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Why Mental Health Is Worth Investing In (with PhD Balance Founder Susanna Harris)

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In this episode, Emily interviews Susanna Harris, a PhD student at the University of North Carolina and the founder of PhD Balance (formerly PhDepression). Susanna is an outspoken advocate for the mental health of PhDs. However, bolstering mental health can take up-front resources, such as time, money, and energy. Susanna argues that mental health is worth investing in, particularly in your early 20s and while you’re affiliated with a university. Susanna and Emily discuss low- and no-cost methods to improve mental health.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

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Teaser

00:00 Susanna: The point of investing time, money, resources into your mental health is one, if you don’t, it’s not going to get better. I think that there is this really dangerous mentality around grad school that it’s like, “Okay, I’m going to do grad school and then when it’s done I’m going to start my life” and that for some reason that the moment you graduate, everything’s going to get a lot easier and there’s a lot less stress and you’re going to be making way more money and you’re going to feel like an adult. And not surprisingly, when I talk to people who’ve been out of their PhD for six months they’re sort of still reeling from it.

Introduction

00:43 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season five, episode seven, and today my guest is Susanna Harris, a PhD student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the founder of PhD Balance. Susanna is an outspoken advocate for the mental health of PhDs. However, bolstering your mental health can take upfront resources such as time, money, and energy. Susanna makes the case for why mental health is worth investing in particularly in your early twenties and while you’re affiliated with the university. We discuss ways you can improve your mental health even if you don’t have much or any money to put towards it. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Susanna Harris.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:34 Emily: It is my pleasure today to have Susanna Harris on the podcast. She is the founder of PhD Balance and we’re going to be talking about a really exciting and a very relevant subject matter, which is mental health. So Susanna, for those in the audience who don’t already know you, will you please introduce yourself?

01:48 Susanna: Sure thing. Well, first of all, Emily, thank you for inviting me. At first when you asked for me to be on, I was like, I don’t know what my work has to do with finances and it’s definitely not something I’ve gotten nailed down. I started PhD Balance about a year and a half ago to really just start talking about mental illness in graduate school. I myself am a, we’ll say a final year PhD student in microbiology, and what I really wanted to do is just start talking about mental illness because I’m someone with depression and anxiety and working on a PhD. And throughout this process of building that community, I’ve learned a lot of really important things, one of which is how important it is to get mental health care and how it can be really tricky for people to find space in their finances to do that.

02:44 Emily: Yeah, that’s exactly how we’ll narrow this very vast subject down today, the crossover point between the two of us. So tell us a little bit more about this origin story of PhD balance because I understand there’s even a name change involved.

02:56 Susanna: Yeah. I think that was one of the most difficult decisions for me. So when originally this started, it was just called PhDepression. Again, because I was a PhD student with depression, I thought maybe I would put up an Instagram post and find a couple other people who’d be interested in joining. The whole point was to share a photo, like you would put up on Instagram or you know, the image that we put out to academia. And then in the text share a more personal story about your own dealing with mental illness or mental health struggles while going through academia. And this all came about actually because about a month before — so PhDepression started in March of 2018 — about a month before this Nature Biotech paper came out showing about 40% of graduate students were dealing with anxiety or depression or the symptoms of them at any given time, and I saw that and it was just like, “Oh, I kind of had no idea. I thought I was really alone in this.” And I looked around, I was in a conference of about 200 people and I thought, “there’s no way that five other people understand.” And I think that that’s where it sort of clicked of we get these numbers, but it doesn’t really mean anything unless we can look around and find other people who are going to understand us, who are going to listen to us, not judge us, and then really importantly, be able to give us the resources that we need when we need them.

04:19 Susanna: Probably about a year into it, well six months in, I ended up turning it into a business and that was mostly for liability reasons. It’s a sensitive topic to talk about mental illness. At that time I had a small team of people working with me and I wanted to make sure that if anything should happen, if we ever faced anything legal that we just didn’t know about, that that responsibility would fall on my shoulders. And of course, once you have a business, then people ask you to kind of run it as a business and figure out money. As we were doing that, trying to think of what it’s going to be a sustainable financial model for what we do, we realized that changing to PhD Balance, one people could pronounce it easier, which is always a benefit.

Susanna: Two, it really became much more about general mental health, and that idea that even if you’re not dealing with a chronic mental illness, even if in general, your mental health is great, there’s going to be times where you do become imbalanced. You do kind of tip over to one side and need to right yourself. And so the idea of this PhD Balance is to acknowledge that there are those tipping points that different people have their kind of center at different places, but that the goal is to find that place where you’re okay. And I like to tell people, I think about it balance in terms of yoga, where the purpose of balancing in yoga is not to be perfect. And in fact, if you’re in a position where you’re absolutely perfect and it’s no challenge, you’re not really pushing yourself. Maybe that’s where you need to be that day, but you’re through yoga trying to find out more about yourself, learning where your limits are, understanding that your limits are different than somebody else’s. And the goal is not, again, to be perfect, but rather to learn how to balance and learn how to respect those boundaries of yours. We thought PhD Balance was a good switch to encapsulate all of that.

06:17 Emily: Yeah. What I’m getting from what you’re describing is a dynamic balance, right? And not a static balance. I think everyone likes the term balance, but I like it too, and one of the reasons is really what we’ll be talking about during this interview is that it’s not actually that mental health is one’s only concern, right? You would not sacrifice everything else in your life to have whatever perfect mental health might mean because this does impact other areas of your life such as finances, such as time management, such as work-life balance, other areas. It is about finding a balance between what your needs are and your resources are in one area versus another, and it does have to be dynamic over time. Anyway, we’ll be diving into more of that for the rest of this interview.

Intersection of Finances and Mental Health

06:59 Emily: Let’s talk about kind of, again that intersection between the finances and the mental health. When you’re experiencing financial stress, financial insecurity, as many PhDs do, especially during the graduate student or postdoc period, what effects can that have on mental health?

07:17 Susanna: I think there’s a few kind of separate but overlapping ways that that can affect your mental health. One is just like you said, that added stress. Chronic stress, so stress that lasts over weeks instead of let’s say a day. You know, there’s some stress that’s good. I think that whether it’s in work or even in finances to go, “Ooh, well this is a crunch time,” that’s not necessarily bad, but rather to have it constantly ticking in the back of your mind, that can take a toll on everything else. Oftentimes when we’re stressed about finances, it’s not just that we want to get to a certain goal, but rather that we’re afraid of falling into something else. Especially as people who in general are not making a lot of money, or are making no money, or paying money, it’s not so much always about like, “Oh, how can I best invest my extra money?” It’s rather, okay, how do I get by with my rent and my food and you know, any dependents I might have. And so just that stress and that background knowledge that you might be dealing with those things, that on its own is very difficult.

08:29 Emily: If you don’t mind, I want to add something there, which is about how chronic this can be because I think in regular society, in a normal kind of job, if you were experiencing financial stress or insecurity, there are actions you can take to alleviate that by increasing your income through your primary job, finding another job, moving to another place. But inside academia we don’t feel as free because we have this career goal that we’re pursuing, and the income is not really the main point of the job, right? It’s the training for that next stage. So we start to feel more stuck. Whether that’s actually true or not, how stuck we are, I think it’s a very common feeling, and to me that contributes to the stress, as well as just looking out of this long time horizon of this is not going to change for years and years and years potentially. I really think that that contributes to it, the stuck feeling.

09:22 Susanna: Yeah. Well absolutely. Sometimes I think about, so I’m in my sixth year and at this point I’ve invested so much time and money that I could have made in a higher paying job and I’ve gotten paid the same amount for five and a half years. Now, if I decided I have to have more money right now — I’m really lucky to be a single person who didn’t come in with a huge amount of debt, and has a lot of skills that help to keep my financial requirements down — but let’s say I had a dependent, or let’s say something happened, if I needed more money, I literally could not get it right now. Part of my department is that we signed on saying we weren’t going to have a part time job. I would have to choose between my actual needs versus all of this time and energy I’d put in and walking away with almost nothing. At this point I actually can’t master out, it’s a weird part of my department, so I would literally walk away after five and a half years. So I think that that goes both ways with any kind of crisis, right? Whether it’s finances or mental health or just general physical health, that we are in this really precarious spot where if anything major happens, there’s not really a safety net. And I think that we’re constantly, like you said, we’re constantly aware of that and it’s not something that’s going to go away.

10:52 Emily: Yeah, we’ve definitely well outlined that part of the problem. What was the second point you’re going to make?

10:56 Susanna: Yeah. So the second point is just that, and I think we’ll talk about this a little bit more, of why mental health is worth investing in, worth putting in that money, even when we don’t see the dividends right away. But if you don’t have the money you might decide to or you might have to allocate your resources to other things. Although mental health affects everything that we do, if you can’t buy food that’s going to be a more immediate problem. And what we know about mental health is that even if it’s a small issue, if left unaccounted for, I’m saying untreated, but that doesn’t have to be necessarily medical, that can just be talking to a close friend or doing something like yoga, those things to help you rebalance, if you don’t get the chance to do that, then can develop into something worse and more chronic and takes you more energy and resources to get out of. I think that those financial issues not only cause some of the mental distress, but also make it very difficult for people to remedy the kind of signs and symptoms before it becomes a bigger issue.

12:14 Emily: Yeah, I definitely see what you’re saying there. It’s the same in the area of finances as well, which I say this a lot, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but when the prevention becomes out of reach for whatever reason, then yeah, you’re continuing down that line into the negative conclusion there.

How to Support Your Mental Health in Grad School

12:33 Emily: Okay. Given constraints in resources that PhD students and postdocs have, how can they find low cost methods and resources for bolstering mental health? And you just said it might involve treatment or it might involve some non-treatment options.

Professional and Medical Options

12:50 Susanna: I think my biggest piece of advice would be to talk to an expert in whatever way that you can. It’s not great across the world or even across the US, as far as having healthcare for students, but one thing that people might not necessarily know is that your general practitioner, so the doctor you’d go to if you had a sore throat or something similar, that’s actually someone who has some training in mental health. If you have health care coverage, you can go to that perso, and that’s something, you know, if you go to your university and say you want to talk to someone about mental health, if they covered mental health at the university, then that’s fantastic. I think it’s worth looking into. If they don’t, it’s okay to say, well, I’d like to speak with my general practitioner, and they can do some basic screenings.

13:39 Emily: I actually want to ask a little question there because when I was in graduate school, I went to student health as my — so I didn’t have a primary person, I had sort of a practice that I saw through the university. So when you’re saying the university versus your primary care provider, you’re saying the university as in the nonmedical support options that a student might have available to them. Is that right?

14:01 Susanna: Oh, no, that’s a good clarification. So for me, even though I go to campus health, we have our own providers. So we can meet with somebody and then request them every time. I do all of my physical health care through the university student health. The university also has a campus psychological service, so a counseling service, and in fact, what happened for me when I was having a hard time is I actually went into my practitioner who is at the general student health, and she did this little screening. I had gone in to try and get sleep medication because I wasn’t sleeping and she said, “you know, it seems like there might be something else going on here. I’d like to instead prescribe you some antidepressants.” And then they kicked me over to the campus psychological services who in turn referred me to my now therapist. But all that’s to say that the campus health, the people there, even just in the physical health spaces, do have training, at least to give you an idea, is this something that you’re going to need a more specialized form of help, or is this something that maybe you can deal with outside of medical treatment?

Susanna: In terms of the financial side of this one is that it’s really important to figure out what your insurance covers. This can be really tricky and I would just recommend either finding someone who’s gone through this or working with the campus facilities because they should have somebody. It’s okay also to reach out to a friend and say, “Hey, I’m having a hard time with this. I have to navigate it and it’s going to be brutal. Can you help me?” Because I think that’s one of the big issues with the crossover of finances and mental health is that when you’re already feeling just drowned in distress and responsibility, the idea of waiting through calls and emails is just absolutely abhorrent. I would say reaching out, figure out what your insurance covers, take a look at what money you do have flexible. If this is something that you could afford to see a therapist once a month, twice a month, once every two months, and to be able to then go into your resources, at the university, talk to someone and say, this is the amount of money I have, just full stop. I don’t have flexibility outside of that and they will be able to help you find, there’s something called sliding scale therapy, and so if you don’t have the means or the insurance, there are places that don’t take insurance but also charge you based on how much money you make. One really good option is group chat sessions, or kind of the support groups. Sometimes they’re through university. A lot of times depending on what you’re dealing with, there are local groups.

Susanna: Then I would say though that there are going to be some situations that you’re going to have to find a way to see, maybe a psychologist or a psychiatrist. A psychologist has a PhD in psychology. They’re usually you’re like high level counselors. A psychiatrist is someone who can prescribe medication. And so for things that might need a little more attention, it’s going to be important to figure out if you can get close to those resources. I would just encourage people to reach out to a friend, reach out to an ally and ask them for help navigating the system because there are low cost options, but it can be really exhausting to figure out what you need.

17:40 Emily: Yeah, that’s a great point. It would be, I’m imagining it would be amazing if there were a campus affiliated person who could like officially could help you navigate this. That may or may not exist in different places. Sort of an ombudsman, I guess that kind of thing, maybe that would exist. I know for me, when I sought out a little bit of counseling help when I was in graduate school, if I remember correctly, I went straight to the counseling services on campus. I did not go through like the medical referral route and they had some sort of package available where you can get this many sessions for free over the course of the semester. And then if I needed more than that, I think it would’ve gone through my insurance. Then the other place that I went to was actually through my church and I was able to get some free counseling sessions — actually, some were free and some were low cost — through that avenue too. So it could be another maybe community group that you’re part of. Maybe that’s something that is provided to you as a benefit for being part of that group maybe. That’s kind of the medical side of things. Actually, I want to make one more point, which is for graduate students who are younger and who are still on their parents’ insurance. This is something that you might want to consider when you have insurance offered to you through your graduate program, but you also have the option of being on your parents’ insurance still. If you know that you’re going to need this kind of care, and this would apply to a variety of other medical conditions as well, which insurance is going to be more beneficial to you, and maybe even, is there a way to get double covered, potentially. I don’t know if that’s the case sometimes. Just something to evaluate if you’re eligible for more than one plan.

19:10 Susanna: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I would also say one of the things that gets brought up a lot is that it’s bad, that’s like the low term, that students don’t get full psychological care in addition to whatever medical insurance they’re provided, or just full medical care. But I would say that graduate school in general is not a bad time to start these processes and to get early intervention care. About 75% of people who are going to deal with mental health problems have their first encounter before they’re 25. So right around early, mid twenties is when these things really start showing up, or at least they recognized as larger issues. This is a good time to start getting that help and often university programs, even though they’re not fantastic always, offer a lot more things than you might get at a starting position at a job. I think that it’s worth mentioning, even though it’s not the best system, this might be one of the better places, at least for me in the next five years, foreseeably this is a better insurance set up and a better support system than I will probably have at my next job.

20:25 Emily: I think one of the other benefits there, and it goes right along with that is that the people who you see who are affiliated either with a university or just in the same city as university are used to seeing college students, graduate students, young adults, other people in this age range as you were just saying, when these problems sort of first start occurring, so they may have a little bit more familiarity than if you were in some random city somewhere else and a person who’s dealing with all kinds of different people. We would hope, at any rate.

Commercial

20:55 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Tax season is upon us and while no one loves this time of year, it’s particularly difficult for post-bac fellows, funded grad students, and postdoc fellows. Even professional tax preparers are often thrown for a loop by our unique tax situation. And don’t get me started on tax software. I provide tons of support at this time of year for PhD trainees preparing their tax returns. From free articles and videos, to paid at-your-own-pace workshops, to live seminars and webinars for universities and research institutes. The best place to go to check out all of this material is pfforphds.com/tax that’s P F F O R P H D dot com slash T A X. Don’t struggle through tax season on your own. Visit my website for the exact information you need in the most efficient form available. Now back to the interview.

Non-medical Options

21:58 Emily: Okay, so that was kind of on the medical side of things, but what about on more of the balance that’s not directly related to the medical or counseling treatment of mental health problems. What can people do this low cost or no cost on that side of the spectrum?

22:13 Susanna: Well, I love that you brought up the aspect of your church. Whether or not it’s a church, more religious side or some other kind of community based services. And I also know that some churches, even if you’re not a regular member, even if you’re not necessarily religious, will offer those kinds of support groups for people, depending on where it is and what exactly you’re looking for. But even things like joing a yoga studio, or finding a group — Meetup oftentimes has groups that get together, do yoga or have conversations — what can be really helpful for your mental health, there’s a couple things. One, the biggest thing is having a community and being able to feel like you can reach out to somebody and say, “Hey, I’m having a hard time” and to know that they have you. I think that’s technically a no cost option but it takes time to build those relationships with people that you can actually trust.

Susanna: Another really big thing for your mental health is your physical health. Being able to unplug from our phones, which is funny coming from someone who I basically live on social media, but I do actually try to take a week off every two or three months. But taking some time away from our built environment inside and getting outside or if you have access to university gym, fantastic. If not, going for a walk is fantastic. Call a friend while you go for a walk if you don’t want to be alone. Or walk to the grocery store. Or a lot of times if I’m having a bad day, I will get off the bus one stop early and just give myself a little bit extra space. You can do this with any sort of physical activity. There’s ways that you can build up your mental health, even by little things of like choosing positive music, doing affirmations, which is so cringy if anyone has done affirmations, it feels really weird. One of the things that I do that helps that takes like three minutes — I call it three, two, one where I list out three things. I’m grateful for that day; two self complements, so the things that I would say to a friend, but to myself; and one self-love thing I’m going to do that day. It could need get myself a coffee, it could be call a friend, whatever. That kind of like active self intervention can be so helpful.

