Flexibility

11:47 Emily: I’m not that familiar with like your field. So like, what is the nature of the research that you’re doing? Like is a lot of thinking and writing and reading? Or do you have to like, be certain places aside from like the teaching component? Like, do you have to be certain places at certain times? Like how flexible is your schedule, I guess?

12:02 Natilie: Very flexible schedule. So, as a doctoral student, I study communication. Specifically, I’m more of an interpersonal and family communication scholar. Specifically, I look at what’s called voluntary care relationships. And so those are relationships that have no biological tie, but because we say they’re family, they’re family. So your best friend that you consider your sister friend or your childhood nextdoor neighbor that you may have considered your cousin growing up because you all have known each other for the past 20 years. Godparents and things like that. And so I look at that, but specifically within the context of Black families and Black people and the validation process of those relationships, the impact of them, and the benefits. And so, I’m also a qualitative scholar. So I spend the time interviewing people and things of that sort. So that’s my research interest. And when you’re doing the interviews, you can, you know, do them over the phone and things like that. So, I had a lot of flexibility except for the fact that my coursework was in person. So I just, I knew how much time I had to drive to the airport right after class. I knew how much time I had to board the airplane. So I really just really got it down to a science.

13:16 Emily: That’s amazing. I don’t <laugh>, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten near that degree of specificity with like my time blocking practice. But it’s because I have much fewer, I think, constraints on my life, especially prior to becoming like a parent. Like once you have like that the parenthood stuff going on, I know it’s like a thing that’s said like, you know, mothers become like the most efficient workers you’ve ever seen because they have like, so limited time to like, do their work and then they have to do these other things. So like, but even that, like, I’m not to the degree that you just described, like time blocking. So I really like admire that. It sounds like an amazing skill to have.

Speaking Engagements During COVID

13:53 Emily: And how, like, during this time that you’ve been a PhD student, you know, you mentioned that you took very few speaking engagements at first when you were kind of getting the lay of the land. But then how has your business grown over the past few years? And I’m especially wondering how things have changed with COVID, because you just mentioned you were doing in person speaking. I assume that at least changed for some amount of time for a while. So how have things been going, you know, since starting your PhD?

14:15 Natilie: So as soon as I got the understanding of my schedule and the timing, I hopped right back on that road and it, I just, I knew if I had class, if I didn’t have to teach or my own classes on a Thursday or a Friday, I knew Wednesday night I could go fly out and come right back. And so I started to just be intentional about the different conferences I would present at, in front of students. But then also too, with the decision-makers present, understanding how many decision-makers will be present during that networking piece. And that networking piece, allowing decision-makers to meet me, sit in on my sessions, get to learn more about the learning objectives with my presentations, whether it was a workshop or a keynote, that really allowed me the opportunity to continuously to grow on the speaking circuit.

15:02 Natilie: And with the topics that I speak about, leadership and student leadership on the collegiate market, it’s not as many young black women doing what I’m doing. And so, I’m standing out, right? And I’m doing very well with speaking as far as the mechanics of it. And I was able to and still am able to get my name out there. And so that allowed me to grow my speaking engagements. And you also mentioned about COVID. Well, when COVID hit, I was in my mind, I first thought that this was literally the end of my speaking career. And I said, well, you know what? I had a great run. I did a great job. If that’s it, I went out with a bang. And I actually saw my business boom, shortly after. Like months after. And my mind was blown. I’m like, wait a minute. But I realized that these schools were like, we still need people to encourage our students.

15:53 Natilie: We still need people to give our students the how to. It’s now a virtual space. And so I was able to sometimes do two engagements in one day I could do one in California, one in Florida virtually and not have to leave and not have to also invest in travel expenses. And so, 2021 was probably one of my most profitable speaking years yet. And I think this year is probably on top to beat that. It’s definitely on top to beat that. And so, yeah, I was completely blown away by it, completely blown away. And once I finished coursework for my PhD, it was <laugh>, it was all she wrote. I was able to do a lot more. So I didn’t have to be in the classroom as a student. I just had to teach. And so I was able to have even more free time to get out there and to maximize my opportunities to get in front of my target audience.

16:47 Emily: Yeah. I’m so glad that your business has grown through COVID as well. I’ve observed the same thing. My client base has expanded. It’s so much easier to set up speaking engagements without having to do all the logistics of the travel. And you know, my schedule’s a lot more open, as you were saying, because the travel’s not there. So I’m free to accept engagements that are closer in time together than they used to be. And it’s been strange because I had the same reaction like, oh I can’t travel anymore. I’ve got to pivot. <Laugh> like, what else can I do in this business aside from speaking, because I’m clearly not going to make money from speaking anymore. No, that was not at all the case. Once people kind of got their bearings, the bookings started coming in again. So it’s really been like amazing and I’m so grateful, and grateful that it’s happened the same way for you.

17:27 Natilie: Thank you!

Commercial

17:30 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2022-2023 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/speaking/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

Business Income vs. Stipend

18:52 Emily: Let’s talk about money. So, you have an assistantship. I don’t know if you want to share how much you make through that. Feel free if you’re comfortable. But how does your, like the money that comes in through your business compare with like your stipend?

19:05 Natilie: Yeah, so with an assistantship so Hey, when I left corporate, I left corporate, I quit the job. I had saved up $15,000 over the timeframe that I had worked there. Especially when I knew I wanted to leave. I was like, well, I’m no fool. I need to, you know, I need to be able to live. And so I saved up $15,000 and then I got this assistantship. And this assistantship was paying me literally a third, one-third of what I made in corporate. And for me I’m like, I will figure it out. Like that’s one promise I’ve made to myself is that I will always be okay financially. Legally, financially, correct? And so yeah, so with the assistantship I was making like a third of what I made in corporate.

19:50 Natilie: And with speaking, I was able to, there were some times where I was literally making whatever my assistantship was, I could make double that with speaking. So I was literally making double my assistantship with speaking and still had my assistantship. And so for me that allowed me to realize like, okay, I can do both of these things well, and I’ve always been a saver and I knew that I would need, you know, I would need to live after I graduated. So I was able to prepare for life post-Graduation. And then also writing a book while I was in the doctoral program and releasing the book and also having book sales come in. So, I was able to, once you added in book sales, you added in speaking, yeah, I was able, at some point I made maybe like two and a half times my citizenship, almost three, by being able to do these things and elevate my speaking career. Expand it, so not just speaking, but then also a book. And so, yeah.

20:54 Emily: It sounds to me like, you know, going into your PhD program, it was never like a question that you would give up the speaking. Like, it’s part of your career now. But I’m just wondering like, had you come into graduate school and not had a side business, is your stipend even enough to live on? Like, are your peers living on it? Or do they all have like side stuff going on or taking out student loans or depending on family members? Or like what’s going on financially in your program, I guess?

Transparency with the Department

21:19 Natilie: Yeah. Most of them, they definitely, they hustle. When I say hustle, I don’t mean it in a bad way. But they’ll take another job. They’ll teach somewhere else. They will, some of them have maybe like a significant other, so they’re able like to split costs. But for the most part, we definitely, as part of our program, we look for other ways to bring in that additional income. And so for me, I came in as a speaker and I made sure that that was something I promised myself that I would not give up, but I wasn’t sure how the department was going to react or respond to it. Because I never wanted them to think that like I was not focused on the program. And I listened to one of your previous episodes where you were talking about that, where it’s frowned upon sometimes.

22:07 Natilie: And so, I came into the department and told the Director of Grad Studies for the department, like, Hey, I do speaking. And so there would be some Fridays where they would have, what’s called colloquium where like, it’s like a big research conversation. And I’m like, yo, I’ve got to go Denver to speak. I can’t make it to colloquium. And luckily the Director of Grad Studies was like, you know, I’m going to count you speaking as professional development since you already have your hand in your career. We’re not going to count it against you, that you aren’t at colloquium, right? Like you already have your hand in your career. We’re going to support that. And I was so happy that she was so generous because she could have been like, no, you need to be here. I can say for like some of the rest of the department more so like peers, I didn’t really let them know too much.

22:56 Natilie: I would just say like, oh, I have a leadership conference to go to. I didn’t mention to my peers that I was the keynote for the leadership conference. But once I saw that it was a comfortable space, I was able to let them know. And then once they saw that like I wrote a book and so they were like, oh, wait a minute, you really do this. Like you wrote a book like you are on a book tour, wait a minute. Like, you know, so once I felt comfortable, I didn’t mind sharing. But I had to be sure that it was a safe space because I was not going to allow anybody to sabotage this career that I had worked so hard for.

23:28 Emily: Yeah. I think this makes a ton of sense because when you have a business, a side business or whatever you might call it, that’s so like out there and public-facing, and especially it’s in higher ed <laugh> as well. Like, it’s something that’s probably impossible to conceal. Like sometimes with my podcast guests, they don’t want to let people know about it, and they can not let people know about it. They can do their side hustle on the weekends, in the evenings. It can be just a private thing. But I think it was really smart of you since you were already doing it when you came into graduate school just to be completely upfront and say, this is what’s happening. And I’m really glad too, that, you know, they worked with you on that. It also makes sense to me that what you’re doing is professional development enhancing your career. So, I’m really glad they gave you that, you know, a little bit of leeway on the attendance.

24:11 Natilie: It was difficult. Because it got to the point where like, I was so protective of my speaking career. Like I was not accepting my colleagues on social media because I didn’t want them to see that, like, you know, I’m speaking. Or if after class, as a student, I go hop on a flight to the airport and I post on social media that I’m on a flight and they’re like, oh, well, what is she doing there? Is she going to make it back in time to teach? And I would, but I never wanted people to question. I never wanted people even to have the opportunity to try and, you know, speak against or speak negatively or try to talk about what they didn’t have clarity on, you know, so. But now it’s all good.

Advice for Working on a Business in Grad School

24:47 Emily: Yeah. You proved yourself in your program and it came out that you were doing all of that with the business on the side, and being successful in both. So yeah, I’m really glad that you had that positive reaction. Is there anything else that you want to share with us about your business or your role as a graduate student before we wrap up?

25:03 Natilie: Absolutely. As a graduate student, if you come in with a business, you don’t necessarily have to lay it down by the wayside in order to focus on your doctoral studies. You can do both and you can do both well. I think it’s about coming into a department and figuring out how does this operate? And then also allowing yourself to have as much time as possible to work on your business and still be a person because doctoral programs are hard for no reason. But it’s possible to maintain both of those things. And if you are like, well, I’m a doctoral student and I want to start a business but I don’t know. Try and think about what skillset do you have that you can actually monetize, and that you can do it in a way in which you’ll have time to dedicate to it. Because you don’t want to start a business and you can’t serve your customers well. So I could not show up to my speaking engagements half-tired because I had a paper due last night that was 15, 20 pages, you know? So being able to still serve your customers in whatever capacity that you serve and try and figure out how you can monetize your skillset and do a ton of research, right? If you are interested in speaking, you can look up other speakers that may be doctoral students and figure out how did they do it. So, you never have to recreate the wheel.

How to Reach Natilie

26:22 Emily: How can the listeners find you if they want to learn more about your career or anything else?

26:27 Natilie: Absolutely. I would love for your listeners to follow me on social media and let me know that they found me from the podcast. And so, I can be found on Instagram @NatWillSpeak N A T W I L L S P E A K. And so that is @NatWillSpeak on Instagram, on Twitter, on Facebook. My website, www.natwillspeak.com. And I’m available if you know, they ever want just drop in and say, hi. And my book Innerview, I N N ER, Lessons in Leadership is available on my website, NatWillSpeak.com, and it’s also available on Amazon. And I really kind of lay out even more in the book of how I was able to start the speaking career and elevate it.

27:13 Emily: Yeah. Fascinating. I love that URL slash handle. Your name lent itself so well, that’s amazing.

27:18 Natilie: Thank you. <Laugh>.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

27:20 Emily: So, the question that I ask all of my interviewees before we wrap up is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be something that we’ve already touched on in the interview, or it could be something completely new.

27:33 Natilie: Know what you have coming in financially, know what you have going out paying bills. And you can do that for as in a budget. Budget, your money, so, you know, again, what you have due every month, what you have coming in, and that will really allow you to take more ownership of your finances to say, Hey, I realized that I have $800 leftover every month. I’m doing pretty good. I can start saving or investing. Or it may make you realize I need $800 more a month. I don’t have enough. Do I need to pick up another position? Do I need to try and apply for a fellowship or a scholarship or outside grants or things of that nature? So, I think that me budgeting, learning to budget my money, I budget down to the dollar. Not to the cents, but to the dollar, and me doing that, I was able to take ownership of my finances and know at all times where I stood. And checking bank accounts daily, making sure that, you know, what’s what, did this bill get taken out? So just knowing where I always stood financially gave me the knowledge to make the best-informed decisions financially as a doctoral student.

