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This Soon-to-Be PhD Is Facing Debt and Underemployment as He Goes on the Academic Job Market

December 2, 2019 by Meryem Ok

In this episode, Emily interviews Chad Frazier, a graduate student in history at Georgetown University who is about to complete his PhD and go on the academic job market. Chad’s career plans and personal finances have changed a lot during his PhD (and a master’s before that). When he received his stipend offer from Georgetown, he thought he had made it. But seven years later, the pay increases haven’t kept pace with housing prices in DC, and Chad has accumulated credit card debt. As he applies for faculty positions, Chad faces underemployment, and the grace period on his student loans from his undergrad and master’s degrees is quite limited. Chad argues that universities have a moral obligation to pay their grad students a living wage so that they can thrive academically. (Update: Chad successfully defended his PhD just prior to the publication of this episode!)

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PhD debt and underemployment

Teaser

00:00 Chad: I just spent the last 10 years at an institution, and I’m now actually financially worse off than I was when I started. At times that makes me really scared and angry. And that wasn’t something that I imagined it would be like when I would get to this point.

Introduction

00:21 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 four, episode 16, and today my guest is Chad Frazier, a rising eighth year PhD student in history at Georgetown. Chad and I discuss some really tough and even emotional issues in this interview including large student loan balances, credit card debt, underemployment, the difficult academic job market, and the feeling of being let down by your university. Chad shares quite openly the current state of his finances and career aspirations. We discuss what universities can do to alleviate financial stress among their grad students as well as what prospective grad students should think about when they look at a stipend offer letter. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Chad Frazier. You don’t want to miss this one.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:15 Emily: I am joined today on the podcast by Chad Frazier, who is currently a PhD student at Georgetown. And we’re going to be talking about the financial issues that arise, particularly as you’re getting close to the completion of a PhD. Right? You’re getting to to the end of graduate school, and what happens next and how do you handle that with your finances? It’s a really challenging situation for many, many, many PhDs. So Chad, I’m really delighted that you joined me today. And will you please tell the audience a little bit more about yourself?

01:46 Chad: Yeah, sure. First off, happy to be on the podcast, Emily. So just kind of a little background. I’m, like you said, just in the process of finishing up my PhD. I’m kind of planning to defend middle to late part of September. I focus on US history. Before that, I got my MA at Georgetown, which is the institution I’m currently at, BA at Dickinson. I guess those are kind of the broad highlights. I’ve been in the last couple of years, very active with the graduate union here at Georgetown. I’m part of the organizing committee and started getting more and more interested as part of that work in the last couple of years.

Evolution of Career Plans in Grad School

02:32 Emily: Yeah. Super interested here. Maybe not specifically about the unionization issues or your role in that, but just about your thinking around those issues as it relates to what we’re going to be talking about today. So, you’re almost done with your PhD. What are your current career plans, what you think you’ll be doing next, and also maybe how has that changed over the course of your degree?

02:54 Chad: Okay. Yeah. So when I started out the PhD, which would have been fall of 2012, the plan was generally that I was going to just tenure track, ideally at a liberal arts college. I was a peer writing tutor in undergrad and I really liked the experience of teaching. That said, I was kind of amenable to the idea of like maybe doing alternate career paths, kind of sidetracks, that led eventually to this final goal. But I can’t say that I really thought about them in any sort of depth. I think I figured, “Oh, I’ll just figure it out as I go.” So, like last year, I tried the academic job market for the first time, kind of a soft search. I didn’t get anything, which was not unexpected where I was with my dissertation. And then I’m going to try it again this year–be better, generally more competitive I think–and we’ll see what happens there. But over the course of the sort of last several years, I have just gotten more interested in other possible career paths. Because there are maybe some things about academia that I’m not always a fan of. And I think in particular, one would flag, like I mentioned, the unionization, maybe involvement with something to do with the labor movement, either as an organizer or researcher for a union. I’m also working with a professor here on building an online archive. So it looks at teachers in the labor movement. So it’s kind of up in the air.

When Does Your Graduate Student Position End?

04:18 Emily: Yeah. So it sounds like you’re getting other kinds of work experience. Right? Other kinds of, or not necessarily work, maybe it’s volunteer as well, but other kinds of experiences that’ll help you figure out what you want to do with your career and maybe you know, land, whatever that next job is. So you said you’re planning on going back on the job market again this fall. When does your position as a graduate student actually end or do you have an end date for that?

04:41 Chad: So I actually just put in paperwork with the graduate school. So the way this basically works is, I will defend, ideally late September. Once I do that, and generally, I am sure this is true for a lot of people, the assumption is that when you get in the room, you’re ready. Then there are revisions, which part of that is what your committee says, part of it is shaping it to the graduate school. And, as far as the university is concerned, when I’m in that mode, I’m still a student. And it’s just then once those are done, you file it with the graduate school, and then you apply to graduate, which for me the plan is to do that in December.

Plan for Income Until Graduation

05:24 Emily: And so as far as your income goes, in the meantime, do you have an assistantship that’ll still be ongoing, or what’s the plan for the income?

05:32 Chad: So the plan for the income by sort of Georgetown rules is basically after seventh year, which my seventh year technically concluded in May, I’m not eligible for any kind of assistantship, whether as a TA or an RA. So, the work I’ve been doing with the online archive is paid out of an Institute here at Georgetown called the Kalmanovitz Initiative. And I’m figuring out how many hours they will be able to pay me for that. But I’m also looking for sort of part time jobs. One of the advantages of being in DC is there’s a fair amount of work for research with journalists or stuff like that to kind of make enough money that I can make ends meet until I can have something more definite.

Are You Considered an Employee at Georgetown?

06:20 Emily: So, the position that you’ve had at Georgetown, not your assistantship, are you an employee technically or is that like an independent contractor position?

06:32 Chad: So, I’m an employee. It’s routed through sort of the student payroll office. It’s a little complicated just because the way the rules are here with PhD students, we have to estimate how many hours a week I plan to work and how many weeks. And then they are like, “Oh, this is his stipend.” And then that gets dispersed out in biweekly installments. They changed that recently. It used to be able to have been, oh, just hourly, as long as I didn’t exceed like some certain restraints, that would have been fine. Bureaucracy.

What is the State of Your Finances at this Point?

07:05 Emily: Yeah. So, it sounds like you have a part-time position that’ll be ongoing through Georgetown. And then on top of that you do need to work a bit more as well as actually finishing up your dissertation and doing the defense and all of that. So, it’s a lot going on at this juncture. It’s a time of transition and a challenging time. So, can you tell me a little bit more about the state of your finances at this point? It sounds like, well first of all, is that income that you anticipate making going to be enough to sort of keep your head above water or is that still a question mark?

07:43 Chad: So, the way it’s kind of shaping up is that income that I’m going to get from the job with KI, with Kalmanovitz Initiative, probably I’m hoping that’s enough to cover rent. And then the additional work–the idea is basically enough that I can feed myself and pay for Metro and sort of living expenses and hopefully get enough too that I can start paying down credit cards a bit more. Because I’m very cognizant of the fact that, six months after I graduate, the student loans are going to start coming due. And that’s going to drop like anvil from heaven, it feels like. So, I want to have hopefully something ready for that where I’m not getting hit from two sides.

History of Chad’s Student Loans

08:37 Emily: Yeah, totally. So, you’ve mentioned you have student loans. Do you want to share like the amount of that, or like which degree you accumulated them from?

08:47 Chad: Yeah, sure. So, I went to a private liberal arts school, Dickinson College, for my undergrad. And I got lucky. I got a pretty good financial aid package there that most of it consisted of scholarships and grants. And I only had to take out, I think, anywhere from 10 to 20,000 [dollars]. Most of the student debt I’ve accumulated was because of my master’s degree that I took before I started my PhD. And for that, I basically have to look through the records and that’s about 80 to 81,000 dollars. So that’s, yeah.

09:20 Emily: Yeah, that’s going to be a large minimum payment. Even if you go one of these income-driven routes, depending on what you’re doing the rest of the year, assuming you haven’t gotten like a full-time faculty position yet. Anyway, it’ll be a large payment, presumably. So, that sounds really, really tough, but it’s also pretty common as you might imagine. Okay, so you have the student loan debt from your earlier degrees, not from the PhD itself. And then you mentioned credit card debt. Do you want to share the amount of that, and how it was that you accumulated it?

Accumulation of Credit Card Debt

09:54 Chad: Yeah, because I’m not sure. I don’t think I can pull the dollar amount right off the top of my head. But it’s basically–so, a little background about how a PhD sort of works at Georgetown. I was admitted with a five-year package, which meant that for three years there was a service obligation, which I TA’d. Two years was non-service. And then basically, for year six through seven, the department was able to fund me kind of on a discretionary basis. I got a fellowship my sixth year where I got to teach my own class, and then I got a semester of non-service. And then this last year I was on service. And I got a decent enough job working kind of as an administrative assistant to a professor. But the big issue was, that fellowship when I was getting paid was only nine months out of the year, which is pretty common for humanities and social science students here at Georgetown.

10:55 Chad: And so that meant that like, I tried to set aside money so I could cover rent. I would basically always try to find an extra, some sort of job either during the semester where I could save up money or a job during the summer where I could kind of live off of that. Invariably, credit cards became the sort of go-to during the summer. And the usual MO is, in the summer months, pay them down during the year, and then in the summer months make minimum payments until–maybe a little extra if you can–you get back into the fall, and then start paying them down again. And that worked actually pretty well the first couple of years. It’s just in the last two, three years, cost of living has been going up in DC with rent. And also with like, you know, last summer I had three really close friends who got married, and I wanted to go to their weddings and I had to pay for that. And I went to a conference in November that I didn’t get reimbursed for that was on the West coast, which was expensive. And it’s been hard to sort of do that, pay it down this last year where, come June, they were all maxed out, and I just was boxed in.

12:15 Emily: Yeah. I think what you’re describing is super common for PhD students, for people in their twenties and thirties, generally. I mean the nine-month pay, of course, is fairly unique to our mode of work, depending on what kind of field you’re in. But yeah, I mean it sounds like you had the right idea, right? Save up during the year, so you’re cognizant of that in advance. You’re trying to plan for it in advance, save up during the year, live on that over the summer, plus you work a little bit. But it’s really hard to do that planning. It’s just a really, really challenging situation to be in. So yeah, it sounds like credit cards came into that for you as well as the whole irregular expenses thing, you know, going to people’s weddings. I also really value attending weddings.

13:00 Emily: I love being able to go, I always had to travel. It was a challenge, financially. And what you mentioned, of course, the conference thing. We all know inside academia that conferences either are not paid for at all for students, or the student has to pay upfront and then the reimbursements, and it’s months later. That can definitely get people into cycles of credit card debt as well. It’s a huge, widespread problem, I would say. So, I’m sure all of this sounds very relatable to the audience, and I’m really thankful to you for sort of bearing yourself this way and sharing this because it is a really difficult thing to talk about publicly. So, thank you so much for doing that. Is there any other debt that you’re dealing with at this point aside from the credit cards and student loans?

Any Other Debt Besides Credit Cards and Student Loans?

13:41 Chad: I think those are the two biggest sort of issues. Like, yeah, there’s nothing else really out there. I rent so I don’t have to worry about like a mortgage. I don’t like to drive. I don’t own a car. So, it’s public transit. So yeah, it’s pretty much just credit cards and student debt.

14:01 Emily: Yeah. And it sounds like, given that you don’t own a car–which is one of my very go-to suggestions for people trying to reduce their expenses–you live in an expensive city. That’s how it is. You pay a lot in rent. You don’t own a car. Rent’s been going up, presumably, as is almost always the case. Stipends do not keep up with rising rent costs and yeah, it’s just a really, really tough spot to be in. I’m curious actually what your thought process was about choosing–and maybe it’s not really like a conscious choice, but like you have been accumulating credit card debt over the past couple of years. You know, at first, you said you were in a cycle of, “Okay, I build it up and then I pay it down.” But as you said, the last couple years, it’s been more building up than paying down.

14:43 Chad: Yeah.

14:44 Emily: Why did you go that route instead of taking out additional student loan debt?

Why Credit Cards Over Additional Student Loans?

14:50 Chad: I think part of that was I was just being cognizant of the fact that I had a fair amount coming in from my master’s program in particular. I actually had this conversation with my mom a couple of times. Where she’s like, “Well you should just put in for FAFSA and try to get more. You should try to get another student loan or something.” And I was like, “But I’ve already got at least 80,000 perhaps up to a hundred thousand, and it sort of seemed like I would be mortgaging my future even more so than I did. In the early years of the program, kind of you brought up the whole idea of stipends not keeping up–throughout sort of my time here at Georgetown, usually the stipend has gone up in each year by about a thousand dollars, which in year one that meant I went from 22 to 23 thousand. That was like a 5% increase. And that I think helped keep ahead of a lot of stuff.

15:50 Chad: And then, more recently it’s like now that last year–the university introduced a wage freeze this year, but the year before it was like–that amounted about 3.5%. I don’t have terribly many expenses. I used to joke that I only allowed myself sort of three very basic luxuries, which was food, like going out to eat. Not that I go out anywhere very expensive. Booze. I like beer, but I like cheap beer. Weirdly enough. And then books. And those, even there, I’m like, “Oh, I won’t spend more than like 25 bucks.” So, it was like, “Oh, these are really small things.” And it’s not like I was going on trips to Europe or anything that expensive. So it was like, “Okay, the credit cards just seemed more manageable.”

16:48 Emily: It really seems like just mentioning those little luxuries that you allowed yourself–which again, like you just said, did not amount to a lot of money–it really illustrates for me how large a chunk of your income must be taken up by your necessary expenses. Because what you mentioned as discretionary expenses have not been outrageous by any means of course. So, it just for me really illustrates this like probably 60, 70, 80% of your income has probably been taken up by like your rent and your basic food and you know, basic transportation and all that kind of stuff, which is a really, really, really tough spot to be in. There’s a benchmark that I like to reference which is called the balanced money formula, which I don’t know if it was created, but it was definitely popularized by Elizabeth Warren and her daughter in their book from, it must be 10 plus years ago now, All Your Worth*.

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

The Balanced Money Formula

17:43 Emily: And they introduce this concept of the balanced money formula. And in that, a person’s necessary expenses–so you know, stuff to keep you alive, housing, food, et cetera. Also, all the contracts that you are in, your insurance, that kind of stuff–that should amount to no more than 50% of your net income after-tax income. And that’s to live like a balanced life. On a sustainable basis, it shouldn’t be more than 50%. If you go above that, it’s like warning, warning, warning. This is not going to feel sustainable for you. It sounds like you’ve probably been in that warning zone your entire time you’ve been in graduate school most likely. And again, really, really common for graduate students, especially those who live in higher cost of living areas. So, that benchmark can feel really discouraging to people who have lower incomes. And it’s just kind of something that like, I don’t know, just you need to acknowledge. It’s going to feel really difficult to live on your stipend if you can’t fit your rent and your transportation and your food under that 50% figure. And is that something that’s worthwhile to attend the institution you want to attend and do the research and pursue our passions in our careers. It’s a tough spot to be in.

Commercial

18:59 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. As a listener of this podcast, every week you hear strategies that another PhD has used to improve their financial picture. But listening and learning does not automatically translate into action in your own financial life. If you are ready to change how you think about and handle your money but need some help getting started, I can be of service. There are two main ways you can work with me to create and implement a financial plan tailored for you. First, I offer one-on-one financial coaching, either as a single session or a series as you make changes over the longterm. You can find out more at pfforphds.com/coaching. Second, I offer a group program called The Wealthy PhD that is part-coaching, part-course, and part-community. You can find out more and join the waitlist for the next time I open the program at pfforphds.com/wealthyPhD. I believe it’s possible to succeed with your finances at every stage of PhD training and throughout your career. Let’s figure out together how to make that happen for you. Now, back to the interview.

Anything Else You Would Like to Share?

20:14 Emily: I wondered if you had any additional thoughts, feelings that you wanted to share regarding what we’ve been talking about. Your career transition upcoming, about the state of your finances right now. Anything you haven’t said so far?

20:28 Chad: I think in terms of sort of the way this has all been. Because again, I don’t come from money. My dad works as a supply manager at a college bookstore. My mom recently started working for Chick-fil-A. Like, working-class family. And there was even this weird stretch when I started the PhD in 2012, my dad who had gotten fired from his job like just after the financial crisis and just took the opportunity to go back to school himself, to finish first his undergrad degree. He could only find a job working part-time for a big-box retailer. And you know, there were moments where mom was calling me up and having to borrow little bits of money from me and then she’d pay them back to make their ends meet. And there was just this sort of sense of like, “Oh, I made it. I’m okay. Like this is not a lot, but it’s going to be kind of uphill, you know, all going up from here.”

21:35 Chad: And then now to be in this position where I kind of feel like at times I just spent the last 10 years at an institution, counting the same institution for both my MA and my PhD, and I’m now actually financially worse off than I was when I started. And I think at times that makes me really scared, and at times it really also bothers me–like now, my mom has to front me money for stuff like getting a new cell phone. Because my old one was four years old and couldn’t hold a charge for like a few hours–and angry. And that wasn’t something that I imagined it would be like when I would get to this point. I felt like it would be tough. There’d be an adjustment, but I didn’t think there would be quite this type of problem.

Supporting Family Members During Graduate School

22:27 Emily: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah, just thank you for sharing the point that you’ve gotten to here. I think that graduate students supporting their family members to a degree–and it could be their parents, it could be a sibling, it could be a dependent child–is something that is, in my opinion, not really talked about that much openly. But it happens a lot. And your degree of like, you know, maybe short term loans to your family that happened over what seems like a relatively short period of time is a more brief, just smaller kind of support that you were able to provide at that time, which is awesome. And other graduate students support their family members for a significant fraction of their stipend for years.

23:19 Emily: And maybe it’s remittances they’re sending to another country. It could be within the US. That situation happens all the time, too. And so, I’m glad to share your perspective on the podcast of thinking, “Okay, I made it into my PhD program. I’m no longer taking out student debt. I have an income. I’m making it. I’m living in DC. The future ahead of me is bright. I’m going to be a professor.” And then, you know, seven years later coming to this point, like, “I’m not so sure what my career is going to be. I have a lot of student loan debt. I have consumer debt. I don’t quite know how I’m going to be making it from month to month starting in just a few months.” So, really, really tough spot to be in. But again, I don’t think it’s that uncommon for PhD students. What has been your observation about how your situation maybe compares to some of your other peers?

How Does Your Situation Compare to That of Your Peers?

24:11 Chad: Actually, I think you’re right. In talking with my peers, there are a lot of similarities. Like you were talking about grads supporting other grads. I’ve got friends in my program, other departments that I’ve gotten familiar with thanks to my involvement with the union, where they’ve got families–or like one of my really best friends in my cohort was from the Philippines and throughout the program he was sending money home to Manila to help his family out. And yeah, it is very common. It’s just, the more jarring thing about it is that for me, on one hand with history, more and more of an awareness of like, “Okay, the job market has sort of changed. Higher ed: We’ve seen this sort of adjunctification of labor. Okay, we need to start thinking about alternative pathways or career diversity.” Different labels get used for different fields. But there really has never been this sort of awareness about the financial dimension. I think the only time it’s ever come up in conversations with faculty are like, “Oh, the stipend’s enough, right? You’re doing okay.” Or, “You’re not having to take out loans for this, are you?” And I’m like, “No, I’m living within my means. I’m fine.” And part of it is, this stuff is kind of new-ish. It’s not necessarily out of the blue, but it is new-ish. And for a lot of faculty, this is wasn’t their experience and isn’t their experience now. So yeah, those are kind of two broad impressions.

Universities Do Not See All of Our Financial Struggles

25:45 Emily: Yeah. I think what I’ve observed from maybe more of the university perspective is they track things like amount of student loan debt taken out. And so, if they don’t see a lot of, let’s say, PhD students taking out student loans–like you have consciously avoided student loans because of your existing level of debt–then they may not be aware of the hardships that people are undertaking outside of the university system, like racking up credit card debt or like borrowing money from other sorts of lenders or from family members or whatever it might be to again sort of keep their head above water. And also, the whole side hustling thing, which is super, super common. And I’m generally a fan of side hustling, especially when it advances your own career, like what you’ve been doing with your other position. Like that’s exposed you to a new area of work and maybe you’ll keep going in that area.