24:48 Emily: I want to add something there. I really love that you gave that little tool because it’s so, I mean, you can do that at any time throughout the day at any point. I’ve recently been learning more about affirmations also and I’ve actually published a couple podcast episodes on how sort of your mindset with respect to money and career affects your finances overall and how affirmations can be helpful in reversing limiting beliefs around money or false beliefs that kind of holds you back from accomplishing things. I also was very resistant to this idea of affirmations the first dozen times I encountered it. But anyway, anyone who’s interested in that kind of thing, there’s been a couple episodes in the past, I’ll link them from the show notes. This affects all different kinds of areas of life, but I’ve been focusing on learning more about how they affect your money mindset. But go ahead.

Further listening:

25:38 Susanna: That’s super cool. Now I’m going to have to go back and listen to those podcasts. The last thing is just having hobbies, having things that you do outside of your work. And that can be anything from, again working out can be a hobby, or cooking, or sewing. Anything that you do, not because someone else is going to think it’s cool, you know, something that you walk away from and you’re like, “yeah, I feel better” just cultivating that. It takes time away, but it is a way for you to give back to yourself and basically a very low cost way of taking care of your overall balance.

26:20 Emily: There’s one more that I want to add in there. I think it’s on the physical health side of things, but that is sleep. This is something that I learned like personally, I did not sleep a lot during college. It was such an intense time and it was weird, I actually went on graduate school interviews about a year after I finished college saying if people ask me, what do you like to do in your spare time, what are your hobbies? I would just say I sleep now. That is my hobby. I lost all my hobbies during college. Now I sleep. That’s how I’m choosing to spend my time and build into myself. And it’s something that I’ve never returned to that lack of sleep that I practiced during college and it’s so much better on this side of things with the sleep.

27:04 Susanna: Yeah. I think that, overall a lot of these things can be summarized of like there’s two limiting factors. You’ve got the limiting factors of finances and you’ve got the limiting factors of time, and in general you’re going to have to choose what you’re gonna pay into. And you’re probably going to have to pay in both, but it is worth it because you get back both. I think that’s what’s really cool is that if you’re at a place mentally that is more healthy, you’re going to do better with your finances and you’re definitely going to do better with your time management and with the enjoyment you get out of your time.

26:45 Emily: Yeah, I think so as well. I don’t really think of these activities as taking away from time or money, but like you said, just just building back into it. I hear this a lot about like working out, like working out does not take time out of your day. It gives you back time during your day because of the energy boost you experience from it and how much, well, if we want to talk about productivity, how much more productive you can be after working out and so forth. Okay, so great, low and no-cost resources there.

The Importance of Investing in Your Mental Health

28:14 Emily: You mentioned earlier this idea of investing in mental health and especially at this particular time of life of, you know, potentially the early twenties. Why is mental health worth investing in? I use that term very carefully, because there’s very few things that actually qualify as investing. And because I deal with finances, I think about actually putting money towards making more money. But there is this parallel idea of investing in other areas of life that don’t directly give you returns on your money but rather give you returns on your self, your person. Why is this worth investing in?

28:46 Susanna: Wow, there’s just so many things and I guess I’m saying this from a perspective of somebody who, if we’ll keep going with the analogy just like really kept digging into that credit card of mental health, where I really didn’t sleep much. I’m still guilty of this and sometimes pushing it too hard, of having to dig into these stores that I don’t necessarily even have. But the point of investing time, money, resources into your mental health is one, if you don’t, it’s not going to get better. I think that there is this really, I think it’s dangerous mentality around grad school that it’s like, “okay, I’m going to do grad school and then when it’s done I’m going to start my life.” And that for some reason that the moment you graduate, everything’s going to get a lot easier, and there’s a lot less stress, and you’re going to be making way more money, and you’re going to feel like an adult. And not surprisingly, I when I talked to people who’ve been out of their PhD for six months, they’re sort of still reeling from it. They’re like, “Oh, it’s, I still have stresses, I still have responsibilities. And in fact, it’s really hard now because I have dealt with these for so long. It’s exhausting.” And so one of those things of why investing now is important is that, um, relative to at least how my future looks — that I want to have a family and kids, I want to have a really full career. I love being busy — is that I don’t foresee my life getting some easier and for me to suddenly find an extra hour in every single day to start dedicating. Building those healthy habits is going to set you really well up for the future when you do have more responsibility rather than just fight this kind of stress. I think this is a really weird time. There’s a huge amount of stress there. There’s no question.

30:42 Susanna: Then the other thing is that I think people have this idea that having better mental health just makes you feel better and it certainly can. I will also say that sometimes working on your mental health feels really awful and it’s important to know that working on your mental health or focusing on finding that balance throughout your life, might not feel great at the time, but you do reap a ton of rewards later on. Speaking personally, I used to go really hard throughout the week and I had something called my Fridays where anyone who was close to me understood that probably two or three Fridays every month I would just crash out. As of about 2:00 PM, I was useless. I was cranky. I couldn’t stay with having commitments and it would take until Saturday afternoon until I was back on it. It would just be a really weird cycle. Looking at it, if I — and this is what I’ve started doing is that I’ve been able to invest 20 minutes a day or so, on average, and then I don’t have that crash out time at the end of the week. And that’s time that I have actually saved. Some interesting things is that people who, for instance with depression, people who deal with depression take significantly more sick days than people who are not dealing with depression. People with anxiety are much less productive if it’s not being handled or managed. And so although you might be working more hours and feeling like, Oh, I can’t possibly fit 30 minutes of exercise in here a day, based on the data we have, you’ll probably be much more productive and you’ll probably make up that 30 minutes and then some, and you’ll also have the benefits of enjoyment that you have there.

32:39 Emily: I think you’re making excellent points on the mental health side of the equation, but I just have to underline everything that you’re saying on the financial side, too, of like don’t squander this opportunity that you have at the moment in building those positive habits in multiple different areas of your life. Because I couldn’t agree with you more that it is pervasive in academia that we think that our life somehow gets to be put on pause during graduate school or during PhD training. And it’s really not the case. As you were saying, if you allow problems to lie on unaddressed, they just, they fester and they grow and then it takes, even that much more to pull yourself back out of it if it’s even possible, at the end of that process. So it is much better to, as you were just saying, invest a little bit of time, a little bit of money, a little bit of effort on a consistent basis up front rather than trying to dig yourself out of it on the back end. Whether we’re talking about mental health or whether we’re talking about finances. Wonderful points overall. And I’m sure if we had more people on this call speaking about other areas of life and they would say the same thing. Beautiful points there.

Financial Advice for PhDs

33:44 Emily: As we wrap up the interview, I like to ask all my guests, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be related to something we’ve already addressed in the interview or it could be something entirely different.

34:00 Susanna: I think my biggest piece of advice and the thing that I’ve had to learn several times over is to give yourself a bigger buffer than you expect. I think what was hard for me is that coming into grad school, I budgeted kind of monthly and that was because a lot of my expenses were pretty consistent throughout undergrad. It was like, okay, every month I’m going to have this, and I didn’t have a car, I didn’t have my own real place. I was renting and everything was already taken care of. What I spent in one month was pretty much what I would spend the next month and I’d have a small buffer. And then getting into grad school, you get kind of these more adult-like problems of your washing machine breaks down, or I have to suddenly pay medical bills that I wasn’t expecting. Things like that. And so I’ve had to learn instead of focusing on a month to month and if I have a buffer at the end of the month, then great. I get to spend that next month, thinking about my buffer in terms of semesters or at least longer, maybe six months at a time. And then at the end of that six months, consider using that buffer. I actually had to learn that my second year when I switched over to a fellowship and they didn’t give us our fellowship for I think 25 days. I didn’t get a paycheck until almost a month after I was expecting it and I was really lucky to have that buffer. You are kind of at the whim of the university. You can’t do a side hustle necessarily. And so that pre-planning for things that you have no idea if they’re going to it’s just, it’s necessary. It’s tricky but it’s necessary.

35:45 Emily: Yeah. Wonderful point. And I mean there’s so much that I could and have teased out in what you’re saying in terms of not relying on the university to pay fellows the same way they would pay employees in terms of being on a deadline. That’s a common unfortunate problem. I totally agree with you about budgeting. I would say over the course of a year, like looking out over the coming year, although semester’s a little bit easier to get your hands around, through what I call targeted savings accounts. That’s a little bit more of a formal system. But like you were just saying, it’s just basically having a longer view about the expenses that are coming your way because they are hard to handle if you only have a given months amount of income to do so. Wonderful points there and thank you for that. Great advice.

Where to Find Susanna Online

36:24 Emily: For members of the audience who don’t yet know where to find you, what’s the best place that they want to follow up with you or learn more about something that you cover?

36:33 Susanna: Sure. I am on social media probably more than I should be, but it is sort of one of my hobbies. I consider it the only game on my phone. You can find me on Twitter and on Instagram @SusannaLHarris. And then to find PhD Balance, we both have a website which is www.phdbalance.com. And then we have Instagram and Twitter as well. You can join the conversation. You can see the other stories that people have have posted, some of our tips and we’d love to hear your stories and your tips. That you can find us @PhD_Balance.

37:15 Emily: Perfect. Thank you so much for giving this interview today.

37:18 Susanna: Yeah, thank you Emily. I’ll talk to you later.

Outtro

37:20 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPphDs.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple podcast, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media or with your PhD peers. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars covered the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and taxes. Four, subscribe to my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode, and remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

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

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

Links Mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

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

Intro

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

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Level of Pay Variation at UW-Madison

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is a Project Assistant?

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

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

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

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

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

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

06:52 Emily: But in reality…

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

RA-ing Does Not Always = Dissertation Work

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

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

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

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

Perspective on Assistantship Tiers

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

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

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

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

Determine the Standard Offer in Your Field Ahead of Time

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

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

A Deep Dive into Frankie’s Side Hustles

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

Tutoring for the Department of Athletics

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

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

Self-Employment: Frankie’s Cupcakes

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

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

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

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

Arbitrage via Poshmark

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

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

GRE Tutoring and College Application Assistance

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

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

Commercial

18:43 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Tax season is upon us, and while no one loves this time of year, it’s particularly difficult for post-bac fellows, funded grad students, and postdoc fellows. Even professional tax preparers are often thrown for a loop by our unique tax situation. And don’t get me started on tax software. I provide tons of support at this time of year for PhD trainees preparing their tax returns, from free articles and videos, to paid at-your-own-pace workshops, to live seminars and webinars for universities and research institutes. The best place to go to check out all of this material is pfforphds.com/tax. That’s P F F O R P H D S.com/T A X. Don’t struggle through tax season on your own. Visit my website for the exact information you need in the most efficient form available. Now, back to the interview.

Prioritizing Valuable Side Hustles

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

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

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

Managing Work-Life Balance

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

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

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

Benefits of Therapy in Graduate School

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

Best Financial Advice for Early-Career PhDs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Know Your Worth, and Advocate for Yourself

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

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

Ask for Help: Get to Know Your Administrative Staff

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

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

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

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

Outtro

33:08 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. Pfforphds.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple podcast, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media or with your PhD peers. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and taxes. Four, subscribe to my mailing list at pfforphds.com/subscribe. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode. And remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the free music archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

Three Financial Strategies Every Early-Career PhD Should Employ (with Kate Mielitz, PhD, AFC)

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Kate Mielitz, an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University who holds a PhD in financial planning and is an Accredited Financial Counselor. Kate gives her top three financial tips for early-career PhDs: celebrating financial wins, no matter how small they are; asking questions regarding your pay and benefits; and saving in advance so you can say “yes” to networking opportunities, from a meal or drink with a colleague to conferences. Kate also tells the story of a recent financial challenge she encountered that is highly relatable to anyone in academia. Due to her preparation, what could have easily been a financial disaster became just a hiccup.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

financial strategies for PhDs

Teaser

00:00 Kate: It is okay to make a financial mistake. I want that very, very clear right now. We are human. It is only money. Yes, you heard it from me. It is only money. How do we use it? It’s the tool that we’re using like the hammer or the screwdriver. If you make a mistake, you pick yourself back up, you carry on, you figure it out. What’s the mistake? You ask the questions of yourself and figure out where you went wrong. You figure out where you need help going forward, and you take proactive steps. You’re going to be okay.

Introduction

00:43 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season five, episode five and today my guest is Dr. Kate Mielitz, an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University who holds a PhD in financial planning and is an accredited financial counselor. Kate and I discussed the top three financial strategies early career PhDs should employ: celebrating financial wins, no matter how small, asking questions about your pay and benefits, and planning to spend money on networking. Kate also shares her recent and pretty big financial mistake, which will be highly relatable to anyone in academia, and how she weathered it. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Kate Mielitz.

01:34 Emily: I am just delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Kate Mielitz, who is an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University and an accredited financial counselor. So we have an expert on the show with us today, for once. It’s wonderful. Please introduce yourself to the audience. Tell us a little bit more about how you got where you are and what you do.

01:55 Kate: Yes. Thank you so much Emily for having me on. This is a thrill for me. Let me give you the deep background first. I have 20 years combined experience, a bit little more than that, in collections, bankruptcy, fraud, financial counseling and education. I’ve been an accredited financial counselor for a little over 10 years. And the accredited financial counselor can be associated with and compared to the certified financial planning designation. The accredited financial counselor focuses on some of those foundational pieces, like, do you know how to budget? Do you know how to save? Do you have enough insurance? Do you know how to appropriately use credit? Whereas the CFPs look at wealth growth and wealth management. So my area of expertise is helping people get a solid financial foundation that works for them, that’s specific to them and their financial situation. Then I have my PhD in personal financial planning from Kansas State University and I work in the family financial planning program in the department of family development and family science at the Oklahoma State University.

03:06 Emily: Yeah. And again, it’s such a pleasure to have you on today, Kate. So, because you are an accredited financial counselor and a PhD in this area, and again, an expert, I am basically going to turn the reins over to you and let you direct where you want this to go. I asked you to give me your top three financial strategies that early career PhDs should be using. Let’s talk through those.

Financial Strategy #1: Celebrate Financial Wins

03:28 Kate: First, I want you to remember before I give these three strategies that it’s always dangerous to give me this much leeway, Emily, so thank you for that. But remember that no matter what I say, you need to be true to you. So ground this in your financial reality. And when I say for example, with my first strategy, always celebrate the progress forward that you make on your savings goals no matter how small, I mean that quite literally. If that means that for one month to the next, that all you can get in that savings account is an extra penny — celebrate it. It’s the small victories that then help us get into the bigger victories. Do we want to focus on just putting pennies, nickels, and dimes in savings? Not if we can avoid it, but when we are early career, when we are in graduate school and coming into postdoc and coming right up, it’s not always easy. Finding a way to commit to savings and then doing it always celebrating those small successes is so very, very important.

04:29 Emily: Yeah. I’d love for you to elaborate on the point you were just making about how, okay, even if it’s just a penny, it’s still worthwhile. It’s still something to celebrate. Even if the dollar $10 a hundred dollars, whatever scale we are at, it’s worthwhile doing. And can you talk a little bit about the reasoning behind that? Like why it’s worthwhile to save even if it’s just a few dollars? Because some of my audience members, it can only be a few dollars, if anything.

04:53 Kate: I have so been in those shoes. We could go forever on this, Emily. The fact of the matter is, any teeny tiny amount that you can put forward is still a teeny tiny amount that you’ve put forward. I have worked with families who are experiencing homelessness, who are out of work or supporting a family on minimum wage. So I get working with small amounts and the reason that we focus on the small amounts is because those are bite size. How do we eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Therefore we save a penny, a nickel, a dime, a quarter, a few bucks at a time to make that small progress. So then we’re more conscious about it. The more we’re thinking, “Oh, you know what, this is 34 cents that I got back in change — I’m going to put that in my savings account.” And then the next time, “Oh, this is 56 cents, I’m going to put that in my savings account.” Maybe we can’t do it every time, but as we think about these pennies, whether we collect in a change jar or it’s just, “okay, I made progress,” it’s gonna stick in there and we’re going have these little tickle reminders that it’s like, “well, I was successful. I was successful before. I can be successful this month.” And we’re not focusing on, “Oh my God, I only put 20 bucks in savings. I should just give up now.” Never give up! These teeny tiny amounts add up. Americans throw away billions of pennies a year. I mean, it’s mind blowing. So stop and think about what you can put forward.

Kate: One real quick caveat I wanted to share with you, Emily, on this idea. I remember watching an old Family Feud episode and the host asked, “we surveyed a hundred people on the street, what is the smallest dollar amount you would dive back in the trashcan to retrieve?” I was blown away that the number one answer was a $10 bill. I mean, I was like, are you kidding me? I have gone for 26 cents and I’ll do it because to me those small things make a difference. And I mean, whatever happened to the $1 bill and the $5 bill? Those, those are very valuable, as our quarters and dimes and nickels and pennies. So start small, save small, build as you can and you can do it. So celebrate that small progress.

07:11 Emily: Yes. Oh my gosh, I love this point so much. And one thing I wanted to add to what you’re saying is, one of the most valuable things that I think, and this is I think another rephrasing what you’re saying, of it sticks in your head when you start saving, you know, rounding up to the next dollar, whatever it is. I think what most important thing that it does is it changes your self identity to one of “I am a saver.”

07:32 Kate: Oh yeah, absolutely.