28:38 Emily: Well, Natilie, it’s been such a pleasure to meet you and thank you so much for sharing your experience and everything with the listeners! Thanks for coming on!

28:45 Natilie: Thank you so much! Thank you!

Outtro

28:52 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? I have collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

The Gardener and Rose Approach for Childfree PhD Couples

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Jay Zigmont, who holds both a PhD in Adult Education and Certified Financial Planner designation. Jay has focused his financial planning practice, Live Learn Plan, on the childfree community, and his book, Portraits of Childfree Wealth, will be published on June 1, 2022. Emily and Jay discuss the stories and interview excerpts from the book and Jay’s observations about the relationship between being childfree and finances. Jay holds up the model of the Gardener and Rose as a potentially useful one for dual-PhD couples, which is what he and his wife practice.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

Teaser

00:00 Jay: And I was amazed that people would share this. I mean, to be frank, people would rather talk about their sex life than their finances. But people were sharing it all, and it’s just amazing to see.

Introduction

00:15 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 12, episode one, and today my guest is Dr. Jay Zigmont, who holds both a PhD in Adult Education and the Certified Financial Planner designation. Jay has focused his financial planning practice, Live Learn Plan, on the childfree community, and his book, Portraits of Childfree Wealth will be published on June 1st, 2022. We discuss the stories and interview excerpts from Jay’s book and his observations about the relationship between being childfree and finances. Jay holds up the model of the gardener and rose as a potentially useful one for dual PhD couples, which is what he and his wife practice.

01:10 Emily: If you’ve been getting value from this podcast, would you please do me a favor? This is a perfect time of year to recommend me and my work to an appropriate host or sponsor at your university or Alma mater. In case you didn’t know, I offer numerous personal finance seminars and workshops on topics like taxes, investing, budgeting, and debt repayment, all tailored for graduate students, postdocs, and/or prospective graduate students. If you think that you and your peers would benefit from my teaching, please recommend me to your graduate school graduate student association or post office. These recommendations help me get my foot in the door with new clients or remind past clients of the need for this material. If you choose to recommend me over email, please Cc me, [email protected] so that I can pick up the conversation. It’s only possible for me to create free-to-you content like this podcast if I have paying clients for my speaking engagements and prerecorded workshops. Thank you in advance for recommending me. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP.

Would You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:29 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Jay Zigmont. He is a CFP whose practice is called Live Learn Plan. And he’s also a PhD. His PhD is in Adult Learning from Yukon, and we’re going to be talking today about his kind of specialty within his financial planning practice, which is in childfree people. So, that’s kind of the topic, and specifically how like his career has progressed and how he and his wife together have progressed in their careers and trade offs in their childfree life. So, Jay, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for volunteering! And would you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the listeners?

03:06 Jay: Absolutely. Emily. So what I do for my day job is I help people understand their dreams and figure out their life and financial planning. I specifically work with childfree folks, which is a interesting area, because in finances it’s completely ignored. There’s no mention in the entire certified financial planning training of being childfree. So I try to bring a little bit of my own life and my research into the practice.

03:30 Emily: Yeah, that’s really, I just think it’s really exciting to learn people’s niches and like why they chose them. Obviously, I have a very specific niche in my like financial education stuff. So, that’s awesome that you’re kind of overlapping your own life choices with what you focus on in your profession. So, it’s a little bit of an unusual path, right? To get a PhD and then get a CFP later on. That’s a certified financial planner by the way, for those who aren’t familiar with the acronym. So, can you tell us how your career took that path?

04:00 Jay: Yeah, so I spent a lot of time in healthcare and academia and you know, everybody listening, there are probably some people who have done both those careers. And it’s always good, bad, and ugly. And across that time, the thing that was common was I was doing coaching. So, whether it’s executive coaching, career coaching, life coaching, academic coaching, whatever it is. And the reality is people are more willing to pay for financial coaching than they are for some of the other. And as soon as you do that, you need to start working on a CFP, become an investment advisor, all the other ones to cross the T’s dot the I’s. And what I’ve found is that I can combine life coaching or life planning with financial coaching and financial planning, because I don’t know if you can separate your life and your finances, but at least that’s the way I look at it, they’re all together.

04:45 Emily: I have the exact same viewpoint. It’s one of the things that has always like excited me about personal finance is that it is so intertwined with just your life holistically. It’s impossible to separate. And I think you really can like get to know people really well, what their values are, what excites them through how they are using their money or how they would like to use their money in the future. So, I totally agree. That’s really, really fun.

05:08 Jay: So, I’m also advice-only. So, I’m an advice-only CFP. I don’t do investment management for people. So, my work is around teaching people to do it themselves. So, that matches where I come from. But it’s also, frankly, different in the financial world, because I’m not charging an AUM fee or anything like that. I meet with people on a regular basis. I actually meet with them monthly and we work through their life finances and it just helps people grow.

05:31 Emily: I totally agree. This is a really new, like exciting model within financial planning. I don’t know if the listeners will be familiar with the AUM or assets-under-management model, but that’s where you hear like a, you know, an advisor’s charging you 1% or some other fee similar to that, to do all your investment management for you, but your model is completely different. And a lot of, I think younger planners are moving towards this fee-only model where, like you said, you’re paying kind of for someone’s time and expertise, but it’s a teaching relationship. It’s a coaching and guiding relationship. I’m working with a financial advisor as well who’s a CFP who works under that same model of a subscription model instead of this like AUM model. So yeah, I really, I love that.

Portraits of Childfree Wealth

06:10 Emily: So, in preparing for this interview, you sent me a book. Can you tell us about the book and the study that you did that leads into it?

06:20 Jay: Yeah. So, I actually started off with a different plan than my book. And, you know, when you dive into research, you have this idea of what you’re gonna look at and then it goes somewhere else. And I’m a qualitative researcher by nature. So, I really wanted to look at the question of what is it like to be childfree, and how does that impact your life and your finances and your wealth? And I’d done a bunch, you know, got a bunch of surveys, got a bunch of data, started going through it. But I was doing these interviews with these people, and these amazing stories came out of what their life was like. And I said, okay, I have to kind of pause some of the analytical work I’m doing and just share these life stories because they don’t exist. You know, and the childfree, they’re about 11% of the U.S over 55 are childfree. And a recent study in Michigan found that 27% of adults are childfree, but there’s no stories about kind of like, well, what does that mean? How does that work? What is that life like? And I was like, how is it possible that such a large group, I mean, we’re talking millions and millions of people, don’t have something, and in the financial literature it’s completely ignored? So, I’m sharing the stories, and hopefully people can go, “Oh, that’s me,” or, “Wow, I didn’t realize that was a way of life.”

07:28 Emily: Can you say the name of your book and when it’s coming out?

07:31 Jay: So Portraits of Childfree Wealth comes out June 1st.

07:35 Emily: Okay. So, I read this in preparation for the interview, and what I found fascinating is that it feels very honest. It feels very unfiltered, especially about a topic like finances, which is so sensitive. And a lot of people are not willing to speak openly about it. So, it is really exciting that you could, you know, compile these interviews and really share, like you just said, like exactly what life is like for these, you know, selected people that you included in the book. So, it was really a fascinating read. Disheartening at times, honestly, but also very encouraging at times. Because obviously different people have different kinds of stories.

08:10 Jay: So, you’re right on it. And I think one of the most shocking things to people is, being childfree doesn’t mean you’re rich. There are people in there literally talking about living on an air mattress. You know, I’m like, the way I look at it is, you know, if they had a kid they’d drown, you know, they just barely keep, and I was amazed that people would share this. I mean, to be frank, people would rather talk about their sex life than their finances, but people were sharing it all. And it’s just amazing to see.

08:37 Emily: Yeah, and I don’t know if this is one of maybe the threads that you pulled out of this set of interviews, but definitely in a number of them, finances were not necessarily like a motivation for making a choice to be childfree, but it helped a lot on that front. Like you said, some of people interviewed would not, I think, be able to financially support a child without some additional like outside assistance, the way they were earning and living like at the moment. And so, it seems like a practical choice as well.

09:10 Jay: Yeah. And I think, so because we’re talking to researchers, this is always a fun one. There’s a relationship, I’m being technical on that, between growing up in poverty or poor and choosing childfree. I don’t have enough data to look at correlation/causation, but there is something there, you know? I didn’t come up with it. I don’t have the money. And then I’ve made that choice. And I think that’s one of those that we’re going to have to dive deeper in to understand, but there are also people that have chosen, well, I’m not having kids because of climate or medical issues or all different reasons. So, I mean, they’re just as varied as the people themselves.

FIRE versus FILE

09:47 Emily: Yeah. And I’m sure this is probably typically a multivariate decision, right? It’s not just one overriding reason for making the choice to be childfree, but it’s, it’s a few things that all kind of come together. Besides the relationship between growing up in poverty and choosing to be childfree, what were some other like key observations or other relationships that you saw?

10:06 Jay: So, I think some of the interesting ones, I was surprised the amount of childfree folks that say they don’t really want to retire. So, there’s a lot of work right now on the FIRE movement, Financial Independence, Retire Early. And there are a couple people that are FIREd and some people like inadvertently FIREd and all that. But most people are going, I’d rather do what I call FILE, Financial Independence, Live Early. It’s kind of dimmed the work. You know, Ryan shares his story in the book of, he works 25 hours a week, never on Fridays, never before 10:00 AM. And like he could take his laptop and go to Palm Springs and do work from anywhere. And that’s really interesting because I think that might be a unique thing to the childfree community that you can get up and go and have that mobile life. But it’s also, if your goal is not retirement, it completely changes your financial plan.

10:54 Emily: I really like that you had that acronym that you explained a few times throughout the book, the FILE. And it reminded me of some of these other like flavors of FIRE, like barista FIRE and Coast FI and all of those. Yeah, super interesting.

11:09 Jay: Some of the people in the FIRE community will argue with me and say, well, Choose FI or Slow FI, the same as FILE. And I go, well, here’s the question? The question is, are you retiring at the end? And what you hear is a lot of FIRE people go, “No, I don’t really want to retire.” Well then you’re not FIRE-ing. You are doing something else. And I think the point I was trying to work through is if I’m not retiring, then my financial plan shouldn’t reflect retiring. And people go, well, what does that change? Well, it changes a lot of your assumptions, and it changes what are your goals, and how does that fit?

11:41 Emily: Yeah. That’s a really exciting concept. Were there any other observations or relationships that you’d like to pull out from the study?

The Gardener and the Rose

11:48 Jay: Yeah, I think the other one I mentioned in there comes out of me and my wife to an extent is this concept of the gardener and the rose. So, my wife and I were both PhDs, and anyone that has a family with two PhDs, you know how hard it is to get a career with two PhDs. Does that make sense, Emily?

12:04 Emily: I know it very well. My husband has a PhD, too.

12:07 Jay: Yeah. So, we get this trailing spouse thing, and it just, it’s a nightmare. My personal belief is it’s almost impossible to get two careers at exactly the same level at exactly the same time for two PhDs. It is possible, but I mean, it’s like you won the lotto. And what I heard from the childfree folks was people were looking at, Hmm, what are the options? And what my wife and I did is we look at it as the gardener or the rose. Somebody’s the rose growing, and somebody’s the gardener providing the support. And I have to clear, you know, that is not gendered roles or anything like that. It’s just expectations, because somebody has to provide support, and somebody has to grow. And my wife and I, we actually have made a conscious effort that we’re going take turns, you know, and that allows the rose to kind of grow and do its own thing.

12:54 Jay: And what you heard is people in this book saying, “Well, you know, we have two incomes. We don’t need both. One of us is not happy.” And I’m like, “So, quit.” And they’re like, “Wait, what?” I’m like, “Well, take turns growing and you can work this gardener and the rose approach. And I’ve got people in there that one’s creating his own video games and he’s doing indie game design and they’re living in an RV. He’s the rose right now, and his wife works in healthcare. It’s this thing that can happen where you can take these turns. Does that make any sense?

13:24 Emily: It absolutely makes sense to me. And as I was reflecting on this concept, I was trying to sort of apply it to like my relationship with my husband and how our careers have progressed. It doesn’t fit, I think, quite as cleanly for us as it does for you and your wife. But I see elements of it at different times and in different ways.

