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This Grad Student Puts Half Her Stipend Paycheck into High-Yield Savings

September 9, 2024 by Jill Hoffman

In this episode, Emily interviews Maggie Canady, a rising second-year grad student at the University of California at Irvine, on her budget breakdown. Maggie gives us a peek into her life via her top five expenses each month, which are rent, car insurance, groceries, utilities, and travel. Despite taking a pay cut when she started grad school, Maggie maintains close to a 50% savings rate on her stipend. Maggie and Emily end their conversation by discussing how Maggie can get started with passive investing.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • PF for PhDs Quarterly Estimated Tax Workshop
  • Host a PF for PhDs Seminar at Your Institution
  • Emily’s E-mail Address
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
  • Maggie Canady’s Website
  • Maggie Canady’s Twitter
This Grad Student Puts Half Her Stipend Paycheck into High-Yield Savings

Teaser

Maggie (00:00): I live in a, uh, beautiful, like two story craftsman house here in LA and I have three other roommates. One of them is my boyfriend. Our house is, uh, $4,500 like total, and there’s four roommates total, and we split it four ways evenly. So we each pay, um, 1100. My boyfriend and I share, um, the like master bedroom, the larger bedroom. Yeah, I’ve lived in this house for two years now. It’s been great. I love my place and that’s also why I’m kind of doing the commute from LA to Irvine because I really love the community I’ve built out here.

Introduction

Emily (00:44): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (01:13): This is Season 19, Episode 2, and today my guest is Maggie Canady, a rising second-year grad student at the University of California, Irvine, and we break down her budget. Maggie gives us a peek into her life via her top five expenses each month, which are rent, car insurance, groceries, utilities, and travel. Despite taking a pay cut when she started grad school, Maggie maintains close to a 50% savings rate on her stipend. Maggie and I end our conversation by discussing how Maggie can get started with passive investing.

Emily (01:47): Let’s talk fellowship taxes for a minute here. These action items are for you if you recently switched or will soon switch onto non-W-2 fellowship income as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac; you are a US citizen, resident, or resident for tax purposes; and you are not having income tax withheld from your stipend or salary. Action item #1: Fill out the Estimated Tax Worksheet on page 8 of IRS Form 1040-ES. This worksheet will estimate how much income tax you will owe in 2024 and tell you whether you are required to make manual tax payments on a quarterly basis. The next quarterly estimated tax due date is September 16, 2024. Action item #2: Whether you are required to make estimated tax payments or pay a lump sum at time tax, open a separate, named savings account for your future tax payments. Calculate the fraction of each paycheck that will ultimately go toward tax and set up an automated recurring transfer from your checking account to your tax savings account to prepare for that bill. This is what I call a system of self-withholding, and I suggest putting it in place starting with your very first fellowship paycheck so that you don’t get into a financial bind when the payment deadline arrives.

Emily (03:07): If you need some help with the Estimated Tax Worksheet or want to ask me a question, please consider joining my workshop, Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. It explains every line of the worksheet and answers the common questions that PhD trainees have about estimated tax. The workshop includes 1.75 hours of video content, a spreadsheet, and invitations to at least one live Q&A call each quarter this tax year. The next Q&A call is this coming Friday, September 13, 2024. If you want to purchase this workshop as an individual, go to PF fsor PhDs dot com slash Q E tax. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s19e2/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Maggie Canady.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (04:14): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Maggie Canady. She is a current graduate student at UC Irvine, and today we’re doing a budget breakdown and we haven’t done one of those in a really long time, so I’m very excited about it. So Maggie, would you please introduce yourself to the audience a little bit further?

Maggie (04:30): Yes. Hi, everyone and Hi, Dr. Emily Roberts. That’s so, I’m so happy to be here. Um, my name is Maggie Canady. I am a rising second year clinical psych PhD student at UC Irvine. I’m originally from Dallas, Texas. I received my bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 2020 where I majored in psychology and minored in dance. Um, really broadly, my research interests, interests include understanding the risk and resilience factors around trauma exposure, as well as, um, learning about culturally responsive trauma interventions.

Emily (05:07): Okay, fascinating. And actually now that I know that you had a little bit of a gap between finishing undergrad and starting graduate school, let us know what you were doing during that period.

Maggie (05:17): Yeah, so my first year after I graduated and obviously graduated during the pandemic, I received a traveling fellowship from Harvard and I was supposed to be in Southeast Asia for a year. Um, that obviously couldn’t happen, so they said, okay, we’ll still give you the money, um, but you have to choose and create a project that stays in one state. So for my first year I was interviewing and photographing mixed race individuals and doing a, um, kind of like ethnographic project, um, about mixed race identity. And then after that I worked full time as a research assistant at the University of Southern California.

Emily (05:54): Okay. And I’m trying to sort of place some numbers on those kinds of jobs, like did you take a pay decrease when you started graduate school from that assistantship position?

Maggie (06:04): Yes, I did. So, um, at USC I was making about, I think I was making about $48,000 a year, $49,000 a year, and then went to a graduate student, uh, stipend <laugh> after that.

Current Stipend, Additional Income, and Household Size

Emily (06:17): Yeah, go ahead. Tell us what is your stipend right now?

Maggie (06:20): So this past year as a first year, I made a total of $29,125. Um, and that was for nine months of working as a part-time teaching assistant, which is defined as about 20 hours of work a week. Um, I also received a diversity recruitment fellowship of about $5,000 when I first started, and then I also received a merit award to help with summer costs, um, which I received at the beginning of the summer for $3,000. Um, this upcoming year I’ll make about $35,000, and this is due to the 2022 strike, um, that happened all across UC campuses. So starting, um, this, this year, the lowest paid workers will make $34,000. And then based on your level of experience, you make a little bit more incrementally. So this upcoming year I’ll make 35,000, which is great.

Emily (07:14): And that’s again for teaching assistantship, is that right?

Maggie (07:16): Yes, uhhuh.

Emily (07:17): Wow, I’m so glad to hear that. I’m so glad to hear that was the, the effect and also that you had some bridge funding for last year to kind of bring you closer up to that a number that you know, we will get to in this upcoming year. That’s really, really good to hear. Do you have any sources of income outside of your stipend?

Maggie (07:35): I occasionally tutor and babysit, but it’s very like one off and kind of just if my schedule allows, I’m also a dancer and I’ll get paid for gigs occasionally, um, like music video gigs or performance gigs. Um, but that’s more for like my own interest and like personhood as opposed to depending on that as, as like a source of income.

Emily (07:59): I see. Okay. And is there anyone other than you in your household, any living beings?

Maggie (08:05): Living beings? Yes. So I live in a, uh, beautiful, like two story craftsman house here in LA and I have three other roommates. One of them is my boyfriend, um, my boyfriend and I split a lot of the house grocery expenses, but when I pay my taxes at the end of the year, it’s just me.

Emily (08:24): Gotcha. Um, so no dependents, but you do have people, your boyfriend and other roommates that you’re sharing expenses with.

Maggie (08:30): Exactly.

Current Financial Goals and 50% Savings Rate

Emily (08:32): Alright. Are you currently working towards any financial goals?

Maggie (08:36): So I would eventually love to buy a house that feels a little bit, um, kind of like of a, a dream in the far distance right now, just with my stipend and how crazy California is with, um, like yeah. Houses. Um, but it’s definitely in the back of my mind, mind and when I put money into savings, that’s kind of what I’m thinking. I also love to travel, so I feel like I’m always kind of planning a trip or thinking about a trip and having money tucked away for a trip. I feel like when I think about my budget budgeting categories, that’s definitely one of them that I’m always, um, saving money for.

Emily (09:15): Okay. So you are, you do have some kind of savings rate for this like eventual house goal, um, and that could be several years away. Are you keeping that money in, in cash right now in like a savings account or are you investing it in some way?

Maggie (09:29): So I have, uh, Robin Hood and I am investing it, but I also have a high yield savings account. Um, and so I, this is like kind of one of my like tips or things that I learned this year, but, um, my 50% of my direct deposit goes directly to a high yield savings account and that, uh, a, that high-yield savings account is not connected to any of my credit cards or any of the ways that I spend money. So I feel like it’s just like this pot of money that, um, is really growing, which is really awesome. Um, and then I will also invest, um, invest like kind of every other month or so depending on like my schedule.

Emily (10:06): Wow, okay. A 50% savings rate. So once the money goes into the high yield savings account, does it come back out for spending in the present, like for travel, for example, like you just mentioned?

Maggie (10:16): I try not to, I try to really use like my 50% and, and go from there, but I definitely can pull from it and like have in the past, but I really try not to, I try to not touch it.

Emily (10:28): Okay. Wow. So you’re, you’re close to a 50% savings rate then. Yeah. This is something I’ve never heard of from <laugh>, a graduate students, so, okay. Now I’m very interested to hear how you’re managing your expenses to make that happen on the stipend numbers, um, that you mentioned. So that’s incredible. Let’s start talking about that. So we’re gonna go through your top five largest monthly expenses. And tell me first, are we hearing about these top five expenses based on like your average spending over the last year or like what you budget or like just last month or how did you come to this list?

Budget Breakdown: Housing and Car Insurance

Maggie (10:58): Yeah, so a couple of them are set in stone. Like my rent for instance is set in stone, that’s every month. My car insurance, I pay, um, every six months, so I just averaged it out for each month, but I pay it kind of in bulk. Um, and then my groceries, utilities, and, um, like flights that I pay for, um, that’s kind of an average. Um, so yeah, my rent is my biggest expense. Of course, it’s $1,100 a month. Um, so I’m, I immediately automatically budgeting for that.

Emily (11:30): Okay. So $1,100 per month for rent. Are you sharing? Okay. Just tell me more about the house. Like how many bedrooms are there? Yeah, how many people are there? Are you sharing a bedroom with your boyfriend and then you’re splitting it? Like, just tell me how you came to this number and what the house looks like.

Maggie (11:43): Yes, so fair. So, um, our house is, uh, $4,500, um, like total and there’s four roommates total and we split it four ways evenly. So we each pay, um, 1100. Well, we used to pay, we used to pay 1125 each. Um, but we have like a apartment. It’s kind of a long story, but now we each pay 1100, um, and we split it evenly. My boyfriend and I share, um, the like master bedroom, the larger bedroom. Um, and yeah, I’ve lived, uh, in this house for two years now. Um, we’ve lived together for coming up on four years. It’s about like three and a half right now. Um, and we’ve always split the rent evenly. Um, yeah, it’s been great. I love my place and that’s also why I’m kind of doing the commute from LA to Irvine because I really love the community I’ve built out here. Um, so yeah, 1100 and that’s what everyone in the house pays.

Emily (12:40): Gotcha, okay. Yes. ’cause I didn’t realize that you weren’t close to the university. So how long was your commute?

Maggie (12:46): My commute is anywhere <laugh> from 40 minutes to an hour and a half. Um, but I usually take the train and the train is like a clean an hour, 20 door to door, and I’m doing work on the train, et cetera. But if I drive, it varies depending on the traffic.

Emily (13:05): And do you commute every day? Every weekday?

Maggie (13:08): I, so during the school year, I commuted every day for the first two quarters, so about two thirds of the year. And then the last quarter I commuted for, I think it was, I think it was three days a week. Um, it really just depends on the quarter. It, and like these first two years are the most class intensive obviously. Um, so I will be commuting every day. And then the expectation is that as classes lessen more of my research becomes kind of independent. I won’t have to commute as much. And so it was like this real back and forth that I went of like, okay, do I move down to Irvine and like, do I kind of lose this community that I have but I’m closer to school or do I invest in kind of like my personal happiness and then have this balance? Um, and obviously I cho chose to stay in Los Angeles, um, and it’s, it’s been great. Um, occasionally I’ll house sit down in Irvine, which I guess is also, I don’t make money from it, but it is like kind of a relief from the commute. So it is an investment in some sorts but I’ll house, sit, dog sit, uh, closer, closer to campus.