07:33 Emily: Doesn’t matter what the amount is. If you become a saver in your own mind, that’s what’s going to create that habit change that carries into the future when the dollar amounts can be bigger. But you have to start with that identity change. And the best way of doing that is to actually enact savings. Even if it is that small amount.

07:52 Kate: You’ve nailed it, Emily. I mean that’s it. It’s really about phrasing it. When you got your first published article, even if you were fourth or fifth author, didn’t you then say, I’m a published author? Well, yeah, the same thing goes. I’m a graduate student, I’m a successful graduate student. Oh my gosh. I’ve landed my first job. I’m a postdoc, I’m an assistant professor. Own these things. And yes, even if it’s pennies, you are a saver. So now let’s keep going. Absolutely.

08:22 Emily: Yeah. And going back to your original point of celebrate — what are some ways that you can celebrate without spending the 34 cents that you just saved?

08:31 Kate: Absolutely. Well, it’s kind of like weight loss. They say never celebrate weight loss by going out to eat. So we’re not going to celebrate saving by spending, but we’re going to maybe, and this is so key, especially for graduate students in early careers, but give ourselves permission to just kick it. Give ourselves permission to sit back and worry about the hustle, not worry about the side hustle, it exists, and just breathe. Whether that means taking an hour for ourselves and watching an extra show, or that means potluck in with a friend. You already have the food in the, in the cabinet. So let’s have somebody over. They bring a piece, you bring a piece. Nobody’s really out of pocket. Talking about it with friends. Call Emily, send her a message, send me a message. Say, “Hey, listen, I did it!” Celebrate those small things. Tell your mom and your dad. Sometimes it’s just a matter of not physically doing something, but just acknowledging it. Looking at yourself in the mirror and say, dude, you saved. That’s empowering and it’s exciting and it is a way celebrate.

09:41 Emily: Yeah, absolutely. So I think the word celebration maybe can be boiled down to just acknowledgement in some positive way. It could be as small as that or it can be bigger, if you have the means and the time to do so. But the key is do something that’s out of your routine to acknowledge that you accomplished something because you really did.

10:00 Kate: That’s right.

Financial Strategy #2: Ask Questions About Your Finances

10:01 Emily: Okay, let’s move on to your second strategy.

10:04 Kate: Second strategy: ask questions about money. Now, if you are in graduate school and you don’t have access, for example, to a retirement plan, maybe it’s not human resources that you’re going to. If you’re early career definitely be seeking out human resources to ask questions about your insurance plan or your retirement plan and what those things mean. But don’t ever think that you have a question that is too small or too easy or so-and-so is going to think I’m an idiot if I asked this. Listen, Emily and I would not be doing what we are doing if any question were too basic or too small. That’s how we thrive, right? Emily?

10:46 Emily: Exactly.

10:47 Kate: So if you don’t know who to ask, reach out to Emily, reach out to me. We are more than happy to answer any financial question you have because it is your financial health that you need to be focused on. So what resources? No, we’re not going to rescue. Absolutely not. But we’ll get you a list of resources. We’ll point you in the right direction. Sometimes it’s just as simple as, well does this mean that they’re going to match this and that’s a yes or no. So ask the questions and never be scared that “Oh, I’m a graduate student or I’m a PhD, I should know this.” No, not necessarily. That’s why they give PhDs in personal financial planning because other people don’t know. So that’s what I’ve got mine.

11:29 Emily: Yeah. I’ll say especially for, so obviously anyone who is an employee anywhere, you’re going to have an HR department or an HR person, or something. I say person because my husband works for a startup and they do not have an HR department, but they have a person, part of whose job is to handle this kind of thing. So there is someone, if you are an employee, who you can ask questions about the benefits that you’re receiving or even something as simple as, and this is a big question that we’ll get into later, “Hey, when’s my next paycheck coming? What amount is it going to be in?” Those, those are not even trivial questions for, let’s say a graduate student or a postdoc who’s changing how they’re being paid from this system to this system, et cetera. Things can fall through the cracks. It is very worthwhile to keep on top of these questions.

Emily: If it’s not an HR person who’s available to you, go to someone in your department, like the administrative assistant for the graduate program that you’re in or there is someone there. Even if they can’t help you with the question directly, they’re going to be able to point you to the next step. Definitely keep asking questions at your institution until you get the answers that you need around your benefits. And like Kate was just saying, you can go to outside people like me and like her if you have non institution specific questions. One I get all the time is “am I eligible to contribute to an IRA?” I can answer that question for you if you give me a few details about you know, how you’re being paid.

Financial Strategy #3: Plan to Spend on Networking

12:47 Emily: Now, what’s the third third strategy?

12:49 Kate: The third strategy is to plan to spend money networking. We talk a lot about planning to pay our rent. We talk about planning to pay our car payment or our car insurance, but we don’t always talk about planning to spend money socially. And, no, I’m not talking about going and kicking it with the girls or the guys after work, but that can sometimes be a networking tool. But I’m talking about really digging in and you know, once a month, every couple of weeks, having that networking lunch. Who is somebody that you met at an orientation or somebody who your major professor introduced you to, or somebody who you happen to find out via a Google Scholar search has the same area of interest as you in research, but it’s across campus in a whole different department. Reach out, invite that person to lunch. You can go splits down the middle, you can pay, you can switch off and pay as you go, but plan to spend that money. Because the old adage is that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. But truly it’s what you know and who you know, you’ve got to have both pieces in there and that is so insanely true in academia. It’s what you know and who you know.

14:02 Emily: I think it’s really, really smart, as you’re bringing this up, just to acknowledge that first of all, networking is an important part of career development at every single stage. Never think that you’re too early on to start networking. You are a person worthy of knowing and you should introduce yourself to other people. So plan for it at every single stage of your career and just acknowledge in advance that you’re going to have opportunities come your way and you want to be able to say yes to them immediately without being concerned about where’s that money going to come from? You want to be able to accept a lunch invitation when you’re not really sure if you’re going to end up paying or the other person will, or you want to be able to accept taking a few hours drive to another institution to do a meeting. Anything like that, where you might end up being financially are responsible for, you don’t want to have to say no to that because you’re not prepared. So I really love the idea, and tell me what you think about this Kate, of having, so I’m really into targeted savings accounts or sinking funds, so having a sinking fund or target saving account that’s labeled networking and there’s enough money in there for whatever you think might come your way.

15:08 Kate: You know Emily, I was just thinking in my head, “Oh, I want to make sure that I talk about the budget sheet that I use.” Whether you call it budgeting or spending plan or targeted savings. The fact of the matter is you’ve got to have a plan for those dollars and cents and yes, having that emergency savings — I’m going to remind you, emergency savings comes first — but then secondary to that, what else do you need to have that money set aside for. On our budget sheets, I tell people all the time, I tell my students, I tell my clients, I remind co-counselors all the time — it’s not my money, it’s your money. So what is your plan for it? Where do you intend to spend it? And write it down. If I’m going to spend a $500 a month on entertainment, which I don’t do, but if I was going to spend $500 a month on entertainment, as long as my budget is balanced and I have the dollars and cents to do that, I can do it.

15:58 Kate: Now, when we’re talking about planned networking and we’re talking about spending money consciously to do this, I’m not talking 50 bucks a month. I’m talking maybe as little as $20. But like you said, Emily, maybe it’s a few hours drive to another institution. Or maybe we’re talking about a conference. It’s really big in our industry, and so we’ve got to take the time to find the money. Now it can be very difficult to do on small salaries so seeking out what funding is available through my department, what grant funding, what fellowship, what scholarship monies might be available. Ask. Even if you, graduated, you’re in your first position as an assistant professor or you’re a postdoc, don’t think that that precludes you from opportunities to get assistance to travel. Ask. Worst case scenario, the answer is no, we got nothing. Okay. At least you know, and then going forward you can put those dollars and cents away toward that. But I’m still going to say try and keep that $20 in your pocket so that if you get the opportunity to say, “Hey, let’s go grab a Coke” or “let’s go grab, you know, a quick bite to eat and talk this through,” you’ve got it. It’s not always easy to do, so please do not hesitate to ask a qualified professional for help. How do I put this budget together on these teeny tiny little pennies that I am paid? And there are resources available to help you do just that.

17:23 Emily: Absolutely.

Commercial

17:28 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Tax season is upon us and while no one loves this time of year, it’s particularly difficult for post-bac fellows, funded grad students, and postdoc fellows. Even professional tax preparers are often thrown for a loop by our unique tax situation. And don’t get me started on tax software. I provide tons of support at this time of year for PhD trainees preparing their tax returns. From free articles and videos, to paid at-your-own-pace workshops, to live seminars and webinars for universities and research institutes. The best place to go to check out all of this material is pfforphds.com/tax that’s P F F O R P H D dot com slash T A X. Don’t struggle through tax season on your own. Visit my website for the exact information you need in the most efficient form available. Now back to the interview.

Saving tips for larger networking events

18:38 Emily: One thing I just wanted to follow up on about the conference travel, because now we’re not talking about a $20 lunch, right? We’re talking about potentially thousands of dollars, between fees and travel and the lodging and all of that. So of course, totally want to underline, ask and ask and ask if there’s any money available from the sponsoring organization, from your department, from your university, from anywhere you get funding, outside scholarships you can apply for. There’s many different potential sources of funding for travel awards. That’s something we’ve covered on the podcast in the past. But I want to say that in some fields, the money is less prevalent, right? And so in some fields you may be able to say, “Oh, of course I’ll be able to find funding for that conference.” And maybe you can keep, you know, just a smaller amount of money available for your incidental expenses while you travel. But in some fields you may know, “well, I may get funding once or twice during my PhD, but really I should be attending a conference every year.” Then, it’s a scary thing, but you just need to acknowledge that that is going to come up at some point and start preparing for it.

Emily: Because the thing is, I think what happens with a lot of people with conference travel is that they end up just with a reaction to it. They act retrospectively instead of proactively about it. If you put a conference on a credit card and it’s $2,000, whatever, you’re gonna end up paying that over months or years and with interest and you may as well flip that around and pay it upfront into your savings over months and years and be gaining interest instead of losing interest. You’re going to end up paying for it slowly over time either way, if it has to come out of pocket and you can’t get it paid for, so just do it upfront instead of on the backend and you’ll come out much further ahead financially. I just hate it when I hear about students who have to forego these really wonderful conferences or networking opportunities because they can’t find the funding, they don’t have the money saved. And it can be a real blow to your career potentially. So it’s just something that’s worth building into your budget, as you were just talking about, early on, you know, from the beginning.

20:36 Kate: And let me, if you don’t mind Emily, I’d like to follow up on, on the comment you made with the credit card. Credit cards are amazing tools when used appropriately. We’re not going to use a hammer to put in a screw, we’re not going to use a credit card to finance everything. But if you know that you can utilize some points off that credit card and/or, emphasis on the and, you can pay that off, say for example, six months from now I will have this conference paid off rather than just making the minimum payment, but you can pay twice or three times the minimum payment, even if you can’t front load the conference because you found out about it last minute, or Oh my gosh, I never thought about it this way and I’m coming up on it. Don’t be afraid to use the credit card as a tool, but I just want you to be careful and I want you to be conscious and I don’t want you to think about, “Oh, it’s okay, I’ll carry a minimum balance for the next however long.” No, no, no. Go into it with the forethought to say, “all right, I’m going to pay this off in six to 10 months. This is how I’m going to do it. And at the same time, I’m going to be saving for next year’s conference.” Again, you are not walking this path alone. You have resources. Ask, ask, ask, ask, and you will get answers and you will find help to help you make these decisions and figure out how you’re going to use these dollars.

22:04 Emily: Absolutely. I feel I have to at this point put in a bid for my own services, which I do offer one-on-one money coaching. And so if you, one of the listening audience members, wants to work with me on these kinds of issues around budgeting or around paying off debt or investing for the future or whatever it might be, please contact me and I will be happy to, you know, have a short call with you to talk more about that. You can find more details about that in the show notes. And Kate, I don’t know if you offer individual services at this point or if you are, uh, you know, strictly in your academic role.

22:37 Kate: I do offer services. You can find, contact information for me and other professionals like me at afcpe.org and you can just search, find a counselor. I think it’s either find a financial counselor or find a financial professional in your area. I happen to be in Oklahoma, but there are many of us throughout the country who work specifically with students, graduate students, postdoc, early career, the broke, the wealthy, across the gamut. So we are available afcpe.org.

23:09 Emily: What I love about that AFCP database, and also if you wanted to search for a CFP, similarly, is that the professionals identify themselves by their areas of expertise or types of people that they prefer to work with. And so for example, for me, I’m not an AFC, but I specialize in graduate students, postdocs and early career PhDs. So probably anyone listening, your,within my area of specialty. But let’s say you had a different situation like you are in the military or your spouse is in the military, or you’re dealing with maybe an inheritance due to the death of a parent or you know, there are all these other special situations that might come up that maybe that’s your primary identification, not as a graduate student or postdoc, and maybe in some other area. That’s what I love about these databases that you can really search and find who is looking for…you are someone’s perfect client, right? And you can try to find that person through one of these databases. Thanks for adding that a resource, Kate, and that’ll be in the show notes as well.

How a AFC Deals With Financial Challenges

24:05 Emily: Okay. I think we’re ready to talk about your financial challenge that you have had recently due to your academic position. This will be very relatable to many people in the audience.

24:15 Kate: Okay, so let me lay it out really quick. Miscommunication is what this boils down to. Misunderstanding. Me, even as a financial professional, not asking the right question. Not full information being passed down the pipeline. So I wanted on the board, nobody is at fault here, but if somebody has to take it, it’s probably me. I didn’t ask the right questions, didn’t think about it the right way. But what happened is this: I have a nine month contract and I wanted to get paid over 12 months from the start, but because of when I did my onboarding paperwork, I couldn’t do it, I had to wait until the next spring. Well, the way I understood it was that when I did my 12 month pay, my pay would become effective July 1st, the new fiscal year of this year. Well, I knew that I was going to be out pay for about a month, but it turns out that that’s not what the actual situation was. Yes, they would input the information, but my 12 month pay would not actually start until my next contract started. My next contract starts September 1st, my first pay September 30th. So instead of one month without pay, I’m four months without pay. Ouch. Just to put it mildly.

25:42 Kate: Fortunately, because by nature I am a saver, I am a scrimper, I have very little fun. My husband is just like, “Can we go?” “No, I got to put the money away. No, we can’t. No, don’t ask me again.” I put money aside and my emergency fund will be empty come payday because I’m still pulling from savings with his retirement, his disability money to pay the bills. But come September, we’re back on the horse. And so yeah, the end of September. So I’m eking, I made it, I had enough money set aside. I had, I didn’t even realize it at the time, but with small changes, I had three to four months in the emergency fund. I’m always shooting for six. We had had a lot of fun and relaxation prior so I could have tightened the belt a little bit more. We only made a few small changes. This has been a hiccup for us. Not a, “Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh,” but again, another learning experience.

26:45 Kate: It is okay to make a financial mistake. I want that very, very clear right now. We are human. It is only money. Yes, you heard it from me. It is only money. You set a hundred dollar bill on the table. You get up and walk away. Forget the wind. It’s not going to get up and walk its feet. How do we use it? And so it’s the tool that we’re using, like the hammer or the screwdriver. And so if you make a mistake, you pick yourself back up, you carry on, you figure it out. What’s the mistake? You ask the questions of yourself, you figure out where you went wrong. You figure out where you need help going forward, and you take proactive steps to fix it. You’re going to be okay. We’re okay. I’m going to be rebuilding my emergency savings over the course of the next year, because that’s probably how long it’s going to take to get things back into the groove. But that’s okay. I now have a plan of action and I lived through it. My family lived through it. Nobody starved. This is a good thing.

27:47 Emily: Yeah. I think that this issue that you ran into, again, for the people inside academia, I mean, I hope it hasn’t happened to you, but you probably know someone this has happened to you. They didn’t, as you were saying, didn’t fully understand the contract that they were signing, didn’t fully understand the timeline that the other party was working on. And you end up without — in your case, it wasn’t specifically without summer funding, but that’s how it sort of laid out — but many people will end up without funding for a summer or a semester or something, at some point in their graduate degrees. Hopefully not as a postdoc, although I have known postdocs that that’s happened to, that they go a lapse and pay for some period of time. But this is exactly what an emergency fund is for, right? The primary way you calculate how large an emergency fund should be is if I lost my income for three to six months, how am I going to pay the bills in the meantime? And that is exactly the kind of emergency fund you had so you were able to sustain yourself and your family through that period. But it’s a super, super relatable problem. I’m really glad that you brought this up because hey, if it happens to you as a graduate student, that’s a mistake that Kate made and so you don’t have to feel bad about making that mistake.

29:01 Kate: Don’t feel bad at all!

29:04 Emily: People with PhDs in personal financial planning can make this kind of mistake too. So don’t feel bad about it. But the point is just to the greatest extent possible to prepare in advance for whatever comes your way. It might not be specifically this kind of lapse in income, but at some point you may have a lapse in income for a variety of different reasons. It’s a great reason to have an emergency fund. All kinds of other emergencies might occur and other great reason to have an emergency fund. As we were saying earlier, use that mindset of putting away even the small amounts of money. Start snowballing that account bigger and bigger and bigger, and over time it’ll eventually become a full-fledged emergency fund or whatever it is that you’re working on. Thank you for sharing that story, Kate.