26:40 Emily: So, what can be really beneficial in a lot of ways, but it’s something that can be distracting from the degree, especially if a student has a lot of other responsibilities going on too, like they have a family or whatever. So, it’s not great if a student has to side hustle. It’s okay if they want to and they can balance it or whatever. But it’s not a good situation when they have to do it to just keep their heads above water. So, all of that can be very stressful. Of course, of course it’s stressful and can affect career decisions. And I think what you’ve been talking about–that we’re specifically talking about transitioning out of graduate school–the idea that your stipend is enough to make it on like a month to month basis is kind of one thing. But is it enough to actually bridge you until you get to the kind of job that you’re supposed to have as a PhD?

27:27 Emily: And we know as you were just mentioning from the academic job market that it can take multiple cycles of going through this before maybe you get a possession or maybe you don’t. And what are you doing in the meantime? Are you adjuncting? Like that’s not a really solid situation either. So, it’s not only a stipend needs to serve you in getting, you know, from month to month, but it also should be enough that you can actually transition into the next position, you know, and not have to take on let’s say a bunch of credit card debt or whatever it is in the transition. Like to have to move and to have to have a lapse in employment and all the expenses as you enter the job market. Anyway, that’s me going on for a while about that. So, these challenges are definitely common. What do you think are some solutions or better practices that either the universities could be doing or individuals could be doing or anybody else could be doing to kind of alleviate this situation?

Solutions for Universities and Individuals

28:21 Chad: Yeah. Well, I think universities kind of start from the top and work down. Because I very much do believe in sort of this idea of agency and personal responsibility. But you have an obligation to make the best of the cards that you’re dealt. But you’re also not the one dealing the cards. And I think universities really do have an obligation–for PhDs or master’s students who are working– to pay them sort of a living wage. And there are definitely forces that are nudging them in that direction. Whether it’s like Washington DC, which has passed a referendum that I think will eventually set the minimum wage to $15 an hour which has started leading new improvements for friends that I know or master’s students who work hourly. Graduate unionization, kind of nudging for upped stipends. Also just, there’s the competitive angle of this, you know, trying to get the best recruits. I know with Georgetown we want to get the best people and we’re competing against universities like, for example, Emory or Vanderbilt that actually pay better and are also in cheaper cities compared to Washington DC. So I think universities have an obligation there.

29:40 Chad: I also think sometimes with just like master’s students, it’s a thing that is kind of maybe a joke or a truism, at least with the people I’ve talked to here, that, “Oh, master’s students, your job is basically subsidizing the PhDs or you’re subsidizing the department,” so you have an incentive to bring in more people. And it’s not necessarily going to be a funded program. And you know, okay, I paid in my $80,000. So as a PhD, I don’t always feel bad when I go into the department supply closet and be like, “I need a notepad.” But part of the function of some master’s programs is to recruit people, like identify people that would be good in PhDs. And I don’t know, the sort of like treating folks as a revenue source in that way. It’s just deeply unsettling. And not that I necessarily have an answer to that, but I think universities thinking of alternative ways to handle that or to control sort of tuition is important.

Are Students Primarily Producers or Consumers?

30:38 Emily: What I’m thinking about when you’re saying this is whether the student is primarily a consumer of what the university produces or a producer of that work. And scholarship is part of what a university produces, right? As well as the teaching and everything. So, for undergraduates I guess we kind of accept that they are consumers of the university, and they or the government or whoever should be paying for them to get this lovely education. PhD students we generally see as producers. They’re either teaching and spreading their knowledge and mentoring people, or they’re producing scholarship that is worthwhile. Master’s students I feel like could fall in either category and maybe are viewed mostly as consumers, yet as you were just saying, especially if they’re going onto the PhD level and producing scholarship of their own, even at the master’s level, maybe they should be viewed more as like producers.

31:40 Emily: But anyway, all of this is so, so complicated. And I’m really glad that you brought up like the unionization movement and how that’s affecting this conversation, as well as the competition thing. Of course. I was just thinking that, if we are going to view PhD students as producers of work, it makes a lot of sense to pay people enough that they don’t have to feel stress. Because if what the university wants is a product out of a graduate student, whether it’s a class or whether it’s a paper or whatever, it makes sense to give them an environment where they can produce a good product. And paying them enough that they don’t have to side hustle and they don’t have to take out debt and they don’t have to feel stressed, and it’s not a cloud looming over them all the time. It makes sense to me in terms of producing the best product out of those people as possible. I don’t know what your thoughts are on that.

Quality Work Requires Quality Pay

32:30 Chad: No, I absolutely agree with it. And I think it’s interesting because for me when I first got involved with the unionization effort here at Georgetown–it’s really funny if like, someone had tried to talk to me and get me involved by talking about how low my pay was, that wouldn’t have worked. It would have just been like, “Well no I make enough. It’s not a lot, but I make enough to just get by, and I have a little extra if I want to go out to eat with friends, I can do it.” For me the issue was sort of more transparency about things like job listings and responsibilities. But kind of over the last two to three years, as I have gotten closer and closer to the sort of end, it’s now much more about sort of money and like the awareness that, like what you were talking about earlier, a stipend that just allows earning a living in a livable wage that kind of also gives people a cushion. I’ve been lucky. I haven’t had any sort of serious medical problems or family issues that would’ve required like a massive outlay at one time. But there are a lot of people that don’t have that privilege. So, that’s for me like the big part of the unionization effort. Now it’s just like, we want people to do good, so we should create conditions where they can do good. Like, can do the thing that they signed up to do, whether that’s research, whether that’s teaching.

34:04 Emily: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for that part of the discussion. I think we’ll just conclude the interview here by asking you what is your best financial advice for one of your peers? Maybe someone who’s anticipating the end of the PhD coming up fast.

Best Financial Advice for Your Peers

34:21 Chad: I think probably my best advice would maybe be more geared towards people earlier on, which is recognize that you’re going to change. When I started, I was 25 years old. $22,000 sounded like a lot of money. And like I said earlier, I felt like I kind of had made it. Recognizing that by about now I’m 31. I’ve had friends getting married and needs change. And seven years is a long time to be in one place. So, be aware of that, and when you’re starting out, make a plan kind of on that basis. You’ll hear some of the faculty here talk about, “You need to have like a 10-year plan for academic stuff.” Like when you’re going to publish and do all this sort of stuff. But I think also just the idea of having some sort of longterm financial plan, especially when you’re a graduate student and you’re dealing with pretty thin margins already.

Consider Long-Term Financial Goals and Changing Needs

35:17 Emily: Yeah. I totally agree and want to just underline what you said. To someone who’s in their early twenties or mid-twenties or something, that first stipend offer can seem great. Totally adequate. Fine. You’re looking at your rent, whatever it’s going to be fine. And then you get a few years down the line and your life changes and your career goals change and your responsibilities increase, often. I had another interview in season three with Scott Kennedy and he talked about getting married and having children during graduate school, which is not something that he had in his plan when he accepted that first offer letter. But it was, you know, over the years that he spent in graduate schools, something that came into his life. And so an amount of money that can seem workable at a younger age doesn’t necessarily seem so workable later. Not just because of the individual and your own life changes that you incur, but also as we were just talking about, because stipends don’t keep up generally with the cost of living and inflation, especially in these higher cost of living cities.

36:12 Emily: So, it could be that you’re actually falling behind in terms of an indexed amount of money as well as you yourself are getting older and having all these changes occur in your own life. So, it’s just an argument for prospective graduate students to be not accepting of something that seems “okay,” but really looking, as we were just saying, for competitive offers that will offer you well above the living wage for whatever area you’re moving to. Another thing which we didn’t discuss in detail, but tuition and fees–the responsibility that falls upon the graduate student for paying those–that can sometimes change. And universities who are facing funding shortfalls can change the package that you receive. So, hey, maybe your stipend doesn’t decrease or maybe your stipend goes up, as you were saying. Maybe it’s $1,000 a year, but maybe your fees are also going up by hundreds of dollars per year. That could easily be the case too.

37:04 Emily: And once you start in a program, you start feeling stuck and you’re invested, and there are sunk costs and so forth. And so, it’s just something to think about at the beginning to have more margin than you anticipate that you’re actually going to need because over five years, over seven years, whatever it is, a lot can change. So, Chad, thank you so much for this interview. It was really a pleasure to have you. Thank you for sharing so openly about your situation.

37:26 Chad: Yeah, thanks for having me. It was great talking with you.

Outtro

37:29 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.

Filed Under: Career Transitions, Debt, Financial Goals, Podcast, Student Loans Tagged With: career transition, grad school, podcast, student loans

This Part-Time PhD Student Needs Her Full-Time Income for Her Financial Goals

November 25, 2019 by Lourdes Bobbio

In this episode, Emily interviews Patrice French, a PhD student in adult education at Texas A&M. Patrice has a full-time position at her university and is pursuing her PhD part-time. She is paying for her degree through her employee benefits and a small grant she won after searching and applying for over 50 external scholarships and grants. Emily and Patrice discuss her path to the PhD, her decision to maintain her full-time job while in her program, and what she expects the PhD to do for her career going forward. Along the way, they touch on Public Service Loan Forgiveness, repaying consumer debt, side income, investing for retirement, and the positive steps Patrice has taken with her finances over the past few months.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Sign up for personal finance coaching
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Wealthy PhD group program sign-up
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Podcast Hub
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Subscribe to the mailing list
  • Find Patrice French on Twitter
  • This Grad Student Defrayed His Housing Costs By Renting Rooms to His Peers
  • How the Promise of Public Service Loan Forgiveness Has Impacted This Prof’s Career and Family Decisions

part time PhD in TX

Teaser

00:00 Patrice: The reality at the PhD level is that there’s not a lot of funding for part time students and that’s just something that I had to contend with. I’ve scoured the internet, I’ve looked throughout all of our university. I looked at regional associations tied to my degree and it’s just not a lot out there for part time students, so being prepared to really fit the cost of your education is something that you have to think seriously about because there’s not going to be a lot of financial support for you as a part time student.

Introduction

00:35 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 four episode fifteen and today my guest is Patrice French, a PhD student in adult education at Texas A&M. Patrice has a full time position at her university and is pursuing her PhD part time. She’s paying for her degree through her employee benefits and a small grant she won after searching and applying for over 50 external scholarships and grants. Patrice and I discussed her path to the PhD, her decision to maintain her full time job while in her program, and what she expects the PhD to do for her career going forward. Along the way, we touch on public service loan forgiveness, repaying consumer debt, side income, investing for retirement, and the positive steps Patrice has taken with our finances over the past few months. I’m very excited to share her perspective here on the podcast. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Patrice French.

01:39 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast today, Patrice French and she will be telling us about her journey to the PhD as a part time student and a full time worker. So Patrice, thank you so much for joining me today.

01:52 Patrice: Thank you for having me Emily.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:54 Emily: Please tell us about yourself — where you’re in school, who your employer is, where you live, all those kinds of.

02:01 Patrice: Sure. Well, I am currently at Texas A&M University. I’ve been here a little over three years and this is also where I am pursuing my PhD. I am finished with my second year in my program, which is educational human resource development with an emphasis in adult education, but I like to call it adult education for short because the degree name is a little bit long and people often don’t know what that means. Texas A&M, the main campus is located in College Station, Texas, which is approximately a hundred miles northwest of Houston, Texas. So we’re not too far aside from some major cities in Texas.

02:44 Emily: Yeah, that sounds great. I actually have a little bit of a personal connection, I guess, to your field because my mother-in-law made her career in adult education and ultimately rose to the level of principal of an adult school. So yeah that’s what she’s been up to. Tell us your backstory, maybe from high school or college and what you were studying and what brought you to your current point.

From Social Work to Adult Education

03:12 Patrice: Sure. I have a background in social work actually. I have my bachelor’s and master’s in social work. I went to Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas for my undergrad and I got my master’s degree at the University of Michigan, also in social work. So for a little bit of time I was licensed to practice social work in the state of Texas, but while I was pursuing my master’s degree, I learned that my focus on social work was pretty much in the minority because I was more focused on policy analysis, whereas most of my colleagues really wante to work inter-personally with families, children, things like that. I made a strategic decision to build my skill in a way that would support the efforts of social work, but at a macro level. While I was at my master’s program, I was a research intern at a social justice education program and my experience there basically just led me to an opportunity in higher ed doing social justice and multicultural education and basically led to my switch from social work to higher ed, which is where I’ve been for the past 10 years.

04:23 Patrice: My first job outside of my master’s degree, I would definitely say parallels different areas of social work, but I’ve transitioned in some ways to being more entrenched in higher ed where I wouldn’t consider my work to be social work. I did diversity and multicultural education work for four years and I was in St. Louis. I moved from University of Michigan to St. Louis in Missouri. I did that work for four years and then I transitioned to doing academic student success and retention work, where I oversaw unit that was tasked with supporting students who are transitioning to make sure they have their tools and things to be successful for retention, et cetera.

05:11 Patrice: I moved back to Texas about three years ago and some of that was precipitated by a major health event with my father. I was searching at the time, but by happenstance I happened to apply right around the time my father became ill. While I was in Houston, which is where I’m from, being with him, I basically got a really quick offer from Texas A&M. and I said, “well, I guess it’s meant to be that I’m back in Texas.” And a couple months later, I was back and that was in 2016 and I’ve been back since.

05:45 Patrice: As far as my trajectory to pursuing a PhD, I had been thinking about that really since I was in my master’s program and thought that I would work for three years and go back to school and become a social work researcher. But since I’ve kind of floated around outside of social work for so long, I didn’t think that was a good fit anymore, but I really was still interested and ended up exploring different programs either in psych or communication or an education for probably two or three years. I decided to take a break from looking at it because I thought it’d be more advantageous to work. I was not willing to sacrifice my income, and with my father’s health, I just put that on the back burner so I can be closer to him and my family to make sure that they had what they need. I was back at A&M and learned that they had an adult education program in my university and I actually work in the college that also hosts my program. I did some research and just decided to apply and got in. So a year into me working at A&M, I started my doctoral program and I started part time and have been pursuing the program part-time since 2017. It’s been a bit of a journey. I will say that I don’t know if I would recommend working full time and being in a doctoral program part-time or even, I know some colleagues that do it both full time. For me, I don’t really have any major life commitments to where I can’t balance it. I have a dog, but I am child-free, I don’t have a partner. Outside of going to visit my family, which is about an hour or 40 minutes drive away from me, which I usually go twice a month, I don’t have those huge commitments to where that it would make it harder to balance outside of just the commitment of supporting myself and making sure I’m doing what I’m meaning to do with my main employment position. And then just figuring out life and making sure I take care of myself, health wise and things like that. It’s been a lot.

Deciding on a Part-Time PhD

08:11 Emily: I can definitely see how you got to the PhD though. It’s clear from the point when you were in your master’s that the more academic kind of work and training was going to be a good fit at some point and you got there in a slightly different field than you were expecting. That’s great. I think you mentioned a little bit earlier that you didn’t want to sacrifice your income, but was that the main reason to do what you’re doing this way, with full time work and part-time PhD, rather than doing the PhD full time or are those programs not like well-funded or how did you come to that decision?

08:48 Patrice: I believe the year I started at A&M as an employee, they just started a new benefit where staff employees who could pursue a degree and get some tuition assistance. You had to work at the university for a minimum of one year to be eligible for that. The way that it was marketed at the time, I thought it was only $2,000 maximum for your pursuit of your degree or maybe between $2000 and $5,000 just for one year. So I was under the impression that I would be funding most of it myself and my program funds traditional full time students that are able to serve in TA, GA, or RA positions. Funding was not an option for me through my program nor was it at the larger university level because most of the graduate funding and fellowships were full time students. Or all of them actually. I haven’t seen any part time student funding fellowships at the university level. Financially, it would not have worked for me to go back to school full time because I think our average GA/TA salary is about $1,900 a month and most of them fund just traditional fall and spring hours, and the summer. My amount of bills and needing to be available if it was necessary to support my family. It just really wasn’t an option for me and I just didn’t want to sacrifice getting to a place where I was sort of comfortable. I didn’t want to struggle like I had been in graduate and undergrad and so I just decided not to do that.

10:31 Patrice: Up until the time when I got admitted, I was searching furiously for funding opportunities and I think I applied for over 50 external scholarships. I have a very detailed spreadsheet that tracks all of that and I didn’t get anything. I was applying to $500 scholarships from law offices or foundation repairs. It was just everything that didn’t have a stipulation for what a student should be, I applied for, and nothing. Right into the start of my program, I talked to our benefits people at the university and that’s when I learned that the benefit actually is as long as I’m employed at the university full time, I will get up to $5,000 a year in tuition assistance, which breaks down to $2000 for the fall, $2000 for the spring and $1000 for the summer. That, in combination with some fee waivers, which I think equate to about $300 a semester, really covers about 80% of my overall tuition fee costs. That ended up being way more affordable for me to have to come up with maybe $400 or $500 a semester in comparison to $2,600. In my college, our tuition and fees, excluding some of the fees that I don’t have to play as an employee , the tuition is about $2,547 per semester if I’m taking six credit hours. It sounds really inexpensive in comparison to some other institutions and I’m in state as well, so that makes a big difference, but still it wouldn’t be affordable on my salary to pay out of pocket without pursuing any external aid or scholarships or loans.

12:25 Patrice: I made a very intentional decision not to pursue any more student loans because I have them now and they are continuing to accrue interest and things of that nature, based on the payment plans I’m under because I am pursuing the public service loan forgiveness and have been under the income based repayment plan for four years. Now I’m on the pay as you earn, but my balance has increased and although I’m in school, I have chosen to waive my deferment so I can continue to make payment towards my loan so I can increase my qualifications sooner than later. I just didn’t want to occur any more debt and so I decided either I’m paying for this out of pocket as much as I can, so that might mean that it takes me 10 years to finish my degree, or I’m going to try to find some aid. Gratefully, I have been able to cover all of my costs for my program. I also found a small grant that I have to apply for annually, but I’ve gotten each year, that is for $1,500 for the fall and the spring.

13:36 Patrice: My net costs for my degree program has been negative for me out of pocket, meaning that in many cases between the grant and my tuition assistance, I actually get a little bit of a refund that I’m able to put towards books and supplies, software and other general living expenses. It’s actually worked out very well and I’m very grateful that I’m able to pursue my degree pretty aggressively. I think two courses per semester is a lot to be doing while working full time. And I do one in the summer. So far it’s been a very affordable degree. And even with that, I have a very detailed spreadsheet to the penny where I’m able to project how much my total degree is going to cost with fees, tuition, even diploma fee, the dissertation fee, even the regalia, I already haven’t an estimated a cost of total attendance. I’m being very diligent towards those costs, even though they have primarily been covered by my institution.

14:43 Emily: This is a very thorough explanation. Clearly you are on top of all of these different areas, in terms of the, and I’m, I’m glad that you mentioned pursuing all of those like scholarship applications that you did. I mean, only one grant has come of it, which is good, it’s what you needed, but not more than that because it was such a limited pool for part-time options. But it definitely sounds like you’ve been funded to the degree that you need to be and you just have to keep working your full time job and time to do the graduate work on the side. It’s different to work a full time job than to be like a TA, because a TA, tt’s only a 20 hour week per hour per week commitment and you have a presumably 40 hour per week commitment, but also as a professional, you’ve been doing this for a while, you’re very efficient. I can see how this would work out like pretty well, definitely financially, and also how you can manage your time. Before we move on from this, what does the future look like for you? What are your career goals with the PhD?

