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Why Pay Down Your Student Loans in Grad School?

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While you’re in graduate school, you have the option of deferring payments on the student loans you have previously taken out. This is a very standard procedure that your lender should have no trouble helping you with once you make the request. Deferment means that you are not required to make payments on your student loans. You are allowed to defer student loans when you are enrolled at least half-time in graduate school.

That’s where many graduate students stop thinking about their student loans. “I don’t have to pay? Awesome!” But just because you defer your student loans does not mean that you should ignore them. Even in deferment, you have the option of making payments of any size you choose on your student loans. Depending on the rest of your financial landscape and the interest rate of the loans, it can be a good idea to pay down your loans while you are in graduate school.

When your student loans enter deferment, you don’t have to make payments but the loans still accrue interest at their given rate. In the case of federal subsidized student loans (which are now only available to undergraduates), the federal government pays the interest for you, so your loans don’t grow any larger. In the case of federal unsubsidized and private student loans, the accrued interest adds to your balance due. When your loans exit deferment, the interest capitalizes, which means it becomes part of the principal due, making your accruing interest and minimum payments even higher.

Interest rate is crucial

The higher the interest rate on your unsubsidized loans, the faster the loan balance will grow during the deferment period. Let’s look at a few examples. Direct unsubsidized loans for undergraduates are offered at 4.45% and direct unsubsidized loans for graduate students are offered at 6% (as of June 2017). Private student loans might be offered anywhere from 3 to 12%.

This table illustrates how much your loan balance would grow at the given interest rate if you made no payments (deferred) for five years.

You can see how much the interest rate itself affects the balance after five years. And remember, interest will continue to accumulate throughout the entire life of the loan! Not making payments just allows the problem to grow larger.

If your student loans are currently deferred, you have a decision to make: Should you make payments on your student loans even though you don’t have to, and what amount should you pay? There are different answers depending on your exact situation.

You can’t pay – period

Some graduate students have no choice here; they are simply unable to make any payments on their student loans. This might be because they are taking out more student loans or consumer debt during graduate school or because their stipend only just covers their bare-bones living expenses. This is a situation in which deferment is sorely needed. The best course forward is to finish graduate school in a timely manner, get a well-paying job, and start repayment when the deferment ends.

You might be able to pay, but you’re reluctant to free up the cash flow

Many graduate students who receive stipends technically have the ability to make payments toward their student loans if they want to, but they either don’t recognize their ability or are unmotivated to make the sacrifice to their lifestyles. When you’re not compelled to put money toward your future, it’s easy to let your lifestyle inflate to your income level.

When you’re dealing with compound interest, like with debt repayment or investing, the question comes down to how much you value an amount of money now vs. a larger amount later. How much larger an amount depends on the interest rate. Yes, it would be a sacrifice to cut $100/month from your budget, for example, to make a regular payment on your debt, and it would almost certainly be easier to sacrifice $100/month out of your larger post-grad school income. But remember that we’re not comparing $100 now to $100 later – more like $100 now with $120 or $140 or $160 later.

What the tipping point is between those two options is up to each individual to decide based on his risk tolerance, post-graduation income prospects, and lifestyle desires.

You have available cash flow, but you’re not sure if it should go toward the loans

Other graduate students have already identified some amount of cash flow each month that they want to put toward their financial goals, but they’re not sure if their loans should be their top priority. Maybe they feel they could also use some additional cash savings on hand or are excited about investing.

As long as the student has a satisfactory emergency fund and/or cash for short-term spending and no higher-interest rate debt, putting the cash flow toward either the debt repayment or long-term investing is a good choice. Which one comes out on top should be determined based on two primary factors: the math and your personal disposition.

The math: Compare the interest rate on your debt with the average annual rate of return you expect on your investments. If your interest rate is much lower than your expected average annual rate of return, that’s a big argument in favor of investing over debt repayment. If your interest rate is comparable to or higher than your expected average annual rate of return, that favors debt repayment.

Personal disposition: How you feel about this investing vs. debt repayment decision matters, too. If you can’t sleep at night for thinking about your looming debt, just work on paying it down. If the math doesn’t sway you strongly to one side and you are super excited about starting to invest, go ahead and do that (but keep in mind that losing money is a distinct possibility).

Remember that subsidized loans are effectively at a 0% interest rate, so repaying those loans would only be a top priority for someone who really hates their debt.

Payment strategies

If you have decided to repay your student loans to some degree during grad school, you have some options on how to do so.