29:44 Kate: Absolutely. And then when you do use it, like I’m in my position, I’m empty or I will be empty in about three days. Start over. And if that means that I’m starting small and I will, because my last paycheck when I was really focusing on building it, I was getting paid over nine months. Now I’m getting paid over 12 months, so my paycheck is going to be smaller. So my contribution to savings is going to be smaller. But that doesn’t mean that I give up. That doesn’t mean that I look at that and say “Oh, I’m never going to make it.” No, I am going to make it. Is there something I can cut out? Like, I don’t need to go downstairs to grab something to eat everyday. I can pack that sandwich, or you know, small things like that. The things that we hear, no matter where we go, here are easy ways to trim your budget. They are true. Not all are applicable, don’t get me wrong, but if it’s a $1.50 for the soda at the vending machine and you’ve got a cold Coke at home, grab it from home, stick it in your backpack and off to work you go. Small, teeny tiny changes will add up. That’s not just in contributions to savings, but also in decreases to your budget. The small make a difference, because gosh darn those pennies add up.

30:54 Emily: Absolutely. One last point that I wanted to make about this story and what you were just saying, is that if you do end up choosing to make some sacrifices to your lifestyle to fund a savings goal. For example, you’re needing to rebuild your emergency savings, it’s going to take a while. You’re going to have to do a few sacrifices in the meantime. Don’t think that that’s going to be forever. Don’t think that just because you have to give up your weekly lunch out, or whatever it is that you are in the meantime, it’s a temporary thing that you need to do to reach this goal. Once you have reached the goal, you can reevaluate. Is that something that I want to continue in that habit that I’ve created? Or is it time to add that spending back in now that I have a little bit more financial security. But don’t have the mindset that just because you make the cut for some period of time, it has to be forever. Things will be different in a few months or a few years and you can reevaluate at that point.

31:47 Kate: And also don’t be afraid to say, I can’t afford to do it this month. It is absolutely empowering to say I can’t afford to do it this month. Maybe that means that you don’t participate. Okay. But if you are honest with yourself and have the courage to say, I can’t afford it, I guarantee you the person you’re talking to is going to understand, because they have been there or maybe they’re there, but they’re hiding behind a credit card or they’re hiding behind borrowed funds. Listen, people, it happens and it happens all the time. So it is okay to say I can’t afford it. And yes, I know that point number three was the plan to spend money networking. Well, plan to bring a Coke and a sandwich from home and go meet on the bench. Go meet at the union and people watch. Go for a walk in network. You don’t have to have $20 every time if it’s not going to work. If it’s not in your budget, it’s not in your budget. But don’t think that the money needs to stand in the way of that networking.

32:48 Emily: Yes, absolutely.

How to Contact Dr. Kate Mielitz

32:49 Emily: Well Kate, this has just been a wonderful interview and I’m so glad to have met you and to be able to introduce my audience to you and you know, let them know a little bit more about what an AFC is and you know, what do you guys do? And so thank you so much for joining me today.

33:03 Kate: Thank you so much. It’s been an absolute thrill to be on today, Emily. I really appreciate it.

33:08 Emily: And where can people find you if they want to follow up about something?

33:11 Kate: People can find me on Twitter, @KateMielitz, and I have a sneaking suspicion Emily that you’ll put that in the comments. You can also find me on Instagram, @KSMielitz , or if you just Google my name Kate Mielitz and Oklahoma State University, it’ll pop right up and give you my university contact information as well.

33:35 Emily: Beautiful, thank you so much.

33:36 Kate: Thank you.

Outtro

33:38 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPphDs.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple podcast, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media or with your PhD peers. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars covered the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and taxes. Four, subscribe to my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode, and remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

How This Graduate Student Rejects the Academic Culture of Being Broke

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In this episode, Emily interviews Hajer Nakua, a rising second-year PhD student in neuroscience at the University of Toronto. Hajer describes how the culture of being “broke” in academia becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for individual graduate students. Hajer and Emily discuss in detail Hajer’s top three strategies for breaking this cycle of brokeness in graduate school and how you can change your money mindset. Hajer identifies the culture of consumerism as the top culprit.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

academia culture of broke

Teaser

00:00 Hajer: You know, if people don’t talk about how they’re spending money and all they talk about is the fact that they’re broke, it’s really easy to be like, “Okay, yeah, sure.” But to be more open with money and not have it very taboo I think will really help spearhead discussions of what does it mean to be in graduate school and have money. Like, how are the best ways to spend my stipend?

Intro

00:25 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season five, episode four, and today my guest is Hajer Nakua, a rising second-year PhD student in neuroscience at the University of Toronto. Hajer describes how the culture of being broke in academia becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for individual graduate students. We discuss in detail her top three strategies for breaking this cycle of brokeness in graduate school, and how you can change your money mindset. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Hajer Nakua.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:04 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast today, Hajer Nakua, and she is a recently started graduate student. We are recording this in August of 2019 so she’s going into her second year. And we’re going to be discussing today the “culture of broke” inside academia and how to combat that with your own personal finances. So, Hajer, thank you so much for joining me today. And will you please tell the audience a little bit more about yourself?

01:28 Hajer: Thank you very much, Emily, for having me. And sure. I just finished my undergrad in Psychology, Neuroscience & Behavior at McMaster University in Ontario. I finished in April 2018, and in September 2018, I started my graduate training at the University of Toronto. It’s technically in the Institute of Medical Science, but my field is specifically neuroscience. And even more specific, I use computational technology. So, things like neuroimaging, brain imaging, MRI, to better understand brain behavior relationships in a population of psychiatric children.

The Culture of “Broke” in Academia

02:07 Emily: Very, very interesting. So, you have been in academia–well, your PhD program, at any rate–for only about a year, but that’s been long enough to start to absorb the culture of being broke. So, would you please start to describe that for me?

02:22 Hajer: Sure. I’ve actually noticed this culture very, very persistently in undergrad, and it’s more of a student thing than when you’re a PhD–you’re still considered a student. And it’s just the idea that students, because they don’t have a very stable income, they’re supposed to be broke. And that is a very, very persistent limiting belief that many students have. And I find that particularly in PhD, Masters, or any graduate school program because of the high expense of the program, people just sort of settle into the idea of, “Oh, I’m broke, I’m supposed to be broke.” And it often limits them from taking the necessary measures to try to build wealth even during their PhD or graduate school training.

03:00 Emily: Well, you know you have found a very friendly audience in me with this message. I totally agree with you. To me, like if you’re looking at the numbers, right? Like if you’re actually looking people’s income and outflow and everything, to me, there’s usually a pretty big difference between someone who is paying out of pocket to be in school. They’re probably taking on student loan debt or maybe they’re supported by their families or even maybe they’re drawing on their own savings from the past, and someone who does have their education expenses paid for, plus there’s a stipend on top of that. That to me is like black and white, a very different situation. But you’re right that, because there’s often a continuum between those two things, people who are on the, “Well, you actually do have an income side of that,” can have some of the mindset still from when they were on the other side of the equation. Again, because as you said, the label of “student” is still there. And you said for me a couple of magic words, which were “limiting beliefs,” which I am very interested in. Can you expand on that a little bit?

Can You Expand on Limiting Beliefs?

04:03 Hajer: Sure. So, in general, a limiting belief is this very persistent idea someone has that often allows them to settle into something that prevents them from moving forward with whatever it is that they want in their life. And that’s a very vague and general explanation. But in this case, I find that when people say things such as, “Oh, I’m broke,” they sort of get over the idea that, “Maybe I should have a savings account, maybe I should start, you know, being more financially savvy.” They’re like, “Should I buy this $10 meal? Yeah. Whatever. I’m broke. What another $10?” So, it’s this constant idea that any sort of wealth, any money management is not applicable to their life.”

04:46 Emily: Yeah.

04:46 Hajer: I think that’s very persistent in particularly graduate school. And quickly commenting on one thing that you said. Although there is a stipend, and it’s fair that many people move for a PhD program, so that often goes towards living expenses. So, of course, the amount of money that someone gets, it’s not high, but it’s still, as you said, a little bit surprising to me sometimes that there’s such a strong sense of, “I have no money,” even though technically there is some sort of cash flow coming in.

05:16 Emily: Yeah. And this is another difficult point, right? Because for some people, the stipend is insufficient to live on in that city. It’s tragic that some graduate schools choose to pay their students that way–their workers or their fellowship recipients–that’s something that needs to change kind of about the higher education system as a whole. So, in some cases, it really is true. There’s not enough to live on. You have to be going into debt, whether it’s student loan debt or consumer debt or you’re being supported by someone else. And I think around 50%, or if I’m trying to remember the stats correctly, around 50% or less of doctoral students ultimately do take out some sort of student loans during their graduate degrees, right? Not just from undergrad. Yet, in other cases, as you were just saying, the stipend may be sufficient to live on maybe even sufficient to do a little bit more with.

06:09 Emily: But because of those limiting beliefs, that isn’t even considered, it’s just an assumption. You’re a student, you’re going to be broke, there’s nothing else you can do about it. And like you said, sort of acquiescing to that idea and not acting in a way that could change that situation just because you think that it can’t be changed. Yeah, this is a big part of my message, so I’m really glad that we can have this discussion today. So, what would you say that if someone does accept being broke as a limiting belief, even if it’s not factually numbers-wise necessarily the case–what’s the harm in that? What’s the effect in that?

The Harm of Brokeness as a Limiting Belief

06:48 Hajer: It prevents them from trying to seek opportunities to sort of build any sort of wealth or income. When I say wealth, I don’t mean, you know, those like $1 million wealth. I mean, just sort of being able to work towards your financial freedom, which is a huge goal, particularly in the West as a lot of prices have been getting a lot more expensive. So, it prevents starting that. People often say, “Oh, in my PhD I’m broke so I’m going to stay that way. And then maybe after I’ll sort of think about how I want to think about money or how I want to build my income.” I find that very problematic because PhD is a really pivotal time in your life. So, the vast majority of people start between 22 to 32, in that decade, a lot of students are. And that’s a really key time to sort of build for retirement, or whatever it is, any goals that you may have.

07:40 Hajer: So, starting from an early age, they think, “Oh, that’s it. That’s a problem for later.” Or, “No, I don’t have the money to try to really focus on building financial freedom slowly, slowly, slowly.” It can really be detrimental in their ability to A) save, and also learn how to be good with money when you don’t have a lot of money. Because we’re not saying that PhD students have a great salary, as we’ve spoken about before, but it’s still important to sort of think about ways to be financially savvy at a time where you may not have a lot of wealth. And then as you build on later in life, you’ll get better and better at it. So, I feel like there’s a lot of wasted opportunity during the PhD years once someone succumbs to that limiting belief.

Investing in Yourself: A Cautionary Tale to Grad Students

08:25 Emily: Yeah, I totally agree. There are two points in there that I’d like to follow up with. The first is, so at least I have heard, you know, from some aspects of the culture, that your twenties are your time to invest in yourself. Don’t really worry so much about saving for retirement or whatever it might be. There’s time to do that later. Your twenties are your time to invest in yourself. And, if you’ve heard that message, you might think, “Well, yeah, I’m pursuing a PhD. Like that’s a great thing to be doing with my twenties in terms of investing in yourself.” And that’s true. But I do think that maybe the people who are propagating that, “Twenties are the time to invest in yourself” message are assuming that people have a much higher income. That during the course of your 20s, you’re going to be ramping up that income and you know, pursuing all these different opportunities.

09:12 Emily: Maybe you’re starting your own company or whatever it is. That’s a little bit of a different level of potential wealth, you might say, then what we’re talking about in more like the PhD land. Because it is a really difficult thing to start off, let’s say in your twenties, with a certain stipend. And then five, six, seven plus years later still have pretty much that same stipend that’s coming in. It’s very difficult to increase your income at all while you’re in graduate school unless you turn to outside sources of work. So, that’s something that doesn’t really jive for me about that message of like, “Invest in yourself in your 20s.” It’s like, yeah, you can do that, but please note that your income, if you do that through graduate school, is not actually going to be increasing during that time. Or at least not, you know, appreciably.

Investing in Retirement: Slow and Steady Pays Off

09:57 Emily: So, that was one thing that I wanted to point out. And the other one was just, as you were saying, I just wanted to underline the power of starting to invest. Whether that’s, you know, paying off debt or actually investing in stocks or something in your 20s is incredibly valuable because you have so much more time on your side before you reach the goal of, “Okay, I want to support myself in retirement,” or whatever your goal might be. It’s so, so valuable to put away even a very small amount of money early on. The earlier on you can do it, the better because of the magic and the power of compound interest. So, it’s something where like, as you were just saying, if you acquiesce to the idea that you’re going to be broke and you can’t, you know, invest for retirement or pay off your debt or whatever–if you succumb to that idea in your 20s, you might dismiss, “Oh, well, okay, I did have like $20 this month that I could have saved, or like $50. That’s not that much money, whatever. It’s fine.” Actually that is a lot of money once you compound it over multiple decades. So, it’s something where, as you were saying, succumbing to that limiting belief really does damage you in the long-term. If there was something you could have done about it, you know, in the present, which again, for some people it isn’t, but for others perhaps you could.

Investing in Yourself vs. Your Future ≠ Mutually Exclusive

11:16 Hajer: Yeah. And also I wanted to comment on the idea that, “Oh, in your 20s you’re supposed to enjoy yourself and invest in yourself.” And while I agree with that philosophical idea, I think that people often make it very mutually exclusive where there is being financially savvy and then there’s enjoying spending on yourself and investing in yourself and quote unquote self-care and all that kind of stuff. So, I think the message which is driven by consumerism teaches people that, “Oh, you don’t need to think about the future now. You don’t need to be financially savvy now. It’s just spend whatever you want to spend.” And if you have that limiting belief that you’re broke, it’s a very easy message to take in. And it also sort of fills that cognitive dissonance that anyone may have. However, again, I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive.

12:02 Hajer: I think that you can equally–if you’re able to support yourself and your stipend is sufficient–I do genuinely think that you can enjoy yourself and invest in yourself, whether it is with consumerism goods or other self-care habits, and also plan for the future and try to be more financially savvy. And it doesn’t need to be as complicated as investing, but like you said, it could just be having an emergency account that you know that every month a hundred dollars is going to be put in the savings account. I definitely think that in many cases, you can do both. And I think life is very enjoyable when you do both because you know that you’re enjoying the present, but you also know that you are planning for the future, and I think that there’s a lot of sort of warmth that comes with that on the inside.

12:45 Emily: Yeah, I totally agree with what you’re saying. This is what I found to be the case as well, that I never wanted to completely sacrifice my enjoyment of the present. A part of me enjoying the present was feeling more secure in my finances. And so it wasn’t like it has to be all one way or the other. And again, this is another limiting belief, right? Like, “You can only work on your financial future and then the present is going to be completely sacrificed.” Or, “You can only enjoy the present and then you cannot do anything for the future.” In fact, there usually is a balance between those two things. And why also when we choose to be extreme in one way, do we always choose the extreme of enjoying the present and not the extreme of sacrifice in the present, at least for the vast majority of people? So, yeah, I really enjoyed that part of our discussion. So, okay, let’s say we have a listener who says, “Okay, I’m hearing you. I’m hearing you. What can I do now on my grad student stipend or my postdoc salary?” Or whatever amount of money is coming in. You know, “How can I not be broke anymore? I’ve been telling myself that I have to be broke. Okay. Maybe I don’t have to, but what do I actually do to not be broke anymore?”

How to Exit the Cycle of Broke

13:51 Hajer: Okay. I love this question. I wanted to say more of a philosophical idea and then go towards practical tips. The first thing is to recognize that you’re always accountable for all the money that you use and you spend, because I think that people often–I hear this all the time, “I don’t know where the money goes. It just sort of leaves my bank account, and I just keep tapping. I have no idea what I’m buying.” So, I think when you’re at that level, you really need to step back and think, “Where is my money going?” If you’re a Tapper, if you’re just like, “I can tap my way through life,” you really need to sit back and think, “Well, what am I actually tapping on? How do I stop these habits?”

14:29 Hajer: So, I think that’s the first important step to acknowledge self-accountability in your spending and financial habits and your financial future. That’s number one. Number two, I think saving money can be a lot easier than people expect. And oftentimes when you go to YouTube or you read these blogs, they have these very complex budgets and you know, all these things are very meticulous and they understand that as a graduate student, a lot of our time is spent on project management, making sure that we’re sort of completing every stage of the project. So, you don’t want to add so much more to your plate that you’re being super meticulous. So some habits that I started off with is A) have an automatic transfer from a checking account to a savings account. So, I will check how much money would I need to save per month for whatever it is that I want. Maybe I’m saving up for a vacation, saving up for a car, whatever it is that you want to do. Calculate your monthly budget and then just transfer that so it’s on autopilot. You never have to think about it. And whatever’s left in your checking account, you can just spend. And that way it’s a much simpler methodology to get the end goal. Which is that, there’s a certain amount allotted for things that you want to do. You’re thinking about the future, but you have enough to enjoy.

You Don’t Have to Budget in Order to Save

15:43 Emily: I want to add to that for a moment because I think this is a really, really good and important point. Because there are some people who as you said, maybe it’s because of busy-ness, but maybe it’s not–some people don’t want to keep a budget. They don’t like to be feeling–even though they’re telling themselves what to do–they don’t like being told what to do with their money at any given time. So, the thing is though is that you don’t have to budget to save, but you can just go ahead as you were just saying and take the step of saving. And as long as you don’t end up overdrawing the amount of money you have left, then Hey, you’ve accomplished the step of saving and you’re trusting yourself to stay within the ultimate confines of the remainder of your money.