Commercial

13:43 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. If you are a fan of this podcast, I invite you to check out the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community. The community is for PhDs and people pursuing PhDs who want to take charge of their personal finances 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, including my recent set of Wealthy PhD Workshops. There is also a discussion forum, monthly live calls with me, and progress journaling for financial goals. Basically, the Community exists to help you reach your financial goals, whatever they are. Go to pfforphds.community to find out more. I can’t wait to help propel you to financial success! Now back to the interview.

Taking Turns

14:49 Emily: The examples in the book, as far as I remember of gardener and rose, were like the one that you decided of like, well, one person’s going to like take a break from earning or like earn less than they maybe could because the other person is financially able to provide. But from what I can tell for you and your wife, that’s not the case. You’re both working, you both have income, but it’s more about whose career is driving some other decisions in your life. Is that right? How does that work?

15:12 Jay: Yeah, so my wife is in the academic path. And as everybody here knows, when you get the right tenure track position, you just go <laugh>. So, we actually recently moved 1200 miles for her career, and you’re right. It’s not about income, but it’s about that support. So, if somebody’s going to be on that tenure-track path, there’s a whole lot of other stuff that needs to get taken care of. I mean literally like the gardening and the house and the landscaping and the, whatever it is and paying the bills and whatever it is. It’s not about money, but it’s about that support that you need to do that. Because if my wife had to stop and do all that while she was on this tenure-track fun, it would hurt her career. So, we take those turns. Now, mind you, my turn as a rose, I’ve told her 15 years I’m retiring completely and we’re going to get in a boat and travel the world. That’s it. And that’s what I want to do. And she knows that, but that puts a limit, frankly, on her career. But also, it’s a fairness of taking turns.

16:14 Emily: Do you think that the turn-taking aspect is like essential to the concept of gardener and rose? Or is it okay for a couple to choose permanent roles as one or the other?

16:24 Jay: Yeah. So, it’s a rough question. I believe that if people pick one role or the other, it’s way too easy for someone to be neglected or not appreciated or have concerns, let’s call it that. What I think happens is, there are some great stories in there of people that have tried to do the type of gardener and rose without the swap, but then the person that’s in the rose position feels guilty. You know? Well, I’m taking advantage of, well, no, if we know we each have our own turns, I can be selfish for my turn. You can be selfish for yours, and that’s okay. I think if one person decides, “Hey, I want to be this role forever,” and that’s their conscious choice, maybe. But especially when you’re talking about like two PhDs, that’s hard, you know? Fortunately, I can do my finance work from anywhere, but there are other career options I could follow if I was being the rose. So, I think there’s just a balancing act. Does that make sense to you?

17:24 Emily: It does. And I’m actually thinking back to, I’m not going to be able to like cite research on this, but it’s something that I think I read maybe during our premarital counseling that my husband and I went through about how it was maybe about like life satisfaction or something with, we’ll just say married couples, where they had an agreement about whose role was whose. Like maybe there was a working spouse and a non-working spouse. As long as they both were in agreement about what their roles should be, they had a pretty decent level of happiness, even if their circumstances caused them to be flipped. So, let’s say, you know, more traditional, let’s say the husband’s supposed to be the one working, let’s say the wife’s supposed to be the one taking care of the home. Well, the husband becomes disabled, and the wife is the one who has to go into the workforce. Couples who were in agreement about like what their roles should be were happier, even if they couldn’t actually live out those roles, but just having the agreement between them was satisfactory to them. So, it reminds me a little bit about this. Like how do you negotiate, you know, who should be the gardener and who should be the rose at any given time. As long as you’re in agreement, I feel like it’s going to help, even if maybe life circumstances end up playing out a little bit differently.

18:31 Jay: Yeah. And I think there’s some of that that nature does to it. You know, like just your life, your career, there are times in your career. There’s a great example, somebody in the book who just needed to take a 90-day sabbatical, just needed to like get her brain back, you know? And we’re seeing some of this with the great resignation where people aren’t really quitting jobs forever. They’re like, I just need to stop and do something else. And that might be just for a period of time. And I think you’re right. It is the clarity on the roles. But I think with childfree couples, one of the challenges is you have the time, money, and the wealth, the freedom to do what you want. And that actually can cause a little bit of analysis paralysis routine of having too many choices. So, by taking these turns in the roles, you go, “Okay, you’re the rose. Follow your dream. I’ll do like the day in, day out work and vice versa.” And it’s almost like it’s just a little anchor between the two of you. And it also gives people to think through that chance, like you’re talking on the marital counseling of, well, what are our roles? What do we want to do? And a lot of couples have never had that discussion. It’s just implied. And that can cause issues.

19:35 Emily: Yeah. I mean, I’m just trying to think about like two people trying to be the rose at the same time. And if you both want to be the rose, then you’re both also going to have to be the gardener in some ways. There’s going to have to be some kind of negotiation and agreement there. It’s a little bit more clean if it’s like, okay, clearly one person’s a rose, one person’s a gardener. But maybe there are ways you can work out, you know, different aspects of your life or something like that where it could play out a little bit where both of you sort of get to feel like the rose, maybe. This is maybe a little bit how I was applying it to the course that my husband and I have had with our careers. Because, like you and your wife, we moved in 2015 for my husband’s job.

20:15 Emily: So, his first like post-PhD job in industry. We moved across the country. And I was okay with that. I was starting my business. And so I was like, you know, I had a location freedom within my job, but I wasn’t making nearly as much money as I could have had I taken a traditional job after my PhD. And so, in a way, you could interpret that as he’s the rose, because we’re moving for his job. Our location where we’re living is determined by his work. I also see it as my husband was providing financially for both of us, to a large degree, so that I could grow my business, which has flourished over time. And so, I see it like kind of both ways in different ways, right? Location on the one hand, and actual like finances on the other hand. So yeah, I just, there are different ways, I think, that you could imply this framework, but I think it works.

Outsourcing the Gardener

21:03 Jay: Yeah. And I think the gardening roles can be a whole bunch of things. And frankly, if you make enough money, you can pay somebody to do all the gardening roles. Literally. I mean, you can pay somebody to do all that. And then you can have two roses. But as long as location doesn’t mess with it. Some people do look at it as the financial support and the other. But if we go back in time, and I hate to say these old gender roles, but the idea was somebody was doing their primary job and somebody was providing support at home. And I don’t think we realized how much work it is to provide support at home, with or without kids, there’s just a lot of stuff. You know, we need a new roof on our house. Well, that’s a giant project, you know? So, you’ve got to have somebody with the flexibility to do that. Or, you have to be able to pay somebody to manage these projects for you. And I think that’s overlooked because if we’re both at the top of our careers, then we’re going home and have to figure how to mow the lawn. Like, our brain just explodes. Money is not important. What money gets you is important. So, if you’re just working to make the dollars, and it’s not making your life better, change something,

22:16 Emily: I’m feeling this like so strongly right now because my husband and I purchased our first home, which is like a single-family like house a year ago. And so, we went from like apartment living as renters to this managing an entire house situation. And it is a lot of work. I was not quite prepared for this. So yeah, and we’re trying to figure out ways, like how much should we be outsourcing? How much should we keep, you know, us to do the work. But it is a lot, a lot, a lot of work that it takes to run a household. Yeah. And I definitely did not appreciate this a few years ago back when I was still a renter.

22:51 Jay: Let me give you a number on that one. I’ll actually give you the answer on what you should outsource. The question is what do you make per hour, and would you rather work an hour than do the work? So my wife and I, we have somebody come in to help clean. I’ll work an extra hour of work and not have to clean the toilets. I mean, that’s the math behind it. If you enjoy mowing the lawn, do it. If you don’t, <laugh> figure out your hourly and, you know, pick up an extra, you know, class or whatever it is to cover that.

Communication is Key

23:18 Emily: Yeah, this is like airing my dirty laundry on the podcast, but like literally my husband and I are talking about this right now with respect to a house cleaner. I am very confident that we both made more per hour, and that a house cleaner could do a better job and faster than we could do it. But he still has this like, idea that like, you should do it yourself or something. We’re working on that. That’s something we have to agree on together. So yeah, we’re sort of in negotiations about that right now. Is there anything else you want to tell us about this like gardener and rose concept?

23:51 Jay: I think the big thing is communication. I mean, that’s the bottom line of all of it. And I think, when it comes to finances, unfortunately, even couples don’t talk about it, you know? And here’s what I’ve found, with my clients, I talk about this type of concept all the time. The person who needs to be the rose, the person who’s burnt out of their career or whatever, the other spouse is perfectly fine with. It’s the rose that has trouble taking it, you know? Of saying, okay, I will step down or I will change, or I will do whatever. The other person always supports it. So, I think it’s that communication. And I think the other part of it is, what I’m seeing at least in the great resignation world is it’s not about money. It’s changing jobs for either meaning or, you know, whatever that feeling is for the soul, not about the dollars and cents. Hey, I want to make more in my career.

LifeScriptTM Deviation

24:46 Emily: Kind of tying into that. One of the big patterns that I saw reading through the stories in your book was this concept that childfree people, and the people are sort of speaking about their own experience, they have this sense that they can make changes in their lives without maybe considering how it would affect a child or maybe other people in their lives. And that they, in theory, have like a freedom to do that. Did you have that observation as well? But what I also observed is that they weren’t always acting on it. They thought they had the freedom, but they weren’t using it.

25:22 Jay: So, I have this moment frequently and it was in the book and also with just everyday people. And I look at their numbers, I go, “You’re fine. You can do that. You can make that.” And then you get this look in their face, like, “No, no I can’t.” And I’m like, “I’m looking at it financially, you can.” And there’s like this tension. And it happens with people that could cut back on work or retire or change their careers. And I think, you know, I just had a good conversation with somebody that’s this concept of like the middle class work ethic or the Protestant work ethic, which is kind of what you’re talking about with your husband, where I’ve got do this. No, you don’t. Like, so for childfree folks, our goal is not to pass generational wealth. It’s to pay for our bills on the way out. So, adding more zeros to a bank account doesn’t help. So, there’s a point where you’re like, well, I want to go on that, you know, trip of a lifetime or whatever. Well, then do it. And people are like, “Oh, I can’t. I still got…” I’m like, why? And I think it’s just this cultural component. It’s why your husband won’t let somebody else clean the toilets.

26:28 Emily: Yeah, I totally agree. That Protestant work ethic thing <laugh> how people are brought up. And I guess what we see in the book is like people, you used the term LifeScriptTM in the book. And how people who have made a conscious choice to be childfree have deviated from the LifeScriptTM. But it sounds like even though they’ve made that step, some of them are still being held back by this like cultural conditioning around making radical changes or really experiencing the freedom that they have earned through their finances and through their career.

27:02 Jay: Absolutely. So, the LifeScriptTM goes this way. You go to school, high school, you graduate, you go to college, by the way, most people don’t even like pick where they go to college. Their parents put something on them. So, that’s part of the script. You go to college, you get a job, you get married, you have kids, you get old, you retire. That’s kind of like the standard script. So, childfree people threw out the middle of it. Like, nah, I’m not doing the kids. And also, interestingly enough, 32.1% of childless people, this is per census, will never get married. So, they even threw away the married part. So, they threw that all out. Cool. Throw away the part about job and career and like, it just locks up because, well then what do I do? And they’re like, well, I don’t like where I live.

27:50 Jay: Well, then move. And they’re like, well, but you know? So, another great example is people go, well, I have to buy a house. You don’t. If you’re childfree and you’re going to move every two years, there’s no reason to buy a house. But then people go, well, but how do I, you know, make money without a house? That’s fine. We can do reeds. We can do some other stuff with it, but it’s just like this, it locks them in. And I have to spend a lot of time going well, there are other options and working it step by step.

28:18 Emily: This is just that observation you just made is why I’m so pleased that you chose this as your niche, because some of those elements you just said, you know, the FIRE movement is kind of working on people’s psychology around this, but I love that you have that further spin on it of focusing just on the childfree community. Because they, as you said, you know, at the beginning they have different financial lives than other people who do have children. And they deserve to be served specifically with their finances. And so, I’m so glad that you chose that as your niche and connected that personal element of your life to your professional life. I’m just so excited for your business. Tell us where people can find the book and where they can contact you if they’d like to learn more?

29:02 Jay: Sure. Portraits of Childfree Wealth is sold everywhere books are sold. If you want to go to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, whatever works for you. And I can be found at childfreewealth.com.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

29:13 Emily: Well, Jay, thank you so much for giving this interview. I conclude all my interviews by asking what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on already in the interview, or it could be something completely new.

