Personal Finance for PhDs

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Financial Goals

What to Do When Facing Financial Uncertainty

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Academic and research institutions are facing federal funding cuts—both realized and potential—due to the Trump administration’s hyper-aggressive and ham-fisted attempts to reduce federal spending. Many of the graduate students, postdocs, faculty members, and researchers at these institutions are experiencing uncertainty about whether their positions will continue and how they will be funded, at least to a degree. In the face of income uncertainty, there are certain steps you can take to shore up your personal finances so that you can better weather any storm that might come.

The following are practical steps you may take to strengthen your personal financial position if you still have an income. There’s no need to take every action on this list. My intention is to help you reduce your stress at this time, not add to it.

Establish or Increase Your Emergency Fund

Evaluate whether you should increase the size of your emergency fund. An emergency fund is a sum of money specifically set aside to be drawn upon when you have a financial emergency, such as income loss or an unexpected but vital expense. This money should be kept in cash equivalents, such as a high-yield savings account, not put at any risk.

While in more stable financial times you might be able to get away with maintaining a smaller fund, right now I suggest an emergency fund size of two months of expenses if you are early in your financial journey (e.g., are holding high-interest debt) or six months of expenses if you are later in your financial journey (e.g., are debt-free aside from student loans or a mortgage and are regularly investing).

If you don’t yet have the smaller size of emergency fund set aside, please make it a top priority to create it quickly, even if it requires an uncomfortable level of sacrifice in the short term. You can free up cash flow for your emergency fund by fasting from discretionary purchases, cancelling discretionary fixed expenses, selling items you no longer use, increasing your income if possible, and attempting to reduce your expenses generally. Ask yourself what you would and would not spend on if you had no income, and spend only on what’s absolutely necessary until you reach your emergency fund goal.

Pay Off Your Credit Card Debt

If you are carrying a balance on your credit card(s), the next step after increasing your emergency fund to two months of expenses is to pay down or off your credit card debt. Like with the emergency fund, please do this as quickly as possible. Credit card debt typically accumulates interest at a very high rate, which is toxic for your finances. I don’t suggest closing any credit accounts in this process unless you are paying an annual fee for them because if worse comes to worst you might have to accumulate a balance again (see next).

Research and Prepare to Take Out (Less Toxic) Debt

Where would you turn if you lost your income and spent down your emergency fund? Especially with a smaller-sized emergency fund, that could happen before you secure another position or funding source. Taking out new debt is a possibility, even though it’s no one’s favorite option. What types of debt are accessible to you that would come with a lower interest rate than your current credit cards?

If you are a student, look into whether you’re eligible for federal or private student loans; consider submitting a Free Application for Federal Student Aid now to open up that possibility without committing yourself to taking out any debt.

If you’re a homeowner with equity in your home, compare home equity line of credit (HELOC) offers from a few lenders and consider opening one. Opening an HELOC doesn’t obligate you to borrow against your home, but once you open it, the credit is available to you. However, there are origination and possibly account fees, so don’t exercise this option without weighing the costs. Some lenders require you to have an income to take out this type of loan.

Shop around for a personal loan at a reasonable interest rate—preferably without an origination fee or a very low fee. If you want to take out this type of debt, you will have to do so while you still have an income.

Consider opening a credit card with a lower-than-average interest rate to turn to if you run out of cash. Some cards offer a 0% interest rate for a fixed period of time.

Diversify Your Income Sources

In general, I suggest the habit of applying for at least one fellowship/grant per year, and right now you should double down on that practice. Take some time this month to identify several potential funding sources; some of them should be from organizations other than the federal government. Loop your advisor/mentor in to help you decide which to apply to, and make it a priority to submit a strong, tailored application at the appropriate time.

Now is also the time to start a side hustle or job if you don’t yet have one—or to add another. You don’t necessarily have to set a goal of earning a lot of money through it right now (unless you’re trying to increase your emergency fund size or pay down credit card debt). The purpose of establishing one or more income sources outside of your primary one is to be able to quickly ramp up your income through them should you lose your primary income. For example, if you freelance and typically take one small job per month, if you needed to, you could try to attract additional clients. It’s easier to go from one client to five than to go from zero clients to one, so establish yourself now, before you need the income.

When you diversify your income sources, think about the upstream source(s) of the money you seek. At this time, it’s best to add income sources from people/companies who do not directly receive federal funding. While I typically advise graduate students and postdocs to focus their side hustle efforts within areas related to their developing expertise that could potentially advance their careers, now is the time to cast a wider net. Yes, offer your data visualization services, but maybe also do a few baby- or pet-sitting jobs to gain references.

Research Resources Available to You

What resources are available to you through your university, city, county, or state if you did lose your funding? You can research this question in advance so that you know where to turn. For example:

  • Would you qualify for unemployment benefits? (Don’t assume you do as a graduate student or fellow! It varies by state.)
  • Does your university offer emergency grants or loans? What is the application process?
  • Where are the local food banks and when are they open? What are their eligibility criteria? (There may be one on your campus.)

If you are a student, the financial aid, basic needs, and/or financial wellness offices can help you with this research.

Prepare for a Career Pivot

While you hopefully will not suddenly lose your income, it may become clear over the coming months that your current career path is not viable or will not meet your expectations. In that case, prepare to pivot. Early steps you can take are to update your CV/resume, reconnect with and expand your network, and utilize the career and professional development resources available to you, such as through your university’s career center.

I hope that taking one or more of these steps will help to calm your nerves in this time of uncertainty. If you are able to, please advocate for the restoration/continuation of vital research funding.

Financial Questions from an International Graduate Student

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In this episode, Emily interviews Gauri Patel, a first-year grad student in biomedical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Gauri is on an F-1 visa, but she has lived in the US for over 10 years. The financial questions Gauri has encountered are different from those typically asked by both US citizens and new international students. Gauri and Emily discuss bank accounts, retirement accounts, tax reporting, and the cost of immigrating to the US.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

Gauri (00:00): I’m the type of person to gather all the information before doing things, but that can hinder progress if you just keep adding more bits of information rather than like acting on what you already know. I spent a little too long deciding like, oh, which, which company to go with. But yes, I I was able to open up the Roth IRA.

Introduction

Emily (00:28): 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 (00:59): This is Season 20, Episode 2, and today my guest is Gauri Patel, a first-year grad student in biomedical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Gauri is on an F-1 visa, but she has lived in the US for over 10 years. The financial questions Gauri has encountered are different from those typically asked by both US citizens and new international students. Gauri and I discuss bank accounts, retirement accounts, tax reporting, and the cost of immigrating to the US.

Emily (01:30): The tax year 2024 version of my tax return preparation workshop, How to Complete Your PhD Trainee Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!), is now available! This pre-recorded educational workshop explains how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. Whether you are a graduate student, postdoc, or postbac, domestic or international, there is a version of this workshop designed just for you. While I do sell these workshops to individuals, I prefer to license them to universities so that the graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs can access them for free. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they sponsor this workshop for you and your peers? You can find more information about licensing these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Thank you so, so much for doing so! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s20e2/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Gauri Patel.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (03:06): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Gauri Patel, a first year PhD student in biomedical engineering at UT Austin, and today Gauri and I are going to discuss being an international graduate student, but one who has been in the US for a significant amount of time and how the financial questions that you have at that stage are different than either you know, domestic graduate students or people who are international students and brand new to the US. So I’m really excited to learn from Gauri about this. So Gauri, will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience.

Gauri (03:37): Thank you so much Dr. Roberts. So I, as you mentioned, I am a first year graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin and I’m studying biomedical engineering, uh, specifically in biomedical imaging. So my start in this field was during my master’s thesis where I studied a particular image analysis technique to understand how a tumor microenvironment could influence outcomes to therapy. And so I want to continue studying this and so here I am, uh, doing more research at, uh, in a PhD program.

Emily (04:14): Excellent. Well, let’s kind of rewind the clock and take us back to, uh, maybe when you first, uh, entered the US and tell us about how that happened.

Gauri (04:23): I first moved to the US pretty much exactly 11 years ago. Uh, and it was because my dad had found a job in Michigan and so at at that age you don’t really have much of a say in where you’re going. And so my family moved to the states and I’ve been in Michigan ever since.

Visa Status: H-1B, H-4, F-1

Emily (04:46): So tell me how that works visa wise. ’cause I know, I’m gonna guess your father was on an H-1B, but I don’t know how the family aspect of that works.

Gauri (04:55): He eventually got to an H-1B, so we moved from Canada to the US and so Canada, there’s a different visa category that my dad could also work under. So he first started on a TN visa and I was on whatever dependent version of the TN there is. I’m not sure what the name of that is exactly, it was quite a while ago, but then eventually he did get moved over onto an H-1B, after which I was on an H-4 visa, which is a dependent of the H-1B. And I basically stayed on that, um, from middle school through high school and then my first year of my undergrad.

Emily (05:34): Okay. And then from your second year of undergrad, did you start on F1 visa at that time?

Gauri (05:40): I switched to an F1 during my second year of my undergrad and that was because I wanted an opportunity to do internships or paid research on campus. Uh, so the H-4 visa, you require some type of worth work auth- authorization and that there’s a different timeline about when you’d be able to work. It has to go through a different approval process and it’s kind of like up in the air when that, uh, work authorization would come through. And so if I was on an F1 visa, it would be rather immediate. I would do a year of school and during that time I would be permitted to work in a research capacity on campus. And also it’s pretty immediate you can get authorization for CPT or OPT and so that’s why I switched to the F1.

Emily (06:34): That certainly seems like a reasonable reason to, to, you know, make that switch. I’m wondering were there any downsides, like anything that you were foregoing or giving up by making that switch?

Gauri (06:44): Yeah, for sure. So since my family was on an H-1 was under the H-1B visa category, there’s also the option to apply, have your employer sponsor for a green card. And so that’s like the main perk of the H-1B visa. It can eventually lead to a green card. However children, they age out at 21 and so I was like really getting close to that point of aging out. And so the question remained, do we still hang on to this H4 dependent visa and not be able to work in the hopes that before I turned 21 I would, that green card would, you know, go through or do I switch immediately and you know, cut my losses. And so, uh, we just decided that the green card was probably not gonna happen before I turned 21. And so I might as well switch to the h uh, sorry, excuse me. F1 visa at this time.

Emily (07:53): Well I wanna kind of pick up with the green card process maybe a little bit later in our conversation, but let’s kind of go back with um, your experience, you know, doing research and everything through your undergrad. Um, it totally makes sense to me that you would want to have those potentially paid research experiences where you already thinking at that time that you wanted to pursue, uh, your field or science generally or like did this basically the switch to allow you these experiences. Were you thinking ahead to graduate school, I guess is what I’m asking?

Gauri (08:24): Yeah, for sure. So I first started off, um, my first year I was pretty set on pre-med. I wanted to go to medical school, um, and pre-med the curriculum makes you jump through like a lot of hoops, like oh, do shadowing and do research hours and all that. And so that’s how I got into research in the first place. But I ended up liking it so much that I abandoned the pre-med track and I’m like, I think this is the research is just what I’m interested in general. And so the F1 visa definitely helped. It also would’ve been helpful for pre-med purposes as well to get like clinical hours maybe, you know, work in some, some sort of, um, healthcare setting. So working somewhere was like whether I wanted to go to graduate school in research, in a research capacity or to medical school working somewhere had to have happened.

Family and Personal Finances

Emily (09:21): Yeah, that makes sense. Um, since we’re talking about work then and paid work and so forth, can you tell me a little bit about, doesn’t necessarily have to be your family’s finances, but like what was going on for you financially during that time and especially if there were any tie-ins then with like your visa status or your choices around that.

Gauri (09:39): Finances were never really a struggle for my family, which I’m very grateful for. Um, because I, as an international student, I didn’t get any financial aid or qualified for federal student loans, so everything did have to come out of pocket. So more about having paid work, it was more about, um, finding a sense of autonomy and not having to rely on, you know, my family being my safety net all the time. And so that’s why I was interested in the paid work.

Emily (10:14): And you told me during our, um, pre-interview chat that you started listening to financial podcasts even as an undergrad, including this podcast. And so what led you in that direction of like being interested in finances even at that stage?

Gauri (10:28): Oh yeah, it was pretty much, so I worked in this, um, lab as a volunteer for two semesters and then that summer after I asked them like, Hey, can I stay for the summer and work here full time and also get paid perhaps? And they were like, yeah, sure we can make that happen. Um, in hindsight I didn’t realize how like, oh wow, that actually happened <laugh>. Um, now that I know more about the research space like that, that was kind of incredible that that happened. But anyway, so I, I’m like, oh, I’m about to get money for the first time. Um, and unlike some of my peers that I went to high school with, they all worked like, you know, jobs, um, at like the local ice cream shop or they were, you know, hosts at, you know, some type of diner or they tutored on the side. I couldn’t do that on the H-4 visa. And so up until this point I’d just been volunteering. This was quite literally like my first paycheck. And so I was like, what do I do with this? What could I possibly do with this? And I’m just the type of person to go poking and prodding for answers. And so I went to finance podcasts.

Emily (11:49): Yeah, that’s great to hear. Um, I think when I had a similar like transition, you know, coming out of undergrad and getting like my first stipend paychecks, like after that I was asking the same questions like, oh, uh, never had this control over money before. Like, what exactly do I do with this? I went to books because podcasting was barely a thing back then, but that’s awesome that we have so many different like avenues you can go to now. Um, okay. So anything else you’d like to share with us? Maybe about the transition from, you know, finishing up undergrad and your master’s into graduate school in terms of your finances and then we can kind of dig into the, um, specific questions or concerns that like someone in your position has?

Gauri (12:29): I think the only big difference between my undergrad and master’s and then grad school now is that in undergrad and Master’s, the amount I was making was like, it, it couldn’t sustain all of me. Um, my family was helping out with tuition entirely and then now it’s a, a different ball game. Like I, I can more or less like take care of myself on this stipend. And so that autonomy I was like really searching for. Um, I I feel like it’s like finally coming to fruition like, oh, it’s happened.

Emily (13:06): So when you kind of approached me about doing this episode, you were saying, okay, yes, I’m an international student but I don’t have the same concerns of a brand new to the US international student and I also have different concerns going on than someone who is already a citizen or resident. So just like point by point like let’s talk through like what you’ve encountered and sort of what you’d like to share with other, other listeners who might be in a similar situation.

Choosing a Bank as an International Student in the US

Gauri (13:30): Yeah, for sure. So the first thing, um, you do is when when you get some type of money in your hands, it’s like I have to put this somewhere. And so it’s the first question is like, oh, what bank do I choose? And so I was consuming this financial content and it was like, oh, you should start saving up for an emergency fund and moreover you should put it in a high yield savings account, but for international students there are only a certain number of banks that will offer their services to you. And so the first bank account I had was, um, a Chase bank account. Um, I don’t know if it’s okay to name names.

Emily (14:07): Oh yeah, go ahead.

Gauri (14:07): For banks. Okay. So it was a Chase bank account and it had some like stipulations on the minimum balance that should be in there. It didn’t offer any interest at all. And so in terms of all the different banks you could choose from, you’re limited to a very set few. Um, so I had that bank account first, but then finally after I got the work authorization to work on campus in this uh, lab and then after I got the social security number associated with it, it was after all that that I could open this bank account. And so anytime you hear like, oh, do this, do X, y, and z, like a pretty actionable step, that seems easy enough. Um, I always seem to find like, oh I need to have this before I can do this thing.