16:25 Emily: And you don’t have to silo all that money off into different categories if you don’t want to. If that’s helpful for you, great. But if you’re too busy, you don’t like it, just start saving and you know, adjust–you can live off the rest of it. So that tip, I mean, if that’s the only one anyone gets out of the podcast, that’s a hugely powerful one. I totally agree with you. Automate savings, do it first thing after you get paid. Don’t allow yourself to consider that money part of your general monthly spending, but rather put it first thing towards whatever goal it is that you’re working on, as you said. So, please continue. But I love that first point.

Tip 1: Automated Savings. Tip 2: Check Your Food Expenses

16:57 Hajer: I’m happy that you like it. What really helps me, especially during grad school–because I’m someone who is more on the meticulous end. I like know exactly where everything’s going in all aspects of my life. But I really found that this tip is the best one to start off with because I’m a big believer in gradual changes. So, nobody’s going to go from a reckless spender to a meticulous budgeter in a month because they have this very intense goal. And I think that it’s not practical to think that or to take those steps. So, I think sort of automated savings is the best way to go especially for graduate students. And then further on, as your money increases, you may want to be a little bit more meticulous. My second tip, and I’ve seen this in undergrad and graduate school, people spend an absurd amount of money on food, I’ve learned.

17:43 Hajer: And not grocery shopping. We’re not talking about whole foods, organic apples, we’re just talking about buying food every single day, buying a coffee and a drink with that. So, a lot of people that I know in graduate school spend $20 a day just on their daily food intake, in addition to any grocery shopping that they may do. And I really wanted to bring this up because when you really calculate how much money food takes out of your wallet, it almost would make you cry because it’s just one of those things that you don’t feel it because it’s $15 here, it doesn’t seem like a lot. The next day, $7 here, it doesn’t feel like a lot. So, that’s one thing. If you find that a lot of your money is being spent on to-go food, so food outside of your own home and outside of groceries, I really think the first step in addition to the savings account is tightening that up and trying to just do the grocery shopping and meal-prepping or whatever it is that’s how you want to eat. It’s up to you. So, we’re not talking about from a health perspective, although it helps. But from a money perspective, I really think that’s the first place people need to look at–their food spending habits.

Pay Attention to Repeated Spending Patterns

18:48 Emily: Yeah, of course. I have more to say on this as well because I love this tip as well. So, I actually found myself falling into this when I was in graduate school. So, something that would happen to me–and you can tell me if you relate to this–this is especially in the first couple of years when I was in grad school and I was still in classes and had like homework to do and stuff. So, you know, go to campus, you know, do your classes. I’ve packed my lunch. Okay. I packed my lunch every day, but there were plenty of days when I would sort of, without knowing in advance, I would actually stay late. So, I would stay over the dinner hour and be working on campus in the evenings because, you know, I had like a good study group going for like a couple of my classes.

19:23 Emily: We would meet and kind of talk about the homework and stuff, you know, in the evenings, a couple days a week. Maybe there’s something in the lab that I didn’t get to during the day. I need to get to it a little bit later. But I didn’t want to be hungry, of course. So anyway, I would go and buy convenience food on campus. This would happen, you know, once, twice a week, something like that. Not seemingly a hugely damaging habit. But when I kind of stepped back and evaluated that, I was like, “Okay, this is a pattern. It’s not totally unexpected that I stay into the evenings at least a couple days, you know, on campus.” So it’s not like, “Oh my gosh, this is only happening this one time. It’s a one-time exception.” No, it was an exception that was happening on a regular basis.

20:05 Emily: And so once I realized that that pattern had formed, I was like, “Okay, I need to do more than just pack my lunch. I have to also keep some food that I could eat for dinner at least as a heavy snack or something that’ll tide me over until I actually get home in the little bit later part of the evening.” So, it’s one thing, of course–people have heard the tip, right? To pack your lunch–but I would say just if you see patterns developing where you need to eat on campus and you see yourself turning to convenience foods, just try to acknowledge that that’s happening and take some steps so that it doesn’t catch you by surprise.

Keep a Snack Drawer, and Bring Your Own Tea (or Coffee)

20:38 Hajer: I actually had the exact same experience. I started to develop like a snack drawer. So, there’s a couple of healthy snacks I like, some that I make, some, you know, whatever it may be–maybe it’s like an apple or something for the week–and I keep that there. And that way, whenever I have to stay later–which I try not to do, I am someone who, you know, at 4:00 PM that’s my home time–but of course, like you said, there are times you just can’t control it. So, I know that there is something there and it’s something that I brought. Even if it’s a $3-4 bagel, that still adds up. My biggest thing was I used to really enjoy buying tea outside. I just loved in the morning coming with my tea and it was only $2 and 67 cents from Starbucks at the time.

21:24 Hajer: I memorized it and I always had it ready because I knew exactly how much it was. But over time you realize how much it would cost. And what I started to do is A) bring my own tea and buy a really cute mug. So, I felt good walking in with my tea mug. But sometimes if I didn’t have my mug, I would actually just ask for a cup and hot water and I would bring my tea bag, and I have them on my desk. And that saved a lot of money. But you just don’t feel that because $2.67 doesn’t seem like that much money. So, even something as small as tea, I felt that like, “Oh wow. By the end of the month, I have considerably more money than I did last month.” And it was just one very small change.

21:59 Emily: Yeah, because it’s a daily or an almost daily habit. Making a small change can make a huge difference.

Commercial

22:09 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Tax season is upon us, and while no one loves this time of year, it’s particularly difficult for post-bac fellows, funded grad students, and postdoc fellows. Even professional tax preparers are often thrown for a loop by our unique tax situation, and don’t get me started on tax software. I provide tons of support at this time of year for PhD trainees preparing their tax returns, from free articles and videos to paid at-your-own-pace workshops, to live seminars and webinars for universities and research institutes. The best place to go to check out all of this material is pfforphds.com/tax. That’s P F F O R P H D S.com/T A X. Don’t struggle through tax season on your own. Visit my website for the exact information you need in the most efficient form available. Now, back to the interview.

Changing Your Money Mindset

23:12 Hajer: One thing that has really helped me is–so, there’s multiple aspects of consumerism that we all fall into, and I think it’s very pertinent in grad school just because, “Oh yeah, the whole broke culture.” But it’s a very funny dissonance where we love to talk about how broke we are, but we love to spend money at the same time. So, I find that’s very common. So, in general, in addition to food, other habits that you may have, I think it’s very important to check. So, many of us like to spend a lot of money on fast fashion. And we know that it’s not going to last very long. We just love the idea of going into a fast-fashion store, buying a $40 shirt. Seems like a good idea, but you know, in four months you’re not going to wear that shirt anymore.

23:54 Hajer: So, it’s things like that where you really want to try to look at alternatives where you may have to put in a greater sum in the beginning, but in the long run you’re really going to help your finances. And I think thinking in that way has really helped. So, instead of the idea of instant gratification, “I want a latte right now. I want this shirt right now. I want this meal right now.” Get outside that mindset. And instead think, “Okay, long-term, what do I want? Because when it comes to the food or the clothes or whatever, the idea is, “I want to have a meal that I enjoy.” That’s really the core of what you want. But that can come in many different ways. And many of it you can save a lot of money with.

24:34 Hajer: “I want to buy clothes that I enjoy.” Okay, well, what are better spending habits that you may do so that in the long-term, you know that you’re saving money? So, and just in general, letting go of the need of instant gratification, which to be honest, is very, very hard in our very, very multi-consumerism culture. Many businesses make billions of dollars because of the fact that it’s very hard to let go of instant gratification. But the way that I like to think about it is, the PhD is the biggest test of lack of instant gratification in your entire life. You are never going to get this level of delayed gratification where you work two years and you got one paper. You know, you work four or five years, you finally got your PhD. So, really changing your mindset and saying, you know, “I’m doing this for the long run. Like I know that the PhD is not going to be enjoyable all the time, but at the end I’m going to enjoy it.” Think that same way about money and your finances. And I think that one thing is just so powerful, and it can fuel a lot of change. So, although it’s not as much a practical tip, but I think that’s an important way to redirect or reconceptualize how you view your spending habits.

The Multiple Benefits of Being Future-Focused

25:47 Emily: Yes. Unsurprisingly, I love this point as well. This is actually something that I’ve spoken and written about on a few occasions, but I’ve never heard anybody else bring it up. So, I’m really glad that you did, which is the specific characteristics of a person who is in a PhD program or has completed a PhD program. Some of those characteristics can lend themselves very, very well to financial success. As you were just saying, thinking long-term about your career. “Okay, I’m going to dedicate multiple years to achieving this PhD.” As you were just saying, sometimes the experiments, the research itself, can take a really, really long time, especially at the beginning. You become really persistent. You are dedicated when you are in a PhD program or have accomplished a PhD, and you’re really future-focused.

26:33 Emily: And all those things serve really, really well if you’re able to translate them into the area of your personal finances as well. PhDs are also resourceful. They are creative. They’re all these really positive things. Even just getting admitted into a graduate program means that you have a lot of these characteristics and you will further develop them during the course of the PhD. And so yeah, if you can find a way to apply those in the financial realm as well, I mean you’re going to be a superstar, basically. Just by the characteristics that brought you to the stage of training that you’re already at. So, I really, really totally agree with this point. I think something that you said that people don’t necessarily acknowledge is if they take a step back from the treadmill of consumerism, they might think, “I have to live this way forever. I have to be frugal forever. I have to say no to buying X, Y, Z forever.”

You Don’t Have to Be Rich in Order to Be Frugal

27:27 Emily: But the thing is that if you can take that step back from consumerism for a period of maybe a few years and really get your finances solid underneath you, and really do things like investing in yourself and increasing your income and so forth, you can add–I mean consumerism is kind of a negative word–but you can add mindful spending back in after a period of, you know, stepping back from it, if you just again, have some wherewithal to your finances. So, for example, something that is a common criticism of frugality tips that are disseminated is that you have to already have money to be frugal, right? So, stuff like buying in bulk or like what you were just saying, actually, buying an investment piece of clothing that’s a little bit more money instead of multiple cheaper pieces of clothing that aren’t going to fall apart faster.

28:19 Emily: Well, you do need money upfront to do those things. So, a common criticism of frugality is you have to be rich to be frugal, right? It kind of doesn’t make sense. But the thing is that it doesn’t take that long of building up some savings or something to have enough money to start taking those frugal steps that do require an upfront investment, which of course not all of them do. And so, it might be that, “Okay, yeah, I’m just going to go on a spending fast for three months. At the end of the free three months, I will be able to take all these other frugal steps, which will then be able to fund me starting to spend again.” So, it doesn’t have to be a forever sacrifice. It can be a short-term thing that can then sort of catapult you to greater and greater ability to build your wealth. Does that make sense?

Inching Toward Investments: Take Your Time

29:04 Hajer: Totally. And I had a couple of comments on the frugality. Because I used to actually think like that, too. I used to think, “You know, frugality comes from a relative place of privilege.” To be able to think–and even the comment on fast fashion that I brought up, I was listening to a podcast and one of the key women who tried to really vouch for sustainable fashion. She works with a lot of celebrities. She talks about the fact that if you really calculate how much money you are spending on fast fashion, you could easily buy a couple of those things and investment pieces. So, again, it’s the idea–and like you mentioned as a PhD student–you know, really understanding where’s the investment worth being put in. And another really important point that I wanted to say is, I don’t think it’s wise to do all these changes all at once.

29:54 Hajer: To be like, “Okay, that’s it. I’m kind of all out. I’m changing everything I wanted to change.” There are of course going be habits that trickle in and that’s totally fine. But it’s again thinking that you’re responsible for your wealth, your financial management. So, what are the steps that you think you can do? And then start from there and slowly build in. So, you know, if you want to be a little bit more frugal or you want to go on a spending fast, but you want to make sure that you have some money initially just in case, then make that your priority and you’ll sort of focus on that. So, these are all gradual tips that require time to sort of get back on your feet of comfort with your money and comfort with your finances, but it’s important just to start somewhere and then, you know, build from there.

30:41 Emily: Yeah, I think that the idea that you have to revolutionize everything in your life at once to be successful with money is another one of those limiting beliefs that isn’t true that we tell ourselves as an excuse to getting out of doing anything. So, when I think about my own journey–when I started my business, Personal Finance for PhDs, it was when I finished graduate school and I had already attained a great deal of financial success at that point. And so if you looked at me at the end of graduate school and saw, “Okay, she’s got her stuff together, she’s budgeting, she’s saving, she’s investing, paying off debt, all that stuff.” It’s easy to overlook the seven years between college and when I finished my PhD that it took to get to that point of success. And I did not start off doing everything right out of the gate, right? This is something that I learned very gradually over time, and yet still, by my own definition, obtained a great deal of financial success several years later. So, it’s not that you have to exactly be like me or exactly be like you or exactly be like someone else you hold up as a model, like a financial mentor or something. You don’t have to instantly transform to be that person. It’s okay for it to take years. It will still be effective if you make slow changes. In fact, probably more so because it’s more sustainable.

Personal Finance Really Is “Personal”

31:55 Hajer: Exactly. And also take into consideration your personal situation. So, many PhD students live at home, so of course they don’t have the very high rent to pay. And of course that makes many things easier. Many PhD students are supported by other individuals that help them out. And some PhD students, again, are living in a more difficult financial situation in the sense that they have to pay rent and they’re solely responsible for themselves. So, take in your situation, and really think about what are the actionable steps that I can do, what are the beliefs that are holding me back? How do I change those? And again, it will take years to be really comfortable with the way that you want to spend money, and that’s completely okay. And there’s never the best way to money. There are certain things that some people may think, “Oh, you don’t need to spend on that.” But I personally like to and I’m okay with that. So reaching that place where you’re confident and comfortable in your money spending, it takes many years. But like you said, it’s always worth it. But it’s always important to take in your personal situation and your personal wealth and not try to compare your situation to someone else’s.

33:02 Emily: This is actually one of my favorite things about personal finance, is that it is intensely personal and intensely individual and there is not a cookie-cutter solution that’s going to work for everyone. It’s a challenging thing for me as a personal finance educator, but it’s just something that makes it such a rich field to be in. I want to get back to this question of mindset. Are there any more comments that you want to make about how to break this mindset, this accepting of the culture of being broke?

Encouraging Open Dialogues About Money in Grad School

33:29 Hajer: I think the first thing I want to say, like we mentioned, this culture is very, very persistent. This mindset is very, very hard to stay out of. Like sometimes I find, even though I’m totally against it, I find that I say things about the whole broke culture of being a student. In terms of breaking the mindset, it’s just always important to understand what being broke means and what us casually saying the word means. Many people, as we mentioned, do have some level of finances that they can spend. If you find that you are able to spend money, you’re technically not broke. So, you just think about that, and then take the steps that you want to take to get more financial freedom. And also just, I think it’s really helpful to bring up the conversations around your colleagues, whether that’s in school, your classmates, those in your lab.

34:22 Hajer: I do that often in my lab. It’s quite a big lab. So, we often talk about money and what does it mean to have money in graduate school. And sometimes if someone says, “Oh, you know, graduate students are always broke,” it’s important to sort of chime in and think, “Okay, well why are we broke? How do you break those down? Is it something that we just think in our head?” So, that’s why I think this podcast, I really gravitate towards it. Because it is just trying to have that conversation started. And I think that’s the most effective way to break that down because it’s hard as an individual, even if you got over that, just sort of change the culture around you and it will always creep into your mindset. But just starting the conversation, it doesn’t have to be on a podcast, of course.

35:02 Hajer: Individually, it’s really important to talk to the people around you about money and not make money a very taboo topic. Because I think if people don’t talk about how they’re spending money and all they talked about is the fact that they’re broke, it’s really easy to be like, “Okay, yeah, sure.” But to be more open with money and not have it very taboo I think will really help spearhead discussions of what does it mean to be in graduate school and have money. Like, how are the best ways to spend my stipend?

Call to Action: The Importance of Budget Breakdowns

35:32 Emily: This is one of the reasons why I really love doing the budget breakdown episodes that I have done in the past. In my first season of the podcast, I did 50% of the interviews were budget breakdowns where I think it was all graduate students except I did my own as well. I think it was all graduate students and talking about, “Okay, this is where I live, this is how much I make and this is how I spend it and these are my financial goals.” And it’s something that I’ve continued with the podcast, although not at the 50% frequency, but I just want to point out that I love these local examples, right? These very relatable examples. If someone else from that same institution living in the same city hears that particular podcast, that’s an easy way to start a discussion–not necessarily even with the person who was interviewed, but just someone else like, “Oh my gosh, I heard this thing and that person is spending how much on rent? And that means that they can turn around and do this with their finances. I wonder how I can find a place where I can only spend that much on rent?” Or like, “Wow, they meal prep their food and that means they only–you know.”

36:25 Emily: But it’s really valuable to see those local examples that are very, very relatable to you. Because it’s very easy to dismiss, as we were talking about before, frugal tips or something as something that doesn’t apply to me because I live in X , Y, Z and this is my particular situation. Well, if you end up talking to people who make the same amount of money that you do and live in the same place that you do, it’s a lot more relatable and their strategies are a lot more translatable. And frankly, you’re more likely to hear them if you listen to them. If you hear them from someone who you can identify with in those other factors. So, this is basically just a call for any listeners, please volunteer and submit your budget breakdown. Volunteer for a budget breakdown episode because I love doing those and I’m not really getting that many volunteers for them now, which is why we do a lot of other types of episodes. But anyway, I still love them. They hold a special place in my heart and I think they’re really valuable.