Emily (14:12): I’m curious, um, how you and your roommates found this house,

Maggie (14:17): Craigslist, <laugh>? Yeah, so we were living in, um, echo Park, um, which is different neighborhood in la and we were looking for a new place that was slightly bigger. So we looked for about a year, really, I think eight years, eight months to a year. Um, and then my boyfriend found this place on Craigslist before it was on Zillow in the other, um, rental websites. So we were the first to apply. Um, we had three interviews with the landlords because they wanted to, um, rent to a family. Um, yeah, so they wanted to rent to a family. Um, but we convinced them that, you know, we all have incomes and steady incomes and that we’re reliable. So it’s been great. They’ve been great landlords.

Emily (15:05): Oh, that’s really interesting. I’m glad I asked about that. <laugh>. Um, yeah, ’cause I don’t talk with too many graduate students who live in houses with multiple roommates, but I think it can be a very cost effective, um, situation. So anyway, I’m, I’m just glad to hear all those details about yours.

Maggie (15:19): Oh my gosh. Yeah. I feel like it’s just like such a great perk of Los Angeles, that there’s so many beautiful, like artisanal houses and we have a front in the backyard and laundry and, you know, AC and uh, a fireplace. Like there’s so many, like, I don’t know, homey perks of it. And it is cost effective, which is sick.

Emily (15:37): All right. Number two, expense

Maggie (15:40): Car insurance. Um, so I pay $300 a month for a car insurance, which is definitely on the higher end. Um, I recently got an electric vehicle and it was a more expensive premium because of that. Um, yeah, my car insurance expires in September, so I’m definitely gonna be shopping around for a cheaper premium. So if you have any recommendations, I’ll definitely take them. Um, yeah, so it’s 300 a month.

Emily (16:10): I actually don’t have recommendations because I just found out that our car insurance company is pulling out of California.

Maggie (16:16): Wait, mine too.

Emily (16:16): I was using E-surance.

Maggie (16:18): Yes, same.

Emily (16:19): Okay. So we will both be shopping around.

Maggie (16:21): Okay.

Emily (16:21): For insurance on our electric vehicles. ’cause I also recently got an electric vehicle. Um, tell me, yeah, you too. How did you acquire this car? Because I’m not seeing a car payment on your list of expenses.

Maggie (16:33): Yeah, so I had a little electric car, um, before this one. It was like a little 2015 Nissan. Um, and I bought it on Facebook marketplace. Um, and it just didn’t go the distance. Like I had to charge it constantly, um, and all of that. So I was selling this car, I I put it on Facebook marketplace and then after about three to four months on Facebook marketplace, someone, um, purchased it. So I had, um, like that immediate check. Um, and I had, I’d say about like, so the car was 30, $37,000. I had this like about $10,000, $11,000 check from the car I sold. So then it was $26,000. I had about half of that money that I could, you know, I had allotted to like buy a new car. And then my parents helped me with the last like $12,000. So that’s how I bought the car full out. And then when I got my tax return in April, I got $7,500 back from that that I was able to give back to my parents. Um, so, so I’m, I know that math is kind of hard to like, speak out loud without seeing it. Uh, my parents probably gave about $5,000 to help me just like pay it out in full. And I had the rest in savings, the rest with selling my last car and then the, uh, tax stipend.

Emily (18:02): Yeah. Amazing. Um, I guess you probably had a pretty high savings rate during your last position as well, right? Making more money living in this same place. It sounds like same people.

Maggie (18:13): Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Emily (18:13): So similar rent.

Maggie (18:15): Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Emily (18:15): Um, yeah, so I, I see how that savings account was, was healthy enough to help you with that purchase, so that’s amazing not to have a car payment during graduate school, but, uh, yeah, hopefully we can get that insurance, uh, monthly cost down a little bit. I mean, you and I were probably both with insurance because it was a pretty good bargain <laugh> the last time we looked around, but hopefully there will be another bargain that we can both find. Um,

Maggie (18:36): I hope so. Yeah. <laugh>.

Emily (18:37): Yeah. Anything else you wanna say about that? Car insurance?

Maggie (18:40): Yeah, I guess this is more of like, um, kind of like a bigger thing, but, um, like my, my parents are like huge savers and I feel like I have like a very kind of like conservative background when it comes to money of like, okay, I’m going to like save my money and like, really just like, be aware of like, what’s coming in. And so I feel like I, I’m like always like, like nesting acorns or something, <laugh> with my money, which has been, has really paid off with like these bigger, um, payments. Um, so yeah, I, I think that that’s where it’s coming from of like, ’cause I know it’s like kind of insane to have like 50% of my income going to payments. Uh, sorry, 50% of my like, um, income’s going to savings. Um, but yeah, so I think that that’s where that’s coming from of this like very like, almost like must conserve my resources. Um, yeah.

Emily (19:35): Okay. Well let’s put a pin in that. We’ll come back to it at the end of the interview.

Commercial

Emily (19:41): Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, budgeting, investing, and goal-setting, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2024-2025 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutes enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

Budget Breakdown: Groceries, Utilities, and Travel

Emily (20:56): Let’s continue with our list. What’s your third largest monthly expense?

Maggie (21:02): Um, my third largest is groceries. And so I split this with my boyfriend. Um, but even after splitting, it’s anywhere between like one 50 to two 50 a month. Um, I love to cook and we’re always kind of cooking meals, so that’s part of it and that’s more cost effective. But groceries are expensive. Like I can see the difference even from being here since 2020. Like it’s just, it’s just crazy.

Emily (21:30): Yeah. But that number actually seems pretty low to me. I mean, I also <laugh> grocery shopping, cook for a family of four, but it’s two little kids, so it’s not that much more than, you know, just two adults and, uh, we spend quite a bit more than that. So you must be doing something right. Tell us about a few of your go-to meals.

Maggie (21:47): So we have, um, a Costco membership. And so like, we’ll get like a rotisserie chicken, like $5 rotisserie chicken from Costco.

Emily (21:54): The loss leader.

Maggie (21:56): Um, Yes, love, um, big fried rice, stir fry kind of people. I just made like a shrimp fried rice, so frozen shrimp and then whatever veggies I have. And, um, we buy like a 20 pound thing of rice, which is awesome. Um, soups, I, not really right now ’cause it’s summer, but I’m a big soup girl <laugh>, and that’ll last, like, that’ll be made in bulk on like a Sunday, and then I’ll use that as like meal prep for the week. Um, and then I eat like, pretty light breakfasts, like I’ll buy like a pack of like a big thing of yogurt and like granola. Um, yeah. Yeah.

Emily (22:36): So eating out does not appear in your top five expenses, but let us know where that falls in the list. Like, are you eating out, how often do you do? So,

Maggie (22:45): Uh, it really depends on my social battery <laugh>, which I feel is like this pendulum swing. And, um, like, so I was in Europe, um, this, um, at the first two weeks of this month, and like my shopping was like through the roof, like my eating out obviously because, you know, we were on vacation and so like when I came back I like shut my doors, like grabbed my groceries and like, have been cooking, like eating in just because like I can’t, like eat out for the whole month. Um, and then when I’m back in LA like it’ll kind of depend on like, oh, okay. I’ll feel like, oh, I have a little bit more free time in my schedule, so I’ll see more of my friends and then we’ll like go like, grab a drink or we’ll go out to eat. Um, and then I’ll like feel like, oh no, I’m way too stressed. I have to like, just can’t see anyone have to stay in and then I’ll just do that. Um, yeah, so it really kind of varies. Um, but when I, I do go out, I try to just like go for coffee or like, um, frozen yogurt or something, like, something that it’s like still I’m, I’m still paying for something, but I’m not paying like 30 bucks for a meal, you know?

Emily (23:56): Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> especially if your purpose is to see people, then it doesn’t really matter how much money you’re spending on the food or whatever, it’s more having this setting to to be together with other people.

Maggie (24:06): Yes, exactly.

Emily (24:07): And how about, um, takeout or, you know, DoorDash, GrubHub? Do you do any of that?

Maggie (24:13): So, no, my mom owns a restaurant. She’s had a restaurant for like 30 years and I worked for her growing up. Um, and then even throughout college whenever I was back. Um, and GrubHub and DoorDash just like are so awful to small business owners. Um, and so kind of seeing like behind the scenes, I was just like, I, I cannot endorse this. So it’s like more of a personal value. Um, but I, I don’t, I don’t, DoorDash, yes, <laugh>. Um, I’d say utilities, they average about $75 a month. Um, it’s $25 for, um, wifi and then like somewhere between like, like 10 to $20 for gas. And then depending on the month, the rest of it is, um, uh, electricity. So anywhere, honestly, probably like closer to 75 to a hundred dollars a month. Like it really just depend, like we’ve had the ac blasting this, you know, this past month, so it’s going, it’s gonna be a lot higher than usual, but then kind of in the fall and spring it’s, it’s very, very little, very minimal.

Emily (25:26): Yeah. And this is one of those areas where having the multiple roommates really, really helps because yes, your utilities go up a little bit more with the higher square footage, but things like internet, like that’s just gonna scale down. Right, exactly.

Maggie (25:38): Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That’s exactly right.

Emily (25:40): Sounds great. And your last expense? The fifth one,

Maggie (25:43): My last one, it’s, uh, most recently been flights. Um, I’ve been trying to buy like my holiday flights early and then, like I said, I was in Europe, so I bought those flights. Um, the most recent flight I bought was for my parents actually to come visit me. Uh, my dad had a coupon and then for my mom’s, uh, ticket was $400 round trip. And so like kind of going back to that, like travel as like a bucket for my budgeting, like it’s, it’s one of those things that I’m like, I will be traveling home for the holidays or like, I want my family to come see me or I wanna go on vacation. So it’s one of those things that I just, I’m like, okay, this is where money is gonna go, you know?

Emily (26:24): Yeah. And with a 50% savings rate, nobody can argue with spending a little bit on travel as well. Um, tell us about your, um, strategies around buying flights, if there are any. Like, are you loyal to any airlines? Do you use any certain credit cards? Like how do you work this?

Travel Credit Cards

Maggie (26:40): So I have a Southwest credit card, which honestly has not been as great as I expected. Um, but I’m from Dallas and uh, Southwest, um, has like love, uh, love Field Airport, which is 10 minutes from my house. So it’s, um, it’s nice to have the Southwest credit card because I am building points on that and I try to use those when I can, but the flights are usually quite expensive still. I also have a, um, I have to look at the exact one, but it’s a Chase, like traveling credit card and that’s been great.

Emily (27:14): The Sapphire Preferred, I’m assuming?

Maggie (27:16): Yes.

Emily (27:16): Okay.

Maggie (27:16): Yes, the Sapphire Preferred. I love that card. I try to do like all of my expenses on that card and that card actually paid for my flight to Europe this past time, like after, like, just spending for the entire year. And I love that. So those are my two. I also have a Amex Blue Preferred, which gives 6% back on groceries. Um, and so I’ll just give that back as like a, um, kind of like cash, like return. Um, so yeah, those are my, my top three.

Emily (27:51): Uh, what airline did you use for your trip to Europe?

Maggie (27:53): Oh, great question. I used, um, I think it was, I’m, I will probably get the name wrong. France Air or like Air France. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Okay. Yeah. Um, because they’re a partner with Chase and so I was able to transfer my points from Chase to Air France.

Emily (28:10): Yeah, I’m, I’m quite familiar with the Chase system because I also was trying to be loyal to Southwest for a little while. Um, it’s a little bit easier actually with the family because we can do the Southwest Companion Pass, which is a really great like, value. Are you familiar with it?

Maggie (28:26): Yes. That’s amazing.