29:27 Jay: Let me give you something that’s a life advice, if that’s okay. One of our colleagues taught us this and I wish others knew it. He said him and his wife both were MDs, had made a deal that they don’t have to go to each other’s corporate events. You know, the Christmas events, all that. So, my wife and I early on adopted this and we don’t go to each other’s events, because frankly, we don’t know anybody. And it’s been the best thing for our life because we don’t have to have that awkward conversation and the other. And people go, well, that’s not financial. No, it’s a life thing. You know, I don’t need to have that convo. And by the way, it’s easy to explain to people go, yep, we have this deal. This is how we do it. We have separate careers. And it works. And it sounds silly, but if you try it, you’ll like it.

30:12 Emily: Okay. Very interesting. Well thank you, Jay, for this fascinating interview. Thank you so much for coming on!

30:17 Jay: Happy to be here!

Outtro

30:24 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? I have collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance…but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

This Prof Is Taking Deliberate Steps Toward Self-Employment

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Leslie Wang, an associate professor of Sociology at UMass Boston. Over the last several years, Leslie has become a certified life coach and secured her niche as a coach for academic women publishing their first book. They discuss how Leslie manages what are essentially two full-time jobs on top of becoming a new parent during the pandemic and how she is using the revenue her business generates. Leslie speaks openly about her plans to take a leave of absence later in 2022 to try out coaching full-time so that she can finally decide whether to stay in academia or pursue her business.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

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Teaser

00:00 Leslie: I wanted to leave when I knew that what I was leaving for was much more compelling to me than trying to escape where I was at. I haven’t had that chance yet to a hundred percent devote myself to this. So that’ll start in May when my classes are over, and then I can really test it out, like fly the coop and just see what kind of happens, and still give myself some time to make a decision.

Introduction

00:29 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 11, Episode 10, and today my guest is Dr. Leslie Wang, an associate professor of Sociology at UMass Boston. Over the last several years, Leslie has become a certified life coach and secured her niche as a coach for academic women publishing their first book. We discuss how Leslie manages what are essentially two full-time jobs on top of becoming a new parent during the pandemic and how she is using the revenue her business generates. Leslie speaks openly about her plans to take a leave of absence later in 2022 to try out coaching full-time so that she can finally decide whether to stay in academia or pursue her business. I am requesting your help with something. I’ve developed a new program for prospective graduate students titled Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School. It’s a year-long interactive workshop that gives prospective graduate students the tools they need to understand their funding offers, select a financially supportive PhD program, and navigate the financial transition into graduate school. If you’re a regular podcast listener, you’ve probably heard me mention some free live webinars under this title that I piloted this spring.

01:57 Emily: I believe that many of the financial pain points of graduate school could be alleviated or eliminated by helping prospective graduate students develop a realistic financial picture of what their life in graduate school will be like if they choose a specific program. I also believe that PhD programs will take notice when prospective PhD students negotiate their stipends and benefits or decline their offers of admission citing insufficient financial support. If the programs receive the message that the financial support of graduate students is vital to their academic and personal success from yet another source, that can only benefit current graduate students. If you like this idea and wish that you had been given access to such a workshop when you were applying to and interviewing for graduate school, would you please recommend the workshop to an appropriate host? I primarily have McNair programs in mind as sponsors for the workshop, but I’m sure there are other appropriate programs at the undergraduate or postbaccalaureate levels. If you were part of a McNair program or other similar professional development or fellowship program, I would really appreciate you recommending that the director of that program check out this workshop at PFforPhDs.com/prospectiveworkshop/. Please cc me if you do email them so that I can pick up the conversation. Thank you very much! Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Leslie Wang.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:38 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Leslie Wang. She is an associate professor of sociology at UMass Boston, and on the side, she is a certified life coach working with academics. So, I’m really excited to hear about this, you know, balancing the full-time job with the side hustle and how the finances work out with that. So, Leslie, I’m so excited to have you on the podcast. Will you please introduce yourself a little bit further to the listeners?

04:01 Leslie: Of course! First of all, Emily, thank you so much for having me on. Again, my name’s Leslie and I am an associate professor of sociology at UMass Boston. I received my PhD in sociology from University of California Berkeley in 2010. After that, I moved to Vancouver for two years to do a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of British Columbia. After that, I moved to Michigan for a year where I did one year of a tenure-track position at Grand Valley State University. And then since 2013, I’ve been at UMass Boston. And then, so in terms of my research, I am a feminist qualitative researcher who studies issues related to families and work and migration between China and the United States. And so, I’ve published two books with university presses. The first one is called Outsourced Children: Orphanage Care and Adoption in Globalizing China. That was based on my dissertation, and it was published by Stanford University Press in 2016. And then last year in 2021, I published my second book, which is called Chasing the American Dream in China: Chinese Americans in the Ancestral Homeland, and that was published by Rutgers University Press. And then I’ve also been a certified professional life coach since 2019.

Becoming a Life Coach

05:19 Emily: Alright. So, you have the academic chops for sure. Congratulations on your promotion to associate professor! And I want to hear more about the life coaching, because that’s what sets you a little bit apart. So, why did you start down that route of becoming a life coach?

05:36 Leslie: So, I decided to pursue a nine-month intensive life coach training and certification program in 2018. And so at the time, I was going up for tenure, you know, as I mentioned, I had moved three times in four years for this job. And by then I was feeling really burnt out. I felt really overworked. I felt like I didn’t have any boundaries with my job. And I also was tired of working in a fairly dysfunctional, emotionally unsupportive environment. And so, I was initially going to wait until after I got tenure to start my training. And that was always in my head, like, let me just put everything on hold until after tenure.

06:18 Emily: That’s familiar.

06:18 Leslie: Right, right. I attended a weekend-long coaching training program, and this was in Los Angeles. And I just felt so drawn to the work. I felt like there was an immediate impact that I had in making the world better that I hadn’t felt from the kinds of academic work that I had done before.

06:39 Leslie: And I realized I was looking for that feeling all the time through my research and my teaching, but I got it through coaching instead. And so, I changed all of my plans and I signed up for this program. And, you know, it took place in LA, and I was living in Boston. So, I flew back every six weeks for almost a year, and this was pre-pandemic, so all the trainings were in person. And so, you know, my goal as a coach was actually really trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my own career. It was totally like self-focused to start with. I was really unclear whether the problems I was facing and the unhappiness that I was feeling could be solved by moving to another faculty position, or whether I would be happier potentially outside of academia, which is not something I had ever considered before. And I just really needed to figure that out. And I can say now that I’m confident that I will be happier outside of academia. I’m moving towards making that happen in the next year or so, as we can talk about. But you know, that’s essentially why I started down that path, and then I’ve stayed with it because it’s really, really fulfilling. It’s been extremely satisfying and a really interesting new challenge.

Finding a Niche as a Writing Coach

07:54 Emily: Life coaching is quite general, but I understand you have a focus within that broader category. So, what kind of coaching do you do?

08:02 Leslie: So, now I am a writing coach and I work specifically with women scholars who are publishing their first book. And so it’s become very narrow. But it took me a while to get to this point. So I’ve been coaching now for three or four years, and I started out by coaching, like, I think everyone does this, but coaching anyone who would be coached by me. So this could be my friends, my colleagues, their partners. I coached women. I coached men. I coached you know, grad students, postdocs, faculty members, just to get a sense of like just the coaching itself and how does this feel and let me develop my own own style as a coach in the way that you do when you become a teacher. It’s like, you don’t exactly know the first time you walk into a classroom, what your style is going to be, how you’re going to react to things.

08:50 Leslie: So, I just had to build up that skillset. And then over time, I came to realize that if I really wanted to make this a go, so move it from a side hustle into being like an actual career, I really did need to focus on something. Because general life coaching at this point is so common. You know, everyone’s a coach, and you don’t actually need to be certified to be a coach. And I think it’s great that there are so many folks out there that want to help other people. And there are a lot of people looking for help. But in order to have like a message that lands with people, it needed to be more about an issue that I could help them solve that was more tangible than like live a happier life. Because that is really the goal, I think, of all life coaching, but having the goal of like let’s work together to help you create a sustainable writing habit and create an empowered mindset and be able to take the reins of your career and become comfortable being visible and getting your ideas out into the world and changing the world with your ideas.

09:57 Leslie: All of that ended up being easier to package into something when it was around book writing, which I had done already myself. And therefore, I can say like, Hey, this is my experience. I suffered a lot during that because I was so alone. And let me help you not have to go through those things, make it faster and easier. And then in the process you can live a happier life.

10:23 Emily: I think that niche makes, well, first of all, nicheing down, I’m obviously a fan because I have the nicheiest niche ever <laugh> of, you know, grad students and postdocs and early-career PhDs talking about finances, in particular. So, I’m all in favor of nicheing down. And this is an obvious one that has a connection to your current career. So, if you do end up leaving your current position, or whatever, for this side hustle becoming the full-time thing, it’s a little side-step. It’s not like this massive upheaval in your entire career.

Balance and Boundaries

10:51 Emily: So, you mentioned that you, you know, started down the certification route in 2018 and you were experimenting at first, and then you found your niche. Currently, how are you balancing the demands of your full-time position with this side hustle that’s growing into maybe its own full-time thing?

11:07 Leslie: I have to say, it’s not easy. I am essentially working two jobs at the same time. And so, it was fine for a while when, well, so if I back up a little bit, I had to stop coaching for all of 2020, because I had a baby early in the year, and then COVID hit. And so, that time happened to coincide with my sabbatical, but basically, the whole year was eaten up by childcare. That’s what I did. And so I was not working on the business. It was kind of like, I was just thinking and processing. I was listening to podcasts like yours, and I was thinking, you know, what are the next viable steps after I returned to my job, which I did last September. And so, juggling them, you know, teaching and doing faculty work in the time of COVID is hard.

11:59 Leslie: It’s much harder, I would say, coming back in the middle of the pandemic than before. And my life changed completely in the middle of that too. And so, for now I am juggling two jobs, and it is really about you know, can I practice what I preach in terms of what I work with my clients on: setting really strong boundaries, figuring out the things that, you know, inspire me versus drain me, and trying to say no to everything that drains me, if possible. That still doesn’t compromise the quality of my students’ learning, or I still want to fulfill all of the obligations of my job in terms of being a good colleague. But there’s a lot of gray area in there that, if you’re not really strong with your boundaries, you end up taking on more and more and more to the point where you are completely burnt out.

12:56 Leslie: And so, if I did that and I had the coaching, then I would be burning out twice sort of <laugh>. So, I’ve just been like, you know, with my job, like these are the hours I’m working my job. These are the committees I’m on. I know exactly how much time all of those things are going to need. And then there are certain things that I’ve stopped doing because I realized that I didn’t enjoy them all along. So, things that I felt like I had to do, like for example, present at conferences. I attended every conference. I never even questioned it. Except for the fact that when I got there, I didn’t enjoy them that much, especially when there were like 4,000 people milling around. And so, things like that, I’m like, I don’t have to do those things if I don’t want to. So, it’s more about asking myself, like, what do I want to do? And then I can take on more coaching because that’s what I want to do. But it’s definitely not easy, especially when you’re juggling parenthood.

13:55 Emily: I think this is a theme that often comes up when people start a side hustle and/or become a parent, or just have some other thing going on in their life that’s very demanding of their time and energy that they want to be demanding of it, right? They want to devote their time and energy over to that side. It does force you to create better boundaries in your full-time job instead of just saying, “Oh, my entire self is being given over to this job and take, take, take take, take everything you possibly can.” So, it sounds really healthy, although it’s a lot of work, obviously for you, he parenthood and the essentially two full-time jobs. I can definitely see how, and this applies for people in positions other than yours as well, that being forced to create those boundaries is ultimately a really healthy thing to do in all of these different spheres of your life. Is that how you feel about it?

14:42 Leslie: I completely agree. And one thing I was going to add is that I have stopped getting involved in any politics. So, any of the departmental and institutional drama that I used to get really sucked into, out of choice, really, because I was curious and it’s like, what’s going on? And how do I help fix this? And I realize like some of these issues, they are so systemic. I’m not going to be able to change them, especially in the time that I have left. And so, that’s part of it too, is when it comes to, I think more about energy than about time. And my energy, I’m not spending on the things that I used to worry about as much. So, that’s really helpful when you do have actually less time to work with.

Setting Boundaries and Saying No

15:28 Emily: I think that’s probably a lesson we’ve all learned during the pandemic where, suddenly, your time is very, very differently allocated. Maybe you’re not commuting or other things like this, but the energy becomes the key thing of how much can I really devote to this, that, or the other? And I have to, you know, allocate my resources carefully. Do you mind giving an example or two of some like specific boundaries you have with your full-time job? Whether it’s time or energy or, I mean, you already listed I’ve dropped certain kinds of non-required commitments, but do you have any other examples of boundaries?