37:11 Hajer: I love them as well. On YouTube, I think Glamour magazine on YouTube has a lot of budget breakdowns, particularly in individuals in very expensive city like New York, San Francisco. And again, it’s really nice sort of think about how someone else spends their money and then you can translate that into thinking about how you spend your money. Another tip is, the first step if you’re going to take one actionable step, especially to break down the whole broke culture, is to really calculate how much money is going in every month, how much money are you spending? And that way you can numerically counteract the idea that, “Oh, you’re broke.” Because if it’s the, “Oh wow. After all the money that I get and after I spend it, I still have $400, like I’m not really a broke.” So, I think it’s really getting in tune with how much you’re spending. But because of the way the culture is right now, not many people are in tune with their spending habits. So, again, falling into that very broke culture. It’s very easy.

Tell Us More About Your Podcast Team

38:07 Emily: So, I understand you are part of a podcast team as well. So, what is that podcast and how can people find it? What is it about?

38:15 Hajer: So, it’s called Raw Talk Podcast, and essentially it’s a science communication podcast headed by students in the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Toronto. And essentially what the team tries to do is take these really key topics that people are interested in and go to scientists and ask them about their research and the latest discoveries of those topics. So, we’ve covered a wide array of topics such as autism spectrum disorder, the circadian rhythm, mental health in graduate school. And the idea is just to help you know, the general public and everyone understand what is the latest research and how do we best understand some of these topics that are not always well-represented in the media or that people may be curious in. You can find it on Facebook, Instagram, any podcast app, and Twitter and it’s just Raw Talk Podcast. And on Instagram, there’s a lot of new content featuring our guests and some really cool science tips or science fun facts. So, we really just try to break down some of the complex parts of science and be able to translate it using very local researchers that many people can Google and email.

39:31 Emily: This is such a fun way for people to get involved in science communication, I think. I mean I love podcasting obviously, And I just think it’s an amazing medium. And so, this is something that I know has been started. This kind of thing has been started at many other universities as well. And so, I mean if this is something that attracts you about potentially communicating science from your own university and you don’t want to take it all on yourself, it’s a really good idea to get a few other students together who are also interested in the same thing and start it up together and kind of spread the work around. So, that’s exciting. How long has this podcast been going on for?

40:06 Hajer: When the summer finished, which was about April, May, we just finished our third season, so we’re starting our fourth season in September.

How Else Can You Be Reached?

40:18 Emily: Great, great. Okay. And how else can people find you individually?

40:23 Hajer: Sure. So, I recently just started a science communication account myself as a science student and also moreso to share the graduate student experience and experience with research and academia. What does it look like, particularly being from more of an underrepresented group? I really wanted to share what that looks like, navigating academia and research. So, my main platform right now is Instagram, but I do hope to branch out and start blogging. But my Instagram is, @itshajernakua. So, I T S H A J E R N A K U A. And yeah, it’ll be really nice. And I try to share tips of grad school, tips about finding passion with research, and I’m also starting to get more into financial and money tips as a graduate student.

41:08 Emily: That sounds amazing. Okay, well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing this wonderful content.

41:14 Hajer: Thank you so much for having me. This is my first podcast being interviewed, not interviewing. So, this is really exciting.

Outtro

41:20 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. Pfforphds.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple podcast, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media or with your PhD peers. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhD’s are most interested in like investing, debt repayment, and taxes. Four, subscribe to my mailing list at pfforphds.com/subscribe. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode. And remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the free music archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

How to Combat the Negative Financial Attitudes We Learned in Academia and in Childhood

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In this episode, Emily interviews Cortnie Baity, a doctoral candidate in Human Development and Family Sciences at Florida State University and licensed marriage and family therapist intern. Cortnie’s dissertation is on how your upbringing influences your financial attitudes and behaviors later in life and how to effect better financial outcomes, specifically for African American families. Cortnie shares a framework from the literature of four money belief systems, three of which significantly correlate with income and net worth and two of which can become pathological. We discuss the financial messages PhDs absorb from academia and how those might influence financial attitudes and behavior. We conclude with Cortnie’s advice for PhDs who want to combat financial attitudes that don’t serve them well.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

financial attitudes academia

Teaser

00:00 Cortnie: I would suggest early career PhDs to take a financial attitude questionnaire and to gain additional insight to see what financial attitudes you resonate with the most and how they could be possibly subconsciously guiding on your financial behaviors and influencing your overall financial well-being.

Introduction

00:25 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season five, episode three and today my expert guest is Cortnie Baity, a doctoral candidate in human development and family sciences at Florida State University and licensed marriage and family therapist intern. Cortnie’s dissertation is on how your upbringing influences your financial attitudes and behaviors later in life, and how to bring about better financial outcomes, specifically for African American families. We discuss how financial attitudes form and how they translate into behavior. Cortnie shares a framework from the literature of four money belief systems, two of which can become pathological. We discussed the financial messages PhDs absorbed from academia and how those might influence financial attitudes and behavior and what PhDs can do to combat financial attitudes that don’t serve them well. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Cortnie Baity.

Will Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:25 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today Cortnie Baity, who is a doctoral student, and she specifically has an interest in financial attitudes and how they develop. This is such a relevant subject for us. I’m so delighted that Cortnie reached out to me and that we’ve been corresponding and she agreed to come on the podcast. So Courtnie, will you please introduce yourself?

01:47 Cortnie: Hello, Dr. Roberts and hello listening audience. Again, my name is Cortnie Baity. I am a current doctoral candidate in the human development and family sciences PhD program. I am located at Florida State University. I earned my masters of science degree from the couple and family therapy program at the University of Kentucky, where I initially became interested in personal finances. Just a little bit of background about my areas of research, it includes family finances, personal finances, socialization processes, African American families, and minority mental and physical health disparities. The overall goal of my research program is to minimize any inqualities in mental and physical health, experienced by black families. In the way that I have chosen to go about intervening on health for black families is looking at how personal finances influences or undergirds some of those health disparities that we might be noticing in the literature.

02:52 Emily: That is so interesting. So exciting. Really, really glad that you’re working in that area. Can describe for us for just a couple of minutes, the dissertation that you’re working on, your specific research?

03:04 Cortnie: Yes. So my dissertation studies financial socialization in black American families, and its implications on financial wellbeing for young black adults. My primary hypotheses is that black young black adults experience asset and resource inqualities, in part because they receive minimal or possibly counterproductive training about finances. My goal with my dissertation is to do three things: document diverse types of family, financial socialization experienced by black young adults, explore the consequences of types of family, financial socialization for financial literacy and financial wellbeing, and then lastly, consider gender variation experienced in family and financial socialization and how it may have undesired effects on financial literacy and financial wellbeing. My overall hope for this study is to, in this study and in following research, will be to produce clinical strategies for marriage and family therapists like myself to help black clients improve financial management, which can help reduce asset and resource inequalities among black families. Personal finance has been demonstrated in the literature to be connected to mental and health outcomes, especially unfavorable mental and physical health outcomes. So I’ve chosen to focus my research on personal finance interventions to improve black health overall.

What is Financial Socialization?

04:40 Emily: Yeah, I’m sure the listeners know that this is a subject that I’m intensely interested in — how to improve financial outcomes among our population, the PhD population. And this is so applicable. It’s a great subject for me to learn about as well. You’re using the term family financial socialization. Can you explain that? Can you define that a little bit more? What plays into that?

05:03 Cortnie: Yes. If we think about socialization broadly, there’s a communication component, so it’s the sending and receiving of a social message, but it also includes the implementation and application of that message into the individual’s life. If we put that into context of personal finance, we’re looking at how families socialize their members surrounding personal finances. That includes how the messages and beliefs surrounding personal finances, including budgeting, world perspectives about money, and the economy and that influences an individual’s financial attitudes. There’s also a tie between financial attitudes or your perspective of finances and how that influences your financial behaviors. And then of course your financial behaviors feed into your overall financial well-being.

06:03 Emily: Yeah. So there’s a whole chain there and this is something that is being passed from parents and other family members to children, and it’s being propagated within families, as well as within society more largely. Can you give some concrete examples of maybe those communications or demonstrated behaviors?

06:23 Cortnie: Sure. One concrete example of a family financial socialization that you may witness in families is, for instance, when families, parents will distribute out an allowance to a child, and they say, “Hey, you know, you have this amount of money once it’s gone, if you want to buy things for your hobbies or if you want to buy a video game, that money is gone.” And so it’s socializing the child surrounding finances in the family social context. Some type of message is being transmitted over to that child. The thought behind family financial socialization is that the child not only hears that message from the receiver, but they start to internalize that message and start to make decisions about their environment around them, based on the message from the receiver. And in that case, whether the child internalize the message to save the money and let it stretch a little bit. So don’t kinda spend all your money on the most expensive video game because you know that if you want to go to the movies the next weekend with your friends as well, you won’t have anymore financial means until the next time that you receive an allowance. So that will be one concrete example.

07:47 Emily: Yeah. Thank you for that. That’s definitely an example of an intentional or an overt way that parents would communicate around finances to their children. I don’t know about you, but the family that I grew up in, the signals around finances were implicit. We did not talk very openly about this subject, but I learned a lot from my parents by example. So can you give another example of how that kind of communication would work?

08:11 Cortnie: Oh yes, absolutely. Gudmunson and Danes has a family financial socialization theory and they support the idea that the majority of family financial socialization happens through modeling or observation. So one implicit way that we learn about money is when our parents will take us to the bank with them. There is some type of message that is being sent to us that there are outside institutions that help us to manage our money. That would be one concrete example of family financial socialization. You’re with your parent, it’s in the family social context is not really being spoken we’re at the bank because I need them to help me manage my money, but it’s that kind of unspoken undertone. It’s an institution It’s associated with money. I see mom and dad go here. So those kind of implied messages are occurring in that kind of way.

09:16 Emily: It’s a really, really interesting example. It just reminds me of, well first of all there’s a large unbanked population within the United States, right? So there’s all kinds of children who are not getting that particular kind of message that maybe some other children are. Maybe the actual interaction the parent is having with the teller or the manager could be positive, could be negative. All kinds of differences there. And it’s actually making me think now. So I have two very young children. The older one is maybe on the cusp of being able to learn some money lessons if we were to overtly teach something. But I’m just thinking about how much financial stuff that I do that it just takes place digitally online. It wouldn’t necessarily be seen very easily by my children if I just choose to not do that stuff in front of them. So yeah, I don’t know. Going into the new generation, we might have to have different strategies around how to do the socialization, given the differences.

10:09 Cortnie: Very true, very true.

The Four Financial Attitudes

10:11 Emily: Okay. So that’s about how parents and families are communicating some lessons around finances, implicitly or explicitly. How the children are receiving those attitudes. Can you speak a little bit more about the connection between what you’re learning in your family and the attitudes and so forth that you develop and then how that translates to behavior? What the connection is between those two.

10:33 Cortnie: Personal finance psychology and marriage and family therapist scholars, Klontz and Britt have produced some studies that look at how financial attitudes developed and they suggest that trans-generational personal finance messages, typically learned in childhood, subconsciously influences the development of financial values and beliefs. And collectively these financial values and beliefs are referred to as financial attitudes. So Klontz and Britts specifically have come up with four distinct financial attitudes. One is money avoidance, money worship, money status and also money vigilance. To have these categories are important because some of them suggest a pathologic view of money that can have a negative impact on your financial behaviors in your overall financial well-being.

11:35 Emily: I love to hear a framework. This is great. Can you say a couple of words about what each of those four categories are so people can kind of say, “Oh, I definitely see myself here or there.”

Money Avoidance

11:45 Cortnie: Reiterating when I say a financial attitudes are important because certain attitudes for example, like money avoidance and money worship, have been demonstrated to suggest pathological views of money. Those who resonate with money avoidance attitudes may tend to believe that money is bad or that you don’t deserve money, and for people with this personality, money can typically evoke feelings of fear, anxiety, or disgust even. This is a financial attitude that is common among low income, younger, and single individuals because they typically have something going on with them where money is evoking these anxiety or stressor indicators for them. It has been demonstrated that typically those who are money avoidant produce, financial outcomes like financial well-being that are not as high as individuals who possibly resonate more with other types of financial attitudes.

12:58 Emily: Yeah, I definitely can see that. I mean, we can sort of imagine very easily that prototype person who is money avoidant. There’s probably, I don’t know if they’d be listening to the podcast, but there’s certainly potentially some of those within academia, within graduate students. Maybe not because of how they were raised, but then the environment that they’ve been put in, you know, since getting into training. We’ll talk more about that a bit later, but go through these other three categories please.

Money Worship

13:23 Cortnie: Money worship, more so those types of individuals, you would see indicators of that individual where they’re very central to their career. They’re very central to building wealth and things like that. It can be suggestively pathological. In the Klontz Money Scripts inventory, there is a cutoff score for what is kind of considered as like a clinical concern, a clinical cutoff score. If you go beyond that threshold, you will be considered possibly you need to look into it being an actual issue. Even if you resonate with, and I do want to say it is possible for you to resonate with several categories of financial attitudes. For a lot of people it kind of depends on the context. Like we talked about, being a PhD student. But going back to what I was saying with the, clinical cutoff score, there essentially are four different types of financial attitudes and worship would be another example of that. There’s literature that goes through the exact representations of the four financial attitudes and Klontz and Britt will be the scholars to kind of refer to that information in further detail.

15:05 Emily: Yeah, I would love it if you could send me a link to put in the show notes for that. Yeah. So I think money worship is another one where we can again, sort of maybe imagine a prototype for that. And I think that I, obviously I don’t know about this clinically for myself, but I have been very careful, mentally to not, because I think I have maybe some tendencies where I could fall into that category. Maybe not even tendencies, but just based on what I do, right? I talk a lot about money. I’m very careful to not allow myself to fall into that category.

Money Status and Money Vigilance

15:33 Emily: Can you remind me what the final two were and maybe give some examples? These were maybe more the non pathological categories.

15:41 Cortnie: Money status, it more so resonates with viewing money as a social status for yourself. And then also money vigilance is being careful with money. Those are two that are not as suggestive to pathological views of money.

16:02 Emily: Yeah. Okay. Thanks for that clarification. I’m seeing myself maybe in the vigilance category, for sure, and I hope the audience is starting to get an idea of where they might fall and what possible interventions might be helpful depending on where they are.

Commercial

16:21 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Tax season is upon us and while no one loves this time of year, it’s particularly difficult for post-bac fellows, funded grad students, and postdoc fellows. Even professional tax preparers are often thrown for a loop by our unique tax situation. And don’t get me started on tax software. I provide tons of support at this time of year for PhD trainees preparing their tax returns. From free articles and videos, to paid at-your-own-pace workshops, to live seminars and webinars for universities and research institutes. The best place to go to check out all of this material is pfforphds.com/tax that’s P F F O R P H D dot com slash T A X. Don’t struggle through tax season on your own. Visit my website for the exact information you need in the most efficient form available. Now back to the interview.

How Financial Attitudes Can Affect Your Finances

17:25 Emily: Can you give maybe like a concrete example of how let’s say, a money avoidant person, a behavior that might result from that attitude?

17:33 Cortnie: I think that it kind of blends into our follow-up question of how does academia, how does being a graduate student, how does that influence certain financial attitudes. As we all know, being a graduate student is very expensive, yet graduate students often have very little income, unless you’re in a situation where you do have enough fellowships and scholarship funding to carry you throughout your entire program. Also, because graduate students are in the process of becoming experts in their field, they may feel like they do not deserve to get paid very much. Those kinds of experiences typically evoke fear and anxiety surrounding money, which could be suggestive that graduate students tend to have a money avoidant financial attitude. Of course, there are clinical cutoffs for that, as we discussed before, but some of those common experiences and feelings of being a graduate student, surrounding money, may lead to being category categorized as money avoidant.

18:52 Emily: Yeah, I definitely want to talk about for this for another moment, because I think this is going to be such a common experience for many people in our audience. Either that they’re currently in this space, they are currently a graduate student and experiencing some of these forces and attitudes or maybe that is in their past and it’s still something they’re working on because they still have some residual effect, mentally, from that time. I do think there are pervasive messages within academia that your passion should sustain you. You should not care how much money you’re making right now or in the future because you just love your work so much, none of the rest of that matters. It really plays into a larger attitude within academia. And I’m not blaming any person or institution. This is just like a mother culture kind of thing around “Well, you should just go ahead and put your life on hold while you’re in training. Nothing else matters aside from your training. Put your money on hold, put your relationships on hold. Other things in your personal life, your health, mental health, all that stuff is secondary to the all consuming goal of your research getting to a certain level, finishing your dissertation, whatever it is. Super, super unhealthy. Super, super unsustainable. I mean, maybe you can do that for a few months or a year, but for the five, ten, more years you might be in training it’s too tall of an order. And yet this is still the message that we’re all kind of marinating in within academia. Right? And so what I think I’m hearing from you is that these messages, maybe it’s not the family that we grew up in, right? That has a certain influence on us. But then our academic family is also having an influence. Does that make sense? Can you talk a little bit more about that?