Emily (28:27): Yeah, so like you can always take one for the listeners once you earn the companion pass. You can always take one when, when the primary person books a flight, they can always take a companion with them on any flight, unlike some other airlines where it’s like once per year. Nope, it’s every flight as long as there’s a seat available, um, for free, which is amazing. Uh, but anyway, the Chase points Trav, uh, transfer to Southwest as you probably know. So I was working that system for a little while. And smart. Yeah. Seeing where else the Chase points could go. ’cause we also have the, um, the Sapphire preferred card, but I haven’t gotten into any of the other systems yet. Like I’m not an Amex, you know, so it’s something to explore and see what those partners are. ’cause yeah, I mean, using credit card rewards for travel seems to be the kind of the biggest bang for your buck.

Maggie (29:07): Yes, I totally agree. And I feel like I’m like so sold on Chase as like my credit card because of how many flights and like how many points I get that I can then transfer. I’ve heard that for American Express, like it’ll start paying off once you have like the platinum or whatever, like the highest kind of credit cards are, and I’m just not, I’m just not ready to spend like $600 a year on a credit card. So I haven’t yet, but <laugh> maybe one day.

Emily (29:34): Um, yeah. Well this is really exciting. So you’re spending quite a bit on travel, but you’re also trying to optimize as what, as much as you can with points and so forth. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and it seems like you’re sort of using that, uh, save the high yield savings account that you split your paycheck into as, um, what I would call a, a targeted savings account, at least to a degree. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> because you can pull from that account when you have these like large flights or whatever coming up, right?

Maggie (29:57): Exactly. Yeah, you’ve got it exactly on the head.

Saving Vs. Investing

Emily (30:01): Okay. Um, so the question I kind of wanted to come back to is why are you saving and not investing given that you have quite a high savings rate and you could be doing some of both?

Maggie (30:12): Yeah, that’s a great question. I honestly feel like it’s from a, like lack of knowledge around investing. Like I know that investing kind of consistently and monthly and like diversifying your assets is the way to go, but I feel like there’s still a bit of fear for me there. And kind of going back to this idea of like where my parents came from of like saving, like my, my mom and I just got into investing in 2020, so it’s kind of this new endeavor for both of us and she’s really gotten into investing, um, in the past few years. Um, and for me, like, it’s just, I haven’t put that like energy into like really knowing what I’m doing. Um, but I feel like that’s potentially like a financial goal I can work on, um, alongside like saving for a house, um, just because there is like so many benefits, um, to it. So if you have any advice for me, I would definitely take it.

Emily (31:14): Yeah, I mean, I, I said a second ago that you weren’t investing, but that’s not quite true, right? Because you are using Robinhood Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> you said sort of inconsistently. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. What kind of investing are you doing with Robinhood? Like what are you investing in?

Maggie (31:26): Um, like I’ll invest, you know, I have to honestly go back and like, look, it’s kind of all over the map. Like, like I, it would be like Apple <laugh>,

Emily (31:37): But single stocks is what we’re talking about.

Maggie (31:39): Yes. Yeah, Exactly.

Emily (31:39): Not Like, um, ETFs or something

Maggie (31:41): Like that. No, not ETFs. Yeah. Okay. And see, like I, I feel like I can feel myself like not even really know, like exactly like feel, not feeling super confident in like having a conversation about it because I, it’s just, it’s like a place where there’s a big gap in my financial knowledge. Um, so yeah, I think that that’s definitely like kind of a next step for me. Um, yeah.

Emily (32:04): Yeah. Well I have, I have content recommendations for you, please. Are you more of a reader or more of a podcast listener? Um,

Maggie (32:13): Podcasts, I think for, especially with my drives,

Emily (32:16): So there’s a very, uh, well known person in the, uh, the fire space, the financial independence and early retirement space. His name is JL Collins. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And he has a book, if you are a reader, I would recommend his book. Okay. But since you’re a listener, I would say find his interviews, which he goes on a lot of different podcasts, but he’s been on, for example, the Choose Fi podcast several times. So I, I would go find like the earliest one or two interviews where they’re probably going over the basics of, uh, his book is titled The Simple Path to Wealth. So it’s all about this strategy, which is passive investing, which is investing in, um, index funds and ETFs that are based on indices. And so it’s a very like set it and forget it kind of investing strategy, which I really like. And it’s the kind of strategy that I teach also because it’s the most effective Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>

Emily (33:02): In terms of the money that you’ll have at the end of the decades, like in your pocket because you’re paying very little in fees and you’re not letting your, um, psychology and your human emotions, you know, get in the, in the way, in the way of like your investing strategy. So I would go find some interviews with him, definitely on Choose fi. You can probably just search like your podcast player for Col j Collins and hopefully some interviews will come up. But choose FI for sure, has him. Um, I might also suggest Afford Anything that’s another podcast name. I bet he’s been on that podcast too, although I haven’t listened through all the archives extensively. So yeah, just find, find a few interviews with him and see if you sort of like his argument, his philosophy.

Maggie (33:42): This is so helpful. Thank you so much. And I will definitely check out The Simple Path to Wealth. Um, I have like two free audio book credits for some reason right now, so that’ll be one of ’em. <laugh>.

Emily (33:54): Yeah, I don’t know if it’s an audio book. I certainly heard Hope it is Okay, because it is very popular, so hopefully they have turned it into an audio book. But I’m curious, um, whether he the author is the one who’s reading it or whether they hired someone else. He has a very like deep like gravelly like old man voice, which actually think would be great for an audio book. So, um, yeah, I’m curious if if he’s the one who’s who, uh, read it or not. Um, but yeah, start, start there, I would say.

Maggie (34:19): Okay. I definitely will. And if, like, I’ll definitely take a book recommendation too, especially with the summer. I have like ex like exponentially more free time. Mm-Hmm. So

Emily (34:27): The one After The Simple Path to Wealth that’s also great on investing is Ramit Sethi’s book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich. Mm-Hmm. And that’s on more broad personal finance topics, but he’s, he does have a couple chapters devoted to investing, passive investing. So that would be another good one to read.

Maggie (34:42): Thank you. That’s so helpful.

Emily (34:44): Oh, sure. I mean, you are already, honestly most of the way to winning the game by just having like a very high savings rate on obviously a limited income and really dialing in your expenses. Obviously you’ve thought a lot about what you value, um, in the travel and so forth. So like you’re already doing a ton of stuff really well, and if you decide you want to, you know, devote some of that very high savings rate toward investing, you’ll really be able to grow your money, um, over the next few years. And even, um, this is not like advice, but depending on how far out that potential house purchase is, um, you know, a savings account might not be the most appropriate place for it. Some conservative invest investments might be an appropriate place, but it kinda depends on what your timeline is on, on that front. So it’s just something to think about. Like you could do a split, right? You can do a certain percentage into just straight savings, a certain percentage into investing. Maybe some of it’s for long term, some is for medium term. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, um, again with high savings rate you kind of can’t go wrong. Um, yeah. With choosing where you wanna put that money.

Maggie (35:42): Yeah, that’s a great point. Yeah. Okay. This is a great summer project. I am excited to Yeah. Kinda go down this route.

Emily (35:50): Yeah. Um, I hope the listeners enjoyed this because this is a really, you know, unique example of like living in a very high cost of living area. But as we were talking about kind of setting those highest, you know, the, the expenses that are, have the potential be the biggest in the budget, the rent, the transportation, getting those set at the, the best level that you can and sort of letting everything else fall where it may, and, and doing that, um, strategy of paying yourself first by splitting your paycheck. These are really great examples. So I wanna say to the listeners, if anybody else wants to come on and do a budget breakdown, I love doing these kinds of episodes. I wanna hear from people all over the country with all different kinds of stipends, and it’ll be every one single one is gonna be a very different story. Right.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (36:29): Um, so Maggie, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I’d love to ask you the final question that I end all my interviews with, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And it could be something that we’ve touched on already in the interview, or it could be something completely new.

Maggie (36:44): Ooh, okay. Yes. Well, a couple things We’ve already touched on. High-yield savings account. Definitely recommend that. Um, I use SoFi because I had a great offer. Um, so kind of look at whatever has, you know, a great, uh, high interest rate. Um, like I said, the, you know, trying to like immediately put my direct deposit into savings and into that high yield savings account, so I don’t even have to think about it, um, was like kind of a great, like passive like, or, you know, intentional act that now has become like routine. So that was really helpful. Um, I listened to, um, financial Feminists by Tori, uh, Dunlap this, uh, at the beginning of this year. And I feel like it was a really like great, um, like supportive start into thinking about finances, um, because she really breaks things down and you don’t feel like overwhelmed or Yeah, she, it just feels like it comes from like a context in a place in a positionality that I also, uh, subscribe to.

Emily (37:48): And that was the audiobook version, right? Yes. She has a podcast as well. I don’t think it’s called Financial Feminist though.

Maggie (37:53): No, it was the audiobook. Yes. Great distinction. Um, and that’s where I learned about, um, kind of like values and having like when you’re thinking about budgeting, kind of breaking up the budgeting into buckets and like three buckets that you care about. Um, and that was a really helpful framework. And then this is kind of like a small piece of advice. Sorry, I feel like I, I just have my list, so I was like, oh, lemme just say it. Go for it. Um, but institutions have money and like applying for stuff, my first year was really fruitful. Like I was a mentor and received a stipend, you know, like I was a volunteer for a conference and I received a stipend. Um, yeah, just like reading the emails weekly, weekly emails you might get from your institution and just like checking those for additional pockets of money.

Emily (38:42): Great. Great advice. Um, you won’t be needing it as much, right? With a massive pay increase that you’re gonna enjoy this year, but should still be available to you should you want to access those opportunities and amazing. Well, Maggie, thank you so much again for volunteering to come on the podcast and sharing your life with us for the last half hour.

Maggie (38:59): Of course. And thank you so much for having this podcast. It’s so helpful for people like me. So yeah, I really appreciate you.

Emily (39:06): You’re absolutely welcome.

Outtro

Emily (39:16): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Filed Under: Budgeting Tagged With: audio, budget breakdown, budgeting, grad student, investing, transcript, travel, video

Financial Goals Workshop Advance Preparation

August 29, 2024 by Emily 3 Comments

Thank you for registering for How to Set and Achieve Financial Goals as a Graduate Student or Postdoc! Please complete the action items below prior to the date of the workshop so that you can receive the full benefits of the workshop.

  1. Bring your balance sheet. A balance sheet is a record of all of your current financial assets and liabilities. If you don’t have a balance sheet, please take some time to create one. You can download a template spreadsheet as well as some instructions via this link. Feel free to use a different template if you prefer. If you use budgeting or net worth tracking software and have all your accounts linked, the software probably has all the information, so no need to replicate it elsewhere. You will work with your balance sheet during the workshop.
  2. Review your budget or cash flow with these questions in mind: Am I currently saving money for my short- or long-term future? If yes, what percentage of my gross income am I saving? If no, would it be possible in my current circumstances for me to save a certain dollar amount or percentage on a regular basis?
  3. Enter your question(s) via this form so I can be sure to answer the most popular.

During the workshop, we’ll be working with spreadsheets and PDFs. If the workshop is in person, please bring your laptop or tablet. If the workshop is remote, please set your workspace up so that you can best juggle Zoom alongside the other programs.

I look forward to speaking with you during the workshop!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Budgeting Workshop Advance Preparation

August 29, 2024 by Emily Leave a Comment

Thank you for registering for Expert-Level Budgeting for Graduate Students and Postdocs! Please complete the action item below prior to the date of the workshop so that you can receive the full benefits of the workshop.

Please bring all of your current/recent spending data that you have access to. If you track your spending, bring your spreadsheet or plan to access your software. If you don’t track your spending, look up your fixed expenses in advance (e.g., rent, minimum debt payments, utilities, subscriptions) as well as what you’ve spent recently on variable expenses (e.g., food, transportation, entertainment). If you would like, you can use this spreadsheet to organize this data for the recent months (edit according to your spending categories).

During the workshop, we’ll be working with spreadsheets and documents. If the workshop is in person, please bring your laptop or tablet. If the workshop is remote, please set your workspace up so that you can best juggle Zoom alongside the other programs.

I look forward to speaking with you during the workshop!