The first is that deferral decision that we assumed at the beginning. Even if you don’t feel you have to defer because you can easily afford the minimum payment, deferring still may be advantageous for two reasons: 1) If something ever came up that prevented you from making your required payment, your credit score would take a hit. 2) With no minimum payment required across all your loans, you can choose to pay down one loan at a time.

Second, assuming your loans are deferred, you can make regular payments or save up for some time and make larger, lump-sum payments. It might be easier to make fewer payments over the course of a year, but if your loans are unsubsidized you would lose a little bit of money to interest accumulation. Talk with your lender to see how willing they are to accept payments of variable amount and at irregular times. For subsidized loans, you wouldn’t be penalized for building up your payoff money in your own coffers up through the entire deferment period as long as you paid the sum before the loans exit deferment.

Third, within your set of student loans, you may have multiple different interest rates, perhaps including both subsidized and unsubsidized loans. If you have decided to commit a certain amount of money to loan payment, you should put the whole payment toward the unsubsidized loan with the highest interest rate (the debt avalanche method).

Pay just the interest

One option that I haven’t yet mentioned is the common suggestion to pay off only the accruing interest during the deferment period so that the loan balance you have upon exiting deferment is exactly the same as the loan balance that you had upon entering deferment. While it is a fine idea to pay some amount toward the loans during deferment, I don’t see a compelling reason why that number should exactly equal the amount of interest accruing. If you have the ability to make interest-only payments, why stop there? You should pay as much as your budget allows.

I do think it’s a good idea to defer your student loans while you are in graduate school. And on top of that, to the greatest extent you are willing you should put your money toward increasing your net worth. Both debt repayment and investing fulfill that goal well, and which one you choose will depend primarily on the math and your personal disposition. The higher the interest rate on your student loan debt, the more compelling the argument for paying it down while you are in grad school.

Birthing a Baby Before You Birth Your Dissertation

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Financial considerations for graduate students becoming parents.

If your relationship with your graduate advisor can be compared to a marriage, the dissertation you create together is your child. You conceive it together in early days and then spend 5 (or 6 or 7 or…) years raising it up until it can make its way into the world independently. That creative process is time-, energy-, and emotion-intensive, not to mention financially limiting due to the small stipend you receive in those years.

Is it possible to bring a human child into your family in the midst of your graduate degree and still see it to a successful completion? Plenty of newly minted PhDs celebrate their accomplishment alongside their children. But having a baby during graduate school may be even more of a challenge to your time and finances than doing so before or after.

When you are deciding whether to have a child during grad school or preparing for one already on the way, the two key areas in which you need to make space are your time and money. In this article, I outline the largest monetary costs that you will incur in the first year of your child’s life and discuss ways to minimize those expenses. The first things to come to mind when you think of these costs may be clothing, toys, or a crib, but those are actually among the more minor expenses.

Medical Care and Insurance

Prenatal, postpartum, and ongoing medical care are necessary for mother and baby, so check your insurance policies. Research the out-of-pocket costs for an uncomplicated birth with each of the providers and settings you are considering, and ask your insurance company about your deductibles and co-pays. Midwifery care tends to be less expensive than obstetric care, but that may or may not be in line with your birth preferences or affect your bottom line. You have time to save up a fund to pay for your part of the birth expenses. You should also make sure your emergency fund is a healthy size in case mother or baby experiences complications that will add to the expense.

After the birth, you can choose to add the child to either parent’s insurance policy; assuming the care options are comparable, you can choose the one that you expect to be less expensive to you between the premiums and the out-of-pocket costs. An open enrollment period prior to or during pregnancy also provides an opportunity to switch the mother’s insurance provider if that is advantageous.

If you are adding the baby to your graduate student insurance policy, expect to pay a (higher) premium. Also be aware that while a typical health insurance premium would be paid incrementally with each paycheck, your grad student insurance might require a lump sum up front for each term or year.

Parental Leave

Your university or department may have a parental leave policy in place. It should outline the amount of time you are permitted to take off; whether the leave will be unpaid, paid, or at partial pay; and whether benefits such as insurance will continue. If there is no official parental leave policy, there may be one regarding leave for a medical or an unspecified reason that will apply or a vacation policy. Failing that, it will be down to you to negotiate your leave with your advisor and possibly department. This is also a great opportunity to negotiate a different schedule for after the baby arrives.

The reason leave is included as a major cost is because of the potential loss of income. The length of your leave might be influenced by what you can afford. Similar to your medical expenses, use the time you have leading up to the birth to save a dedicated fund out of which you can pay your expenses during your unpaid or partial-pay leave.

Childcare

Childcare is easily one of the largest costs you will incur in the first year of your baby’s life, and it can be paid in either money or the caregiver’s time (i.e., opportunity cost).

If you are going to pay for childcare, compare all your local options: daycare, a nanny or nanny share, or babysitters. As a graduate student, you may be eligible to receive a subsidy for daycare on- or off-campus. Consider whether you need full-time or part-time care; if you have flexibility in when you work and money is more scarce than time, perhaps you only need part-time care.

Some families may be able to arrange for childcare that does not involve an exchange of money. One parent can cease working or move to a part-time schedule, both parents can work different ‘shifts’ so one is always with the baby, or another family member may donate his or her time. This is highly dependent on your existing resources, the flexibility of your work, and how you want to spend your time.

Be very cautious about assigning your time a value equal to that of your stipend ‘hourly rate.’ This line of thought leads many lower-income workers to the conclusion that it is financially advantageous to quit a job to become a full-time caregiver rather than to pay for childcare. This is short-sighted because it does not consider future career advancement and income increases. While you are in graduate school, your income is suppressed, but you can greatly increase it by finishing graduate school and moving on to a higher-paying job. It can make financial sense to pay a comparable or higher rate for childcare than you earn from your stipend if it speeds your progress toward your post-grad school job.

Space

Just about every year a new ‘cost of raising a child’ calculation is performed. For example, in 2015 the headline cost of raising a child to age 18 was $230,000 (this is an average over all income levels and parenting choices). The largest component of that cost calculation (29%) was for housing. If you decide to move to a larger dwelling to accommodate your new child, you must account for that additional monthly cost. Depending on your parenting decisions, that’s not necessarily a cost you will incur immediately – the American Academy of of Pediatrics recommends sleeping in the same room as your infant for the first year – but eventually more space will become necessary.

Insurance

If you have not yet had reason to purchase life insurance, the birth of your first child will almost certainly motivate you to do so. The purpose of life insurance is to provide for anyone who would be financially impacted by your death. The most cost-effective type of life insurance to buy is term life insurance, not whole life or universal life. You can shop online or through an independent insurance broker to find the best policy and price for you.

Food

While the average American spends less than 10% of their disposable income on food (both at home and out), I consider food to be a major regular budget line item for graduate students (often third-largest after housing and transportation). Therefore, an infant’s food could also have a significant impact on the family’s budget. The choice to breastfeed or formula-feed – to the extent that it is a choice – is a parenting decision that has a monetary cost either way. Expect to spend some money in this category, whether on formula, bottles, breastfeeding supplies, or extra food for the mother. Starting between 4 and 6 months of age, you’ll also start purchasing solid foods for your child.

Further reading: Breastfeeding Ain’t Free

Diapers

Another significant cost in a baby’s first year of life is waste management, i.e., diapers, wipes, diapering supplies, etc. This cost is less avoidable than some of the previously listed ones (except by practicing elimination communication and potty training early), but it can be minimized. If you are using disposable diapers, it’s all about sourcing the least expensive diapers that work for your baby. Cloth diapering requires an up-front investment, but becomes less expensive than disposable diapering within the first year and realizes large savings in subsequent years and for subsequent children.

Further reading: Cloth Diapering in an Apartment

Stuff

Most of the remaining money that you will spend in your child’s first year of life are one-time purchases of various items, such as a car seat, stroller/carrier, furniture, linens, clothing, toys, and books. If you receive gifts or hand-me-downs, they will likely be in this category, so some of the cost might not be borne by your budget. You might even be able to borrow many of these types of items from a family with a child slightly older than yours. A parents’ group at your university could be a great resource in this respect. Whatever you do need to buy can be bought used, though be careful for highly regulated items like car seats and cribs that they are compliant.

Further reading: Outfitting Our Baby with Hand-Me-Down, Borrowed, and Used Stuff

While this list may appear overwhelming, not every cost may apply to your family and there are ways to minimize each one. For the costs that you expect to incur, the best way to decide if you can afford them is to pretend that you are paying them now. Draft a post-baby budget that includes your monthly additional cost for housing, childcare, purchases, etc. and see if you can live on the remainder right now. Funnel all the cash flow you are trying to do without into a dedicated fund for your child that can ultimately pay for your start-up costs.