Post PhD Career Goals

15:56 Patrice: I always wanted to get a PhD for the credentials and that is still my primary goal. When I was admitted to my program, since Texas A&M is such a huge research institution, I wanted to open myself up to opportunities that would expose me to the academy, to what a tenure track faculty position could be for me. Is this something that I can see myself doing? So I’ve been building my experiences to both pursue the degree itself and also build my CV to give me opportunities, through publications, research experience. I’m still on the fence about whether or not I’m interested in an academic career and I’m leaning towards that not being for me and I do feel like I have a lot of skill and I’ve gotten some really positive feedback from my professors and peers in the field at conferences I’ve attended, but I don’t know if it’s for me in terms of the work with the writing and a lot has changed in the academy with how competitive it is. And quite honestly, based on my research, I would likely be taking a pay cut and would essentially be transitioning to a new career track that would take me maybe five to seven years to recoup the my salary that I had built thus far. And I don’t know if I’m willing to sacrifice that. I don’t really foresee myself getting a partner anytime soon, that may contribute to making a change in that decision. Aafter this, I do foresee myself staying in higher education. My current role right now is that I’m in an academic administrative position overseeing a program assessment that’s tied to some accreditation needs. It’s very much an administrative role, but there are lots of opportunities in higher ed that with the PhD specifically will open up opportunities. So I’m not too worried about where I’m going to land. I’m just gonna hold on for dear life for right now so I can finish my degree and then make some decisions about that. I’m crossing my fingers, I should be finished by the end of 2021 with everything. I have a year and a half left of coursework, so I should be done fall 2020, and my goal is to devote 2021 to writing. By 2022 I should be at a place to evaluate where I am and make some decisions, things like that. I don’t know, we’ll see.

18:30 Emily: You anticipated my next question because you had offhandedly said earlier, “Oh, might take me 10 years to finish,” but that definitely does not sound like the plan that you see yourself on, so that’s really, really good to hear.

Commercial

18:45 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. As a listener of this podcast, every week you hear strategies that another PhD has used to improve their financial picture. But listening and learning does not automatically translate into action in your own financial life. If you are ready to change how you think about and handle your money, but need some help getting started, I can be of service. There are two main ways you can work with me to create and implement a financial plan tailored for you. First, I offer one-on-one financial coaching, either as a single session or a series, as you make changes over the long term. You can find out more at PFforPhDs.com/coaching. Second, I offer a group program called The Wealthy PhD that is part coaching, part course, and part community. You can find out more and join the wait list for the next time I open the program at PFforPhDs.com/wealthyPhD. I believe it’s possible to succeed with your finances at every stage of PhD training and throughout your career. Let’s figure out together how to make that happen for you. Now, back to the interview.

Side Hustling for Extra Income

19:59 Emily: So in terms of funding your PhD, we’ve talked about you have your salary. Thankfully you haven’t, it sounds like, had to use your salary directly to fund the PhD. You have your tuition assistance from your employer. You have this grant that you won. But you told me that you also side hustle, so can you tell me about that?

20:16 Patrice: Yes, I am trying to find multiple ways to supplement my income even though I feel like I’m pretty stable. I did buy a home a couple of years ago and so there’s some costs that I’m looking to cover in terms of maintenance and repairs that are eating away at my salary more than I anticipated and I’m trying to recoup my savings. I have done a number of things. I have done freelancing editing work. I am renting out a room in my house with a colleague and friend of mine. I have done a lot of freelancing stuff as well, mostly editing. And something that’s more towards my student loans, I am partnered with an organization that basically connects nonprofit organizations with freelancers that have a level of skill that the organization needs and upon successful completion of a project, that organization will pay my student loans directly in the form of a stipend. And so I’ve done a couple projects. I haven’t done that many because I’m super busy, but that is another way that I’ve tried to indirectly try to pay down some of my debt with my loans even though I still plan on pursuing public service loan forgiveness, but I don’t know if I will continue to pursue that because it’s counted as income. So I did get a miscellaneous 1099 and it’s taxed, so I don’t know how advantageous it is for me to not see those costs directly, and how it affects my taxes. That’s pretty much what I’ve done. I don’t have a lot of time to do a lot of freelance stuff. Before I started, before I moved here, I did Ubering for a while, which was more lucrative for the drivers than it is now, hearing what I’ve heard, because I do still have some peers that drive for it. But I’m pretty busy so I don’t have a lot of times to do work that takes a lot of time, so any way that I can make free money, that’s where I’m kind of looking at now. The rental income is an easy way to do that and it works out both for myself and my friend because she gets to save money because she’s also in a doctoral program and is really looking to save on costs from renting her own apartment. And I’m able to get a little bit extra income that can go to other things.

22:45 Emily: Yeah, I was going to say the rental income sounds like the perfect solution in your situation because a full time job plus being a PhD student plus trying to side hustle where the side hustling involves trading your time for money, that is a lot on your plate and as you said, you’re visiting your family and so forth. The rental income is really just leveraging another asset you have, not your time, but your home, in a new way. That sounds like a really a really good fit. I’ve published an episode on the podcast before about a homeowner who rents out, who at the time was renting out rooms to his friends and how it was really just, while interpersonally challenging in a couple of ways, really overall very beneficial, mutually. So a good situation when you are able to rent to someone that you know and like and want to be around and trust to pay the rent on time and so forth.

Student Loan Repayment as a Part-Time PhD Student

23:38 Emily: You’ve mentioned your student loans a couple of times and your pursuit of PSLF. I meant to say earlier, it actually makes a lot of sense to me if you are into PSLF to not, I guess go to graduate school full time because I think that would have stopped the clock on that, I’m assuming.

23:56 Patrice: Yes. As long as I’m have my employment verified for full time employment, it would not. It still defers my loans automatically, but there is a one-time option to submit for a waiver of the deferment. You have to either stick with it or you don’t, they’re not going to give you the option to go back and forth, so I made that decision before I started, so I never had a lapse in my qualifying payments for that reason. I’m just sticking very diligently to and really connecting with the loan servicer in regards to where I am and I’m making my minimum payments and just chugging away.

24:37 Emily: And I think you may have mentioned earlier, are the student loans totally from your master’s degree or also from undergrad?

24:44 Patrice: They’re a combination. My undergrad degree was, my first two years were fully funded by scholarships and due to some transition and changes, a part of that was there was an increase in tuition of about up to 7% per year. And TCU is a private institution, so that 5-7% on $19,000, it makes a difference. My last two years of my undergrad, I think I took a total out of, I think, $14,000 and my master’s degree, I took out $24,000 and my master’s funding was only to cover my living expenses because I had a scholarship that covered all of my tuition and fees. While I tried to find employment while I was at Michigan, it was getting really tricky, so I just decided to take out the loans. I was only there for a 13 month program anyway, so I figured, let me just focus on my education and get out and just deal with the loans later. Total for both my degrees it’s about $36,000, but my balance is about $37,500 now eight and a half years later due to the accrual of interest and capitalization since I’ve been on the income based repayment plan instead of the standard option. So it’s just sitting there.

26:01 Emily: I’ve also done other other episodes where we discuss PSLF, very common in our community to be either pursuing it or considering it. What do you think about that decision now, eight and a half years in? Was PSLF the right route for you?

26:17 Patrice: I think it is. My salary when I was right out of my master’s degree was about $30,000 a year and it was in a state that took out state and local taxes, so my take home was about $1,800 per month. I think my standard payment at the time would’ve been about $400. That is a little bit under a quarter of my salary, and so I was really intentional about thinking about the options. I know I’m likely going to stay in nonprofit higher ed. That really wouldn’t be too much of a challenge to pursuing other employment options in lieu of a public service option. Really the salary and then my employment options were my main decisions behind that. I’m a little bit antsy about it given the challenges that I’ve been hearing about, but I think by the time that I’m qualified for forgiveness, there will have been…One, I think that any changes they make will affect new borrowers and not existing borrowers. Let’s say they take it away. I think that it won’t affect me. I think a lot of the hiccups that have happened with the borrowers that are qualifying now will have been remedied by the time that I qualify, which honestly should be in 2022, but I have some payments that are under review that I’ve not gotten a straight answer on in over a year. So my date is September 2023. So within 2022 or 23, I should have a qualification for forgiveness. I’m trying to stick to my decision. That’s why I’m on the fence whether or not I’m going to ambitiously start paying them down, or if I should just stick to the minimum payments because it really aggravates me to see my balance to staying. Because I’ve also been able to maintain a taxable adjusted salary that is, that keeps my payments pretty low. I have a very good accountant that’s able to, with my freelance income, to reduce my income a lot to where what’s reported helps to keep those payments low, which is a goal of mine since I am still covering a lot of other things. But I don’t know. We’ll see. If it happens that it no longer is advantageous for me, then I will make plans to pay them down because I am on a pretty ambitious consumer debt plan right now to where I should be done with all of my consumer debt, excluding my mortgage and my student loans, by next year. And so that should free up a lot of salary, especially if I continue to get some supplemental income through renting my room or stuff like that. So if it happens that I want to change my mind, I’ll just start ambitiously paying it down and will get rid of it.

29:19 Emily: You sound, overall, pretty optimistic about the program. I share your optimism.

29:25 Patrice: Cautiously, I’m cautiously —

29:27 Emily: Yeah, very good point. And really since you’ve been on the plan for eight years, it makes sense to hold out for that last 20% and just see it through and hope for the best.

Other Financial Goals

29:40 Emily: Tell about your other financial goals. You mentioned other debt repayment.

29:45 Patrice: Yes. So my goals right now are to really get a hold on my consumer debt. I have a little bit of credit card debt. I have a car that I have a year and a few months left back on that. I actually have been listening to a lot of your podcasts and reading the blog and have put together a debt plan where I think I’m using the avalanche method to really just target one area of debt at a time. I’m targeting the highest interest rate and then just tackling it and then going to the next. I have a pretty robust plan that if I stick to it, I should be done with everything by the end of June. I have a couple of credit cards and I have a car payment that I think has about $6,000 left on it. I had a really good interest rate on that. It has 2% interest on my car. Really, it wouldn’t save me that much. I have a loan for doing some home repairs and I would pay off a year early, a little bit under, maybe 10 months early on my current plan. I’m really just focused on getting the consumer debt down.

30:57 Patrice: I also want to build up my savings because partially me buying a house, there were some unanticipated expenses of repair really early on to me purchasing them. Since I had done so much on the down payment, I didn’t have the savings to do the repairs, so that was part of the reason why I have a loan for doing some of their repairs. By paying off all of this debt, it will free up a lot of my income so I can start saving, which is a big goal. I’d really like to have more of a cushion than I have right now. Besides that, some larger goals are to just do a lot better at my mid-term and long-term planning. I usually would just plan month to month and all my bills are really the same, so they’re on auto repayments. Any overspending I’m doing or not planning ahead is my fault, quite honestly, unless there’s an unexpected expense, like if my tire blew out or something. But a part of it is just me just being too social and liking to go out and drink and eat out when I can easily just eat at home. It’s just being more fortuitous on my budget so that I could meet some of these financial goals and I’m being less reliant on overspending and really trying to plan out.

32:19 Patrice: I actually have a spreadsheet that is between now and 2020 that kind of plans out how much I’m expected to spend on all my bills, which really shouldn’t change. And then as those debt balances go down, I anticipate that my salary is going to go up so I can start planning for more savings and planning around travel because that’s a big thing that I don’t do a good job at. If I’m traveling for a conference, which a lot of that is self funded, or I’m just going to visit friends and stuff, I kind of just figure it out, and usually me figuring out is putting on my credit card and paying it off later, which isn’t the best approach. I’ve actually applied for a credit card that has a really good mileage rate. There are no airports that are really close to me where I have a preferred airline and so I’m really focusing on putting my recurring bills on that card to build up points, so that I can use that for more of my travel instead of just relying on just any old card. I’m trying to be a little bit more savvy with things. I definitely think when I get through with my debt, I won’t really have to worry about trickling back to my credit cards since there will be so much more flexibility in my salary or my take home anyway. That’s about it.

33:40 Emily: Yeah. It sounds like you’re tackling now the personal finance side of things with the same kind of diligence and energy that you were in these other earlier areas that we discussed more related to your career. That sounds amazing. There are so many wonderful strategies that you just laid out and so I hope that everyone caught them the first time around. Great stuff that you’re doing right now. How are you doing on long-long-term, like retirement stuff? Does your employer already do a lot of that?

Retirement Savings

34:10 Patrice: Yeah. My previous employer, I worked at and institution in St. Louis, I forget what they matched up to, but after the year I was able to contribute at a matching rate up at least to 5%, but I think I might be wrong.I have a 403b that is sitting, that I haven’t touched, I’m just letting it accrue. And then I have a separate retirement plan since I worked for the state of Texas. They take a little bit longer to get vested in, so they’re contributing an equal amount, which is 7.6%, that I’m contributing each month. But after five years I’ll be fully vested as an employee. Um, so if I ever leave I can just let it stay there, I can come back and it’s a really robust retirement system. I will definitely be here long enough to get vested. Those are my main two things and because of that, I haven’t really pursued any other retirement options such as a Roth IRA or things like that, because I’m well-matched at my institutions and I think it’s the equivalent of a pension retirement with the state of Texas. I don’t think it’s your traditional investment fund. I think it’s fully funded and that my eligibility I think is at 55 years age or the equivalent of I think 20 years of service or something. If I wanted to, if I ended up staying in the state of Texas or at this institution, I would have the option to retire at 55 because I’ve been working here since before I was 30. I think it’s a good option. That’s something I’m paying attention to more readily, but I’ve been contributing to my retirement since I was 22, at a minimum of at least 2.5% of my salary, which was not a lot at the time because I was making $30,000 or $33,000 or whatever. But definitely at a point now I’m maxing out the full contributions and maybe if my salary is freed up once I start paying off my debt and have a more sizable savings and I might take out in a Roth IRA to maximize their savings as well. Or I think I’m also looking into some investments, but that’s kind of a long-term thing. I would feel more comfortable pursuing investments once all of my debt is free, so I’ll have a lot more pocket money to play with, assuming that I’m in the same role I’m in now, making the same salary that I am.

36:41 Emily: Yeah. I can definitely see this as one of the advantages of doing the PhD part-time while working full time is that not only do you have the higher salary, but you have these benefits that graduate students never receive. That’s awesome. And it seems like over the next two, three, four years, a lot of different pieces of your finances are going to get a lot easier, right? That’s going to be paid and PSLF will either come through or you’ll have to focus on paying off in another way. Other consumer debt will be gone. It really seems like…And of course when you finish your PhD and your salary hopefully will change, it’ll really be a pretty nice rosy picture at that time and you’ll be able to pursue the IRA or other types of savings, or whatever lifestyle stuff, whatever you want at that point.

37:29 Patrice: Yes. Yes. That’s my goal. Something I neglected to mention is hat my tuition benefit that the university is actually really smart in this because if you’re pursuing graduate level work, and you get tuition assistance from your employer in excess of $5,250 in a calendar year, anything over that amount would be taxed as income. And my previous institution gave a hundred percent tuition remission, but it was a private institution and tuition was about, I think $25,000 a year. So even if you were pursuing part time, most of my colleagues that were pursuing degrees, they would actually end up owing taxes annually because of that. Then our employer worked out a deal where you can just pay the taxes out of your salary, so it wouldn’t feel like such a big hit. But I don’t have to worry about the tuition assistance being a taxable benefit because it’s right under that mark in a calendar year, which is fantastic.

Financial Advice for Part-Time PhDs

38:32 Emily: Yeah, because I mostly deal with full time students, it’s something that I’m like, “Oh yeah, I remember those numbers, I remember being aware of that,” but it’s not something I’m intimately familiar with, so I’m glad you can tell us about that on the podcast. As we wrap up here, what is your best financial advice for another PhD student? Perhaps a part time student.

38:54 Patrice: I would definitely say, look and find as many resources as you can to fund your education. Depending on your program, there may be funding through grants. For example, I’m on a research project right now, that I’m not being funded on, but they got a little bit of money to fund graduate students for extra work. I know that it may be something to consider between the time you’re already spending working, but there is funding out there within your programs, through a lot of the research that’s being done. It’s really just being proactive to ask for it and also don’t feel like you have to rush to graduate and get it done. That’s something that I had to reconcile with, and I had to keep asking myself, why am I really pushing to get this done by this date? And there’s no real answer to that. So if you are reasonable with your time, that is something to make it really affordable, in terms of whether or not you’re going to pursue self funding or program funding or even things like loans and stuff like that. I have a colleague of mine that she and her husband actually bought an RV and we are a huge tailgating community at Texas A&M and she actually rents out her RV during our football season and that is partially how she’s able to fund her cost of her program. And so I’ve heard of some really creative things in addition to just the taking out loans or paying out of pocket that have helped support them.

Patrice: Unfortunately the reality at the PhD level is that there’s not a lot of funding for part time students and that’s just something that I had to contend with. In doing my exhaustive internet search, I was on some premium scholarship websites where you pay a fee to look in databases. I’ve scoured the internet, I’ve looked throughout all of our university. I looked at regional associations tied to my degree and it’s just not a lot out there for part time students. So being prepared to really fit the cost of your education is something that you have to think seriously about because there’s not going to be a lot of financial support for you as a part time student, even if your program gives a lot of flexibility in the pursuit of your degree, which my program does by offering a number of courses online and then in the evening. So it doesn’t really conflict with my nine to five, eight to five work schedule, but it just is hard. There’s just no way around it , there really isn’t. Maybe for some people that are in a partner relationship that it’s more feasible for them. Thankfully through my benefits I am able to not really worry about my cost, but if I wasn’t, I definitely would be taking a lot more time to pursue my degree because I am very much committed to not incurring any more student loan debt.

41:45 Emily: Yeah, I think the listeners can pretty well trust what you’re saying, when you say I have scoured the internet because you’re obviously very thorough in your work and so it’s disappointing to hear that, but better to be realistic about the situation than to go into it hoping that you’re going to win something that’s just not available to you. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. I am so glad to have your perspective here.

42:08 Patrice: Thank you so much Emily. I’m glad I’m able to share.

Outtro

42:12 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 Poddington Bear from the Free Music Achive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

Filed Under: Financial Goals Tagged With: budgeting, career, frugality, grad school, money story, part time phd, side hustle

This PhD Compares Her Experiences at a Unionized University and a Non-Unionized University

November 18, 2019 by Meryem Ok

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Carly Overfelt. Carly received a master’s from Purdue University, which does not have a graduate student union, and a PhD from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which has a longstanding graduate student union. Carly compares and contrasts her experiences as a graduate student worker at her two alma maters; she received higher pay and benefits at UMass. She shares the history of the graduate student union at UMass and the nature of her work within the union’s bargaining unit. At the end of the interview, we address the core questions around graduate student unions: Does the university view graduate students primarily as students or primarily as workers? Are graduate students paid well enough for their assistantship work to allow them to pursue their other job of completing their dissertation?

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grad student union experience

Teaser

00:00 Carly: A lot of union work and bargaining is holding onto as much of what you already had as you can because unions are not as powerful as they used to be. And so, usually, when you’re bargaining, you’re trying to mitigate something disastrous that the management is doing. They’re usually slashing something, and you are using your collective power to mitigate that as much as possible.

Introduction

00:27 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 four, episode 14, and today my guest is Dr. Carly Overfelt. Carly received a masters from Purdue University, which does not have a graduate student union, and a PhD from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which has a longstanding graduate student union. Carly compares and contrasts her experiences as a graduate student worker at her two alma maters. She shares the history of the graduate student union at UMass and the nature of her work within the union’s bargaining unit. At the end of the interview, we get to the heart of the question around graduate student unions: Does your university support you in your dual roles as student and worker, or does one eclipse the other? Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Carly Overfelt.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:24 Emily: I am delighted to have on the podcast with me today Dr. Carly Overfelt, and she is here to talk to us about being at two different universities during graduate school, one that didn’t have a union and one that did and the differences between those two experiences. So, Carly, thank you so much for joining me today, and will you please tell us a little bit more about yourself?

01:44 Carly: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I’m Carly, and I started my graduate school journey at Purdue University where I did a master’s degree in linguistics and then a master’s degree in English. That took me about three and a half years, and then I started a PhD at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. I finished my PhD in the spring of 2017. My interests were in linguistics and literature. I got interested in supporting linguistic diversity through my teaching. So, the position I have right now is at a small liberal arts college in Minnesota, and I’m kind of an adviser/tutor/instructor for our international students and domestic multilingual students. Yeah, it’s a great job.

Finances while at a Non-Unionized University

02:33 Emily: Very interesting. Yeah. Glad to hear that you’re enjoying that. So, let’s go back to your days at Purdue as a master’s student. So, what was the financial lay of the land at this non-unionized university?

02:48 Carly: Right. So, you know, since I had never been to a unionized university yet, I didn’t really have a comparison point, but I remember, you know, just like so many graduate students- broke all time, you know, my rent was almost 50% of my pay. Which I think is going to sound familiar to a lot of folks. That was the start of my expertise in the side hustle. In addition to teaching a few times a week and having meetings with students in office hours, I was also tutoring three nights a week for about $20 an hour cash. And so, I ended up spending so much of my time during the week on my side hustle that it was really hard for me to perform as well in my courses as I wanted to and to do the research that is necessary to do well. Right. So that was pretty tough.