Dr. Emily Roberts, Personal Finance for PhDs

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Estimated Tax Workshop Advance Preparation

August 28, 2024 by Emily Leave a Comment

Thank you for registering for How to Prevent a Large, Unexpected Tax Bill on Your Fellowship Income! Please complete the action items below prior to the date of the workshop so that you can receive the full benefits of the workshop.

  1. Bring your 2024 income- and tax-related records to the workshop. Bring your spouse’s records as well if you file a joint tax return. These records include any or all of:
    • Your fellowship offer letter,
    • Your recent fellowship paycheck amount(s) and date(s),
    • Your student account transactions,
    • Your final pay stub from a prior W-2 job, and
    • Your most recent pay stub for an ongoing W-2 job.
  1. Bring your 2023 federal income tax return, if you filed one, to the workshop.
  1. Watch this video (7 minutes) for background information so that we can jump right into the exercises during the workshop.

During the workshop, we’ll be working with spreadsheets and PDFs. If the workshop is in person, please bring your laptop or tablet. If the workshop is remote, please set your workspace up so that you can best juggle Zoom alongside the other programs.

I look forward to speaking with you during the workshop!

Dr. Emily Roberts, Personal Finance for PhDs

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Investing 101 for Your Post-PhD Job

August 26, 2024 by Jill Hoffman 2 Comments

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Scott Grissom, a full professor of computer science at Grand Valley State University and Certified Financial Planner with Socrates Financial Planning. Scott and Emily talk through the health insurance and retirement benefits options that may be available to PhDs in their first post-PhD jobs. Scott explains the tax benefits of investing via an HSA and/or a 401(k) or 403(b) and the factors that affect the choice of a Roth or traditional option. He also helps the listener overcome potential analysis paralysis by detailing the benefits of a target date retirement account.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • Join the GRADBOSS community to attend Emily’s workshop Your Financial Orientation to Graduate School on 8/27/2024
  • Host a PF for PhDs Seminar at Your Institution
  • Emily’s E-mail Address
  • Dr. Scott Grissom’s Website: Socrates Financial Planning 
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List 
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
Investing 101 for Your Post-PhD Job

Teaser

Scott (00:00): From day one. Let’s get that match and figure everything else around that. ‘Cause otherwise, as we know, we’re gonna be, have some inertia put in place and we say, I’ll do it later. I’ll do it next year. You probably won’t. So day one, do whatever you can to get that match would be what I recommend.

Introduction

Emily (00:27): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (00:57): This is Season 19, Episode 1, and today my guest is Dr. Scott Grissom, a full professor of computer science at Grand Valley State University and Certified Financial Planner with Socrates Financial Planning. Scott and I talk through the health insurance and retirement benefits options that may be available to PhDs in their first post-PhD jobs. Scott explains the tax benefits of investing via an HSA and/or a 401(k) or 403(b) and the factors that affect the choice of a Roth or traditional option. He will also help you overcome potential analysis paralysis by detailing the benefits of a target date retirement account.

Emily (01:37): My colleague, Dr. Toyin Alli, recently launched a new community called GRADBOSS. Toyin is an expert teacher of grad school productivity and time management through The Academic Society in addition to being a lecturer at an R1 university, so she knows of which she speaks! I’m honored that Toyin has invited me to facilitate a workshop within the community this month! Join the GRADBOSS community to attend my workshop Your Financial Orientation to Graduate School on Tuesday, August 27, 2024 at 4 PM PT as well as access all the other incredible resources! Go to theacademicsociety.com/gradboss/ to learn more and join the community. I hope to see you tomorrow at the workshop! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s19e1/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Scott Grissom of Socrates Financial Planning.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:48): I am delighted have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Scott Grissom, who is at a really interesting point in his career where he has two jobs right now. He’s a full professor at Grand Valley State University and also a CFP with Socrates Financial Planning, his financial planning firm. So we’re gonna talk all things investing today, which is really exciting. So Scott, thank you so much for volunteering to come on the podcast, and would you please introduce yourself a little bit further?

Scott (03:11): Sure. Excited to be here. Um, so Scott Grissom, a little academic background for the PhD folks, if that’s okay. So, for my whole life, I wanted to be an architect. So I went to college at Texas a and m University, all set to be an architect and be the next Frank Lloyd Wright. And by the junior year or so, I had, uh, discovered two things. One is that I didn’t like architecture as much as I thought I did, and two is I discovered these new things at the time called computers. So I got enamored with computers and one of the professors that I admired a lot, I had taken several courses from him. I still remember where I was standing at the time. He says, Scott, have you ever considered graduate school? I’ve seen the way that you work with your fellow students and you tutor them and you help them, I think you’d be really good as a professor. Well, I had not considered that at all until that moment, but the light switch went off, changed my career path, went to graduate school for computer science with the sole purpose of getting a job as a professor. And 32 years later, I am still a professor. So it, it’s been a great choice. Highly recommend being a professor for the rest of your life, if, if that’s an option for you.

Emily (04:25): And yet you’ve decided to embark on an, an encore career. And so can you tell us how personal finance, how money became a passion for you alongside of your career as a, as a professor in computer science?

Scott (04:41): Yeah, so as long as I can remember, I’ve been interested in my own personal finances, whether it be investing and reading books. When I was in college myself, uh, I used to get this thing called a magazine in the mail each month on this physical piece of Paper magazine, uh, called Kiplinger’s. And I would read the, I would be so excited every month waiting to see what information they would have about saving and investing and all sorts of stuff. And one, one week there was this article about this designation called the Certified Financial Planner Planner, CFP. Ooh, that would be fun, at least for my own self education. I would like to take those two years of courses and see where that leads. So that was around 2005. And after taking classes for two years and then passing a pretty exhaustive exam, uh, I earned the CFP designation mainly as a hobby. Didn’t really, really know where that would go, but then I started helping friends and family with their financial questions and then started to work occasionally with some small financial planning firms. But, and that passion sort of peaked and valleyed through my, my 25 year career as a professor. And now I’m to the point where I’m ready to move on. I’ve enjoyed being a professor, but for the next x years of my life, I’m ready to transition to probably just part-time, uh, helping, educating others much like you do in terms of, of their finances and especially as they get close to retirement, uh, what changes do they need to make? What adjustments, what questions do they have? So I’ve got another year as a professor, and then I’ll be transitioning to this firm that I just created about, uh, six months ago called Socrates Financial Planning, Socrates building on the way that I like to teach in the classroom using the Socratic method. So I thought that was a fun, playful, uh, name for me.

Finance Related Employee Benefits

Emily (06:31): Yes, very eye-catching as well. I love it. Um, so we have a real, um, treat today, which is to employ your teaching skills in the subject of investing. And even though you just said that, you know, your typical financial planning client would be closer to retirement, you know, when we were prepping for this episode, we talked about how, um, the typical listener for this podcast is gonna be very early on in their career, maybe currently in graduate school, currently a postdoc, uh, maybe in in their first job post PhD. And so we were thinking it would be really great for them to have some insight into how to set up those initial investments with their new employer when they finally get that 401k or the 4 0 3 B or similar type of retirement account, um, access. So let’s go into it. So very good for that newly hired employee. Looking at the benefits package for the first time, it can be overwhelming. What are they probably looking at in terms of potential benefits related to their finances?

Scott (07:26): Yeah, so probably the, the biggest benefit most people have to struggle with initially is the health insurance. Now that applies to us because if they have an option for what’s called a high deductible plan, which mostly they do nowadays, uh, that will have an important financial option available for you called a health savings account. So maybe we’ll come back to that a moment. And then the second one is what kind of retirement account do you have? And in the private workplace, that’s generally called a 401k, uh, in the public space, whether it’s hospitals or my case a, a university, they’re called 4 0 3 Bs, pretty interchangeable. Uh, and then just personally you might have a thing called an IRA. So all three of these retirement accounts are virtually the same. They’re a place for you to invest for the future, and there are generally some tax advantages to each of those, depending on what choices you’re trying to make.

High Deductible Health Insurance Plans

Emily (08:19): Okay, let’s dive into that a little bit more. Let’s start with the health insurance component of it. Who is a good candidate for choosing a high deductible health plan versus like a PPO is probably gonna be their other option, I would imagine. Um, and, and for also using that HSA if it can come with that H-H-D-H-P

Scott (08:38): <laugh>. Yeah. So hard to de- describe o- over, over this broadcast on, on what makes the best choice. Uh, just recognize with a high deductible plan, depending on whether you’re single or a part of a family, you’re agreeing to pay the first $2,000 of your medical care, maybe the first 4,000 thousand that’s called the deductible. So you need to have, uh, an emergency fund I guess, or enough, uh, fees also depends on your, um, your health. So if you’re somebody that’s pretty healthy and don’t anticipate seeing the doctor much, therefore you don’t need to worry about paying that deductible, that might be a good rationale, justification for getting the high deductible plan. Uh, and then it also just depends on locally and you, if you’re moving to a new city, you may not know, but picking what, uh, doctor option doctor networks that you have sometimes make a difference. So there, I would say talk with your, uh, human resources department or a colleague that you’re about to work with or a supervisor to see what choices they’ve made and why.

Emily (09:38): Yeah. So the trade off there for those who don’t know is gonna be a, a premium difference. So the monthly premium that you pay for like a PPO plan, for example, is gonna be higher or at least let’s say the overall portion. We don’t know, uh, how much the employer is paying versus the employee in, in, you know, general. But that overall premium is gonna be higher for like a PPO. It’s gonna be lower for that high deductible health plan. But like you said, you have to be prepared to pay out of pocket for a higher deductible, $2,000, $4,000 versus maybe the PPO is 500 or a thousand, something lower than that. Um, and so you have to have some savings available to, uh, to do that in your own finances, should you need to access medical care. And that’s kind of where the idea of the HSA comes in. It, it sort of, um, nudges you in the direction of, oh, you have that high deductible health plan, well you better be saving in this HSA. But tell us more about how the HSA works.

Scott (10:26): Yeah, so it’s, it’s one of, it’s a very unique, um, savings plan in terms of what the federal government allows for you. So it allows you to save money going into the account, uh, tax free going in, but it’s also tax free coming out, which is highly unusual. So that doesn’t apply to the 4 0 1 Ks and the IRAs or even the Roths. So I really like the HSAs, the potential advantage, advantage that you have to save on your taxes from day one in your career. And so what that means is for every dollar that you put into this account, and it’s earmarked to be used for medical, so for healthcare to be spent this year or next year or 10 years from now, but all of that money is tax deductible off of your current income. And as we know, every dollar that you can shave off of your current income is gonna reduce your taxes. So that’s great for now, which is the way a lot of the retirement accounts work. But then later on, when you start to pull money out to pay for those qualified medical expenses, it’s not taxed there either. And that’s what’s different about the HSA. So HSA saves you now, it saves you later. It’s just a, a win win win when it comes to taxes at least. And as you said, there is this sort of incentive to put that money into this account because you know you’re going to have to spend it at some point this year, next year, five years from now on those deductible expenses. And so that’s why the federal government requires you to tie together. You first have to have this high deductible plan and then that allows you, it’s optional, but I would strongly encourage it to create this health savings account.

Emily (12:02): I’ve not had the, uh, reasonable option of signing up for a high deductible health plan with an HSA ever. So I’m, I’m sort of excited about this in a theoretical way. But, uh, my understanding is that if this comes through your employer, um, you actually save, not only on income tax going in, but also your, your FICA taxes, your payroll taxes, which is like, there’s like almost no other way you can reduce your payroll taxes. So that’s like really exciting as well. Um, in terms of more money in your pocket, more money in that account.

Scott (12:29): Yep. Once again. And you’re saving now and never taxed again on it, assuming you pull it out for medical expenses and it rolls over each year. So there, there’s another kind of a medical account called a flexible savings or flexible spending account that you might have options for. They’re probably a little antiquated now, but the potential concern with them used to be you had to spend it or lose it at the end of the year. So back in, in December then people started getting dental care and eye care and so forth to try to, to spend that money. But the HSA, you can literally, it let it run for 30 years. And so that’s why some financial advisors think of this as sort of a third retirement plan. ’cause we’re always going to have healthcare expenses. And so the longer you can invest it and let that build tax free, the more money in your pocket.