Emily (15:05): Yeah, it is, it is really hard at like as a podcaster, someone who does one to many communications, it’s really hard <laugh> to keep all audiences in mind and speak to like all audiences. So you’re absolutely right. Like if you’re listening to a US based, you know, personal finance podcast or like reading a book or something else, like you definitely have to put another filter on that and say like, okay, <laugh>, is this actually going to be possible for me? And the answer is like, just like you said, yeah, there are banks that will work with you, it’s just not necessarily every bank and not everyone’s gonna make it easy and some people need the SSN and some don’t and so forth. So like you just have to be, there’s just another selection criteria on that. Absolutely. Have you, so since like having that Chase bank at first, have you subsequently opened or been able to open any other types of like higher yield savings or something like that?

Gauri (15:51): Yeah, for sure. I primarily use uh, my SoFi bank account now and it was pretty easy to like get the account, but it’s only after you’ve got some type of job lined up and you’re getting paid for it and you’ve got like all the things that come with the job first, like you need to have that SSN which um, is not like a oh I’ll just like apply for it type of thing. They’re finding the job is not like the easiest thing in the world. So you could hear the fi- finance advice but know that there are steps before steps you must take before you can, you know, enact those. Um, yeah, in general it’s like a thing I have to Google, like, oh open up a Roth IRA, can I open up a Roth IRA is something I have to Google.

Commercial

Emily (16:42): Emily here for a brief interlude! Tax season is in full swing, and the best place to go for information tailored to you as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac, is PFforPhDs.com/tax/. From that page I have linked to all of my free tax resources, many of which I have updated for this tax year. On that page you will find podcast episodes, videos, and articles on all kinds of tax topics relevant to PhDs and PhDs-to-be. There are also opportunities to join the Personal Finance for PhDs mailing list to receive PDF summaries and spreadsheets that you can work with. Again, you can find all of these free resources linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. Now back to the interview.

Opening a Roth IRA as an International Student in the US

Emily (17:34): Yeah, let’s talk about that question. Um, so you heard about Roth IRAs, I’m sure through all the content that you were consuming and uh, tell me what year that was when you like first learned about a Roth IRA,

Gauri (17:46): I actually learned about a Roth IRA back in high school and so my high school offered a finance class and so they tried to teach us about, um, saving for retirement and 401Ks and Roth IRAs and whatnot, but I don’t think it like fully sunk into our minds yet about how significant those things were. So I heard about a Roth IRA before, um, I didn’t fully grasp its like importance until I started listening to like finance content a few years later.

Emily (18:21): Yeah. So when did you like start googling that question? When did you feel like, okay, as an imminent step I would like to open this kind of account and I really need to figure out if I’m able to? When did that happen?

Gauri (18:31): I think that was two years ago. I was like, I’ve listened to all this advice. Um, so I’m the type of person to gather all the information before doing things, but that can hinder progress if you just keep adding more bits of information rather than like acting on what you already know. So I knew that I needed the Roth IRA and I was like, you know what, fine, let’s, let’s just start googling. Um, can I, can I open this and who’s willing to offer this to me?

Emily (19:01): Yeah. And what did you find?

Gauri (19:04): I think it was from your podcast, like some interview a while back, um, and there was like a snippet. I remember watching like as an international student you can open a Roth IRA and I’m like, oh check. Fabulous. Um, now I spent a little too long deciding like, oh, which, which uh, investment bank or like, which, which company to go with. But yes, I I was able to open up the Roth IRA <laugh>.

Emily (19:31): Yeah, that I think you’re referring to the interview I did with Hui-chin Chen who’s a CFP. And I think that we recorded that back in like maybe 2018 or 2019. And even by then I had been getting regularly questions in my like, live seminars from international students, can I open a Roth ira? Should I open one? You know, is it allowed? Is it a good idea? And so I was really, really glad to get an expert on the podcast who could help us with all those questions. But the, the gen, I mean people who are interested should listen to that full episode. But yeah, the, the general, uh, takeaway was like, yep, <laugh>, if you want to invest like while you’re an international student or postdoc in the US go ahead and do it now with a Roth IRA specifically, you still need to fulfill the, um, taxable compensation requirement to be able to make those contributions. Did you have to like, I don’t know if you were receiving W2, you know, employee type income at that time, maybe it wasn’t so much a question for you or is that, is that taxable compensation question something you also had to investigate?

Gauri (20:30): I don’t think I investigated it that much because at the time I really wasn’t earning all that to put anything into the Roth IRA, so it was just open for a while and it, my income definitely wasn’t a W2, it was actually a 1099, but I think from another series of, not another series, but like another episode or couple of episodes of yours, um, I think you went over the old guidance before 2020 and then after 2020 and it was like, yes, 1099 income can be uh, put into a Roth IRA. And so I was like, oh great. So I I could have done it all along. Um, not that there was anything left <laugh>.

Emily (21:16): Yeah, that definitely did change to have fellowship income not reported on W2 eligible to be contributed starting in um, 2020. But you still had that added wrinkle of like as an international student, as a non-resident in the us um, we’ve settled like the compensation term in, in taxable compensation, but you also had to know that your income was taxable in the US and I don’t know, would you like to share like what is your technical country of residence? It seems so silly to say that ’cause you’ve been here for so long, but like what is your country of residence?

Gauri (21:47): I think right now for tax purposes, it is not the US I think it switches to the US in a year. I think it’s like five years. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yeah, that I can say I’m on my tax. I’m like, not from here, but after five years of saying that you are from here now for as far as taxes are concerned.

Emily (22:09): Yes. So I don’t know the Canadian US tax treaty intimately, but I’m pretty confident that your income was then taxable in the US at least to some extent. So you did have that eligibility mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yep. So yeah, that’s great. But like you said, like, you know, US citizens, residents and so forth, they have this one bar of like questions they have to ask about the Roth IRA and then there’s that further bar that, you know, international non-residents have to ask. So I’m really glad that we kind of reviewed that to like, you know, point people back to that other resource and like get that all out there because like it is such an amazing tool. Um, and it’s really a shame to miss out on it if you’re ready to contribute to one just because you might have some outstanding questions that, you know, they can take a little bit of time to resolve those. So hopefully we resolved a few for the listeners. Um, is there anything else that you’d like to add on that? Like Roth IRA question?

Gauri (23:03): I think that’s about all. Just, uh, don’t let the tail wag the dog as, as they say. So I had the account open but I wasn’t like too worried about what could go in there. Um, it all worked out in the end for me, but I think if I got too caught up in the weeds, I I don’t think the account would’ve ever been opened or I would’ve ever put anything in there <laugh>.

Emily (23:25): Yeah, I totally agree. And it’s, and it’s this area of investing where people that in my observation seem to have the most like analysis paralysis. Um, and I, maybe you’ve heard me say this on podcast before, I’ve probably told the story, but like I made like a huge mistake when I first opened my Roth IRA, which is that I didn’t actually invest the money that I was putting in and yet it’s really good that I started it and started contributing even though I made like a huge mistake with it. Like, I mean we have a decades, decades long investing journey ahead of us, so like it’s better to just get started even imperfectly than to just like wait and wait and wait and wait and not do anything. It’s totally okay to make relatively minor mistakes. You can overcome them along, along the journey. What was your third uh, point that you wanted to bring up?

Opening a 403B as an International Student in the US

Gauri (24:08): So I figured out the bank account, I figured out the Roth IRA and then now my question is, hmm, I still have some more left to save. Can I open a 403B? Which the answer is yes, but then all of this additional money that I have, it’s coming from a fellowship which according to my university, it’ll be reported on a 1042s form, which I’ve never encountered before. Um, from my searches on Google, I don’t see that much guidance for graduate students with this form. It’s more about US citizens that have moved abroad that, that received this form and I’m like, I’m, I’m not that <laugh>. I’m very much the opposite. I’m a non-citizen within the US so the jury is still out. I’ve emailed like the tax folk at my university regarding like, Hey, would you happen to know if this can be put in a 403B or a Roth IRA or like any tax advantaged account and they’re like, sorry, we can’t give tax advice.

Post-Interview 403B Contribution Follow-Up

Emily (25:19): Hi y’all, this is Emily breaking in during the editing process. Gauri and I talked for a bit here about her 403(b) and her tax situation, but I wasn’t quite asking the right questions, so we ended up exchanging several emails after the interview to sort it out. Here’s what we figured out: Gauri has two types of income. She’s an employee throughout the year and also receives supplemental fellowship income. Her employee income exceeds $10,000 per year and therefore is not subject to the US-Canada tax treaty, so it is fully taxable and reported on a Form W-2. As a nonresident, her fellowship income is reported on a Form 1042-S with income code 16, and it is also fully taxable. Gauri’s question was whether or not she could contribute her Form 1042-S income to her 403(b), and the answer to that is no because it is fellowship income and only employee income can be contributed to a 403(b). But she does have employee income, and that’s why her university allowed her to open the account and she could contribute to it from her employee, i.e., W-2, income if she chose to. The reason she particularly was asking if she could contribute the fellowship i.e., Form 1042-S, income to her 403(b) is because of the automatic 14% income tax withholding rate, which is rather high compared to her effective tax rate. So our conclusion is that she can contribute to the 403(b), but not from the particular pot of money that she wanted to, and even though she has that annoyingly high income tax withholding rate, it’s all going to come out in the wash at tax time, likely in the form of a tax refund. OK now back to the interview!

Building a Financially Stable Life in the US as an International Student

Emily (26:52): Was there any other, another point that you’d like to bring up in this sort of question about having been in the US for like a very long time yet still being on this F1 status?

Gauri (27:03): The main goal of consuming all the finance content is, so answering the question of like how do I build a financially stable or good life for myself years in the future if I’m in the US but because of my visa I also have to, it’s like vacillating between yes, think long term, but also what if you’re not here long term? What then? Um, so of course that opens a can of worms, like what if this, what if that? But I just have to work with, let’s just assume I’m gonna be here for some indefinite amount of time and then if the day that I have to go back to Canada comes, um, I will deal with extricating myself from all of this money that’s invested in these US-based, um, accounts at that point. Um, I think it would, it would be like a hindrance if I constantly worried about it right now.

Emily (28:09): Yeah. And I I’m really not sure what steps you would that would be practical to take, um, to, you know, think about this possible future where you would be living in Canada, um, I don’t know, open a Canadian bank account. Like I’m not even sure what would be like a reasonable thing to do, um, like you said for an outcome that you’re hoping is not going to come about and has a probably a low chance of actually coming about. I think you’re exactly right. Just to say like, I’m gonna build what I can here and if the day comes when I have to make a change, I’ll make a change then, but you don’t need to anticipate that. Yeah, and I think that was the answer too from that podcast episode with, um, with Hui-chin Chen. She was just saying like, yeah, if you end up leaving the US later whether because you wanted to or because you had to or whatever the reason, you can sort of cross that bridge when you come to it. Like don’t let that be a reason for you to not build wealth and build your financial life in the US. So I think you’re taking exactly the right path.

Gauri (29:08): That’s fabulous to hear.

Current Financial Goals

Emily (29:09): <laugh> Do you have any current financial goals?

Gauri (29:14): Current financial goals? So the immediate thing would be to restore my emergency fund. So my emergency savings, I had to draw out of that for moving to Austin from Michigan. And so the moving costs and then furnishing, you know, the apartment, the first few months of, you know, rent before the, uh, the stipend payments came in. I used my savings to tide me over during that time. And so right now I, I need to work on restoring that amount. Um, so that’s my immediate goal. And then once that’s done, I think that should take up to a year, depending on how aggressive I’d like to be at. After that point, I will have to decide where to redirect those extra funds that were going into my, um, emergency savings, like should I put that into a taxable brokerage account or finally answer that 403B question. And so send that, send those funds over there. Where should those go would be the next question.

Emily (30:25): And are you also thinking about a potential green card in the near future and like what are the, because I know there’s sometimes hefty financial costs associated with that transition.

Gauri (30:34): Oh yeah, for sure. So the past, I think two or three years, uh, my Visa has cost about $500 a year in different work authorization fees or different petition fees. So I already have that in the back of my mind. Like, oh, every time I need to do something with my visa, it’ll be a couple hundred dollars. But for a green card application for someone that is seeking a PhD, there is a employment based visa that I myself could petition for if I demonstrate that I’ve done outstanding research in my field and I’m a person worthy of staying in the us. Um, and so just for that, just for two forms relating to that, I think it’s um, called, it’s called Immigration for Alien Worker or Petition for an Alien Worker, something along those lines. The fee for that is around $700 and then the adjustment of status. So to adjust my status from an F1 to this employment based visa, that would be around $1,400. And so just for those two forms, if I were to go about it without the help of any sort of immigration lawyers, whatnot, that’s already over two grand. So I definitely need to have some sort of bucket larger than a couple hundred dollars ready to go for when that day comes about. And also I have to decide like, do I even wanna pursue that path or would I prefer to just go the more routine route, which is employment based, um, visa. So like pursuing an H-1B track, so up in the air.

Emily (32:31): How will you make that decision? Or I guess I’m also asking like you mentioned earlier about, you know, the number of years you’d been in the US and having to make a decision about F1 versus staying on the previous status. Um, is there an amount of time that you’re looking at where you’ll, that you’ve been in the US where you or been on the F1 visa where you’ll need to make this decision? Or is it really kind of up to you? You can do it at any point?

Gauri (32:53): The sooner it happens, the sooner like a weight would be lifted off my shoulders about like this always, you know, you have to keep in the back of your mind that like you’re not necessarily here forever, whether you choose to be or not to be here forever. So it would be like a mental weight, you know, relieved. Um, the F1, since I’m in a STEM field, I could have my OPT go for I think up to three years with the extension. And so within those like three years, I’d have to make some type of decision about whether my employer can sponsor for an H-1B visa or I’m going to go about it on my own. So it’s within the next eight years I have to come up with an, an exact plan about what would be the fastest, um, most efficient way to go about this process. Mm-hmm <affirmative>

Emily (33:53): And if you decide you wanna do it on your own and you have those fees that you’re looking at, plus maybe you, you might wanna pay a lawyer, um, to help you as well, are the finances going to hold you back or do you think you’ll be able to save up the requisite amount of money by the time you want to go about this process?

Gauri (34:10): I think I am well informed enough about how much this is going to cost me, and so I’d be able to plan for that regardless. It would still be a stretch, but it’s not like this is happening six months from now or you know, this is happening in just in a very short amount of time. Like I have the time to prepare for this type of scenario.

Traveling Back to Your Home Country as an International Student

Emily (34:36): I don’t know if this applies for you at all, but something I’ve seen happen with other international students, um, is that they need to go back to their home country every so often to deal with their visas. Has that ever come up for you and, and if not, is it ’cause you’ve been in the US under all these different statuses for so long? Or is it because of the relationship between US and Canada or like how does that work?