What was the toughest financial aspect of having a baby while in grad school and how did you work through it?

Why the Roth IRA Is the Ideal Long-Term Savings Vehicle for a Grad Student

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You’re a graduate student with the means and desire to save for your future. What is the best way to do so? If you have taxable compensation, the Roth IRA is an awesome choice. IRAs confer long-term tax advantages so your money grows at its maximum possible rate. The Roth version of an IRA is very well-suited for people who currently have a lower income than they expect to have in retirement. And if you decide that your goal is not saving for retirement after all, you can still access your money!

Further reading: Even Grad Students Should Have a Roth IRA


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Tax Advantage of the IRA

If you keep your investments in a taxable account, whenever a taxable event occurs (like you sell an investment or receive a dividend) you will have to pay tax. Year after year, those taxes erode the gains in your account. In any given year, this may seem like a nibble, but when you consider that you will stay invested for decades, taxes become quite a big bite.

As a simplified example, compare the account balances of two people who invest $5,000 per year at a 10% rate of return over 40 years. The person whose account is not subject to tax ends with $2,434,259.06. The person who pays a 20% tax on the gains yearly ends with $1,398,905.20, 43% less!

The way to keep from paying tax on the gains in your account is to use a tax-advantaged retirement account. This deal does presume that you will not access your money until retirement (exceptions are below). There are many types of tax-advantaged retirement accounts out there, but they all depend on your workplace offering them to you or you being self-employed. Virtually no universities extend their 403(b) benefits to graduate students. Luckily, there is one tax-advantaged retirement account that is independent of your workplace or self-employment income, which is the IRA (Individual Retirement Arrangement).

The IRA is a wonderful vehicle to invest through. As it is independent, you can open this type of account at just about any brokerage firm and can put just about any type of investment inside of it. The world is your oyster when it comes to investment choice inside an IRA. In 2021, you can contribute up to $6,000 per year to an IRA.

You do need “taxable compensation” to contribute to an IRA. Starting in 2020, non-W-2 fellowship income is considered “compensation” for the purpose of contributing to an IRA. As long as your grad student stipend is taxable (it is for US citizens and residents, but may not be for non-residents covered by a tax treaty), it can be contributed to an IRA.

Further reading: Fellowship Income Is Now Eligible to Be Contributed to an IRA

Pay Tax Now, Not Later with the Roth

Tax-advantaged accounts currently come in two flavors: traditional and Roth. The main difference between the two is when you pay income tax on your money. While your money is inside the IRA, it grows tax-free, as discussed above. But you also get a tax break upon either contribution to or withdrawal from the account.

With a traditional IRA, you take an income tax deduction on the money you contribute to the account and pay ordinary income tax on the distributions you take in retirement. With a Roth IRA, you pay your full income tax on the money you contribute and do not pay income tax on the distributions.

When choosing between the traditional and Roth, the idea is to pay tax when you will be in a lower tax bracket. The typical graduate student has a low income during graduate school but expects a higher income later in life and in retirement. Therefore, the Roth option is the more popular for graduate students.

The Roth promises that you will pay tax on your IRA contribution now at your marginal income tax rate (likely 15% or lower) and never pay tax on that money again, no matter how much your investments grow!

Flexibility for Non-Retirement Goals

I’m an advocate of clearly defining your goals and choosing investments appropriate to your time horizon. For this reason, I think that you should only contribute to an IRA if you intend to use the money in retirement. But the Roth IRA rules allow for some flexibility. If the idea of absolutely not being able to use your investments for anything other than retirement is preventing you from starting to invest, you should know that you can access much of the money in your Roth IRA early should you change your mind about your goal.

Usually, when you pull money out of an IRA early, the distribution is subject to a 10% penalty. However, there are big exception categories for the Roth IRA. You can remove the contributions you made to your Roth IRA at any time without penalty. When it comes to your earnings, your distribution becomes qualified and therefore not penalized if you use it for the purchase of a first home (up to $10,000) or for higher education expenses.

So if you want to invest for the long-term but the idea of absolutely not being able to touch your money until retirement puts you off, rest easy that the Roth IRA is a great option for you. If your financial goals change in the next few years, you do have the ability to use the money in your Roth IRA for something other than retirement.