Emily (13:20): Yeah, I wanna kind of underline that point that you just made about the potential for the money inside the health savings account being invested for the long term, because that’s not something that I think people really did maybe 10 years ago with those flexible spending accounts that wasn’t an option. This is unique to the HSA, um, and so elaborate on that a little bit more, the power of of that option.

Scott (13:40): Yeah, and it’s something that I suspect a lot of people don’t take advantage of. So generally by default, you’re gonna put this into an HSA and it’s gonna be treated like a savings account or a checking account and probably not pay you much at all if, if even 1% and for money that you’re gonna spend three months from now, that makes perfect sense. You wouldn’t want to invest it because with investing, and let’s just generally talk about investing in stocks, there’s the concern that that money’s gonna go down in the short term. So, but if you are investing for the longer term, 4, 5, 8 years down the road, you’re convinced that you don’t really need that money out of the HSA that you can pay for these, these medical expenses out of pocket, then the longer horizon that you have, the more options it gives you. And then you can now invest in stocks and mutual funds in your HSA, just like you would in these other accounts such as the 4 0 3 B and 401k.

Emily (14:40): Yeah, it’s really like, I think you mentioned this earlier, like a supercharged form of an IRA, like an even better form of an IRA. But you have to be prepared to pay for those medical expenses and save it to the HSA on top of that. So it’s really a personal finance and budgeting kind of challenge, but a very, very powerful tool if you can harness it,

Scott (15:00): Right? So at the very least you would want to contribute enough for your deductible each year. So even if you don’t wanna invest in the future and your little leery of building a large account of 15, 20, $30,000 in this HSA, if nothing else, remember that very first dollar that you save is saving you permanently on taxes. So if you’ve got a, a deductible of $2,000 and you’re pretty predictable that you’re probably gonna spend about $2,000 this year on healthcare, then at least put that much into your HSA and if it hovers above and around close to zero because you’re putting money in it and taking money out, you’re still getting a great tax advantage from that.

Traditional Retirement Savings Vehicles: 401Ks and 403Bs

Emily (15:41): Yeah, I love it. Well let’s talk about those more traditional retirement savings vehicles, the 401k, the 4 0 3 B. Can you tell us generally like what’s the advantage of investing for your retirement through your employer? And then we’ll talk a little more about traditional versus Roth.

Scott (15:57): Okay. Uh, so as I said, 4 0 1 Ks are just the names generally for private companies and 4 0 3 Bs for public companies slash universities and healthcare. Uh, historically they’ve been what we call pre-tax. So I put money in and I get to remove that from my salary this year, which is gonna save on taxes this particular year. So let’s suppose I’m in the 20% tax bracket and I put in a thousand dollars. Well that’s gonna save me $200 this year on taxes, but eventually I’m gonna take that money out presumably during retirement and then it will be taxed then. So that’s one of the, the advantages is the tax advantage is that we’re going to have a tax advantage this year. It’s gonna build tax deferred and then eventually we pay our taxes. But one of the new features that these companies now are allowed to provide somewhat new is a Roth component to this 401k. And now we have the option of do we pay taxes now and put that into what’s called a Roth account or a 401k Roth, but it’s never taxed again, much like the HSA, so you can let that ride for the next 30 years and hopefully make lots and lots of money off of your investments and then they come out tax free. So that’s one of the choices you’re just gonna have to make is if I have a Roth option for my 401k, do I put my money in there now or do I use the more traditional approach? The second key I think, um, question is, is your employer providing a match or not? And they often do, uh, and it’s often tied to how much you put in. So they might say, we’re gonna match the first 2%. If you put in 2%, we’ll put in 2% or we’ll put in 50% of how much ever you put in of the first 6,000. So either way, whether you’re gonna put 2000 in on your behalf or 3000 or 8,000, you really wanna take advantage of that ’cause that’s in the business we call that free money. And then you’re going to invest that going forward. You’re not paying taxes on it now. Um, the employer’s putting the money in so it’s not coming outta your paycheck. So if your employer does provide a match, be aware of, put as much money as you can in that affects that match.

Emily (18:17): I have also noticed sometimes with these employer provided plans that have a match or maybe not even a match, but a baseline amount that they’ll put in for you. Sometimes universities do that sort of thing. Um, they’ll have like a vesting schedule. Can you explain how people should understand the vesting schedule?

Scott (18:33): Yeah, so normally what that means and, and it’s case of as you said, it’s the employer putting money in on your behalf less so of the money that you put in. And they’re going to as a way to try to keep you employed there as long as possible. Say we’re gonna put $10,000 in each year for you, but you can’t pull all that money out if you were to leave employment. So over the next four or five, six years, uh, on a sort of degrading uh, feature, we’re gonna decide how much of that money do you get. So you’ll have employers say, this year I’m vested. Well that means that this year if I were to leave or get fired or whatnot, then I would at least get all the money that’s in my account. Up until that point it might look like I’ve got $50,000, but 20,000 of that might not leave with me if I choose to leave. And general, as you said, it’s generally the what, the money that the employer puts in any money that you put in is generally what we would say 100% vested immediately.

Should You Ever Pass Up On The Employer Match?

Emily (19:34): Okay. And so I’m thinking about a person who is just starting out and they’re looking at this benefits package and they see that they have a match available to them, so exciting. Um, but maybe their personal finances are not totally in great shape yet. When should they pass up that free money and work on other areas of their finances? Is there ever a situation where that, where you would advise that?

Scott (19:57): I wouldn’t think so. I mean, so let’s suppose you’ve gotta put in 4% of your brand new paycheck that you’re excited to get and that’s going to entitle you to matching and you’re leery to say, but could I use that 4% for something else paying off student loans or paying off credit card debt? Well that might be an appropriate use of it, but I would be more inclined from the psychological perspective is let’s just commit to that 4% and then learn how to carve out additional savings from our new paycheck to pay for that other debt. I mean, debt would be the only reason. I could see why you wouldn’t want to get that initial match. And even then I would really encourage you to, from day one, let’s get that match and figure everything else around that. ’cause otherwise, as we know we’re gonna be have some inertia put in place and we say, I’ll do it later, I’ll do it next year, you probably won’t. So day one, do whatever you can to get that match would be what I recommend.

Emily (20:52): Yeah, I really like that advice. A great point about the inertia, like when are you really going to make that change if you don’t make it right from day one? Um, and if you are really excited about getting that match and you’re really hating, let’s say the credit card debt that you’re in, maybe because of your move to your new job or whatever the case is, um, just use all those, uh, well, they’re probably negative feelings, but use them to energize you <laugh> to get that debt paid off while you’re still contributing to that retirement account and getting the match. And hey, then once the debt is paid off, you can increase that retirement contribution rate above the match level, let’s say

Scott (21:26): After celebrating and going out to dinner or, or something that you paid off your debt. So

Roth Vs. Traditional Retirement Accounts

Emily (21:31): Yeah, that’s awesome. Okay, still thinking about that new post PhD employee, um, let’s say they have a Roth option and a traditional option within their retirement accounts, what are the factors that go into making that decision? Which way to go?

Scott (21:46): So it generally comes down to taxes. And so as we said that traditional, um, contributions to 401k are tax, um, deducted this year. So you save on taxes this year, let’s suppose 20%, whereas the Roth contribution, you don’t save on taxes this year, but it goes in and you never pay taxes again. So the question becomes do I wanna save on taxes this year, maybe saving 20% depending on where my income is or at the, when I start to retire and I pull money out, do I want to pay taxes then do I have any insight 30 years from now that I’m gonna be paying less or more tax rates than I am now? And we don’t have a crystal ball, so we don’t know that for sure. But the general understanding is that the lower your tax rate is now probably a pretty good chances 30 years from now when you start pulling money out, your tax rate’s gonna be higher. So that puts you in favor of using a Roth. Now, uh, it’s less like, it’s less helpful to you to save 15% on taxes now, which is the Roth scenario, rather than to wait 30 years from now and pay 2020 5% coming out, which is the 401k option or the traditional 401k option. So I would say, what’s the general recommendation when you’re starting off, that’s generally the best time to do a Roth because you’re generally making less income than you will in the future. And it also give you a much longer runway the next 30, 40 years to invest that money and have it accrue, uh, tax free, which is a, a really great option.

Commercial

Emily (23:24): Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, budgeting, investing, and goal-setting, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2024-2025 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutes enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

Roth Vs. Traditional Retirement Accounts

Emily (24:42): Let’s project forward a few years, maybe 10 years. So this person is no longer a fresh new PhD graduate in their first job, but they have increased their income somewhat over time. Is there a tipping point that you would say or is it just for every individual? Where do you see your income potential going?

Scott (24:58): Yeah, that’s a much trickier. Um, but let, let’s play that, that scenario. So some, some of my colleagues will say, um, if collectively, because we’re talking about, I’ve been saying federal tax rates, but it also applies to state income tax, if that’s indeed, um, it, it, uh, applies to your state. So in my state of Michigan I pay about 4% and if I’m in the 24% tax right rate for a federal plus the four is 28% combined. That’s where I’m wondering am I gonna pay more or less than that when I retire 20 years now or 30 years from now? And so I hear people talk about this magic, not magic number, but just sort of rule of thumb about 30%, anything less than 30% taxes. Now it’s probably a pretty good bet that when you’re pulling money out later, you’re gonna end up paying more than that. So somewhere in that range, 25 to 30% is, is sort of this borderline category. Anything more than 30%. So if you’re very high income earner right now, you probably want to take advantage of saving taxes now because you might be in the, the 34% tax bracket or even higher and you’ll likely be taxed less than that 30 years from now. But we don’t know for sure. So all these choices, it just sort of depends. You make the best decision you can at the time and then don’t look back, don’t worry, you made your decision, it’s over and what happens, happens.

Emily (26:22): Yeah, definitely don’t use the uncertainty around where will my tax rate be in retirement as a reason to not get started, right? Like just jump in with whatever option you think is best at the moment. That’s okay, keep going at that. And my philosophy around it is kind of to want to get to retirement with a mix of Roth and traditional so that I can do some tax optimization on the backend. So as long as I have big pools of money in both of those types of accounts, by that point I’ll be pretty happy. I’ll add in one other anecdote, um, sort of about how I made this decision earlier on in my career when I could see, um, where my tax rates were going. So I post PhD was living in the state of Washington, which has no state income tax, but I knew that I aspired to move to California, which has could be a high state income tax rate. And so I used that view into my own personal aspirations in my future to say, okay, when I’m living in Washington, that’s a great time to use the Roth. And when I move to California, that’s a great time to switch to traditional assuming no other changes in my, you know, overall income.

Scott (27:22): Very good, good idea. Now let’s talk about those, that bucket that you mentioned. So when people retire, it’s nice to have options and so there’s considered, there’s sometimes considered three buckets of Roth, which has already been taxed, 4 0 1 Ks which have not yet been taxed. And then there’s a third category that we haven’t talked about. We call that a taxable account. And that’s just where you’re doing extra savings. So out aside from these retirement accounts, and if you have sizable amounts in all three of these buckets, they’re probably not gonna be equal and nor should you necessarily aspire to that. But if, if you’ve got some money in each of those, as you start to pull money out during retirement, as you said, that gives you some flexibility, uh, to control your tax rates so you can start pulling some money out of a Roth because it’s not gonna be taxed at all, some money out of your 401k ’cause it is gonna be taxed and then have some money in your taxable. So how do you manage that? How do you end up with three buckets? Well, we’ve talked about early on maybe you start with a Roth for retirement and then throughout your career maybe you start to transition it, there’s gonna be perhaps some tipping point, maybe not, maybe you just wanna do Roth all in and that’s perfectly fine as well. But in that mid category, that 15 years that we were talking about, you could get to the point where you put half in Roth and half in a 401k, so there is no right or wrong or it’s not a binary decision. And that would allow you to con uh, to continue to build in all three of those buckets.

What Exactly Should I Invest In?

Emily (28:49): Perfect. Let’s talk about another decision that has to be made when you’re contributing to that 401k or 4 0 3 B, which is what should I actually be invested in <laugh>? Because the 401k or the 4 0 3 B is not synonymous with the investments that could be inside of it, there’s gonna be some choice about what exactly you wanna be invested in. So help that you know, fresh PhD with that first job, help them think through that choice of what exactly should they be invested in.

Scott (29:17): Uh, well still first and foremost when we come to talk about investing, uh, the golden rule is called, um, diversification. So we don’t wanna put all of our eggs in one basket. So although it’d be really tempting to, to buy as much apple stock as you possibly could or as much Nvidia stock as you possibly could, uh, because that’s currently what’s hot, you want the risk of losing a lot as well. So how do we do diversification is we mainly, or most of us buy things called mutual funds, which are collections hundreds if not thousands of individual stocks for different companies. So that provides you that diversification and that’s what you will generally be given as an option. So for your 401k, normally you’re given a limited collection of choices for yourself. Those are often gonna be what we call mutual funds. And so you still have to make choices. So maybe it’s a choice outta 10 or it’s a choice out of 50, that can be pretty overwhelming. Uh, so my approach is to pick mutual funds that buy a little bit of everything. So these are called index funds and I know Emily, you’re, you’re a fan of passive investing as well. And so look for, uh, titles of these mutual funds that perhaps include index in the name, probably don’t call it passive, but they might say index. Uh, one of the keys when you’re picking out mutual funds is the expenses that they cost. So most people don’t realize, but you invest money in a mutual fund and each and every year the uh, management company takes a little bit out of that. Maybe it’s 1%, which would be super high or maybe it’s 0.1%, which would be pretty low. Sounds like pretty sounds like the same thing to most of us. 0.1% and 1%. What’s the difference? Well, it turns out 30 years from now, those build on themselves a lot. So when we’re given a choice of mutual funds, back to the original question is I wanna look for something that is an index slash called passive investing. And those generally have lower fees, which might be 0.1% or even less, uh, which is more money in your pocket, less money in their pocket, more money in your pocket. And that’s the win-win. So first choice, pick mutual funds that are indexes and then you might have to choose between, uh, do you want to buy stocks or do you wanna buy fixed income, which is, which is often called bonds. That’s probably a whole nother podcast. But, but the quick answer is most of us now have an option called a target date fund. And a target fund. Target date fund is perfect for somebody just getting started ’cause they don’t need to worry about the ins and outs of picking what percentage of stocks and what percentage of bonds someone else is doing that for you generally at a low cost. So if you have an option for a target date fund, they’re gonna have names associated with the year that you plan to retire. Now there’s nothing magical about it and nothing significant about it, but if you’re just getting into your career now and you’ve got at least another 30 years to work, 35 years to work, so adding that to 2025. So 2060 would be the name of a target fund that you might look for. Vanguard has these fidelity, uh, Schwab has all of these and all that tells you is somebody has decided what percentage of stocks and bonds. So I just looked up Vanguard’s 2060 target date fund and 90% is in stocks and 10% is in bonds. The longer that you have to invest the, uh, more volatility or the more ups and downs you might be able to stomach mentally stomach. So if you recognize, yeah, the stock market went down this year, it’s gonna go down. I can guarantee you that. I don’t know if it’s this year, I don’t know if it’s next year, but at some point the stock market’s gonna go down again. And if you’re okay with that, if you’re mentally prepared to say, I knew that was gonna happen, I’m gonna keep letting it ride, then because you have the luxury of going for the next 30 years, then it’s okay to have 90% in stocks. But as you get closer, uh, and this is what those target date funds do for you, is they start to reduce the stocks and increase the fixed income so that as you get closer to closer it might be a 60 40 split. So long-winded answer, sorry my professor is coming out on me, but what are your choices as a new employee? If you’ve got a target date fund, generally pick that.

“Safe” Investing Options

Emily (33:40): So sometimes I get questions when I teach about investing where the questionnaire says I want to start investing and I wanna use something safe. If one of your clients said that to you, I I’m nervous about the stock market, I wanna pick something safe, how, how would you coach them?

Scott (34:01): So safe generally means, um, lower return. So whether you’re buying bonds or treasury bonds, so safe means less likely to lose money, which is something that none of us want to do, but also less likely that you’re going to make much money. So over the next 10, 15, 30 years. Question is, can you afford to be conservative? Maybe you can, but I think there’s a bigger risk, a long term risk that if you’re too conservative, you put all your money. I mean the extreme would be you put all your money in a savings account making 0.1% and that’s gonna make you feel very safe. But 20 years from now, you’re gonna regret that because your money has not even kept up with inflation. So if inflation’s rising, if 3% every year, so it’s really a mental game, I understand that the concern about potentially losing money, but hopefully you overcome that and recognize that over the next 15, 20, 30 years you’re likely not going to lose money and you’re going to stay ahead of the game by investing in more what we would call more aggressive, not completely aggressive, but more aggressive investments as as, um, you pointed out.

Different Fee Structures of Financial Advisors

Emily (35:14): So something that I learned in our prep for this interview, um, is in your financial planning practice, how your fee structure works, which I really appreciated, but I want you to explain it, um, and explain why you think it’s advantageous both for you and for your clients.

Scott (35:30): Okay, well let’s back up and recognize that there are hundreds of thousands of people that call themselves financial advisors in the us. Uh, that’s not a regulated term. And so almost anybody can call themselves a financial advisor and they generally make money from three ways. Now we all need to make money so there’s no harm in that. Uh, one of them is that they make commissions. So they sell you products whether they be what are called annuities or insurance or stock plans and they make a commission off of that, whether that be 2% or 3% or 10%, perfectly fine, assuming that they disclose that to you and they’re recognizing, you know, I’m gonna make 10% off of you buying this $100,000 investment, but I think it’s best for you and that very well may be best for you. Then there’s a category called called fee only advisors. So they wanna avoid commissions with the potential of there being a conflict or at least the perception that there might be a conflict. And they’re generally gonna charge you for ongoing what we call asset management. And so the going rate is generally 1%. Now these are people that already have established accounts, maybe a million dollars. And so they’re going to pay their, um, fee only advisor 1% of that each and every year to manage their money and give them good advice and, and keep them on the straight and narrow. And then there’s a relatively new category that we call flat fee planning where we’re not interested in managing the money for that client, but we want to just give them some objective solid education advice and then the person can go back on their own for the next 2, 3, 5 years and then maybe come back for a refresher and say, how am I doing? What advice do you have me now? So I’m in that category, it’s called flat fee. So for a particular fee I offer a financial plan to clients that says if they’re starting out and or getting close to retirement and says, let’s take a look at all your finances, not just your investments, but let’s take a look at your insurance and your estate planning documents and a variety of other aspects. Let’s take a look at your goals and just do an assessment and objective assessment to see if you’re on track or not. So, so flat fee advising or flat fee expenses is the way I model my business useful for people especially just getting into investing because they don’t have a lot of money yet. And so the fee only advisors that charge 1% probably aren’t going to see you anyways. So that would be an advantage.

Emily (38:06): Hmm, yeah, especially if, um, you may have zero in assets under management to offer if you only have your 401k plan, for example, if you don’t even have an IRA that, that an advisor could even work with. So I really appreciate that flat fee, um, model. It’s actually when I sought out financial advising a few years ago, that’s the model that I went with for the advisor that I chose. So, um, I’m a believer in it now. It’s a little harder to stomach maybe upfront because you have to come up with hundreds or a couple thousand dollars maybe, depending on the advisor and the type of, um, package that you’re getting versus going to someone who makes money off commissions. Well, it seems like it’s free, but it’s really not free. And so just to recognize as you said that everybody in this industry is getting paid in some way or another, as long as you’re upfront about it, fine, then the client can choose how they want to pay for the service that they’re getting and their advantages and disadvantages to each of those models. But I really appreciate the model that you’ve chosen, so it’s great.

Socrates Financial Planning

Emily (39:01): And if someone listening, um, really likes your style, likes how you’ve taught us through this episode, wants to work with you or maybe wants to recommend you to someone else, how would they get in contact with you?

Scott (39:12): Yeah, so the name of the company is Socrates Financial Planning. So Socrates, because that’s the way I always taught in the classroom using the Socratic method. So Socrates financial planning, socratesfp.com is the website address and from there you can get an email or schedule a call with me or, or find more information about me, but socratesfp.com is the place to go.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (39:36): Well thank you so much Scott, and I wanna conclude by asking you the question that I ask of all of my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for an early career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on already in the interview or it could be something completely new.

Scott (39:50): Yeah, I would come back to that notion of day one, start contributing to whatever plan you have, whether it’s the Roth or or the, the traditional plan certainly to, um, achieve that employer match that we talked about. 10% might sound like a lot to start saving right away, but I would recommend you, you strive for that if not higher, set that up from day one so that you just learn to get by on 90% of your salary. And that’s gonna do such wonders for you. 30 years from now, you will be so glad looking back that that was the best decision you ever made.

Emily (40:26): Well, Thank you so much Scott for volunteering to come on the podcast. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you.

Scott (40:31): Very good. Thank you very much.

Outtro

Emily (40:41): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Filed Under: Investing Tagged With: audio, expert interview, investing, PhD with a Real Job, retirement, transcript, video

What You Should Know about Money Early in Your PhD Career

July 29, 2024 by Jill Hoffman

In this episode, Emily shares the microinterviews she recorded at two higher education conferences this summer. The conference attendees, virtually all of whom work at universities and most of whom have PhDs themselves, responded to this prompt: “What do you wish you had known about money earlier in your career?” Listen through the episode for insights into the financial steps for which, should you take them now, your future self will thank you.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • Host a PF for PhDs Seminar at Your Institution 
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  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
What You Should Know about Money Early in Your PhD Career

Teaser

Lyndsi B (00:00): You don’t have to make one decision and have it be the right decision for the rest of your life. Like you can make changes at any point along the way and you are allowed to fail and like you can recover from failure.

Introduction

Emily (00:20): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (00:50): This is Season 18, Episode 5, and today I’m sharing the microinterviews I recorded at two higher education conferences this summer. The conference attendees, virtually all of whom work at universities and most of whom have PhDs themselves, responded to this prompt: “What do you wish you had known about money earlier in your career?” Listen through the episode for insights into the financial steps for which, should you take them now, your future self will thank you.

Emily (01:20): The two conferences I attended were the Graduate Career Consortium Annual Meeting or GCC and the Higher Education Financial Wellness Alliance Summit or HEFWA. GCC is primarily attended by university staff members working with PhD students and postdocs in career and professional development. HEFWA is attended by university staff members working in financial wellness across undergraduate and graduate populations. These two conferences were excellent networking opportunities for me on top of the built-in professional development. However, there are plenty of universities who were not represented at these conferences. Would you please consider recommending my financial education seminars and workshops at your university? My most popularly requested events for the upcoming academic year are Your Financial Orientation to Graduate School, How to Prevent a Large, Unexpected Tax Bill on Your Fellowship Income, Expert-Level Budgeting for Graduate Students and Postdocs, and Demystifying Taxes for Graduate Students. Please direct an appropriate potential host within your graduate school, postdoc office, grad student association, etc. to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ where they can learn more. Thank you in advance! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s18e5/. Without further ado, here are the microinterviews recorded at GCC and HEFWA.

What Do You Wish You Had Known About Money Earlier In Your Career?

Amy (03:03): Hi, I am Amy from Princeton and when I was in graduate school I wish I had learned more about investing and saving for retirement and sort of how all that works early in your career to benefit you later.

Sharon F (03:18): Hi, my name is Sharon Fleshman. I’m a senior associate director at Career Services at University of Pennsylvania. I think coming out of undergrad I basically took the salary, I was pitched <laugh> and that was it. So I wish I knew the implications of a starting salary across the years.