20:37 Cortnie: That definitely makes sense because essentially what family financial socialization theory suggests is that our founding beliefs and values surrounding money typically come from the family system because that’s typically our first opportunity to learn in a social context. As you become 18 and you move away from home and you have more interactions with other socialization agents, like being in an academic setting, being around peers, being in a romantic relationship, that influences your personal finances as well, or how you’re being socialized around personal finances as well. It’s certainly a undertone, kind of an unspoken thing in academia that the main goal is to focus on getting your program or research to a certain level, getting through the program and graduating and the personal finance piece is often not really addressed very much, or the stressors that are associated with finances are typically not addressed unless you actually go directly to a personal finance specialist on campus that can help you to continue to fund your program. And not just your program, but your life outside of that. A lot of graduate students have full blown families. They’re married, they have mortgages and all kinds of things like that. So yes, academia can definitely put some stressors on your personal finances and your financial beliefs and kind of make you question “Should I be money avoidant because it gives me so much anxiety or possibly having the opposite effect of making you so money vigilant to the fact that you kind of become OCD about just budgeting down to the dime every single semester so that you can have all your expenses covered.

22:43 Emily: Yeah I think there’s the component of what we sort of implicitly absorb in academia about work being the primary thing. But then there’s what you were just saying, the actual real life in your face stressors – the stressors associated with being academia, not being paid enough for where you’re living, having to pay tuition fees, the budgeting issues. These are all not just in your mind, these are real problems that are happening to students. And I think what I’d also love you to comment about is the influence that these experiences and hearing these messages can have on a young adult, right? We’re just talking about okay, the family is the first place where we start to form these attitudes. But I would imagine that a graduate student in their 20,s maybe straight through college and to graduate school is going to have a different set of experiences than someone who starts later on after working. Maybe they are married, maybe they’ve had just more time to build up what their beliefs are and their attitudes around their own finances. Can you comment about that a little bit?

23:46 Cortnie: So I’m not speaking from my empirical research theoretical standpoint. This is just my own personal perspective. But my belief is that when young adults go straight through graduate school and they don’t really get that real world application personal finance management, they kind of start at a deficit when it comes to personal finances as an early career PhD, or if you’re graduating fresh out of a master’s program or early career master’s degree recipient. You don’t have those opportunities to really grapple and absorb what it means to budget with an income and a salary, especially not at the level that you will be earning outside of a graduate program. Then also maybe not being privy to the realities of the consequences of not having enough personal finance related literacy. Not knowing about how credit works, how student loans may impact credit, how that may later impact your purchasing power when it comes to purchasing a new home or a car. And then of course, it has implications on your romantic relationship. Having to have not so easy conversations with your partner that “Hey, you know, when it comes to my personal finances, I’m kind of behind the curve”, especially if you have a partner who did not take the graduate school route, who did have opportunities to kind of build up their financial literacy through work experiences and budgeting that adults do who do not decide to go straight through graduate school. So yes, absolutely, going to graduate school for us to sit significant amount of years, not participating in the workforce as like a traditional adult would so to speak, definitely can leave a graduate school student at a little bit of a deficit when it comes to managing their personal finances. Unless you’re a business major, typically you do not get that background working knowledge about personal finance management.

How to Work with the Money Attitudes You Have

26:11 Emily: Yeah. This is exactly the space that I’m trying to step into. On that subject, once a person recognizes, “okay, academia is feeding me some toxic messages, it’s giving me all these stressors,” what do you do with that? How is it that you can change financial attitudes. Or maybe it’s from the upbringing as well. Maybe you recognize, “okay, my family was not super healthy around this, can I change my own way I approach these things?” How do you actually do that?

26:39 Cortnie: Me, personally, as I’ve gone throughout my graduate school education, I have become more immersed in the subject area of personal finances, becoming more aware of my own financial attitudes and financial behaviors that do not serve me well, and I go by the saying of try to practice what I preach in my clinical practice. And as a therapist, I suggest to all my clients, the first step of changing an unwanted behavior is to acknowledge that it’s problematic and explore its origins. If you recognize that you’re just taking out way too many loans, it’s just not feeling right to you, kind of explore the fact you’re going against what one of your financial values or beliefs are, which is to keep your loans to a minimum, and explore where the origin of the motivation to do that behavior is coming from. Once you have acknowledged that the behavior is problematic, explored its origins, from there I will suggest seeking out resources to support the desired behavior change. Personally what I did for myself is one, I made personal finances, I was very intentional incorporating that in my area of research. And also, my niche is actually surrounding personal finances, mental health, physical health and family relationships. And so it kind of forced me to get immersed in the personal financial literature, become more financially literate in ways that were supportive of my career, but also in my personal life. So I actually did the accredited financial counseling education requirement through Texas Tech University. I did that program back in this past spring and I learned a wealth about personal finances that not only legitimized myself as a marriage and family therapist, that her niche would be personal finances, but also my research. I will say another huge impact that it had was application into my own personal finances. Recognizing that there’s an issue with the financial attitude or the behaviors that you have become accustomed to in graduate school, exploring what the origins are, like why did you even start doing these behaviors, and then seeking out resources, and there’s a wide variety of ways of doing that, but just becoming more knowledgeable about healthy money management.

29:44 Emily: I can definitely see a parallel in myself to what you’re saying. I didn’t necessarily know that what I was trying to do was changing my attitude so that my behaviors would follow. But I can see, from my upbringing, I grew up with a one one parent who was like a spender and one who was like a saver, and sort of absorbed the spender mindset from one of my parents. And that was something when I finally had my own paycheck coming in, I realized my small stipend cannot support the spender inclinations that I had based on my upbringing. And so that was something that I had to, as you were just saying, recognize, “okay, this is going to put me at some dissonance here.” This desired behavior and the financial realities, I realize, “Okay, well that I learned that from my parent. That doesn’t have to be what I do. That’s just what my parent behaves that way, I can be different.” And as you just said, seeking out more and more resources and support around the positive behavior that I wanted to affect, which was not spending a lot of money whenever I wantet to. And so the resources that I went to at that time were personal finance books, the personal finance blogosphere, which now has morphed into podcasts and blogs and Reddit and all these other wonderful places where you can go for resources. So I really sort of started to see into the lives of people who I could recognize as models of positive financial behaviors and start to, um, enact what they were doing in my own life. And if I would be so bold, I will say that the Personal Finance or PhDs community is one of these places where you can learn some of these positve behaviors, from me and from the guests who I interview and from the articles I have on the site and there’s lots of ways you can get involved. In fact, please, if you’re not yet on my mailing list, get on my mailing list because I’ll be sending this great content your way every week.

31:35 Emily: Cortnie, thanks so much for pointing that out. I think we’re coming to the end of the interview here. If someone wants to follow up with you, maybe they have a question about something you’ve said today or maybe they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I need Cortnie in my life. I need more Cortnie”, how can they get in touch with you?

31:51 Cortnie: For those listeners out there who are interested, I’m always happy to share whatever information I have and chat with you. So, um, I can be best contacted at my email. It’s [email protected]. I am also listed on the Psychology Today website as a psychology today verified marriage and family therapist intern. You can look their website up and then as we’ve discussed previous to actually starting the interview, you’ll leave the actual website in the notes. Then also the agency that I’m currently contracted it as a marriage and family therapist intern, Better Living Solutions in Tallahassee, Florida, and we’ll also leave information for their direct website. Those are two additional mediums to gain contact with me.

32:57 Emily: Yeah, it’s so excellent. All that information will be in the show notes as Cortnie just said.

Final Words of Advice

33:00 Emily: So last question here, Cortnie, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD?

33:07 Cortnie: In the same spirit of the conversation we’ve been having, I would suggest early career PhDs to take a financial attitude questionnaire — one example is the Klontz money script inventory — and to gain additional insight. If you have some inklings but you’re not exactly sure if you’re at that clinical cutoff for certain financial attitudes, to see what financial attitudes you resonate with the most and how they could be possibly subconsciously guiding on your financial behaviors and influencing your overall financial well-being.

33:47 Emily: Perfect. And can we add that link to the show notes as well?

33:49 Cortnie: Absolutely.

33:50 Emily: All right. Perfect. Oh, Cortnie, this is such a wonderful interview. Thank you so much for providing your expertise on this subject.

33:56 Cortnie: Thank you so much for having me Dr. Roberts, I enjoyed talking with you.

Outtro

34:01 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPphDs.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple podcast, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media or with your PhD peers. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars covered the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and taxes. Four, subscribe to my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode, and remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Choose a PhD Program That Will Support Your Personal and Professional Development

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This episode comprises seven audio clips from PhDs and PhD students who are advocates for PhD students’ professional and personal development. They each answer the prompt: “What aspects of a PhD program – beyond academics and research – should a prospective graduate student consider when deciding among offers of admission and why? How should they investigate and evaluate the strength of a program in this area?” The contributors are Dr. Emily Roberts of Personal Finance for PhDs on finances, Mr. Kevin Bird on unionization and advocacy, Dr. Emily Myers on unionization and advocacy, Dr. Jen Polk of Beyond the Professoriate on career development, Dr. Katy Peplin of Thrive PhD on mental health, Ms. Susanna Harris of PhD Balance on mental health, and Dr. Katie Wedemeyer-Strombel on work-life balance. Please share this episode with all the prospective PhD students in your life!

Links Mentioned in This Episode

PhD personal professional development

Introduction

00:05 Emily R.: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season five, episode two and today I have a very special episode for you. I have invited six other PhD advocates to contribute their voices to this episode and you’ll hear from myself and each one of them in turn. The questions I’ve asked each of these contributors to answer are: what aspect of a PhD program, beyond academics and research should a prospective graduate student consider when deciding among offers of admission, and why? How should they investigate and evaluate the strength of a program in this area?

00:45 Emily R.: If you’ve already matriculated into or completed a PhD program, you probably appreciate what an important topic this is. Will you take a minute to please share this episode with prospective PhD students in your sphere of influence? Please tweet your thoughts on the episode using the hashtag #PhDfactors. In this episode, we’re going to hear from me, Dr. Emily Roberts of Personal Finance for PhDs on finances, Mr. Kevin Byrd on unionization and advocacy, Dr. Emily Myers on unionization and advocacy, Dr. Jen Polk of beyond the professoriate on career development, Dr. Katie Pepin of thrive PhD on mental health, Ms. Susanna Harris of PhD balance on mental health and Dr. Katie Wedemeyer-Strombel on work life balance. Without further ado, let’s hear from our contributors.

Finances with Dr. Emily Roberts

01:43 Emily R.: Naturally, my contribution to this episode revolves around your finances, specifically how to evaluate whether you will be sufficiently supported by the stipend or salary provided by the program. You may or may not end up using this factor when you choose your PhD program, but either way you should go into graduate school well aware of the financial realities. When I was applying to PhD programs, I didn’t pay much attention to the stipends in the offer letters. I naively trusted that every program I was accepted to would support me financially to a reasonable degree. The PhD program I picked based on only the research opportunities and location actually did pay a decent stipend, but that was blind luck on my part. I know now that graduate students often do experience a great degree of financial stress and ill effects. Approximately 50% of PhD students take out student loans, prior to graduation and many also accumulate credit card and other types of consumer debt. Some PhD students qualify for snap benefits and a few experience food insecurity. Think about the difference it would make to your mental health alone to attend a graduate program with a stipend that allows for a comfortable standard of living versus a program where you have to pinch every penny, side hustle like mad, and still be in the red every month. Do you think you will be able to perform well academically if you’re experiencing chronic financial stress?

03:08 Emily R.: There are long-term financial effects to think about as well. If you currently have student loans, will your stipend allow you to start to repay them? If they are un-subsidized, they will accrue interest all through your graduate school deferment period and you’ll have an even larger balance to tackle post-PhD. What if you were able to start investing with your stipend? If you’ve never played around with a compound interest calculator, pause this episode and spend a few minutes doing so now. With reasonable assumptions, investing $250 per month throughout only five years of graduate school can turn into nearly $1 million in your retirement years. That’s $1 million of wealth in retirement that would not exist if you accepted a stipend that didn’t afford you that ability to save.

03:56 Emily R.: Are you sufficiently motivated to pay attention to the stipends in your offer letters? Good. I’m going to tell you how to evaluate the single most important factor in your funding package. The number that I want you to find in each of your offer letters is your stipend or salary net of fees. Some of your offer letters might state this number clearly and some might obfuscate it. To compare apples to apples across all your offers, you need to know how much money is actually going to end up in your bank account after your tuition, insurance premiums, and all fees have been paid. If your offer letter doesn’t make it clear to you what financial obligations you will have to pay to the university from your stipend, it’s worth a follow-up email to clarify.

04:39 Emily R.: Next, we need to put this net stipend number in the context of the local cost of living for the university. I like to use the MIT living wage database for this. The living wage is basically the amount of money it takes to pay for basic living expenses like housing and food in that local area. It doesn’t include discretionary expenses like travel or putting money toward financial goals. Go to livingwage.mit.edu and click on the state and county of the university you’re considering scroll until you see the amount of money that constitutes a living wage, including income taxes for a single person. If you have a child, or someone else who depends on your income, you may need to scan over to the amounts for larger family sizes. Take the living wage number you found and compare it to the stipend after all education related expenses have been paid. Ideally, your stipend will be higher than the local living wage. Personally, I felt I was able to live comfortably during grad school and save a good amount of money and my stipend was about one third higher than the local living wage. The number that represents your stipend, net of fees divided by the local living wage is the number that you can compare across all of your offer letters.

05:54 Emily R.: Now, what should you do with this information? My advice, which you can take or leave, is to eliminate from consideration all of the PhD programs that will pay you less than the local living wage. If you choose to go to a program that pays you poorly, steel yourself for the likelihood that you will take out student loans or consumer debt during your PhD or have to devote a lot of time to side hustling. You may decide that this is worthwhile, but at least now you’ll go in with your eyes open. If you have two or more offers that are above the local living wage, if you like, you can continue to factor in financial considerations as you make your decision. In fact, I’ve made a list of a dozen additional factors you should evaluate before committing to a PhD program. The stipend divided by the local living wage actually just scratches the surface. You can download the PDF of the full list by going to pfforphds.com/offerletter and signing up for my mailing list.

Further reading: 10 Ways to Combat Financial Fragility Beyond Grad School

Unionization and Advocacy with Mr. Kevin Bird

07:00 Kevin: Hi, my name is Kevin Byrd. I’m a PhD candidate in the department of horticulture at Michigan State University and I’m also the current president of the graduate employees union in Michigan State and I’ll be covering how and why to take graduate unions into account for your graduate school decision. Graduate unions are important to consider because I think they’re central to a safe, secure, and equitable experience in graduate school. If you have a graduate union, it means there’s a system in place to combat harassment, discrimination, overwork, and other workplace mistreatments, independent from these university institutions. It also means there’s more power to pushing universities to provide living wages, comprehensive health insurance to all graduate assistants and to keep university fees low. When we were looking at other universities at Michigan State for our last contract campaign, we found a pretty stark pattern that the highest stipends in terms of cost of living were held by unionize universities and the lowest by non-unionized. In fact the only universities that had stipends less than half the cost of living were non-unionized universities.

08:03 Kevin: Additionally, through collective bargaining, there is something that holds institutions to their word and maintains benefits and services graduate assistants are entitled to receive. When I was an undergraduate at the University of Missouri, there was a moment when graduate assistants lost their health insurance with two days notice. Without a binding collective bargaining agreement, these students were largely left powerless to get back the benefits they were promised upon signing. Meanwhile, at Michigan State after several contract campaigns, we have some of the most comprehensive health care on campus with low deductibles and low co-pays, even after the university tried to reduce those benefits in the last contract cycle. It’s this sort of stability and progress that unions help maintain and build upon year after year. Hopefully the benefits of unions are at least partially clear right now and we can move on to how to evaluate unions at universities that you’re looking at.

08:52 Kevin: One of the first things to look at is whether the university is public, private, public universities are governed by state labor law, while private universities are governed by federal labor law. Given the latest ruling by the national labor review board, most private university unions are fighting for a struggle to be recognized by universities, whereas many state labor laws allow for graduate students to be unionized. Knowing whether university is public or private is one of the easiest ways to figure out if there is an established union or if there is a union currently fighting for recognition. Right now at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and Loyola, all private universities, there are unions but they are not officially recognized by the university and they have not been able to participate in collective bargaining.

09:33 Kevin: The next move would be some internet sleuthing to look at the website of the union at the university you’re looking at first see if they have their last collective bargaining agreement posted. This would tell you the benefits that graduate assistants currently have with the university, especially important things like the minimum stipend the university can pay you, the pay increases every year, and the current health insurance plan the graduate students currently enjoy.

09:54 Kevin: Next, would be the current campaigns the union’s currently working on. What sort of things need to be addressed in the university? What’s the union doing to address them? And what does progress look like over the last few years? All of these things will help you get a landscape of what issues are facing a campus and how a union is working to address them and how successful they’ve been in the past. Additionally, you can look at media presence to see how the news covered the last bargaining cycle that a union undertook. Did they have to shut down streets with a march? Did the hold rallies? What sort of actions were they able to take that eventually led to the progress that they got in their latest contract? These things in particular can tell you how well organized a union is and how they can use their power to make changes on progress for graduate assistance.

10:34 Kevin: You can also look for other benefits that unions provide to their members. At Michigan State, we have something called the solidarity grant where members can apply to the union in times of financial need and receive a couple of hundred dollars or a thousand dollars to address major crises that have occurred in their life, from a flat tire to burst pipes. One final thing to consider is whether the university website talks about the union on it. This could be an indication of labor relations between the union and the university. It’s probably best to be at a university that acknowledges and at least recognizes the union and works to distribute information about contract benefits to prospective and current students.