Gauri (34:57): It’s a US and Canada thing, so it’s a special caveat in this regard as well. So most students need to go through a Visa interview and actually receive approval to study in the US however, I’m Canadian and so I simply have to be accepted into a US university and show that I have some method of paying for my stay here and that’s all the evidence I have to give to study. I don’t have to continue to go back to Canada to renew my visa or even have any documentation for the exact visa.

Emily (35:41): I see. I’m just throwing that out. There’s another potential cost that I’ve seen international students bear uniquely these like high fees of international travel every, you know, few years to deal with that like particular issue. Um, yeah, I mean the more that obviously I, I was not an international student, so like, but the more I learned about the financial aspects of having this status in the US like it just, there’s just kind of more that burdens that kind of get thrown on the pile. Like, okay, no access to student loans, can’t side hustle, have to pay fees for visa related items, maybe for travel as well. Like just, it it emphasizes um, very deeply for me the importance of paying a living wage and not just a living wage more than a living wage to graduate students, especially international students because there’s just no, there’s no ways to pivot. Um, if you are financially on your own, if you’re financially independent from your family, then you have to make it work on the stipend like you’ve been talking about and you have all these additional, um, fees that can, that can pile up as well that domestic students don’t have to, don’t have to worry about. So yeah. Yeah. I’m really glad that, you know, you brought this up and that we got to have this conversation. Um, is there anything else that you wanna add about yeah, um, being an international student, having been in the US for so long? Or about your current financial goals or anything else?

OPT Application Tip for International Students in the US

Gauri (36:59): Pro tip for international students, um, when it comes time to send in your OPT application, do it the day you’re allowed to submit that application. So first you need all those signatures or you know, green lights from your advisor about like, yep, you’re ready to graduate and whatnot. That should be done before the 90 days. You have like a 90 day window before your last day of classes to apply for OPT. Have those ready to go. And on that like very first day of the 90 days apply for OPT then ’cause I did it right the first year after I grad, graduated from my undergrad and the second year I waited a few weeks and my OPT was delayed, I think over a month.

Emily (37:55): So it’s just for processing time, like you’re just saying like be the first one, like be first in line mm-hmm <affirmative>. Because if you delay then these applications are like piling up behind it and just pushes like the timeout. Is that right?

Gauri (38:06): Yeah, exactly. So when I was first in line, my OPT, like the EAD card arrived within three weeks. And so I had it well in advance of any start date and the second year round I was like, oh, it arrived in three weeks. I’ve got time.

Emily (38:26): You were complacent. Yeah, <laugh>.

Gauri (38:27): I was, I didn’t think I’d be so off base. Um, but yeah, don’t, don’t, don’t do what I did. <laugh>.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (38:37): <laugh> Yeah, don’t do it <laugh>. Um, okay. Well thank you so much for that tip. And I’d like to end by asking you the question that I ask all of my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And it can be something that we’ve touched on in the interview already, or it could be something completely new.

Gauri (38:53): I’ve learned that you need two savings buckets at least. So there’s the emergency when truly it’s an emergency and you have no sources of income whatsoever, and then a second bucket for yearly, like one off expenses, like, oh, there’s that vacation you’ve really been wanting to take or you have to travel for whatever reason. For me it’s like, you know, oh, here’s a couple hundred dollars for some visa related thing or I’m working in a STEM field. But I think all grad students in this day and age need a laptop or some type of technology of some sorts, and that’s pretty costly as well. And so, you know, your phone falls apart or your laptop needs to be replaced or you gotta go to a conference or whatnot. Um, there has to be like a separate bucket <laugh>, aside from the emergency savings. Um, and that, that having that separate bucket really relieves like a lot of stress, at least for me.

Emily (39:55): Yeah, this is like a major component of my teaching. I would say that’s different from like you mentioned listening to like financial feminists, for example, Tori Dunlap’s podcast, Her First 100K. Um, what I see in like the more general personal finance space is people talking to other people who have higher incomes high, you know, moderate to high incomes, which is just not the case for graduate students. And so things like having to pay for a plane ticket, well, you know, if your income’s high enough and you’re doing a great job with your personal finances, you know, keeping your rent low and all that stuff, like that’s not gonna be an issue for you, but it’s an issue for almost all graduate students to pay for those types of expenses. So like that is definitely an area that I have of much greater emphasis than other like personal finance teachers do because I totally agree with you. It takes so much stress off to have planned and prepared for those expenses in advance so that you’re not having to, I don’t know, like go to the food bank and like not, you know, put gas in your car and like all the stuff that you would have to do on the short term basis to sacrifice, to come up with money that you really needed if you, if you didn’t have that savings. So I love that tip. Thank you so much for sharing that. Um, and this was, it was wonderful to talk to you and thank you so much for teaching me and you know, asking the questions and you know, sharing the conclusions that you’ve come to along the way. And I wish you all the best in getting your, you know, status in the US secured in the way that you would like it in the near future.

Gauri (41:15): Thank you so much. It was great talking to you

Outtro

Emily (41:27): 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 me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Negotiation and Long-Term Thinking Effected Financial Success for This International PhD

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In this episode, Emily interviews Wen, who recently earned a PhD in plant pathology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Wen came to the US for her master’s degree immediately after finishing undergrad and started learning about the US financial system, even though she had an avoidant money mindset. After overdrafting her checking account, she realized she needed to take control of her finances, start thinking long-term, and work toward financial goals such as investing inside a Roth IRA. Alongside peers, Wen negotiated the research assistantship stipends in her department, they were ultimately given a 13% raise. She has started applying those negotiation skills in other arenas. Finally, Wen explains how she pursued a career in tech transfer, starting with professional development and an internship during grad school.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

Wen (00:01): Um, yeah, I, I think I want to circle back, um, the negotiation again. Um, I want to, uh, emphasize, um, negotiation. It’s not only like what the stipend could be like, I think every grad student could ask more from their PI, um, you know, sponsor me to this conference. This is a good workshop I want to do, and this is a career event I want to attend, and can you sponsor me? Can you cover that for me? Um, and there’s everything there. There’s a lot of things online. Talk about negotiation and everything. So I, I do want to share that. Um, when I purchased my second car, um, I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube, how to talk to the dealership, and, uh, just, um, trying to negotiate the best option for myself. Um, it was a quite funny, like real life big purchase that I went to the dealership, uh, and the dealer just thought I’m a innocent, uh, foreigner. <laugh> doesn’t, didn’t know what’s going on. And, um, so I think I, um, really take advantage of negotiation and know that what’s the best for me and, um, argue that, uh, those, those terms. And, um, yeah, I, I learned a lot of from practicing, uh, negotiation. And, um, advocate for myself.

Introduction

Emily (02:02): 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 (02:32): This is Season 19, Episode 7, and today my guest is Wen, a recent PhD graduate in plant pathology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Wen came to the US for her master’s degree immediately after finishing undergrad and started learning about the US financial system, even though she had an avoidant money mindset. After overdrafting her checking account, she realized she needed to take control of her finances, start thinking long-term, and work toward financial goals such as investing inside a Roth IRA. Alongside peers, Wen negotiated the research assistantship stipends in her department, and they were ultimately given a 13% raise. She has subsequently applied those negotiation skills in other arenas. Finally, Wen explains how she pursued a career in tech transfer, starting with professional development and an internship during grad school.

Emily (03:24): I have a quick update for you on the tax return preparation workshops that I’m offering next spring. I’m super excited for my planned live in person workshops in California and Colorado and also my live virtual workshops for universities in Minnesota, Missouri, and New York. I’m sure there will be many more universities offering my asynchronous workshops as well. If you want to learn if your university is already on my list for a live or asynchronous workshop or want to help me get one offered at your university, please email me! You can reach me at emily at P F f o r P h D s dot com. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s19e7/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Wen.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (04:25): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today. Wen, who is a postdoc in tech transfer at a university in Texas, and she’s going to share with us about her sort of financial transition to the United States as an international graduate student and now postdoc. And also about, uh, her pivot to the field of tech transfer. So that’s really exciting. Uh, Wen will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

Wen (04:50): Yes. Uh, thank you Emily. Um, my name is Wen and I’m a recent PhD graduate, uh, from University of Wisconsin Madison, and my major is plant pathology. And, um, when I started my PhD, uh, four years ago, um, I, I wasn’t sure about much about financial situations and all my career plans, so I’m glad, um, things are work out, uh, currently and, uh, really, um, happy to share with people in the, uh, going through grad school. Um, so yeah, and I currently start, I just started working as a tech transfer early professional as a postdoc position at university, uh, in Texas and help researchers to protect their, uh, IP and licensing the IP to, uh, the, the industry. So it’s quite interesting and fun new, um, career for me.

Finances During Childhood and Young Adulthood in China

Emily (05:57): Yeah, that is great. Tech transfer was very intriguing to me when I was in graduate school as well, and definitely a career that I considered, uh, before starting my business. I want to actually take a step back and would you please tell us a little bit about how you grew up and your young adulthood, at least in terms of your finances, um, up until the point that you came to the US so we can understand a little bit of your background and your mindset?

Wen (06:20): Yeah, so I came to United States in 2018 when I finished my college back in China, Beijing. So before that, um, before I was 22, I spent my whole life in China. So I would see that the bigger picture of how I grew up is China was, uh, developing country and we have fast economic and financial growing throughout my, the, that two decades is I live there and how that affect my early, uh, adult year is we, not only me, but my parents, they went through a insufficient, uh, lifestyle to kind of going to be self-sufficient and to industrialize and to eventually abundant, uh, lifestyle. Um, I think that affect me in the way that okay, situations always change and I don’t feel like I need to plan for financial situation when I grow up, especially rely on my parents. And that’s quite Asian family culture, um, that parents help children to, uh, uh, fund that college and find job and, um, kind of help them to establish their, the family, new family in the future too. So I don’t have many financial literacy, uh, when I came into u uh, the, the us. And another personal, um, background about my family is my parents they are, uh, they own a family business, so they always talk money, um, in our private family life, and they would argue and things get stressful. And when I went to, uh, sleep a lot of times, and I think that just make me, doesn’t feel positive to talk about money or thinking about what can money do. Um, yeah, so I don’t consider much about learning financial stuff, uh, even in college, uh, when I make, uh, decisions on what to study. So I just follow my interest in biology, went to, uh, plant pathology and decide to pursue higher education. Um, because I wasn’t thinking about making money, it was kind of a hard topic for me to discuss or openly to look into what do I need to do? Yeah. Until I, uh, came to United States and explore things on my own here.

Emily (09:15): Yeah, that’s really fascinating. And I’m sorry if this is like overly like reductionistic, but it sounds like you developed a bit of an avoidant mindset around money because both of being provided for by your parents and in an increasing lifestyle over time, right? Things are getting better and better lifestyle wise, and also because of the stress that money, um, caused in your household and that you absorbed some of that. And so that sort of came together to be like, well, it’s, it’s all okay and I don’t wanna think about it. Does that make sense? Yes.

Wen (09:46): Yes.

Adapting to the US Financial System

Emily (09:47): Okay. So then there’s a big shift right when you get to the us. Can you tell us, uh, about that and, and how it happened and how you were feeling and how you adapted to this new system?

Wen (09:59): Yeah, so when I came to us, I started my master program in Ohio State. Um, and I was awarded the research assistantship, so the regular RA stipend to start. Um, and it was quite efficient for me to, uh, start living there because, uh, to cover rent and, uh, groceries. Um, I was just excited to just experience all things. Um, and I got my first credit card, uh, when I came to United States. It’s not a thing in China. Um, and I got my first a used car, um, in my second year. Um, but I think there is a, there was a turning point when after I pay my, um, car payment to buy the car, my bank account, I didn’t realize it went to negative. Um, and I got, uh, a fine of the overdraft fee, $39. I still remember that. So I went, um, really anxious. I’m like, how could this happen? And, uh, the bank can just take, uh, overdraft fee from me. And, um, I think I was able to argue with them saying, Hey, it was my first time I was, I was new to this system. So at that point I realized, okay, like, um, I need to take serious on my situation. I need to plan and budget very well to buy things, um, and know how much number in my account, how much do I have. And, um, so I’d say more and, uh, during Covid I moved to Madison, Wisconsin, which is a higher cost of living city, um, for grad student. Um, I just starting to saving even more, um, for the moving and, um, adjust to their high rent here.

Emily (12:15): Can you say a little bit more about how you got into that, more of like long-term or annual planning? Um, because I can imagine that’s a really, that’s a really difficult thing for someone who’s, you know, within a year or two of being financially independent from their parents. I know it took me several years to start sort of pushing that time horizon out for the planning, right? Like, did you use any like tools or, I don’t know, anything that would help someone else who’s going through that transition?

Wen (12:45): So at beginning I do ha- uh, in my first year in Madison, I want to focus on getting to know my own financial habits, uh, tracking my spending, and I just downloaded very simple, um, Excel sheet from the website to track down my spending. Um, and I realized I eat, uh, a a I spend more money take out and, uh, some online shopping and necessary fashion stuff, um, into some unnecessary items. Um,

Emily (13:28): Sounds pretty typical pandemic spending though, right? <laugh>

Wen (13:32): I know, and investing couples hobbies. Um, yeah, I think those the first step is getting to know myself and, um, get rid of their, the spending. I didn’t realize I, I was, I was doing. And then I figured out if I want to save extra, um, cutting spend, it’s one thing. And another thing is I found some resources on campus. Um, back then, we do have international student group that, uh, we will go to their, uh, local food pantry that’s on campus. Um, and there are very fresh produce. We’ll go weekly with, uh, a bunch of international students and we, it’s just like, uh, grocery shopping and I will, I got save quite a lot of money from that. And sometimes our dining hall, um, they will have extra dining food and they will pack very well and give to students. I think all this, um, on campus activity, uh, on campus nresources help me allow to save some, um, necessary spending as well. Um, and it’s a way for me to find my community that time.

Emily (15:03): Yeah. Thank you so much for, for sharing that. Um, is there anything else that you wanted to add about kind of adapting to the US um, financial system?

Wen (15:12): I think getting the social security number and um, just a first debit card was, uh, essential for us to get paid. Um, and establish that is very important, especially, um, I need the social security number to apply, uh, the credit card later and, um, be aware that having credit card is essential for, for future, like the credit scores, um, which I wasn’t educate, educated, uh, in that perspective back in China. We don’t use credit score. Um, and also I just think it’s extremely more important for international student have the emergency, um, savings because we don’t have, um, the, the, the support that domestic students have, um, and always have that saving would just help so much. Um, and at the same time take advantage of the health insurance, the benefits that, uh, come with our student staff. And I always use my dental and vision and um, uh, insurance, um, coverage every year. Um, so those are now counted by numbers, but they are financial. Um, they could be financial spendings in the future. Um, yeah.

Stipend Increase During Grad School

Emily (16:53): Yeah, that’s great that you have that insurance provided you by your program. I know not everybody has that, but it’s something that more and more programs are adding if they don’t already have it. So I believe you told me in advance of our interview that you increased your stipend during the course of graduate school. Can you tell me how that happened?