Between the tax-advantaged status, the option to pay tax now at a low rate and never again, and its flexibility to be used for multiple goals, the Roth IRA is just about a perfect retirement investing vehicle for graduate students! The only thing I would change about it is for the contribution limit to be higher. But grad students with taxable compensation have very good reasons to contribute to a Roth IRA

Why You Should Invest During Grad School

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Graduate school is a financially challenging time even if you are fully funded. Your stipend isn’t intended to do much more than pay your basic living expenses. You are likely young and relatively inexperienced with managing money, especially for long-term goals. You’re short on time to learn about financial best practices, and you may even be suffering from analysis paralysis. Investing may be either the furthest thing from your mind or yet another item languishing on your “To Do” list.

I believe that if you fully understood the benefits of investing right now, you would be chomping at the bit to get started. If you have the means, investing for the long term is one of the best possible uses for your money during graduate school. Of course you should cover your basic living expenses and live a little, but you can simultaneously begin building your lifetime wealth. It’s worth starting to invest during graduate school even if you can only put away a small amount or a small percentage of your income. Your status as a graduate student is even an investing advantage in some ways!


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Below are four reason why you should start investing for the long term during grad school.

The Time Value of Money

In investing, time matters a ton. There are three key components to increasing your wealth: how much money you invest, what you invest in (i.e., the return you get), and for how long you invest. The first and third are the most important, believe it or not, because they are the most under your control.

Compound interest, or the time value of money, is the magic element that makes investing so powerful. Well, it’s not magic, it’s math – exponential growth. Here’s how compound interest works: Assume that your invested money gives a modest return each year. In your first year, your money grows by that return. In your second year, your money grows again, plus you get growth on last year’s growth. In the third year, you get growth, growth on growth, and growth on growth on growth. This continues (on average) for the entire period you are invested. Growth on growth ad infinitum!

One of the most powerful actions you can take for your net worth is to get the compound interest clock ticking for you as early as possible. Say, for example, that you need to invest regularly over 40 years to fund your retirement. Would you rather start that clock right now or wait until you’re done with your training?

You might think that starting to invest during graduate school is a big sacrifice that won’t amount to much because you won’t be able to save nearly as much now as you will on your future Real Job salary. This is a dire misconception!

Let’s take Tom as an example graduate student. Tom receives a $30,000/year stipend and invests 10% of it every month throughout his five years in graduate school. Over those five years, he contributes $15,000. Given an 8% average annual rate of return (very reasonable for a long-term investment), at the end of graduate school Tom’s account balance has grown to $18,353.49. If we leave that sum of money alone to continue to compound at 8% (no additional contributions), the balance grows tremendously. After 40 years, it has become $398,720.79! That’s an extra $400,000 for Tom’s retirement that he wouldn’t have had if he hadn’t started investing during graduate school.

Ingraining Positive Saving Habits

Incorporating regular long-term investing into how you manage your money during graduate school creates a powerful habit. Not only are you experiencing the benefit of compounding interest on the money you invest during graduate school, but you have created a habit of investing that will carry forward throughout your whole life. In fact, by doing so you have changed your identity to that of an investor!

Investing during graduate school is a sacrifice, of course. But to be honest, it’s going to be a sacrifice at whatever point in your life you start to invest. People always think that it’s going to be easier to start saving later, when x, y, and z in their life has changed; this mindset is not unique to graduate students. Yes, in a few years you’ll have a Real Job’s salary, which will make saving easier, but perhaps you’ll also experience other life changes like having a family or want to pursue other financial goals like buying a home, which will add financial constraints.

If you start investing during the objectively difficult period of graduate school, you’ll always be able to say, “I was able to save during graduate school, so of course I can continue to save now.”

Tax Advantages

Another big argument in favor of starting to invest during grad school is the tax advantages. In this case, having a low income actually works in your favor! (And not because of the Saver’s Credit.)

Graduate students with taxable compensation are eligible to contribute to an individual retirement arrangement (IRA). An IRA is a wonderful vehicle for anyone with the goal of saving for retirement. The big upside to using an IRA (or 401(k), 403(b), etc.) is that your money won’t be taxed while it’s growing inside the IRA. If your money were invested outside the IRA, the yearly taxes would essentially erode your rate of return and lower your balances.

When you open an IRA, you have the option to make it a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA. With a traditional IRA, you take a tax deduction on the money you contribute and pay ordinary income tax on the IRA distributions in your retirement. With a Roth IRA, you pay your full tax on the money you contribute and the distributions are tax-free.

For the typical young graduate student in the 15% (or lower) marginal tax bracket who expects a much higher income post-graduation, a Roth IRA is a fantastic choice. You pay your 15% income tax on the money you contribute to your Roth IRA, and that money is never subject to income tax again! It’s a great idea to add to a Roth IRA when you’re in a low tax bracket like while in graduate school. If you do have a higher income after graduation and a higher marginal tax bracket, you’ll either pay a higher tax rate to contribute to a Roth IRA or switch to a traditional IRA. When you consider that some people contribute to Roth IRAs when they are in much higher tax brackets, a 15% tax rate seems like a deal!

Even if you do not have taxable compensation, your low tax bracket is still an advantage for long-term investments. If you are in the 15% tax bracket, you have 0% federal tax on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends. This means that investing outside an IRA is not such a terrible fate because of your low tax bracket as long as you use a tax-efficient investing strategy such as index fund investing.

Further Reading: Fellowship Recipients Can Save for Retirement Outside an IRA; How Fellowship Recipients Can Save for Retirement (video)

Post-Graduation Flexibility

If nothing else, having money increases your options. Exiting graduate school with savings and investments gives you more flexibility when it comes to financially motivated decisions like where to work and how to live. If you already have a nest egg compounding in your corner, you can consider the lower-paying job that fulfills your passion or the high cost-of-living city that you love. You are no longer hamstrung into maximizing your salary and minimizing your lifestyle so that you can compensate for the opportunity cost of your graduate training.

Further reading: What We Did in Graduate School to Enable Our Risky Career Decisions

I hope that considering all the benefits of investing has motivated you to start investing or increase your contributions during grad school! It’s amazing to graduate with not only a degree but also sure financial footing.

How Much of Your Stipend Should You Spend on Rent?

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A version of this article first appeared on GradHacker.

There are a few different versions of the “rule of thumb” regarding how much of your income to spend on housing. No more than 25-30% of your take-home pay seems to be the consensus, with a few outliers. But as a graduate student receiving a stipend, does this guideline apply to you? How should you figure out how much to spend on housing? Clearly, whether your university is in a high cost-of-living or a low cost-of-living area will have an enormous impact on how much you need to spend.

For some graduate students, this rule of thumb is unfortunately useless and discouraging. In certain high cost-of-living areas, rent can be 50% or more of a stipend. But even in pricey markets, it’s worthwhile to take a hard look at yourself and your surroundings to make the best choice you can among your limited options.

But, other graduate students are in an area that offers them a degree of choice in how much of their stipend to spend on rent. They have the opportunity to evaluate the range of reasonable choices and decide what is best for them, given their values and other financial goals.
Whether you are moving to a new city to start grad school or are several years into your program already, you should evaluate your housing costs to make sure you are spending the right amount of money and getting the right amount of value for you. To do so, you have to evaluate both yourself and your environment and, ultimately, balance your budget.

Evaluate Yourself

Since housing is the biggest component of most Americans’ budgets, you should use a mini-financial planning process to help you determine where housing falls on your priorities list. Start by determining your top life values (family, freedom, creativity, health, achievement, etc.). Then, set goals for your finances that help you fulfill those values. Once that high-level picture starts to come into focus, you can figure out where housing falls on your priorities list. What aspects of housing—space, location, safety, privacy, amenities—help you fulfill your values or are otherwise very important to you? What attributes are non-negotiable and what are you willing to let go of in favor of a lower price? This process can bring a lot of clarity because it helps you directly compare differences in the price of housing with your other financial goals.

One of the first and biggest decisions you will make is whether or not to have a roommate/housemate. Some graduate students are so tired of living with other people that they won’t consider it no matter how much cheaper it would be, while others may be excited about how a roommate would benefit their lives as well as bottom lines. If you’re on the fence, price out both options and ask yourself if having $X more per month to put toward other areas of your finances is worth the (reasonable) potential downsides such as noise/distractions, differing standards for common areas, reduced privacy, or personality clash. Living with another grad student in your same year or area of study who understands the demands of your program could be a great option.

Evaluate Your Environment

Your best resource for finding appropriate housing options is other graduate students. I have found that grad students are quite willing to divulge what they pay in rent, and widely polling can give you a great idea of the market. If you haven’t yet moved to your city, start by emailing students you met during your visit weekend, students in your (prospective) lab/group, or students in departmental leadership positions. But you don’t have to keep thinking “inside the box,” either, if it seems that grad students flock to the few most popular options. Where in your city do other young professionals or people with an income similar to yours live?

In addition to asking around, check your university’s website to see 1) if housing is offered to graduate students (and at what price and priority) and 2) if your university makes off-campus housing recommendations or maintains a housing database of its own. Searching on Craigslist is usually a good way to find housing and/or roommates, and you can also check listings on Trulia, PadMapper, apartments.com, etc. Which database is best to use to search for housing will vary somewhat by city.

Be sure to consider various types of housing. In Durham’s housing market, my observation is that the least expensive option is renting (or buying) a single-family home with several other people and the most expensive option is renting a luxury apartment near campus. In some cities, on-campus housing may be the least expensive option, and by talking with your peers you may discover the best practices for getting your foot in the door.

Balance Your Budget

Ultimately, when reconciling your own priorities with the realities of the housing market, your expenses need to be less than your income. If you are simply locked into high housing costs no matter how low a priority it is for you, the rest of your budget is going to be affected. But one additional factor to consider is how housing cost might play against other needs like transportation and utilities costs. Perhaps a higher base housing cost can become more palatable if it means you can live car-free or have low utility bills. For example, are you able to keep your total needs spending to 50% of your net income (recommended in All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan*), or at least minimize the whole category?

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

If you live in a city where you have good housing options across a reasonable range of prices, this is the situation where the rule of thumb might come in handy. Calculate what 25-30% of your household take-home pay is and look at what that will get you. If you are tempted to spend more than 30% of your income on housing and don’t have to, ask yourself if it’s really that important and if you are going to be able to meet your other financial goals. Certainly, you can spend less than 25% if you are so inclined!

Revisit the Question

If you are renting, you aren’t locked into the housing decision you made at the start of grad school. In fact, you’re likely to make a better decision about housing after you have gotten to know your city and have seen where other grad students live. Your priorities and income may also change with time. It is valuable to periodically re-run this analysis on yourself and your environment to determine if moving is warranted.

I have personally benefitted from re-evaluating the cost of my housing during graduate school. My husband lived in the same apartment for his first five years of grad school and really loved it. But the city changed during those five years, and the area he was renting in no longer seemed like the only option. When the apartment complex tried to raise our rent 6% year-over-year (the rent increases in the previous 5 years had summed to about 10%), we took it as an opportunity to shop around. We ended up moving to a townhouse with the same square footage closer to our university (reducing our commuting costs) for an 11% decrease in rent. The only downgrade was that our new community didn’t have a clubhouse gym, but that wasn’t much of a sacrifice, as we had access to our university’s gym. I count that move as one of the best financial decisions we made to reduce our spending during grad school.

For your stipend, is housing in your city expensive, reasonable, or inexpensive? Where does housing fall on your priorities list? Have you been able to find a good deal in your city?

Basic and Stretch Financial Goals for Graduate School

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A version of this article originally appeared on GradHacker.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but graduate school affords you an excellent opportunity to grow financially, whether that means growing in your money management skills or growing your net worth. There is no need to wait until after you land a “real job” to put in the effort to improve your financial picture.

Basic Financial Goals

All graduate students, whether they are being supported by stipends, loans, family, savings, or some combination, have the ability to set and reach basic financial goals during graduate school. In fact, graduate students have already overcome one of the biggest hurdles that prevents people from succeeding with personal finance: they are future-focused. Graduate students are making an incredible sacrifice in the short term to invest in their future careers. Often, success in personal finances comes down to the same type of decision-making and commitment: to put the good of ‘future you’ at least on par with what is good for ‘present you.’

Here are a few examples of basic financial goals and why you should work on them during graduate school:

  1. Track 100% of your spending: If you have never paid attention to how you use your money, you will be surprised by what tracking reveals. Tracking alone can actually change how you spend because of your higher level of awareness. You can track your spending manually (pen and paper, Excel, Pocket Expense, Every Dollar) or automatically (Mvelopes, You Need a Budget, Mint, GoodBudget).
  2. Budget: Be the boss of your money. Tell it where it’s going to go and what it’s going to do. Exercising this kind of control over the small amount of money under your purview now will help you control larger amounts later. Furthermore, you can use your budget to help you meet other financial goals.
  3. Discern the difference between needs and wants: No one is living high on the hog while in graduate school, and many students flirt with the poverty line. When your income is low, you are forced to figure out your priorities quickly. The upside to this process is that you can carry that knowledge forward into your post-grad school life and use it to avoid wasteful spending and lifestyle inflation.
  4. Monitor your credit: Everyone should practice the basic financial hygiene of monitoring her credit reports at least once per year. The purpose is to ensure that all your accounts are being properly reported to the credit bureaus and to catch identity theft early on. You might also take an occasional peek at your credit score (for free), but that’s not as vital.
  5. Build an emergency fund: Emergency funds are important even for people who are in debt. An emergency fund stands between something bad happening in your life and something bad happening in your life plus serious financial consequences (e.g., credit card debt). A starter emergency fund size might be just $1,000, and you can build up the size of the fund to meet your unique needs.
  6. Learn about personal finance: We all should take the time to learn a bit more about such an important topic, and there are plenty of easy-to-digest resources in the form of books (e.g., Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties*), websites (e.g., Get Rich Slowly), podcasts (e.g., Stacking Benjamins), etc. Learning more can both motivate you to set other goals and show you how to reach them.

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

Two of the basic financial goals I set during graduate school were tracking and budgeting. When I was single, I budgeted and manually tracked my spending using Excel. After I got married, I switched to using my husband’s preferred automatic tracking and budgeting platform, Mint, which really aided our communication and coordination around our finances. These practices helped us to align our spending with our values and gain peace of mind, which maximized the satisfaction we gained from the use of our money during grad school.

Stretch Financial Goals

Some graduate students may desire to go beyond these basic financial goals to set ‘stretch’ goals for themselves during graduate school. If achieved, stretch goals positively impact your net worth. (It is also likely that some of the basic goals will improve your net worth, but that is not their primary intent.) Whether one will set stretch financial goals during graduate school is a personal decision, but a student who understands the power of compound interest is likely to strive to preserve or increase her net worth as much as is reasonable during graduate school (i.e., don’t sacrifice your degree progress!).

  1. A stretch financial goal for a graduate student taking out loans for his education may simply be to minimize the amount of debt he is taking out. This could be achieved by reducing his living expenses, finding an on-campus job that provides tuition benefits, or working part-time.
  2. A stretch financial goal for a student living on a stipend plus loans or familial support may be to forgo taking out debt by living within what her stipend provides or making up the difference between her stipend and living expenses with additional paid work.
  3. A stretch goal for a grad student receiving a livable stipend may be to more aggressively save/invest or pay down debt.

This type of goal lends itself very well to the SMART description of goal setting: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Money itself is easily measured, and it is straightforward to set specific and time-bound goals, e.g., save $3,000 into an emergency fund by August 2016. The aspects of SMART goal setting that will take more consideration are making the goals relevant and attainable.

The goals you set must be relevant to what you really want out of life. It will bring you no satisfaction to set and achieve a financial goal that you don’t care about and that doesn’t impact your well being in the short- or long-term. Give yourself some time to consider what you want money to do for you during and after graduate school, and then translate those ideals into SMART financial goals.

To avoid burnout, the financial goals you set must also be attainable. You will just become frustrated if you set a goal that requires you to have an amount of cash flow available that is impossible or unlikely in your current situation, so you should select challenging but achievable goal numbers for your life.

Stretch financial goals boil down to ones that improve your balance sheet (assets minus liabilities). On the ‘increasing assets’ side, you can set a short-, mid-, or long-term savings goal and choose appropriate investment options for your time horizon and risk tolerance. On the ‘decreasing liabilities’ side, you can set a goal to pay off your debt ahead of schedule, perhaps using the debt snowball or avalanche method. To achieve these goals or to reduce your living expenses overall, you may set a variety of other SMART goals, like reducing your spending within a given category through budgeting, tracking, and frugality.

One of the ‘stretch’ financial goals I set during graduate school was to save for retirement consistently. I started out saving 10% of my gross income into my Roth IRA, but over time wanted to do even more. Eventually, my stretch goal became to max out my Roth IRA every 12 months. I did not achieve this goal during graduate school, but I did end with a 17.5% savings rate, which definitely aligned better with my values than not saving at all or sticking with 10%.

Grad students shouldn’t treat this period as an exception from their overall financial lives. Even if you are taking on debt or have a lower income than you had before or expect to have after grad school, you have the ability to set and achieve basic financial goals that will help you develop positive financial habits and even stretch financial goals that will help you grow your wealth.

What is a basic or stretch financial goal you are currently working on or would like to set for yourself during grad school?