15:57 Leslie: Sure. I mean, at this point, my schedule books out pretty far in advance. And so, there’s only so much I’m going to take on in a day. So for example, when there are some committee assignments and they want to throw on a meeting in like the next day or like a few days from that, I just say, no. I already have commitments. Even if there’s nothing actually over that time, it was time that I was going to use to decompress or to commute or, right? So, instead of like being like, “Okay, well I’m commuting, let me throw on this call.” I realize, unless it’s like something that I’m in charge of and they really need my input, it’s okay for me to say no. Especially when there’s like five or six people on this committee. And so, these things happen all the time. And normally I would say yes, but I also feel like, you know, people have to respect that folks have a lot of things filling up their schedules, and sometimes you just can’t make it.

16:59 Emily: I think this is another common like pandemic lesson, right? Like you literally cannot schedule me in Zoom calls all day long every day because I will not get any work done, period. So just, you can’t have it happen. You have to block out. I don’t know if you’re actually using time blocking, but you have to block out time in your schedule for these other things that have to fit into your life. So, I love that example.

Commercial

17:20 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. If you are a fan of this podcast, I invite you to check out the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community. The Community is for PhDs and people pursuing PhDs who want to take charge of their personal finances 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, including my recent set of Wealthy PhD Workshops. There is also a discussion forum, monthly live calls with me, and progress journaling for financial goals. Basically, the Community exists to help you reach your financial goals, whatever they are. Go to PFforPhDs.community to find out more. I can’t wait to help propel you to financial success! Now back to the interview.

Financial Side of Having a Coaching Business

18:25 Emily: Let’s turn to the financial side of having this business. How are you using, if you are, the income that you’re generating from it?

18:34 Leslie: Yeah. So, let’s see. I think last year I was coaching only from about May to December because that’s when we got childcare. In that time, I earned about $40,000 from coaching, and all of that went right back into the business. All of it. So, the big things were paying for a business coach who I worked with for half a year to develop an entire huge plan for how I was going to turn this into a full-time sustainable career. Let’s see, I hired a website designer to go along with it. Professional photoshoot. I was also part of a 12-month-long, let’s see, business kind of development program that was sort of like a coaching program. So, that took a chunk. And then all the costs that go along with starting and maintaining a podcast. So, I’ve been like starting my own podcast that hasn’t launched yet.

19:35 Leslie: So, there was a whole financial side of that as well as like the time that it takes to learn all of those skills. So, pretty much everything is back into the business. And you know, somewhere, I heard that advice of, you know, the first $75K of your coaching business should go back into the business. And I’m pretty much kind of following that. But I do think that that investment, when I was ready to make it, because it wasn’t at the very beginning, it was once I felt like, “Okay, I do know what I want to do with this, but I need help doing that,” that was a really good time for me to invest.

20:11 Emily: And I think this points out one of the real advantages of launching a business while maintaining your full-time position. Because your personal budget does not, if you want to take some of that money home into your personal budget, you have the option to, but if you don’t and like you, you want to reinvest essentially 100% of it, you have that flexibility in your personal finances to be able to, you know, the business is funding itself at the beginning and you don’t need to draw a salary from it right away. I have to say, I took completely the opposite approach when I started my business of like, this is my income and I am very reticent to spend any money like on the business. And that’s something I’ve had to unlearn over these years. It’s something I’ve had to like pry out of my brain, this like frugal nature. It is very different when you’re running a business versus running your own household how you choose to manage the finances. So, I’m really interested, you know, to hear about your journey initially. Now you mentioned that was for 2021. What is 2022 shaping up to look like for the financials? Like are you going to start taking any of that income home?

21:13 Leslie: I would say I pretty much have started. Yeah, I’m probably projecting that I would make around 65 to 80 this year. I am going to take a leave of absence this fall. So I won’t have, you know, I’ll have half of my faculty income. And so, basically, I have been slowly easing my way out. I wanted to get to a point where I felt like the risk did not feel like such a huge risk anymore. Like, I had proven to myself that I had a sustainable, profitable business. And also that I wouldn’t have regrets in leaving tenure and leaving, really a job that a lot of people would die to have. And I fully, fully recognize the privilege that I have, you know, come into through my entire career. And that said, I feel still very drawn to having even more flexibility and having even more autonomy and freedom and all of the things that I value so much about academia, I can have even more of once I’m running my own business. But I had to get to a point where I felt confident enough that I could do this. It’s not going to affect my family’s, you know, wellbeing in any way. And so, that’s why it’s taken me a few years.

Making a Final Decision Whether to Leave Academia

22:41 Emily: I really think that, given the particular job that you have, the risk is mostly not financial. It’s mostly the I’m going to leave this position and it’s, I don’t know what you put your personal likelihood on it, but the ethos is you can never get another job like this again, right? Once you’ve gotten the job, you can’t leave the job. And you can tell me if you think that’s actually going to be true for you, if you ever decide to change your mind again. But I’m curious about how you see this plan like playing out, if you’re comfortable discussing it. You’re planning on going on a leave of absence. You mentioned that’ll be at half-salary, so still a little more runway being provided to you. That’s great. At what point will you decide, okay, I am going to go back to this academic job full-time, or Nope, I’m officially out and I’m done and I’m a coach now?

23:29 Leslie: I need to decide by the end of this year.

23:33 Emily: Okay. So you have basically, like the fall semester, essentially, is your leave of absence.

23:36 Leslie: Mm-Hmm <Affirmative> I think that would be the fairest to my department as well. I don’t want leave them in the lurch. And it’s also not even about my position anymore. It’s more, I wanted to leave when I knew that what I was leaving for was much more compelling to me than trying to escape where I was at. It took me a while to get to that place, but now I’m definitely feeling that, but I’m still in the job. So, I haven’t had that chance yet to a hundred percent devote myself to this. So that’ll start in May when my classes are over. And then I can really like test it out, like, you know, fly the coop and just see what kind of happens, and still give myself some time to make a decision.

24:24 Emily: That is so fantastic. I mean, I’m sure it’s based on, you know, your particular position in academia, but I would say that academia generally, once you get to your level does provide these opportunities for flexibility in a way that other kinds of jobs wouldn’t, right? You just have to quit the job. Like that’s it, there’s no leave of absence. There’s no negotiating, you’re done with the job. And I love what you said about, you know, wanting to make sure that what you’re going to is more compelling than just merely the feeling of, I need to escape where I am right now. Because that’s something that comes up in the FIRE movement, the Financial Independence and Early Retirement movement. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it in the personal finance space.

25:01 Leslie: Mm-Hmm <Affirmative> Yeah, a little bit.

Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE Movement)

25:03 Emily: So, for the listener, the idea is, you know, especially for the retire early aspect of FIRE, this would be retiring very early, like when you’re 30 or 40 or 50, much, much sooner than the typical retirement age. And a lot of people who join this movement feel very fueled by getting out of their current job. And they think that the way out is to retire early. To just, I’m going to generate this big enough nest egg to give me financial freedom, and then I never have to work this job again. But now that there’s been, I don’t know, 10 or 20 years of early retirees, the wisdom coming back from them is don’t make it about the current job, find a job that you love and it’s maybe worth it to stay a few years longer. Maybe if you took a pay cut or something, but find work that’s compelling to you. You can still pursue the early retirement, but don’t make it about escaping from your current reality. Find a job along the meantime that’s a little bit more fulfilling than the one that, you know, you’re trying to escape from. So, I really love that you pointed that out and that you’re just taking such slow, gradual like deliberate steps toward this, because it is a big deal to leave this kind of a job.

26:03 Leslie: It’s a big deal emotionally, I think, for academics to leave academia, and to still, I’m fortunate to be in a position where it’s a choice, where I don’t feel forced out. And that’s extremely empowering. But also that’s work that I had to do in my own mind around feeling that it was a choice and feeling like I had other options and creating other options, too. So, I think that there’s a lot of grieving that goes along with giving up something that you have invested decades of your life into, your identity is fully intertwined, with your social networks are probably very much dependent on, and especially, you know, we, in our PhD programs, we’re socialized into thinking that the tenure-track position is the way. Like, that’s your way to happiness. And so, that’s why I feel like I did all of the things that I wanted to do.

27:02 Leslie: You know, publishing and getting a job and then getting tenure. I did all of these things so that I could know for myself, like, are these the things that will actually make me happy? And realizing, not so much. It didn’t feel that different. Like once these things happened, like I’m glad I did them. Glad for the experience. And then I also realized that if I really ground myself in my core values, like those weren’t really the things in the first place that I was really inspired by. So, you know, now I’m in a position where I can make a new choice. And that feels really scary. And I think getting used to that fear and still moving forward anyway, is a big part of the work.

27:47 Emily: I think this is such an important message for the listeners to hear if they are still somewhere on this academic track. Grad school, postdoc, first position, you know, as an assistant professor, et cetera, et cetera. It’s okay to reevaluate. You don’t have to accept the messages that academia tells you that this is the perfect position that everybody wants and everybody’s going for. It’s okay to evaluate your own self and figure out anywhere along the way, if something else will be more fulfilling for you. And like you, they can do this slowly and gradually and make sure that it’s the right decision. That’s okay. Or if it’s not your personality, you can do it abruptly, too. Nothing wrong with that.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

28:26 Emily: This has been such a wonderful conversation, Leslie. I’m sure there are going to be some people who want to follow up with you. Can you tell us where the listeners can find you?

28:33 Leslie: Yes. So my business is called Your Words Unleashed, and that is my website. So YourWordsUnleashed.com, and my podcast has the same name.

28:43 Emily: Perfect. And we’ll end with the last question that I ask of all my guests, which is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And this can be something that we touched on during the interview, or it could be something completely new.

28:57 Leslie: So, great. I have a couple of suggestions. So, the first thing, people probably hear this all the time, but in terms of tangible things that I’m really glad I did was I hired a financial advisor right when I got my job. And so, it has been this major mental relief to have someone else on my team who just knows a lot more than I do <laugh> about finances and can give me advice or even, you know, sometimes just tell me what to do. It took this huge mental load off of me. So, when I first hired my advisor, her name is Inga Timmerman and she is actually an academic herself. And she specializes in working with academics. So that was important for me. But when I hired her, you know, I was 35, I was single, I had just moved to Boston.

29:47 Leslie: I had almost no savings. I was really afraid to confront my financial future. I had just been sort of ignoring it until I got a job. And so, you know, we looked at my finances together. So, it made it less scary. Rearranged some investments, increased my retirement contributions, and once we did that, like I knew that my financial future was safe. And so, that in itself is like worth every penny. And she’s also helped me figure out all the next steps. So, in the time that I’ve worked with her, I got married, I had a child, she’s helped me plan out next steps with my business. And so, it’s like having, she’s like a friend who just knows a huge amount about what I should do with my finances. And she understands academia. And so, that has been one really great thing. So, hiring a financial advisor.

30:40 Leslie: The other thing I would say is a bit more abstract, and it comes out of my coaching work. And so, I really encourage people to sit down, reflect, and identify your top five core values. And so, these are qualities that make you feel inspired and motivated, and if they’re not present in your life or you’re not sort of living into them, then something feels off to you. And so, you know, my advice is, you know, make sure your career decisions are always in line with these values. And this is the first exercise I do with all of my clients. And people are always surprised at what comes up as their core values. I think oftentimes we think we know what they are, and then you ask people really what they are. And they have like 40 things. It’s not really like the corest of the core values.

31:32 Leslie: And so, I would consider this to be financial advice because our career decisions are ultimately financial decisions. And having core values as your guide means that you have an internal compass and a way to make decisions that is separate from externally imposed criteria of success that is given to us by academic culture, or by our advisors or, you know, people we see like succeeding in all these ways that are prescribed, right? And we feel like we need to be that way in order to be successful. And so, you know, I think when you’re really grounded in your values, you can feel like you’re choosing your own path rather than feeling like you’re limited to doing only one type of work in one type of setting. And so, really, I just feel like for me, like always being acquainted with my values has let me see other possible avenues.

32:33 Leslie: You know, where I have been able to use my skillset, do work that I care about very deeply while also making a better living <laugh> and being happier, you know, than if I was to stay where I was. And so, I say all of this because I’ve gone through a huge mental and emotional transition to get to this point, and I’ve come through it knowing that I can actually become more fulfilled and more successful running my own business. And that is not something I ever would’ve thought, you know, even five years ago, let alone when I started this journey when I was 24. So, that’s basically financial advice as well as some coaching advice.

33:19 Emily: It’s excellent. And it’s the foundation of financial planning, financial considerations, should be, as you just mentioned, identification of your core values. And it’s something that gets overlooked. I overlook it quite a bit as well because it’s not very like tactical. It’s not like use this app or, you know, something really that you can put your hands around like that, but it’s something that has to be done. It’s the baseline work that you really need to work through to, as you said, have a fulfilled life. And career and finances are very closely tied together in this respect. But you can have, and once you identify those core values, you can see how they play out in your career. You can adjust your career if necessary. You can see how they play out in your finances. And of course, just your adjust your finances to better, you know, be in alignment with those. Because then you’ll really feel like you’re using your money optimally and not, you know, wasting it here or there and not getting value from those dollars.

34:14 Leslie: Yeah. And I think what’s really interesting is that, for so many of my clients, their core values are things like fun and peace <laugh>, calm, self-care. And they’re like, how does that work into work? And it’s like, actually, we can find ways to pull those qualities into your work life so that you can feel, if you’re prioritizing those things, then you’re going to eliminate some things, you’re going to increase other things. And then hopefully be happier and more financially successful along the way, right? It’s always just about like, because you’re attuned to yourself.

34:51 Emily: I have a feeling that the values that you just mentioned, you have at least one of those based on the boundaries that you have mentioned earlier, setting with your work. Because I can see how those boundaries have created that in your own work life. Well, Leslie it has been such a pleasure to speak with you. I really hope the listeners got a ton out of this episode, because I know that I have. It was great to meet you and thank you so much for coming on the podcast!

35:12 Leslie: Thank you so much for having me! It’s been a lot of fun.

Outtro

35:20 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? I have collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are 3 ways you can help it grow: 1. Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. 2. Share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email list-serv, or as a link from your website. 3. 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 increasing cash flow. I also license pre-recorded workshops on taxes. 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 by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

How Grad School Rewired This Student’s Brain for Financial Success

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In this episode, Emily interviews Elise Glickert, a fifth-year PhD student in organic chemistry at the University at Buffalo. Elise got married in the summer between finishing undergrad and starting grad school. Between their student loans and car loan, Elise and her husband were in about $85,000 of debt. With two irregular incomes, they quickly realized they had to change something to do more than just get by with their finances, and they implemented a zero-based budget. Elise compares long-term debt repayment with the process of completing a PhD—both require a long-term mindset, creativity, discipline, and intentionality. Elise and her husband are now debt-free, planning their next steps with their finances, and expecting a baby.

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Teaser

00:00 Elise: Even with that, I think that was helpful. Just even for both of us to see, “Man, like, it is kind of cool how, like, you know, you can increase income just by like approaching or working towards something from a different angle.” And again, I think just like when you’re working on research projects, right? Sometimes you need like a different angle or different thought process to kind of come in and be like, “Oh, cool. Actually, I could approach this problem, look to solve this problem from this angle, instead of just this way.”

Introduction

00:30 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 11, Episode 9, and today my guest is Elise Glickert, a fifth-year PhD student in organic chemistry at the University at Buffalo. Elise got married in the summer between finishing undergrad and starting grad school. Between their student loans and car loan, Elise and her husband were in about $85,000 of debt. With two irregular incomes, they quickly realized they had to change something to do more than just get by with their finances, and they implemented a zero-based budget. Elise compares long-term debt repayment with the process of completing a PhD—both require a long-term mindset, creativity, discipline, and intentionality. Elise and her husband are now debt-free, planning their next steps with their finances, and expecting a baby.

01:30 Emily: Speaking of the transition from undergrad into grad school or the working world into grad school, I am giving away an incredible resource for rising graduate students later this week! The resource is a live webinar on the financial actions that people who will matriculate into graduate school in the coming months need to take right now. It’s really, really practical. We are covering why and how to right-size your housing and transportation expenses, budget and save up for your start-up costs, and investigate your paychecks prior to receiving the first one. I’m really looking forward to sharing this material with you and hearing your questions and concerns. If you are headed to graduate school in the fall, you can register for the webinar at PFforPhDs.com/rising/. If you’re already in or past graduate school but wish someone had sat you down to warn you about the financial pitfalls in your path to the PhD, please share the registration page with the rising graduate students in your life. Again, the URL to register for the free, live webinar on Thursday, April 28, 2022 is PFforPhDs.com/rising/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Elise Glickert.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:59 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today Elise Glickert. She is a fifth-year PhD student at the University of Buffalo, and we are going to discuss her financial journey, along with her husband, from when she started grad school to this year, when she’s nearly done. And it has been quite a journey. So, I’m very excited to talk about Elise. Elise, will you please introduce yourself a little bit for there for the audience?

03:20 Elise: Yeah, so what’s up everyone? Yeah, just like Emily was saying I’m Elise and a fifth-year PhD student at University of Buffalo. I do organic chemistry research. So that’s kind of what I’m working on right now, synthesizing different compounds. And then primarily as well, the hope is with that to ultimately go on maybe into like academia, do some teaching or some like business type stuff. Especially like I tutor now, we’ll probably talk a little bit more about that with like kind of like side businesses and side hustles as well and stuff, so, yeah, it’s exciting.

Finances at the Beginning of Grad School

03:57 Emily: Okay. Sounds great! Let me know, let’s kind of take it back to the beginning of graduate school. I understand you got married right around that time as well.

04:05 Elise: Yes. Yeah.

04:06 Emily: So, what was going on with your finances and also, you know, your understanding of finances or your outlook on finances at that time?

04:13 Elise: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, so my husband and I, we got married in May of 2017, and we actually got married the day after we graduated, which I will say made finals week very, very stressful. Very, very stressful. Yeah. And so, you know, because it’s like you still have all your tests and everything and then also double-checking, like, Hey, is the DJ good? Is the catering, all this stuff. But it was also a lot of fun because we went to a small college in Ohio, and so it was cool getting to you know, just like kind of have like a final like celebration per se with all of our friends and everything. So that was really awesome. And then after that, we actually headed out to Buffalo. One of the reasons I even chose Buffalo or UB was because at the time when we had started talking about like getting married and stuff I didn’t really care where we lived at all.

05:03 Elise: My family’s originally from Jacksonville, Florida, and my husband has a lot of family in New York. We had some friends in like this New York area as well. And so yeah, so UB was one of the places I applied to that accepted me. And then, yeah, basically after that got married, graduated honeymooned, and then headed out to Buffalo and I started doing some TAing during the summer, and then my husband was also working in retail at like a DICK’s Sporting Goods. So, yeah, so that’s kind of how we started with that. And then in regards to finances, I will say we are complete polar opposites. I’m a huge spender. One of the like embarrassing stories I share is so like my senior year, so entering my senior year of college, I had this goal. I have no idea why, it’s not even really that great of a goal, honestly, to just like blow a thousand dollars in a day. And I was a college student.

05:54 Elise: I didn’t, I mean, it was bad. But anyway, so I did that, and then I hadn’t actually read my like student bill correctly, so I didn’t even have enough money. So I blew the thousand, and then like three days later went into the admissions office and was like, “Hey, like I, is there any way I can get more money? Like I don’t have.” It was so bad. So very, very, yeah, very irresponsible, I would say, was more of my mindset. And then my husband is the complete opposite. Absolutely hates spending money whatsoever. So yes. Yeah. That’s kind of like, again, my financial background there. Yeah, I would say definitely no financial literacy whatsoever. It was just kind of like, yeah, you know, as long as the bank account’s not zero, enjoy spending.

Combined Debts and Incomes

06:38 Emily: Got it. And what about your like net worth or your combined net worth at that time? Did you all have debts? Did you have assets coming out of college?

06:46 Elise: Yeah. Yeah. So we both had student loans coming out of college. And so I had around like $30,000 or so, and then my husband had around like $46,000. My loans then went in deferment. But for his, right, we were then like six months later began making those payments. And then we also in like the fall, so like fall of 2017, we then also financed a car. And with that again, I will say I’m more so kind led this as a spender, but again, something I would recommend not doing. I remember we both walked into the dealership and I like told the dealer who was there, like the salesman. I was like, “Hey, yeah. So, you know, we’re looking for a car, our budget is $15,000, but we can go up if needed.” So again, not the best, really just not the best lines to use there. So as I said, yeah, I was super yeah, not super intentional with money or anything, so yeah.

07:46 Emily: Okay. Let me know about your incomes as well at that point. So like, what was your stipend when you started grad school? And what was your husband earning?

07:53 Elise: Yes. Yes. So for me, it started out around like basically $26,000 a year, like $26,300. And usually, that would be split up into like $23,000 the full like semester, both semesters, and then $3000 during the summer. So, like $3,200 during the summer.

08:13 Emily: Interesting. So you would have to prepare a little, I mean, in theory, you could prepare a little bit through savings to supplement over the summer, but I’m not thinking that was something that you were trying to do at that point.

08:25 Elise: No, definitely not. Yes. I remember even when we saw this you know, you’re like talking with other grad students, you see the forms and stuff. And yeah, I remember where both of us, as I said, since we were kind of more like opposite-minded, there kind of started to be very much a “Man, something’s going to need to change. Otherwise, this is going to be kind of disastrous.” Right? And even, I know like one of the things that can be like one of the leading causes of divorce, right, is like financial issues. And we didn’t want to have that. So, yeah. Definitely again, that kind of was what even really started, I would say especially for both of us, a passion for finance was kind of realizing, “Man, we are going to, just like what you’re saying, we’re going to have to start planning.”

09:08 Elise: Because like my income’s a little bit irregular. And then as I said, at the time he was working at DICK’s and so that was I think that like first semester or whatnot, that summer again making like $15,000 or whatnot. Or like 12 to $15,000. And then again, that was kind of irregular because he was working at DICK’s part-time and then also had like an internship as well. So, it again was like part-time. So not, yeah, we weren’t bringing in a ton of money. I think those first six months’ gross was maybe like $25,000 or so. And again it was all irregular, always irregular paychecks.

Money Mindset and Strategies in Grad School

09:52 Emily: Yeah. So let’s kind of talk through, you know, we have a good picture of the start. So let’s talk through like how those next few years went, and what you were learning. And maybe what strategies or mindsets you started to use along the way. Because you know, we’ll get to what the current picture is, and it’s a lot rosier than, you know, what the start was. So like let’s talk about that evolution.

10:13 Elise: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So, I would say the big thing for us was kind of a desire to make sure we were on the same page. Because I will say, when we did first get married, there weren’t I guess like a lot of like financial stressors per se, it was just, everything was very disorganized. But we weren’t having like I will say we were sort of blessed. We didn’t have like any huge thing that kind of like came up where it was like, oh no, it was just, it was like, man, we are, you know, we’re little just organized and stuff, but Hey, you know, it’s good, life’s good. Like you know, I’m doing school he’s working. And then again, I would say is more so because our paychecks were so irregular, it was kind of like a “Man, we’re going to need to be a little bit more intentional with this.”

11:00 Elise: And so that was when I started doing a little bit more research into just personal finances of like, “Hey, you know, how should we like set up a budget?” You know, what’s the best way to do that. And we ended up finding like a zero base budgeting type method. And so with doing that, it’s kind of where you’re like setting up, Hey, at the beginning of the month, this is how much we’re going to spend, which was really helpful for us, especially because of, again, that irregularity. We were then able to be like, okay, well this is for sure, you know, like our expenses. And then you know, even though the incomes are irregular, this is how we can use this excess. And then we also decided that it was like, “Hey, let’s also look to start having some financial goals together.”

11:48 Elise: I would say we both do love setting goals and achieving them together. So it was also a lot of fun kind of setting like one of them was, “Hey, let’s become debt-free.” So again, let’s be intentional with that zero-based budgeting of how can we pay off our debt? And then also like, you know, getting savings account set up, stuff like that. So I would say, but the big start with that shift was really kind of like those again, how irregular the incomes were and kind of almost seeing, “Man, if we’re not intentional about this, sure, it’s fine now. But like five years down the road, this would be just disastrous, right?” It would not, because again, if anything comes up, like it’s going to be really, really bad because we’re just not keeping track of everything thing well.

Debt Repayment Goal

12:34 Emily: I’d love to talk more about the debt repayment goal. And so, you mentioned that you both had student loans, but yours were in deferment. And you had the car loan. And so, did you use any particular like methodology? Or like how did you decide what to tackle first or how much to pay? How did all that work?