Wen (17:10): Yeah, I think, uh, it’s just a, a process of negotiation between our grad student, um, group, uh, with our department. And when I started my PhD four years ago, uh, we had that huge inflation that like about 8%, um, that year. So I realized our department only increased like about 2% into the student stipend that year. Um, and the something I think it’s critical is timing. Um, most of the universities, or at least our department will decide how much to pay the year ahead for student. So for example, this August we, the department will submit their budget for next, um, next year’s, next fall students, um, payment. So I just couldn’t, um, thinking about like this lack of, um, catching up <laugh> eventually just will make our stipend pay so behind, um, the current raise of rent. Um, so in my first year I realized this financial hardship, but I think we started talking about it. Um, and until second year, I actually joined the student body, uh, kind of our grad student council, and I initiated more discussion. We talked to other departments, grad students as well. Um, and eventually I designed a survey, um, right after actually, uh, nature published a paper on the graduate student stipend survey results. Hmm.

Emily (19:17): Was that the biology PhD stipends one?

Wen (19:21): Yeah, I think so. It has a bunch of, um, PhD programs, data that related to our program.

Emily (19:29): Yeah.

Wen (19:29): Uh, entomology, plant pathology, horticulture. So

Emily (19:32): We’ll link to the episode that I did with the, uh, one of the co-founders of that, uh, database. So we’ll link to that in the show notes.

Wen (19:39): Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, I think getting the information about what’s going on with other universities really help us to push this forward. So I, um, we made, I made a survey about what’s our current inflation rate and cost of living in Madison specifically, um, and stipend numbers we quote from their PhD stipend.com, uh, a bunch of data and make, make, uh, we make a very informed, um, survey plus it, uh, plus like collection of the students data points. And we made a report, so we were able to present a report at our department meeting before they make a decision. And, um, you know, it’s hard to, um, really let them to, um, because they have their budget, uh, difficulty as well. So we will patiently, um, talk about this with our department, um, faculties and administrations, and I think we got their feedback. They want to, uh, so we ask more data from other universities, similar program, um, you can say like a competitor of our programs administration, uh, admission. So I think after two times, like monthly meeting like that, we were able to, they devote, um, increased stipend, um, about 13%, um, which includes a percent inflation and 5%, um, extra for their cover, our student’s fees. It’s, it’s like their activity fee we pay for the university. So our department, uh, help us on that. Um, yeah, so we got, uh, got a pretty good raise on that. And the good thing is, um, it didn’t make our students happier and, uh, have stronger adminis admission data to attract prospective, uh, students applicants. Also our, um, nearby like close program, they were able, the student body were able to kinda refer to what we do, we did and, uh, start some conversation with their department. So yeah, I, I think it was something that, um, really amplify, um, what I think that time was important. Just voice out, um, what we need as grad student, um, and, um, extra, uh, hardship for international student that time.

Emily (22:44): Yes, I love that example so much and I’m, I’m so glad to hear this story as well as we’ve heard a couple other similar ones on the podcast about departmental level negotiation.

Commercial

Emily (22:56): Emily here for a brief interlude! I’m hard at work behind the scenes updating my suite of tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2024. These educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2024 tax season starting in January 2025, I’m offering live and pre-recorded workshops for US citizen/resident graduate students and postdocs and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they host one or more of these workshops for you and your peers? I’d love to receive a warm introduction to a potential sponsor this fall so we can hit the ground running in January serving those early bird filers. You can find more information about hosting these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Now back to our interview.

Low Stipends and High Costs Impact International Students Most

Emily (24:13): So you just mentioned, especially if you’re international students, so like the way I view this, you can tell me if you agree, um, is that in that period of high inflation or I’d really any time when stipends are not keeping up with basic cost of living expenses, um, the international students are the ones who suffer the most because domestic students have sort of financial pressure release options, which are, you can get a side hustle. I mean, they, your department may not like it, but it’s legal. You can do it. Um, and or you can take out student loans. And these are just not available at least to the, you know, 90% are not available to international students. And so it’s so much more important for the international student community together with domestic students to do the type of negotiation that you just outlined, which is, let’s just raise the stipends. Can we just get these stipends up to a decent level? Do you, do you agree or like, what are your further thoughts on that?

Wen (25:06): Yeah, I, I totally, um, agree on that as well. We’re, as international students, we are restricted to apply for certain funding and look for a, a, a second shift and make extra money. Um, but I, I will say that, um, getting to know the resources out there is still, um, skill to, uh, develop, even though there are, are limited. Um, for example, that’s something related to my stories about professional development and career planning as well. Um, there are, you know, all kinds of event provide free lunch, pizza, <laugh> free dinner. So I, I try to, um, take advantage of that. Um, and it’s also a form of connecting to other students getting to know what’s going on. Um, yeah, I think be resourceful even we are restricted is, um, I think one day it, it just extra skills we develop make out of the, the, the situation. Um, yeah, so I was involved, uh, in a professional development, um, student organization called <inaudible> on campus. Um, so this is an organization help grad students, postdocs to practice, um, um, commercialization of technology. So it’s really something I really want to develop. And, um, in this, uh, organization, they hosted event to, um, work on project and they gave micro grant, which is a grant. Um, I will buy linking per, uh, subscription and take professional headshot and only use for professional development events. Um, so yeah, that covered a lot of my, um, let’s say unnecessary spending, um, that I wouldn’t spend, I wouldn’t have the capacity to spend out on my personal account, but it’s important for me in the future. Um, so I think take advantage of the resources, uh, like that will, um, be very helpful.

Financial Goals During Grad School and Beyond

Emily (27:53): Yes. Thank you so much for adding those examples. For sure. I totally agree. Um, okay, so your stipend is increasing <laugh>, it’s, it’s at least catching up to, you know, the, the damage done by inflation. Um, can you tell us about some of the financial goals that you pursued during graduate school or since graduate school?

Wen (28:10): Yeah. Um, I wouldn’t say I have a specific number to target, but I know that I want to save as much as I can and start, start investing. Um, so it’s more like explore- uh, -ation of what’s going on in the market and where the, uh, where the places and learn about all the ETF, um, and the fire movement and write books about, uh, investing. So set up, um, investing, um, with, with the, the stipend I can save, um, I, I try to, because my pay is biweekly, so I set up other automatic transfer to my saving and, um, brokerage account biweekly. Um, just couple, just not couple hundred. I think like it’s, it’s probably 10% on my paycheck each time it comes through. And I have a individual investment account and a Roth IRA in investment account. Um, and yeah, I, and mostly just looking to their, uh, VOO S-P-F, um, their ETFs, um, trying to not, uh, yeah, I don’t do like day trading and all that. Just put money in there in, uh, in there.

Emily (29:52): Sounds perfect to me. That’s the type of investing that I teach and that I, um, subscribe to. Um, what brokerage firm or firms do you mind me asking? Um, did you open your Roth IRA with or, and or your taxable brokerage account?

Wen (30:05): So, yeah, <laugh>, um, first I think, uh, firstly I use Robinhood for my individual investment account because I think it was, uh, a fun app, uh, for me to get started and to get motivated. And I, I really enjoy, simplify their investing, um, using that app. So later I got to know more about, um, the long-term investing opened. I opened uh the Fidelity, um, uh, Roth IRA and the individual accounts I transferred my, uh, the investment from Robinhood to, uh, fidelity. Um, and one thing I think about learning out this is just finding the community of people comfortable in sharing that and learning that, and listen to your podcast. Um, really at beginning of my PhD to realize, okay, I need to, uh, pay attention to my PhD stipend. I think Sam, someone shared at a grad school workshop thing, so I clicked and I subscribe, and later I did follow some podcast, her 100, uh, her first 100k writes books about like the most important thing about investing. Um, and I think I started action, just got to know people have a similar background like me. Um, there is a website called Women Overseas built by, um, Chinese, um, Chinese Women Study abroad, work abroad. And that’s really the community. I learned a lot of these things from, they will share from life to work career and, and investment. And I, yeah, I think I learned a lot from them, from their experience. A lot of the members, um, in that Open Formula firm room, they started working for years. So it was really good experience to to set up myself to that path too.

Emily (32:26): I love it. I love that, you know, my podcast became a springboard for you to investigate, you know, the subject further, and that you found a community that was like exactly, exactly what you needed. And, ugh, that just makes me so happy. I’m so pleased. There’s such a huge amount of resources, financial education related areas now, um, that kind of, everybody can find their community that reflects, you know, who they wanna see and who they wanna be. Like, and I, I get to be one of the voices in the PhD space, but then, you know, everybody has multiple aspects of their identity, so like we can expand beyond that. And oh, I just, I love that so much. Um, is there anything else you wanna add about the financial goals you’ve, uh, pursued during graduate school, aside from the investing ones?

Wen (33:08): Um, yeah, I, I think I want to circle back, um, the negotiation again. Um, I want to, uh, emphasize, um, negotiation. It’s not only like what the stipend could be like, I think every grad student could ask more from their pi, um, you know, sponsor me to this conference. This is a good workshop I want to do, and this is a career event I want to attend, and can you sponsor me? Can you cover that for me? Um, and there’s everything there, there’s a lot of things online, talk about negotiation, everything. So I, I do want to share that. Um, when I purchased my second car, um, I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube, how to talk to the dealership, and just, um, trying to negotiate the best option for myself. Um, it was a quite funny, like real life big purchase that I went to the dealership, uh, and the dealer just said, I’m a innocent, uh, foreigner. <laugh> doesn’t, didn’t know what’s going on. And, um, so I think I, um, really take advantage of negotiation and know that what’s the best for me and, um, argue that, um, those, those terms and, um, yeah, I, I learned a lot of from practicing, uh, negotiation and, um, advocate for myself.

Current Postdoc Position in Tech Transfer

Emily (35:00): Love it. And that’s a skill you’re gonna be using literally throughout the rest of your life. So it’s fantastic too, um, master that early. And especially I know that the cultures around negotiation are very different. So especially to understand how to do that in an American context, it’ll be received <laugh> by other people in, in this, uh, in this culture. Um, that’s awesome. Okay. Let’s talk about then your current postdoc position and how you got to it and why you chose to, you know, make this pivot to tech transfer. And you already mentioned earlier that, you know, there was this specific professional development group that you were involved with. So maybe you could start back there with like, the preparation and then, you know, like your choice in like, getting your new position. 

Wen (35:38): Yeah. So I would say like, compared to financial goal I had at, um, beginning of my PhD, I’m more really like clear about my career goal. Um, and I took PhD as one of a professional, um, period, um, in on my resume. So I don’t think I, I don’t think I’m a student, uh, in school. I think it as a, a career I’m at right now. So I know that I am not the best person, um, best on myself to do bench science when I went in, uh, grad, uh, the PhD program here and I want to connecting people and I want to bridge the science and market, um, gap. So I know that my goal long, uh, like four years later, my PhD after PhD, I want to do that kind of thing. Um, but I learned lot doing science and talk about science. And so I think I have that goal just over my head and took other opportunities, uh, in the professional development organization. And I took extracurricular, uh, courses, um, I P, uh, that taught by another, um, economic department. And then that lead me to an internship on campus at our tech transfer office. Um, and I learned, uh, really through their internship that one year time and, and got and just confirm my interest in tech transfer space. I really enjoyed talk to scientists and, uh, about their innovation and on different, um, topics of projects and then connecting that idea to their, the, the market, what could we amplify the value of research, um, and, and license this patent. So I think like networking, uh, in, in that space and outside our university and connecting to other tech transfer office, um, just, it was a great, I talked to a lot of PhD working in that space, really see myself can make that transition. Um, so that’s what I did. I applied and talked to people and eventually landed this tech transfer, um, role. And I think it’s very, um, a good fit for me to, uh, really combine my interest in the science background.

Emily (38:34): Yeah. I love how you emphasized like we’re not in a PhD program simply to finish the PhD and do research. I mean, if that is exactly in your professional goals and you wanna just keep doing research in that area and you’re gonna stay in academia or you’re gonna pivot to something really, really close. Actually, my husband followed that path. Like his research is very close to what he did during graduate school research wise. So like, it was a good preparation, but if you wanna make any kind of a little sidestep from that, like you need to start layering on those experiences and the, that networking and, and exploration. ’cause of course you don’t necessarily know right away what your goal is going to be your career goal. So it’s, it’s about figuring things out and exploring the space. And I love that you got to do an internship. Did you say it was for a year with the tech transfer office? And so was that like a part-time thing, um, that you were doing alongside your, your normal PhD type work?

Wen (39:24): Yes. And it’s on campus. Um, it’s very flexible, uh, terms of hours with my PhD, uh, advisor’s requirements <laugh>.

Emily (39:34): So it was something you had to again, negotiate with your advisor, right? To take a little bit of time to do that.

Wen (39:39): Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,

Emily (39:41): Yeah. Awesome, using that skill again. Um, this is so great. Is there anything else you want to tell us about that, about that career step,

Wen (39:49): Um, about transitioning to a new role or job hunting overall? I think it’s quite, um, a self discovery <laugh>, um, time for, uh, us as PhDs as we are going to this tunnel of focusing things on our field. And then suddenly we have to, I think, set up us to be very open-minded about the careers we’re, we’re, uh, we’re going to explore and I think it’s sometime we got break ourselves a little bit. Um, and it’s okay if we don’t talk in, in our research terms and it’s okay to just talk very, um, I don’t know, simple words. We don’t use scientific words. And, um, and I I think it there, the PhD is, is a, is a journey and that doesn’t represent us going to move forward, um, like connecting with others.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (41:06): This is so great. Well, Wen, thank you so much for volunteering to come on, on the podcast to do this interview. And, uh, we’ve gotten so many great stories out of this. I’m really glad that the listeners got to hear, um, about your journey. Um, would you please tell us what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on in the interview already, or it could be something completely new.

Wen (41:31): Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. I think just to be able find yourself being financially independent in charge of your finance, um, is extremely empowering. And I have situations about myself going through, uh, co-living with someone and then we broke up and move out. I think all those, um, life-changing decisions need, um, ourselves have their confidence in our financials and now feel obligated to, um, make decisions around others. Especially I think as international students. I, I think the last advice is we prepare to save money for the applying for, uh, work visas EAD card. And if you want to get it on time, um, use a premium, um, service, which adds $2,000 <laugh>, um, to the application. So, um, don’t be shocked how expensive those things can take and, um, make, um, make informed decisions on that. Yeah,

Emily (42:54): I’m, I’m sure you’ve heard this since you’ve been consuming like other financial material, but I just love um, the sort of, uh, mantra or phrase money gives you options. So you’re just definitely able to, um, you know, so fully realize, you know, your potential and get yourself out of situations you don’t wanna be in and you know, pay for that premium service when you need it. Whatever needs to happen if you have the savings built up already. And sometimes we don’t know when we start saving what exactly we’re gonna be using that money for, but it’s just there as like a backstop and insurance policy just to give you, um, options in the future. So I’m really glad that you emphasize that, especially for international students. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. ’cause I totally agree that, um, you just, you need a, a bigger pool of money to draw from for it because a lot of expenses that international students experience are pretty large. Um, irregular expenses as I often talk about, about, um, on the podcast, like traveling home, like visa stuff and all that. So thank you again so much for volunteering to come on. This has really been a pleasure to talk with you.

Wen (43:52): Thank you so much, Emily. Thank you for, um, doing this and I, um, really benefit from this podcast and I, I know you will continue to serve a lot of PhD students.