Evan W (03:34): My name is Evan Walsh. I’m a career advisor at Harvard Medical School. I really wish I knew that it only takes a little bit each week to put towards something. So every week I put money away into a travel fund. Each week I put money away towards retirement. Each money I put a little bit away towards just miscellaneous fees that I may incur and it’s all within my master budget that I now wish I would’ve known earlier that I like to do and that’s really helped me sort of save for trips and things for my future, things that I wanna prioritize, how I utilize my money. So I wish I knew earlier that your money is yours to spend the way that you want to.

Laura S (04:11): Hi, my name is Laura Stark and I work for Harvard University. I got my PhD many, many years ago and I wish that I had known that I should start saving for retirement even as a graduate student.

Briana M (04:26): I’m Briana Mohan, I am a program manager at MD Anderson Cancer Center. A lot of times we feel, I have felt that money is tied to worth and my value as a professional and there actually is no correlation at all so far as I can see. So I think that decoupling those two things so that then it’s a little bit more feasible to work with money and money questions and speak about them and grapple with them and not have it so tied to how much I’m valued or how much I am worth, I wish I would’ve known that earlier.

Alla M (05:03): So my name is Alla Mirzoyan and I’m from Florida International University and I wish I had known about credit in the United States and not to sign up for credit cards without really understanding the implications. I was an international student so I knew very little about how credit works, but I know better now.

Gina B (05:25): I’m Gina Bellavia from the University at Buffalo and what I wish I’d known about money earlier in my career is, well, particularly because I got a PhD but then I went a non-traditional route. I didn’t go into academia, so I guess it would’ve been good for me to know going that route that I might have to kind of go down in pay to, to then start a new trajectory and then work my way up again, which I guess it makes sense if you think about it, but I didn’t really think about it that way. So it’s taken a little longer to to build up I think by taking that less traditional route, but, but I’ve also had greater career satisfaction.

Manali G (06:03): I’m Manali Ghosh. I’m a senior academic recruiter at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and I wish I had known sooner to invest in stocks like s and p 500 earlier in my career.

Ivonne V P (06:16): My name is Ivonne Vidal Pizarro. I’m at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. I’m the research consultant in the graduate school supporting postdocs and I wish that I’d known that if I could save more money when I was younger, I’d have more in my 401k now.

David C-B (06:30): Hi, David Cota-Buckhout. I am the assistant director of Alumni Engagement and Career Support at the University of Rochester’s Graduate Education Postdoctoral affairs office. I wish I knew that I should have paid off my private student loans earlier so that way the compounded interest wouldn’t have backed me with so much debt. And just recently I was able to get rid of those student loans and then free up over $13,000 of interest that I can now put towards other things.

Katie H (07:07): I’m Katie Homar from University of Pittsburgh and what I wish I knew about money earlier in my career was the importance of researching salaries and negotiation.

Alex Y (07:18): Hi, this is Alex Yen, a second year postdoc at Boston University’s professional development and postdoctoral affairs office. The thing I wish I had known about money earlier in my career, and I think especially in graduate school, is that open a high yield savings account as soon as you can and put just a little bit of money, even if it’s 20 bucks, 30 bucks a month. Just having that and knowing that it can, it’s a long term sort of savings space that will continue to accrue interest, will make you feel less anxious and look forward to a time when you can save more

Dan O-B (07:56): Dan Olson-Bang, Syracuse University. If I had known this, I would’ve been grateful. Uh, don’t take out loans during your PhD.

Ryan U (08:05): My name is Ryan Udan. I’m director of the office for postdocs at UTM, the Anderson Cancer Center. As a long time trainee that did not make a lot of money, who navigated into a career path that I was ultimately happy in, it did take too long of a time to get to that career path that for me, I wish I knew about other career options that I would’ve been happy with earlier that paid better and earlier. So now I have a better understanding of all the other diverse career options that are available to people, not just for people with their PhDs, but for other types of professional degree programs that would’ve gotten me to a space where I was happy with my job and that I was making a lot of money more quickly. For example, I didn’t know about optometry field, I didn’t know about radiological careers and you know, the flexibility you have for, uh, uh, obtaining jobs more easily and, and many different places from small towns to big cities. And again, immediately after you get sometimes an associate’s degree, that stuff for me was a black box when I was training.

Giovanna G-M (09:14): Hi, my name is Giovanna Guerrero-Medina and I’m director of Diversity programs at the Yale School of Medicine and the Wu Tsai Institute. One thing I would’ve liked to know about money earlier in my career has to do with how much life costs and how there are gonna be times in your life when you will need to have extra cash because of health emergencies. Because you have to take care of family members who are sick. You have an emergency trip that you have to plan and so it’s important to have a, a fund or a a some money that is liquid that you can use in an emergency at some point in, in my life after my graduate school, my family had some emergencies and I also had some healthcare costs and it was really important for me to have that extra cash that I had saved and separated.

Bill M (10:15): Bill Mahoney. I’m the Associate Dean of graduate student postdoc affairs at the University of Washington. I’m also faculty in the School of medicine and I wish I understood a little bit better that making career decisions based on the next paycheck, the most money, it’s only part of the decision. You have to make it on what you love doing, the people you’re gonna support. And if you choose to stay in higher ed, you’re probably gonna not make as much money, but you’re gonna have a bigger impact on training the next generation of scientists and students to go on and do bigger and better things in uh, and improve the world.

Meredith O (10:44): Meredith Okenquist, Director of Career Management Villanova University. What I wish I knew more about was retirement planning at the very onset of my career and investing the full maximum percentage for my 401k.

Kirsten R (10:59): My name is Kirsten Ronald. I am the program manager of advanced degree career management at UT Austin. I wish I had known that you don’t need to go back to school to make a massive career change and I also wish someone had talked with me about the ROI of going back to school before I did it.

Colleen G (11:13): My name is Colleen Gleeson and I work at the University of Texas at Austin as an associate director for advanced degree employer integration. One thing I wish I had known about money earlier in my career is thinking about careers and jobs and salary packages and benefits in a way that like evaluates in the total compensation package and how invaluable it is to have employer paid health insurance and to have things like pay time off and something that forces you to invest in a retirement account or a pension to make you think about the future.

Marlene B (11:51): So my name is, uh, Marlene Brito, Dr. Marlene Brito and I’m the associate director of DEI at NYU Career Development Center. And what I wish I had known before I started a PhD was that you self-fund a lot of your activities as a doctorate student, especially if you’re a professional who’s going to school part-time, but sometimes even as a full-time student. So like save money for conferences, save money for research expenses because all of that cost thousands of dollars.

Melissa K (12:21): Melissa King, University of Mississippi, the best advice I ever received about money was when my husband and I married 13 years ago and my mother-in-law told us it doesn’t matter how much money you make if you spend all of it right? So knowing how to spend and how to save is by far the best piece of advice. It doesn’t matter if you make six figures if you’re, you’re spending all of it, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Lee T (12:46): Hi, my name is Lee Tacliad. I’m a manager of alumni and employer engagement at Scripps Research and what I wish I knew about money earlier was the magical effect of compound interest.

MaKenna C (13:00): Hi, I’m MaKenna Cealie. I am a graduate student at the University of Rochester. What do I wish I had known about money earlier in my career. So I had some great advice about learning to save and invest, but I think sometimes I took that too far. So I think it would also be important to kinda spend your money too as sometimes and enjoy your life. I read this great book Die With Zero and I think that was very helpful for me.

Dan E (13:26): Hi there. My name’s Dan Emmans. I am senior coordinator for student development and engagement at Harvard Medical School. Early on, get into the habit of putting 20% away and you’ll never go wrong.

Tamar G-C (13:36): Hi, I am Tamar Gaffin-Cahn. I’m the assistant director for graduate students at the Career Development Center at Emerson College. And one thing I wish I had known about money earlier in my career is put money away. Invest really early on, even if it’s just 20 bucks a month, invest early ’cause it will grow. I would also say to diversify where you’re investing and there are lots of opportunities of how to invest in uh, that’s connected to your values as well. So there are opportunities to invest in green energy, invest in programs that are good for the environment and good technology and things like that so it your money isn’t going to corporations that do harm to this world.

Bryan M (14:12): Hi, my name is Bryan McGrath. I do employer engagement over at Harvard Medical School. What do I wish? I had known about money earlier in my career that credit cards accrue interests and you should be paying more than the minimum each time.

Linda L (14:24): My name is Linda Louie. I work at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and I wish that earlier in my career I had known that retirement was a thing you needed to plan for <laugh>.

Jessica R (14:35): My name’s Jessica Roman, I’m the Assistant director of Graduate career Services at Stony Brook University and something I wish I would’ve known about money earlier in my career is how private loans and their interest works because I thought it was like public loans where you have the same principal and then I graduated and I got the bill and it was very shocking and I’m still paying that off, so I wish I would’ve known how that works so I would’ve made payments while in college.

Breanna G (15:06): My name’s Breanna Gallagher and I am a career coordinator at Oklahoma State University and what I wish I would’ve known about money earlier in my career is literally just the lingo of all of the money talk, being able to understand my benefits, being able to understand 401ks and medical insurance and being able to just understand what I was reading and signing, especially in a really tight window when you’re required to do your benefits in like 24 hours.

Aimzhan I (15:39): My name is, Aimzhan Iztayeva. I work as a program associate at the graduate School of the University of Minnesota. What I wish I had known about money earlier in my career is how investment works and also how taxes work with regard to money that you gain through investment.

Natalie C (15:56): My name is Natalie Chernets, I’m director of postdoctoral affairs and professional development at Drexel University. What I wish I knew about money early on is that higher education doesn’t necessarily mean more money in your salary, especially if you are an immigrant coming from another country. There are other barriers you have to think through to earn that salary.

Rowena W (16:14): Hi, I’m Dr. Rowena Winkler. I work for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County or UMBC in their career center as the assistant director for graduate student career development. So what I wish I had known about money earlier in my career is, especially as a graduate student, I, I’m an immigrant child, so my parents came here from the Philippines and I didn’t really know good personal finance and money management practices. I wish I had taken out loans or looked for more scholarships because as a graduate student in particular, I went into a lot of credit card debt just trying to finance my way through school. And so I wish I had known more about personal finance resources or funding options as a graduate student.

Mearah Q-B (16:56): My name is Mearah Quinn-Brauner. I work at Northwestern University. I wish I had known that sometimes it’s a good idea to spend money in order to have more money later in your life. When I was in graduate school, my mom tried to convince me to buy a house and I thought that that was insane. It was a crazy idea given how much money I had at the time, but it would’ve been worth figuring out so that I would have a house in Philadelphia now.

Diane S (17:24): Hi, my name is Diane Safer. I’m the director of career and Professional Development at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine where I work with PhDs and postdocs. I wish I would’ve taken the advice that I give to my students and postdocs right now and really negotiated for higher salaries and higher starting salaries right when I got the job because you can never really make it up once you’ve started a job and you’ve lost all your negotiating power once you’re in.

Mallory F-L (17:49): Hi, my name’s Mallory Fix-Lopez. I’m with Language ConnectED. I wish I would’ve known to charge for my work earlier in my career. I’ve done a lot of work for free <laugh>.

Emily S (17:59): So my name is Emily Sferra. I am the coordinator for career and Professional Development at the University of Michigan Medical School. If given the option to contribute to a retirement account you should contribute to a retirement account.

David B (18:19): Hi, I’m David Blancha. I’m a program manager at the OCPD at University of San Francisco. The thing that I wish I had known about money earlier, especially when I was a graduate student, is that when I was doing all of the math on my finances and what I might like need to live while I was in graduate school, all of those numbers would be wrong. Eight years later when I graduated I had no, I, no sense of adjusting for inflation or markets changing or anything like that. So I assumed the math I had done to live in a one bedroom apartment <laugh> in New York in 2015 is what I was going to need in 2022 and that’s absolutely not, not right. <laugh>.