03:42 Emily: Yeah. So it sounds like, were you a TA for the entirety of your time there? That was how you received your stipend?

03:50 Carly: I was. I was teaching a communications class for international graduate students, and the whole time I was there, I was teaching for that program. And sometimes there was a summer version of that that I could teach.

04:06 Emily: Yeah, it’s a little bit surprising to me, just given that Purdue is in a low cost of living area. I mean, we’re already hearing like, okay, you move from Purdue to UMass Amherst. I’d imagine there’s a big cost of living difference there. But even in Purdue, your stipend was only about twice what your rent was or maybe not even that much it sounds like.

04:24 Carly: Right, right. That’s right. And we did have health insurance benefits. Some of that came out of our paycheck, and they were fine. They weren’t as good as what I had through my parents before I started graduate school. But it was like, it was okay.

04:38 Emily: How about dental and vision?

04:41 Carly: Dental and vision was a little bit extra. And they would take that out of your paycheck as well. Some other things I want to note–and these were differences I didn’t notice as much until later–but we did not get paid through the holiday months. So, it was kind of several weeks that we were not getting paid. And we also had hefty fees through our program in the fall semester. And sometimes we would start getting bills for those before we had gotten a full paycheck through our teaching associateships. So, that was pretty tough.

05:16 Emily: Okay. So, you’re saying that your stipend was not a 12-month stipend, but it stopped over winter break and then what about the summer?

05:23 Carly: Right. So, it stopped over winter break, and it didn’t continue for the summer unless you were lucky enough to have a summer class assigned to you, and then it would pick up again in, say, like June.

05:36 Emily: And also, of course, the very common problem of paying fees one time per year or one time per semester. And it’s a real hit to the budget. That’s a really hard thing to cash flow on a grad student stipend. Yeah. OK. So not such a pretty picture.

05:51 Carly: No. Pretty tough.

05:52 Emily: Anything else you want to add to that?

05:54 Carly: No, I think that’s about it. That pretty much covers it.

Finances while at a Unionized University

05:57 Emily: Okay. And then when you moved on to UMass Amherst, you started realizing things didn’t have to be the way they were.

06:05 Carly: Right.

06:06 Emily: So, what was it like there?

06:09 Carly: I was very excited when I heard that they were unionized because I, you know, grew up in kind of a union household. My dad and stepdad both were kind of hardcore union. So, I was like, “Oh yeah, let’s do this!” But I didn’t realize how much it was going to change my financial picture until just like kind of living it. So, a few major differences right away. We were paid a lot more. Maybe not twice as much, but it was at least a 30% increase over–maybe 40% over–what I was being paid before. And that’s just wages, not talking about benefits. So that was noticeable. The fees were smaller, but also it was written into our contract that you could have that spread throughout and taken out of your paycheck, and we were paid through the holidays.

06:58 Emily: I really love the benefit of actually paying something with each paycheck. Because like, I mean fees–it kind of depends. They may be a reality or not, but just if you know what they are and they’re going to come at regular intervals, they are a lot easier to deal with. So, love that. And you said you were paid through holidays, and what about summer?

07:17 Carly: In the summer, it was kind of similar where if you were lucky enough to have a summer class assignment, which in my department was extremely rare, then you could be paid through the summers. So, I still had to, you know, work my side hustle skills, but at least I only had to do that in the summer. Sometimes I would do my side hustles during the week to just sort of help myself with the cushion for the summer. But to put that in perspective, I would do maybe one four-hour, you know, side gig shift per week to sort of just keep my relationship with that employer, and then work during the summer more hours for that kind of side hustle. So I actually was able to spend time on research and writing and conferences. I think I went to one conference the whole time I was at Purdue in terms of presenting, and then that switched to actually having the time to work towards that. And I was going to maybe two conferences per year when I was in my PhD program because I had time to do it. It was great.

What about Travel Funding and TA-ships?

08:20 Emily: Actually, I’m glad you brought up conference travel because that’s kind of another benefit that may or may not be in place. So it sounds like, because you weren’t side hustling so much, you had more time to go to conferences. Was there additional funding available for that sort of thing, or were you paying for that out of your own pocket?

08:34 Carly: I was usually paying for that out of my own pocket. There was a little bit more funding in that department, but it wasn’t part of the union contract bargaining. I think it was just a department that had different maybe funding priorities, you know, just generally for their graduate students. I don’t think I’m remembering this incorrectly, I think that was something that was just department-specific.

08:58 Emily: Gotcha. And were you also a TA throughout your PhD? Like that was your position every term?

09:05 Carly: I was. I was a TA, first teaching for the writing program, and then teaching for the English department, and getting my stipend through that and benefits which were very good and actually better than the benefits I have in my full-time alt-ac job right now.

09:24 Emily: What do you mean by that? What makes them better?

09:27 Carly: So, the deductible and coinsurance strategies that we usually get through our employer benefits. You know, when you lose the power of sort of negotiating for that and it just sort of gets handed to you from on high, it doesn’t take long to start seeing the differences in what are you going to pay in copay, what types of services are covered, and that kind of thing.

Paid Leave and Other Union Benefits at UMass Amherst

09:51 Emily: Gotcha. Let’s see, you talked about leave over the holidays, but–was built in the contract and maybe in contrast to when you were at Purdue–any like other kinds of paid leave? Or maybe you didn’t access this but you know about it, like maybe parental leave or short term disability leave, anything like that?

10:12 Carly: Yeah, there were different leaves that were available. There was even vacation in our contract. Of course, no one ever took it because you’re teaching, right? So, it was pretty rare for anyone to actually, you know, do that. But if you were savvy enough about your union contract, you kind of notice those things. Or if you were sort of touching base with your union reps enough to sort of learn about some of the more specific–because a lot of times, and this makes sense, a lot of times residents were thinking about the pay. That’s really the main thing that they’re concerned about. But there are sort of these other things that you learn about that you have those benefits. If you’re sort of plugged into the union a little bit more and reading their emails and doing all that–it takes a lot of time though. Right?

10:56 Carly: And you know, grad students are always very busy. So, you know, no shame for people who didn’t know about some of those details. But if you were plugged into it, there were different things. Some things that, you know, were negotiated in the contract were, like, paid parking. So, if you just want to park on campus as a grad student employee, everyone knows that can be very expensive. But the union had actually negotiated certain rates for graduate student employees to lower those costs. So, another benefit was, one of the bargaining years that I was there, the bargaining team negotiated access to all-gender restrooms where you’re working. So, in these huge campuses, right? You know, it’s not the same experience for everyone in every department, every building. And that’s something that you should be able to use the restroom and feel comfortable and safe. And that’s something that was actually written into the contract. So, that was a huge one.

11:53 Emily: Yeah, that’s super interesting. Yeah, interesting that we get down to that level of sort of granular detail, right? Like you were saying, it’s not just the pay. There are all these benefits and other working conditions that can be brought to the table. And like you were saying, I think something that is useful to think about is that when you have a union in place, it sort of brings all the disparate parts of the different departments–for example, like graduate students in different schools and different departments at the university–it brings them to the same like playing field and gets them all the same benefits. And it’s not like there’s going to be this level of pay and benefits over here and this over here. Is that correct?

Departmental Differences in Pay Rates and Raises

12:35 Carly: There was still some difference in pay. So, for example, I worked for the writing program my first few years and we had the lowest hourly pay. It was still way better than what I was getting at Purdue. I think it was something like $22 an hour when I started at UMass, but there was a minimum wage on campus for graduate student work, and we were making that minimum wage. So, if you’re coming from a different department that’s more well-resourced or you know, maybe use this recruiting tool, then you may get paid more. My husband was in the linguistics department and he got paid more than me, and I just was always annoyed about that.

13:15 Emily: So, the union helped establish the minimum wage across the university, which your department said, “Yup, that’s what we pay.” Did the union also negotiate the pay rates at other departments? Or is that just the department saying, “Okay, we see the minimum, but we’re going to be paying more than that?”

13:33 Carly: I think that that’s what other departments would do. I can’t speak specifically to that, but I think that that’s how the disparities–and you know, when I say disparity, it was pretty minimal. It wasn’t a huge difference among the departments–but there was a difference. So that was sometimes annoying to me. But yeah, when they would negotiate raises, it was like a general raise. And so, how that might work out in particular departments might vary.

Additional Experiences with the Union

13:59 Emily: I see. So, aside from just being a student at the university, did you have experience with the union as not just a student?

14:10 Carly: I did. You know, I was already sort of interested in unions and so I was a steward at first, which means that you maybe come with someone to a meeting with their supervisor that they think might be a little bit tricky, and you come and you’re sort of a support person for them. And then I was in the leadership for the graduate student bargaining unit part of our union, because we were part of a–and some people who don’t know, there’s usually a much bigger organization like the United Auto Workers was ours. And then the graduate students at UMass were one shop as they say, one workplace, in that. So, I was in the leadership of that. And then I kind of just kept getting more involved and I volunteered on the joint council, which is where all of the shops, the workplaces, kind of have representation. And then eventually I was on the executive board as the secretary and that’s where you have like the president of the union and this would be over the entire union for us. It was UAW 2322. And so we had, I think there at the end about like 3000 members. So, there was a lot of opportunity to be involved and to meet different people. And so that was an interesting perspective.

15:21 Emily: Yeah. What an interesting opportunity for, maybe not work experience, but volunteer experience that is very professional as part of your graduate experience. Like, yeah.

15:33 Carly: Yeah. I have used a lot of that experience in, you know, my work even now working on committees with people who have extremely different backgrounds than myself. Just collaborating towards a common goal. Most of everything that I did was volunteer-based, but something that people don’t know sometimes is that, if your graduate students are unionized, sometimes there are paid positions within that shop, so to speak. That is a fellowship or assistantship that comes with the pay and benefits, you know, that we’re talking about. So, sometimes people would step into one of those roles out of their teaching fellowship and do one of those leadership roles for a year and then step back into the funding stream of their department, which was really great to have that kind of opportunity.

16:20 Emily: Yeah, that’s kind of some more jobs to go around. I guess.

16:23 Carly: That’s right.

Commercial

16:27 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. As a listener of this podcast, every week you hear strategies that another PhD has used to improve their financial picture. But listening and learning does not automatically translate into action in your own financial life. If you are ready to change how you think about and handle your money but need some help getting started, I can be of service. There are two main ways you can work with me to create and implement a financial plan tailored for you. First, I offer one-on-one financial coaching, either as a single session or a series as you make changes over the long-term. You can find out more at pfforphds.com/coaching. Second, I offer a group program called The Wealthy PhD that is part-coaching, part-course, and part-community. You can find out more and join the waitlist for the next time I open the program at pfforphds.com/wealthyPhD. I believe it’s possible to succeed with your finances at every stage of PhD training and throughout your career. Let’s figure out together how to make that happen for you. Now, back to the interview.

History of the UMass Amherst Union

17:41 Emily: So, you kind of talked about what your experience was again as a student at UMass. When was the union at UMass Amherst established?

17:50 Carly: This was established in the 1990s, so by the time I was there, it was a really longstanding, well-established union, sometimes even seen as a model for organizing in other places. Around the time I was there, the University of Connecticut organized as well. And so, yeah, there wasn’t a lot of memory of what that was like at first, although I think it was kind of tense, and I believe that the students did go on strike to help create that union. When I was there, when we would bargain every maybe two or three years–I think that’s right–it could get a little bit tense with the relationship in terms of like the bargaining team and the administration. But other than that, usually it was pretty calm. A lot of people didn’t know that we were unionized, which was kind of interesting and a little discouraging. If you’re involved in the union, you’re like, “Hey, you know, this is like this really great thing that’s happening here.” But yeah, so it was interesting.

18:52 Emily: So, while you were in graduate school, it sounds like since there were contracts being renegotiated every two or three years, did you see any changes year over year to those contracts?

19:06 Carly: For sure. So, we always would bargain–I’m now using the word “we” to just being “we the union,” I wasn’t on the bargaining team–but we always negotiated for higher wages. So, it was usually between a 2-3% raise. I’d want people to know that when you’re talking about one and 2%, you’re usually just keeping up with the cost of living. So, we get excited when it’s 2-3%, right? And you’re just getting a little bit higher than that.

19:33 Emily: Is that 2-3% over the two-to-three-year period or is that every year within that period?

19:40 Carly: Yeah, so because it was usually stepped up. So, maybe it would be 1% for the first year and then 2% for the second year, or something like that. And so, you would see gains over cost of living, I guess, is the important point. You know, one thing that people don’t think about sometimes is that if you’re not getting a raise that at least equals cost of living, your employer is paying you less money for the same work. And that’s one of the benefits of the union experience. You start to think in those terms a little bit, which everyone benefits when they’re kind of thinking about that for themselves. I guess the major point I want to make is that it was over the cost of living.

How About Changes in Fees?

20:21 Emily: Yeah. How about the fees? Because I mean, you said already that the fees were at least set up so that you could pay them with each paycheck. But something I’ve seen at other universities is, not only is the pay stagnant, but the fees are increased. The out-of-pocket fees are increasing. Did you see any changes to that fee structure while you were there?

20:43 Carly: I think our fee structure stayed about the same. I don’t remember any major changes with the fees. So, that’s not one thing, but maybe a different example of a gain would be the health insurance difference. So actually, and this is sort of a larger context and other union leaders that you interview can probably corroborate this, but a lot of union work and bargaining is holding onto as much of what you already had as you can because unions are not as powerful as they used to be. And so, usually when you’re bargaining, you’re trying to mitigate something disastrous that the management is doing. They’re usually slashing something and you are using your collective power to mitigate that as much as possible. That’s going to sound really cynical to some folks, but when we’re talking about the benefits side of things, it just is true.

21:33 Carly: So, for example, the insurance turned into kind of a co-insurance the first year I started. So, I don’t remember what it was exactly the year before I started, but I remember that they upped it to like a $5,000 deductible, which was a huge difference from before. And the union over time and a lot of effort was able to cut that to $2,500. That’s half. Right? Still wasn’t as good as it was before, but with the rising costs of health insurance and just unions just being what they are in the U.S. right now, that was what they were kind of able to do. You wouldn’t feel that difference if you don’t have like a major accident or a chronic illness, but for people who are experiencing that, it was a major difference for them.

Any Downsides or Tradeoffs with the Union?

22:20 Emily: Yeah. I appreciate you making the point about it’s not necessarily about seeing gains, like while again just a beneficiary of the contract, but rather you don’t know behind the scenes what is being pushed back against, you know, what changes might have been had there not been some bargaining power there on behalf of the student workers. Were there any downsides or tradeoffs you would say for the union being in place at UMass Amherst?

22:50 Carly: Right. So really the major thing is that you’re going to pay union dues, and depending on what state you live in, that might look different. So when I was at UMass, it was 2% which is something like two hours worth of labor, I think is the way that they figure that. And so there was the option to be an agency fee payer and now we’re kind of getting into the legislation around union membership and that kind of thing. And if you didn’t want to pay the 2%, and you could be an agency fee payer and pay 1.7% because of the laws in effect in Massachusetts at that time. Somewhere like Indiana, you could get away with paying zero, but you’re still covered because you’re in the bargaining unit. You still get all those benefits, anything that they bargain you get. If something terrible happens in your workplace, like you’re sexually harassed, the union is behind you 100% and they do all of the things that they would do for anyone else.

23:48 Carly: But then you’re either not paying the dues, somewhere like Indiana, or you’re paying a smaller amount. And so at UMass Amherst it was 1.7 or 2%. You’d be surprised how many people chose the 1.7. And I understand that because people are thinking, I want as much of my paycheck as possible. But you know, from my perspective it’s like, “Pay the 2% and be a voting member.” That’s kind of changing. There are some changes with legislation around that. I’m actually not sure how long Massachusetts will be able to do that. I think they’re about to go to a system where they can’t require that 1.7% anymore. But so, right. Paying dues. Something that people think about is a potential trade-off would be maybe the attitudes on campus around the union. Do we have an adversarial kind of relationship with the university? And that kind of thing.

24:40 Carly: And not really, I mean, if you’re on the bargaining committee, it could get kind of tense with the administration during that time, as I said before. But being part of the union or being a union member from my experience, didn’t make like my advisor feel differently about me. It didn’t make me seem like a troublemaker, you know. It was just, it was kind of normal because the union had been there so long. If I had been there during like the initial fight, I guess you could say it might be different.

Other Union Groups on Campus

25:09 Emily: Yeah, I can definitely see how that could be the case. But with a union in place for decades, it’s just kind of part of the landscape now. Were there any other union groups on campus? Like adjuncts or faculty or postdocs or staff members, anything like that?

25:23 Carly: Yes. So the postdocs were in the same union with us. They were a different shop, but within the same union. And they were you know, maybe like less active because they were usually on campus for maybe one or two years. The faculty were also unionized, but they were in a different union. The staff were unionized and they were in a different union. And then also I think Massachusetts at that time had legislation where any contract work that they did on campus, like construction, etc., they had to hire union workers or at least there were some incentives to doing that. So, If we marched around with signs about something like the co-insurance issue, we had support from all different directions. And sometimes we would have events and actions, you know, together. But I remember specifically one time marching across campus with a sign and the guys over here on the forklift doing whatever they’re doing construction-wise, like kind of honking and supporting us. So, it was kind of a cool way of being part of a community on your campus as well.

26:24 Emily: I’m really glad to get this picture of an established union for the graduate students and postdocs–or postdocs separately, different shop–but then also just pretty much most people on campus, right? Being part of one union or another. So it’s a very normalized part of the culture. So this is a very, I guess maybe could say like quiescent situation. Like, it’s just this is how things are at that university. So we may hear in other interviews I do in the next few months from some different situations where unionization is a newer concept or maybe only the graduate students are unionized, not other people.

26:56 Carly: Right.

Anything Else About Your Union Experience?

26:56 Emily: I don’t know. So it’s really interesting. I’m really glad to have your perspective there. So, anything else you want to add on this before we wrap up?

27:03 Carly: You know, I would say, just looking back on my time at Purdue, I remember that they made a change with our health insurance benefits once where suddenly like birth control was not going to be covered at all whatsoever. It didn’t matter what your doctor said, if you needed it to live, it doesn’t matter. Right. And I remember being really angry about that and not feeling like I could do anything. If that had happened at UMass Amherst, hell no. That would not have gone without a fight and it probably would have eventually gotten into the contract that that has to be covered. And it was covered. That kind of thing was covered through our insurance. So, you know, just looking back, you think a lot differently, and I feel really grateful that I was part of that and I was actually able to do research and writing, which is what you’re there to do. So, it was great.

27:48 Emily: Yeah. It sounds like your experience at Purdue, versus at UMass, that you were much more supported as like a well-rounded student, I guess you could say. Which is kind of a funny thing to say when we’re talking about unions because we’re really focused on employees, right? Like the important part is that you were an employee of the university and therefore were part of this bargaining unit and so forth. But what I’m thinking of is that you really were supported more as a whole student rather than at Purdue, it sounds like you were treated like you’re a TA. In terms of the relationship between the university and you, that’s what they cared about. You’re serving as a TA, that’s what you’re being paid for, et cetera. Maybe you had other types of relationships with other people there, but in terms of the administration, they saw you as a worker who was just there to perform some task.

Grad Students: When are you Working versus Studying?

28:41 Carly: I see your intuition, totally, but it’s almost the opposite. And let me kind of explain that. So, at Purdue, if there was pushback about something like pay, et cetera, the rationale that the university would give is this is your stipend, this isn’t wages. You’re a student and this is a stipend that you get. Because if they thought about us as workers, then they would have to reckon with what are we getting paid hourly, right? What does that calculate to? And that was some of the rationale against some agitation to unionize while I was there. Actually there was some movement towards that, which is a whole other story. But yeah, that was usually their argument if someone had to complain about something. At UMass, they saw us as workers more than at Purdue, and we benefited from that.

29:31 Carly: But sometimes there was still a little bit of that. If there was something that someone’s complaining about, if they could benefit by seeing you as a student for these purposes and as a worker for these purposes and they could work the system to sort of benefit in certain ways. And usually when we insisted on being seen as workers, that’s when we would usually do the best. So, it’s kind of interesting that you say that because it kind of gets us into the heart of that question is like, when are you working and when are you studying? And I would argue that you really have two jobs. One is the thing that you’re getting your pay and benefits for, and the other thing is your research and writing and thinking. And that’s also your job.

30:09 Carly: And so, if you’re at a place where you’re unionized, you can do both of those jobs. If you’re at a place that isn’t, you may find that you’re only doing one of your jobs because the rest of your time is your side hustle to try to kind of make up for the pace. So, that’s kind of a long-winded way of saying that you’re really hitting at the heart of the question, which is when are you a student? When are you a worker, and why does that matter? What are the implications for that?

30:31 Emily: I’m so glad that we got to that additional level of insight on this. I guess that I was thinking more so, and you brought this up too, is like that the university maybe in a nonunion situation sees that their graduate students are both employees and students, and they’re going to do whatever’s best for them in terms of, do I want to treat you more as a student? Do you want to treat you more as an employee? Well, we’re just going to do whatever is in our best interest. The dual relationship in that case can work against the student worker. Whereas, it sounds like what you’re saying, at least in the case when you have unionized in terms of your work, that is more protected, and then you as an individual can have that protected part of your compensation, your benefits and so forth, be able to enable you to do the other part of your job as you said, which is actually what you’re in grad school to do, like kind of scholarship and your own professional development. Does that sound right?

31:31 Carly: Yep, absolutely.

Financial Advice for Early-Career PhDs

31:32 Emily: Okay. I’m so glad we got there, and so last question as we wrap up, Carly, which is just what I like to ask everyone. What is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD?

31:43 Carly: I would say, and this is right from what we were just talking about, which is what you’re doing is work, and it’s labor. And don’t forget that, and think about what it’s worth. And when you’re doing things, think about how is that coming back to you in terms of hourly work. So, thinking about how much time you’re spending on different components of your teaching and your research and your writing, and how is that coming back to you and what’s it worth to you? Sometimes people say don’t do anything for free. Maybe sometimes, but like know what you gave away, right? Know what was the value of that. And it has really helped me think about like my career steps afterwards and thinking about what I’m worth and what I want. So yeah, what you’re doing is work. It is.

32:32 Emily: Well, thank you so much for this interview, Carly. I really enjoyed speaking with you about this really sort of topical and timely issue in getting your perspective from those two different institutions you’ve been part of. So thank you.

32:46 Carly: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Outtro

32:49 Emily: Well, 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.

Filed Under: Income Tagged With: audio, grad school, grad student, money story, Non-Union, transcript, Union, video

Meal Prepping Has Benefitted This Prof’s Time, Money, Health, and Stress Level

November 11, 2019 by Lourdes Bobbio

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Brielle Harbin, and assistant professor at the Naval Academy. Brielle realized early on in grad school that she had to reform her eating patterns, and she slowly worked her way into meal prepping. She describes her current meal prep practice, including what she eats and when she shops and cooks. Meal prepping is an excellent practice for early-career PhDs as it almost always saves time and money and improves health. Brielle outlines a perfect first step for people who want to start meal prepping.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Sign up for personal finance coaching
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Wealthy PhD group program sign-up
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Podcast Hub
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Subscribe to the mailing list
  • Find Dr. Brielle Harbin on Twitter

meal prep postdoc

Teaser

00:00 Brielle: And just start off with a very reasonable goal. Say, for a month, I’m going to meal prep my breakfast and I’m just going to try and get into the practice of preparing that and figuring out what that is. And then once that’s under your belt, then you can add, I think the next thing I added was a morning snack. So okay, now I’m doing the morning snack and once I had that under my belt, then I did lunch. Don’t try and go 0 to 100 that that’s not going to happen. So be very realistic about what’s the easiest thing that has the least amount of barriers for you to be successful and start there.

Introduction

00:40 Emily: Welcome to the personal finance for PhDs podcast, higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season 4, episode 13 and today my guest is Dr. Brielle Harbin, a new assistant professor at the Naval Academy. These days, Brielle is a skilled meal prepper, but things weren’t always that way. She tells us how her cooking and meal planning has evolved over her years in grad school and her post doc and describes the sustainable, flexible system she developed. Brielle’s commitment to meal prepping, has reaped benefits in her time, money and health. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Brielle Harbin.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:23 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Brielle Harbin, who is going to be speaking to us about meal prepping, which is a topic that I am so excited to learn from her about. So Brielle, will you please tell us a little bit about yourself?

01:36 Brielle: Sure. Thank you so much for having me. My name is Brielle Harbin and I am a political scientist by training. I got my PhD at Vanderbilt. I graduated in 2016 and I then went to the university of Pennsylvania for post doc and I was there for three years. And now I am actually beginning in my very first week of being an assistant professor and I have my new job at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. So I now live in Annapolis, Maryland.

02:10 Emily: That is amazing. And thank you for taking the time out of this first week to speak with us.

Cooking Habits Before Meal Prepping

Emily: Let’s take it all the way back to when you were in graduate school, before you got into meal prepping. What was your starting point with respect to cooking and how you managed your food and everything?

02:28 Brielle: Sure. I was very fortunate that I always liked to cook. I think I cooked my first Thanksgiving dinner when I was in seventh grade. So I’ve always had a passion for cooking. When I was in grad school, I learned pretty quickly, especially the first semester when you’re taking coursework and you just have so many things that are being thrown at you that one of the biggest time sucks is going to get food. So that was quickly on my list of things to try and figure out how I can minimize the amount of time. It took quite a while for me to do that, and I can get into some of the different phases that I went through in that, but I started off with just, “I know I need to do this, but how can I do this when I don’t really have that much time?”

03:19 Emily: And are you speaking now about cooking in general or like cooking in an efficient way? Time efficient.

03:26 Brielle: Yeah. Trying to cook in a time efficient way. Because you know, as someone who loved cooking, I would always do it more in a social way. So I’d have people come over and it’s like, “Oh, I’m going to cut this and I’ll sit down and I’ll chat.” But when you’re in grad school, you don’t really have that liberty. I had to figure out, okay, how can I, one think and create a plan for what I’m going to cook, and then I need to think about, okay, when am I going to get it? Where am I gonna get it from? How am I gonna store it? How am I going to pay for it? It just became a much bigger logistical issue, then from just enjoying to do it with family and friends.

04:08 Emily: Yeah. It sort of sounds like cooking went from maybe more of like a hobby and an enjoyable activity to okay, I have to feed myself. It has to be monetarily efficient. It has to be time efficient, because there’s no slack in my schedule and in my budget for another way of doing things, at least not on a regular basis. So, we just mentioned a couple broadly a couple of barriers: going to obtain food, the budget, the amount of time it takes. Is there anything you want to go more in depth on about when you were trying to move towards what ultimately became meal prepping, what was maybe holding you back from being fully successful with it during graduate school?

04:49 Brielle: Well, one, I just think I was unrealistic in terms of how much I was spending. I didn’t have a great sense of how big of a cost it was. And so one of my earliest steps in trying to create a process was actually tracking how much I was spending on eating out. The way that my brain works is I need to have some type of motivation to help keep me, especially if time is zero-sum and you know, I have a lot of things competing. So when I saw the number of how much I was spending on eating out and then thinking about how much time it takes if my order is wrong and I’m unhappy with the meal, it just didn’t make sense anymore. I think, and I’ve talked to a lot of friends because everyone always asked me about my meal prepping, I think a lot of people don’t have a strong sense of how much they’re spending because you know, it’s a coffee here, it’s a quick run to, you know, whatever restaurant there and you never really aggregate the data. But as a social scientist, I guess this is my quantitative brain coming to bear. I wanted the data and once I saw the data, it was pretty ugly.

06:00 Emily: Yeah. That’s interesting that you bring that up because I feel like there’s a couple of different styles right with this. So there’s the style of what you were just saying. Maybe eating out quite frequently or making small trips to the grocery store and it’s sort of dribbling out money and dribbling out time and it is hard to, to keep track and add up what all that is if you’re not doing it quite intentionally versus like the meal prep approach is more like, okay, you’re going to do your shopping trip — maybe it’s once a week, whatever it is, a certain frequency, it’s a big trip — and then you’re going to do this big investment of time to do all the prep. And so it feels like a lot for the day or two it takes to do that. But then it pays off so much the rest of the time and you’re not dribbling out time and dribbling out money on continuing to shop and prepare food and so forth. It’s really a reallocation of time and money and like you were saying it, you become more aware of how much you’re spending in both of those areas with the meal prep, but it doesn’t mean it’s more in money or time than doing it the other way. It’s just your awareness is different of it, right?

07:01 Brielle: Yeah. The biggest thing and when I started my meal prepping, I wasn’t always saving a huge amount of money. I was always saving something because eating out can get pretty expensive pretty quickly. But the biggest changes were occurring in the amount of time I was just traveling, having to go places and whatever. If there’s traffic and all the different things that can hold you up, that was just consuming a lot of time and actually creating quite a bit of anxiety for me around if I’m going to lose my parking space so then I have to go at this time. It’s just a lot of brain space that it was taking up for met that seemed like a not great use of my time.

07:42 Emily: That’s another really interesting thing for me to hear. I’ve become more, I think, sympathetic over the years, as my life has gotten more full, to the advantage of totally simplifying decision making, and not having to make a decision in the moment of, “okay, where am I going to go eat and when is it going to be and what am I going to eat.” If it’s just like it just in this one small area of what are you going to eat, if I’ve already decided that in advance, it really is kind of, for me, a load off my mind, so I’m sure other people come to the same decision maybe in terms of routines that they go through in their daily basis or maybe they always wear the same types of clothing or whatever. There’s lots of ways that we can simplify our decision making and preserve that energy for other areas of our life and planning your meals is one of those areas.

08:27 Brielle: Yeah, I’m really into different professional development things and time saving. I’ve listened to several podcasts that are just about that. And I think, I can’t remember what I read or what I listened to, but I remember reading that, I think President Obama always wore a similar outfit because he didn’t want to have to waste the mental energy. And I was like, well, if it’s good enough for President Obama, it’s good enough for me. That really resonated with me and helped me a lot.

Getting Started With Meal Prepping

08:56 Emily: Okay. So you’re in graduate school and you have this eating out habit and this lovely hobby of cooking, but it has to become a little bit more utilitarian maybe overtime. Now it seems like, or let’s say in your post doc, prior to your move, you got to a really great spot with your meal prep. Can you tell me about how you did that? How did you make that transition?

09:22 Brielle: Beginning, and can I go back for a second to grad school, the way that I was able to make that transition, I actually started with the buddy system. I had a really good friend that I met actually the day of our orientation at Vanderbilt and he just happened to love to cook too, and also had a habit of doing it and similar stressors that were coming into life. Since we were in different departments and had different life things that were coming up at different times, I think, I can’t remember, I’m pretty sure I started it. I think he was taking an exam and I just went over there with three days worth of food, so that he didn’t have to think about it. And he was like, that is really nice. When I was going through a big exam, he came over with three days of something for me and then it kind of became a friendly competition because he has a Caribbean background and so all the things that he was very familiar with were not foods that I had before. It became, “Ooh, let me introduce you to this food that I love and that food” and it became a social thing, which outside of the efficiency question, which is nice to have a friend in to bond that way. I always tell people it’s not always realistic and I frankly don’t want to eat everybody’s food, but if you have that opportunity, it’s a really great way to mix up the meal prep process and when you are kind of at the height of all the things on your plate, maybe you have someone who’s not as busy and is willing to step in for you. So that really helped. Once I started with that, I never really fully got consistent every week in grad school with meal prepping just because honestly you have so many things going on that I think if you’re 50/50, that’s a good goal to have with meal prep.

11:14 Brielle: But once I moved to the postdoc, I realized this is less stressful now, I don’t have as many things on my plate, and I was craving stability. Honestly, I was just so stressed out during grad school and I’m feeling some of the effects of being post PhD in terms of the stress level that it has on your body, and I really felt and craved eating for holistic health. I actually briefly had a blog where I was kind of getting into different foods, how they make you feel, the effect that they have on your body, so I was doing all this research and then trying to incorporate these ingredients into my weekly meal prepping. It just became, after awhile, I think it was June in 2017, I just said, I want to, for two months, meal prep every Sunday. I’m going to do this for two months and then I’ll see how it feels. I’m going to take pictures on Facebook for accountability because that’s what we do these days. After two months I just felt so much better. I was getting better sleep, I was just feeling less stressed out during the day and like I was better powered in terms of my energy that I just stuck with it.

12:36 Emily: I love that approach of setting yourself a challenge right over a set period of time to really put your all into it and then decide at the end of it, was it worth it or was it not? I talk about this sometimes in the context of what I call frugal experiments. And meal prepping is a big frugal experiment, right? That’s a big, big timeline and these could be very minor, but I really just love the idea of having a set in advance, fixed period of time to have an experiment and evaluate the results at the end of that. It sounds like at the end of that period you were ready to keep rolling because you’d experienced so many advantages.

Meal Prep Routine

Emily: Can you tell me about what is the system that you came to? You’ve mentioned Sunday already, so just tell us what is the meal prep process for you?

13:23 Brielle: It started off where I was on Thursday and ended up being on the Fridays because I was usually tired on Friday afternoons. I would think about what is it that I want to eat for the next week and I would come up with a shopping list. I’m super organized and so I always went to the same grocery stores so I knew exactly which section everything was in. I created my shopping list by sections so that I could just get in and get out because I love to cook but I hate grocery shopping. Behind laundry, it’s the only thing I hate more in terms of just life stuff. I would do on Friday the shopping list and then on Saturday I always went to a morning spin class that was fairly close to the grocery store that I would go to. So I’d always go to the same class and immediately after go to the grocery store on Saturday morning and then on Sunday and not at a particular time, just sometime on Sunday I would actually cook the food.

14:23 Emily: Yeah. I think that’s a pretty common lay out for a meal prepper, right? To do the prep on Sunday and do the shopping on Saturday. I’ll start interjecting some of my own thoughts here at this point in the interview because meal prepping is something that I have tried maybe a little bit half-heartedly and not been very successful with. I definitely agree that you need to separate the shopping from the cooking. It’s all too much to do in one day. For me, trying to do all the cooking that I would eat for the week — and actually this is when I had a family, so it’s actually a lot of food — I was exhausted by the end of six hours or something and I was like, I haven’t even gotten through everything I planned and I felt like an abject failure. So tell me for the actual, on Sunday when you’re doing the meal prepping, what are you doing? What foods are you cooking? Are you making components that you then assemble into meals right then? Or are you making things that you’ll be assembling later?How does it actually work for you?

15:25 Brielle: So at some point, and I don’t remember exactly when this happened, I realized that I was having a challenge in my meal prepping because I really didn’t like the Tupperware I was using. That seems like such a small detail, but if you want to transport it and then microwave things, Tupperware can get pretty gross pretty quickly. Especially I would use a lot of curries and things like that. The big thing that shifted my process was getting Pyrex, and they are a little bit more expensive, but it’s actual glassware. I actually separate each one of my lunches into a different Pyrex bowl and I started off where I was trying to prep salads and I think that’s probably the most common question I get. How do I do that? And so for me, I always just put the leafy greens in one of the Pyrex things and then I have the component pieces in separate ones and then the sauce in a third smaller one, and then I combine it when I’m ready to eat, just because you don’t want to have a soggy salad.

16:37 Emily: I want to be clear about what I’m imagining here. I’m imagining you on a Sunday, you have your five, or seven, or however many you’re doing, bowls for your greens and you have your five, or seven for the toppings and then you have your five or seven dressing separately. All those are like individually packaged already starting on Sunday, is that right?

16:25 Brielle: Yes. I don’t actually have five separate for the dressing. I usually just use a Mason jar and made the bigger one and then I would just pour it into the smaller one because that’s a pretty easy clean. But yeah, otherwise you’re correct. I have a lot of pictures and posts I did on Facebook that showed my five dinners, because I usually do five, five lunch and five dinner.

Commercial

17:24 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. As a listener of this podcast, every week you hear strategies that another PhD has used to improve their financial picture. But listening and learning does not automatically translate into action in your own financial life. If you are ready to change how you think about and handle your money, but need some help getting started, I can be of service. There are two main ways you can work with me to create and implement a financial plan tailored for you. First, I offer one-on-one financial coaching, either as a single session or a series, as you make changes over the long term. You can find out more at PFforPhDs.com/coaching. Second, I offer a group program called The Wealthy PhD that is part coaching, part course, and part community. You can find out more and join the wait list for the next time I open the program at PFforPhDs.com/wealthyPhD. I believe it’s possible to succeed with your finances at every stage of PhD training and throughout your career. Let’s figure out together how to make that happen for you. Now, back to the interview.

Meal Prep Recipe Ideas

18:39 Emily: Okay, you’ve talked us through salads. What are some other common meals or foods that would show up for you?

18:46 Brielle: I make a little bit of everything. I think one of the biggest things I tackled was getting bored with things. I had some regular meals that I would make, and then, after a while, I realized I think I’ve gotten tired of at some point or another, shrimp, and chicken, and all these kinds of things. I became a master at Googling ingredients and then finding new things that I would experiment with. Through that process, I figured out sometimes, you know, a picture looks nice, but when you get into the details of the recipe, it’s like all these elaborate things and all these mini micro steps that take a lot of time, so I use them for inspiration, but I didn’t always follow recipes one-to-one.

19:39 Emily: Just to follow up on that — do you have any go to resources to find, let’s say recipes specifically designed for a meal prepping or are you more adapting recipes? Not necessarily for that purpose, but just you do it on your own?

19:53 Brielle: I don’t necessarily do it for meal prep specifically, but I found a couple of sites that I like. There is a blog, Sweet Potato Soul and it is actually run by a woman of color named Janae and she is vegan. I went through a phase of just prepping vegan stuff. One of the things that I have continued to have, even though I’m not a vegan, in my weekly routine, is I love Buddah bowls because they’re so easy to just throw a grain in there, throw some chickpeas, and some toppings and she has a lot of great ideas for Buddha bowls. I would say that that is a staple and you can always change the ingredients of what’s in the Buddah bowl, but it’s really easy.

20:40 Emily: This is another example of simplifying the decision making, right? That you have like a baseline type of meal you make — salads, Buddha bowls — and then you can shift things up as your taste directs you. Any other resources you care to mention or any other types of food that you love to prep?

20:57 Brielle: I don’t have a specific recommendation beyond I think one of the most important things is going with the flow and listening to your process and not being too hard on yourself, if you don’t get it right. For me, there were a lot of different adjustments that I made along the way and you just have to roll with it and beating yourself up doesn’t help at all. But if you can just become more aware of maybe certain times of the year you like this type of foods or when you’re taking a test, this feels more of a comfort. Just paying better attention to yourself, which can be really hard in grad school, I think that’s the best advice I could probably give someone who’s trying to embark on the journey.

Saving Money Through Meal Prepping

21:39 Emily: Yeah, it sounds a little bit like budgeting actually. You may think it’s going to look one way when you haven’t quite dived into the process yet, but then it’s going to evolve as you evolve and your life changes and so forth, and you’ll learn more about yourself and what makes you happy and satisfied. Speaking of budgeting, do you think that you’re spending less money overall with this meal prepping stuff or how has meal prepping affected your budget?

22:07 Brielle: I definitely have saved money over time. The biggest shift actually though came when I changed my process from, I think I mentioned before that I would on Friday create a list and then go on Saturday. Once I got more comfortable with what I like to eat, I actually didn’t create a list and I would go into the store and find what’s on sale. I think when I was doing the list thing, I was spending some like $115 a week and I eat a lot of organic things, a lot of fruit and veggies, I get all organic meat, so that’s kind of at the top end of things. But I went from that to spending about $65 a week by just eating what was in season. So I think that’s a considerable difference.

22:59 Emily: Oh, that’s huge. That’s much higher than I was expecting actually. And did you then or do you now do all of your shopping at one store? You already mentioned your routine of going after your cycling class or spin class, but is it always one place or do you have a few different stores you hit in rotation?

23:16 Brielle: Now it’s just one, but at one point I was, there’s a produce junction that was in Philadelphia that I found one of the administrators at Penn told me about it, and you could buy fruit and vegetables in bulk. Now my challenge is that I’m single and so I would buy things and I was wasting a lot of foods. That didn’t work for me, but for somebody who has a family, I think finding some of those alternative options where you can buy in bulk would be a great option, but it just wasn’t for me. I wanted to say one thing to make sure that I acknowledged this, while it was still in my brain. I was a single person in grad school and I know a lot of people aren’t. A lot of times people would say, “Oh, I can’t really do that because I’m a mom where I have like this or that.” I’ve actually become much more attentive to asking my sister friends who have children and meal prep, how do you do this? And I think the biggest difference in the process is that some of the women that I have talked to say that they eat more stews and soups because you can just throw everything in a crockpot and it’s really easy. They may go to the grocery store twice, rather than once a week. I think it’s still possible to do it, it just might look different in that phase of life.

24:38 Emily: Yeah. And I think that goes to what we were just saying earlier is that this kind of has to evolve with you as things change for yourself and your family. I know that when I was in graduate school and just cooking between myself and my husband, I was using our Crock-Pot so much. I wasn’t really into meal prepping, but I would do bulk cooking. So like huge thing in a Crock-Pot, feed me all week for lunches. It was a sort of minor step in that direction and I still love that approach of just make an enormous pot of something and be done for a little while. Again, it takes the decision making off the table because you know what you’re eating for the next week when you cook in such great volumes. Okay, you were really able to take you’re spending down. You’re eating this lovely food that you feeling wonderful for your body and so forth and you really took your spending down by becoming a little more flexible and being able to go for sale items, in season items, and making the decisions on the spot in the store. I know I’ve fallen into that trap sometimes too of being too emboldened into my list or feeling too flexible and I go back and forth, but that’s a great percentage reduction in your spending just based on that one step alone, so that’s awesome. Thank you for that discussion on buying in bulk versus not because of course different households have different needs there. I know, personally, we shop at Costco right now quite a bit and the buying and bulking from Costco gets a lot of criticism, “Oh, how are you ever going use a gallon condiment jar or whatever.” But we actually buy produce and meat at Costco because we do get through it and we just eat the same produce for several days in a row and it works for us well. Okay, so we’ve talked about the time and how you do it and the money and so forth. Why do you think that other people should be meal prepping? Or maybe you think, why should other people consider meal prepping? What benefits might they experience? And let’s specifically think about our population of early career PhDs.

Other Benefits of Meal Prepping

26:31 Brielle: The biggest benefit for me, and I think for others potentially, is just the health benefits. I think it’s really hard when you’re in the thick of grad school to give time to your mental, physical health, but it’s so important. Sleep deprivation and all the different thingsthat’s happening to your body when you’re in such a stressful period. If you can’t sleep eight hours, at the very least, you can give yourself some leafy greens and nourishing meals. I consider it, and I didn’t always follow my advice, is just a little bit of — I know people kind of don’t like the self care language now, but something you can do for yourself that you’re going to have to do no matter what. It’s not like, you know, it’s an elaborate expensive thing to just take care of yourself in that process.

27:20 Brielle: For me, actually when I started, I went through a couple of different phases with like doing Whole 30 and different types of food preparation techniques because I was experiencing some health issues and I actually figured out what my food intolerances were by meal prepping because I was able to eliminate things and put things into my diet where I figured out what was causing me inflammation. I think even for that reason alone, it’s really helpful to just know how different foods are affecting your body so that you can at least control that part of a life that is pretty out of control in grad school.

28:01 Emily: Yeah. Great point. Exactly as you said, you’re going to be eating anyway, you may as well make it something that’s going to fuel your body properly and keep you feeling good for all that work you have to do. Just as we’ve discussed before, I think the other potential benefits, depending on how you do it, are of course time savings and money savings. we’ve well covered that, but thanks for adding the health benefit there.

Tips To Get Started With Meal Prepping

Emily: Let’s say there’s someone listening like me. I’m listening and thinking I need to give this a shot, I needed to try this again. What are some easy first steps you would recommend?

28:39 Brielle: What I did was start small. For me breakfast is always a pretty simple meal that I’m always going to pretty much eat the same thing and just start off with a very reasonable goal. Say, for a month, I’m going to meal prep my breakfast and I’m just going to try and get into the practice of preparing that and figuring out what that is. And then once that’s under your belt, then you can add, I think the next thing I added was a morning snack. So, okay, now I’m doing the morning snack and once I had that under my belt, then I did lunch. Don’t try and go 0 to 100, that that’s not going to happen. So be very realistic about what’s the easiest thing that has the least amount of barriers for you to be successful and start there.

29:24 Emily: Yeah. Thank you so much for that advice because that is what I need to hear. I’ve been pretty successful in cooking like a casserole for breakfast that’ll last us the week. Something like that. Lunches are also pretty accessible for me. I think dinner’s the real challenge and that’ll be left for last in my next go around with this.

29:42 Brielle: Hold your confidence when you find yourself because there’s going to be benefits. I even noticed I was able to better control the calories once I was like, okay, I’m eating this for breakfast. So then I’m snacking less and it’s like, “Oh, I lost a couple of pounds. Ooh, I feel better.” Okay, so now I’m motivated to do the next thing. Like you, I was the type of person who needed a reward for every single thing and celebrated every single success. So there are a lot of those small milestones along the way that’ll keep you going. If you just commit to the very small thing of, let me work on my snack or my breakfast first.

Meal Prepping During Life Transitions

30:19 Emily: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for this wonderful view into your meal prep process and it’s really encouraging to hear that this is not something that was automatic for you from the beginning. It’s not something you learned as a child or anything. This is something you took years and years to develop. And of course there were times during graduate school when it wasn’t able to happen, but that doesn’t mean it can’t ever. And you’ve continue with that. How has it been with your latest move? Going from, you had your process down set when you were living for your postdoc and now you’ve moved. How has that gone?

30:59 Brielle: It was very chaotic. I think I was realistic in that if all my kitchen is literally in boxes, then I can’t cook. But it just takes a lot out of you to move, to pack and then to move. I thought, “Oh, okay, I’ll just jump in probably a week after and I’ll be back to it,” and that just didn’t happen. I just gave myself this space to say like, I’m gonna just enjoy eating out because even with my meal prep, I would still eat out on the weekends, just as a social activity. I allowed myself to do that and I’m just now kind of getting in, I moved at the end of May, and I’m now just a month or so later, finally getting back into my routine.

31:44 Brielle: It’s gonna look different because my life is different here, but I’m going with the flow. I think the other thing besides just moving that’s been a change in my routine is that, with my meal prepping, I got better in terms of feeling healthy with my food, which encouraged me to be better about my exercise. Now I’ve gotten to exercising five or six times a week, which now has changed how I had to meal prep, because in order to be able to do those workouts, I have to eat in a totally different ways. I think there’s never an end point in how this process works. However your life goes, you have to adapt and move with it. And so I don’t know, and I’m not feeling super successful about my food prep right now, but I know I will be if I just give myself some time.

32:35 Emily: Yeah. Unsurprisingly, what you eat is very intimately connected with many other areas of your life and health and work and sleep and exercise and so forth. And so yeah, just thanks so much for giving us a picture of that evolution with how meal prep has been fitting into your life over the last few years. Thank you so much for teaching us on this topic today.

32:55 Brielle: Thank you. And I wish everybody lots of success in whatever their journey looks like.

Outtro

33:02 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 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 Achive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

Filed Under: Frugality Tagged With: food, frugal, frugality, meal prep, money story

This Higher Ed Career Coach Worked Her Way Out of Financial Ruin Caused by the Great Recession

November 4, 2019 by Meryem Ok

In this episode, Emily interviews Beth Moser, a certified career coach specializing in higher education clients pursuing career change. Beth was All But Dissertation and pregnant with her first child when the Great Recession hit Phoenix and she was laid off from her museum job, so she and her husband lived on his graduate student stipend and the money she earned from odd jobs. Their home also lost enough value so as to go underwater, which tied them to Phoenix long-term while the value recovered. These events brought them to “financial ruin,” and they spent the next several years digging themselves out of that hole. Beth and her husband pursued several strategies to improve their finances over the coming years, including a career change for Beth, slashing household expenses, better financial management, and working with a financial advisor. Beth concludes with excellent money mindset advice for younger PhD trainees. You can find Beth at Academics at Work.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Personal Finance Coaching Sign-Up
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: The Wealthy PhDs Group Program Sign-Up
  • Solve Your Irregular Expenses Problem with Targeted Savings Accounts
  • How Finances During Grad School Affected This PhD’s Career Path
  • Beth Moser’s Website: Academics at Work
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Podcast Hub
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Subscribe to Mailing List

grad student recession

Teaser

00:00 Beth: I don’t have a dime to save. What are you talking about? There’s no point. And now I’m like, now having seen the power of stashing away $5 here, $10 there over time. I’m like, huh, what actually could I have saved? What might have been?

Introduction

00:23 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season four, episode 12, and today my guest is Beth Moser, a certified career coach and the founder of Academics at Work. Beth was ABD (all but dissertation), married to another grad student, and pregnant with their first child when the great recession hit Phoenix. She was laid off from her museum job at the same time their house went underwater, which brought them to what she calls “financial ruin.” Beth and her husband lived on his graduate student stipend and the money she earned from odd jobs while she reevaluated and eventually changed her career objectives. To climb out of that hole, they slashed their household expenses, implemented basic and advanced budgeting techniques, and worked with a financial advisor. Listen through the end of the episode to hear Beth’s excellent advice for PhD trainees regarding money mindset. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Beth Moser.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:26 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast today Beth Moser who has, well, quite a story for us, quite a financial story from her own personal life relating to her family and pursuing a PhD and having children and the great recession. So I’m really excited to dive into this story. Beth, would you please introduce yourself to us a little bit further? Tell us about your family and your career to date.

01:51 Beth: Sure. Thank you so much for having me, Emily. So my name is Beth Moser. I’m a certified career coach and I specialize in coaching higher ed clients who need career change. As part of that, I am a training manager who does professional development workshops for graduate colleges, for graduate students, postdocs and faculty on why they need to be incorporating this into their own lives and into their curricula. So I work in higher ed as well. I am married, I have a spouse who is an academic, and I have two children. But when this financial journey that we’re going to be talking about today started, I didn’t have children. So that was some time ago. And I live here in Tempe, Arizona.

What Led to Your “Financial Ruin”?

02:48 Emily: Yeah. Excellent. So let’s go back because what we’re going to be talking through here is kind of a perfect storm of events that brought you to–what you described to me when we talked for this episode–you described this to me as “financial ruin.” A sequence of events that brought you and your husband and your family to financial ruin in the midst of, you know, pursuing degrees and so forth. So, let’s find out what that was. What was the sequence of events here?

03:20 Beth: Sure. Yes, so some of this is unique to us and our circumstances and the timing. And some of it I think a lot of your listeners and readers can relate to. So, I went to get my PhD to go into what’s called an alternative academic or “alt-ac” career. I went to get my PhD so I could get a job in museums. And so, when I came out of working through my coursework and was in the midst of my dissertation, I landed a full-time job in the museum’s field, which was my ultimate goal. As you might surmise, it’s not a very well-paying field. Museums are of course, nonprofits. And so, when I started my first full-time job in 2006, I was making about $36,000 a year with no benefits. So, when I went to work full-time, my husband and I switched off.

04:25 Beth: He had wanted to get his PhD as well. So, since I had landed a full-time job and my career, he quit his full-time job to go start his PhD program. So, he got a stipend of making about $12,000 a year. So, total, I mean, for the two of us, for a single couple in their thirties, we were making about $48,000 a year in the Phoenix metropolitan area. So, not great, but not horrible either, especially when you’re considering we didn’t have children at that time when we moved here. For his PhD program, we bought a home because we thought, you know, well we can and that will keep our costs lower than rent. And so, we were fortunate in that respect, at least at the start. So, for the first three years of my full time career, I was not making more than about $36,000 a year.

05:26 Beth: But within three years with position increases and promotions, I eventually was making $50,000 a year plus benefits. I finally was making benefits, but that’s the first time. In my mid-thirties was the first time I started getting any employer retirement plan of any sort, including any employer match of any kind. So, I got started on saving for retirement relatively late into my career. Okay. So, in the midst of that I finally got pregnant. We had wanted to have children. I was three months pregnant when the recession had started hitting and I got laid off from the museum that I was working on. At that time, we spent four months surviving only on my husband’s graduate school stipend and me taking odd jobs here and there. You know, babysitting, working an office job for people for, you know, 12 bucks an hour, but nothing steady.

Aftereffects of the Great Recession in Pheonix, AZ

06:31 Beth: And then, when I was seven months pregnant, I finally landed a full-time benefits-eligible permanent job at a higher ed institution. But I only had two months of paychecks there before I gave birth and then had eight weeks of unpaid leave. So, during that summer in 2011, you know, we had already had three months of me not having an income. Of us surviving on my husband’s pretty paltry stipend, and then having the enormous cost of diapers and you know, cribs and strollers and car seats and all of that with no income on my part. So, in the midst of all of that, our lives were changing financially. They were changing personally. They were changing in ways big and small. In ways that were amazing and incredible, but also incredibly challenging as you can imagine. So, what finally led to what I call financial ruin is the aftereffects of the recession hit particularly hard here in the Phoenix area, and the home that we were living in lost over 50% of its value.

07:48 Beth: So we could not consider moving to downsize our living expenses because we were what’s called “underwater.” That meant that our home was worth far more than what we owed on it. And we did not qualify for state or federal programs to offset that or alleviate that to get out from under that because we were, and this is a great irony, too far underwater to qualify for that program to help us. So we found ourselves, you know, in the first year of our first child’s life, really relying on credit cards, unfortunately, relying on piecing together unemployment in odd jobs for several months, falling behind on monthly bills, and then finally starting to catch up once I was back at work full-time after parental leave. But it was really, really difficult to climb out of that over the next several years. So, that’s what I wanted to talk with you about today.

08:56 Emily: Yeah. Beth, thank you so much for that introduction. Oh man, it’s taken me back. I didn’t personally experience hardship during the great recession, but it’s taken me back to all the media coverage and everything because I was very involved in the personal finance, you know, sphere at that time. Just a terrible situation that so many people were in. You were not alone in being so far underwater, especially in your particular area. And wow, I’m really glad to have the opportunity to talk with you to get the second half that story. Right? Because we know that so many families were hit so hard by the recession. And of course with you personally, it ended up coinciding with, as you said, a wonderful time of life but also a particularly challenging time of life, especially financially challenging that is having your first child. So, I’m really glad to hear how you ended up climbing out of that because I think that’s the part of the story that we don’t hear so much. And especially how, you know, you did that as a person who was in higher ed, is working in higher ed and also your husband still pursuing his PhD at the time that we’re, you know, picking this up. Is that right?

09:57 Beth: Yes.

Strategies for Financial Recovery

09:58 Emily: Yeah. So, thank you so much for sharing that with us. So, okay. The strategies that you were using to climb out of the financial ruin and it’s taken, what, we’re going on eight years, it sounds like? Since this point you identify as like the low point?

10:12 Beth: Right.

Recovery Strategy #1/4: Increasing Income

10:13 Emily: So, it’s been quite a while. You’ve probably tried a lot of different things. So, we’re going to break down your strategies into three main categories and then kind of a catch-all. And so, the first one there is regarding increasing income. So, how did you do that? Aside from, as you just said, you landed a job. You actually weren’t out of work for too long, relatively, that’s not so bad. So, aside from that, again, a full-time job with full-time pay, what else were you two doing to increase your income?

10:41 Beth: So, when I was laid off from museums, I decided that that was the end of that career, unfortunately. I mean, that had been the goal of me going to graduate school. That had been the focus of my dissertation work. It was my passion. But when reality hits you, and especially when your life changes and your marriage becomes more of a priority or your partnership and having a family or children and other things outside of yourself that you have to consider financially, it just became really real that it was time for me to grow up, perhaps. I don’t really like to use that phrase, but to really get real with myself about what my financial needs were and what ours were in providing for, you know, a tiny child who was going to grow over the course of our lifetime. So, strategy number one was to accept and work through that difficult decision to close down one career and change directions.

Recovery Strategy #2/4: Decreasing Household Expenses

11:47 Beth: So, that helped me prioritize. I need something that pays at least a livable wage for myself and has great benefits including retirement plans and matching and of course, great health insurance in order to just, you know, close that chapter and move forward. So I targeted my job search exclusively to sectors and employers where my skills would transfer, but that was my priority. Finding employers that would pay a much better wage and that would provide those benefits. So, that was strategy number one in increasing my income: being really targeted with what sectors I was applying for and networking in and going after. The second strategy was to decrease our household expenses. Now, as I alluded to, we weren’t able to decrease our housing expenses. So, while our neighbors were scooping up the exact quality of homes at literally 50% of what we were paying for our mortgage monthly, we could not address that one. We tried to qualify for a program, a HARP program was what it was called and we didn’t. So, that was a fixed expense.

Did You Consider Taking the Foreclosure Hit?

13:11 Emily: I want to jump in there with a question because I do remember at the time a lot of people were walking away from their homes that were too far underwater, taking the foreclosure hit to their credit and just saying it’s too far gone. So you guys didn’t go that route. Did you think about it?

13:25 Beth: I did think about it and I consulted with others who had done it and people who had not done it. I decided not to do it because I held my credit score tightly at value. So I knew that we were going to come out of this someday (our financial circumstances). And I didn’t want to also have to tackle just a really horrible credit score because that can take years to repair as well.

13:52 Emily: Yeah, it sounded like it didn’t get to the point where you had to walk away. There may have been a point that it could have gone that direction, but because it sounded like you did an amazing job searching for and networking for the new job, it didn’t get to that point where it was a necessity.

14:07 Beth: Correct. Yes. And so, we sat down and we looked at what can we downsize on as far as our monthly expenses. So, we went down to sharing one vehicle. That way we didn’t have to carry insurance on the other car. We wouldn’t have gas expenses on the other car. We live within walking distance to grocery stores and coffee shops and so forth. So, we started walking to the grocery store decreasing mileage and usage of our vehicle and gas expenses. So, we would coordinate going to and from work together so that we had that only one vehicle expense. We used my husband’s vehicle because he did not have to pay for parking at his work, but I did at mine. So, he would drop me off, drive off to his job, park for free. He would come back and get me at the end of the day.

15:09 Beth: And then we really cut down on all like entertainment expenses. We got really lean and mean about it. So we dropped streaming services of all types. We didn’t even have the Netflix DVD service, which existed back in that day still. We didn’t do any movie rentals. We wouldn’t go out to movies. We cut down on eating out. And I mean, like by cut down, I mean, we did not do it. So, we got really disciplined about what expenses are necessary and which ones would be nice to have again in the future, but that we can’t afford right now. We made huge use of our libraries. We would rent DVDs and movies and streaming there all the time. But it just meant that we did not have the luxury of having, you know, just flip on the TV and whatever’s on tonight is what we’re going to be able to watch.

Decreasing Expenses while Starting a Family

16:05 Emily: How did this effort in decreasing expenses play with you having a baby for the first time? Because I think there’s an idea in our culture that babies need a lot of stuff and you have to provide a level of care for children. I don’t know. So, how were you handling applying the decreasing expenses mindset to your first baby?

16:30 Beth: So, one of the things that we did was I sat down with women friends of mine who had recently had babies and said, okay, you know, you go to the baby websites and you go to the stores and they give you this like, you know, flip book of all the things you need. Okay. What are the absolute essentials that I must have? And so for instance, people were saying, okay, yes, they’re going to tell you you need a pack and play. But really here’s my bassinet. My baby doesn’t even fit in it anymore. Use it for the first three months. And then when she needs to grow into a crib, we can go, you know, get you a crib at Target or whatever. You don’t need, you know, this, that or the other. You don’t need toys yet. She’s too little.

17:19 Beth: So it really helped me focus in on like: these are the absolute bare bones essentials that you need to have a baby. And just having, you know, that critical mindset about what we consume. Right? And I mean, if you think about it from the “this is a first-world problem” perspective. Like thinking about, okay, well families who live in tiny apartments in giant cities around the world or in smaller, more humble circumstances, they don’t need these things for their babies and their babies grow up healthy and beautiful too. So, just really being critical about the buying, what we could borrow from friends. Using secondhand stores for buying baby onesies and that sort of thing. And then luckily I was able to nurse so I didn’t have the expense of formula. I say, luckily I was able to, because there’s also this cultural presumption that, “just nurse and you’ll be fine.” But that is not always an expense that can be eliminated. I know many women who have been either physically unable to nurse or their baby can’t nurse and formula is no joke. It is really expensive. So, I do recognize that that was something we lucked out on.

18:38 Emily: Yeah. Thanks for those comments. I want to jump in here with some comments of my own as I have two children that are fairly young. So, it’s a recent thing for me. The first is, this is kind of weird, but my husband and I watched the documentary, which was available on Netflix, maybe it still is called “Babies.” It’s like a no-narration documentary just following these four babies in different countries through their first years of life. And so, it’s a really fun, funny kind of documentary. But what we took away from that is babies thrive in all kinds of different situations. Like, they’re good, they’re gonna develop, no matter if you have this, you know, doodad or this gadget or you do this thing this way or that way. You know, babies are very adaptable and, you know, robust and so it’s going to be fine.

Any Other Strategies to Decrease Expenses?

19:23 Emily: You know, no matter what you choose, it’s going to be okay. So, we enjoyed that and I’d recommend that to someone who is looking forward to becoming a parent. I really liked what you did in talking with multiple, other new mothers or recent mothers or recent parents to get their perspectives on what you actually need. I say multiple because babies are also very individual. And so, what was essential to one parent might not have been essential to another parent, might not be essential to you. And so it’s great to get an idea of from several different people. “Okay, that one person said that one thing was essential, but I didn’t hear that from, you know, so and so and so and so. So maybe I’ll hold off on that.” And I just think the idea of, as you said, like babies don’t need all the stuff from their first two years of life upon their birth. Right? You can acquire these things slowly as you determine that they actually make sense for you. So, it doesn’t have to be a buying binge like right at the beginning. So, Please continue on. Were there any other ways that you decreased your expenses during that period?

20:23 Beth: I mean that was the main thing, the main categories. We couldn’t, you know, decrease utilities or we couldn’t drop Wi-Fi. So those were the main things, like any entertainment sort of things. And then the other thing, you touched upon this earlier, are these like cultural messages that we receive as new parents. And one of the big ones especially that I see is like date night and how important it is to remain committed to your partner. Yes, that is of course important. But for the first six months of your baby’s life, you are so tired that even if someone had come and offered us date night, we would have been like, where’s the closest place where we can go take a nap? You know, so that was not something that we had any interest in spending money on anyway. But we really didn’t use a sitter. We didn’t go out for that sort of thing, honestly, for the first year at all. I mean for like birthday dinner out or something like that, we had a friend watch the baby. We would trade off and say like, “Hey, the baby’s very calm during mornings, so let’s go out and have a leisurely brunch together and bring the baby.” Right? Like you don’t have to buy into this messaging about how much children have to cost.

21:46 Emily: Yeah. Great, great point.

Commercial

21:51 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. As a listener of this podcast, every week you hear strategies that another PhD has used to improve their financial picture. But listening and learning does not automatically translate into action in your own financial life. If you are ready to change how you think about and handle your money but need some help getting started, I can be of service. There are two main ways you can work with me to create and implement a financial plan tailored for you. First, I offer one-on-one financial coaching, either as a single session or a series as you make changes over the longterm. You can find out more at pfforphds.com/coaching. Second, I offer a group program called The Wealthy PhD that is part-coaching, part-course, and part-community. You can find out more and join the waitlist for the next time I open the program at pfforphds/wealthyphd. I believe it’s possible to succeed with your finances at every stage of PhD training and throughout your career. Let’s figure out together how to make that happen for you. Now, back to the interview.

Recovery Strategy #3/4: Sticking to a Budget

23:06 Emily: Okay, so the third kind of category that we want to talk about is financial strategies or financial management. So what, aside from increasing income and decreasing expenses, could you do with your finances to help you through this period?

23:19 Beth: Okay. So, one of the things that we did was, and this is not going to be eye-opening to you, but it really was to us, was to finally follow the adulting advice of creating and sticking to a budget. I know how insane that sounds for people in their thirties to finally like “adult up” and sit down with an Excel spreadsheet and say okay, how much is Wi-Fi, how much is our utilities, how much is our car insurance, how much is our mortgage? But we started looking at that and sticking to it. So, that was first and foremost was getting real about these are our expenses.

24:07 Beth: Burying your head in the sand and pretending like, “Oh, you mean I have to pay my cell phone bill every month?” That’s not a viable strategy. So, actually facing the reality and the facts was another strategy that really helped us. You know, I think as academics in particular, you get a lot of messaging and a lot of training in your self-worth and therefore perhaps your, you know, financial value being wrapped up in your job title and what you tell people you do. But you cannot ignore the financial realities of what you have to provide for yourself and your family. And I don’t think there’s enough about that in graduate school for any of us. And I think for those of us who aren’t in graduate school in MBA programs or accounting or finance, like it’s just, you know, sort of back of the mind consideration. And so we finally decided to get real about that.

25:12 Emily: Yup. Classic advice, but always perennially good. And I kind of feel like, I guess I feel like some people can get away without budgeting if they make a lot of money or if they have very, very, very, very, very simple lives and simple desires. But 97% of the population I feel like would benefit from keeping a regular budget. So, it sounded like it took you a little bit longer to get there, but when the need was high enough, you did and you found it to be a useful tool.

Maintaining Your Budget for Continued Savings

25:44 Beth: Yes. And so, one of the ways we use that tool was even as we started to catch up on the backlog of expenses that we had been tacking onto credit cards out of necessity. So, we started to tackle debt. But then as my income rose over several years–because I stayed in this full-time role, I found a new career, I was doing good work, so I was getting promotions and increases over time–we maintained our budget. So, we could use that extra income not to like restore all the streaming services, and sign back up for the premium whatever, and start doing date night once a month, but to focus on getting rid of that debt and then start to tack away even tiny amounts for savings.

26:35 Emily: Yeah, you really had a large hole that you had to dig yourselves out of first before you could even consider increasing things on the lifestyle side. And again this is not, I mean, none of this was like your fault, right? Like this is all just what happened like nationally and in your housing market in particular that caused this. And I’m sure that, you know, it took so many years of sacrifice to do this and it must be frustrating that like you were kind of just generally a victim of what was going on, like more generally. So anyway, it must have been frustrating and difficult, but I really admire that you stuck at it and you stuck with it for so many years to ultimately get ahead.

The Benefits of a Financial Manager

27:14 Beth: Yeah. And so, one thing we did was we decided to add on one strategic expense and it was a huge expense to us at the time, but we met with a financial manager two times. So, I can’t quote this for sure, but I believe each session–I know each session was an hour–but I believe it was $150 an hour. And that was a huge add on for us at the time. But the knowledge and the toolkit that we came away with like has paid off in spades for years to come. So one of the things she did was she took our budget and she tried to convince us–and the first session, it was a little hard for us to hear this–that we did have spare room in our budget to start saving. And we were like, no, we really don’t.

28:10 Beth: But she actually did the math and she did some forecasting with us and she showed us that if you make your savings automatic and you start putting that away before you can even see it in your checking account so it’s not there for you to spend or consider spending, then you can honestly start to build up savings. And so she taught us about, we used a tool called Capital One 360. It’s an online bank and within that particular bank it’s free to set up an account and you can set up as many accounts as you need. So we set one up, for instance, for future child activities, like day camps during the summer or sports lessons or whatever. We set up one for travel with, I mean, we weren’t traveling at the time, but we were like, “Hey, maybe we’re going to want to take a big beach vacation, a weekend trip to San Diego one of these days.”

29:10 Beth: So we set up these little goal buckets in Capital One. And I’m telling you, like five bucks out of that paycheck and 10 bucks out of this paycheck, and what seems like a coffee here or a lunch there. Really small amounts. We were so skeptical that this strategy was going to work, but she had seen it work before and she had the expertise to back it up. So we said, we’ll give it a shot. And I have been continuously blown away by this, and I still use it to this day. So, within our first year of trying this, even with our really modest higher ed incomes–and my husband had finished his graduate school programming at that time but was on the job market, which as we know is problematic. So he was adjuncting only so we were not living large.

30:04 Beth: We were not high on the hog. We had climbed out of this debt and so forth, but we were not like, you know, going on extravagant vacations or anything like that–but in the first year we were able to save about $5,000. And then the second year, $10,000 on top of that. So, it completely blew me away that like five bucks here, 10 bucks there. Oh, I have a few extra dollars left over from grocery shopping. Okay. Tuck that away. We’re actually going to go put that in the ATM and transfer it over to the Capital One 360 funds and then we’re not going to touch those funds. They’re there for those goals. Just leave it and forget it. And they’re not making huge interest. Right? Like we are not talking about anything more than the interest rate you’d get at your bank or credit union. So, it’s not like this is some investment strategy. It’s literally just set it and forget it but don’t touch it. So that was a huge eye-opener for us.

Financial Advising Tip #1: Targeted Savings Accounts

31:08 Emily: I really love that you brought up this strategy because it’s one of my favorite ones. Especially for, you know, grad students and postdocs, people with lower cashflows, but I talk about this very, very frequently. I call it targeted savings accounts. Other people call it sinking funds. I’m not sure what term your advisor used, but it’s exactly what you described. Putting away a small savings rate with every single pay period. And then pulling the money back out when you have those, you know, a reason for it. If you want to take a trip or maybe you have car repairs or whatever the buckets are that you’ve set up. I also have seen this work in my own life and other people’s lives. And it is amazing that there’s actually a difference between saving in theory and saving in reality.

31:51 Emily: Like you might tell yourself, “I never have money, you know, I never have $5, $10 leftover at the end of the month. How could I possibly be saving anything?” Or like, “Oh yeah, I’m saving but my savings are just sitting in my checking account and oops, I actually kind of spend them from time to time without thinking about it.” It’s amazing what a difference it makes to actually sequester the money away from your general cashflow. And I really love that you particularly use Capital One 360. My husband and I currently bank with Ally, which has the same kind of structure, but I used to bank with Capital One 360 and it was totally great and you know, no big reason for the change, but I also set up targeted savings funds there. So, if anyone’s looking to implement this strategy, using an online bank like Capital One 360 or Ally is a really good choice because some of the larger brick and mortar banks might charge you fees for having accounts open or maybe they’ll charge you a fee if your balance drops below a certain amount.

32:45 Emily: And when we’re talking about these accounts, the balance might be $5. That’s all that might be in there at one point or another when you’re starting out or if you’ve just depleted it. So, it’s really important to have an account that has no minimums, and Ally and Capital One 360 both offer those kinds of accounts. So, really good tip to check those out. In particular, if you like this strategy, and I’ll link in the show notes some more writing I’ve done about this strategy. But thank you so much for describing it Beth.

Financial Advising Tip #2: Use Cash for Day-to-Day Expenses

33:09 Beth: Yeah, I mean it’s been huge for us. So, the other strategy that our financial advisor had us use was to use cash for all of our day-to-day expenses. And I’m not talking about the complicated, here’s the envelope for groceries and here’s the envelope for eating out and like figure all of that. No, just take a lump sum of cash out of each paycheck. And it sounds like a lot, like maybe it’s $400, maybe it’s $800. That, you would have to consult with somebody on, but use it for all your groceries, your cleaning supplies, your coffee shop runs, your lunches out, the beer happy hour after work, whatever it is. And the reason for that is, for whatever psychological reason, whatever behavioral economists call this, you really do think twice about that purchase when you’re using cash, much more than you would with your debit card. So, it has been incredibly powerful and honestly, I get a charge now at the end of every two-week pay cycle where I’m like, “Haha, I still have 40 bucks left over, and I’m actually going to shove that into my Capital One 360, because I actually do want to do like a trip to Denver next year and go have some amazing food and beer. And that’s going to be way more fun for me than using this 40 bucks to go out to lunch a couple of times this week.”

34:39 Emily: What I really love is with your leftover money that you saved it. You weren’t like, “Oh, leftover money. Yeah, great. I’m going to blow it. Like it’s already been accounted for.” You’re like, “No, I’m actually weighing like should I use it for this purpose in the here and now or should I use it for this purpose? Maybe it’s a longer term thing that I’m saving for.” And sounds like much of the time you said, “Nope, I have this other goal, I know exactly where this money is going to go, it’s going to give me more pleasure, more satisfaction to put it over here. Even though it’s, you know, saving in the meantime but it’s saving to spend in the short term.” So, I really love that you actually followed through on that because that’s the part that a lot of people don’t do is the last final step of actually saving the money that they have available to save.

Recovery Strategy #4/4: Research Your Resources

35:18 Beth: Yup. And the final strategy, which I’ll just touch on briefly, is it’s a lot of hard work and it’s a lot of discipline, and that can get tiring over time, but it pays off. So for instance, in 2013 when we had our second child, okay, childcare expenses are about to skyrocket. Like you wouldn’t believe. Well, okay, so let’s take the time and do a lot of research and homework and find a childcare share situation. So for that, we were able to find a place that during the academic year we had part-time childcare and we could take summers off but still hold our place for the next academic year. So that way during summers when my husband was adjuncting only online courses, he would watch the children at no childcare expense to us. So, it’s really hard to find that sort of circumstance, but you might have something equivalent in your life that it’s going be hard to find, but it’s going to be worth the effort to find.

Were There Any Other Strategies You Used?

36:23 Emily: Yeah, it just shows the creativity and the resource in terms of the time you were willing to put into researching certain things is not easy, as you said. But when you can apply those things, you can come up with financially pretty frugal solutions that still work for you. Okay. Were there any other strategies you want to get to that you were using during the period of those years?

Curate Social Media Exposure, Find Your Support System

36:47 Beth: I think a lot of it was trying as much as possible to curate what we looked at and saw. So like staying off of some social media sites where everybody’s flaunting their amazing vacations and you’re like, “Oh, I’m missing out on that.” Or you know, I started reading a blog for instance, about a woman who decided to see how much she could save by bringing her lunch to work every single day for an entire year. So just seeking out where you could that support system, whether it’s virtual or in real life, being really mindful about not going to those after-work happy hours where you know, “Okay, sure. One beer. Well, now I’m hungry, I’m also going to get an appetizer.” So really just being mindful about surrounding yourself with the support system you need to stay on track.

37:45 Emily: Yeah, and I think within an academic setting, I would imagine you can find those other people. Those frugal friends, the classmates who are living on the same kind of income that you are. I’m sure you can find other people who are living above their means in some way or another. So it’s not necessarily everyone in that setting, but you can definitely find that support system. And I did, I know during graduate school because I happened to be very open about talking about money. Other people who were open to talking about money realized that about me and we became friends around that common interest, I would say. So they exist. You might have to sniff them out, but the support systems do exist. Okay. Beth, I think we’ve gotten through the strategies you used to recover from the financial ruin on as you’ve been doing over those several years and since then. So, is there any advice that you would give your past self? You know, anything that you wish you had considered or wish you could have done differently during that time? Given that again, a lot of these forces were completely out of your control.

Final Financial Advice to Oneself

38:49 Beth: Yes. Yeah. So yes, I have two really key takeaways that I wish my younger self would have known. The first one is I wish I had had the ability to more critically consider my future financial needs when it came to choosing a career. So my initial career I was dead set on working in museums and even knowing the realities of the job market and the pay and, you know, how long it takes to get a livable wage in that industry with benefits. I still chose to do it. And it’s not that I regret that at all. It was an amazing experience. But if I could have somehow talked myself into considering like, “Hey, you probably do want to get married someday, you probably do want children. It may be that you’re going to have changes in your life that shift around your personal priorities and some of those are going to cost a lot of money.” I wish that I could have taken that into consideration when making my career choice more deliberately and not tossed finances to the wind as if like, “Well, you know, we’ll figure out how to make it work with whatever this industry pays.”

40:07 Emily: Yeah. It sounds like you were forced to do that, right? When you were laid off from your museum job and you totally did this reevaluation and had gotten to your new career path. That was when it had happened, but maybe you could’ve done that a little bit earlier. And if you go to the show notes, I’ll link from this episode a whole other discussion I had in season three, I believe it was episode six with Scott Kennedy. And we talked again about that same subject of how the reality of “he wanted to have a family, have children” and how did that affect his career decisions in terms of which career paths will pay enough to support a family versus others. Because there are plenty of things you can do because you have a great passion for it that might support a single person but probably not a family. So in that episode, he also grappled with the tough thing of closing a door to a career path that was very attractive to him and turning to something that was also attractive but going to pay quite a bit better. So thank you for that point. What was the other one you wanted to make?

Learn to Critically Examine Your Self-Talk

41:10 Beth: So the second is I would tell my younger self to really hear what you tell yourself and that are truths and beliefs that you have about your money. Because they may not turn out to be true at all. That is the case in my instance. So now, you know, knowing how much I’ve been able to save by this sort of, I forget the term that you use, but this automatic savings out of my paycheck into these Capital One 360 accounts. I wish I had tried that a long time ago. Because I’m sure–in fact I know–I was telling myself in my twenties and before all of this happened, like “I don’t have a dime to save. What are you talking about? There’s no point.” And now I’m like, now having seen the power of stashing away $5 here, $10 there over time, I’m like, “huh, what actually could I have saved? What might have been?” So I really wish I had been able to critically examine that self-talk.

42:17 Emily: Yeah. Thank you so much for making that point. And I think it’s a really common one among graduate students or PhD trainees in general. You know, “I’m meant to be living close to the bone during these years. I’m not meant to be paying off debt. I’m not meant to be saving. I’m not meant to be investing.” That’s a story that academia tells us. Is it actually true? For some people it is. They definitely don’t make enough money to do anything else. Other people, it is possible. So it’s more of a matter of what are your priorities. So thank you so much for bringing that up. And as we wrap up here Beth, could you tell us a little bit more about your business and how people can find you?

Beth’s Website: Academics at Work

42:52 Beth: Yeah, thanks, Emily. So I’m a career coach. You can find me at academicsatwork.com. I have a blog there where I share all kinds of tips about changing careers or making the one that you’re working at now thriving in that to advance and what you need to think through in terms of networking, your resume, your cover letter and career-changing. And aligning your career with your needs, which change over time. So that’s where you can find me. You can also reach me at [email protected]. And I really, really appreciate your blog, Emily. I have started nerding out about paying more attention to my finances as a result of this, you know, climbing out of this hole that I had. And so that’s how I found your blog. And I just think it’s such an incredible tool that everyone should know about and be using. So I’m so glad you’re doing this podcast. You’ve got the blog. And I really appreciate you having me today.

43:52 Emily: Aw, thank you so much for saying that Beth. And I’m really glad that we got to hear your origin story, kind of view yourself as your first client in terms of a career coach and how that worked out for you. It’s clear that you made that transition very well and rather quickly, finding another job within only three months. So I’m excited to see more about what you do for other people now that that’s your business. So again, thank you so much for joining me and it was really a pleasure to talk with you.

44:17 Beth: Thank you so much!

Outtro

44:19 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.

Filed Under: Budgeting Tagged With: audio, frugality, grad student, money story, savings, targeted savings, transcript, video

This Behavioral Finance Expert Gives Incredible Career and Financial Advice to PhDs

October 28, 2019 by Lourdes Bobbio

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Daniel Crosby, an author and expert in behavioral finance. Upon completing his PhD in clinical psychology, Daniel realized for the first time that an academic salary would not afford him the lifestyle he wanted. He instead pivoted to translating the academic research in behavioral finance for working financial advisors, and he currently serves as the Chief Behavioral Officer for Brinker Capital. Daniel shares how he’s applied the principles of behavioral finance in his own life and specific career and financial advice for early-career PhDs, particularly those exiting PhD training.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Sign up for personal finance coaching
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Wealthy PhD group program sign-up
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Podcast Hub
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Subscribe to the mailing list
  • Find Dr. Daniel Crosby on LinkedIn and Twitter
  • Books by Dr. Daniel Crosby [These are affiliate links. Thank you for supporting PF for PhDs!]:
    • The Laws of Wealth
    • The Behavioral Investor

PhD behavioral finance

Teaser

00:00 Daniel: And rather than saying, “Oh, I’m a PhD in psychology, so let me do PhD in psychology things”, I thought, well, I know to have great conversations with people. I know how to run a training. I know how to read human emotion and human behavior and all of these things, when you conceive of them as building blocks, you can repurpose those building blocks in different ways and create a host of opportunities for yourself.

Introduction

00:34 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 four, episode eleven and today my guest is Dr. Daniel Crosby, an author and expert in behavioral finance. Upon completing his PhD in clinical psychology, Daniel realized, for the first time, that an academic salary would not afford him the lifestyle he wanted, so he pivoted to translating the academic research in payroll finance for working financial advisors. Daniel shares how he’s applied the principles of behavioral finance in his own life and gives specific career and financial advice and encouragement for early career PhDs, particularly those about to finish their PhD training. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Daniel Crosby.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:23 Emily: I have the pleasure today of hosting Dr. Daniel Crosby on the podcast. He is a certified expert in behavioral finance. I’m really, really pleased that he agreed to come on. And Daniel, will you please introduce yourself a little bit further and tell the listeners about the fantastic career you’ve had?

01:41 Daniel: Great to be here. Thank you for having me. I am the chief behavioral officer at Brinker Capital, which is a multibillion dollar asset manager based outside of Philly. There’s not many chief behavioral officers in the world, I guess, so by way of explanation, what I do is I create training, tools, and technology that help people make better decisions with their money. I am a clinical psychologist by education, but really haven’t spent any of my professional career in a clinical setting. I quickly learned in grad school that I loved thinking deeply about why people do the things they do, but I didn’t love working in a medical setting. I’ve looked for business applications of the thing that I studied, and I know you know what it’s like to pivot, so my career has been wild and crazy, but it’s been a great one.

Going from Psychology PhD to Chief Behavioral Officer

02:39 Emily: Can you take us back? Tell us more about your education and at what point you decided that you weren’t actually going to go that traditional, clinical route with your degrees?

02:50 Daniel: My undergrad was in psychology. Loved it. I’m the son of a financial advisor, so I went into school thinking I would study finance and be a financial advisor. Took some general ed courses in psychology and just absolutely fell in love, knew that that’s what I wanted to do, started my PhD three days after I finished my bachelor’s. I was really just on a good path to get going with this. But about three years into my doctoral program, I had just kind of had enough. I don’t think I’m wired to listen to 40 hours a week of heavy stuff. It’s hard to be that empathetic. It’s hard to not let that bleed into your own life and your own wellness, and I was just really taking my client’s problems home with me, candidly. And I said, you know, this is just a lot. The final nail in the coffin for me though, I was still sort of on the fence as I was wrapping up my PhD, I had an inkling that I would like to apply this in a business setting, but wasn’t quite sure how, so I interviewed for a dual appointment position at a local university, which would have been half teaching, half counseling and the pay was so bad. I got offered the job and the pay was just so ridiculously bad that when I sat down and did the math with my wife, I was just, there’s no way this can work. I think it’s instructive that I, as the son of a financial advisor, someone who is interested in finance, finished an entire PhD, kind of never doing the math on how the thing I was studying would put food on my table. That’s sort of an embarrassing, but true story, is to get to the end of this road that I was passionate about and then go, “Oh, well geez, what am I going to do with this?” So then I was sort of left scrambling with how can I actually make a living at this thing I’ve just spent eight years studying.

05:05 Emily: I think that’s going to be a very relatable story to a lot of people in the audience of hearing that advice, follow your passion and doing it, and doing it at a high level, and getting to the end of it and saying, “well, now what do I do?” In your case, it was because the dual position that you applied for was not attractive, financially. That could be the reason, certainly for people in the audience, why they don’t continue on the expected career path. But for many people who want to go into academia, it’s just that the jobs aren’t there. That’s the main problem is that there’s just no jobs to be had or very, very few, and so they end up having to look elsewhere. So super, super relatable story there. Would you mind me asking, was your graduate degree, did you go into debt for that or was that paid for, was it a combination?

05:52 Daniel: It was paid for. PhD programs in psychology are very selective, they’re very small, so there were only like five people in my cohort. If you get in, it’s paid for through assistantships. Then, through nothing but luck, I had parents who were in a position to support me in other ways. My parents kept the food on the table and a roof over my head, and the tuition itself was paid for, so I came out with no debt.

06:26 Emily: I see. So when you were sitting down to do that salary calculation, it wasn’t debt that was necessarily causing your initial needed number to rise, but rather just simply the cost of living and supporting your family and so forth.

06:39 Daniel: Yeah. It wasn’t debt. It was just like, “wow, I’m going to work forever.” It was crazy because it paid less than a kindergarten teacher. You go teach at a high level, at a college, go to all this school and you should have just taught first grade. The pay was much better, if you can believe it, and I think you probably can. That was just a shock to me. I had never really put pen to paper about how the jobs that were available to me would coincide with the kind of life I wanted to live. Then the other thing is, as you said, so many of the jobs — I was lucky to get a job offer in my hometown — but you know, many, many times you’re forced to move to someplace you don’t want to live or somewhere very out of the way to start your career. And that’s its own set of trade-offs, certainly.

07:34 Emily: When you decided, “okay, that’s not a viable route over there, I have to pivot and do something else,” ten or so years later, you’ve come to this point where you’re the chief behavioral officer somewhere.

What is Behavior Finance?

Emily: I want to hear more about what behavioral finance is and did that exist as a field when you came out or have you been part of developing that? What’s been the transition both for your career and also for that field over that time?

08:00 Daniel: Great question. I got out and I said, “look, I need to pivot to something that is a little better for my sanity and is also a little better paying.” I began to explore jobs in organizational behavior, organizational psychology, behavioral economics, behavioral finance, and really, no one would take a chance on me because this is 2008 and the economy’s not exactly fantastic. I’m out there, 29 years old looking, looking for a job and I’m applying for jobs in fields where I candidly have no experience, because I have this PhD in clinical psychology and they go, “well, this is, you know, industrial psychology or organizational psychology.” And so I got a lot of doors slammed in my face. And really it was just luck. I applied at an organizational behavior firm where the boss, the founder of this firm had a clinical background and had sort of made his way in the world. My story resonated with him and he saw enough potential there to take a chance. Again, I think anyone who has any modicum of career success can point to times in their career where they just got lucky. That was certainly one for me, where he saw himself in me, took a chance on me and knew what it was like to be in my position, because I just wasn’t getting a look at most places because I didn’t have the right sort of psychology background.

09:47 Daniel: In terms of the field of behavioral finance, behavioral finance is just sort of the study of finance that incorporates the messiness of human beings. A lot of standard financial and econometric models are based on simplifications of human behavior that make humans look more rational than they really are. Behavioral finance is just finance with human irrationality factored in and talking about the way that we make quirky decisions with our money. This was a field that was around. Not too many years later they gave out a couple of Nobel prizes for it. The good thing for me, sort of the niche that I found, was there were people out there charging $200,000 an appearance. These Nobel prize winning folks were out there charging a $100,000 to $200,000 every time they gave a speech and multimillion dollar contracts for consulting, but there was no one that was more affordable and there was no one that was more applied. There just weren’t many people doing more reasonable applied behavioral finance work and taking these great ideas that these folks had come up with and taking them out of the ivory tower and putting them on the desks of everyday people or everyday financial advisers. That’s sort of where my niche — my niche became being the more affordable, more practical options.

11:23 Emily: But it sounds like what you were doing was really taking academic research and translating into what can be then used on the ground by, as you said, advisors and perhaps other people, is that right?

11:35 Daniel: Yeah, that’s right. I mean that’s been sort of the trajectory of my whole career is as an intermediary between people who are much smarter than me and people who haven’t been exposed to these ideas. I sort of view myself as a translator to take these ideas, this research, and make it speak to the lives of everyday people.

11:57 Emily: This actually reminds me, from what you were saying, of my physics training, which is what I did my undergraduate degree in, where you basically assume that everything is a sphere, so the calculations are actually manageable because if you actually look at what things are, real shapes and so forth, it’s just the math is completely beyond what’s possible. Of course, not everything is a sphere, but you have to assume they are to make the math work. It reminds me of that.

12:23 Emily: I am curious if anything in your personal history — going through the PhD process and then, and then coming out as an early career PhD, and this job search and so forth — has any of that informed the work that you’re doing now within behavioral finance? Any of that personal stuff informing that?

12:41 Daniel: I don’t think so, really. I don’t think that really informs a ton of what I do from day to day. It probably informs my parenting more than my work. I have three young children and my wife and I talked, that as we raise them, I’m just trying to give them a more expansive look at the world of work and maybe a more detailed look at finding the sweet spot between following your passion and doing work that gives you the kind of life that you want. Because one thing that my studies have shown me is that we all measure what normal is on a relative basis. This is true of everything from mental health to wealth. Normal for you is financially is just kind of what you grew up with, so I think you need to be candid with your children about how they grew up and what normal is and what normal isn’t. So yeah, it probably impacts the way that I parent more than more than anything else.

13:51 Emily: Gotcha. What about the reverse ways, from taking what you’ve been learning about personal finance and behavioral finance since you pivoted into that field? Have you taken any of what you learned and applied it in your personal life or were you already kinda there with what you grew up with your particular parents?

14:09 Daniel: Yeah. What’s interesting is I have applied a lot of what I’ve learned from behavioral finance into my own life. But one of the primary ways that I’ve done this is by knowing what I don’t know. I remember, and I think every PhD has this experience, I remember I started my program when I was 23 years old. I start this PhD in psychology, 23 years old, thinking I know everything, get out a couple of years later and I’m like, did I learn anything? I feel like I know less than I did before. I think I have more questions than answers now. Especially when what you’re studying is something as hard to get your arms around as human behavior, you never quite get good at it. One of the primary things that I’ve learned from my years of study of finance is that nobody really knows anything and that knowledge is a weak predictor of behavior. I work with a financial advisor myself. And not to toot my own horn here, but I think when it comes to knowledge of markets and things, I probably know more than my advisor, but that’s not why I pay him. I pay him to keep me out of my own way. I pay him to be a barrier between me and the sort of bad behaviors I study because I know that simple knowledge of the sort of biased, irrational poor behavior that I study is a weak predictor of doing the opposite. I know I’m no better than the next person, no matter how many books I write on the subject. I take pains to diversify, to keep my fees low and to work with someone who will keep me out of my own way.

16:01 Emily: Yeah. I think this is something that’s maybe not well understood by the public. That you may be paying an advisor for expertise — you are not necessarily, but someone else may be — but an even more important role is, as you just said, to kind of talk you off the ledge from carrying out bad behaviors that you’re inclined to do as any human naturally would. You’re specifically talking right now within the realm of investing, is that right? Or does your advisor help you with other decisions as well?

16:31 Daniel: He does help me with things around, you know, the purchase of a home. He’s sort of a sounding board for things like college savings for my kids, the purchase of a home. But I’m primarily focused on investing and investing professionally is my primary focus.

Commercial

16:53 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. As a listener of this podcast, every week you hear strategies that another PhD has used to improve their financial picture. But listening and learning does not automatically translate into action in your own financial life. If you are ready to change how you think about and handle your money, but need some help getting started, I can be of service. There are two main ways you can work with me to create and implement a financial plan tailored for you. First, I offer one-on-one financial coaching, either as a single session or a series, as you make changes over the long term. You can find out more at PFforPhDs.com/coaching. Second, I offer a group program called The Wealthy PhD that is part coaching, part course, and part community. You can find out more and join the wait list for the next time I open the program at PFforPhDs.com/wealthyPhD. I believe it’s possible to succeed with your finances at every stage of PhD training and throughout your career. Let’s figure out together how to make that happen for you. Now, back to the interview.

Human Emotions and Financial Decisions

18:08 Emily: Is there anything else that you have learned, and then applied in your own life, aside from putting a bit of distance between yourself and being able to make a fast decision?

18:18 Daniel: Well, one of the hallmarks of behavioral finances talks about overcoming emotion. A lot of what we talk about is how do we keep people from making these emotionally laden decisions, but one of the other things you learn when you’re studying human behavior is that it’s always easier to roll with a behavioral tendency than to push against it. There’s cool research that shows that people who look at a picture of their children for five seconds before making a financial decision save more, are more likely to stay the course, et cetera. Similarly, we find that people who invest in ways that are aligned with their own personal preferences around the world that they want, in terms of social issues, environmental issues, tend to be better behaved. So I’ve tried to build some emotion into my process. I’ve tried to keep the things and the people that I love at the front of my mind and central in the planning and investing process, and I’ve tried to invest in a way that’s consistent with my values, because I think that it makes it a little stickier than say owning the S&P 500. It just personalizes it a bit. I think that those are both powerful ways to make investing a little more fun, to make the investing and planning process a little more personal and to bring about some good behavior in the end as well.

19:51 Emily: I really love those suggestions. I think I’ve also, maybe in the similar vein of looking at a picture of your children, I’ve heard that if you look at a picture of yourself aged up, you make different decisions. Is that right?

20:04 Daniel: That is right. Yeah. One of the things you learn a lot about in behavioral finance is salience and salience is just the ease with which you can sort of imagine or tap into a situation. As I sit here, I’ll be 40 next week, so as I sit here at nearly 40 years of age, it’s hard for me to imagine 80 year old Daniel, right? The idea of a guy who walks with a cane and has gray hair and stuff, it feels a little remote. People have found that if you age your face, you’re basically making it a more visceral experience to imagine yourself as this 80 year old version of yourself, it brings about better behavior. Again, that’s an imperfect example of how you imbue the process with a little emotion to help you make the right decision.

20:56 Emily: I actually had a client asked me recently what I thought about the particular RoboAdvisor Ellevest and she followed that up with, well, I’m really passionate about women and empowering women and all these things that were sort of in line with Ellevest’s mission. And I said to her, well, it sounds like you’re really excited about that, so I think they’re fine and go for it. Because, as you were saying earlier, if it it lines with her values, that particular manner of investing, she’ll probably be more likely to throw more money at it, engage with it more, and have a better outcome. Is that right?

21:27 Daniel: Yeah, that is. Without speaking to the particulars of Ellevest, I don’t know all the ins and outs of it enough to say one way or the other, I have a lot of respect for Sallie Krawcheck who heads up a Ellevest. But in general, you’re more likely to contribute to, and stay the course in your women’s leadership fund than you are your S&P 500 fund because it’s personalized, it’s tailored to you and your values and, not making any promises here, but there is also research to suggest that the kind of companies folks like Ellevest seek out, companies that have better female representation on boards and things, there’s historical research to suggest that those companies have outperformed the broad market, at least historically. I think there’s every reason to try and personalize your investing to your own preferences, feel like you’re doing a little good in the world, and if that helps to animate you to stay the course or to set aside a little money, both of which are very psychologically difficult, more power.

Behavioral Finance Strategies for the PhD

22:35 Emily: Absolutely. Yeah. Another question here. We’ve started to get some insights into this behavioral finance stuff, maybe for the general population, but I’m wondering if you see that there are any personal finance pitfalls that you think PhDs might be particularly susceptible to falling into, and then what strategies might there be to not do that?

22:59 Daniel: I’ve observed — I’ll speak to psychologists, doctors of psychology in particular, but I think that this probably applies to PhDs broadly — a lot of times we get a PhD because we want deep domain-specific knowledge, right? We get into this because we love it. We want to be the best in the world at it, but almost every position needs a bit of business savvy, and I think that we have more power than we realize. I think this power takes a couple of forms. I think first of all, you need the power to negotiate a salary. That first job you get is more predictive of your ultimate wealth than just about anything else, because it benchmarks every subsequent salary conversation. Being comfortable negotiating that first salary — I remember that first job, you feel lucky just to be there. You beat out 20 other talented people to get the offer, but don’t be afraid to know your worth and to negotiate that salary. I would say PhDs need a little business training, because we have this deep domain-specific knowledge, but we don’t know, sometimes I feel like, how to do more practical things. I think get a little bit of business knowledge.

Daniel: Then a third thing and I would say the thing that has probably served me best in my career, financially, is to just think creatively about your role. If I had stayed on the prescribed path of being a dual-appointed college counselor, I would make a fraction of what I make now. Because I thought expansively about the things that I learned in school, and rather than saying, “Oh, I’m a PhD in psychology, so let me do PhD in psychology things” I thought, well, I know to have great conversations with people. I know how to run a training. I know how to read human emotion and human behavior and all of these things, when you conceive of them as building blocks, you can repurpose those building blocks in different ways and create a host of opportunities for yourself. Rather than thinking about one prescribed path, think about your education as a series of building blocks, a series of competencies that you can repurpose in any number of ways to do a host of different things. Finally, I would say don’t be scared to get out of academia. Because when I was in academia, you’re a face in the crowd, you’re one PhD among many. But when you get out in the real world, when you get out in the business world, you’re special and people respect your expertise in a way that they might not necessarily in a university setting. Lots to be said for a university setting of course, but I think don’t be scared to get out there to try something new and to know your worth.

Dealing With an Income Increase Post-PhD

26:20 Emily: Such wonderful advice and you put that so well. Thank you. I’m wondering if you have any advice for a person in this situation, which is something that you went through, which is a person who is about to come on a large income increase? They’ve been in training, grad school, postdoc, whatever it might be, and now they’re going out there and doubling or tripling, or more, their salary, potentially in industry, or similar. What behavioral finance concept should that person know about and be applying in that situation?

26:50 Daniel: This is a great question. The concept to know here is what’s called the hedonic treadmill, which says that, as our earning increases, our consumption or spending tends to increase in ways that are commensurate with the increase in earning. And then you never feel richer. You never feel better off because your lifestyle has risen as fast as your income. My number one piece of advice here would be to not let your lifestyle rise faster than your income and to make sure that as your income increases, so does the amount you’re setting aside, because lifestyle creep is a really, really big problem. What’s fascinating is, and I’ve been certainly bitten by some of this and haven’t followed my own advice here in certain instances, but the things that seem so extraordinary to you — I think about my house; when we bought this house it was the most beautiful house I had ever seen and soon it’s just where you throw your dirty socks — it just quickly becomes the backdrop against which you live your life. So really watch out for lifestyle creep. Make sure that if your income increases 50%, that your spending only increases 25%. Have a little fun, but make sure that they don’t increase in lockstep because that’s not where happiness is.

28:26 Emily: Yeah. I guess, I think I would add onto that — you put it very well about how the hedonic treadmill operates — I think that for some PhDs, when they get out of training and they finally have that larger salary, there’s some pent up demand. There’s some pent up wanting to spend behavior because they have been on this constrained income for so long. My advice to that person, in addition to what you said, would be to splurge on something that’s a one time expense, like a grand vacation or something, and not upgrade your housing this high degree, not upgrade your transportation to a high degree, not upgrade those fixed or recurring expenses in your life, but rather have this one wonderful, pleasurable experience and then get back to a lifestyle that is, as you were saying, far below what you could actually “afford” with your new salary, just so you aren’t stuck on that treadmill over the long term.

29:15 Daniel: I love that advice and I think it’s also consistent with understanding how you can spend money in ways that make you happy. When you look at the research on how to spend in ways that makes you happy, giving money away makes us happy, spending on experiences makes us happy and spending on getting rid of stuff we hate doing makes us happy. Having someone mow your lawn for example, makes happy. Buying time, buying experiences, and giving for goodwill — these are the things that make us happy. Don’t go buy a fancy car. Don’t go buy a big house that’s going to lock you into this recurring expense trap and it’s not even going to make you feel any better. It’s a trap.

Last Words of Advice and Where to Find Dr. Daniel Crosby Online

30:01 Emily: It’s great insight. Thank you. Do you have any final pieces of advice? We’ve already heard so much, but anything more for that early career PhD in terms of personal finance or behavioral finance advice?

30:11 Daniel: Again, just really to know your worth. I felt like when I broke out of my swim lane and got out of the cattle call that was sort of herding me towards this very prescribed life and once I sort of broke out and got into the world, I found that people had a lot more enthusiasm and respect for my ideas than they might have in a more constrained academic setting. So know your worth, don’t be afraid to ask for what you’re worth and go get ’em.

30:46 Emily: Wonderful. And if listeners want to follow up more with you, want to learn more from you, read your books, listen to you, where should they go?

30:54 Daniel: Yeah, I’d encourage folks to check out my books. The Laws of Wealth* is probably the place to start, The Behavioral Investor* is next. I’m super active on LinkedIn and Twitter, @danielcrosby.

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

31:07 Emily: Thank you so much, Daniel, for this interview.

31:10 Daniel: My pleasure.

Outtro

31:11 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 Poddington Bear from the Free Music Achive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

Filed Under: Career Transitions Tagged With: audio, career, expert interview, investing, PhD with a Real Job, transcript, video

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