Outtro

Emily (44:17): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

This Grad Student Channeled Her Financial Exuberance into Teaching and Coaching Her Peers (Part 1)

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In this episode, Emily interviews Elle Rathbun, a 5th-year PhD candidate at UCLA. Elle shares her financial origin story of growing up in a low-income family, becoming a QuestBridge scholar during undergrad, and working for two years before matriculating at UCLA. During those years, Elle developed her financial acuity and prepared financially for grad school, including investing for retirement and saving up cash. This energy carried forward into grad school, where within her department Elle started a group to chat about money and created resources to help her peers navigate the financial aspects of their fellowship and UCLA’s bureaucracy. Tune in to the next episode for part two of the conversation!

Links mentioned in the Episode

This Grad Student Channeled Her Financial Exuberance into Teaching and Coaching Her Peers

Teaser

Elle (00:00): I think a lot of undergraduates and techs and PhD students are like, oh, I’m not making money yet, um, to any real degree. Like, I’ll just wait. Um, and I think that’s one of the worst things you can do is to wait. Um, and I think even if you have five extra dollars to put into a Roth IRA, I think that is worth doing.

Introduction

Emily (00:25): 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 (00:54): This is Season 19, Episode 5, and today my guest is Elle Rathbun, a 5th-year PhD candidate at UCLA. Elle shares her financial origin story of growing up in a low-income family, becoming a QuestBridge scholar during undergrad, and working for two years before matriculating at UCLA. During those years, Elle developed her financial acuity and prepared financially for grad school, including investing for retirement and saving up cash. This energy carried forward into grad school, where within her department Elle started a group to chat about money and created resources to help her peers navigate the financial aspects of their fellowship and UCLA’s bureaucracy. Tune in to the next episode for part two of the conversation!

Emily (01:41): This fall, I’m opening my calendar for 15-minute introductory calls! This is a chance for you and me to meet one-on-one. I want to hear your current financial questions and challenges. If I can provide some quick value by answering a question or pointing you to a resource I absolutely will. These calls are a way for me to keep a pulse on what’s going on financially in our community so that I can address whatever comes up through my seminars for universities and the free content I create. I would love to meet you, so please sign up today at PFforPhDs.com/intro/. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s19e5/. Without further ado, here’s part 1 of my interview with Elle Rathbun.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:40): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Elle Rathbun, who is a, an entering fifth year PhD candidate at UCLA and Elle and I actually met last spring when I was giving an in-person seminar at UCLA, and she was there because she was part of the financial wellness office, so she was there with a booth so the students in attendance could get some extra resources after my presentation was done. And she came up to me after the presentation introduced herself, which I love it when people do that. So podcast listeners, if you ever have the opportunity, please, please introduce yourself. We had an amazing conversation right then and there, and I immediately invited her on the podcast. So we’re gonna have a really good time today learning about Elle’s story, how she came to work for the financial wellness office, everything she’s done in her personal finances, in between. So Elle, I’m absolutely delighted to have you on the podcast today, and would you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the listeners?

Elle (03:30): Absolutely. Thank you so much, Emily. I am so excited to be here. First of all, I am a long time listener, even before I started graduate school. This is really something that, um, this podcast kicked off my, my interest in personal finance as a PhD student. Um, and so yes, I was, uh, raised in Durango, Colorado, so a very small rural mountain town. Um, and my parents always sort of, um, struggled to keep things afloat in terms of, in terms of finances. Um, and so I was able to get the QuestBridge Match scholarship to the University of Chicago for my undergraduate degree. So that meant that I got a full ride, uh, uh, to to University of Chicago where I majored in neuroscience and biological sciences. Um, and I was really, really grateful for, for that opportunity. Then I stayed at the university, uh, for two years in a biophysics lab. So I was a tech there. Um, and that sort of is really when, uh, things started coming together for me in terms of what I wanted to do academically, but also when it came to personal finances. And, um, and then I ended up at UCLA’s graduate program in neuroscience. Um, and that’s where I am now.

QuestBridge

Emily (04:39): Okay, fantastic. Now I wanna talk more about your, um, interest in personal finance, your passion for the subject. And you mentioned this QuestBridge program, so maybe we should start there. Can you tell us more about that program?

Elle (04:51): Absolutely. I’m happy to. So QuestBridge is a phenomenal nationwide program that basically helps match high achieving low income students with some phenomenal, uh, undergraduate universities. So I think at the time I applied, I, we had 35 partner colleges and now we’re way above that. Um, and essentially what it is, is it’s an application on its own. You apply as a high school senior before in the fall, um, and then the people at QuestBridge look through those applications, figure out who qualifies, uh, both financially and academically, and then helps match those students to a partner college. And it’s a phenomenal program. You rank which colleges you would want to go to, and the deal is whichever one you rank the highest that accepts you, you have to go there, but you get a full ride. And so for me, that also included a stipend for housing and included money for books and for travel, um, and for food and board. And so it was just, it was a phenomenal experience. Um, and it allows me to not have the burden of student loans, which I have come to learn more about. Um, and it’s, there are thou- now thousands of, of QuestBridge alumni, um, and I’m continuing to work with them, uh, in terms of guide, sort of guiding Questees for, um, preparing for graduate school, whether that’s law school or medical school or PhD programs, um, and sort of things that people from, especially from low income backgrounds, don’t necessarily know or not are not, uh, privy to, especially since so many of them are children of immigrants, first generation students, college students, um, et cetera.

Emily (06:27): What an incredible program. I had no idea that it was both, you know, the, the tuition and fees and everything and all that plus the stipend and your living expenses. I mean, it’s a very analogous situation to, um, being in a funded graduate program, really. And so that’s a very interesting kind of like, um, twist on this in that you had some experience prior to starting graduate school with managing that kind of budget, right? The stipend kind of budget. Um, it’s just incredible that you had that opportunity and that you’re giving back now to like, you know, help shepherd, you know, other people interested in the path that you’ve taken, uh, along that same route. Okay, awesome. So college, no student loan debt. Um, great. And talk to us a little bit about that, um, interim time period before you started graduate school and like what was going on with your finances, and it sounds like you started listening to this podcast, maybe looking at other resources too during that time. Tell us that story.

Financial Journey From Childhood To Grad School

Elle (07:12): Um, I started working when I was very young. I started, uh, selling rocks by the train, uh, in Silverton, Colorado. So if you’ve ever visited Silverton, um, or took the drain from Durango to Silverton and saw kids selling rocks, I used to be one of those kids. Um, and so it was very sort of my personal finance story started very young. I I always thought about money, not necessarily always with a negative connotation or a positive connotation. It was just a reality. Um, and I knew how many rocks I had to sell in order to buy the grilled cheese sandwich that I needed, that I wanted at the end of the day. And so, um, when I entered college, I had some savings from the rocks, from working in multiple restaurants, um, in my parents’ shop, et cetera. Um, and so you’re Yeah, exactly right. That was sort of my emergency fund going into undergrad where a lot of things were paid for, but I had some flexibility and I knew I had to be very careful with that stipend. So coming out of undergrad, I was able to, I had about, I was, my net worth was about the same as going into undergrad. Um, and then I realized, okay, I need to start saving money. One of my reasons for staying in Chicago, um, for those two years before my PhD was because I knew the lay of the land. I knew that it was affordable. I knew I could get cheaper housing here than I could in LA for instance, or New York or Boston. And so, but I knew that in order to be stable and to feel, uh, like I had flexibility, um, and to be able to help my family if they needed it, I needed to really get my stuff together, um, and, and understand where I was, where I wanted to go, and how I could get there. Um, especially before starting, uh, graduate school. And so I started listening to this podcast. Um, I think this is the main podcast that I’ve just continued listening to. Um, and I think I fangirled out when I met you <laugh>, um, just because I’ve listened to like almost every episode. Um, and, uh, but I also start, I listened a little bit to Dave Ramsey, uh, which I think is fine for people with credit card debt, but that wasn’t necessarily my case. Um, the Dough Roller Money podcast Money Girl, um, I read Beth Kobliner, uh, Get a Financial Life, um, in your twenties and thirties, um, and then sort of just hodgepodged a lot of podcasts, resources, pamphlets, booklets, webinars, um, and, and try to figure out, okay, what do I need to prioritize? What do I need to do? And when can I apply to graduate school? Because applying to graduate school isn’t necessarily cheap. Um, and so, so that was sort of what, what came to be over those, over those two years.

Emily (09:48): So it sounds like you, um, knew that you were probably headed to graduate school at the, even coming out of undergrad, right? But you wanted to take some time to get your feet under you, figure out where you wanna do that. Exactly. I have the same story for my, you know, between undergrad and grad school kind of time period. Um, were you intentionally then working on like building up savings to have maybe a more robust emergency fund? Were you working on investing because maybe you knew that would be more difficult, you know, once you started graduate school? Like what, what sort of goals did you set during that time period?

Elle (10:16): At first, I was just like, okay, just figure out where I am, like, figure out how many credit cards I have, figure out how much I have in savings, figure out what those savings are for, um, how much I feel a need for a comfortable emergency fund. Um, so the first goal was just to understand where I was. And then the second goal was me looking at my benefits and being like, what is a 403B? I have never heard of that. I’ve heard of a 401k. Um, and that’s sort of it. And so it became pretty apparent that I needed to educate myself further because I knew, okay, if this is taking a good sum of my paycheck, I wanna know what that’s going into. Um, and also in my junior year, senior year, one of my, uh, older friends who worked at the university told me, just open a Roth IRA, just trust me. You won’t regret it, just open it, throw a couple dollars in, um, and, and then educate yourself on it. And so I had done that as well. And, but I had, I had put it in there, um, but didn’t invest it, uh, just was sort of sitting in that, in that cash account. And so that was my, my second goal. So after I understood where I sort of was coming from and what I had, um, I wanted to learn more about invest investing. Um, and so a lot of my youth was, uh, I was told, don’t invest. That’s fake money. Like the stock market isn’t real money. Um, and so I sort of had to reeducate myself, um, in, uh, sort of the risks, but also the benefits of investing in the stock market and the bond market, um, and what a retirement account was, why it existed, um, advantages of, of those and, and tax laws and things like that. And so, um, so that was my next step was to just sort of understand and start investing.

Resources For Learning How To Invest

Emily (11:58): You’ve already listed a few different resources, like podcasts that you listen to. Was there anything that you found, well, is there anything you would recommend to the listeners who are at a similar stage and wanna learn what investing is and how to do it and what a Roth IRA is and what a 403B is and all of that? Any books or, or any resource that you enjoyed?

Elle (12:15): Yeah, I think that Get a Financial Life book was a game changer for me in reading that. Um, and also this podcast and Money Girl, I think, um, oh, I forget the host’s name currently, but, um, the, the host does a phenomenal job breaking down everything. Um, and also, uh, if you can by Bill Bernstein, um, just sort of it, because that especially takes, really takes into account like not everyone can do this, um, but a lot of people can do at least a little bit. And that’s where to start. It’s so important to start building that habit. So once you can contribute more to a retirement account, you already know what that is and how to do it. Um, and also just your local hr,

Emily (12:55): I’m really glad to hear these resources, some of which are new to me, like the Bill Bernstein book that you just mentioned. Um, I’m gonna check those out because I found that a lot of the maybe most popular personal finance, or maybe now it’s financial independence material is much more geared for high income earners who have a different set of financial things to deal with than lower income earners. Um, I’m not at all surprised that you mentioned Dave Ramsey because even though his philosophy is maybe at odds with mine or other people’s at certain points, he does try to speak to people who are lower income at times. And so yeah, I’m just, I’m really glad to hear these resources and, and yeah, to have you speak to this because it’s a different set of things that you need to handle when you’re not quite in graduate school yet or, or in graduate school than you would, you know, later in your career.

Financial Goals Before Applying to Grad School

Elle (13:42): Yeah, absolutely. And I think, um, that, that’s something to, to keep in mind as well for, for listeners, for people who I coached, which we’ll get into later. Um, but in terms of just building the habit, um, right, I think a lot of undergraduates and techs and PhD students are like, oh, I’m not making money yet, um, to any real degree, like, I’ll just wait. Um, and I think that’s one of the worst things you can do is to wait. Um, and I think even if you have five extra dollars to put into a Roth IRA, I think that is worth doing. Um, just to, to figure out what it is. I had, I think I had $500 sitting, sitting in my Roth IRA for like two years before I figured out what that actually was. Um, and, and then as soon as I realized, oh, okay, I need to invest this, um, that sort of just took off flying. And so that was, that then became my main goal because I didn’t know when I was going to start a PhD program. I didn’t even know, even know what PhD program I was going to apply to. Um, I was deciding between, uh, neuroscience or biological sciences or even biochemistry. Um, and so while figuring out all my academic stuff, um, I decided, okay, I will apply to graduate school when I am comfortable, uh, with the idea of maxing out my Roth IRA for five years. Um, and so I didn’t necessarily need to have all of that money in cash right away, but I needed to have a plan to max out my Roth IRA for five years. Um, and that’s, that was sort of my, my threshold for, for applying to graduate school.

Emily (15:13): Hmm. That’s a really interesting goal. I mean, I definitely see the merits of it, of course. Um, now I’m wondering when you were applying to graduate school, how much you had the stipend and the cost of living, um, in mind since it had been such a focus for you over the past couple of years?

Elle (15:26): Very much in mind, um, the first, the first job was to get into graduate school. And so, um, so I sort of, I, when I applied, I didn’t consider it. I think I had looked at what graduate housing options were in all of those areas, but, um, I knew I didn’t necessarily have to go, uh, even if I applied. And then once it came time to decide, um, I was basically, it, it, it got narrowed down eventually to just two options. One was UCLA, which is, um, in a very high cost of living area, um, but it would be new to me. And they offered me basically a recruitment, um, scholarship, which was a large enough sum of money to make me feel comfortable matriculating in this program. But the other option was to stay at UChicago. Um, and there I had cheap slash uh, cheap housing essentially. Um, I was living in a house where I would be taking care of the dogs and I didn’t necessarily have to pay rent. Um, and so, but I, so that would mean that I could essentially keep the majority of my stipend and continue saving. And so in that regard, I decided that UCLA was the better career move, um, and even the overall better financial move, I could make more connections. I would have more opportunities, and I would be studying precisely what I wanted to study. Whereas UChicago, which just wasn’t as good of an academic fit.

Emily (16:47): I think that’s the ideal position to be in when you are, um, applying to graduate school and you are keeping an eye on the personal finance side of things is just the decision is not gonna be completely determined by the finances, but you least need to set some kind of bar of, like, anything above this bar I’m gonna be able to say yes to, and I can decide based on the academics or whatever other factors are important to you. But you just know that anything below that bar is, is really just not a viable option. And a lot of times you don’t really, even though it’s great to check out what the stipends are, what the, you know, what the base stipends are, what the cost of living is, et cetera, in advance, a lot of times you don’t know until you get into admission season exactly what they’re going to offer you. Because like you said, with UCLA, they could come up with an extra scholarship or fellowship that you weren’t aware that they were going to offer you. And that can completely change the calculus of the situation.

Elle (17:32): Oh, absolutely. I had, I had my mock budgets of whether I stayed or at U Chicago, whether I continued living in that house or whether I came to UCLA and lived in graduate housing versus with, without roommates. I had all the mock budgets just because, um, it’s, it’s a commitment. It’s like a five plus year commitment, um, for, especially for the biological sciences. Um, and so I knew that like, okay, this is a financial decision as much as it is a educational and, uh, career decision.

Current Housing Situation

Emily (18:03): And I’m really glad to hear that you had those different like scenarios modeled out too, because sometimes, okay, so I don’t know. So are you living in graduate housing now?

Elle (18:12): No, I, I started, uh, because I matriculated in 2020 and then, um, and so I lived my first year here in graduate housing and then I moved to a, a private rental.

Emily (18:23): Okay. Was that the plan all along or was there a possibility that you could have stayed in graduate housing?

Elle (18:28): UCLA offers three years of graduate housing. Um, and then after that it’s really hard to stay in it unless you move to family housing. And so, um, I think my plan was always like, okay, start in, uh, graduate housing, um, and then maybe go live with friends, sort of get a lay of the land <laugh> after Covid is over and, and then, um, move somewhere cheaper because graduate housing is in West la. Um, but that’s not necessarily where I needed to stay. So currently I live in Studio City, in the Valley.

Current Financial Goals

Emily (18:56): Okay. So we’ve talked about kind of the lead up, you know, your decision to go to UCLA now that you’ve been in graduate school for four years. Um, what kinds of goals have you been working on? You mentioned the Roth IRA earlier. Have you been able to do that? Anything else? Just let us know how your finances have been going

Elle (19:11): In graduate school. Yes, I’ve been keeping up with the, the Roth IRA, I’ve been learning more about different retirement, um, options. Um, and I’ve sort of stuck with the same strategy, just index funds, putting extra savings into, uh, different account types and, um, keeping up with my budget, I budget with YNAB or you need a budget, which is a phenomenal budgeting service. Um, and just sort of making sure that my finances and how I spend my money align with my goals and my priorities. So that absolutely includes, uh, investing for retirement, but also, um, I am also investing in, uh, a taxable account just for an eventual down payment on a home. And, um, making sure to spend, spend, uh, enough money on, on funds, so things like travel and seeing different sites in la. Um, and then I also, on the non-money side of things, um, sort of just created a lot of resources for myself and for others where I could sort of track my net worth because that is very motivating to me just to be able to see progress over time. Um, but also getting things in order. Like I, uh, I signed up for life insurance term life insurance, uh, when I was a first year graduate student, just because I am sort of my family’s overall retirement plan. And so if anything were to happen to me, I would want to make sure that they, um, are at least somewhat stable financially. And so, um, so sort of putting that into place, getting a feel for, um, what’s su- what is sustainable in terms of credit cards. I’m big on credit card bonuses and rewards. Um, and so that’s something else that I’ve sort of made sure that I was good to go, um, and, and to sign up for more credit cards, um, while still maintaining a good, uh, credit score and, but being, being able to take advantage of, of that, that as well.

Emily (21:10): So exciting. I love all of those. Um, I love that there’s a variety of goals in different areas, right? It’s not just about increasing the net worth, it’s also about increasing your own financial, um, education you could say, or just your, um, acuity and also like some budgeting stuff. I love that you mentioned Y-, uh, YNAB you need a budget and you know, the credit card stuff. I’m curious, um, about how your spending is overall. ’cause you mentioned that you, you wanna spend on fun things on discretionary items. You may have heard me mention on the podcast before, like the balanced money formula. It’s probably something you’re familiar with. Um, I’m curious how your overall budget conforms or doesn’t conform with the balanced money formula, because it can be so challenging to achieve that on a grad student stipend in a high cost of living area. So go ahead and have you made that comparison before?

Current Budgeting Process

Elle (22:00): Not explicitly. So I think the sort of, the way I approach things, especially in YNAB is the, I still stick with the whole pay yourself first thing. So, um, I, um, have a specific set amount that I put aside for the Roth IRA that’s just determined by the federal maximum, um, every month. And then, and I always, I save up throughout the year and then deposit it right at the beginning of the year. So I try to get it in there as, as soon as possible just so I can forget about it, um, and not have to like, keep such an eye on it or figure out when I want to, to invest it or not. And so, so that’s my strategy for that. And then I also have specific amounts for, um, a home down payment and a car down payment. Those aren’t necessarily massive funds, but they are goals of mine. And so I just make sure that every month I put in, um, that set amount. And um, and then after that I figure out, okay, like how, how am I doing, uh, and where are my finances? And then I go ahead and distribute throughout the rest of the categories, starting with, with needs. So of course, like rent, utilities, groceries, uh, gas, those are basically my big ones. Um, and I, I have a monthly goal of how much to budget, so not necessarily how much to spend, um, but how much do I wanna allocate to each category? Um, and usually I don’t really know how much I spend in a month because that varies all the time. And also if I go get car maintenance and it costs $1,500, that kind of offsets my monthly spending, but it has almost no impact on my monthly budgeting, um, because I save for that, I know I eventually need car maintenance. I know I’ve eventually want to buy an expensive plane ticket. And so, um, so my, I don’t focus too much on the spending. Um, I just make sure that I spend whatever I have available in my budget and if I don’t, I sort of just reallocate, um, when I’ve called it rolling with the punches. Um, and so, um, and then after I reach sort of that amount that I am comfortable with budgeting, if I have any leftover, then I just start putting it in next month’s categories. Um, and then if I get more than two months out ahead, um, then I just, everything else just goes straight to, um, my home down payment fund.

Emily (24:15): So I’m not a YNAB user, but I’m a longtime wine nab admirer. Does the software en enable you and, and sort of teach you how to do all the things you just mentioned? And I’m specifically wondering if the software makes any suggestions on where you house these different pools of money? Like does the software think it’s okay to all stay in your checking account? Does the software want you to have like a single separate savings account? Like sort of mechanically? How do you communicate between the software and like how you structure your accounts?

Elle (24:42): Uh, great question. Um, I love YNAB because it is so flexible, it doesn’t necessarily give information as to whether it’s something should be checking or savings, um, or a cd. Um, that’s sort of for you to completely decide. Um, and so, and then I just write it in the account name. So I have like an ally cd and that’s where I house my emergency fund because if I need, if in case of emergency, um, break glass, I don’t really care about the interest that I might lose, um, if it’s like fairly short term. Um, but they do separate things into budgeting versus tracking accounts. So basically anything that looks that is within budgeting is for spending. And if you move something from budgeting to a tracking account, it looks, it comes up in your spending reports. So I love this feature because it allows me to make saving look like spending. So if I pull up my spending reports, um, and I don’t filter out anything, it, I see exactly how much I put aside for my home down payment for my car down payment, um, and for retirement, and I can always filter those out to get my actual spending. Um, but it sort of removes it mentally and within the software of, okay, <laugh> no touching, this is for these goals only. Um, of course in reality, if I really needed those funds, I can, I can pull from them, but I also would have to go through the hassle of adding them back into my budget where it would look like income. And so, um, in terms of, of checking and savings, it doesn’t really matter. So I think you’ve talked about ally buckets before, um, and I love those. And so for me, my ally buckets are listed as different accounts within YNAB even though in reality they are one actual account with one account number one routing number. Um, and so there’s a huge amount of flexibility in that. Um, and YNAB has like several, like four main rules, um, that, uh, really just help you figure out how to approach things. Um, and yeah, it’s a great software. Highly recommend it

Emily (26:40): Since you’re highly recommending it. Um, I, if I remember correctly, it’s free for one year for students, but then after that you pay for it. Um, can you tell people where to find this, how to sign up <laugh>?

Elle (26:53): Absolutely. Um, and so this is actually one of the many resources in, uh, a folder that I share with, um, UCLA students and my friends. Um, but yes, you can actually get 13 months for free. So YNAB offers all users a 34 day trial. So what I recommend to, especially students, unless you’re about to graduate, is sign up for the 34 day trial, then you just email them saying, hi, like, I did a 34 day trial, um, I’m still really interested, but I am a student, um, and I would like to sign up or I would like to get the year, uh, free that you offer students. Um, and, and then they say, no problem. They just need a proof of enrollment or acceptance. So I started mine even the summer before I matriculated, but at that point I had already had on my paperwork from U-C-U-C-L-A, so they accept that as well. So if you’re like a tech or about to reenter school, you can still, um, get away with that as long as you can have proof of being a student or about to be a student.

Emily (27:50): Oh, perfect. Thank you so much for the detail on that. Sometimes people really need like a what exactly when exactly,

Commercial

Emily (27:58): Emily here for a brief interlude! I’m hard at work behind the scenes updating my suite of tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2024. These educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2024 tax season starting in January 2025, I’m offering live and pre-recorded workshops for US citizen/resident graduate students and postdocs and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they host one or more of these workshops for you and your peers? I’d love to receive a warm introduction to a potential sponsor this fall so we can hit the ground running in January serving those early bird filers. You can find more information about hosting these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Now back to our interview.

Talking to Peers About Money

Emily (29:15): You obviously have, you know, a great deal of passion, a great deal of knowledge about the subject area. You’re working on your own finances. I understand that you then started talking to your peers and started having more sort of interpersonal interactions around money. So can you tell us how that got started and, and what you were talking about with your peers?

Elle (29:33): Absolutely. So I, as soon as I started educating myself, um, about finances and personal finances and sort of really building up that confidence, um, and then starting graduate school, um, I wouldn’t really shut up about money. And so I would have, um, I would host these discussions just among my cohort about, um, finances. And everyone was coming in from different places. You know, some people were coming in straight through undergrad, um, and then some were married, some had been already been in the workforce for the better part of a decade. Um, and so it was really nice just to be able to see, um, how’s everyone doing? Um, right, how are we figuring out stipend housing? Um, how are we saving for retirement? Um, is anyone doing any side hustles gig work? Um, TA ships and, and sort of just opening the floor for those conversations. Um, and so that was really useful. And we also have to take a presentation class, um, as a first year and, but we can pick anything. So, um, I talked about finances, um, and, uh, and I think that really made me realize how much I loved educating people and just having a discussion and being educated. Um, I don’t necessarily, it’s not a one-way conversation most of the time. I learn a lot from everyone I talk with. Um, and so before graduate school, I, I started realizing this about myself and I was familiar that, um, or I knew that UCLA has a financial wellness program. So actually before I started graduate school, um, I reached out to financial wellness and talked with the, uh, then and still current director, um, Sara Potter-Gittelson. And she just sort of reaffirmed what I was doing. She said, she told me my options in graduate school. Um, we just sort of talked about retirement investing and, and aspects of being a student at UCLA, um, and how it impacts my finances and my financial wellness.

Emily (31:22): What are the specific kinds of like issues or questions that came up during like these money talks, money groups, conversations with your peers? Um, because I understand eventually you started creating some resources. So there, there must have been, you know, certain topics that came up over and over against certain questions or certain issues.

Elle (31:38): A lot of it was based on your podcast. And so one massive thing was taxes. Like how do we pay quarterly taxes? Do we have to pay quarterly taxes? Um, what, what’s the step by step for doing that? How, how well do they need to be calculated, et cetera. So, um, taxes were a big thing. Uh, payment schedule thing, scheduling was another. Um, and so just because UCLA, they, they’ve restructured the whole system, they just restructured it again. But when I started, we got paid pre-work. So our, um, our September stipend would disperse mid August, um, which was really nice. But once you join a lab and start being employed by your PI’s department, then it goes post work and it becomes a W2 income. And so just making sure everyone was sort of understanding what, um, that situation is. Um, making sure that if sometimes issues would arise with, uh, with how we got paid. So with our stipend, which also is how we paid our housing. So, um, if we got, if we got underpaid with our stipend and then housing just took that back up, we now have no disposable income and have to use like something like credit cards or loans if we don’t, um, have an emergency fund. And so, so those are things that I think came up a lot. Um, some people were, uh, uh, thinking about tutoring. Um, so a lot of like gig work. How do we manage that? Um, is it possible to do, um, and, and sort of all the implications that come with that. Um, and yeah, yeah, I think that’s the, the majority of it. And then of course I was just saying like everyone should open a Roth IRA and I got multiple people in my cohort, uh, to open a Roth IRA, um, which I am very, very happy about <laugh>.

Emily (33:24): Uh, honestly, I mean this is something that I get to hear through my work from time to time, but I, if they haven’t already said it to you, like, that literally changes people’s lives like five years from now, 10 years from now. Like if they haven’t said it already, like they’re going to think back on that and like, really, really appreciate that they ran into you that they were, you know, had the good fortune of just being in your circles and, and hearing that. ’cause they probably wouldn’t have gotten it, you know, from many other sources at that time. So, um, that’s amazing. So tell us more about the resources. Were they about taxes? Were they about these crazy bureaucratic pay schedule things like, um, I love how specific this gets to be, right? UCLA certain fellowships your program, like, let’s talk about that.

Financial Resources for Grad Students

Elle (34:01): Um, the resources, it’s just a, it’s just a folder where I’ve put everything that I’ve created. And so, um, I think one of the, the main things that I have the pleasure and privilege of doing is the orientation finance presentation, um, just to the program, just to the first year cohort, um, sort of orienting them on, okay, this is how we get paid, um, taxes are a thing, but also, um, I have a couple slides on credit and credit cards just to make sure that everyone’s sort of on the same page and we can have a discussion about that. And if you’ve never really considered credit or if you’ve never checked your credit report, I am available to go through it with you just because I think that is so incredibly important. Um, and I also just give, I cannot give tax advice. I am by no means qualified to do that, but I do provide links. Like this is exactly where you go to get your 1098T this is exactly our site ID that you enter. Um, here are the links to the California Franchise Chat tax board that is create an account, make your tax payments. These are the dates. Um, so just sort of links to things that are kind of hard to find sometimes. Um, and that’s even when you know you need to find it. And, and I think the major case with graduate school is that, especially at a place as big as UCLA is that it’s really easy for communication to sort of, um, be looked over, right? Like we get so many emails, we’re just inundated with all this information, especially while starting a graduate program, um, that I sort of try to synthesize the main key points of information, um, and, and, uh, communicate it to the incoming cohort. I also go through pay schedules. So I say, okay, this is our stipend, but also if we’re getting paid in May for June work and then we get paid in August 1st for July work, that means you have no more income coming in between May 20th and August 1st. Um, so sign up for direct deposit to make sure that your check gets, or that your, uh, uh, income gets to you in time. Otherwise they will mail you a check and you won’t get it till August 5th. And if you rent is due August 1st, you need that money. Um, so sort of just going over things to, so that people can either approach me about it if they have any questions later. Um, right. Roth IRAs and investing are a multiple day long conversation. Um, but uh, just sort of putting things on people’s radar. Um, I tell them, uh, oh, just put it in your calendar right now, um, or set aside money or this is where to go get a loan if your, uh, payment doesn’t come through, um, et cetera. Just so they have like a go-to uh, person and also a go-to presentation that. And then I give them the link to the presentation, um, that is just full of notes and links <laugh>. So, um, those, that’s the main, uh, resource that I, uh, created. And then every year the, the presentation changes, just depending on how long the presentation is and, and what changes the university has undergone.

Emily (37:04): Your program is so lucky to have you honestly <laugh>, um, because a lot of the things you just listed, um, I actually have, I I even use the same like phrasing that you do, but I created a new workshop this year called Your Financial Orientation to Graduate School. Um, and so it’s got a lot of, it has credit, like I never talk about credit, but I decided to put it in there because I was like, this is the best time, like right at the start of graduate school to be, you know, reassessing, rethinking, um, starting to build credit if you haven’t before. Uh, but my main point though is that like, even when I’m brought in by a client to give this presentation for like a specific university, and I do look into some policies, like I try to figure out, um, about their tax policies and I try to figure out about their pay schedules and, and all that stuff, but it’s not honestly not the same as having the lived experience of and knowing all those details.

Emily (37:49): And so I honestly can’t get to that level right without working through across many different clients. So your program, UCLA more generally is very lucky to have you have put this together because these resources are needed and they are really hard to find. And until you have, um, walked through it, it’s, it’s hard to know everything that you need to know, right? Until you’ve been through it. So they’re lucky this is not happening at other places. Although by the end of this interview we’ll get to how can this be happening at more places. Um, but that is just awesome and amazing. So next phase of this is, you already mentioned that you would approach the financial wellness office, you know, sort of as a, as a, as a client. Um, but then at some point you started working with them. So can you tell us why you took that step?

Working For the Financial Wellness Office at UCLA

Elle (38:33): Definitely. So, um, at the end of my third, third year of graduate school, I had applied to an NRSA an F31 diversity. Um, and so it’s just a, a grant. Um, and I had completed my qualification exams, um, and I was sort of just looking for more whether that was, um, volunteering and I, and I signed up for some volunteer opportunities. Um, and then in the fall, um, one of the two financial graduate consult financial wellness graduate consultants, um, was no longer able to maintain the position. And so they put out like a mid-year, like hire, um, job posting. And so I said, great, I already know that this is a great office. I’ve already met with Sara, um, and I wanna be a part of this because I’m already doing so much of this work and I’m spending so much time on Reddit giving people financial advice, um, or to, uh, redirecting them to, to resources. And so, um, so I sort of wrote out a whole thing to my, to my PI saying, this is not a zero sum game. Like, this is how I will make sure that I maintain my hours in lab, because that still is my priority, but also this is a huge passion of mine and I feel like I can absolutely really help people to an even greater extent. Um, and so it was really nice just because that was all in like October of, of 2023, um, and I got my PI’s approval, which I, uh, needed, um, on a practical and moral level. Um, and, uh, so I applied the interview was, was great. And when I was, uh, being onboarded, um, things went really smoothly and they had me sort of just go through a lot of their, their training that they typically do with consultants over the summer. Um, but we were sort of working on a, on a condensed timeline. Um, but fortunately I had been able to educate myself a lot, um, in regards to personal finances and, uh, so a lot of the stuff I was just able to like reaffirm, um, and I think it was mostly like student loans that was, uh, I was mostly unfamiliar with just because I don’t have personal experience with those. Um, but then we just dove right in. Um, so after a few weeks of, of training, um, I was signing up for, for workshops and for appointments. And so those are the main aspects of my job is giving, uh, workshops and the slides were already created to undergraduate students and graduate students. Um, so clubs or organizations within UCLA could ask us to come and talk to them. So these were like resident assistants, um, who wanted us to talk about credit to their, uh, to their residents, um, in the residence halls or, uh, more specific like biology PhD students who wanted me to talk about, um, graduate school and investing. And so, um, they could request that we go and talk to the group, um, and, and just be, be available as a resource and really just tell them like, Hey, if you want to dive more into your personal situation, you can make an appointment with us. So that was the other aspect of my job was one-on-one coaching, um, just sort of helping people figure out what resources were available to them, um, just to, you know, and it kind of motivated them to put a little thing together, just say, this is where I am, this is where I wanna go, help me get there. Um, and so, um, that was a phenomenal opportunity and I got to speak to, um, not just PhD students in the Biosciences, but also PhD students, um, in, you know, the humanities and in education and also, uh, law students, medical students, um, master’s students who are about to enter, uh, some really high paying jobs, but they didn’t know what to look for in their offer letters or, um, how to talk about like, uh, restricted stock units. And so I, I really was able to get, um, a whole breadth of, of people to talk to and I was able to educate myself. So we would have the coaching appointment, um, and, and then I would follow up with, with actual links and sort of an outline of what we talked about, an action item list if we created one together. Um, and, and I think with almost every single followup email, um, I think I included one specific, uh, uh, uh, episode from your podcast, like Emily talks about it here. And so, um, especially for, for uh, students who were expecting parents or who had just had a baby, um, or living in family housing, I think those episodes were incredibly useful. Um, and so yeah, so that was sort of my experience with financial wellness.

Emily (43:13): So exciting. Again, what a credit you are to this office, <laugh>, um, coming in with a great deal of like knowledge and, and, um, experience talking with your peers and so forth.

Outtro

Emily (43:32): 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.

What You Should Know about Money Early in Your PhD Career

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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

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.

Unveiling the Hidden Curriculum of Grad School Funding for First-Gen BIPOC Students

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu and Dr. Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, the co-authors of the recent book Is Grad School for Me? Demystifying the Application Process for First-Gen BIPOC Students. Yvette, Miroslava, and Emily dive into the financial aspects of the grad school application and admissions process, from applying for external fellowships to negotiating funding offers to preparing financially to start graduate school. Yvette and Miroslava share their personal experiences as well as their insights from prospective students involved with Yvette’s Grad School Femtoring coaching and podcast and Miroslava’s McNair program at UCSB. This episode is a must-listen for prospective PhD students, especially those who come from underrepresented backgrounds.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Uncovering the Hidden Curriculum of Grad School Funding for First-Gen BIPOC Students

Teaser

Yvette (00:00): One year, there was one student who was really, really struggling financially, had gotten into his top choice, had to move from California to the Midwest, and he couldn’t even afford his airfare. So he contacted his soon to be advisor, told that person his situation like, look, I, you know, I’m really trying to make it things work. I’m trying to work, I, but I, I just can’t afford my flight. And that advisor, without even thinking twice, bought him the flight.

Introduction

Emily (00:37): 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 (01:06): This is Season 18, Episode 4, and today my guests are Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu and Dr. Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, the co-authors of the recent book Is Grad School for Me? Demystifying the Application Process for First-Gen BIPOC Students. Yvette, Miroslava, and I dive into the financial aspects of the grad school application and admissions process, from applying for external fellowships to negotiating funding offers to preparing financially to start graduate school. Yvette and Miroslava share their personal experiences as well as their insights from prospective students involved with Yvette’s Grad School Femtoring coaching and podcast and Miroslava’s McNair program at UCSB. This episode is a must-listen for prospective PhD students, especially those who come from underrepresented backgrounds. In fact, I think Is Grad School for Me? is a must-read as well, so I’m giving away three copies of this book to listeners of this podcast. If you are applying to PhD programs in fall 2024 and are in the target audience for this book, i.e., a person of color who is a first-generation, low-income, and or non-traditional student, you can enter the giveaway at PFforPhDs.com/isgradschoolforme/. I would also appreciate you sharing this episode with any prospective graduate students in your life. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s18e4/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu and Dr. Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, the co-authors of Is Grad School for Me?

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:56): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Yvette Martínez-Vu and Dr. Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, who are the authors of the recent book Is Grad School for Me? Demystifying the Application Process for First-Gen BIPOC Students. And as you might imagine, well this guide is incredible for this population and frankly, any prospective graduate student, I highly recommend the book. I just finished it a couple of weeks ago and there’s a lot of financial content within this, as you might imagine. So I was really excited to reach out to these authors and get them on the podcast so we can dive even further into the financial aspects of the application and the admissions process for graduate school. So, Yvette, Miroslava, again, welcome to the podcast. Would you please introduce yourselves a little bit further for the listeners? Yvette, why don’t you go first?

Yvette (03:41): Yes, of course. Hi everyone, my name is Dra. Yvette Martínez-Vu. I’m a first gen Chicana, chronically ill neurodivergent productivity and grad school coach, consultant, author, speaker. Um, I do a lot of things. I have a PhD in theater and performance studies. I worked in higher ed for over 10 years supporting predominantly low income first gen students of color. That’s actually how I met Miros a few years back. Actually, at the start of the pandemic, she became my supervisor. And since then we’ve developed and nurtured a great relationship, which has manifested in US publishing and co-authoring this book together. So that’s a little bit more about me and what I do.

Miroslava (04:25): Great. Yeah. Hi. So I’m Miroslava Chavez-Garcia and I’m a professor of history and I’m also the faculty director of the UCSB McNair Scholars Program. So I’ve been at UCSB probably for the last 10 years, and before that I was at UC Davis, and then I had another job before that. So I’ve been in the game for a little while. Um, also a product from UCLA PhD Yvette and I have that in common as well. And what else about myself? So I’m also a mom juggling with children and a little needy dog. So life just keeps happening no matter what phase you are.

Grad School for Me? Demystifying the Application Process for First-Gen BIPOC Students

Emily (04:59): Fantastic. So let’s hear more about the book. Um, who is the intended audience for the book and why did you write it

Yvette (05:05): As referenced in the title of the book, uh, Is Grad School for Me? Demystifying the Application Process for First-Gen BIPOC students. The book is predominantly, um, catered to first gen bipoc students. But then, um, more broadly, we also address concerns for anyone who fits the quote unquote low income category or also non-traditional categories. So we’re thinking here of, you know, folks from working class backgrounds, we’re thinking of folks who, uh, maybe ages 25 and older. We know that more and more college campuses are no longer having what we may consider traditional students. A lot more of the, uh, student population is going back, they’re older, they have dependents, they have other commitments, and we wanted to meet, be able to address those other factors that individuals consider when they’re thinking about whether or not they want to pursue graduate school.

Miroslava (06:02): Yeah, definitely. I think that we were really interested in this, these folks who had not seen themselves reflected in all the literature that’s out there. So in looking at what’s been written, um, it’s all kind of cookie cutter in some ways. And they imagine maybe they don’t even imagine who, but we imagine it’s not us, right? When we’re looking at these books. And so we were very much with that intention to be able to provide a guide to all those folks who perhaps didn’t see themselves, um, you know, reflected and, and, um, and that was really important to us. And initially, I would have to say for myself, and I’m not sure if that had this thought, I was thought like, what, is there enough? Are there enough of an, is there enough of an audience for this? And, and yes, there is, you know, it’s, it’s that sort of, um, audience that we don’t hear from, but they’re definitely there. And the press was very, um, supportive of, of this, um, of, of, of the approach of the book. So we’re really happy that we were able to, um, target this population that’s been overlooked for so long.

Yvette (06:56): I have had the idea for this book since I was an undergrad. I was part of the inaugural cohort of Mellon May Fellows at UCLA. And despite the fact that I was in a very privileged position of getting into this prestigious graduate school preparation program, despite receiving ample support, I still was stumbling so much along the way. There was still so much information that I was missing out on. I still struggled to find mentors femtors, and I felt really frustrated and I found myself constantly pulling, you know, trying to find from the weeds as many resources as I could and then sharing them. And every year I was always surprised like, why is there not a book like this? Why is there not a book like this? I don’t see myself represented, not just, um, among the faculty, among my department. I was an English, uh, literature major at the time, but even within the literature, the research, the books I was running into, I didn’t, again, I didn’t see anyone like me a First Gen Chicana represented. And I wish that I had had that how to book. So that was, you know, an idea that I had many, many years ago. Of course, it didn’t come into fruition until Miros literally asked me when I’m gonna be writing a book. I never took it seriously until she approached me. And I thank her for her Femtorship and for her support and guidance, even through this publication process. This work wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for the two of us coming together.

Miroslava (08:26): Like Yvette, most of my career has been focused on doing this kind of work, right? The hidden cur- un- unraveling or uncovering the hidden curriculum, addressing all of those isms, all these things that we feel, but we can’t quite put our finger on it. And so, um, when I was in grad school, there were some guides, but nothing like in the last that has been produced in the last 10, 15 years. And I didn’t even think we could encapsulate. And, and granted, this is not all about grad school. This is about just applying, right? So, but we’ve, it’s a pretty hefty book and we’ve top- tackled one topic. I think there’s many more that can be tackled, um, in the future. There’s other books out there as well. But definitely, um, it’s nice that we’re able to bring so many things together. I, with my more years in academia, but Yvette, with all of our up to date since, you know, things get really quickly, get out of date in academia and there’s new things, new trends, new um, approaches, um, especially we see right now a lot of changes happening. But yeah, it would just worked really well actually.

Emily (09:21): And if someone is convinced already that they need to get their hands on this book, where can they find it?

Yvette (09:26): Yeah, you can get it at IsGradSchoolForMe.com, and you can also find it at most major bookstores and even, um, a good number of independent bookstores have it too.

Miroslava (09:36): And definitely the press. And there is, um, if, if, if, uh, listeners are interested, they can contact us. We have, there’s a, there’s a discount code for now as well. It should probably be there for a while. That makes it more accessible to our, our population

Yvette (09:48): Yeah, you, you can go to the UC press website and this code should work it’s ucpsave30. So again, ucpsave30, it should work as far as we know. We don’t, it doesn’t have an expiration. So if you wanna get it and get it 30% off, um, go ahead and, um, get your copy directly from uc press.

Financial Support During Grad School and It’s Impact on Student Success

Emily (10:10): Perfect. And I definitely learned from reading the book that you all, uh, have an aligned position with mine that having, um, sufficient financial support during graduate school is very important to the students’ overall academic and personal success throughout that time period. Um, can you elaborate on that idea a little bit more? Um, how important is this? I mean, I know you said in the book like, you know, we discourage taking out student loans for our graduate degree and so forth. So just tell me a little bit more about how you came to that position.

Yvette (10:40): I mean, I think a, a big part of it is our experience, uh, both personal experience, experience working with student- with this population in particular for a lot of low income first gen students of color. The question of can I afford it and will I have adequate fund- funding is a very, very important question. And without it, some of them are even willing to go the extra mile of pursuing graduate school. So yeah, getting an advanced degree, especially pursuing a PhD is a significant investment in time, effort, resources. And for some, it’s not even an option without having at least some funding. So that’s why for us, it’s important for them to know, you know, what are the differences in funding options is between PhD programs, between master’s programs, what are these funding options packages even look like? That’s why we provided samples in the book because, um, the more financial burdens you have, if you don’t come in with generational wealth or trust funds or a savings account, just some sort of support, that means that a lot of people end up taking on insurmountable amounts of debt, debt that holds them back from reaching other major life milestones, or they end up staying one too many years in graduate school, they’re having to juggle multiple jobs to make ends meet. Or for a lot of people, they end up getting pushed out. We know that 50% of folks who go into PhD programs don’t actually make it and get to finish. And that’s a problem. And I wouldn’t be surprised if sometimes funding plays a factor in that. So we do think it’s important to, to consider the funding aspects of it, um, when you’re thinking about grad school as your next step in your career.