11:07 Kevin: All these things considered, I would personally recommend prioritizing universities with strong unions in your decision. A graduate degree can take many years and the political and economic landscape can change rapidly. An established union is capable of increasing and maintaining current benefits, while also fighting off rash decisions by university administrations. If you’re committing to live somewhere for five years and you’re embarking on an ambitious academic project, it’s good to have someone on your side fighting for your benefits and maintaining a quality of life that you deserve while you’re working on this degree. While these conditions may exist anywhere, I think they’re much more likely to occur in universities with strong graduate unions.

Unionization and Advocacy with Dr. Emily Myers

11:50 Emily M.: Hi, my name is Dr. Emily Myers. I, very recently, as of last week, have a PhD in pharmacology from the University of Washington, here in Seattle. I am also an executive board member with UAW 4121, which is the union that represents about 6,000 postdocs and academic student employees, like teaching and research assistants, here at the University of Washington. I am going to give some insights into what I wish I had known when I was looking for a PhD program, and how important unions can be for your graduate student experience beyond stipends and student fees, which unions have also won major victories for graduate students.

12:31 Emily M.: So I chose my program for my science interests and because I loved Seattle, but I really didn’t have the depth of knowledge about how institutions work that I do now that I’m on the other side of my PhD. I was fortunate that I chose a university where the graduate students had been unionized and had been building power since 2001 and we had stronger workplace protections than most other schools, because academia is a strict hierarchy, with power dynamics that do not favor trainees, like grad students. In tandem with these power structures are institutional structures, where harassment and discrimination are widespread. In fact, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine put out a report last year showing that women in science face rates of harassment second only to the military, and that this was for white women, and so fails to capture any sort of intersecting identities. And it’s important to understand that harassment and discrimination are about power, and who has power, and who maintains access to that power. Unions are a fundamental way to change power structures, through bottom up grassroots organizing, and gives graduate students and other trainees more of a voice in their workplace. As union members, we have access to third party neutral arbitration, which is the only scenario where the university does not have final control over the outcome of a harassment claim. This is a huge step in rebalancing power and that’s one of the top things that grad students at Harvard are on strike over and are fighting for right now.

14:07 Emily M.: In addition, unions can be a phenomenal source of community in graduate school, because graduate school can be extremely isolating. And so finding folks outside of your discipline is huge and the unions can also offer resources that are not dependent on university approval, which can be critical for international students on visas. And I think that enthusiasm and recognition for the need to change these power structures is reflected in how we are seeing a huge spike in graduate students and postdocs forming unions across the country at all kinds of schools.

14:43 Emily M.: So to give an example of this, towards the end of my time as a PhD student, I made a complaint about a professor in my department who notorious for making sexual jokes for harassing young women and saying racist things. And the university investigated and said while they believed us, but it wasn’t bad enough, meaning it didn’t cross the legal definition of harassment, and so the university was not liable and would not take further action. And it was through working with my union, we were able to get this professor removed from supervision of grad students, even after the university failed to take action. So I am not sure that without my union community and allies, I would have felt safe enough to say anything in the first place, let alone get results from speaking out about harassment.

15:32 Emily M.: As always, I hope anyone listening here won’t face harassment and discrimination in their time as a graduate student or in general. But I also strongly encourage anyone who comes from a marginalized background or is concerned about their future work environments to consider the status of a graduate student union in their decisions about choosing a program. So you can find out if a university has a union by either asking current graduate students. Or universities typically will have a labor relations office and you can check their webpage to see what workers are unionized on campus and you’ll want to look for a name and local number. Like for example, UAW 4121 is United Auto Workers four one two one. Because student senates and associations are not the same thing. And you can always reach out to current graduate unions like mine at UAW4121.org for more resources or resources or information. Or for example, if you’re in California, it would be UAW2865.org. And with that I just want to say congratulations on your PhD programs and good luck.

Career Development with Dr. Jennifer Polk

16:50 Jennifer: My name is Jennifer Polk and I’m co-founder of Beyond The Professoriate. I earned my PhD in history from the University of Toronto and now work full-time helping graduate students and doctoral degree holders build awesome careers. It’s crucial to actively attend to your career while pursuing a PhD. This might seem counterintuitive. After all, isn’t the PhD itself the thing that will help your career? While that may occasionally be true, it’s only true if you build into your experience activities and accomplishments that matter to employers, both within and beyond academia. That building is usually something you need to do for yourself. You can’t rely on your advisor or graduate program to do it for you.

17:44 Jennifer: Most PhD students live on minimal stipends and it’s common for folks to take additional paid work, if they’re able, to pay their way. An awful lot of folks have significant student loans too, of course, and if you’re a regular listener of this podcast, you know all this very well. All of that is to say that you might need a decent paying job pretty quickly once you graduate. Since it could take months to find work, even for the most successful among us, you’ll need to put in the groundwork over the years of your PhD to build experiences, gain skills, and cultivate a professional network that spans a variety of fields. That’s so you’ll be in a good position to get hired when it’s time to start applying for jobs. Ideally, your advisor will be supportive of your career no matter where it takes you. A good match with your primary advisor is incredibly important. That’s true beyond career concerns, of course. Advisors have a lot of influence over your experience, much more than you might expect, and there are academic studies that show this. I’m not just making it up.

19:01 Jennifer: Beyond your advisor, ideally, your department and the graduate program specifically will actively create opportunities for you and your fellow students to gain professional experience and grow your networks. Maybe you can do an internship with the full support of your department or attend regular lunch and learn or other networking events that they organize. Pay attention to academic and nonacademic resources. The default in many academic disciplines is to privilege scholarly careers above all others. Avoid, please, avoid departments that give you that vibe. They are not living in reality and you very much will be.

19:46 Jennifer: The bottom line here is to make sure your advisor will treat you with respect always and support you doing what you need to do to build career-relevant experiences and skills for both academic and nonacademic careers. You can absolutely ask your prospective advisors pointed questions about what kinds of career support you can expect. This is your career, your life, and you want to make sure you’ll get the support and resources you need for success during and after your studies. Graduate school is hard enough without all this added stress.

20:21 Jennifer: As you’re exploring your options, learn about programming and other opportunities available to you via the institution’s career center or graduate school. Look, for example, for a robust series of workshops, for career consultants, you can make one on one appointments with. Maybe they focus specifically on graduate students, even just PhD students. That’s awesome. You can also investigate what’s being done at the association level, so to check on what your academic discipline is up to. For example, some of the larger scientific societies host regular webinars and program multiple career-related sessions during their annual meetings. That’s great. Do take a proactive approach before you accept an offer and enroll. This is not the time to be shy. If you don’t find a good fit, you might be better off not doing a PhD at all or not this year. Your bachelor’s or master’s degrees are absolutely good enough to help you create an awesome career and life for yourself. One filled with all the creativity, intellectual rigor and challenging problem solving that drew you to want to do a PhD in the first place.

21:36 Jennifer: Learn more about Beyond the Professoriate on our website beyondprof.com and you can find us on social media too. You can also follow me, Jen, on Twitter at @FromPhDtoLife. I’d love to see you there. Thank you.

Mental Health with Dr. Katy Peplin

21:58 Katy: Hello, my name is Dr. Katy Pepin and I am the founder and head coach of Thrive PhD. Thrive PhD is a community for graduate students. It’s also individual coaching, courses, a Twitter presence, and Instagram all at that handle. Why I care about this aspect, mental health, of PhD programs is because it was one of the things that was so hard for me when I was a grad student. I have been dealing with a brain that tends toward anxiety, that can have some depression issues. My diagnoses aren’t as important as the fact that I knew early on in my PhD program that if I didn’t take care of my brain, as well as my career and my publications, I wasn’t gonna make it through.

22:48 Katy: So some of the things that I think it’s important to consider when you’re looking at a PhD program are first of all, the resources that are available for your mental health, through the university and hopefully at no cost or little cost to you. Some questions to ask: are grad students allowed to be seen in the on-campus mental health facilities? Sometimes those are undergraduate student only, so that’s important to know. Whether or not the health insurance that you’ll be offered covers mental health services or medications? If so, is there a limit to how many sessions you can have per year or per semester? Do you have the ability to be seen by providers outside of that insurance network or are you limited to a handful of people inside of the area? All really good questions to ask for your insurance.

23:41 Katy: Secondly, it’s important to kind of ask some questions around the mental health culture in the department. Some of the sure sign tells for me are: one, do graduate students stay enrolled? Do they have a high dropout rate? Sometimes that can indicate a mental health climate problem. Do people openly and excitedly talk about their non-PhD, non-grad school lives in the program? Do they talk about how they go rock climbing? Is it encouraged to work out? Do people have the ability to flex their schedules based on how they’re feeling on any given day? Is the opportunity available for you to work remotely? And if people are struggling, do people feel comfortable asking for help around those areas?

24:29 Katy: It can be really difficult to find that out on a prospective visit or even from an email as you’re evaluating, as you’re not a student. But it can be very important to find ways to ask that question. So some of the questions that I have asked to get around the mental health climate without directly saying, does your faculty support or not support the idea of graduate students having robust mental health resources and support, are to ask things like, do people feel comfortable talking about their personal lives? Do any graduate students have different family structures? Do graduate students have kids? Is anybody a parent? Is anyone a caretaker? What kind of relationships do people have? And are those things supported? Another great question to ask are how are the boundaries around breaks? One of the sure fire tells of a department that has a kind of problematic culture around mental health is that students either don’t feel comfortable taking breaks or they only take them in between the semester when their grading is finished or when the university is otherwise shut down. So ask graduate students, you know, what are the PI’s policies around weekends and evening work? What are the policies if you need to go home unexpectedly or if you’re not from here? Is it flexible enough for you to work remotely if you need to? Are there opportunities for graduate students to tweak the conditions of their work in order to best support themselves?

26:02 Katy: It can be really hard to ask those questions and it definitely can be worrying to say, I want to know what these resources are in advance because some graduate students might feel like that makes them seem like they’re already a problem and they’re not even there. So I would embolden you and encourage you to ask as many questions as you feel comfortable, but know that there are always ways to build support around yourself, whether that is through what the university provides or supplementing it from an outside perspective or place. I’m wishing you a happy new year. And again, my name is Katy Paplin. I am the founder of thrive PhD. You can find me on Twitter or Instagram @ThrivePhD or thrive-phd.com

Mental Health with Ms. Susanna Harris

26:58 Susanna: Hi everyone. My name is Susanna Harris and I am a PhD candidate at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. I am also the founder and CEO of the PhD Balance. PhD Balance is an online community dedicated to talking about those difficult challenges and problems we face while we’re in our graduate programs. I founded this group because we really wanted to make a space to talk about certain things like dealing with difficult advisers or understanding what to do after graduation, but most importantly we wanted to talk about the struggles that students have with their mental health and with dealing with mental illness throughout their programs. I really care about this because I myself have depression and anxiety and I realized that a lot of other people around me did as well, but we just didn’t talk about it.

27:48 Susanna: For this reason, I think it’s really important to look at graduate programs and understand how they will support students’ mental health. You can get a good idea of this based on what kind of resources they have, as in, can you go to campus health? How long does it take to get an appointment? What kind of treatments are covered and can you see a therapist outside of those treatment options? This might include how does the department respond to when there is a mental health crisis or when a student divulges to someone that they are struggling with some sort of mental illness. You can even understand what is the culture surrounding the discussion of mental illness. Does the department actively provide resources? Will the lab group that you’re joining be open and accepting of someone having a difficult time? Does the university provide mental health days or access to other kinds of literature? This is really important because although a lot of us, myself included, go into graduate school thinking we are prepared and we will somehow get through it faster and easier than the average, we have to remember that the average is made up of people just like us and I’ve quickly realized that the challenges I faced in the PhD were just as hard as people before me had said.

29:06 Susanna: So what are the best ways to go about seeing if your new program or your new lab will take care of your mental health, no matter what kind of challenges arise? The best way to do this is to just ask people directly. Say, “this is something that is commonly talked about. I know that others have expressed difficulties with dealing with their mental health. How does it work in where you are?” It’s better to ask things about how or what or when rather than just asking, “is the mental health culture good or is mental health supported?” You can ask things like what has happened in the past when someone has talked about these things or you can say, are you aware of what resources there are and can you show me where to find them? Even understanding if a faculty member or a lab member or department has or knows about these resources tells you a lot about how important this topic is to them.

29:57 Susanna: If you want to understand more about my perspective, you can find me on Instagram and Twitter at @SusannaLHarris and I would love for you to check out PhD Balance. We have a website that’s www.phdbalance.com or you can follow us on Twitter and Instagram to hear other people’s stories of dealing with these really hard challenges in graduate schools and sharing resources about how to get through a program. That’s at @PhD_balance. So thank you so much. Bye.

Work-Life Balance with Dr. Katie Wedemeyer-Strombel

30:39 Katie: Hi, I’m Dr. Katie Wedemeyer-Strombel and if you follow me on Twitter it will be no surprise that I’m here to talk about the importance of considering work-life balance when choosing a PhD program. This is a subject I’m passionate about because I chose a PhD program without considering things like departmental culture and the recreational opportunities in the area. Both of these ended up being a pretty bad fit for me and in hindsight I wish I would have more strongly considered the nonacademic factors as seriously as I considered the academic ones. As a PhD student, it’s very easy to lose yourself to your program, to your work, and it’s critical that you’re able to rest and recreate regularly in ways that fuel you. As I say frequently, rest is not just a reward for hard work, but a critical component to working hard. Making sure that the university you attend and the surrounding area can provide enough resources for your well-rounded life and interests is important.

31:33 Katie: When you become a PhD student, generally you will work for the university as a teaching or research assistant in addition to conducting your own research and while will take up a lot of your time and energy, it should not and does not have to be all that you are. You are allowed to be a whole person, not just a research robot and finding a departmental culture and location that fit your interests is important.

31:57 Katie: Let’s first talk about departmental culture. What do I mean by this? Let’s say for example, if you don’t drink alcohol but learn that a department you’re considering regularly encourages binge drinking as a reward for working hard, then perhaps that’s not a great fit for you. If it’s important for you to see your family for certain holidays, make sure that the department you’ll be joining encourages or at the very least does not reprimand students for taking time to spend with loved ones.

32:25 Katie: Now about location of the program. This is something, again, I mistakenly did not consider when choosing my program and it made falling into the bad habits of overwork and over-drinking too easy, as my usual hobbies and recreational activities were hard to come by in the area. For example, do you like to hike and camp? Then a university in a flat state with few nature exploration opportunities may not be a good fit. Do you enjoy seeing or performing in live theater? Google the area and make sure there’s an outlet for this nearby. Does seeing the ocean or other body of water help calm you down when you’re stressed out? If so, maybe only consider schools that have natural features that fit these needs.

33:04 Katie: So how can you look into the work life balance factors as a perspective student? Well, the best thing you can do is ask current students in the department, preferably over the phone or in person, questions about the local culture within the department and the recreational opportunities nearby. Preferably, you’ll be able to talk to this current students over the phone or in person, and I specifically recommend asking over the phone or in person so that the current students will feel more open to answering honestly, as they don’t have a written record of their answers. If you are unable to ask in person, say on a recruiting trip, you can email and ask for a quick phone call. In my experience as both the perspective student and the current student in this scenario, most folks are happy to chat and share their own experiences. Some questions that I recommend asking are: are current students able to comfortably take time to spend with loved ones? Can they travel for holidays? Are they encouraged or reprimanded for working reasonable hours and taking time away when needed? What do they do for fun that’s not related to their work? What do they like most about the location of their program? And what do they like most about the departmental culture that they’re in? If you’re a minority, I’d also recommend asking others who share similar backgrounds with you if they feel that their way of life feels welcomed and safe within their department and local culture. And one of the most important questions I think you can ask is if the current student would choose the same program again, knowing what they know now about it.

32:42 Katie: So now that you’ve talked with the current students about the departmental culture and the location of the university, what do you do with this information? Seriously consider their answers and allow those answers to help you decide between programs. If you get an off feeling from a program’s culture or worry that you won’t be able to do your favorite hobby, trust your gut and find a program that best suits your needs, both the academic and your personal work life balance needs. As my amazing advisor, Dr. Tarla Rai Peterson once told me, “We are all better off when we give ourselves permission to know one another as whole people.” Your PhD research is going to be important, but who you are as a person is even more important and I encourage you to consider your own personal needs in addition to your academic ones in choosing a program. For more on work life balance as a graduate student, you can read some articles I have in the Chronicle of Higher Education or follow me on Twitter at @krwedermeyer. Thanks for listening and best of luck as you choose your program.

Outtro

35:58 Emily R.: It’s Emily again as we close out this episode. I’d like to emphasize two themes I heard from the contributors. First, grad school is your real life. It’s not reasonable to try to ignore or suppress your personal life or what makes you happy and healthy for the five or so years you’ll spend in your PhD program. Choose a PhD program that enables you to live a full life and succeed academically. Second, you can find a good amount of information online, but nothing can replace personal real time conversations with current graduate students. The best time and place for those conversations, and your other observations, is during campus visits. I encourage you to attend as many of those as you possibly can and participate in them fully, asking all the questions the contributors suggested in this episode. You can follow up over the phone, as needed, as decision day approaches. I wish you all the best in choosing the PhD program that will foster both your professional and personal development. Please share this episode with all of the prospective PhD students in your life.

37:12 Emily R.: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPphDs.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple podcast, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media or with your PhD peers. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars covered the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and taxes. Four, subscribe to my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode, and remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is Stages of Awakening by Poddington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio