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This Grad Student-Parent Relied on University and State Benefits During a Tough Financial Period

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Laura Farrell-Wortman about her experience as a graduate student-parent at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Laura started her PhD when her daughter was an infant, so she was very intentional about choosing a PhD program that offered strong health insurance and a childcare subsidy. However, with a $9k/year stipend as the only income for a family of three, Laura’s family relied on the social safety net for a couple of years until both she and her husband increased their incomes. Laura shares the financial mindset she relied on to get through that tough period of time. Laura and Emily also discuss how the shifting political winds in Wisconsin in the early 2010s detrimentally affected the power of the grad student union at UW-Madison. Today, Laura works as a staff member at the University of Arizona Cancer Center and is making up for lost time in funding her retirement and her daughter’s college education.

Links mentioned in the Episode

This Grad Student-Parent Relied on University and State Benefits During a Tough Financial Period

Teaser

Laura (00:00): I also think it’s important to keep in mind you know, if you’re, if you’re feeling sort of weird about getting those benefits, that government benefits aren’t just you know, for people who are poor or struggling I get government benefits all the time. I get my mortgage interest deducted, right? I get my student loan interest deducted. Those are government benefits. And no, trust me, every rich person is getting every government benefit that they can. So you get your government benefits too. You earned them and you’re eligible for them.

Introduction

Emily (00:36): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (01:07): This is Season 16, Episode 7, and today my guest is Dr. Laura Farrell-Wortman. We’re discussing Laura’s experience as a graduate student-parent at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Laura started her PhD when her daughter was an infant, so she was very intentional about choosing a PhD program that offered strong health insurance and a childcare subsidy. However, with a $9k/year stipend as the only income for a family of three, Laura’s family relied on the social safety net for a couple of years until both she and her husband increased their incomes. Laura shares the financial mindset she relied on to get through that tough period of time. Laura and I also discuss how the shifting political winds in Wisconsin in the early 2010s detrimentally affected the power of the grad student union at UW-Madison. Today, Laura works as a staff member at the University of Arizona Cancer Center and is making up for lost time in funding her retirement and her daughter’s college education. I’ve recently joined several different social media platforms, particularly for posting short videos. I’m using the next few months as an experimental period, after which I’ll focus only on the platforms where I’ve gained the most traction. So please give me a follow and engage with me there! You can find me on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, and LinkedIn at either PFforPhDs or Personal Finance for PhDs. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s16e7/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Laura Farrell-Wortman.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:53): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Laura Ferrell Wartman. She is the current assistant director for academic programs at the University of Arizona Cancer Center, but we’re actually gonna be mostly talking about her experience as a PhD student at the University of Madison. So Laura, thank you so much for volunteering to come on the podcast, and will you please introduce yourself a little further for the audience?

Laura (03:16): I did my PhD in interdisciplinary Theater studies at the University of Wisconsin Madison. I was a graduate student there from 2011 to 2017. And some of the really formative things about my time there was that I actually arrived to to grad school with a newborn. And so I think that’s probably gonna shape a lot of what we discuss today.

Financial Mindset During Childhood and Early Adulthood

Emily (03:42): Yeah, so a grad student parent and a unique kind of angle on this. Certainly for our conversation, the finances of that are very interesting as we’ll see as we go through. I should mention that Laura and I met at the Graduate Career Consortium annual meeting, and so it’s always a great time when I get to meet people face to face. And just from the first very few interactions that we had in the room that we were in together, I knew that Laura had to come on the podcast. So I’m really glad that , we made this happen. Okay. So let’s go back even before you started graduate school, actually. So let’s talk about like how you grew up and how, what, what your financial mindset was like during your childhood, your early adulthood, maybe through college and post-college leading up to this time when you were in graduate school.

Laura (04:26): Yeah. so growing up I grew up in a very high income area. I’m from Princeton, New Jersey. But due to a lot of specific factors within my family there was a real trend of scarcity in my childhood. And so I really grew up thinking that money was something that was very elusive. Something that was sort of to be afraid of and something where there was just never a sense that there was enough of it. And so I think that that is something that has really impacted the way that I view personal finance, and especially the way that I view my career because I know that stability and predictability is something that is very, very important to me. And that is sometimes at odds with working in academia, especially if you are not on the tenure track. And so that it very much impacted like the way that I viewed how I was going into my career.

Finances After College

Emily (05:30): So coming out of college, I understand you, you worked for some years right before you started graduate school. Is that correct? So talk to me about like your finances during that time and that decision to go pursue your PhD, especially as it relates to these, the mindsets and, you know, everything that was going on with you financially.

Laura (05:47): Yeah. Again, I think the, the time that I had spent working was very much related to both the sort of you know, desire for that stability but also my desire to continue the research work that I had started in my undergrad. So I, I really started to explore Irish theater and particularly Irish theater of this particular contemporary period when I was an undergrad. And I knew that I wanted to continue doing that. My sister had gotten a PhD. And so that really helped me to kind of see the possibility and see, you know, the, the things that I could do with a PhD. And so I knew that I wanted to, to pursue that. But first I was gonna need to get a master’s degree and a master’s degree in theater, just the, the ROI, the return on investment there is terrible, right? Um and so I got a job at the University of Arizona. I was an admin assistant and that paid for my master’s degree. So that was like, that was like fully a financial decision in terms of where I was gonna go for my master’s degree. And I do not in any way regret that. You know, I came out of that, I paid $25 a semester in tuition. I would highly recommend it to anybody who is looking to get a degree that maybe they don’t feel like they can you know, get that ROI in. But, so that was I was working in higher ed administration essentially, and really like working my way up the ladder while I was doing that master’s degree in theater. And that set me up really, really excellently in terms of you know, when I went into my PhD, I knew the possibilities in higher ed for somebody who has a PhD in anything. Um you know, there really is a benefit in higher education to just having a PhD. And I have noticed a big difference in terms of my career options after my PhD as opposed to before at the same institute. Being a full-time student and a full-time employee is really difficult. It definitely had a lot of financial benefits. I got married during that time and my husband was able to get a, a master’s degree paid as well. And so, you know, there were a lot of benefits to it, but it was I certainly don’t wanna sugarcoat it because it was very, very difficult.

Emily (08:04): So, because you had this long-term plan of getting the PhD, using the job, using the master’s as a stepping stone to get there, I understand during that time you were also saving up, right? And so you went into the PhD with some savings. Can you talk about how you did that or why as well?

Laura (08:19): That was around 2008, 2009. Both my husband and I were very lucky not to have lost our income during the financial crisis. I actually went on to write my dissertation about the financial crisis. You know, our, our income was middling. But we had very few large financial responsibilities. We had our rent, which was moderate. We had no current payments. We didn’t have children at that point. We, we just are frugal people. And so it was you know, we had a goal of, you know, putting money aside, not even really for any particular goal. I think for me, just having that savings, again, coming back to this idea of you know, that rug could be pulled out from under you at any point. So having, you know, liquid cash savings is something that just makes me feel better. So we had a a cash savings of about $30,000 by the time my daughter was born. And that was just from, you know, the jobs we were working.

PhD Admissions and Pregnancy

Emily (09:24): Okay. So let’s talk about the admission season. You mentioned that you had at least, you know, a couple offers, one unfunded, this one from Madison that you ended up taking because you knew at that time that your daughter was on the way. How did that play into your decision of where to attend? Like what factors were you looking at?

Laura (09:44): Yeah, so so being pregnant during admission season was very interesting. I did not do any visits because I didn’t want anyone to see that I was pregnant. Discrimination against pregnant people is a very real thing. And I was really concerned that I would be you know, deprioritized if they knew that I had a child on the way. So it was important to me to know you know, what the, the funding situation and what the daycare situation was in any area that we were planning to, to move. Madison happened to be the best overlap of those things. Daycare is extremely expensive in Madison. It was actually when we were looking in Manhattan because I had applied at a couple schools in New York. The, the daycare costs were essentially the same between Madison and and Manhattan. But the University of Wisconsin has a really comprehensive student parent support, well, system of networks really. And so that was what enabled me to get a PhD in a very real way. And so I think it wasn’t necessarily the top thing that I was looking at, but it was, it ended up being the most influential part of my graduate experience.

Emily (11:11): Wow. was this something that, I guess, I don’t know specifically like the timing of everything, but is this something that you were looking at at the time that you were choosing which schools to apply to? Or was it only by the time, okay, I’ve already applied to these sets of schools, now I know my daughter’s on the way and I need to, you know, evaluate how they’re doing on this front as well?

Laura (11:31): It was a little bit of both. There’s, you know, my, my specialty was Irish theater. There’s not, you know, a ton of schools where that’s going to be a strong focus. And admittedly, some of the schools that I applied to, it wasn’t a strong focus. It just was going to be a better you know, personal situation. But I think that there was a real you know, there, there’s sort of that cliche of like, you know, there’s never, there’s never the right time to have kids, and I think that’s very true. But for us it was like, well, we wanna, we know we wanna have a kid. I know I wanna get a PhD. I, I just think that these things can probably be true at the same time. You know, I was 30 going into my PhD which I’m, I, I’m, you know, really glad that I chose that point in my life to, to have my daughter. But I think, you know, it’s a, I think if people sometimes will try to time it out in ways that I think are never really gonna be, gonna be perfect. And so for me it was a, yeah, it was just kind of saying like, well, I want these two things in my life, and they’re just gonna have to, I’m gonna have to figure it out. And we did .

PhD Program Offer

Emily (12:47): Okay. So what else were you looking at in terms of the factors? We talked about the childcare subsidy, but like, what was your stipend offer, for example, and was that in line with what you were seeing at other institutions? I understand you looked carefully at the health insurance, so let’s talk about more like those other factors as well.

Laura (13:03): Yeah. so my stipend offer so I did, I did end up getting an offer of, of support from UW. This was in 2011. It was only $9,000 a year which is, I mean, it doesn’t approach a living wage. And again, I think that there are a number of different factors that go into that. I think, you know, part of it is that you know, in, in a lot of fields they have established minimums for you know, research assistants, graduates assistants and things like that. In, in theater that in the arts in general, that absolutely does not exist. And for state universities, that is also a difficulty. But yes my offer was $9,000 a year. The that did not include coverage of my fees. So I was still paying about a thousand dollars a year in fees. I was still paying, you know, reasonable but relatively market rate, rent to student housing on campus. So most of my money kind of ended up going back to the university. I, I did have really excellent health insurance though, which is again, to be attributed to the work of the union. Graduate students received the same health insurance as staff members and I didn’t know at the time how important that was going to become, but I was, I was diagnosed with a chronic illness my second year, and probably I would’ve had to leave grad school if my health insurance hadn’t been so good. So it was, it was very, really, really important, to, to have that health insurance.

Finances in Grad School With a New Baby and a Low Income

Emily (14:55): I wanna hear more about how you actually made the finances work, like, especially in this first year of graduate school. Okay. Like, you’ve got the new baby, you’re at a new place, you’re in student housing, like you’re not making very much money. You’ve got your husband to support as well, or, you know, your husband is factoring into this as well. So like, how did that go , especially like starting in that first year?

Laura (15:15): Yeah, it was, it was really tricky. My husband was looking for work but it was, it was really difficult to find. His background had been as an elementary school teacher and he had, he had done some work as like a paralegal. His, his main sort of goal and skillset was in horticulture. And that is what he does full-time now. But at the time, and in Madison it was really difficult to find those jobs. And so he, we also had this child, this infant who needed daycare, and infant daycare is just, I mean, my God, it is so expensive. So he was thinking, well, you know, I have this education background. Lemme see if I can just get a job working at a daycare and maybe that’ll be that’ll subsidize. Eleanor’s Care didn’t really work that way. He did get a job working in daycare. But essentially the money he made just, again, it went right back to the place where he was working because it was so expensive. And so there was no, there really wasn’t a benefit to, to that work. And he, he was able to sort of cobble together a couple of things, you know, sort of, sort of like temp work for that year. But for the most part, he was a stay at home dad. And so he was taking care of our daughter, and again, we were just using that like 25, $30,000 that we had in savings. So yeah, I would say we were living off of, I don’t know, like 35, 36,000 a year for that first year.

Emily (16:52): But not of income, right? Because that’s savings supplementing, yeah.

Laura (16:55): Yeah, yeah. So really it was like, yeah, that was, you know, like a few thousand bucks that I got from my TA work. And then just pulling it straight from savings. So in, in the next, you know, couple years when I was able to I got a a second job within the department working for the theater company of the department. My as my stipend went up a bit I got like a halftime TA instead of a third time ta. So I was able to get my income by the end up to, I think like 18, 19,000 per year, which felt it, it felt like so much money at the time, . And by that point, my husband had started working for the grounds department at UW Madison. And so you know, he was bringing in more money, but not, you know, a ton. Um and so we were, we were making it work, but there was, there was nothing going to retirement. There was nothing going to savings, there was nothing going to my daughter’s college fund, things like that. So we were we were definitely paycheck to paycheck but again, I didn’t have to take those loans for living. And I, I didn’t have to take out student loans to, to survive during that six year period, which is really, really helping now in terms of making up for those, those lost years of, of wealth building.

Emily (18:17): Yeah, let’s talk about that more in a second.

Commercial

Emily (18:21): Emily here for a brief interlude! I’m hard at work behind the scenes updating my suite of tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2023. These pre-recorded educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2023 tax season starting in January 2024, I’m offering four versions of this workshop, one each for US citizen/resident graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. While I do sell these workshops to individuals, I prefer to license them to universities so that the end users, graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs, can access them for free. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they sponsor one of my tax preparation workshops for you and your peers? I’d love to receive a warm introduction to a potential sponsor this fall so we can hit the ground running in January serving those early bird filers. You can find more information about licensing these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Now back to our interview.

Using Government Benefits: Food Stamps, WIC, and Child Care Subsidies

Laura (20:12): Yeah, so because our income was so low we were eligible for, well, because our income was so low, and because we had an infant and I was within, you know, a a couple years of, of having given birth. We were eligible for a few different mechanisms. We were eligible for food stamps, we were eligible for WIC, which is stands for like Women and Infant and Children Support. And we were eligible for childcare subsidy from the state government. And so we did take advantage of each of those. We received, I wanna say like four or $500 a month in food stamps, which, you know, so that paid for like, all of our food, and that was so, so vital to us being able to, to, to make it work. WIC provided for for Formula I was unable to breastfeed after the first, you know, like couple of weeks. And so we, we had to have formula. But formula again is incredibly expensive. It provided for, you know, certain amounts and certain types of food. It was you know, more kind of staples, whereas food stamps is a lot you know, had kind of cast a wider net. And then for our daycare, once Eleanor ended up going to daycare, we were able to supplement UWs contribution with the state support. And so from there we were able to get our month, and that still didn’t cover everything for daycare, but we were able to get our monthly payment down to something reasonable.

Emily (21:55): And how long did you end up using those benefits for? Like as your, your income is increasing as your daughter’s getting older, like did those phase out over time?

Laura (22:04): Yeah, absolutely. We were on food stamps and wic for about a year. And actually that makes us essentially like the standard user of government benefits. The standard user of government benefits is white, and they were on it for about a year. And so I think that there are a lot of misconceptions about people who are relying on certain types of government benefits. But, but in truth, they mostly look like me. And it was something that we used in the short term until we were able to get our income to the point where we could pay for those things on our own. I think we used the state benefits for daycare for like two years.

Emily (22:47): Can you talk a little bit more about how, I guess maybe the decision or your like, willingness to access those benefits stemmed from your money mindset more generally in your experiences in your earlier parts of life?

Laura (23:03): Yeah, absolutely. So there were a number of things that allowed, allowed me to, to access those benefits and sort of allowed me to access them in a way that I felt confident about doing. I think it’s really important, first and foremost to say that I am white. And so, you know, being white and, you know, middle class essentially there was a lot less stigma about me using those benefits. And so I think that that is, is a barrier for a lot of people. I also had a working car and that is not nothing. So the ability for me to apply for those benefits to go pick up my WIC checks, because the WIC is like actual physical large checks, which are really embarrassing to use at the grocery store. And I had to go and get them but I didn’t have to use a bus in the, you know, Wisconsin winters. Um I had a flexible schedule. I was a grad student, right? I didn’t have to like tell my boss, Hey, I need to leave to get my, my food stamps. So there was a lot of privilege that went into being able to do that readily, easily, which is not to say it was an easy process. It was still a, you know, more of red tape and paperwork. But, but I made it work. And I think too that, you know, my, my feeling really was like, well, you know, I’ve you know, I’ve worked since I was 15. I’ve paid into this system. I, you know, if I’m eligible for these benefits, then I’m gonna take these benefits. And, and I still think that more people should have that mindset, right? Like, if you are a grad student right now listening to this and you are eligible for food stamps, go get food stamps. Like if you are eligible for food stamps, it means that you are at a level where you have a need, and this is just providing you with food. Like food, please go and do that. I also think it’s important to keep in mind you know, if you’re, if you’re feeling sort of weird about getting those benefits that government benefits aren’t just you know, for people who are poor or struggling I get government benefits all the time. I get my mortgage interest deducted, right? I get my student loan interest deducted. There’s all kinds of benefits that I get from, you know, having like, like a Roth IRA, right? I get tax advantages. Those are government benefits. And no, trust me, every rich person is getting every government benefit that they can. So you get your government benefits too. You earned them and you’re eligible for them. And so that was kind of the mindset that I, that I brought into that. And it, I’m not saying that it was always easy, you know, like I said, with food stamps or with EBT as they call it now, you get a card that looks just like a credit card and you, and you pay with that. And, and to me it’s a very dignified system when you’re actually using them. Whereas wic it’s like, I, I never had an instance of using the WIC checks where the cashier didn’t roll their eyes, didn’t sigh, didn’t sort of like give me a like, oh, great, now I gotta deal with these. And that is a real deterrent. Like, it was, it was embarrassing. And that is so unacceptable. So, so I think that there are ways that probably the government could make this a little easier, but they maybe aren’t inclined to. But yeah, I think that that was all wrapped up in, you know, again, feeling like, well, I’m a middle class white woman, I’m still going to use these.

Emily (26:44): Well, I do appreciate you talking about this like so openly. It’s something that graduate students are sometimes not aware that they can access these kinds of benefits, or in some places they actually might not be able to, even if their right income would put them at the right level because of their student status or because of the type of income that they have. So it’s certainly a state by state thing. But I really appreciate you speaking about how, like, how you thought about this at the time and how you felt like, yep, I need this, it’s a benefit. I’m gonna take it. Let’s do this even if it’s a little bit embarrassing. Because I do think that, like, like you said, you were only on it temporarily and it really helped you to move past the, the temporary income crunch that you all were in. I mean, you’re moving to a new place, you have a brand new baby, like yeah, a lot of people need help at that time of life, and you happen to access, you know, this these various social safety net aspects for that help. So anyway, thank you so much for talking about this. I really appreciate that.

Grad Student Union at UW Madison

Emily (27:38): So you’ve already mentioned a couple of times the union, the grad student union at UW Madison and how it had negotiated for the great healthcare and like this parental benefits and all this stuff. Could you talk more about your experience with the union during the time that you were a graduate student and also how the overall political climate in Wisconsin at that time, kind of the interaction between those two?

Laura (28:01): Yes. So I, I think I’m gonna do that sort of in reverse because the political climate in Wisconsin sort of heavily influenced my experience with the union. So the year before I started at UW Madison, Wisconsin had gone through a major change with Scott Walker was the new governor. And he had grand designs on leadership of the GOP think we can all recall his presidential campaign. And so one of those was to remake the labor landscape in Wisconsin. Wisconsin has historically been a a very strong labor stronghold. You know, really part of that rust belt that was, was, you know, built and facilitated by unions in a, in a, in a lot of ways. And so new legislation in Wisconsin the year prior to my arriving essentially stipulated that unions had to disband and remake themselves and that there couldn’t be a requirement for dues and things like that. And so this was you know, anybody who’s done any sort of you know, organizational work with people understands that if you have to disband your membership and, and re-up, that is a ton of work. And that’s, you’re not, you’re never gonna get everyone back. And that, of course, was the point. So there were major protests of which graduate students at UW Madison were a really important part. But it meant that by the time I arrived, the union was really trying to reconstitute itself, and I think they deserve a lot of credit for how much work that was and, and the fact that they, you know, are still an ongoing institution within uw. So they deserve a lot of credit for that. But it did change the, you know, the leadership, it changed the the makeup of the union and it changed the resources of the union. Uh so the, the union was not what it, what it had been. And the university was thankfully, you know, still honoring the commitments that they had made to the union prior to that 2011 legislation. But it did change things. Unfortunately and, you know, it’s, it’s tragic that, you know, that was, that was the, the planned outcome and it worked. But it did mean that the, the union had less power. It had less people to do the important work and I believe it had fewer actually full-time staff members which, which really made a difference. And so my, my sort of experience with it was like the, it just didn’t have the legs that it used to. But I will say that you know, having any sort of union as a graduate student can be a powerful thing. There was one instance in which I you know, I had a TA job and I was being told that it was a requirement that I work beyond my contract. And I, it was really great to be able to say like, okay, well I, like, since I’m a union member, I actually can’t. So let me just go to the union and talk to them about this request. And lo and behold I no longer had to work beyond the confines of my contract.

Emily (31:44): What I’m taking from this is that you can’t be complacent about the benefits that are offered by your university and, and if there’s a union by the union, what the union has negotiated for, because like what I’m learning kind of as I talk to people in different states and people at different stages of the unionization like process is that like, like what you experienced in Wisconsin, like things can shift politically at the state level or at the national level, and that can really shift what happens at the university level and with unions or the formation of unions. And so it’s not something you can sort of take for granted. And you’re always gonna have to be responding to those like shifting wins, I guess . And so I, so I’m learning that like, just because there is a union doesn’t mean the union is safe forever, right? You have to keep advocating for yourself and keep organizing.

Laura (32:33): And I think that that is also true for universities. And I think that part of what frustrated me sometimes about our union and, and sometimes frustrates me in in general in terms of like, you know, the way that grad students can sometimes approach their relationship to their university is that there is a sense that the university has the resources to do everything it wants to do and just won’t. And that could not be further from the truth. This is something where, you know, having worked in higher education for my entire career universities are so much more hamstrung by a lack of resources by legislatures that are not supportive or maybe di you know, directly hostile and hamstrung by the need to consistently be getting federal grants. That it’s, it’s so much more complex of a, a situation than I think a lot of grad students that I worked with at UW wanted to acknowledge that this was not us against the university universities in general you know, the people who are in them, they are not here to get rich because we’re never gonna get rich working for a state university.

Emily (33:47): Mm-Hmm. And I think, I mean, your point is, especially I think well made for public universities that have to deal with these state level like issues again and their funding, but of course, all universities are dealing with the grant funding that you mentioned from the federal government and whether it’s there and in what amount and, and so forth. So thank you so much for pointing out. Like it’s not, it’s really not, especially I would say the individuals like at the lower levels working within universities, they’re not the enemies of the students. They’re not trying to work against the students. Like, we’re just all trying to survive within the system. Okay.

Impact of Financial Experiences in Grad School on Current Financial Life

Emily (34:20): In what way has your financial experience as a graduate student continued to affect your financial life to today? Like you mentioned earlier that you did not have any room in your budget for like retirement savings, for example, and so by the time you got out of graduate school, I’m doing some quick math. I think you were 36, so you can talk about that or any other ways that, that, that experience has still had like a financial effect on your life at the present.

Laura (34:44): So yeah, the, the, the period during which I was not able to be saving for retirement or saving for my daughter’s college education that so far has been the most impactful aspect of my finances. Again, I didn’t have to to take on those loans. And so you know, that my, my, my student loan payment has not really gone up. But the, I think it’s important for anybody who is in a PhD or considering doing a PhD to understand the opportunity cost that, you know, taking that time out of your life when you’re in your, you know, twenties or thirties, that is gonna be the most impactful period in which you can be saving for retirement because of compound interest. So the more that you can put away when you’re young, the less you’ll have to put away when you are older. Um and so, you know, know now that I am 42 and you’re right, I was in graduate school from 30 to 36. I am having to put more away towards retirement, and I probably will just have a smaller retirement nest egg. I am again, lucky to be in a university where in a state where I am in a pension system. So this is pretty rare to have a defined benefit pension. But the, the pension is not what it used to be. The pension will cover maybe 50% of my expenses in retirement which is great. I’m certainly not complaining. But it does mean that like I still have to, beyond the amount I put into the pension system, I have to be putting cash away into a Roth IRA. And that’s tricky because at this point I am I am saving for my own retirement. We’re saving for my husband’s retirement we’re saving for my daughter’s college education. So my daughter’s college education is also a strong determinant of where I work because the university I work for that is our local state university offers 75% tuition discount to the children of staff members. So that’s our college plan , right? Which is kind of rough. Like I, I was always kind of taught that like, you know, I had a lot of options for college and for my daughter that is not the case. And I think, you know, for, for Gen Z in general they’re much more savvy than us elder millennials are about these things at their age. But but it still means that like, okay, you know, the, the college savings that I do are aligned with the idea that 75% of her tuition will be, will be covered. Um and that again, is not you know, that was a, a very specific choice that I have made you know, to to to, to remain at a, you know, at a university where that is gonna be one of the benefits. So, you know, that’s also something where, that’s a decision that I made based on the financial situation I was in in grad school. At the same time you know, having the PhD has increased my, my earning potential greatly. And so even though you know, I am at a state university where I can just expect that the, you know, compensation is going to be lower than in the private sector I still am able to to make the kind of salary that allows me to, to save for all those things at once. But you know, there’s still you know compromises to be made. And that, you know, frugality that that my husband and I have always really, really had, has, has come in handy because I think it also can be very tempting, particularly for students who are coming right out of graduate school to have a lot of like lifestyle creep. And, you know, your, your paycheck gets bigger and so you’re spending more money. And I think the, the, the more that you can avoid that, the better.

Emily (38:42): Yeah, you really have to have that awareness right from that first paycheck they receive, you know, post PhD, post postdoc, that there’s a lot more on your to-do list financially that there probably wasn’t graduate school if you weren’t able to get to all those items like retirement and, and college savings and so forth. But I think your story sounds like pretty like par for the course, right? Like the PhD increased your earning potential, but you lost the, to a degree, the time value of money for the time that you spent during the PhD. And so there has to be, there’s the trade off, right? But then again, I’m sure you’re in a career that you find very fulfilling, and so there’s also that aspect of it. Yeah. Okay.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (39:22): So Laura, as we wrap up, I’m gonna ask you the question that I ask all of my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD that could be for a current graduate student, a prospective graduate student, like we’ve mostly talked about, it could be someone more at your current career stage, however you would like to take that,

Laura (39:40): You know, addressing PhD students and particularly PhD students who are going on the job market or are close to graduation. I really want to encourage you to keep in mind that you have a lot of options. I think that there are PhDs who will take a truly suboptimal offers like adjuncting that they do because they don’t feel that they have any options. And the truth is that with a PhD, even if, even if your job is not specifically in your field, my current job is not in the field of Irish theater. But you have options. And please don’t let academia make you feel as though you have a responsibility to, to take these sort of really terrible adjunct offers because that helps perpetuate the adjuncting system, frankly. And you have the ability to, to to have the same sort of self-worth the same sort of you know, fulfillment, even the same publication opportunities in some, in some cases without having to to stay in that subsistence situation. So just really, really understand your own earning power because no matter what field you are in, if you have a PhD, you have pretty significant earning power.

Emily (41:11): Hmm. And even pivoting outside of academia, like within academia, you feel like you’re a dime a dozen because literally your university is graduating like whatever, hundreds of PhDs each year and probably several even from your own discipline. And so you feel like, like you’re nothing. Some people might feel like they’re nothing special. But if you take your training and those translatable skills into another context, you will likely find that you actually have a lot to bring to that other context and that you can be paid very nicely for it. So thank you so much for that, the kind of like shot of confidence to those people who are in that at that point in their careers. So Laura, it’s been absolutely wonderful to have you on the podcast. I’m so glad I ran into you at GCC and thank you so much for agreeing to give this interview.

Laura (41:56): Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate It.

Outtro

42:04 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? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Expert-Level Frugality from ChatGPT and Grad Students Like You

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In this episode, Emily features contributions from the PhD community and from ChatGPT around the topic of frugal tips. Grad students in particular are typically open to exercising frugality to decrease their expenses. Emily talks through her framework on how to decide which area of spending to target first with frugality. She then demonstrates how to use ChatGPT to find as many frugal tips as you could ever want. The episode ends with the frugal tips submitted by grad students and PhDs, which are often more tailored and actionable than the generic ones you can find online.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Expert-Level Frugality from ChatGPT and Grad Students Like You

Introduction

00:05 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

00:34 Emily: This is Season 16, Episode 6, and today my guest is ChatGPT and all of you! Our topic is frugal tips. Grad students in particular are typically open to exercising frugality to decrease their expenses. I talk through my framework on how to decide which area of spending to target first with frugality. I then demonstrate how to use ChatGPT to find as many frugal tips as you could ever want. The episode ends with the frugal tips submitted by grad students and PhDs, which are often more tailored and actionable than the generic ones you can find online. You may have heard that Mint, the popular budgeting app, is half being shut down and half being moved under the Credit Karma umbrella. Longtime Mint users are freaking out and looking for alternatives. As it happens, a few weeks ago I finally cleaned up and made available the Excel spreadsheet I use for tracking to fulfill a request made in advance of a webinar. If you would like to try out manual tracking, please take my spreadsheet and use it as is or build it out however you like. It includes a couple of budgeting principles that I like to follow and teach to grad students. There’s a companion video available explaining those principles. If you’d like to grab the spreadsheet, it’s totally free, just register through PFforPhDs.com/tracker/. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s16e6/. Without further ado, here’s our episode on frugal tips.

02:20 Emily: PhD students are pretty frugal, right? I mean, not everyone in every area of life, but a degree of frugality is necessary if you have any hope of staying in the black throughout your PhD. Now, that frugality may come naturally or it may be something you have to white-knuckle through, but it will happen. I did my PhD during the Great Recession, and frugality was a very popular topic in the personal finance blogosphere, of which I was a part. I remember reading blog post compilations of frugal tips and thinking that I already practiced the great majority of them, and some of my peers did, too. After some time of honing my own frugality, it became a bit of a struggle for me to find new-to-me frugal tips that I was willing to try out. Everyone has their own limits, of course. That’s one of the tricky things about searching for frugal tips: You have to wade through a bunch of tips that aren’t relevant for your life or that go beyond your comfort zone to find one or two that could really work for you. This episode will help you with that process of finding frugal tips that might actually work for you. First, I will share my frugality framework to help you prioritize which budget categories are the best to target with frugal tips. Second, I’ll tell you how to use two invaluable resources to come up with relevant frugal tips, ChatGPT and your peers, and include example tips from both sources.

Frugality Framework

03:41 Emily: Some frugal tips are poised to have a greater effect on your budget than others, especially if they take significant time and/or energy. The juice is not worth the squeeze, so to speak. The Frugality Framework that I’m about to share with you is one that I teach during some of my personal finance seminars for universities. When people decide that they would like to reduce their expenses, it’s often a bit of a panic response. They realize they’re over budget or racking up debt or are about to experience a decrease in income or an increase in another expense. For example, after 3.5 years of forbearance on federal student loans, in October they went back into repayment, so borrowers suddenly had a new expense of tens, hundreds, or thousands of dollars per month that they hadn’t had to pay in quite a long time, if ever. The common response to this is to reduce or eliminate the types of expenses that will have an immediate effect on your overall spending and that give the least resistance. Generally speaking, the first target expenses are variable and discretionary. Variable expenses are ones where your spending correlates with your consumption level, and discretionary expenses are optional, not required to keep you alive and productive. Variable and discretionary budget categories include eating and drinking outside of your home, entertainment, appearance-related personal care, some types of shopping, and much more. You might even be able to immediately reduce spending in budget categories that are commonly viewed as necessary but that have a discretionary fraction as well, such as groceries and gas.

05:16 Emily: This can be very effective in the immediate term to alleviate a cash crunch, but it is likely to only be sustainable for a short period of time. Discretionary expenses are the ones that provide some flavor and enjoyment to our day, and life is likely to feel bleaker without them. Because these expenses are variable, it takes willpower to sustain cuts in these areas, and that willpower will eventually deplete. As easy as it is to reduce or eliminate spending in these areas, it’s just as easy to turn the spending back on once that happens. I don’t want to convey that it’s impossible to sustain cuts to variable and discretionary expenses or that your life won’t be worth living if you do. But to make sustainable, long-term changes to these areas, you will have to make your lower-spending lifestyle a habit and really learn to love your frugal substitutes. That takes time, and if your willpower runs out before your habits take hold, your spending can easily bounce back. There is a time and place for frugality in your discretionary and variable expenses. But if you know that your frugality needs to be a long-term practice, such as the length of your PhD, I suggest a different approach.

06:30 Emily: Think of your expenses as falling into four quadrants, arranged in a square. The two columns are for your variable and fixed expenses. The two rows are for your large and small expenses, or you could picture a continuum here if you like. The expenses that we just mentioned mostly fall into the small and variable quadrant, with some budget categories like groceries probably falling into the large and variable quadrant. The quadrant that I believe you should focus your frugality efforts on first is the fixed and large quadrant. Your fixed and large budget categories almost certainly include your rent or mortgage, your car payment and car insurance if you own a car, and childcare if you have a young child. The reason that I suggest putting your frugalizing energy into this category first is that reductions in these expenses are the 80:20 solution to reducing your spending without depleting your time and energy reserves. By definition, if you reduce a fixed expense, that lower spending level is locked in for the term of your contract and probably indefinitely into the future. Once the change is made, you don’t have to spend any more time or energy to maintain the reduction. Furthermore, because these are large expenses, they have the greatest potential to affect your overall spending level. Even a 10% reduction in your rent or mortgage translates to a savings of dozens or perhaps more than one hundred dollars each month, whereas you would have to dramatically reduce or eliminate entirely a small expense to have the same effect.

08:07 Emily: You already know why almost no one starts with this category though, right? It’s because it’s intimidating and difficult to reduce expenses of the type that I mentioned. For housing, it would likely involve moving, which takes time, research, expense, and a whole lot of effort. It’s also not something that you can do immediately, but requires an acceptance of a long-term commitment to frugal living. Same thing goes for selling or trading your car or finding a different childcare arrangement. These are incredibly challenging tasks to undertake, and they lack the immediate gratification that denying yourself a restaurant meal can provide. But the effort that accompanies changing one of these expenses, I believe, is worth it, if you can get a large enough expense reduction. I went through this personally in graduate school. I moved four times during my PhD, and in three of those moves I reduced my rent expense without sacrificing square footage or proximity to my university. When I finished graduate school, I looked back at the most effective strategies that I employed to increase my cash flow, and those moves topped the list. If you’re interested, I detailed the whole list in Season 1 Episode 1 of this podcast. Frankly, I think it’s highly atypical to make an optimal housing decision in your first year of your PhD program, doubly so if you are moving from out of the area, so at least one move during grad school is warranted once you get to know the housing market and area as a local.

09:37 Emily: Once you’ve investigated and addressed your large, fixed expenses to the greatest extent possible, it’s time to move on to the other quadrants, which should be far less daunting. The second quadrant to focus on is your small, fixed expenses, which can include your internet service provider, your cell service provider, any ongoing subscriptions, and insurance policies. Again, we are not focusing only on discretionary expenses here, but also re-evaluating what are usually considered necessary expenses. Yes, it is necessary to have a cell phone, and probably a smartphone with a data plan at that. But there are likely many plans available that will fulfill your needs, and you have a choice about whether you want to pay for discretionary elements such as a large amount of data. Consider each of your small, fixed expenses through this lens, and keep in mind that annual re-evaluation and frequent switching of providers is typically the best strategy to keep expenses low. The cost of this once-per-year expenditure of time and effort to shop around is well worth it when you find a way to lock in a lower spend for one of these fixed expenses as no ongoing willpower is needed.

10:50 Emily: The third quadrant to work on is your large, variable expenses. Groceries almost certainly fall into this quadrant, and depending on your lifestyle, other potential budget categories are travel, gas, shopping, hobbies, entertainment, and appearance-related personal care. Because these expenses are larger, there is room for a significant reduction in spending, but being variable, they are beset by some of the same issues as those of the small, variable quadrant. You will need to start with experimentation into how to reduce these expenses, but the experimentation must shift into habit formation around any tips you want to use long-term, or else they will not feel sustainable. For example, if you want to reduce your grocery spending through purchasing and eating less meat and dairy, the experimental phase might involve trying out new recipes, with the habit coming when a few of them graduate into your regular meal preparation rotation. Personally, my family has implemented a “decide once,” to borrow one of the principles of the Lazy Genius, of always purchasing gas when we shop at Costco because it is reliably less expensive than the alternatives. We have also been experimenting with a decide once of always flying Southwest when available as it is a budget airline and we are plugged into its companion pass and points system.

12:12 Emily: Finally, we can return to considering the fourth and final quadrant, your small, variable expenses. Perhaps by the time you have worked through all three other quadrants, you will not feel the need to make any further budget reductions. If you would like to reduce your spending further, at least you will have practiced determining for your life what is necessary and what is discretionary and what you value and the frugal habit formation process. You’ll be better positioned to tackle this category. Perhaps you could even pair some immediate cuts to your small, variable expenses to some cuts to your fixed expenses that are in the works so that you can increase your spending once again when your fixed expenses drop. You have to know yourself to figure out what will work for you when it comes to using willpower to sustain reductions in expenses and how you can transition it into habits. For example, Gretchen Rubin has a framework classifying people into abstainers vs. moderators. Budgeting variable expenses is usually an exercise in moderation as you say yes to certain expenses within limits. If you’re an abstainer like me, it might be easier to tell yourself that you simply do not spend any money in certain categories while eliminating or raising the limits on other categories. Now that I’ve shared with you my recommended theoretical approach to frugalizing your budget, I’d like to point you to some resources for actually finding frugal tips to experiment with in your budget categories of interest.

Resources on Frugal Tips

13:43 Emily: From my blogging days, I know that the internet is littered with lists of frugal tips, and there are books and other resources that you can tap as well. But since I want you to target just one budget category at a time, I’m going to point you to two resources where you can really target the type of information that you’re seeking: ChatGPT and your peers.

ChatGPT

14:05 Emily: Seeking frugal tips is an accessible and easy way to use ChatGPT; it’s not at all sophisticated. I used the free version of ChatGPT that is available at chat.openai.com for my queries. I like ChatGPT for this over a search engine because you can be quite specific with your query and iterate it as necessary. I’m going to give you one example of seeking frugal tips for a fixed cost and one for a variable cost. Let’s start with exploring frugal tips to reduce the cost of your internet service, a fixed cost. My first request was “Please list 10 ways to reduce the cost of my internet service.” This is what ChatGPT returned:

“Reducing the cost of your internet service can help you save money. Here are ten ways to do just that:

  1. Shop Around for Providers: Compare different internet service providers in your area to find the most cost-effective plan. Some areas have multiple providers, each offering different pricing and packages.
  2. Bundle Services: Many providers offer discounts when you bundle internet with other services like cable TV or phone. Consider bundling if you need these services.
  3. Negotiate with Your Current Provider: Contact your current internet service provider and ask if they can offer you a better deal. They may have promotions or discounts available, especially if you’ve been a loyal customer.
  4. Downgrade Your Plan: If you’re not using the full capacity of your current plan, consider downgrading to a lower-speed tier. You can save money by paying for only what you need.
  5. Cut Out Unnecessary Features: Some plans come with extras like unlimited data, premium channels, or additional services you might not need. Trim these to lower your monthly bill.
  6. Use Wi-Fi Instead of Cellular Data: When at home, connect your mobile devices to your Wi-Fi network to avoid using expensive cellular data.
  7. Monitor Your Data Usage: Some providers charge extra for exceeding data caps. Be mindful of your usage to avoid these charges.
  8. Buy Your Modem and Router: Many providers charge a monthly rental fee for their equipment. Consider purchasing your own modem and router to save in the long run.
  9. Look for Promotions and Deals: Keep an eye out for special promotions, discounts, or introductory rates offered by internet service providers. These can provide significant savings, especially for new customers.
  10. Consider Alternative Technologies: Depending on your location, you might have access to alternative internet technologies like fixed wireless, satellite, or DSL. These may offer more cost-effective options than traditional cable or fiber.

Remember to check the terms and conditions of any changes you make to your internet service, as well as any potential termination fees or contract requirements. Additionally, the best approach to cost reduction may vary depending on your location and the specific providers available in your area.”

17:09 Emily: I like this list pretty well. It includes all the standard suggestions that I would have thought of or eventually found. I was curious if we could get a little more creative, though, so I iterated my next request as “Please list 20 ways to reduce the cost of my internet service.” ChatGPT added ten more ideas. I won’t repeat all of them as most were redundant, but one that I thought was out-of-the-box was to “Take Advantage of Government Programs: Check if you qualify for government assistance programs that provide discounted internet service to low-income households.” One suggestion I didn’t see on this list but that I would like to add, in case you are looking for ways to reduce your internet bill, is to ask your internet service provider what types of discounts they offer so you can make sure that you’re enrolled in all the applicable ones. So if you really were looking for ways to reduce this fixed cost, you could start with the suggestions to shop around providers, including considering alternative technologies, and then either switch or negotiate with your current provider, and make sure that the plan you have fits your purposes well. I thought ChatGPT might be able to help a bit further with the negotiation suggestion, so I asked it “What should I say in a negotiation with my internet service provider?” That resulted in a list of 15 suggestions for how to handle such a negotiation. After seeing that list, I decided a sample script would be more helpful, so I asked “Would you please write a sample script of a negotiation between a customer and an internet service provider?” ChatGPT then created a sample script that started out as

“Customer (C): Good morning. I’m calling because I’ve been reviewing my monthly expenses, and I’m finding that my internet bill is becoming a bit too high for my budget. I wanted to discuss some options for reducing the cost.

Internet Service Provider (ISP): Good morning, I understand your concern. I’d be happy to help you with that. May I have your account number or name, please?

C: Sure, my account number is [Your Account Number] or my name is [Your Name].

ISP: Thank you for that. I see your account. Can you please tell me specifically what you’re looking to change or reduce in your service?

C: Well, I’ve noticed that there are some new promotions from your company that offer lower prices for similar plans. I’d like to see if I can get a lower monthly rate on my current plan.

ISP: I see. I can certainly check if there are any promotions available for your account. Before I do that, can I ask how long you’ve been a customer with us?

C: I’ve been a customer for [X] years, and I’ve generally been satisfied with the service.

ISP: Thank you for your loyalty. Let me check our current promotions for you.”

The script continues on with the customer and customer service agent exploring various options. It ends this way, which I thought was interesting:

“C: Thank you for the information. Let me think about it for a moment. Can I also request that you send me an email confirmation of the new promotion and bundle details we discussed?

ISP: Certainly, I’ll send that confirmation right away.

C: Great, thank you for your assistance. I’ll take some time to think about the bundle offer and the new promotion, and I’ll get back to you with my decision.

ISP: You’re welcome. Feel free to call us anytime if you have any questions or if you decide to make any changes. Thank you for choosing our service.

C: Thank you for your help, and have a great day.”

20:32 Emily: I liked seeing this sample script as it made the whole process seem much more approachable. Our second example is in how to reduce the cost of groceries, a variable cost. The field of possibilities for reducing spending on groceries is just about infinite, so I’m going to use ChatGPT to follow one type of suggestion until we get some really concrete ideas. My first prompt is “Please list 10 frugal tips to reduce the amount of money I spend on groceries.” This is what ChatGPT returned:

“Certainly! Here are 10 frugal tips to help you reduce your grocery expenses:

  1. Create a Budget: Start by setting a budget for your grocery spending. Having a clear budget will help you stay on track and avoid overspending.
  2. Meal Planning: Plan your meals for the week in advance. This allows you to make a shopping list with only the items you need, reducing impulsive purchases.
  3. Use Coupons and Discounts: Keep an eye out for coupons, discounts, and special offers from your local grocery stores. Many stores offer loyalty programs that can provide significant savings.
  4. Buy in Bulk: Purchase non-perishable items in bulk when they are on sale. This is especially useful for items like pasta, rice, canned goods, and frozen foods.
  5. Shop Seasonal Produce: Fruits and vegetables that are in season are often cheaper and fresher. Take advantage of seasonal produce to save on your grocery bill.
  6. Avoid Convenience Foods: Pre-packaged and convenience foods tend to be more expensive. Buy whole ingredients and prepare meals from scratch whenever possible.
  7. Compare Prices: Pay attention to unit prices (price per ounce, pound, etc.) to determine the best value. Sometimes buying larger quantities is more cost-effective, but not always.
  8. Reduce Meat Consumption: Meat can be one of the more expensive items in your cart. Consider incorporating more plant-based meals into your diet to save money.
  9. Use Leftovers: Don’t waste food. Use leftovers creatively to make new meals, reducing the need for additional ingredients.
  10. Store Brands: Often, store-brand or generic products are just as good as name brands but come at a lower cost. Give them a try to see where you can save.

Remember, the key to saving money on groceries is to be mindful of your spending and make intentional choices when shopping. With a little planning and effort, you can significantly reduce your grocery expenses.”

23:08 Emily: These tips are all great but very high-level, and I don’t yet know exactly how I would implement them. Several of the tips are getting at changing my diet to incorporate less costly foods, so I’m curious which foods exactly ChatGPT would suggest that I buy. My next prompt is “What are 10 low-cost but filling foods I can buy in a grocery store?” This is what ChatGPT returned:

“You can find many low-cost but filling foods at the grocery store. These items are not only budget-friendly but can also provide you with satisfying meals. Here are 10 such options:

  1. Oatmeal: A versatile and filling breakfast option that’s high in fiber. You can add fruits, nuts, or honey for extra flavor.
  2. Rice and Beans: Both rice and beans are inexpensive staples that, when combined, create a complete protein source. They are versatile and can be used in various dishes.
  3. Pasta: Pasta is an affordable and filling carbohydrate. Pair it with a simple tomato sauce, vegetables, or beans for a hearty meal.
  4. Eggs: Eggs are a great source of protein and can be used in a variety of dishes, from omelets to frittatas.
  5. Canned Tuna or Salmon: These canned fish options are not only low-cost but also high in protein. You can make sandwiches, salads, or pasta dishes with them.
  6. Frozen Vegetables: Frozen vegetables are often more affordable than fresh ones and have a long shelf life. They can be used in soups, stir-fries, and as side dishes.
  7. Potatoes: Potatoes are a cheap source of carbohydrates and can be prepared in numerous ways, from baked potatoes to mashed potatoes.
  8. Peanut Butter: Peanut butter is an inexpensive source of healthy fats and protein. Spread it on whole-grain bread or use it as a dip for fruits and veggies.
  9. Canned Soup: Canned soups, especially when on sale, can be a cost-effective way to have a quick and filling meal.
  10. Cabbage: Cabbage is a low-cost vegetable that can be used in salads, coleslaw, stir-fries, and soups. It’s a great source of vitamins and fiber.

Remember to balance your diet with a variety of these foods to ensure you’re getting a range of nutrients. These options can serve as the foundation for many nutritious and filling meals without breaking the bank.”

25:34 Emily: That’s a great list! Now I know a few items to add to my grocery list to displace some others. But I don’t quite yet know how I would use these grocery items. I asked ChatGPT: “Would you please point me to 10 recipes that incorporate the aforementioned foods?” I thought it might return links to full recipes, but instead it lists simple recipes right in the response.

“Certainly! Here are 10 recipes that incorporate the low-cost, filling foods mentioned earlier:

  1. Oatmeal with Banana and Peanut Butter:
    • Cook rolled oats with water or milk.
    • Top with sliced bananas and a dollop of peanut butter for a satisfying breakfast.
  2. Rice and Beans Burrito:
    • Cook rice and black beans.
    • Wrap them in a tortilla with salsa, cheese, and any other desired toppings.
  3. Pasta Primavera:
    • Cook pasta and mix it with sautéed frozen vegetables, olive oil, garlic, and a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.
  4. Scrambled Eggs with Veggies:
    • Whisk eggs and cook them with sautéed bell peppers, onions, and spinach. Season with salt and pepper.
  5. Tuna Salad Sandwich:
    • Mix canned tuna with mayonnaise or Greek yogurt and add chopped celery and pickles. Spread it on whole-grain bread with lettuce and tomato.
  6. Baked Potato Bar:
    • Bake potatoes and set up a toppings bar with options like sour cream, cheddar cheese, chives, and bacon bits.
  7. Pasta with Canned Tomato Sauce:
    • Cook pasta and toss it in canned tomato sauce with garlic, herbs, and a drizzle of olive oil.
  8. Stir-Fried Frozen Vegetable Medley:
    • Sauté a mix of frozen vegetables in a hot pan with garlic and ginger. Add soy sauce and serve over rice or noodles.
  9. Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich:
    • Spread peanut butter on whole-grain bread and add sliced bananas for a quick and nutritious lunch.
  10. Cabbage and Sausage Stir-Fry:
    • Sauté sliced cabbage with sliced sausage in a pan. Season with salt, pepper, and your choice of spices.

These recipes are simple, budget-friendly, and make good use of the low-cost, filling foods we discussed earlier. You can customize them to suit your taste and dietary preferences.”

27:48 Emily: I’m quite happy with this list! I could pick one or two of these new recipes to incorporate into my meal plan and grocery list. Let’s take the final step with ChatGPT, which is to create a meal plan. I asked, “Would you please create a meal plan of five lunches I can bring to work from the aforementioned recipes and/or low-cost foods?” This is what ChatGPT returned: 

“Of course! Here’s a meal plan for five budget-friendly work lunches using the low-cost foods and recipes mentioned earlier:

Day 1: Pasta Primavera

  • Lunch: Pasta Primavera (pasta with sautéed frozen vegetables, olive oil, garlic, and Parmesan cheese).
  • Side: A piece of fruit (e.g., an apple or an orange).

Day 2: Rice and Beans Burrito

  • Lunch: Rice and Beans Burrito (rice and black beans wrapped in a tortilla with salsa, cheese, and toppings).
  • Side: Baby carrots with hummus.

Day 3: Cabbage and Sausage Stir-Fry

  • Lunch: Cabbage and Sausage Stir-Fry (sautéed cabbage and sliced sausage with your choice of seasonings).
  • Side: Greek yogurt with a drizzle of honey.

Day 4: Tuna Salad Sandwich

  • Lunch: Tuna Salad Sandwich (canned tuna mixed with mayo or Greek yogurt, celery, and pickles, on whole-grain bread with lettuce and tomato).
  • Side: A small serving of mixed berries.

Day 5: Baked Potato Bar

  • Lunch: Baked Potato Bar (baked potatoes with toppings like sour cream, cheddar cheese, and chives).
  • Side: A side salad with vinaigrette dressing.

These meal ideas are not only budget-friendly but also relatively easy to prepare. You can make adjustments to suit your taste preferences, and they’re designed to be portable and easy to bring to work. Don’t forget to prepare and pack them in advance to ensure a convenient and satisfying lunch experience.” 

29:38 Emily: That’s where we’re going to leave this exploration of grocery-related frugal tips. I focused more on what I would do at home rather than exactly how to navigate the grocery store, but your frugal experimentation with your grocery budget is likely to go down a completely different path.

Commercial

29:55 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! I’m hard at work behind the scenes updating my suite of tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2023. These pre-recorded educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2023 tax season starting in January 2024, I’m offering four versions of this workshop, one each for US citizen/resident graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. While I do sell these workshops to individuals, I prefer to license them to universities so that the end users, graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs, can access them for free. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they sponsor one of my tax preparation workshops for you and your peers? I’d love to receive a warm introduction to a potential sponsor this fall so we can hit the ground running in January serving those early bird filers. You can find more information about licensing these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Now back to our interview.

Peers

31:39 Emily: The other excellent resource for frugal tips, in my opinion, is your peers. They have the most natural insight into your financial situation and the options and resources available to you. For example, perhaps your university or the surrounding community offers certain discount programs, but they aren’t well-advertised. Your peer could alert you to this fact. This happened to me, actually. When I was in grad school, I went to the dentist for the first time in my city, and because we didn’t have dental insurance, I paid cash for my visit. I mentioned how my morning had gone to my officemate, and she told me that our health insurance actually offered a discount program. You were able to get 50% off the cash price if you provided your health insurance card to certain dental care providers. I called the office I had seen that morning, and I was very lucky that they were one of the partners and they refunded me half of what I had paid! That small exchange with my peer saved me a couple hundred dollars that morning, and a couple thousand over the course of my time in grad school. Now that’s a valuable frugal tip! The ideal peers to learn from are those who attend your same university, but I wanted to get you started with frugal tips from your peers around the country who listen to this podcast, which they have submitted over the past few weeks. I’ve organized these tips into distinct budget categories. I’ll also add in some comments of my own as we go through.

Housing

33:11 Emily: An anonymous contributor said: “Consider grad housing and an RA position as this can reduce your housing costs a lot.” This simple tip is probably more valuable than all of the others put together, honestly. Several of our past podcast interviews have discussed the value of subsidized campus housing and the possibility of reducing or eliminating your housing expense through serving as a resident advisor. I want to point you in particular to the Season 10 Episode 8 interview with Dr. Erika Moore Taylor. Erika served as a resident advisor in four out of the five years of her PhD program, completely eliminating her housing expense in those years. Now, make no mistake, being a resident advisor is a part-time job, but it’s a comparatively lucrative part-time job that is unlikely to raise any red flags within your program. Since we only received that one housing-related tip—and it was a stellar one, make no mistake—I’ll make one further suggestion. Of course, you can go to ChatGPT for specific ideas on how to reduce your housing expense. But my meta-suggestion is to get to know the housing market in your area, definitely the rental and also potentially the buying market. You’re very unlikely to make an optimal housing choice in your first year of grad school, especially if you’re new to the area. Real estate is local, after all. Be intentional about getting to know the housing market during that first year by talking with your peers about where they live, how much they pay, and whether they like it, and also searching for housing through a variety of mechanisms, not just online. Through that process, you’re likely to discover a less expensive way to fulfill your housing needs and wants. And if housing in your area is inexpensive enough, please consider purchasing a home and house hacking, which is when you purchase a home and rent out part of it to roommates. We did a whole episode on house hacking with Sam Hogan, which is Season 8 Episode 4.

Transportation

35:16 Emily: Several of our contributors mentioned either living car-free or using your car less due to high gas and parking costs. They suggested taking public transit or biking instead. Ricky Gettys from Penn State added that his campus offers a bike den, and you can use their tools and expertise to maintain your bike. An anonymous contributor observed, “Many cities allow you to ride for free with your student ID.” Another anonymous contributor who has a car suggested finding free street parking near campus and walking a bit further instead of paying for parking, noting “I saved ~$3000 over the course of my PhD because I never bought a parking pass.”

35:58 Courtney B: Hi, this is Courtney Behringer, PhD student at Oregon State and my frugal tip is that used e-bikes are very plentiful right now on the market, including Facebook marketplace and Craigslist and with a little of negotiation, you could likely get one for under $300 and new ones are getting cheaper every day. I’ve avoided hundreds of dollars in parking and gas and it has only been five months with my e-bike and I actually get to my office faster.

36:26 Emily: Even if you own a car, I think it’s really smart to get to know and try out the biking and public transit routes between your home and your university. There may come a time when your car is unavailable to you, and you’ll need an alternative way of getting to campus. Who knows, you may find the alternative more pleasant than driving and parking. There are some trade-offs if you decide to live car-free, and Shaniah at Emory had a tip that straddles this transportation category with our next category of food: “If you don’t have a car, try Door Dash or Uber Eats. Consider getting a Dash Pass for discounts on large grocery purchases. The cost for delivery is way less than Ubering back and forth.”

Food

37:07 Emily: I received a lot of food-related frugal tips, so we’re going to divide them into tips that relate to eating out of your own kitchen and those that relate to procuring food outside of your home. First, the tips related to eating out of your own kitchen. Right off the bat, we receive the simple advice from an anonymous contributor to “cook at home.” It’s virtually always less expensive to eat food that you prepare yourself vs. food that someone else prepares. So if you want to spend less on food overall, as often as possible and to the greatest extent possible, eat from your own kitchen. Another anonymous contributor put it like this: “Instead of eating out, cook your own meal whenever possible. I personally don’t do this as much as I should but I have other PhD friends who cook most of the time; it saves a lot of money for them.”

38:00 Emily: Pranav from Purdue offered several pieces of advice on the practicalities of making this strategy work, particularly when you are on campus: “1. Avoid buying coffee or snacks during the day. Keep a coffee mug, coffee, tea, granola bars, and other snacks at your desk. Carry fruits every day. 2. Cook at home and plan to carry food for most, if not all, meals on campus. If you eat chicken, marinate on weekends and use through the week in pasta, salad or sandwiches. 3. If you like salad, and a refrigerator is available at your lab for food, store salad dressing and salt/pepper there. Then you just carry a packet of salad and marinated chicken or boiled eggs, and/or fruits. 4. If you plan to stay till late night on campus, make overnight oats in the morning. This helps me avoid the urge to buy dinner, because I know I have already prepared it at home.” Anonymous from Tufts concurs, saying: “I avoid buying food or coffee out by bringing a lunch and coffee with me each day.” They then extended the advice on beverages to alcohol, saying: “I like drinking wine at the end of my day and so I buy a full box of wine at a time to receive a 15-20% discount.” When it comes to actually doing all this cooking that we’re talking about, an anonymous contributor shared: “Meal prep: One of the biggest expenses is eating out. However much you try to eat out healthy, it will be worse than when you cook. Make 4 or 5 things at once to save time, portion and keep them in identical containers so you have a sense of surprise when you open your lunch box. Eating food you cook is better than eating out on multiple fronts.”

39:41 Emily: How about frugality in procuring all the groceries you’ll need? Katie suggested visiting the food pantry on campus. Food pantries or food banks are increasingly available and increasingly utilized on university campuses. 

39:55 Courtney B: Another frugal tip I have is that many universities have a basic needs center. It might not be called that, um, or some sort of food pantry. Um, and my university gives out quality groceries once a week, which always includes eggs, bread, and yogurt, but also often vegetables and fruit that last me a whole week. Um, this program aims to reduce food waste in the community and provide shame-free food to students.

40:22 Emily: An anonymous contributor suggested a subscription to an imperfect produce delivery box or a community supported agriculture (CSA) farm.

40:32 Courtney B: Courtney here with another tip. I am learning the art of gardening and preserving. There’s a veggie you use a lot. For example, spinach or tomatoes consider planting a lot in the spring and harvesting in the fall and freezing for the rest of the year. I recently did this with jalapenos and now I have jalapenos to last me a year in the freezer. Speaking about freezers, you can freeze just about any food, too much tomato paste, freeze it, garlic, ginger, freeze it, freeze bread. Food waste is expensive and as a busy PhD student, I love pulling things outta the freezer as needed.

41:04 Emily: Shaniah from Emory submitted several tips related to grocery shopping: “1. Join Grocery Store reward programs for discounts and deals. CVS, Kroger and Publix have really good promotions. 2. Shop online first (add items to your cart) then go in person. This helps you stick to your budget and pr events overspending. 3. Download the store apps. Similar to #1, this helps you scan items before adding it to your cart; some grocery stores do not update their grocery store price tags / labels.” Finally, as an in-between solution, Shaniah from Emory suggested substituting restaurant meals for a meal subscription service. Second, the tips related to procuring food outside your home. As you might expect, obtaining free food on campus was brought up several times, including by an anonymous contributor who said “FREE FOOD opportunities abound on campus – make the most out of them! (‘One of the essential skills to be a great researcher is being able to find free food.)” Katie suggested bringing food storage containers to campus so that you can easily collect this free food and save it to be eaten later. An anonymous contributor took another approach: “Look in to graduate student off-campus meal plans. At UC Berkeley, our off-campus meal plan equates to getting an all-you-can-eat lunch for $10. There aren’t many restrictions and any unused money rolls over to the next semester.” Ricky Gettys from Penn State pointed out that “kids under 6 eat free at the campus dining halls” and a few other establishments, so that would really help out a young family. We also heard that tip in the Season 16 Episode 4 interview with Dr. Ilana Horwitz regarding Stanford.

Subscriptions

42:51 Emily: Katie and an anonymous contributor were both thinking along the same lines regarding a gym membership, pointing out that your university’s gym might be free or discounted or your health insurance might reimburse you for a gym membership. Another anonymous contributor from Tufts shared: “I use my school’s offerings such as free NYT for my news following.” I have to say, something I really miss about grad school is the abundant free or discounted on-campus resources like the ones mentioned in this section. I didn’t appreciate them enough until after I left!

Miscellaneous

43:28 Emily: Anonymous from Tufts offered a creative solution, “I try to get Amazon gift cards through side gigs (e.g., participating in user interviews or events on campus that pay) to pay for basic household/personal items so that those little costs don’t hit my budget.” Grad students often complain about being considered a student only when it suits the university vs. an employee only when it suits the university, but this anonymous contributor is trying to have the best of both worlds: “Check for (college) student discounts at businesses, these usually still apply to PhD students. Also check your university HR website for employee discounts, you might be able to use some of these too if you can be considered an employee.” Katie added: “Also look into if your university partners with community businesses, often you can get free/discounted things that way. I use my grad student id for any student discounts I can—movie theaters, admission costs, etc.” Another anonymous contributor was thinking along the same lines: “Utilize coupons/discounts/other promotions from school, local newspaper ads, etc.” Another anonymous contributor said “Pay attention to your graduate student society and university calendar as there may be free or discounted events for students on and off campus.” An anonymous contributor suggested “Finding furniture and other home goods on facebook marketplace.”

44:56 Courtney B: Another frugal tip here from Courtney Thrifting. Items enclosed is sustainable and a frugal game changer. I go about twice a month through the thrift store and set price boundaries for myself, and I recently found very nice clothes for conferences for $5 each piece. Um, pro tip go after each semester is over when students are dumping items like crazy.

45:21 Emily: And finally, another anonymous contributor noted that “Events that give away free t-shirts/clothing items are your friends.” It’s a trope, but all those free T-shirts saved me significant money in grad school!

Financial

45:37 Emily: I wasn’t necessarily expecting this, but I received several financially-related frugal tips. From an anonymous contributor: “Have a system (app, spreadsheet, etc.) where you track monthly budgets and expenditures grouped into budget categories.” Absolutely wonderful advice that is an umbrella over all the other frugal tips. Another anonymous contributor said, “Have 2 separate bank accounts. A high yield savings account and a spending account. Adjust the money you put into the spending account from each paycheck such that it is only a little bit more than your monthly budget. This keeps you disciplined about spending while you know that you are not running out of money.” I believe this person is saying to deposit your paycheck into the savings account and allocate to the spending account only what you actually want to spend that month plus a bit of wiggle room, like a more extreme version of the adage to pay yourself first. I like this strategy a lot! Pranav from Purdue suggested, “Maximize bank and credit card rewards and referrals and use a budgeting (not spend tracking) app like YNAB. YouTube is excellent for information about this. (pay on time and in full, and don’t spend money you don’t have!). First year of YNAB is free for college students.” At the time of this recording, Mint has just announced that it is partially transitioning to Credit Karma/partially shutting down at the end of 2023, so frankly this is a great time to try out another budgeting system like YNAB, which stands for You Need a Budget, or my simple spreadsheet tracker, which you can find at PFforPhDs.com/tracker/. Finally, Ricky Gettys from Penn State said, “Most Grad student stipends are NOT taxable at Penn State, meaning income is $0 on PA tax returns. That means that federal programs are almost guaranteed to apply (SNAP, Medicaid, ACP aka free internet).” I can’t verify everything in this tip, but I do know that fellowship income not reported on a Form W-2 is not considered taxable income in Pennsylvania, so if I were on fellowship in Pennsylvania I would for sure look into all the programs that Ricky listed. I hope you all enjoyed listening to this episode as much as I enjoyed creating it! If you have a frugal tip of your own to share, please visit the show notes at PFforPhDs.com/S16E6/ and add it as a comment there. I can’t wait to hear your tips and how you will use the strategies in this episode!

Outtro

48:09 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? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Previous Tax Workshop Clients

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Listed below are the universities* to which I have licensed a version of How to Complete Your PhD Trainee Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!) and/or Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients and the tax years in which we worked together.

Boston University — 2021

Brandeis University — 2022

Brown University — 2022

California Institute of Technology — 2021

Columbia University — 2021, 2022, 2023

Duke University — 2021, 2022

Emerson Collective Grant — 2022

Harvard University — 2021, 2022, 2023

Mayo Clinic — 2021

Michigan State University — 2021, 2022, 2023

National Institutes of Health — 2022

Rutgers University — 2022

Scripps Research — 2021, 2022, 2023

Southern Methodist University — 2022

Stanford University — 2021

University of California, Berkeley — 2021, 2022

University of California, San Diego — 2021

University of Houston — 2022

University of Miami — 2021

University of Michigan — 2021

University of Minnesota — 2022

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — 2021, 2022, 2023

University of Rhode Island — 2022

University of Wisconsin—Madison — 2022

Vanderbilt University — 2021, 2022, 2023

Washington University in St. Louis — 2021, 2022

* The workshop may have been provided to PhD trainees within only a single school, department, etc.

This Grad Student’s Podcast Expands Beyond Her Dissertation Topic

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In this episode, Emily interviews Alexandria Miller, and 5th-year PhD student in Africana Studies at Brown University. In 2021, Alexandria started a podcast, Strictly Facts: A Guide to Caribbean History and Culture, to further her vision for educational equity. Alexandria participated in a business incubator program at Brown and joined a Caribbean podcast network, and she’s now considering how to transition to podcast into a business, perhaps in the ed tech space. Alexandria and Emily discuss how Alexandria manages her schedule as a grad student and podcaster and whether she is open about her side pursuit within her program.

Links mentioned in the Episode

This Grad Student's Podcast Expands Beyond Her Dissertation Topic

Teaser

Alexandria M (00:00): At first, it started as a podcast in terms of just being a niche interest of mine in a way to bridge conversations with peers and, you know, others who I think are enthusiast of history and maybe are of Caribbean heritage like myself. But I, as time progressed and you know, I’ve been seeing how it’s grown over the last two years, I’ve really started to think about other ways to really make it a side business in itself and not just a hobby.

Introduction

Emily (00:31): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (01:03): This is Season 16, Episode 5, and today my guest is Alexandria Miller, a 5th-year PhD student in Africana Studies at Brown University. In 2021, Alexandria started a podcast, Strictly Facts: A Guide to Caribbean History and Culture, to further her vision for educational equity. Alexandria participated in a business incubator program at Brown and joined a Caribbean podcast network, and she’s now considering how to transition the podcast into a business, perhaps in the ed tech space. Alexandria and I discuss how she manages her schedule as a grad student and podcaster and whether she is open about her side pursuit within her program. As I record this introduction, I have just returned from FinCon 2023, which is a conference for financial content creators. It was in New Orleans, and I had a wonderful time and learned a ton! I don’t want to overpromise, but I am hoping to make some changes in the content creation and dissemination aspect of my business, so you can expect some changes like website updates and increased social media content. I’m even toying with the idea of writing a book, which is super scary to say out loud. If you aren’t already on my mailing list, it would be so so helpful to me if you would join so you can hear about all this new and updated content as I’m rolling it out. I would really appreciate the support. As a podcast listener, a great way to get on the mailing list is to go to PFforPhDs.com/advice/ and enter your name and email there. You’ll receive access to a document that contains short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast to my final question regarding my guests’ best financial advice. The document is updated with each new episode release. Again, that was PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Thank you so much! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s16e5/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Alexandria Miller.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (03:24): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Alexandria Miller. She is a fifth year PhD student in Africana studies at Brown, and we’re going to talk about her side business. Really exciting. So Alexandria, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today, and will you please introduce yourself a little bit further to the audience?

Alexandria M (03:41): Definitely. Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Roberts. It’s a pleasure to share with you, especially having been a listener of your podcast for such a while now. So as you said, I am a fifth year PhD candidate in the Department of Africana Studies at Brown. I did my undergraduate work at Duke University in history in African and African-American Studies, so similar fields nonetheless. And in addition to my work as a PhD candidate and all the things that comes with being a PhD candidate, of course, I also founded Strictly Facts, a Guide to Caribbean History and Culture in 2021. So a little bit over two years now, which is a podcast and educational platform just to expand the knowledge and awareness of the Caribbean and its history and popular culture.

Focus of Graduate Work and Podcasting Side Business

Emily (04:27): Absolutely. And so I wanna know how much overlap there is between like the work you’re doing as grad student, like the subject of your dissertation and what you’re doing with this side business. So can you explain any like similarities or differences between those two?

Alexandria M (04:40): For sure. They are not really similar. To put it simply obviously I am a historian and so my PhD is looking at Jamaican women’s history in the 20th century to contemporary times, but Strictly Facts is just, you know, more expansive in a sense. It covers Caribbean history across the region as well as the diaspora. And so not necessarily pinpointed to my specific project in terms of my dissertation, but definitely there have been crossover conversations in various episodes and things to that nature.

Emily (05:16): But it would be safe to say, is it safe to say that your, your passion or whatever inspired you to choose this as your, you know, undergraduate and graduate field of study is also what is fueling the, the side work, is that right?

Alexandria M (05:29): Definitely. I think I have always loved history and have always been looking for ways to see myself reflected in the history that I was alerting. And I think that in large part inspired my path towards the PhD in becoming a historian. It wasn’t till while in the PhD and especially after some years of work that I’ve done in terms of educational equity and accessibility, that I started also thinking of different ways outside of the classroom potentially to expand accessibility and educational equity. And you know, at first it started as a podcast in terms of just being a niche interest of mine in a way to bridge conversations with peers and, you know, others who I think are enthusiast of history and maybe are of Caribbean heritage like myself. But I, as time progressed and you know, I been seeing how it’s grown over the last two years, I’ve really started to think about other ways to really make it a side business in itself and not just a hobby.

Emily (06:30): And I think this is such an, a natural thing that happens with academics, I would say, especially the faculty level, right? But you’re getting a head start in that by doing it at the grad student level, right? Just the taking their subject matter or something broader than their subject matter and pivoting to a different audience outside that academic sphere. So yeah, I think you’re right in good company a lot of academics do this.

Alexandria M (06:53): I do, I would say so I’ve seen several who, you know, have even pivoted outside of academia into social entrepreneurship and things to that nature. I’m still sort of on the fence in terms of where I’d go because I definitely do love teaching and I am sort of looking forward to figuring out what that shift will look like once I finally finished the dissertation. Of course.

Strictly Facts: A Guide to Caribbean History and Culture Podcast

Emily (07:15): Absolutely. Is there anything else that you’d like to share with us about why you started Strictly Facts?

Alexandria M (07:20): Definitely. I think, you know, as a first generation Jamaican American, there have been several ways that I’ve envisioned just, you know, learning about my heritage and where my family comes from that I think has paralleled amongst and across people from other parts of the region. I have a great network of peers and colleagues who are either from the Caribbean or of Caribbean heritage, and we’ve had several conversations across, you know, not only figuring out ways that our histories have been linked but also there are things that, you know, based off things like national and geographic boundaries, the fact that migration, particularly to the global North, is so high for, for people from the Caribbean. There are just several ways that I think learning of Caribbean history and about Caribbean history could be expanded for those from Caribbean Heritage or from the region. And so that was another impetus for me to start Strictly Facts to really expand these conversations and unify all of the community together a little bit more.

Emily (08:26): And can you tell me more about the, the format of the podcast at least? Like is it an interview-based show? Is it solo episodes?

Alexandria M (08:34): It’s a mix of both, depending on probably how busy I am that week. So I definitely have solo episodes where I share a little bit about a topic and offer listeners, you know, additional resources and books and things for listeners to learn more. But I also have interview style episodes where different experts, enthusiasts of history, people have even came and shared, you know, sort of individual or more familial stories and takes on parts of, you know, how their families or even themselves have been part of Caribbean history. So it is really a fun thing in a sense, which is probably why it started more so as a hobby initially, but I’m definitely looking forward to expanding out Strictly Facts a little bit more beyond its podcast in the years to come.

Emily (09:24): Yeah. So going off that subject a little bit more, tell us about, I guess, the structure that Strictly Facts has taken to this point. What, what steps have you taken with it, and then what might you do in the future going forward?

Alexandria M (09:37): Yeah, so as I said, it was more so of a little bit of a hobby in a sense. And so that just meant, you know, me recording episodes and scheduling things scheduling episodes to record with guests. Since then though, of course I have been looking forward to expanding it out. And so I’ve, I am part of the Caribbean podcast directory, which has been a great resource in terms of just, you know, building the podcast community in a sense, helping me get a little bit more familiar with what that community looks like outside of, you know, getting out of my academic bubble sometimes. But also, you know, whether that be crossover episodes with other podcasters, et cetera. And really just growing my listenership. I have also, in terms of more so like the business angle of things, I was a part of Brown’s Breakthrough Lab or B Lab, which is an entrepreneurship incubator. And that really helped me to shift my framing a little bit of how I thought of Strictly Facts in terms of really considering things like consumers and, you know, where do I wanna take it and sort of the business aim, right? Am I looking towards being a solely content based business? What other ways I am hoping to expand out Strictly Facts. So that has definitely been a great help in terms of shifting towards some of my future aims. Of course though, I always say that I have two babies in a sense, finishing grad school and the dissertation and Strictly Facts. So, trying to graduate is on, is the major goal at the time, but I am looking forward to building out other things in terms of content, you know, educational products, ed tech devices and things to that nature in the future.

Brown’s Breakthrough Lab: Entrepreneurship Incubator

Emily (11:25): Wow, okay. I, I would love to hear a little bit more about this like incubator. ‘Cause this is one of those resources that’s uniquely available when you have a position, especially as a student inside of academia that would be very difficult to come by in the, in the rest of the world, right? So like, I don’t know, like what were the other students or other people who were participating in that program? What kinds of businesses were they, were they similar to yours? Were they different from yours that were involved in the incubator?

Alexandria M (11:54): I think in a large part it’s was a little bit over a year now . But it, in a large way, I think there were a lot of people who were definitely in the medical tech space creating apps for medical benefits and devices and things of that nature. So I definitely felt like I was a smaller portion of the incubator who took a sort of different focus in my terms of in, or my definition of entrepreneurship. I don’t think I even really realized it until I started sort of falling into this category that I do definitely have family members who are entrepreneurs who have their own businesses you know, primarily small businesses and what that has meant for our family and the growth and development of our family. And so I have, I used a lot of what I learned both from the incubator and as well from, you know, my own family’s perspective, family member’s perspectives to help figure out where I hope to go in the future.

Emily (12:56): Well, I think it’s just so intriguing that you mentioned like ed tech or like just the, the, I think like the productization like paths that you might be able to take from here. It just by happenstance, literally yesterday I started listening to a, a new podcast and a new to me podcast called Billion Dollar Creator and it’s co-hosted by Nathan something or other who’s the founder of ConvertKit with the email management software, which actually I use. And Rachel Rogers, who’s the founder of Hello seven, the author of the book, we Should All Be Millionaires. And so they’re talking about similar things like once you have sort of an, an area that you have that you’re getting attention in that people are coming to you for information or entertainment or whatever it is, like how can you start to pivot that and not just get paid for having people’s eyeballs on you, but get paid for something that you create from that, like a product or a service or something. And how can you then scale that to a billion dollars? So it’s very aspirational kind of podcast, but I just love that you’re, you know, that you have the opportunity to do this program and that you have these family members and just that you have these examples and influences around you that could help you think like really widely about, okay, this started as a podcast, but where else can we go from here? That’s really exciting.

Alexandria M (14:10): Thank you. Yes, definitely

Commercial

14:15 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! I’m hard at work behind the scenes updating my suite of tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2023. These pre-recorded educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2023 tax season starting in January 2024, I’m offering four versions of this workshop, one each for US citizen/resident graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. While I do sell these workshops to individuals, I prefer to license them to universities so that the end users, graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs, can access them for free. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they sponsor one of my tax preparation workshops for you and your peers? I’d love to receive a warm introduction to a potential sponsor this fall so we can hit the ground running in January serving those early bird filers. You can find more information about licensing these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Now back to our interview.

Podcast Visibility

Emily (15:58): Okay, so you have this fabulous podcast and it’s part of a network and you’re going on other peoples podcast and you’re inviting guests on and so forth, and it’s related to your academic pursuits. So like do people in your program, like either the faculty or the other students, like, do they know what you’re up to? Do they know about this business?

Alexandria M (16:19): They definitely do. I’ve you know, I’ve had faculty members on this show. I’ve had peers on the show. I think my cohort and many of the other students who I’m close with, whether they’re in my program or outside of Brown even have been really supportive of my show, whether that’s, you know, sharing episodes on social media telling me that, you know, oh, I read this great book, have you <laugh> considered having this person on the show, et cetera. And so it, and it is a public podcast, right? It’s across all podcast platforms will soon to be on YouTube as well. So that’s many of the other things I’m working on right now. And so yeah, it is aware, I, you know, people are aware of what I’m doing. I don’t know if they have considered it in a sense, right? I think everybody’s really busy and has, you know, their own their own projects, many other students, but it is definitely a public show and everybody knows what’s going on.

Emily (17:18): How about your advisor or your committee? Have you had any like, direct conversations with them about the podcast?

Alexandria M (17:25): Maybe not necessarily a direct conversation, but it is a public show again, and so I do think many people are still aware of Strictly Facts and, you know, the incubator was through Brown, so there are several things that, you know, if you are interested on wanting to know more, it is all out there. Yeah,

Emily (17:43): I guess I’m just thinking about, you know, some graduate students who have a side hustle want to keep it quiet and don’t want their advisor or their committee or whatever to know about it. So I, I guess maybe for you, would it be safe to say that they’re probably aware and if they had concerns they would’ve raised them by now? Like about how you’re spending your time, for example?

Alexandria M (18:02): I would say so. I, I would think so at least. And it hasn’t been raised yet, so that seems to be a good note. But again, I think the fact that it is sort of in line with my work as an educator, as a scholar also helping me build out my network in terms of my scholarship and where my work will go post graduation is I think also a major plus for the work that I’m doing in this avenue.

Emily (18:32): Absolutely. It seems to be like augmenting your career in this area rather than like detracting from it in any way. Definitely

Time Management

Emily (18:38): Yeah. Well that sounds great. Let’s talk about time management then, because you know, you, you said kind of earlier, oh, it, the podcast is so fun, it’s like a hobby, excuse me. I know that podcasting is an incredible amount of work, plus if you’re not even just thinking about the podcast, but things that like extend beyond that. So please tell us like how, how, how much time are you spending on this? How are you balancing your time? How are you, I don’t know, even like project management stuff, like how, how are you handling all this?

Alexandria M (19:07): Yeah, I mean, I am really big on organization and doing things, you know, well in advance. And so I, I think back to even March, which was like Women’s History Month, or it was Women’s History Month, right? I had that episode scheduled like months in advance and, you know, maybe the listeners wouldn’t know that it was recorded in January or whenever it was. But those things planning has been a big part of the way that I continue to make Strictly Facts and stay on top of all of my other graduate work. So whether that is using, you know, social media manager management services like Buffer or, you know, some of the other similar ones to schedule post when things are going live and all of those things have really helped me. And it, you know, as you said, it does take quite a bit of time to time, make the show, edit it, schedule, coordinate with guests and all of those things, but there are a lot of resources out there that have made the coordination and the planning of it a lot more simple.

Emily (20:12): And I, I know with graduate students, this is certainly the case with me. I was allowing my grad school work to bleed over into all the time and also would allow personal things to bleed into grad school time. It was very like fluid back and forth. I’m much more strict with myself now <laugh> now that I’m like a business owner and a parent. And so I’m wondering for you, like, do you have any like hours that you keep for either grad school stuff or podcasting stuff, or are they separate? Do you allow them to overlap?

Alexandria M (20:42): That’s a great question that I probably should be a little bit more strict and diligent on. I try to, eh, I would, I wouldn’t necessarily say I have hours particularly for either of them. Sometimes it’s, you know, as things arise, I definitely, being that I’m amidst dissertating right now, that is the main focus at the heart of everything right now. But again you know, if it is a Wednesday and we publish episodes every other Wednesday for Strictly Facts, then you know, there has to be some time devoted ahead of Wednesday. But otherwise I, they do probably bleed a little bit, which is always, you know, not necessarily the best organization. But, you know, self-care is important and I think I’ve created a decent balance, at least at the moment of taking care of myself, maintaining this business and grad school as well.

Emily (21:36): And I think it’s very dependent on like the culture that you’re in, right? The culture of academia is a lot of flipping back and forth and transitioning and letting those boundaries kind of slide. And I’ve just found like as now like a full-time business owner that I need to be more strict with myself because again, it’s, it’s very similar to a dissertation. Like the work will balloon to fill any space that you allow it to. So you have to just draw some boundaries and keep it contained. So is the podcast currently monetized in any way?

Podcast Monetization and Ed Tech

Alexandria M (22:03): Not particularly. It’s not being monetized. I have definitely had certain offers, but I’ve wanted to ensure that they really align with my mission and focus at the moment. And I think partially the reason why I’ve reiterated a few times that it started as a hobby was, is because of that it’s not currently being monetized, but definitely again, I do hope to see it balloon into a really, you know, profitable business hopefully in the near future. And so yeah, at the moment it can be seen as more of a hobby or something I’m doing in terms of mere content creation. But again business ownership is something that I think is important to me. Financial literacy and independence is also important to me as well.

Emily (22:50): Well, you always have to lay the groundwork, right? Like it, it depends on the type of business, but I think for the type of business that you’re building, it makes sense that there’s going to be a period of, and especially if you’re selective right, of no revenue or low revenue while you’re figuring out what you want everything to look like. So what do you think the next step will be like? Will it be ads on the podcast? Will it be like, what, what is your next thought in the monetization process?

Alexandria M (23:16): Yeah. I have definitely been open to ads. They just, you know, I want them to be the right one and not necessarily something random just for kicks or anything. I do definitely want them to be in line with the Caribbean education history, things to that nature, but also really hoping again to venture into the ed tech space. So whether that is creating some more of those like digital products you know, I have three nephews and a niece who are always learning and, you know, I’m always engaging with them probably in a sense to give back to sort of like my inner child and having reflected on the ways that I hoped, you know, I hoped to learn or wish I had learned at the time when I was their age. And so I’ve definitely seen what products they’ve have, you know, what my brother and sister have bought for them in terms of their learning and figuring out ways to also input and ensure that the diversity, the Caribbean region itself is also a part of that.

Emily (24:21): Hmm. Can you give us any, ’cause like my mind meant immediately went to like books, right? Even children’s books or, or a book for adults, like, which would be a natural outworking of many people’s dissertations. What like what kind of other ideas are you thinking there in terms of like, yeah, books for kids.

Alexandria M (24:39): I mean, there are books, there are flashcards. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> you know, whether they’re like little alphabet things that has big for one of my, or two of my nephews right now who are two. And so there are things like that. But I’ve also thought of different ways to engage sort of like digital humanities in a sense, but from more so like a children’s perspective, right? So whether that is, you know, apps that are, you know, teaching a different facts about the region and things of that nature. There are, I think a lot of ways that I have toyed with expanding it in the future. But we’re, I’m still, you know, sort of at that idea phase at the moment.

Emily (25:22): Yeah. And like you said, right now the dissertation is project number one, right? To get that to the finish line <laugh>. Okay. Are there any other future plans that you’d like to share with us before we sign off?

Alexandria M (25:35): Not necessarily future plans in the, you know, in a hard line to find way, but there are always Strictly Facts episodes more than 60 to date. So feel free if you’ve never heard of Strictly Facts and want to check out what I’m doing there. We publish episodes every other Wednesday, again, across all podcast platforms, be that Spotify, apple podcast, you know, Google podcast, iHeartRadio, the list could go on. So feel free to check me out there and follow me on all social media platforms at Strictly Facts Pod. And yeah, feel free to let me know if you have any questions or even wanna be a guest on the show as well.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (26:16): I love it Alexandria. Thank you so much for coming on. But before we leave, I have to ask you the question that I ask all of my guests, which is, what is your best piece of financial advice for another grad student or early career PhD? And that can be something that we’ve touched on already in the interview or it could be something completely new.

Alexandria M (26:34): Hmm, definitely. I think one for me that has been really imperative on both journeys, whether that is grad school or you know, as a budding business owner is applying for grants and that could be, you know, maybe fellowships or things of that nature from the academic side, but also, you know, business grants, startup grants, et cetera. It has been really helpful for one, in helping me define my projects in either sense, right? Being able to explain what I’m doing, what my passions are, what the goals are of either side, whether that be dissertating or Strictly Facts. And you know, if it comes through, getting a grant or a fellowship is definitely really helpful in terms of just building out your project and however that is, and also creating a little bit of freedom, right? I think one thing for me from the academic side is, you know, potentially like not having the TA for a semester or a year even has really helped me dive into my dissertation, focus on my research and writing and helping me get it finished a lot sooner than maybe possibly if I didn’t have that freedom. And so I think grants are really helpful on either way, right? Whether that is, again, just applying and helping you narrow your focus or, you know, then at the tail end if you are successful helping you branch out and dive into your work.

Emily (27:58): Absolutely. So well put. Well, Alexandria, thank you so much for volunteering to come on the podcast. It was wonderful to meet you, to hear about your podcast and all the best for the growth opportunities in the future.

Alexandria M (28:08): Thank you so much, Emily. Thank you for having me.

Outtro

Emily (28:16): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

How This Grad Student-Parent Managed Her Money and Time in the Bay Area

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Ilana Horwitz, an assistant professor of Jewish Studies and Sociology at Tulane University. Ilana started her PhD at Stanford when her first child was nine months old, and she had a second child after her third year. Emily and Ilana discuss the frugal tactics and time management strategies that she employed while her children were young. They also discuss the income disparity and gender dynamics that came into play between Ilana and her husband during that period and when Ilana was on the academic job market. Finally, Ilana makes the case for having children as a grad student instead of as a faculty member. If you are a parent in academia, whether as a grad student or full-time employee, don’t miss this episode!

Links mentioned in the Episode

How This Grad Student-Parent Managed Her Money and Time in the Bay Area

Teaser

Ilana H (00:00): I think really creatively and outside the box about how you can garner resources in your community, in your social network to help you sort of accomplish things. And it’s not necessarily like a specific amount of money, but that, you know, if you have a talent, like maybe you can tutor somebody in statistics and in exchange they can watch your kids for a couple of hours.

Introduction

Emily (00:32): 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.

Emily (01:03): This is Season 16, Episode 4, and today my guest is Dr. Ilana Horwitz, an assistant professor of Jewish Studies and Sociology at Tulane University. Ilana started her PhD at Stanford when her first child was nine months old, and she had a second child after her third year. Ilana and I discuss the frugal tactics and time management strategies that she employed while her children were young. We also discuss the income disparity and gender dynamics that came into play between Ilana and her husband during that period and when Ilana was on the academic job market. Finally, Ilana makes the case for having children as a grad student instead of as a faculty member. If you are a parent in academia, whether as a grad student or full-time employee, don’t miss this episode!

Emily (01:50): This is your official invitation to please volunteer as a guest for one of the upcoming episodes! I love that on this podcast I get to feature PhDs and PhDs-to-be who are almost exclusively regular people and learn and share their real-life stories and strategies. Please go to PFforPhDs.com/podcastvolunteer/ and fill out the quick form, and I’ll be in touch over email. I look forward to interviewing you in the coming months! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s16e4/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Ilana Horwitz.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Ilana H (02:57): Sure. Thank you so much for having me on on this podcast, Emily. I am an assistant professor of Jewish Studies and Sociology at Tulane University. I went to graduate school at Stanford in the Graduate School of Education and I got my PhD in Sociology of Education and Jewish Studies. But I had a long career before I started graduate school. I worked in management consulting and in several sort of researchy and evaluation kind of roles and a couple of startups. And so I didn’t start my PhD until I was 30. And then after I did my PhD, I stayed at Stanford for a two year postdoc and then joined the Tulane faculty. And I’m now in my third year at Tulane.

Ilana’s Book: The Entrepreneurial Scholar

Emily (03:44): Excellent. And please tell us the subject of this book, ’cause I can already see there’s overlap with your professional history there and the subject and everything.

Ilana H (03:51): Yeah, absolutely. The title of the book is called The Entrepreneurial Scholar and it’s really a book about how early career scholars and PhD students can think about generating influential ideas while working with very limited resources and navigating an environment of high uncertainty. This is something that people who are entrepreneurial are really good at, but people who are really good at school tend to not be as good at. So it’s really a book that tries to get people to think differently about the dispositions and sort of habits that they bring to graduate school.

Emily (04:26): I love it. Absolutely. There’s no way I’m gonna miss this when it comes out. So we are recording this interview in September, 2023. The book is expected to be out in summer 2024, and I will have Ilana back on the pro on the podcast during that post book period promotional period. ’cause I’m so curious about this whole process, not just the subject of the book, but the making of the book. So is really exciting, but this is not our subject for today. Our subject for today is the fact that you had a child before you even started graduate school, and then you had another one during graduate school. And so we’re gonna talk about kind of the financial stuff that you did to, you know, make that work while you were a graduate student. And so let’s start off by talking about kind of what was your family structure and and what were the finances like at that time and all those details.

Family Structure and Finances During Graduate School

Ilana H (05:09): Yeah, so I had my first kid in January of 2013. And at the time I was working and I had applied to graduate school. And ironically today actually my kids are off from school. So if you’re watching the video here, they are in the background. here, they are much older. But I had Aria I was working and then when I had her, I, a few weeks after she was born, actually my advisor called me and said he had accepted me into the program and so I decided not to go back to work. And I was able to stay home with my first one for eight months. And then I started graduate school when she was nine months old. We had our second baby between my third and fourth year we actually tried to plan it to h her between my second and third year because of sort of but it takes so long to get pregnant sometimes that I realized that planning. It was a very silly attempt. At the time, in terms of our finances, we were pretty financially stable. My husband and I had both worked at that point for about a decade. And so we had a lot of money saved up and he had a pretty stable job in the Bay Area. I had about $40,000 of loans from undergrad and from my first master’s at Teachers Columbia. But they were in deferment and we, I had a pretty generous stipend from Stanford. It was only, it was $25,000, but I had an additional sort of $20,000 for four for a couple of years from an outside source. So I was making about 45,000. But we had very high expenses. So living, we lived on Stanford’s campus in the family housing, which I’ll talk a lot about. But we, our rent started at about $2,000 at the start of graduate school. And then it was up to 2,700 by the time I finished graduate school a month. And then we had really high childcare expenses. We did put our children in daycare full-time. And basically by the time sort of my last few years of grad school, we were paying $50,000 a year in childcare expenses. ’cause Each kid cost over $2,000 per year. So that pretty much all wiped out my entire salary. But we did have my husband’s income to get us through it.

Emily (07:39): Wow, okay. Thank you so much for all those details. So it sounds like your stipend from Stanford at least initially was around 45 k. Did you get any supplement for like a childcare grant or anything? I’ve, I’ve noticed that some other students have had access to those kinds of resources.

Ilana H (07:55): I did not. While I was at Stanford, there was a big push to help parents because parents were really struggling. One of my classmates, actually, Tina Cheuk, somebody you could talk to someday started a whole campaign around mothers and parents in academia. And as a result of this like amazing advocacy work that she did, I think parents were able to apply for grants of up to $10,000, partly to cover not just childcare, but also healthcare. My understanding is that the healthcare expenses through Stanford were in extraordinarily expensive and people weren’t able to pay for it. I was on my husband’s insurance, and so we were able to do it that way. But the sort of advocacy work that she did made a big difference to some parents. And I think by the time I left, there were more resources available to parents.

Emily (08:44): Thank you so much for telling us about that effort because it just goes to show that these advocacy efforts are effective in, in various places. I love to hear that. Tell me a little bit about, more about like, okay, you said we’re basically trying to basically getting by on your husband’s salary because yours is effectively going to childcare. I just wanna know because you said it’s high cost of living, but presumably your husband also has a good Bay Area type salary. I’m trying to understand how much of a strain this was being in graduate school. So like, were you guys still able to invest? Were you guys still able to save or was it like, Hmm, nope. Like there’s no, the building towards the future is the career thing here. It’s not the financial thing at this time.

Ilana H (09:22): We were able to, I think, continue saving, but part of I think my own challenge was that I I had grown up sort of like a, as a working class immigrant, my family moved from the former Soviet Union when I was seven. And then my my, my parents had sort of like pretty working class jobs and then my father unexpectedly passed away when I was 14. And so I think having grown up sort of in some economic precarity and also seeing my mom really having to figure out her finances on her own has always made me very like nervous about being reliant on somebody else’s income, which is, you know, nothing that my, is my husband’s fault, but it’s my own sort of struggle. And so even though we were fine financially, I was constantly trying to think about ways to sort of be frugal, ways to be creative about resources which I know we’re gonna talk about. But I, I felt like I had to sort of because I wasn’t working and I’d been so used to working, I felt like I had to find all sorts of ways to save money and be really, really efficient with our resources.

Creative Financial Strategies During Graduate School

Emily (10:25): So what kinds of things were you doing? Like what could be helpful maybe for other people in a similar situation to hear in terms of how you could keep a lid on expenses related to your children?

Ilana H (10:36): I tried to think really creatively about using and harnessing the communal resources of the Stanford community. So I mentioned that we lived in graduate student housing and our apartments were tiny. But what was amazing is that we had these communal playgrounds and I started spending time hanging out with other parents, you know, on the swing set and whatever. And I realized that like everyone had a lot of really interesting skills and I was like, how can we all sort of bring together all of our unique skills to help each other? And so one thing I knew I was good at was taking family photographs. I had like a background in photography, I really loved it. And so I posted, there was like a parent listerv, and so I posted an email saying like, I would like to barter my photography services in exchange for somebody coming to help me build my furniture. I don’t have time to build my baby crib and the dresser and all these things. And so if you come and build my furniture, I will take family photos. And so that was one thing I started doing. I also sent out an email saying, who wants to do like a meal swap? Because during my winter breaks, spring breaks and summer breaks, I would go on a intensive sort of cooking frenzy where I would cook a ton of stews and soups and chilies and then freeze them in mason jars. And I was like, but I would get sick of the same soup. So I was like, if other people did this, we could have a big soup swap. So I thought about doing that. I also realized, you know, your kids wear some of their clothes like five times and they’re brand new. And so I started organizing baby clothing swaps and also not just for clothing, but like strollers and cribs and all these other things. And I, I think the key thing was like not being shy to ask and sort of put the ideas out there because I think some people feel like, oh you know, I have to, we live in this very individualistic society and I had to get out of this mindset and think about what is the, what can the community do together that’s bigger than what all of us can do individually. I also started all of our houses were attached and I realized that our baby monitors would reach across homes. And so like we had good friends who lived like one door down, like there was somebody separating us. But our monitor reached over there and I said like, we wanna go out to dinner. We don’t wanna pay for our babysitter once we put our baby to bed. Can we give you the monitor and like you just check on our baby? And we did that and we, and then we would exchange those sort of services for each other. So those were some of the ways that I creatively thought about using and leveraging all the parents in the community to help each other.

Emily (13:15): Well, I love those ideas, not just for the specifics of baby clothes or bartering services, but because you were leading by example and you’re still leading by example by sharing this with us on the podcast. So did you find that people were very receptive to these ideas? I would be if I heard them, then again, I’m a pretty frugal person. So how, how were they received?

Ilana H (13:34): Yeah, I think they were received great. I think people were really in the same boat. And I think everybody was trying to make ends meet. There was a lot of stay-at-home parents and graduate housing. It was very typical for men to be getting their graduate degrees and for moms to be full-time with childcare responsibilities. Because basically if you have more than like two kids, it doesn’t sort of make sense to pay for care. It’s often, you know, cheaper for the mom to stay home. And so people who had three or four children did that arrangement and they were still really struggling. So people, yeah, definitely embraced the idea of communal sharing. They loved it. And we also lived in the Bay area where there was like a mentality of recycle, reuse, repurpose. So I think that helped us also,

Emily (14:30): Yeah, my mind is boggling a little bit, thinking about a family being supported by a grad student or postdoc kind of salary or stipend in the Bay area. But I know this often comes up for, for instance, international students and postdocs, right, whose spouse doesn’t have a working type visa, so they literally have no choice. But to be, you know, the stay at home parent or a stay at home home spouse wow, okay. That’s such an awesome idea and I think it really helped in your case that you all did live. I mean, it sounds like you put things out to the parent listserv, but also many of you were actually neighbors. And so that like proximity and the familiarity that that breeds, I would imagine helped a lot with that initiative.