Commercial

Emily (19:09): Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2024-2025 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Orientations or very close to the start of the academic year would be a perfect time for tax education or general personal finance content. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutions enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

What Do You Wish You Had Known About Money Earlier In Your Career?

Alexis B (20:37): My name’s Alexis Boyer. I’m assistant director of Graduate student career services at MIT. And I wish I had known the difference between a 1099 and a W2 and I wish that I had known that the skills that I was developing were worthy of being paid.

RC S (20:54): RC Stabile, uh, Vanderbilt University, director of trainee engagement and wellbeing. I wish I knew about investing, putting money in target date index funds and I wish I knew about high yield savings accounts earlier.

John M (21:10): Hi, my name’s John Miles. I’m the Chief Executive officer of Inkpath, uh, the professional development platform. I wish earlier that I had known that by spending my time working on Shakespeare and taking a very academic direction that I wasn’t counting myself out of decent salaries later on that I should be confident that time will reward you and, uh, you can indulge those academic perspectives, uh, without feeling like you are narrowing down your options for the future.

Zarna P (21:42): Hi, I’m Zarna Pala. I am the assistant director of the Biological Sciences graduate program at the University of Maryland. And I wish I knew, uh, more about investment and investing money in the right direction or any sort of like small investments which I, which I could have started early on, uh, as a graduate student, as a postdoc fellow, that would’ve been really helpful.

Anne-Charlotte M (22:08): Hi, I’m Anne-Charlotte Mecklenburg. I am the postdoctoral associate for academic support at the University of Maryland College Park. And I think something that I wish that I knew about money earlier in my career was just all of the different ways of like saving money and organizing money that I would need later in my career as a graduate student it was kind of like, okay, I have a stipend and it covers all my living expenses and I can’t really do anything else with it, so I just spend it until I don’t have it anymore. And now that I’m sort of moving into more of a mid-career moment, it’s like, oh, I have a retirement account through my university and I don’t really know how that works. All that kind of stuff that I feel like in other careers people kind of learn that kind of stuff closer to right af out of college. It’s something that now feels like a little bit delayed for me and now I feel like I’m a little bit behind. So something I wish I was thinking about before I needed it so that I’d be ready when I did need it.

Amy A (23:00): I’m Amy Aines and I’m with Championing Science. What I would’ve loved to have known more about is how to invest. I think I was conservative and I was okay with a 401k with someone else thinking about it, but it would’ve been nice to know for myself what that was about and how I could take advantage of the opportunity.

Gina D (23:18): Gina Delgado, director of doctoral and post-doctoral life design and what I wish I’d known earlier about money in general is not just knowing about money but not being afraid of being broke because I’m not afraid of being broke.

Beka L (23:32): This is Beka Layton. I am the director of professional development at UNC Chapel Hill and thinking back to when I was a graduate student, I think benefits life insurance 401ks and kind of how to balance life expenses with long-term goals and budgeting. I think that whole like black box of like, I don’t know any of those things was mystifying to me. So things I learned by accident along the way and wish I knew then.

Aurora W (24:02): I’m Aurora Washington. I am currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. And something that I wish I knew about finance when I was a graduate student is how to budget a little bit better and to manage my expectations because I’m a postdoc, postdoc don’t get paid well and so I wish I knew a little bit more about benefits in negotiating in Texas.

Sam R (24:29): Hi, um, this is Sam Ramosevac, I’m director, um, at the office of Postdoctoral and Mentor trainee program at Emory University. Uh, I wish I actually negotiated my salary and I think it’s really important at least to attempt to negotiate and get more money for the level of experience you have and you know, just at least to try.

Ian K (24:57): I’m Ian Krout. I am a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University. For me, being a postdoc, I went on a training grant and realized that I was losing some benefits that I had gotten as being an employee at the university. And so I actually began to ask questions to both my PI and the postdoctoral office about if this needed to be the case and if there was any way to get benefits and advocating for myself was enough to get those benefits brought back through a workaround at the university, which was really positive for my experience and helped me to still be able to save for retirement and not pay into my health insurance myself.

Jessica T (25:35): My name is Jessica Taylor. I’m a research fellow at ACLS and I wish I had known when I was a graduate student that you’re supposed to tip in hotels.

Natalia (25:44): My name is Natalia, I work for the University of Pittsburgh as a career advisor. Yeah, and I wish I, I had known that money would be able to buy me freedom of choice.

Autumn A (25:55): Well, my name is Autumn Anthony. I manage the office for graduate student assistantships and fellowships at GW. I think it would’ve been really important for me to realize earlier that if you are looking to make more money, then you have to go to the organizations that actually have more money <laugh> and that when you are committed to the work that you’re doing and working hard and looking for opportunities to succeed in your work, just because of your commitment and just because of your hard work doesn’t mean you’re going to make more money. So you have to go where the money is.

Jessica V (26:33): My name is Jessica Vélez. I am the membership engagement and early career programs manager for the Genetic Society of America. And I definitely wish I had known that I do actually make more money than I think I do. And by creating a budget, that’s how I learned that I made more money than I thought I did and I signed up for a budgeting app at some point in my graduate career. Because of that, when I finished my PhD, I wasn’t able to immediately get a job, but I had enough money saved up from the budgeting I had done on a graduate school stipend to survive for two or three months without having to worry about unemployment because you can’t apply for unemployment as a graduate student <laugh>. So that was extremely beneficial and I’m glad that I finally learned that, but I wish I had learned that earlier for sure.

Melissa B (27:20): This is Melissa Bostrom. I’m assistant Dean for Graduate Student Professional Development at Duke University and I wish I would’ve known that investing for retirement didn’t have to be perfect. It didn’t have to be the best. I just had to get started with a small amount on a regular basis.

Chris S (27:35): Okay, my name is Chris Smith. I manage the Office of Postdoc Affairs at Virginia Tech. The importance of investing in special retirement vehicles, whether that be a Roth IRA or traditional IRA that have different benefits in terms of tax purposes, whether you pay them now or later. And it might be real benefit when you’re in your lower paying years to be in investing in or Roth where you’re paying the taxes now and then when you eventually retire, you don’t know taxes on that and all the compounding that happens over those 30 plus years of your career.

Jason H (28:06): I’m Jason Heustis, assistant Dean for Student Development Evaluation at Harvard Medical School. I’d say one of the things that would’ve been helpful to know in graduate school, similar decisions you’d make when you start getting a real paycheck, things like allocations for insurances, the different types of saving options, that type of thing would’ve been helpful for me to know earlier, right? Or to be prepared for those decisions so that I can do as much research at the time. That would’ve been helpful.

Anne X (28:30): Hi, my name is Anne Xiong. I’m from UC Berkeley Center for Financial Wellness. I wish I know that no matter how much money you have, you can start investing early.

Kelli W (28:41): I’m Kelli Wright from Wayne State University. I’m the financial wellness advisor there. I’ve been there since March of 2023. I’m an accounting background, so I’m really excited about this space and what I wish I would’ve known is the importance of saving, creating that healthy habit, of saving even $10 a month just where I would be at financially if I would’ve known that.

Charah C (29:07): Yes, my name is Charah Coleman. I work for University of California Merced, and I am the Financial Wellness Center program manager on that campus. I would say the time value of money. I don’t have any regrets with how I spent my money in my undergrad or even early grad school, but I wish I really would’ve invested earlier and given myself a leg up a lot earlier. Now I definitely have to invest a lot more aggressively and I have to cut a lot more expenses now than when I was starting off in my career. I, I definitely think having that awareness of the time value of money being aggressive at the front end, I think would’ve behoove me a lot better.

Beth H (29:49): Beth Hunsaker, MS. Uh, associate Director, financial Wellness Center, university of Utah. After my graduate work, I did take some time off to have kids and although that was a wonderful chapter of my life, I really wish I would’ve taken time to keep my network strong, to keep working on my skills because when it was time to come back for my career, which has to do with money, it was a little harder for that on ramping. And I think that there is a way to balance and do both, and I wish I would’ve focused a little more on that.

Roland K (30:27): Roland Keller Jr associate director of financial aid at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. One thing that I wish I would’ve known about a little sooner is the importance of credit. Credit is very important. It literally is life or death. So I would’ve wished I would’ve been more educated about credit

Darrel S (30:45): Darrel Stufflebeam, uh, a doctor in education from KU and I’m the new assistant director for Jayhawk Finances at ku. Uh, I wish I’d have known about the importance of starting early and compound interest and I did not have a financial background and my parents didn’t really have advice. So if I would’ve started a little earlier then I’d be much happier now, but I’m just spreading the word as part of my current job.

Khalilah L (31:12): My name is Dr. Khalilah Lauderdale. I am the Associate Athletic Director for student services at the University of Southern California. And earlier in my career, I wish I had known, um, concerning money more about how to buy a home. I was very green in our process and very reliant on my realtor resources, so that would’ve been helpful.

Nafisah G-B (31:35): My name is Nafisah Graham-Brown. I am a program administrator of a financial coaching program at SUNY WCC, that’s Westchester Community College. What I wish I had known about money earlier in my career was the value of retirement savings. Uh, unfortunately I was in a job where we were discouraged from taking part in the pension and retirement program mainly because the people that were talking to us also didn’t have much information or knowledge. So I guess the value of it wasn’t seen by most of us. And I guess the lesson is make sure you’re getting your information from someone who knows.

Aly B (32:13): My name is Aly Blakeney. I am an instructor of economics at Phillips Academy Andover. What I wish I had known about money earlier was honestly how important it is to talk with any significant other. If you have like a very serious prospect with them to talk with them and be like, Hey, where are we at in terms of money and debt? I think that will cause stress quicker than anything. And setting yourself up for future means also taking care of your financial wellness via your emotional intimacy wellness as well.

Tony F (32:45): My name is Tony Froelich. I am the financial literacy coordinator at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. What I wish I’d known earlier in my career about money is the power of investing in yourself. I always thought of saving as taking what was left after the month and that was my savings. So whether that was $10 or negative $50, pulling outta my savings account, but learning the lesson of taking that savings out of my paycheck first and putting that away and then spending the rest has been life changing.

Zach T (33:19): Yes, Zach Taylor, assistant professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, and what I wish I had known about money earlier in my career is saving it earlier in my career would facilitate a lot more time and that as I’ve gotten older, time is money and I’m now realizing how much more time money can buy you. And that has become so important as my parents have aged and as I have continued in my career where I feel like I have enough money now, but I don’t have the time, but if I had more money, I know I would have more time. So I think the relationship between time and money is what I wish I had known earlier in my career.

Lyndsi B (34:04): I am Lyndsi Burcham. I am the financial Wellness Program manager at the University of Pennsylvania. I think what I wish I had known about money earlier in my career isn’t even necessarily about money. It’s the fact that like you don’t have to make one decision and have it be the right decision for the rest of your life. Like you can make changes at any point along the way. And I think a lot of times when we’re having conversations about money with students, they’re so caught up in the fact that they have to do the right thing first. And oftentimes there is no right thing. And even if there is a right thing, it’s gonna change depending on your life circumstances. There’s a lot I could say about tactical information about like what is a credit score versus a credit report and, and knowing those kinds of things, but like the psychological component of it, which is you are allowed to fail and like you can recover from failure. I, I don’t think we talk about that enough and instead we instill fear in students that they have to do things the best way.

Peter B (34:59): Hi, I am Peter Bye. I am a doctor of music student at Indiana University and what I wish I had known about money earlier in my career is that sometimes it works out well and sometimes it doesn’t work out well and you kind of gotta roll with the punches and make adjustments constantly. It’s never something you figure out. You can’t solve it unless you’re like super rich, but you can make changes and slowly affect your, your situation hopefully in a positive way. Uh, so you kind of just have to roll with the punches until you hopefully get to the place you wanna get to.

Outtro

Emily (35:41): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Filed Under: Financial Goals Tagged With: audio, budgeting, credit, financial advice, grad student, investing, money story, postdoc, retirement, transcript, video

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