12:55 Elise: Yeah, so I will say one of the big things. So we really liked Ramsey Solutions. That was again, when I was doing like the basic Google search, right, for personal finance. I mean one of the top things that came out, and they talk about doing like the debt snowball method, paying off just smallest debt. And it was fun to feel like all of those wins with things. And then, this is interesting because like I would say at the same time as all this is happening, right? I’m also like progressing in my program as a grad student, and it was interesting, I guess kind of the similarities of, I really liked the focus that like they kind of talked about of like delaying gratification. And obviously, I mean that’s a hundred percent grad school, right?

13:40 Elise: You’re constantly delaying gratification. So, I guess as my brain was already being rewired to some degree of going from, I would say like my senior year where it’s just way more you know, kind of like, “Hey, whatever feels good right now. Like let’s just do it” to a “Man, okay. Let’s put you know, kind of submit to a process.” You know, get that like I’m delaying a pleasure, right? And then again, that intentionality. I would say that was kind of the big methodologies, but I’m not going to lie. I don’t actually know if I wasn’t in grad school, like at the same time as we were doing this, that might have been honestly a little bit, maybe too much of a rewiring all at once. But it was cool because you know, at the same time I’m running experiments and I’m learning, “Hey, this is what happens when this doesn’t work.”

14:25 Elise: Then I have to come back in, you know, or “Man, this is going to be like a five to six-year journey.” You know, like my brain’s already getting used to longer journeys than just, “Oh man, I can’t like pay off all the debt in like three months. So what’s the point, you know? So it’s just interesting all the similarities there that I would say really helped both of us, especially as we were going about achieving those goals. But the big one was yeah, just paying off smallest to largest and kind of, for us, it was realizing, “Hey, this is not going to be something that we finish in a year.” But again, it’s like grad school also, right? It isn’t something that you finish in a year. So, it was difficult, but at the same time, I don’t know, like obtaining a PhD is difficult. So I think it was nice to have like those similarities.

15:14 Emily: I love that you brought up this point because this is actually something that I bring up at the beginning of one of my seminars, which is The Graduate Student and Postdoc’s Guide to Personal Finance. And so, what I say because I know that people who attend these seminars are not necessarily, you know, like you are now like, are a super podcast listener would be like, oh, I’m super interested in personal finance. Like yeah, I’m going to really dive in. You know, they may just be like casually like, oh, I probably should learn something about money. So I’m going to show up at the seminar. So what I do to kind of like frame this is like say, you as a graduate student or postdoc, you have already made the decision to commit to this, you know, as you said, five-ish year, at least maybe 10 years, training period to set yourself up for this wonderful successful career at, you know, the start of that.

15:57 Emily: And you making the decision to do that gives you certain like personality, characteristics, like going through it, like you were saying like forward-thinking, planning ahead, committing to a process. And that, I say, if you take this sort of the personality you’re developing by being a graduate student, by being a postdoc and you translate it over to the financial side of your life, you are going to be successful. Because it does take long-term thinking. It does take delayed gratification. It does, you have to think about it as an investment in your future, whether it’s debt repayment, saving, investing, whatever it is, it’s all setting you up for an easier time in the future than you’re necessarily having right now. So, I really love that you, you know, clearly saw yourself going through this process as well. Brilliant.

Student Loans and Savings

16:39 Emily: Well, I want to ask though about, you know, regarding the debt snowball, which is a great method to use, how did you treat your student loans in there? Because they were in deferment. So, they’re a little bit different than the other types of debt.

16:49 Elise: Yes. A hundred percent. So I will say with that I should say, I guess maybe like a caveat should be, we use like a debt snowball hybrid <laugh> because yeah. So, because with the deferment, right? You did have the 0% interest and yeah, basically, the way we did it was, which, I mean, we just kind of thought of all of our debts as together, I will say. But I guess if you technically split them up, we paid off like my husband’s loans first that were broken off into the like, you know, $3000, $1000, $2,000 chunks. And then did the car, and then did like the student loans that I had. But technically the student loans that I had were higher than like our car.

17:35 Emily: So, sort of a combined avalanche snowball method. Because of the 0% due to the subsidy and deferment and so forth.

17:42 Elise: Mm-Hmm <affirmative> yes.

17:44 Emily: Gotcha. And you mentioned also earlier savings. So, how were you thinking about cash savings versus this big debt payoff goal? Like how much cash did you decide to keep on hand and for what purposes? How did you think through that?

17:57 Elise: Yes. So I will say we did use where for us, we kept it a thousand dollars. I will say though, also we did keep our expenses very, very low. And we were like pretty much every month, again, once we started being intentional and doing that zero-based budget, we had usually like $2000, $3000 a month or again, depending on the year. And as I said, our incomes were irregular. But yeah, we had the $2,000, $3,000 a month where like, if something did come up, we would just take like a pause on the debt payment. But we always had with like an emergency fund of, as I said, a thousand dollars. Again, just in case like because when we were looking at kind of like our lives, it was like, “Hey, you know, the like worst thing that could happen would not exceed really like a thousand dollars, honestly.”

18:53 Elise: Because the biggest thing for us would’ve just been the car repairs, and we actually only had, and still have, one car. So, it also kind of worked out that way. And yeah, most of our expenses I will say, and even now, are like under $2,000 a month. So it also makes it again a little bit easier to with that intentionality of okay, cool. Well, you know, I always have this amount of cash flow. And we did have later on like in our marriage, whatnot and in our journey where technically, I will say, which is bad on my part, like I have actually totaled like two cars. So, when that happened, like we did have to press pause on it and we then like saving up money. And so instead of it just going to the debt again, like $2000 or again, depending on how the income varied, it would go into savings or towards yeah getting a car.

19:51 Emily: I also skated through graduate school with a thousand dollars in a designated emergency fund savings account. Because I mean the way that you described it was also sort of similar for my husband, me, like we were renters, we only had one car, not a whole lot of financial responsibilities at that time of life. Now I did have other savings in other, like I’m really big into targeted savings accounts. I had other cash in other places that were like designated for car repairs or like other purposes. So, it wasn’t like that was our only cash on hand, but I like what you said, because you know, you had the thousand dollars in savings, but every month, if something came up, you had a thousand, $2,000, you could devote to that new thing that popped up because you were so, you were cash flowing so much debt, you know, above the minimum payments every single month. So I definitely, I don’t know how much I’d recommend it, but I definitely see how you could, you know, get by with that. Were there any other like strategies or mindsets or anything that you wanted to share from, you know, that time in graduate school?

Intentionality

20:49 Elise: Yeah. I think honestly the big thing is just kind of what we’ve been talking about. Just like the intentionality. Like, I don’t know, even, I feel like just kind of when you’re choosing a lifestyle. Again, that’s another thing that I think for us going straight from like college to grad school and everything we didn’t do a lot of like the lifestyle creep. And I will say a lot of that maybe I should probably should credit as well to like my husband, because as I said, he’s way more like frugal than I am, but it is really nice, I will say. And again, this is kind of similar thinking to like grad school, it’s like once you’re in a process, it kind of becomes the norm, you know, and you don’t even think about it. So even for both us, like when people are like, “Oh man, you guys don’t,” you know, there would be times where people would say like, “You don’t have two cars?” And it’s like, well, you know, yeah, we have one, but actually we’re like good <laugh>, you know, but it becomes the norm.

21:37 Elise: Or same with when I’m talking about like grad school to people, right? And you know, sometimes you get the whole like, “Wait, you mean you don’t just work like a nine to five in grad school?” And it’s like, no, no, but it’s like, that’s the norm for me. You know what I mean? So again, once you’re in these, I think it’s just the same with personal finance. Like you really do get to set and determine, to some degree, you know, “Hey, this is the lifestyle I’m going to have.” And, I would also say with that, it also becomes harder if you like set a norm that’s maybe a little bit higher that you can’t maintain. Because then you, again, you have to like almost rewire your brain, which is one of the huge benefits, again as I was saying, I think of like being in the PhD program and also the personal finance journey. Because there are just so many similarities that can really, really assist you.

22:24 Emily: I agree.

Commercial

22:27 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. If you are a fan of this podcast, I invite you to check out the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community. The Community is for PhDs and people pursuing PhDs who want to take charge of their personal finances 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, including my recent set of Wealthy PhD Workshops. There is also a discussion forum, monthly live calls with me, and progress journaling for financial goals. Basically, the community exists to help you reach your financial goals, whatever they are. Go to pfforphds.community to find out more. I can’t wait to help propel you to financial success! Now back to the interview.

Supplementing Your Stipend

23:33 Emily: You mentioned earlier that you were tutoring. Like what was your, how did you supplement your stipend? I guess I’ll put it that way, during grad school.

23:41 Elise: Yeah, no, that’s awesome. Yes. So I will say, yeah, so for us, again, as we were kind of on like our debt repayment journey. You know, there kind of starts as you’re like going, going, going, it’s like, “Man, like what, are there any other things I can do to like speed up the process?” Again, similar with like grad school, right? Sometimes you might have weeks where it’s like, “Man, I actually, yeah, I’m going to put in more time. Or okay, I’m going to not do this because I want to, you know, I’m so close. I just man, just got to push through.” And so that was kind of how that started. And then I was looking for different like side businesses or side hustles and things to do. And during the pandemic, actually we did a little bit of like DoorDash, you know, just because you’re like in your car and just dropping off.

24:22 Elise: I mean, it was great, you know. You just pick up the food, drop off the food, and then like wave to the person from your car or whatnot. So super safe and everything. And so doing that, it was kind of like, “Oh this is cool. Like we can supplement income, you know, doing this.” And then also, as I said, our incomes have always been very irregular. And my husband, after working in the retail then went into more of like sales, which was still making around like a 30, 35 or again, depending, because it’s very irregular. But even with that, I think that was helpful. Just even for both of us to see, “Man, like it is kind of cool how like, you know, you can increase income just by like approaching or working towards something from a different angle.”

25:06 Elise: And again, I think just like when you’re working on research projects, right? Sometimes you need like a different angle or a different thought process to kind of come in and be like, “Oh cool. Actually I could approach this problem, look to solve this problem from this angle instead of just this way.” And then with that, so then it was like, man, I’m doing all this stuff with organic chemistry. And so, what would be a good like side hustle I could do that’s more related to organic chemistry? Because obviously DoorDash is not really related to organic chemistry at all. And I had always tutored like a little bit, but it was more so like I would help out like you know, like tutor some like high schoolers at like church or whatnot. Or there’d be someone who would recommend like, “Hey, can you help this student?” I’d be like, “Yeah, sure.” But I use a platform called Wyzant.

Wyzant Tutoring Income

25:50 Elise: And so I started doing that last year actually. And it was awesome. It was I think really, really cool just because I loved it, because I loved being able to teach. I love being able to talk and like communicate with students and explain concepts. And it was great too, because it’s like an online platform, and I feel like you know, obviously everyone has different like opinions and stuff about online learning, but I think a lot of people have really gotten used to it as well. And so it’s also really cool. Because this platform’s just great. And the students like they’re great, you know, it’s just awesome. Being able to like teach and communicate again that one-on-one. Yeah, so it’s just been really, really awesome and it’s been great too. Because then I get to do like organic chemistry on the side, which is also what I’m doing in lab. So I think that’s been really awesome.

26:35 Emily: Another tie-in with what I teach in many different venues, which is if you can somehow employ the specialty that you’re developing in graduate school in some other arena, you’re probably going to get paid like at a better rate than, well, one staying inside academia, like, you know, maybe tutoring at your university, and also, or just trying something totally different that doesn’t use that skillset, like you were saying with DoorDash.

27:00 Elise: A hundred percent.

27:00 Emily: Can I ask what your like pay rate or how much you’re earning like monthly is from Wyzant?

27:05 Elise: Yes. Yes. So in general, which, I will say I started it last year in June, so it wasn’t actually a huge part honestly, even of like our like debt-free journey per se. But yeah, I make on average around like a thousand to 1200 a month from it. And then I charge with it like $50 an hour for the tutoring. And usually it’s like at the college level. And then there’s a couple of students in high school that I tutor as well. But yeah, it’s awesome because again and just like what you were saying, and even like some of like the articles and things that you have posted as well, right? It’s also nice because, to some degree, right? Especially like you’re becoming like an expert, you know, in a field.

27:53 Elise: And so, it’s very, very helpful for me honestly just continuing to man, make sure I’m really communicating well. And then also it is great when, you know, they can both kind of coincide. Because like I do, you know, organic chemistry at work and I can come home in the evenings, you know, for like a couple hours or so, or during the weekends for a couple hours. And yeah, it’s really, really nice. And then, I will say, it does slow down a little bit like in January and then December as well. Just because, you know, not as many students are taking classes and stuff during those times, but yeah. So far it’s been really, really great. And I’ve really been yeah, enjoying just the one-on-one tutoring and mentoring with students.