Ilana H (15:08): Yeah, because I think what that did was develop a sense of trust. Like it wasn’t random people who who you didn’t know who you were trying to collaborate with, right? We had this like, I’m a sociologist, so I’ll just say like we had developed this sort of these networks of trust of social capital. And so I knew that like giving my monitor to you and other parent, I knew who they were, I knew who their children were, their children had probably played at my house. There was a sort of sense of trust and reciprocity that developed by the virtue of the fact that we were all in the same boat and living in close proximity to each other. I also took advantage of a bunch of some Stanford resources that I think some parents don’t, didn’t even know exist. And I wanna put this out there, like for students to see if this exists on your campus. So Stanford dining halls had amazing food and children ate for free, completely for free. And so not only did I not have to cook and clean for my kids, you know, but also it was free. And so we went to the dining hall on a very, very regular basis. It was also like nice to see other families there. It got my children to try new foods, but that was an incredible resource. I also did some things like I co-oped at my kids’ school. If you co-op meaning like you volunteer in the classroom for two hours a week, you can get a discounted tuition rate. So I did that. I also served on the board, which got me 10% off of the tuition. And then I also thought creatively about outsourcing and when I wanted to outsource things. So I come from a business background. Sometimes I like to think like an economist. And so there was a period of time in my sort of fifth year I was taking really some really hard classes trying to finish my work on my dissertation. And it was just too much and I just like wasn’t able to do all the cooking. And so I had talked to one of the parents I’m sorry, not the parents, one of the teachers in my kid’s school and she mentioned like she lived on her own. She was kind of lonely and she loved to cook. And I was like, would you like to come and like spend a couple hours at my house cooking on a Saturday or Sunday and I will pay you? And so I paid her $25 an hour and she came and she did a couple hours of cooking that basically would hold us over for the rest of the week. And the way I thought about that expense was like I was also doing some side hustling and had some consulting jobs on the side and I was like, for me to do an hour of work, you know, I would generally get paid, you know, between like 50 to a hundred dollars depending on the job. Sometimes it was a lot less. But generally I was like, for an hour of my work I could basically get, you know, several hours of time from for somebody to cook. And so I thought about outsourcing in a pretty strategic way because I had this other income coming in from side hustling.

Emily (17:58): Yeah, I love that point and thank you so much for bringing it up. A lot of people within the personal finance community talk about your hourly rate, like your hourly compensation rate and say, ah, anything you know, below that you should outsource it if you can get it done for less. I don’t quite agree with that, but in your situation there’s an exact corollary, which you just said this was not your base salary that you were comparing to. This was the extra hours you could put towards the side hustle that you were comparing to. So it directly freed up your time for that particular income source. So that’s why the comparison works really well. And I love this idea of you like, you know, in your first four years of graduate school doing all this batch cooking during your breaks and like getting prepared and getting your family used to the system of we eat freezer meals and we do this bulk cooking stuff. And then after that realizing, oh wow, I don’t, I now don’t even have time for the cooking part of it, but we’re already used to kind of the system and so you can just outsource that last leg of it and make it work for you. So yeah, thank you so much for like talking about your thought process through that. Was there anything else that you considered outsourcing other than cooking or, or did outsource? I mean,

Ilana H (19:03): Occasionally I would outsource some childcare help. So my kids were in school full time, which was like eight to six. And occasionally I would have people some of their teachers would come on the weekend and I would pay them hourly to watch my kids if I ne needed to do something over the weekend and couldn’t real, you know, ask my husband to sort of watch the kids yet again. I don’t think there was anything else that I can think of.

Time Management During Graduate School

Emily (19:29): Okay. Well now that we’re into kind of the time management portion of the conversation, can you share with us any other like time management related strategies used to make this period of your life work?

Ilana H (19:40): Yeah, so I in the beginning of graduate school, probably my first and second year I would put my, my daughter, I just had one at the time and she would go to bed pretty early, right? That’s the great thing about babies. They go to bed by like seven 30 and I would do a lot of work at night, but then I realized I couldn’t sleep particularly when I was working on my qualifying paper, which is what we have instead of comps. Because I was just thinking about the data in my head all the time and like trying to resolve puzzles as I was trying to sleep and it just wasn’t working. And so I decided to totally shift my schedule to go to bed by about 9 30, 10 at the latest and then wake up five to five 30. And my kids, especially in sort of the later years, were not waking up until like seven. And so I would get a solid hour and a half of work time in the morning and I felt so productive and so fabulous. It took, you know, other people I’ve given this advice to have started it. And then they give up really quickly. The, the trick is you have to stick with it for a couple weeks. Like the first couple days are so hard ’cause your body is not used to doing that. So stick with it and for, you know, it, it can work.

Emily (20:48): So this strategy is called the split shift. It’s something that I learned about in Laura Vander cam’s, I know how she does it, which is about working moms with high impact jobs. And yeah, it’s super, super common as you said, because your kids are only awake for those limited windows. If you’re working for a lot of that window, then you don’t get to see them that much. So you sort of shift the work around, like you said, you tried it in the evening, that’s what most people do, but it didn’t work for you for the reasons you said. And so I love that you just didn’t give up on the strategy entirely. You just shifted the window. Now it is very challenging to get up before young children, at least most young children, but it sounds like it was working for you all. And I know actually from the podcast that Laura Vander cam co-hosts, which is called Best of both worlds, that her co-host is also a very, very early riser. So she loves that morning split shift as well. So yeah, and I totally agree with you. I changed my own sleep habits sort of early on the pandemic. I had never been one to consistently be waking up at the same time every day. And I was a bit of a night owl, but I started getting up at 6:00 AM every day. And you’re exactly right, it’s the, you have to stick with the schedule, you have to power through the initial like difficult early part, and then it becomes more easy as your body then regulates itself towards that schedule that you’ve set instead of like me just being haphazard all over the place when you go to sleep and when you wake up.

Ilana H (22:03): Yeah, that’s absolutely right. Being consistent with a sleep schedule is really important. So I wake up really early on the weekends also. Another thing that I did or things people often said to me in graduate school, like, I don’t understand how you do it. Like, how can you be a mom and a grad student? And actually I think I was more productive than most people because I knew that I had this very finite period of time, right? Like, I have eight to six and that’s it. And so I didn’t, I wasn’t on social media. I like dilly, didn’t dilly dally. Like I didn’t waste any time, every moment that I had, I was incredibly productive because I knew my time was limited as opposed to, I think people who are like, I have all day, like, so what if I watch a couple hours of TV now as a result? I was like, had no idea what was going on in the world. I had no, I have no pop culture knowledge at all whatsoever. I pretty much lived under a rock, but I was really efficient. And so there’s something to be said about knowing that you have a finite period of time and being really efficient during those hours.

Emily (23:01): I think I have to imagine not only the the parenthood aspect of this, but your past work experience played into this as well because I think it’s really difficult for people sort of like me, I almost did this who go pretty much directly from undergrad to grad school and carry that like student mindset, the student schedule, the student finances, the student identity and so forth into their graduate careers if they haven’t had the kind of interruption like you did by a working career. So probably a lot of the habits and strategies you learned in your twenties were you, you were then able to apply once you got to graduate school.

Ilana H (23:30): Yeah, I, by the time I got to graduate school, I knew myself really, really well and I knew what worked for me and what didn’t. I think early in my career I was always like waiting till the last minute to do things and was a total procrastinator and submitted things late. And really I, and one of the things I, the biggest lesson I learned in my mid twenties when I tried working for a couple of organizations is that I didn’t do well having a boss. I really needed to have autonomy and agency in my work. And being a PhD student and now a faculty member is exactly what is, that’s exactly what I have and that’s what I love so much about my job because I learned that I really needed to set my own schedule. I wanna be able to work what I want on what I want and how I want. And I didn’t do well telling me to, having people tell me sort of how to do my job and when to do it. But so my biggest, you know, general advice for people when they come to me about career advice is to take time off between being an undergrad and a grad student because you learn so much about yourself as well as about the real world. As opposed to when you go straight through. There’s so many ideal things that we think about theoretical things we learn about in the classroom that just don’t translate or are much more difficult in reality. And when you actually go to work in the real world, you see some of those some of those things play out.

Emily (24:52): I love it. I give the same advice whenever anyone seems receptive to it.

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Emily (24:59): Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, 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 2023-2024 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator 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 emily@PFforPhDs.com 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.

Family Roles and Responsibilities During Graduate School

Emily (26:17): Now, we already got a hint of this earlier in the email when you were talking about not wanting to rely on someone else financially. So I wanna ask about in your household during this period, how were the roles working between you and your husband? Did you have defined areas of responsibility? Was that something you were constantly negotiating? I’m sure it changed with time, but can you tell us about that process?

Ilana H (26:39): Yeah, absolutely. When I started graduate school at the time my husband had a very long commute to his job. This is in the day when people actually commuted to work. And so I was in charge both of childcare pick up and drop off. But also because I was, you know, in grad school and I had the more flexible schedule it was assumed and we never had like an outright conversation about it, but it was assumed that I was gonna be the one to take the time off. And so when my kid first started daycare, she was sick all the time. She had ear infections, she had flus, she had colds, all the stuff. And I also, at the time, Stanford operates on a quarter schedule, which I had never been on a quarter schedule. And it’s very different than a semester schedule because things move very fast. And so you can never say to yourself on a quarter schedule like, oh, I’ll get to that later. Or like, I missed that concept, I’ll get to it later because there is no later, it’s only 10 weeks. And so I just remember my first quarter it was really hard. I took this very difficult economics class or it was difficult for me ’cause I was trying to learn things that the other undergrad students in the class it was very intuitive to them, like integrals and derivatives. And my kid was constantly sick. And so even missing like two or three or four classes, which is what ended up happening set me back a lot. And so I really struggled with how to like navigate both, like the idea that the grad student is the more flexible one means that we are always having to, to take that on. And also as the mother, there’s so much of the like kind of invisible childcare responsibility. So for example I was the one that managed all the clothes. Like I knew when they would outgrow the clothes and where the next size was. And sort of keeping all of that organized. I did all the co-oping at the, at the school. I was the one that had to do all the paperwork for the school and do take with them to all the doctor’s appointments and hired, you know, anyone that we, you know, brought in outside of childcare hours. So sort of navigating all that kind of what was I think called the invisible responsibility of childcare fell on me. And that was really hard. Another thing that was especially hard is when I was on the job market when I went on the, I went on the job market three times and I was very unsuccessful up until I finally got this job at Tulane. But at one point I had been offered a job at or at least a postdoc at Brandeis. And at the time my husband, this was pre Covid and my husband said like, you want us to move to Boston for two years for you to make $50,000? Like that doesn’t make any sense. You know, it’s not a permanent job and it would mean that I would have to give up my job, which, you know, in terms of our household hold finances would make no sense. But for me it was hard to sort of navi like feel like, oh, when am I ever gonna get my turn? If it’s always about money I’m never gonna get to have a turn. And so when I finally got a job offer at Tulane, I said to my husband and he didn’t wanna move to New Orleans, I said, you know, if, if you, if we don’t move for this job, like I’m gonna be very resentful. Um and then Covid hit and he was able to take his job remotely with him, but he had even agreed to move to New Orleans before that happened. So and now actually he works from home. And when my kids are sick, he’s the one that now stays home with them and I go and teach and we have a much more even sort of distribution of childcare and it’s, it’s great. But because the grad school time is when you, you know, you’re more flexible, I think that compounded by the gender dynamics of childcare responsibility made it hard for me.

Emily (30:24): Absolutely. You were, it was a double whammy on you. Right? And you mentioned earlier about some of your peers and housing having like a stay-at-home spouse. Now I imagine, were there any women who were graduate students among that who had the stay-at-home husband? Or did you only see the opposite model?

Ilana H (30:40): I think I only saw the opposite model.

Emily (30:45): And isn’t that telling right?

Ilana H (30:47): It is telling.

Gender and Income Dynamics with a Working Partner

Emily (30:48): Yes. absolutely. So you had this, these two seemingly really good reasons right, why you should be the one to be handling the childcare and as you said later on, the roles changed and, and things shifted. But is there any like advice that you would give to your past self or someone else who’s in a similar gendered plus income differential, like kind of situation that would’ve helped you I don’t know, get to graduation faster, feel more balanced, whatever would’ve been a greater degree of success for you at that time?

Ilana H (31:18): This one is kind of maybe sort of silly, but you know, when I was on the job market maybe the second time and I was applying pretty widely, my husband and I would have these like extensive conversations before I applied anywhere. Like could we imagine living there and we would, you know, get into this whole thing. Like I’d apply to a job at Notre Dame and he’d be like, do you really wanna live in South Bend, Indiana? No offense to anybody listening from South Bend, Indiana, but he’s like . That wasn’t his first choice of places to move. But we would have these extensive conversations and in retrospect like that was a waste of time and, and a waste of emotional energy because none of those jobs panned out. So I don’t know why we bothered like sort of investing so much of our conversation time and emotional energy even having those conversations. Um and when I did apply to the job at Tulane, he was like, I, I had sort of given up by then about asking him where I should apply or not apply. That was my third time on the market and I was like, I’m just gonna apply wherever ’cause none of it’s gonna work out anyways. And when I applied he, he just kind of remarked like, oh by the way, like I have no interest in living in New Orleans. And I was like, oh well I won’t get the job anyways. And I did and it worked out. But I just, I wish I hadn’t spent so much emotional energy sort of thinking about whether we could actually move somewhere.

Emily (32:34): I would imagine compounded with this situation is the fact that you were living in the Bay Area and I’m imagining the type of job that your husband has, it’s very difficult to leave that area of the country and the job opportunities that it affords unless you’re really looking to get out, you know, and then you can, you know, leverage your experience and your high salary and all that when you go somewhere else. But if you’re not already desiring that, I can see that that area has a pull. I’m never gonna make as much money elsewhere, by the way. You don’t need as much, but I’m never gonna make as much money elsewhere as I do here. So I I imagine that plays into it as well.

Ilana H (33:04): It does. And also my husband has a job that he is really passionate about. He works in clean energy and I you know, he’s super, he was super supportive of me going to graduate school. I’m very supportive of his career. But it made it hard to look outside of the Bay area ’cause there’s not a lot of clean tech jobs elsewhere. And there was a point at which I was you know, interviewing for a job at a highly teaching focused university. I did not really want to be in a, in a teaching intensive university, but it was in the Bay Area. I didn’t end up getting the job, but that would’ve been probably a sacrifice I would’ve had to make for us to stay in the Bay Area so that we could at least kind of have you know have both of us be happy. But then, you know, because of the pandemic, his job did become remote and it enabled us to move to New Orleans and for him to be able to stay working for his Bay Area company,

Emily (33:54): That is one of the, so to speak, positive things that’s come out of our pandemic experiences. Like you mentioned the remote work possibility. I mean, child sick days are not easy, but it’s certainly much less of a strain if you didn’t have to leave the house in the first place for your job. And you don’t have to scramble for the backup childcare or sacrifice your whole day of going to classes like you had to do to stay home with the sick kids. So in, in that respect and the working remotely, you can work for a company here and live over here, which is something that my husband does. That’s all been very interesting and, and in some ways positive, but we’re still kind of working it out, right, as a society . Yeah. Is there anything else that you would like to say about that dynamic between you and your husband or anything that you would, you know, offer to other people by the way of advice or things to think about?

Ilana H (34:38): Yeah, I would say that no one really talks about the gender dynamics and sort of being the doctoral student and being a mother and all of that. Like, I just think I wasn’t psychologically prepared. It wasn’t a conversation that people were having, you know, people were talking about like where we don’t have lactation rooms and you know, sort of more the logistical challenges. But I was, I think navigating the sort of role dynamic challenge and didn’t have a lot of people I think who were part of that conversation. And I just wanna normalize that experience more for people.

Emily (35:19): Have you read Fair Play by Eve Rodsky?

Ilana H (35:23): I have not.

Emily (35:24): This is a suggestion for you slash anyone who has I would say a lot of work to be done in your household and maybe, maybe there’s children involved, maybe there’s not, but is feeling like my partner, I’m doing so much more, they’re not pulling their weight. And something that the book helped me realize was just the degree of work that is going on in my house and actually, wow, my husband is doing a lot and we both feel like we’re doing more than the other person just ’cause there’s so much to do and we don’t always see the labor that the other person is putting in. And so what that book does, and there’s like a sort of a game associated with like a card, like a, the cards have like responsibilities and you say, okay, this is your card, this is gonna be your responsibility, but I’m gonna take this card, it’s gonna be my responsibility. And so it’s a way of really putting that work of the household out in the open and making it much more explicit and splitting it in a way that makes sense for people’s time availability and interest and talents and all that sort of thing. So it’s, it’s a way of negotiating and maybe maybe taking the the edge out of that conversation by using this this game or this like set of tactics. So something to put out there as well. Now you mentioned earlier, for instance, your husband had a long commute and that is a day killer. Absolutely. So like really the availability, his availability was a legitimate barrier in that situation, you know, so we have to acknowledge that as well.

Ilana H (36:42): Yeah, absolutely. And he wanted to be, you know, really helpful. So part of it was like my own issue that I didn’t sort of maybe advocate for myself, but part of it was that, you know, yeah, he wasn’t, he wasn’t there and he was so, so, so incredibly encouraging and supportive of me going to grad school. I didn’t even wanna go at first. I didn’t think I’d be able to sort of do do it well. So I definitely don’t wanna paint a picture of him not being a supportive husband. He, he absolutely was. And now everything in our house is like, feels fantastic. But you know, it also took a little bit of couples counseling to figure out that dynamic, which is something I encourage people to consider.

Emily (37:21): And your kids are a little older than mine, but I’ve noticed it has gotten a bit easier as they’ve gotten out of the baby and toddler stage the workload.

Ilana H (37:28): Absolutely.

Emily (37:29): You know, once they can do some things for themselves, wow, okay, that’s your responsibility now getting dressed or whatever it is. So the workload comes down a little bit in that respect, although as I understand the emotional workload increases as the children get older. And I just wanna say like, I’m so glad that you were willing to have this, this aspect of the conversation with me. It is a very difficult thing to talk about. And it is a financial issue really because these kinds of thoughts and the gender dynamics and everything that we’re talking about plays into women’s careers and how much financial success they’re able to have, how much they’re able to bring to their household. You know, if you’re constantly the one who’s on for childcare, then are you really going to be viewed well by your boss and be up for that next promotion and so forth. So like these are real sacrifices that can have effect on the household finances as well as the individual finances. So it’s important to talk about it.

Ilana H (38:15): Yeah, absolutely.

The Benefits of Having Children During Graduate School

Emily (38:17): Okay, awesome. So one thing that you told me in our prep for this interview is that you were really glad that you had your children prior to and during graduate school instead of waiting until you had your faculty position. So I want you to make the case for why people who are emotionally and otherwise ready for children should just go ahead and do it while they’re in graduate school.

Ilana H (38:34): I think think there’s never gonna be a time where you have as much autonomy and agency as you do during graduate school. Like people in graduate school think they’re so busy. faculty life is, is much harder. Because now I not only have to teach at set hours, I also have to hold, you know, office hours. I have to go to faculty meetings. I have like real responsibilities that would make it so much harder if I had to worry about you know, my kid being sick or just like generally being tired. Because when you’re a grad student, like if you’re tired and you need to take a day off or a couple hours off, no one cares. But now people are gonna notice, or at least I would feel really self-conscious about it. And also you know, the, the sort of feeling of the tenure o clock is real now and it wasn’t real. Like if I needed to stay in grad school an extra year I could. And the, the sort of pressures that I feel now are much more significant. And so I think doing it during the freedom of graduate school if you can manage it financially is the way to go. Well,

Emily (39:47): I wanna probe on that point just one second further, if you can manage it financially. Now you had your husband’s income, so that’s great. And you have your, a generous stipend from Stanford. Do you think it would’ve been easier to do this as a faculty member with your faculty salary versus the grad student salary? What kind of difference would that have made?

Ilana H (40:05): No I mean I, my faculty salary is, faculty salary is, you know, it’s a little higher, but I live in New Orleans and salaries here aren’t that high. And so I don’t actually think it would’ve made a big difference. I, I mean also realistically, I couldn’t have waited. I was already 30 when I started graduate school. And I didn’t start my faculty job until I was in my very late thirties, so I needed to have kids then. But I think the, I think I would’ve preferred to just take out loans and still do it during graduate school as opposed to doing it as a faculty member.

Emily (40:46): Yeah, it’s interesting because you have to think about, especially like you said, when you’re starting graduate school at an older age, if your vision for your life is I wanna be a faculty member and I wanna have children and all this has to come together somehow, then really what you’re doing when you take out student loans is you’re betting on yourself and you’re, you’re borrowing from your future self to pay for your current life. And if you’re confident in the track that you’re on and that you’re gonna make enough income to be able to justify those loans and pay them back, then I do think that makes sense. And plenty of people do take out childcare to take out student loans, pay for childcare, for example. It’s a very reasonable thing to do when what you’re doing is investing in your career and your future earning potential.

Ilana H (41:21): Yeah, and I wanna just be clear that it doesn’t mean that you think you’re gonna make it into a faculty position. It means you’re betting on yourself having a job. And I knew that with a PhD I would get a job and that it would be a decent paying job. I did not expect to necessarily become a faculty member. As we’ll talk about a year from now the odds of getting a faculty position are incredibly low, like in the single digits. And so you have to be confident that you will get a job which you know, requires a, a whole sort of different kind of mindset but not necessarily a faculty job. And maybe you could get a job that pays much more than a faculty job because this job doesn’t pay all that much.

Emily (42:04): Yeah, absolutely. And I do think as you get higher up in the, you know, people with this degree level, you know, high school, college, graduate school, the people who have the highest degrees like doctorates have the lowest unemployment rates. So it’s pretty likely you’re gonna have some kind of job, probably a pretty decent paying job, even if it’s not the faculty member one, like you said, the consolation might be you make more outside of academia.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (42:23): So Ilana, this has been such a wonderful conversation. I’ve really enjoyed talking with you and I’m looking forward to having you back once your book comes out. I wanna leave us with the last question I ask of all my guests, which is, 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.

Ilana H (42:40): So because this is a podcast specifically talking about childcare and directed at parents, my advice is gonna be particularly about that topic and that is to think really creatively and outside the box about how you can garner resources in your community, in your social network to help you sort of accomplish things. And it’s not necessarily like a specific amount of money, but that, you know, if you have a talent, like maybe you can tutor somebody in statistics and in exchange they can watch your kids for a couple of hours, but think creatively about the sort of non-financial resources in your community and how those can be exchanged to create, to create help for everybody.

Emily (43:24): And something I’ve noticed when I’ve started doing this actually in recent years with my neighbors, my immediate neighbors also have young families like I do, is that the exchange of resources also creates and reinforces the community. So like, it feels good to help someone else and it feels good to be helped by someone else so you can actually get, you know, stronger relationships out of this exchange as well.

Ilana H (43:43): Yeah, I think that’s absolutely right and I think it contributed to our feeling like we have a really strong community during graduate school and that people are really counting on each other. We again like live in this very individualistic society where we don’t want to ask other people for help. We wanna think that we can do it on our own and we just need to get out of that mindset.

Emily (44:03): Absolutely. Ilana, thank you again so much for volunteering to be on the podcast and I can’t wait to talk with you again in less than a year.

Ilana H (44:09): Thanks Emily.

Outtro

Emily (44:16): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

This Grad Student Strives to Change Financial Policies at His University

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In this episode, Emily interviews Jason Anderson, a 5th-year PhD student in aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University. Thanks to his work experience prior to grad school, Jason developed an unusual ability to read legalese and view every “no” as a starting point for negotiation. Both as a part of the Graduate Student Council and independently, he has advocated for changes to the benefits Stanford offers to its graduate students, particularly with respect to retirement accounts, health care options, transit, and income tax on fellowships. Emily and Jason have a lively conversation regarding the history and current status of these benefits at Stanford and at other universities, culminating in Jason’s advice to other grad student advocates and personal financial advice for all graduate students.

Links mentioned in the Episode

This Grad Student Strives to Change Financial Policies at His University

Teaser

00:00 Jason A: So they made some changes this year that I, hopefully will alleviate the problem. But, you know, this problem could have been alleviated years ago if they were listening to the students.

Introduction

00:16 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.

00:47 Emily: This is Season 16, Episode 3, and today my guest is Jason Anderson, a 5th-year PhD student in aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University. Thanks to his work experience prior to grad school, Jason developed an unusual ability to read legalese and view every “no” as a starting point for negotiation. Both as a part of the Graduate Student Council and independently, he has advocated for changes to the benefits Stanford offers to its graduate students, particularly with respect to retirement accounts, health care options, transit, and income tax on fellowships. Jason and I have a lively conversation regarding the history and current status of these benefits at Stanford and at other universities, culminating in Jason’s advice to other grad student advocates and personal financial advice for all graduate students. You’ll hear in the second half of this interview that Jason and I dive into some of the issues regarding fellowship income and taxes, which as you know is one of my favorite subjects. By happenstance, we recorded this interview in late September 2023, and in early October, about a week before this episode publishes, I’m scheduled to give my new webinar, How to Not Hate Your Fellowship During Tax Season, for Stanford. I’m crossing my fingers that it really helps alleviate the stress of the grad students and postdocs and is received well, like it has been the other times I’ve given it.

02:18 Emily: If you’d like to bring that webinar in particular to your institution this fall or any of my pre-recorded tax workshops now or during tax season, just reach out! I would be happy to chat with you and give you more information that you can take to your graduate school or postdoc office to ask for this kind of support. You can reach me at emily@PFforPhDs.com or read more about these offerings at PFforPhDs.com/tax-workshops/. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s16e3/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Jason Anderson.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:06 Emily: I’m so excited to have joining me on the podcast today, Jason Anderson. He is a fifth year Ph.D. student in Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University. And Jason was actually connected to me by some of my contacts at Stanford who are hosting me for a webinar at the time of this recording. It’s coming up in a couple of weeks, and they told me that Jason is the person to talk to about some of the financial policy questions and concerns that the students may have. So that’s kind of going to be our topic for the podcast today. The advocacy work and the areas that Jason sees room for improvement in in terms of financial policies at Stanford and possibly at your institution as well. So, Jason, thank you so much for agreeing to come on the podcast. It’s a pleasure to talk with you here. And will you please tell us a little bit more about yourself?

03:49 Jason A: Sure thing. Thanks, Emily. It’s a pleasure to be here. And I’m really glad that I’m going to be able to share this knowledge. I’m really excited to help graduate students get get every everything they deserve. So as you said, I’m a fifth year aeronautics and astronautics student. My research pertains to augmenting GPS signals with cryptography in a way that is efficient and manageable. You know, GPS signals are have been around for a while, and cryptography requires a lot of data. So that’s what my research is about. And my hobbies would definitely be emailing administrators to get them to do things that the grad students need, you know, blow off steam. You know, that does come from some of my background working for and the legal field for a while writing those nice, crisp emails.

Connection Between Legal Experience and Advocacy

04:47 Emily: Let’s talk more about that experience that you had prior to starting graduate school. Yeah. So you were working in the legal field to some degree. Tell us about that experience.

04:59 Jason A: Yeah. So before Stanford, I went to UC Berkeley, go bears, and I needed to make a lot of money for my out of state education to be able to afford that. So, you know, I was a freshman engineer and applying to all these jobs to try and get myself an internship. So I, you know, I’d have have to have that income. You know, one of the checkboxes on one of those large websites was legal intern. And so the only job that returned to 19 year old Jason was that legal job. So it turned out to be a really interesting experience for me. I worked I worked there for between three or four years, actually, as a as a telecommute or working, you know, lots and lots and lots of hours and, you know, hours functioned as an executive assistant, which, you know, scheduling meetings, phone calls. But also my mentor allowed me to learn a lot about legal things. So I spent a lot of time reading agreements and reading laws, trying to trying to, I don’t know. So there’s this, you know, not to be cliche, but there’s this Sun Tzu person who wrote The Art of War. And, you know, his his main mantra was the art, the supreme art of war is to wage war without fighting. And so that’s like a big that was a big context for me. And the law of trying to use and take pieces together, strategy of trying to fix issues, using that. And then so that sort of prepared to me for a lot of the advocacy work today. And then after that experience, I worked at a different defense contractor and then came to Stanford. And so I have served as the in the student government here. I had no interest in student government in my undergrad. And it was not until I needed things that I became interested, like with regards to health care, retirement transit, a bunch of other benefits that I wanted I didn’t have. So I came to that quest to get them. And then, you know, so Stanford just voted to unionize and I am involved with that. So our union, as you know, is is undertaking a lot of these issues to help graduate students afford living. So here at Stanford, there are a lot of issues with affordability because, you know, Stanford is a very, very high cost area to live. So, you know, we have a lot of people going to the food pantry are especially partners with children, you name it. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to make sure that that Stanford is affordable. So and that’s that’s part of what I’ve been working on in my as my hobby project, I suppose pretty serious hobby. But, you know, I still work full time as a graduate student.

08:07 Emily: Well, thank you so much for telling us about that experience. And we’ll get into talking about these specific benefits in a moment. But I just wondered if you could really explicitly make this connection between having this experience, being able to read legal documents and grappling with that kind of language and how you’ve been able to employ that past experience and that skill in asking for finding, advocating for the things that you and your peers need.

08:34 Jason A: Well, so I say that the first sort of thing that comes to mind is like the grit to even though when somebody says no to you, it’s not actually a no. So like, for instance, one of the items we’re going to talk about is retirement and when we get to there, we’ll talk about someone gave you a legal opinion that turned out to be false. And so, you know, when someone says says no to me, it’s it’s just not no. There’s still ways there’s still a way that you can you can talk. There’s a way to position yourself to respond back in such a way. Because, you know, Stanford or pretty much any school administrator is counting on you going away like. Right. So students are there in and out. And if you can just persist just a little bit, you know, you’ll be 100 times more successful. Ah, let’s see there are a lot of student government things that come to mind, like, you know, I got food trucks to come on to campus. That was a that was quite the ordeal. You know, for someone said, well, we can’t do this because these four different department departments need to approve, you know, like the infrastructure and then, you know, like, you know, parking, transit and then fire and then police and then, you know, these other things. And anyway, so the persistence that comes from being able to respond back, you know, when somebody says no, but also to read the documents because someone says no to me and I’m like, well, can you point to me the written rule of why somebody say, no, no, they they might not be able to point to a written rule. What they want you to do is they’re just so used to saying, Oh, I can just say no to this person and they won’t question. And then, you know, there are a couple of times where somebody says no to me. I ask them where in the rules it says that. And then they’re like, Oh, well, we reconsidered. So yeah. So being able to essentially mean where can I appeal. Right. If you know I do appeal, well then yeah. So

10:41 Emily: Yeah, it’s kind of appealing or negotiating and also like asking for your source. Like if you’re telling me there is a rule, okay, I’d like to take a look at it myself. Would you send me the link? Would you send me the document? I found the same thing that people have an impression of what rules are, and that’s actually not literally how it’s written or they’ve misinterpreted maybe what was written. And there’s another way to interpret it. Yeah.

11:05 Jason A: Everything’s sort of like a game of chicken when you’re trying to spar with someone. So their game with chicken is all the same. I just said no, they’ll go away. My game of chicken is I need the rule and they’re going to have to do the work to find the rule. And then they’re going to they’re going to realize, I don’t want to do that anymore. And it’s easier just to let me get what I want. So anyway.

11:26 Emily: I like what you said, though, about, like, oftentimes administrators. I mean, I don’t like to ascribe ill will to people. That’s not very, very, very obvious that that’s what’s going on. But a lot of times people are just overloaded and it’s easier to say no or just dismiss you or whatever, because it would create more work for them. But if it’s really important to you and important to your peers, then you should both try to come to a solution together. That’s mutually appealing.

11:53 Jason A: It helps I don’t take things personally on these types of issues. You know, I am I’m not someone who takes things personally, so it’s cold water on a duck’s back to me. But I can still write that emails to respond back. But yeah,

Retirement Negotiations

12:06 Emily: All right. Well, let’s get into these enticing areas of negotiation and pushback that we talked about before. So I want to hear about your kind of personal experiences working with or against or whatever the Stanford administration in these these four areas. Okay. We’re going to talk about retirement, going to talk about health care, transit and then income tax withholding, estimated tax. So let’s start up at the top with retirement. Can you give me a summary of what’s going on right now and what you have tried to ask for, what you’ve tried to advocate for?

12:39 Jason A: Well, so I have the privilege of having some extra income. You know, not everybody at Stanford has that. But one of my goals is to save 15% of my income. If you start early, this is what Fidelity says it’s only 15%. But a Roth IRA isn’t sufficient for that. And, you know, I think retirement is more like a public health issue. So in that you should have it deducted and not think about it, because if it’s not there, then people aren’t going to do it. So that’s why I think the employer deduction is really important.

13:12 Emily: That’s why people are moving to opt in system or rather opt out systems rather than opt in systems that are normal type of workplace.

13:19 Jason A: Yes. And then also my first year, I needed to borrow for my retirement from my company because I was in a cashflow pinch for about three months. And I was able to do that because I was still employed. I was simultaneously employed. If I didn’t if I weren’t simultaneously employed and I would have you know, you have all these graduate students who are super cash for. But you know something? A lot of them work between undergrad and graduate. So, you know, if Stanford provided this retirement benefit, then, you know, a lot of things happen. You know, you can do that public health savings, you can borrow from it. And, you know, and the benefit is very cheap. So, for instance, another company I work for, I know that the price per person participant is about $4 per month. And that’s actually a very expensive plan. So what my my knowledge is, is that I know this is very cheap and it’s extremely beneficial. I mean, it’s essentially helping grad students avoid taxes from the federal government. Right. Or avoiding shark loans.

14:21 Emily: Absolutely. And furthermore, I mean, Stanford and every university already operates a 403(b) plan at a minimum. And that’s the plan we’re talking about here for the listener. We’re talking about expanding access to the 403(b) plan that the university already has for its employees and faculty and everybody to the graduate students who are also employees. Correct?

14:42 Jason A: Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly right. 401- 403(b) for for my institution because I guess we’re we’re exempt from income tax. But yeah.

14:53 Emily: Yeah. And so you’re saying, yeah, just what you said. Like if a student came in, let’s say they had a 401K or a 403B at a prior employer and they were able to roll it into Stanford’s 403B plan and they’re currently an employee at Stanford then like you did, they would be able to take a loan or while withdrawal could happen either way, but a loan against the four oh three B and then be able to pay it back gradually over time to alleviate the cash flow crisis. As you said, that is so common, especially the start of graduate school, very, very expensive transition. Generally speaking, they’re not helping you at all or very much so. Absolutely. That makes sense. And as you said, to continue the, I think it’s partially like a mindset thing, like because four oh three B’s are not typically offered to graduate students. It’s like not it’s not on their mind. It’s like an out of sight, out of mind thing about saving for retirement. And as you said, if possible, saving something like, you know, a few percentage is fine, but up to 15% would be an amazing goal to be able to accomplish during graduate school. And without the employer support on that, it’s easy to put it on the back burner. It takes a lot more initiative to open up an IRA, you know, separately from what’s going on at work.

15:59 Jason A: Yeah. The only reason why I was on my mind is because while I’m out of Berkeley does this. All right? Right. And so, you know, there are institutions out there that do do this. So

16:09 Emily: Okay. And so what communications did you have with the administration regarding the 403B?

16:14 Jason A: So, you know, student government is its own own thing. And, you know, so on the docket list of priorities, retirement is at the bottom one. Okay, because there’s far more important issues. Okay. But it also costs the employer nothing. Postdocs already have this. Okay. So this is like at the bottom of the list. You know, we’re hoping that they’ll give us the crumbs or whatever. Right. So when I pursued this avenue of advocacy several years ago and the response was, well, so if we give you this plan, then you’ll lose your FICA tax exemption. So just for your readers, graduate students and students in general do not have to pay FICA taxes and which is seven and a half percent off if your paycheck for Social Security and Medicare. So it’s like, Oh, wow, Well, we wouldn’t want to give up seven and a half percent of our paycheck. So I can I can have the option of putting 1% away. Right. Well, so you know that that’s where the legal experience comes in. I’m like, well, they said no for a very good reason to me. And so I go through and read the IRS law and I look up, I see I pull up the document just in case, you know, document number 9167, And on page 24, the IRS provides a comically helpful example that explicitly explains that graduate students can participate in the form of 403B plan and not be FICA exempt. And this is like so you know that tenacity I’m talking about. Well, I read that document from page one through page 30, right? It takes a lot of gumption, I think is to read through really boring topics like this. And it turned out to be helpful. So then as a student government, I got some pro-bono advice from a retirement lawyer. After I wrote my own opinion, I had the lawyer look over it and then I sent back this demand letter that says What you said is not true. And no, and we should be able to get this. And then so then after that, they’re like, Oh, well, nobody would use it. And, you know, the survey data that I have by most, my constituents shows that that’s not the case. People would in fact use it. But, you know, you know, I’m hoping that different organization, hopefully our union will be able to win that. But, you know, there’s a lot of other priorities, too.

18:30 Emily: Okay. So that’s the current status of you think you’re in you’re in the right here, at least their excuse number one was not a valid excuse. I haven’t looked at this myself. It’s very interesting to me. I’ll have to check this out after the end of the podcast interview. And that’s where it stands right now. You’ve knocked down their argument, but no further progress.

18:49 Jason A: Yeah. I mean, I think food insecurity and affordable housing and health care are much more important issues. But, you know, two years ago when I was working on this, I was, you know, you know, Thursday evening, I’m like, we’re doing my research and I’m like, oh, thank you, IRS they like, I’ll give you an example. Like, student J, is this No, they are exempt from FICA, which is I think it was kind of comical, but yeah, they didn’t do their homework or they were they’re lying to me to give me a go away. I mean, who knows? You know, I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but at the same time I think it’s clear and Berkeley and other universities are able to do it.

19:31 Emily: Mm hmm. Yeah, I mean, I agree in terms of, like, basic needs, you know, paying people enough that they don’t have to access food pantries and be housing insecure and all these things very important. But there’s also like the optics on, hey, like let’s treat grad students like they’re real employees and give them real benefits that other people have in other places. It’s quite standard. So there’s that aspect of it as well. But thank you for filling us in about that, because I am quite sure that many, many grad students around the country would also like to use their universities for 403Bs and you know, maybe they can get a little budge on this like you have so far not been able to, but good efforts to move on to the second topic of health, health care, health insurance.

Health Insurance Negotiations

20:13 Jason A: Yeah. So Stanford you know your readers can Google Stanford Bill on affordability and I, I wrote with my colleagues in the graduate Student Council 10 page actually explaining why Stanford is not very affordable. But one of those things is health care. We have the most expensive health care plan that I can find. And then one of the things that is expensive about it is that Stanford students, rain or shine, I have to pay $1,000 per year for their primary health care. I do think that other universities have similar fees, but they’re covered by their tuition. So I do have family who are health care administrators, and I’ve  participated in health care advisory boards. So it’s typical for an employee, an employer, a large organization to have advisors on benefits. Stanford faculty have this, Berkeley students have this. We’re still working on Stanford students, but essentially the students come together and they advise on what benefits should they should they have like, oh, graduate students need wisdom teeth surgery because we’re young or prescription eyeglasses would be nice at Stanford they’re not covered, you know, things like that. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be cost positive or neutral. The point is, is that people should have a say because they pay into the plan. And the administrators, I think, don’t have the best knowledge. The students have the best knowledge. So that’s something I’ve been fighting for for more than two years. I mean, retirement is probably the interesting thing about the taxes and whatever. But, you know, you know, you know, we’re that’s the thing I’ve been working on for a long time. So, like, for instance, Stanford recently changed and they passed just a smidge on allowing student advice on that topic. But they retracted actually. So we’re we’re still fighting for back. But essentially, you know, the advice that I was able to talk about is, you know, students want an app to use their health care because last year, in order to get claims processed, you had to mail in the claims and pulling your hair out like, I don’t know, maybe your readers have an app for their health care, right? So I had to help. I had an app for my parents when I was on my parents insurance. And then and then. Furthermore, the plan is a very high level plan which sort of prices out. Most everybody, only people on the plan have it subsidized. So, you know, the professional students are really hurting right now because they might be over the age of 26 and their only health care options are Obamacare or Medi-Cal or this plan that Stanford offers. So I’m really, that’s something that we’ve been asking for. And, you know, I think we’re going to get it with the with the union. But, you know, I wish that Stanford was as good as Berkeley, so I’m wearing my Stanford shirt. But, you know, Berkeley has been doing this for years. I wish Stanford would catch up on this on this regard.