Current Financial Situation

28:35 Emily: Yeah. That’s a great pay rate. That’s a great addition to your budget. I mean, you know, you’re on the order of magnitude of like a grad student paycheck. I mean, you’re not quite there, but it’s the same, you know, you’re in the neighborhood. So, that’s awesome. Give us an update then on how, like what your finances are like right now. You know, we went over at the beginning of graduate school, you know, the various debts that you had. What do your finances look like now? We’re recording this in January, 2022.

29:00 Elise: Yes. Yes. So now yeah, we’re a hundred percent debt-free. So got rid of all of that, the $85,500. And as I said, that was a process, right? The 47 months paying that off. But again, like grad school’s a process too. So, you know, I think that’s one of the cool things about processes is like all the stuff you can learn about yourself in them. And then right now we’re working on increasing just like our emergency fund. So, as we were talking about like a thousand, you know, it’s fine for like, in my opinion, it’s fine for a starter emergency fund. Really, I would not recommend, you know, spending the rest of your life with a $1,000 emergency fund and especially you know, we have a baby coming, so that’s really, that of course changes things where it’s like, yeah, a thousand dollars isn’t, you know, we don’t want to have that for like 20 years.

29:47 Elise: But yeah, so we’re looking to increase that right now to, which more would be like four to six months for us, which is like $10,000, just to have that nice and set up. And that should be set up in like early March or whatnot is when we should have that. And then right now, after that, we’re also looking to, we’re going to start investing, so we’re going to max out two Roth IRAs. So just kind of again, which that’s a way longer process, you know, but just getting that money saved up for retirement. And I think for that, we’ll probably I’ll be using Fidelity and then my husband as well, who set his up either with Fidelity or maybe Vanguard, because he works for Geico now. And so with that, I think they have Vanguard.

30:39 Elise: So yeah, we’ll see with that. And then, I mean I suppose we’re not a hundred percent sure what like the next five years will look like for us. And so we’re also in the process of we’ll look to get something, once our daughter’s born, we’ll look to get something set up for her for college or just future educational goals. We’re thinking of it’ll probably just be we’ll just set up a 529. And New York has some nice like tax benefits when you set up a 529. And then yeah, and then it will be like saving up for a house. Right now, our goal is to buy a house in cash, because again, with the current lifestyle that we have, as I said, it’s less than $2,000, but we are very content with that. Obviously, when our daughter’s born, you know, that will increase. That will increase a little bit.

31:28 Elise: But yeah, we think we can probably cash flow, because again, my husband’s income continues to go up and my income, hopefully, you know, will also go up beyond the graduate stipend cash flow, hopefully around like 30,000 so a year and we’re hoping to then buy, I don’t know, maybe like a condo or townhouse or single family. Again, depending what, you know, where we go for like maybe $120,000 or something like that. So we’ll see. Yeah, but that right now is kind of the plan with everything. And right now the biggest focus is just yeah, getting that savings increase from a thousand to the, or like I think right now it’s like $1,800 to $10,000. And then yeah, getting those Roth IRAs maxed out.

32:13 Emily: I really like it actually when, this point that you’ve volunteered to do this interview, at this point of we just became debt-free, and now we are ready to start these next steps. I love it that we’re talking at this point. Because whenever you have someone like you, who’s gone through this very intense, very intentional debt repayment journey, you get all of your, you know, systems and processes and mindsets, everything’s set up. So your cash flowing above your, you know, your expenses a thousand, $2,000, $3,000 a month. And it’s all been going towards this debt. And now you get to the point where you get to switch it, and it’s like this massive, you know, amount of cash flow. Like I think of it as like a huge like fire hose like you now get to direct to other goals. And I love that you have this like order. Okay, first is the emergency fund, Roth IRAs, 529, you know, you have your priorities set out. So, absolutely love that. It’s very apparent, you know, these last years have been preparing you for this state. I also want to add that I went through, again, the exact same process when we were pregnant with our first child, that I was looking at that thousand dollars emergency fund going, “Not going to cut it anymore.”

Preparing for Baby’s Arrival

33:15 Emily: And I think our goal was also something like 10 or $15,000 as that next thing to do, like before the baby comes. Which turned out to be very useful. I actually wanted to talk a little bit more about that. Are there any other, you know, you just mentioned sort of long-term financial plans and of course getting the emergency fund together, but are there any other specific financial preparations that you’ve been making or thinking through for your baby’s arrival? Like, I don’t know, like health insurance or childcare like these other, maybe leave? What other sort of major financial things are you working through right now?

33:46 Elise: Yes, yes. No, that’s a great question. So, I will say in regards to like preparing for our daughter and everything, the big thing was I got to have a fun time. Well actually, yeah, both my husband Kyle and I, but kind of doing stuff where, yeah, like reading those actual like health insurance statements. Not going to lie, when I first got to UB, they gave me the handbook and I was like, “Okay, cool, thank you.” And then did not even glance at it. And so, but just, you know, making sure that we know like, Hey, this is like our deductible, this is the amount we will be expected to pay. And it’s actually kind of cool. I will say I have been very blessed, like the lab I’m in, there’s actually like three other students who have also had kids as well.

34:27 Elise: And so for them, it’s also nice because you know, we all technically have the same insurance, and so yeah. And UB I will say does have pretty good health insurance as well. So it’s nice. So we’re of course planning for that where it’s like, okay, cool. We should you know, that’ll cost us like $200 and then, you know, you have all the visits as well, which we again, since we do the zero-base budgeting, we just budget for like, okay, this month, you know, it’s going to be this much for these visits. And then everything else in regards to just like kind of preparing for like stuff and everything, that has more so come from just kind of like asking other people in our lives and also just like other grad students, “Hey, like how much, you know, do you find yourself like spending for diapers?”

35:13 Elise: And I will say also there is a lot of information that is online as well. So it’s kind of like using a mix of like the online plus, like what, you know, our friends are actually just telling us that, “Hey, this is how much I spend for this.” Which has also been super, super helpful. Or like, “Hey, you need this, you know, this is the cost of this.” And just like adding all of that up, like, you know, car seat yeah, cribs, stuff like that. So that’s good. I would say that’s been kind of how we’ve been primarily preparing financially for that. In regards to leave, I’ll have three months of maternity leave that I’ll be taking. And then I have, yeah, kind of like a fellowship that goes through that. And then, so that’s kind of something like, again, me and my boss talked about like maybe a month and a half ago or so, just about, “Hey, this is kind of like the expectations there.”

36:04 Emily: So that’s paid, just to be clear?

36:06 Elise: Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

36:08 Emily: Fantastic!

36:09 Elise: Yes. Yes. So I would say that is, that is a nice thing again about like you know, every state’s different, but like New York does have that paid family leave. And then my husband as well is going to be taking, because as I said, yeah, he’s working for Geico now. So they do paternity family leave or like paid family leave as well. For him, his is a month though, is what, yeah, right now we’re planning on for him. And then, yeah, so that’s kind of, I would say those are the big, like financial preparations we’re doing. But again it is something that, especially, I don’t know when we first like kind of found out, I just like Googled like how to prepare for a baby. And it’s amazing how like just many articles and all this stuff that comes up, and it’s all so different again, based on the insurances, which I’m sure even, you know, right? Like there’s, so there’s just so many different variables. So I think it’s very helpful, at least for us, it’s been very helpful, like talking with other people, talking with peers, talking people from church, talking with people from our places of employment. Yeah. And just like to get that information.

37:08 Emily: I agree. I think those, especially your labmates. Same insurance, same advisor.

37:12 Elise: Exactly. Yeah.

Childcare Decision-Making

37:13 Emily: Been through it recently. Like that’s going to be the absolute best resource. Yeah, definitely. And I asked about childcare earlier, so do you have a plan yet for after your leave ends what’s going to go on?

37:25 Elise: Yes. Okay. So I will say so for that plan, we will. Yeah. We’ll kind of see, because right now, again I don’t think, so we don’t have like anything against daycare or anything like that. Like I think, and UB’s daycare actually is supposed to be like fantastic again, like two of my coworkers use it and they’ve been very, very pleased. For us though right now, so since with every, and again, we don’t know everything will happen with the pandemic, but so my husband, technically he does work from home right now. And then for me, I’m man, I’m just not a hundred percent sure if I would just, you know, maybe just have a weird schedule as opposed to like putting our daughter in daycare because one of the things my boss, obviously he wants us to make sure like we’re getting our research and everything done, but with organic chemistry, there’s a lot of stuff where like you set up a reaction for like six hours or you set up a reaction for four hours, you know, and then you’re like doing some writing stuff and like research stuff.

38:22 Elise: And so for me, yeah, I’m not, I think right now the plan is kind of where it would just be I would just kind of have a schedule set up of like, I’m just going to be in lab at weird hours, like from eight to noon and then maybe come back from like eight to 10 or you know, just weird scattered hours. But we’ll see, that could also, you know, we could also start that and then a week in if I’m like, “This is terrible.” And it’s like, okay, well she’s going to go to daycare. So, it’ll kind of depend too, I think that’s another thing with even talking with people in regards to pregnancy, it affects every woman differently. And so yeah, as much as I love to be planner, sadly, I can’t plan out exactly, “This is how I’m going to feel a hundred percent.” So yeah. But right now the plan is just, I would just have kind of weird hours and just stagger things. And again with that, at least right now, it doesn’t sound all that bad because again, it’ll take a lot of intentionality, you know, I would have to like schedule things out, but yeah, I think it would be fine, but we’ll see. We will see what happens.

39:21 Emily: I will recommend for you in case you haven’t listened to it or any other interested listeners, the interview I did back in season one with Dr. Heather. Because she talked about when she had her first child at the end of graduate school, similar timing to you, how she and her husband set up a overlapping “we’re providing our own childcare” schedule. I think he was teaching actually, he had like a visiting professorship, something like that. So like you said, there was some work that could be done from home. There was some work that had to be in person for both of them, but they just kind of worked out the schedule so that.

39:51 Elise: I like that. Yeah.

39:52 Emily: You know, they could each be with their child. I will say that since then, I believe all their children are in all the daycare and all the preschool, like as much as possible after they got out of this grad student phase. But that’s what they did for kind of the finishing up of grad school, like period. Yeah, so that’s a really, really interesting interview if that’s kind of your like philosophy and the approach that you want to take. And it’s actually a little bit similar to what my husband and I wanted to do as well.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

40:14 Emily: So, awesome! Well, Elise, this has been such a delight to chat with you. Congratulations on becoming debt-free! Congratulations on the pregnancy! I’m so excited to kind of see where, you know, where your new financial next phase of your journey takes you. Because like I said, you, you have all these goals and you’re really ready, right, to tackle them. So it’s awesome. I would like to ask you the question that I end all my interviews with, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on during the interview or it can be something completely different.

40:45 Elise: Yes, yes. So I would say, yeah, the biggest one I always recommend is just to do a zero-based budget. Again, you can also budget, right, where you just kind of look at the end of the month. But I just think, especially even honestly more so when you’re working on like a stipend, just get into the habit. Because again, you’re already learning how to be intentional anyway. So just go ahead and get into the habit of with finances as well, “Hey, this is how much I’m going to spend” you know, in each of these categories. Or, you know, whatever stuff you have set up, or this is much I want to save. You know, in our case it was like paying off debt and then building up savings and investing stuff. But again, whatever your financial goals are like, it’s just so much, I feel like, yeah, just so much easier and so much more helpful when you just zero-base budget it. And it also just like again with grad school, as you like are disciplined and are intentional, your confidence grows, you know?

41:42 Elise: And so I think that’s another thing too, where it’s awesome to, you know, be confident as you’re like doing experiments and stuff, but also confident in the way you’re handling your money. And when you’re able to create a plan and then, you know, like it doesn’t have to be perfect, but then able to like achieve some of the things within that plan. It’s just awesome. Yeah. To then be able to grow that confidence. So for sure.

42:05 Emily: Great advice. Well, thank you so much, Elise, for joining me for this interview!

42:09 Elise: Yes. Thank you, Emily. Thank you so much for having me on.

Outtro

42:17 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? I have collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are 3 ways you can help it grow: 1. Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. 2. Share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with a email list-serv, or as a link from your website. 3. 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 increasing cash flow. I also license pre-recorded workshops on taxes. 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 by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.