23:11 Emily: Well, it’s good to have a nearby, you know, peer type institution to compare to and say what are the best practices that we can take from over there and share back and forth? I think in our prior conversation, you mentioned to me that the annual premium, if I remember correctly, for like a like a single person enrolled on the health insurance plan was like $7,000, is that right?

23:33 Jason A: Yeah. So the aggregate expenses are a 68 plus 1000. So I think about 77 to 7800. And if you have a student partner with a child, the premiums are 12 grand a year. At least 12 grand last year might be 13 this year. So and so to me. So, you know, there’s been issues with the plan because it’s in low participants and they’re apparently in a spiral out of control. And, you know, you wonder why it’s so, so, so expensive that nobody can afford to use it. So, yeah, to me, that price is like, please go away. That’s what the premium says, Please go away. So and then especially to our Stanford International students who bring partners and children and they have visa restrictions preventing them from getting other jobs, you know, those are the people who are at the food pantry every month because they are doing their best in such an unconscionable circumstances.

24:40 Emily: I can confirm when you said that number to me in our previous call that really raised a red flag for me, that that was very high compared to what I hear at other institutions. I want to say. I mean, I was in grad school some number of years ago, but I want to say it was like 2 to $3000 for the year for the premium for one person. So, yeah, a very different price level between those two. So that’s interesting that you. Okay, so you’re saying there it’s an under enrolled plan because the price is so high, which causes the price to go higher. So it’s like in sort of a death spiral. But the competition, let’s say, okay, if you’re a student, you can enroll in this plan. If you’re still under age 26, maybe you can enroll in your parent’s plan or maybe have a spouse. You know, there’s other places people can go, but then that last resort is like the ACA exchange rate versus the Stanford plan.

25:26 Jason A: Yeah, what’s sad about that is you lose a bunch of tax subsidies, right, because that’s why your employer pays for your health care. You know, and there are some tax subsidies. You know, I haven’t done my research into it, but I mean, it’s a very it’s it’s really structured that your employer should pay for this. And also the plan here is for the facilities nearby. If you go ACA, you know, who knows where you where you’re going to be and especially those international students who are coming into this health care system and don’t know what is going on. But yeah, yeah. And part of the reason why the plan is so expensive is because all all Stanford, pretty much all the health care, you have to go to the hospital. And Stanford also is a nice hospital, but it’s impacted. So like I tried to get an appointment nine month waiting time for myself, you know, So they made some changes this year that I hopefully will alleviate the problem. But, you know, this problem could have been alleviated years ago if if they’re listening to the students. So yeah. And also say a lot of this is my opinion. So take that with every grain of salt.

26:37 Emily: Absolutely. Okay. So the idea here is to get a committee, a student group that advises on the health care plan. And right now you’re voicing a main concern is it’s very expensive and it’s driving people away.

26:51 Jason A: Yeah. And I’m not the only voice. I mean, people talk about the mental health issues. There’s the minority disparities in health care that, you know, my family members talk about that I think are insane. You know, this is the type of feedback that needs to come in. And I think the best way to resolve it is to have everybody speak their own voice. And I just I’m just one voice. That’s why it needs to be a committee

27:13 Emily: Okay. Well, thank you so much for bringing that up.

Commercial

27:15 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, 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 2023-2024 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator 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 emily@PFforPhDs.com 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.

Transit Negotiations

28:35 Emily: Third on our list is transit. Tell us what you’ve been doing on that front.

28:40 Jason A: Stanford took away free transit benefits and May June and people are very angry about that. So I’m

28:49 Emily: Are we talking about on Stanford’s campus like busses? Are we talking about trains or what level of transit?

28:55 Jason A: Trains, yeah so rent is very, very expensive in Palo Alto. I don’t know if you’ve heard of so there’s a train that was very convenient that Stanford used to use, used to purchase the monthly pass for, and so I’d like to see that returned. Furthermore, I like on the subject of retirement benefits, costing them nothing. Every employee at Stanford has access to purchase those tickets pretax, which is an effective 30% discount to Stanford students. Right. So and yet another payroll benefit that costs them almost nothing that they can extend so that their employees get thousands of dollars every day. So I would say that that is the transit element that I would like to see happen.

29:40 Emily: Plus the environmental benefits of incentivizing, using public transit over other forms of transportation.

29:47 Jason A: Absolutely. As part of, you know, the Stanford just inaugurated a new school called the Doerr School of Sustainability. So yes, I totally agree with those arguments, although I am a little bit focused on the taxes because I’m a little bit biased on. Yeah.

Income Tax Withholding Negotiations

30:03 Emily: Great. All right. Fourth topic and one of my favorites, the lack of income tax withholding on paychecks for non employees who are U.S. citizens and residents of for tax purposes. And for that group, the possible requirement to pay estimated tax. So this is the issue that you and I first got connected over. So, yeah, I’d love to hear what you’ve been talking about on that front with the administration.

30:29 Jason A: You know, Stanford is an educational institution and I think it is on them to educate their students on their taxes. So one of the things I’ve been working with, graduation council, are these tax office hours. Well, where the government, the student government will purchase the CPAs time and will, you know, explain how to, how to do this. Students really don’t know. You know, I was fortunate enough to grow up in a high school district that literally made every single 18 year olds in your file taxes by hand and like a dummy scenario. So like I you know, you can go to the post office and get your tax forms. I didn’t know that. Right. So I came in knowing every single dollar that I earned, I have to pay tax. A lot of people don’t know that. So at the office hours, you have a wide breadth, you have your international student who’s dealing with tax treaties and all sorts of stuff, and then your domestic student who is this is their first time in their entire life that they’ve earned income and it’s a fellowship and they don’t get their W-2. It’s not you know, TurboTax can’t handle it. And, you know, TurboTax and professionals will get the advice wrong on certain aspects. So one of the things that I was fortunate enough to get Stanford to do is to take a stance on health care fees, the taxability of health care subsidies on fees. So a lot of students at Stanford, which is really why I’m excited to talk to you today, are are falsely paying taxes on their health insurance stipend. So they they get charged at Stanford $7800 a year and some people that’s partially subsidized and then it’s reported funk funky on the 1088 and 1098 is not an income tax. It’s just a it’s just a education benefits, deductions and credits right and graduations aren’t taking those deductions and credits. It’s really the wrong form for them. So you know stand for housing affordability issue. But, you know, I’m so glad that Stanford talked to you. I mean, the reason why they’re hiring you for this is I’m hoping, you know, so we can save graduates from $3,000 of taxes a year. Right. We have an affordability crisis where people are going to the food pantry every month with their wagons and children. This is $3,000 that they don’t have to be paying. Right. And so, you know, when I was student government and I had this from government to government is paying a CPA like $500 for their time. Right. And then you’ve got 100 people coming in and they’re overfull and each one of them is is saving thousands of dollars. Right. This is like the, you know, retirement, transit. But this tax stuff is probably the easiest way that Stanford can take initiative and stop all of this. You know, years ago when I was starting my advocacy on this, a Stanford person told me that that the interest and penalties that students pay every every April as part of their tuition rate, as part of their tuition, they don’t know. They come in. They they don’t know they need to make estimated payments. And then they get you know, they get those fees. That’s their tuition. It just made me so angry that they that they could send an email to everybody today. But this is an example of tenacity where Stanford’s like, it’s not my problem. I don’t want to be liable. What not. Right. But that’s not true. Okay. They they can say this is what a typical student does. You know, my high school in Marietta, Georgia, explained to us how to file taxes in a theoretical scenario. Stanford can do it, too. So, you know, I’m really glad that you’re coming on, you know, a couple of weeks to talk about that. So that’s the end of my long rant. But I could go on.

34:16 Emily: Absolutely. I mean, you hit on several different issues in there, which I think are incredibly important. So let’s start with that. Okay. $7800 in what I in my framework, it’s called awarded income. So it’s fellowship scholarship type income, not reported on W-2. That’s what I call awarded income. And as you were saying earlier, awarded income. Like you have to assume it’s taxable right from the outset. You have to assume that as part of your taxable income, unless you can prove that it went towards paying a qualified education expense and then it gets to be tax free. So the argument here is that whether or not health insurance premium paid, you know, for university health insurance for a student is considered a qualified education expense. And in my opinion, the opinion of the CPA hired to, you know, work with me on this. It is under limited circumstances where it’s required of the student and the student is purchasing it through the university. And that means that that premium or that means that the amount of money that goes towards paying the premium gets to be tax free because you all have such a high number on that. That 7800 really makes a big difference to you all, especially it’s going to be a lesser effect at other other institutions, but still in effect. And so it is an important thing to know that if you receive a 1098-T, that amount of that premium is not going to appear in box one as a as an education expense because it’s not a qualified education expense for the other benefits. As you were saying earlier, the Form 1098T is not designed for the tax free scholarships and fellowships benefits. It’s designed for the lifetime learning credit. It’s designed for the American Opportunity Tax Credit. But that’s not the one grad students are taking. They’re taking tax free scholarships and fellowships. So anyway, the 1098T is like, okay, as far as it goes, but you have to have this inside knowledge that it’s not a complete document. It doesn’t actually list all your qualified education expenses. And that’s a real disconnect. People think they receive a form and it’s kind of trustworthy and it’s really not. You have to double check everything on it to make sure that it’s complete and accurate for your situation. Oh, I’m going on my rant now too.

36:11 Jason A: Yeah, well this is why it’s really important to read those really dull IRS instructions after having three and a half years of legal experience. And you view me the legal brains like, well, health care is disallowed in sections two and three for undergrads, but it’s not disallowed in section one for graduate students. And then you’ve got a CPA. So like I’m in office hours, I’m literally arguing with someone who is has their own tax advice over the phone. And I’m like arguing with the professional over this because they’re wrong, because professionals get this wrong. And this is why Stanford needs to step up and take a stance here, because that’s a lot of money here. And anyway, it also kind of points to how our government should function because it shouldn’t require years of legal experience to be able to navigate our tax code. 

37:02 Emily: I totally agree. It’s interesting that you and I have kind of come to this in a similar way of just like I just I just read the thing like, I just sat down and read it, like, completely. And once you do that a few times over a few years, like you kind of get used to the language and it’s not so intimidating. And you can make those connections like, Oh, the definition of qualified education expense is different depending on which benefit you’re talking about. Oh, the definition of earned income is different depending on which tax benefit you’re talking about, but you only pick up on that after, you know, exposure. And as you’re saying, it doesn’t it’s very hard to find, I mean, this is the experience my client is. But if you work with me, it’s because they can’t find a CPA who’s versed in this because it doesn’t pay. This is not their typical client base. And so you either have to find a CPA and really educate them or somehow find a magical unicorn, which I have not found who is like already well versed in this. But anyway, that’s why people end up working with me, because while I’m not a CPA, but I have read this and I’ve really tried over years, including professional consultations to understand what’s going on, and now I can communicate that

38:04 Jason A: Yeah, I mean, humans were never meant to read all IRS instructions document, so I don’t really want to fault them for it, but that’s just the world we live in. So.

38:16 Emily: It’s tough, especially because even many tax preparers, CPAs included end up relying on software to prepare the returns, and they’re not necessarily deeply analyzing what goes in and what comes out of that software. And if the software, as you said earlier, like TurboTax, is not designed to handle, like you can do it if you know the tricks, but it’s not intuitively designed to handle this income. And so if the software is letting you down, but you don’t even know enough to know that it’s letting you down, it’s a really, really tough area. Oh, I’m getting fired up about this, too. I’m like, I need to create a software solution. Okay. Anything else you want to say about this topic of estimated tax or the reporting or the taxability of like this fellowship type income?

38:55 Jason A: You know, I just want to add like my one sentence obstruction, which is what I do is I go to this website called Smart Asset. I put in my expected income. I ignore the FICA taxes and I look at the federal income and state income, and I take that number divide by four. And that’s what you need to be paying every quarter. And if you forget, you’re going to be splashed with interest and with interest and penalties. Interest rates high now. So if you get a fellowship, you owe money. Even if they don’t tell you

39:29 Emily: Exactly. And that’s the same website that I recommend when I teach this as well for like, okay, honestly, the best best thing to do is to fill out the estimated tax worksheet in form 1040-ES. Yes, but a lot of people don’t do that. I understand. So that calculator is a really good like substitute. You may be paying more than the bare minimum you’re required to, but that’s okay. Like if you accidentally overpay a little bit, you’ll get a refund at the end of the year. And it’s a quick way to get some peace of mind that you’re like, you’re on top of this issue. You’re not going to be fined at the end of the year, most likely. So yeah, I really like that suggestion. And the other thing that I’ll mention, just throw in there for potential future advocacy on on your front is that the university that I went to, Duke, they did withhold income tax on fellowship, paychecks and fellowship stipends. I’ve only heard of a couple of institutions that do that. It’s very, very, very rare. But it happened to be that the one that I attended did that and it causes other complications with reporting. So it’s not an easy, easy solution. But they did it somehow.

40:26 Jason A: Stanford told me that they can’t withhold and now you say that that that’s not true.

40:32 Emily: No, it’s not true.

40:32 Jason A: They don’t have to. But you know just, another reason why it’s not my problem go away administrator, but. Yeah, I mean I talked to them about this and I totally, I it might not be the best solution but I think it’s better. People have their rent deducted. You know in the tax office hours, they’re like, my, I have this deduction why wasn’t taxes put in there. I’m like well your rent deduction didn’t include a tax deduction. So, anyway.

41:01 Emily: Yeah, it’s definitely not impossible. But as I said, it’s very, very rare. What ended up happening in my case is that the income then was reported on a 1099 Miscellaneous. So they basically so they had a box for your amount of income and they had a box for your amount of withholding. They had to use a form that did that because the 1098T doesn’t have a box for how much income was withheld from it. Now compared to back when I was in graduate school, there are 2 1099 options that sometimes gets used for fellowship income. One is the 1099 MISC and one is the 1099 NEC, I’m not sure which Duke is currently using, but I’ve noticed that some funding agencies end up putting fellowship income on a 1099 NEC, which brings up a whole other issue, which is people confusing their fellowship income with self-employment income, which shouldn’t happen and just PSA to anyone who’s listening to this, like do not allow that to happen on your tax return because the fellowship was not self-employment income, in my opinion.

41:50 Emily: Okay. 

41:51 Jason A: It’s very expensive mistake. 

41:53 Emily: Incredibly, I mean.

41:53 Jason A: Very expensive mistake, yeah.

41:55 Emily: You mentioned the 7.65% for your FICA tax it’s double that right for self-employment tax. So huge, huge issue to get into and actually I’ll reference in the show notes an earlier podcast episode I did with someone who went down that mistake route and had to correct it with the IRS. Okay. So among these four areas that you’ve been working on, along with student government and some other people, are there any like big takeaways or lessons that you can convey to the listener about like best practices around doing this advocacy around financially related policies on campus?

Best Practices for Financial Policy Advocacy in Higher Education

42:24 Jason A: I you know, again, tenacity to read the documents. You know, I think we’ve gone through three examples where a Stanford administrator says the wrong thing because there’s just not there probably want to go away but IRS instructions twice and then know. Yeah so like you know on our outline here about how to negotiate for better benefits, the first step is to ask and when they say no, do your homework with with the documents. And you know, I consulted that retirement lawyer and graciously gave me that advice to confirm what I had read in the documents. So, you know, student governments can engage lawyers, unions can engage lawyers, you know, get your own advice and stick them with the letter that says, no, what you said was false. Oh, and then get it in writing too writing is really important because. Yeah. 

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

43:22 Emily: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for that. That advice, that suggestion, that route to go down. Let’s end with the question I ask all my interviewees, which is what is your best financial advice for another graduate student or another early career path? Ph.D. And it could be something that we’ve touched on already in the interview, or it could be something completely new.

43:40 Jason A: So. Okay, maybe this might be this, this might make you chuckle a little bit. So what I do when I file my taxes is I use, I do it redundantly with two softwares and then I submit it with the free one. I make sure the numbers match and it’s actually debugging that is how I’ve really learned the tax code of of all this. So and then so don’t pay money to the to corporations that lobby for our taxes to be complicated. So I will not do that. But anyway so that’s that’s the first piece of advice.

44:14 Emily: I want to make a small comment on that because I love that suggestion A lot of people don’t know. So I’ll mention TurboTax just because I’m more familiar with the software. A lot of people just, you know, input their numbers and then the the return is generated and filed. But there’s a step before that where you can preview your return. So you preview the 1040 and any other forms that have been generated through that process. And that’s what you can compare apples to apples with another software. You also preview the 1040 over there. You get a nice PDF or whatever, and there you can compare line by line to make sure everything matches or see what the discrepancies are. So you don’t just have to blindly submit whatever forms this software is generating. You can actually look at the final form before it’s submitted.

44:55 Jason A: Yeah, and, you know, TurboTax has like the automatic import. So it’s not necessarily that you’re entering it twice. It can be a just a double check

45:04 Emily: Very good. Well, I love that suggestion. Also for me, filing my tax returns manually, like literally by hand or through the free fillable form system was a great education. And I’m very I don’t know. Is the IRS still on track for their own software coming out for upcoming tax season? I know I’m excited too. Okay what was your second suggestion

45:26 Jason A: You know, so there’s this Reddit financial or personal finance page with the flowchart on what to do. I would Google that and follow the flow chart. And then one of those things after you’ve done emergency savings is, you know, Roth IRAs can be a vehicle for your emergency savings under certain circumstances because Roth IRAs, you can pull out the contributions, you can put your emergency savings in cash and a Roth IRA or Treasury bills if you if you want to do that, low risk. And then, you know, if you have the emergency, you have the emergency. But if you don’t have the emergency and five years at six grand, you know, then you’ll have $30,000 in your retirement and your Roth IRA when you end, and then you’ll go straight into that high income job will not be eligible. So, you know, if you can, I would put your savings in cash in a Roth IRA until you have enough cash to start investing it. But.

46:25 Emily: This is an advanced technique. It’s not one that I recommend because I think it’s difficult to do that. The qualifier that you mentioned is keep it in cash or keep it in a very no risk investment inside the Roth IRA. That’s what I think is difficult and where people might not complete this whole process correctly, because it is to me very important that you not take any risk with your emergency fund. But yes, you can still keep it inside the Roth IRA. I love your point of like use that eligibility to contribute to the Roth IRA when you have it, because it may not be around forever once you get to those higher paying jobs. So good suggestion, but I want them to listen to your whole suggestion.

47:01 Jason A: Yeah, it’s all about the audience here. You know, a Stanford PhD student, you know, you’ll find people who are ready to do that advanced topic. I mean, graduate students but yes, you’re right. Totally right about that.

47:14 Emily: Well, Jason, I’m so excited that you agreed to come on the podcast. This is a wonderful interview. I hope our listeners will take some of what we talked about today and go back to their own institutions and start advocating for some of these same issues or using some of the methods that you mentioned. And I especially love your tip about basically perseverance, both in reading the documents and doing your homework and also with your communications, because you’re going to get told no. And like you said, just it’s not personal. Let it roll off your back. Come back. You know, do your homework, etc. So this is really, really valuable, I think. Thank you so much.

47:42 Jason A: It’s been my pleasure. Thank you for reaching out. And I want to say good luck to all of your listeners in their their financial pursuits and advocacy and good luck to SGWU you as well, because we’re going to we’re going to fight like hell to get to get all the things we deserve.

Outtro

48:04 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? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.