Miroslava (12:24): Yeah, definitely. One thing that we tackle a lot throughout the book is this idea of fit. Like is this program or this, you know, university institution for me, and one of the, I would say one of the main, you know, sort of categories of that would be around funding. I know my department does not take any PhD students. We can talk about master’s program that’s a little bit different or could be quite different. But PhD programs, we will not take anybody without funding. I mean, we have to bring in people who have support them. So that’s been going on for a while now. And I think lots of programs run that way. Uh, the PhD programs, at least in the humanities where, you know, there’s so much upfront and then no guarantee on the other end that you’re gonna be able to make up pay off that loan and, and, you know, thrive if you’re able to do that, the STEM fields might be a little bit different, but I know that in humanities, um, institutions are a little more cognizant of that, um, disconnect. Sometimes it happens.

Emily (13:13): This is something that I point out when I speak with, um, prospective graduate students. Current undergraduate students is like the funding mechanism for your undergraduate degree and professional graduate degrees is just completely different from, you know, the PhD or the, the research based graduate degrees. And while it may be perfectly okay, um, to take out debt for, um, an MD or a JD or a similar type of degree like that, it’s because the salaries on the other side of that justify taking out that debt. And depending on the PhD field that you’re in, as you just said, Mirsolava, you don’t really know what kind of career you’re going to have or what that salary is going to be on the other side. So it’s that much more important to make sure that your, um, PhD is, um, uh, you’re not, um, leveraging your future <laugh>, uh, when you’re doing that PhD, you’re only building into the future. And so in your book, one of the, one of the sections is about, um, applying for external fellowships in particular. And so why did you take the time in the book to encourage prospective graduate students to apply for that type of fellowship?

Yvette (14:14): You know, I’ll, I’ll share a personal anecdote in relation to this question. When I went into my PhD program, I was awarded a prestigious fellowship. It was a departmental fellowship, and everybody told me, oh, you got full funding, you’re good to go. You don’t have to worry about applying for anything else. And I remember my advisor at the time discouraging me from applying to external fellowships and only later on finding out about fellowships that covered multiple years that could have provided me with additional years of being on a fellowship could have minimized my teaching burden and could have even increased my chances of getting more competitive dissertation year fellowships later on. So for me, I do think it’s important, it’s not just the financial advantage of having another offer that you can then use to leverage your funding package and to shift things around as best as you can, depending on your department and their flexibility, but also access to a network. So for instance, when I became a four dissertation year fellow, I was, you know, I, I entered this space of networking, I joined the national conferences, I started meeting up with people for networking meetings, and I realized, wow, there’s like this whole world of Ford fellows out there that I didn’t know that I could have been exposed to earlier if I had known to apply to the Ford Predoctoral Fellowship if I had been encouraged. So I do think that it, it only increases your chances of, um, having access to more opportunities, having access to bigger networks. So why not do that? Why, like, don’t put all your eggs in one basket and expect to only get funding from your department or even from your program.

Miroslava (16:02): Yeah, and I would definitely agree. I’m also a Ford postdoctoral fellow. I tried the pre-doc and the dissertation, um, but the postdoc was fortunate to get that. And so Yvette’s talking about the networks, like you can’t put a dollar price on those because they’ll stay with you throughout your career. Particularly with the Ford, they always talk about us being a family and people, um, you know, in a good way, <laugh>, I don’t, so families, uh, you know, uh, but those relationships are there. They reach out to you for networking. So it’s, that’s really valuable. I think another thing to think about as well is that they bring prestige. I hate to, you know, I’m not a big, you know, showy kind of person, but nevertheless institution, it brings prestige to the, you know, value to you. Um, it shows that other institutions also value what you’re doing and it also brings more hum umph to your, the significance of your work. And I think that anytime that happens, you know, it’s, it’s for the, for the work, it’s for your subject, it’s for your project, your research, and that’s a win-win. So

Emily (16:56): I think all those reasons are so fantastic to apply for fellowships, apply for fellowships throughout your PhD, not just early on. As you said before, you aren’t when you aren’t sure what your funding is going to be. Um, but I particularly like them for prospective graduate students because, um, during admission season, it can be quite an advantage to have already been awarded an external fellowship. You can come to your program and say, Hey, I’m actually, you thought you were gonna fund me, but I’m actually bringing in X amount of dollars from this other fellowship that, that I just won. Um, can you speak more about the, um, advantages to, to that situation for that perspective graduate student?

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Negotiating as a Prospective Grad Student

Miroslava (19:03): I, I will, if it’s okay, I’m gonna jump in. I’ll give a specific example of one of our, our McNair scholars who, um, had applied to many institutions and, um, a prestigious one UCLA. She would I think she applied in the STEM fields and she got an NSF and that decision happened like overnight. I mean that they, the door was open quickly at UCLA for her to come in. They’re like, oh, come step right in. And, and so she took that position, but she had been, wait, not waitlisted, but I think she hadn’t heard. Um, and so that really granted her that, um, you know, provided I say the ticket to make her own decisions and choices. And so, um, that’s the example I like to share.

Yvette (19:40): I’ve seen the same scenario, so I was gonna say almost an identical scenario, but with a different student <laugh>. Yeah.

Emily (19:48): Yeah, because sometimes the reason for a rejection is not anything lacking in the candidate, it’s just the funding is not gonna go far enough to accept as many people as we would like, or, you know, this particular advisor didn’t have funding, but if you come with it, then you can work with that person. Um, and so it can reverse those decisions or get you off a wait list or whatever that, um, you know, situation might be. And it also provides you leverage for negotiation <laugh>.

Emily (20:12): So let’s talk about that next. I loved that you included information about negotiation in this book. I think a few years ago I didn’t really hear that many people talking about it, but it’s been, I’ve just heard more and more people familiar, like prospective graduate students when I bring up negotiation, they’re like, oh yeah, I, someone already told me I was able to do that, or at least able to attempt it. Right. So let’s talk about that, um, a little bit further. Like, how have you seen prospective graduate students successfully negotiated their funding packages? Do you have any tips about how they should do so?

Yvette (20:40): I think that it’s always important to tread the waters carefully, right? When it comes to negotiating. And it’s also good to have all of your information available. So you wanna know, don’t start to negotiate before you know, you know, what is even feasible. So, um, I’ve, I’ve seen a lot of different scenarios. Uh, one of the most successful scenario that I’ve seen work time and time again is where when someone gets multiple offers and then they send their best offer to their top choice school who maybe may is offering less, and they ask if they can match or increase their offer. And in many cases, they either increase or match it, or sometimes they say, you know what? This is the best that we can offer you. We still really want you, but there’s no way we can compete with that. And it’s up to the student to decide maybe sometimes it is worth it for them to accept the lower offer because cost of living might be different and cost of living makes it so that that’s actually a better offer financially at the end of the day when you crunch the numbers and, and create your budget. So that’s one scenario where that’s been fairly successful. What I’ve also noticed is that a lot of times folks don’t feel like they can negotiate because they say, oh, well I don’t have another offer, or, oh, they’re not offering me any funding. How can I ask? And in these scenarios, I mean, it doesn’t hurt to ask, it is rare. In fact, I’ve only seen this happen for summer programs, but it, it’s rare for folks to have their offer rescinded because they asked for more. Of course, you want to be conscientious, of course you want to be grateful, of course you want to express your enthusiasm. Um, but you can ask, and I’ve seen this happen more than once, where someone didn’t get any, they got into a master’s program, didn’t get awarded any funding, asked if there was any funding that they could apply for or that they were eligible for and could be considered for. And the next thing you know, a few days later, they’ve got a $12,000 scholarship that wasn’t there before. I’m like, so overnight you got $12,000 for asking, you wouldn’t have had that. Aside from that, a lot of applicants don’t know what else they can ask for. It’s not always just tuition remission, it’s not always just a stipend. Some graduate students get, uh, a laptop covered, some graduate students get their travel, um, or re- relocation expenses covered. Sometimes it’s partial, but it’s still something some, uh, I’m trying to think about other things that, that folks will ask for. I remember one year there was one student who was really, really struggling financially, had gotten into his top choice, had to move from California to the Midwest, and he couldn’t even afford his airfare. So he contacted his soon to be advisor, told that person his situation like, look, I, you know, I’m really trying to make it things work. I’m trying to work, I, but I, I just can’t afford my flight there. What can I do? Can I work for you? Like, is there any way that I can figure this out? And that advisor, without even thinking twice, bought him the flight. So it’s all about advocating for yourself. It’s about asking for what you need. It’s about building genuine reciprocal relationships, helping one another out. But it also, it’s about knowing again, what even can you ask for? And sometimes you get some stuff, sometimes you don’t. Uh, but I always kind of lean, lean on the side of asking because I wish that I had been taught this skill a lot earlier on. Now I have that skill of negotiating took many years trial and error. Um, but I, I just, I, I want folks to learn this skill as early as possible because it’s gonna continue to be an ongoing skill that they practice for the rest of their career.

Miroslava (24:26): Yeah, I would definitely agree that it’s like the biggest hurdle is even knowing what to ask. And I would, I was, I don’t wanna say I grew up in the generation, but I came of age in terms of academia that of my generation where we just didn’t ask. We were just grateful, right? As a, as a Chicano Latina, I was accepted first gen immigrant, you know, that I was being, I didn’t even know that this happened at all. So even for me to get comfortable after all these years, it’s really, really hard. So when you, if you’re newer, new-ish or newer ish coming into academia, practice it and you’ll get more comfortable. And, um, also there’s a question of like sharing information with your peers. That’s another topic as well. In terms of funding packages. Do you talk about them or not? Um, other, I’ll just add two more things that I’ve seen in, in the, the last, um, few years I’ve been academia a lot of times I, what I’ve seen in, um, in terms of packages is that it’s kind of set the amount, but the one thing you could do is you could ask for money to be moved around. Like instead of having that fellowship off the first semester, I’d like it to be off the second semester so you can negotiate those things. So moving money around. Also, another thing to not, not forget or, um, is summer funding. Um, ’cause a lot of these packages do not include summer funding and then summer rolls around, it’s like, oh, oh, you know, we’ve had horror stories here on my campus where students live in their cars and things like that because there’s no, they can’t afford, you know, rent in the summer In Santa Barbara here it’s very, very expensive. So some programs are getting much better at providing funding or helping them find some form of a TA ship over the summer. There’s a lot of course, a lot more online, um, online courses. There’s a huge push in our University of California system for more of those courses. And so that’s a, a space where graduate students can work and make some money over the summer. But, um, I would have summer funding like on the table when thinking about a program.

Emily (26:10): I love what kind of both of you pointed out in that, is that the, the, the start of the negotiation process or the pre-negotiations aspect is figuring out, just really having clarity on what the offer is on what the funding path is, both in the first year and in subsequent years. Um, and even just asking some clarifying questions like Yvette, your example of someone saying, well, you know, is there an internal fellowship that I could apply for anything that we can do here, um, that can sometimes result in, uh, the, the outcome you want from a negotiation without even feeling like a negotiation. You were just asking some clarifying questions. Oh, I didn’t see that there was, um, a moving stipend included in this offer, but I, I’ve seen other universities do that. Is that something that you all offer? That’s pretty like low stakes and easy to ask and it could potentially result in an offer being made. I think something that perspective graduate students should know about the negotiation process, and you all both kind of pointed this out in different ways, is that the, the director of graduate studies or whoever the person is that you’re approaching about this, um, potential augmentation of your funding offer, they know a lot more about what levers, you know, can be pulled, what can be adjusted than you do. And so I think it’s really helpful to keep your question or request very open-ended. Like is there anything that you could do to augment this package? I’m not sure how that could come about. Um, instead of saying something like, I must have my stipend increased by X many thousands of dollars because it’s an, that’s an easy no, a lot of times a base stipend can’t be increased because the rates are set, you know, above that person’s pay grade by far. But maybe there’s, you know, a top up fellowship that they could offer you. Maybe they can put your name forward for an internal fellowship. Maybe they could, uh, get you into subsidized housing. So they know all the kind of background things that could happen much better than you do. And so I think, yeah, just keeping it open-ended is a good idea. Do you have any other tips about the negotiation process that you’d like to add?

Yvette (27:57): Well, there’s one thing that you just reminded me of is about asking clarifying questions. Because not every offer looks the same. Some are very clear and they lay out every year what you’re getting. And others are more vague. They’re like, you’re gonna be receiving a stipend of X amount every year in the program. Okay, how many years is guaranteed? And you wanna have that in writing. So first I would say get very clear about what your offer is because sometimes it’s not very clear and you’re made to feel like maybe you just aren’t reading it right. So I’ve had so many cases where folks ask me to read an offer alongside with them to make sure that they’re understanding it correctly. And then I go over, I’m like, yep, they’re not telling you how many years <laugh> you need to ask this and this and this. You need to ask about healthcare. ’cause healthcare is also not the same. You need to ask about professional development support because again, that’s not the same. I’ve had clients who have had their departments pay for my coaching services and I’ve had folks ask, and if they hadn’t asked, they wouldn’t have had that support. So you, again, just make sure before you negotiate, ask as many clarifying questions as you need to know exactly what you’re getting offered. And once you know what you’re getting offered, sometimes it can help to see if you get in somewhere else to compare and contrast the offers or compare and contrast to some of the offers we mentioned in the book. Which, you know, unfortunately, I would say they might become outdated at some sort, but, or at some point. But, um, sadly these stipends are not going up that much more. So you can kind of compare and contrast between your offer and a friend’s offer if they’re comfortable, your offer and another offer or your offering, even the samples that we have in the book. So you can get a sense of what information you do have, what information you’re missing and what’s, what are the things that are your priorities that you want to ask for. Even childcare is another one that comes up too, that people ask about. Yeah, yeah.

Miroslava (29:52): I, I will add to, um, to last things and something just piggyback on what Yvette was saying in terms of, uh, you might ask as well, like, will there be other opportunities for, um, fellowships or small grants in our program at the end of the year, we have the award ceremony and people apply for these smaller, you know, pots of money, a thousand, 2000 or even $500. Um, and sometimes those pot, those awards are for people working in specific areas, but sometimes the larger, beyond your department, the graduate division might have, um, fellowships for, um, maybe first generation students or maybe Asian American students working in a particular field. So again, like as Yvette saying doesn’t hurt to ask, um, are these opportunities available for me down the road?

Emily (30:33): I wanted to follow up on one of the thing you said Miroslava, which was that, you know, um, some time ago or, or back when you were admitted to graduate school, there was this attitude of, oh, they admitted me. I’m so grateful. This is amazing. I’m not maybe gonna look too closely at what this offer is. I’m just gonna say yes. Um, because you’re so flattered, right? To be admitted right to academia, this, um, this particular institution. And I, I definitely don’t think that attitude serves the student well. In fact, during the, um, admission season, after they’ve extended an offer of admission and before you accept it, that’s the time period when that student has really the most leverage and the most power in terms of negotiating and getting what they want and, and so forth, um, compared to any other time later on in graduate school. ’cause once you say yes to them, you’re committed. And the longer you spend in that program, kind of the more sunk costs, um, there are. And so you really don’t have as much as much leverage later on as you do during the application process. So I just wanna point that out as like, um, it’s, it’s a, it’s a golden opportunity <laugh>. So when you get are in that season, um, take the best advantage of it that you can because it’s not, it’s probably not gonna come around again, frankly.

Yvette (31:38): And I would encourage folks to get support in this process because for some of us, it’s also a major cultural difference and it feels wrong to do it. Like there’s guilt <laugh> and there’s shame involved in asking for more. And so it can help to lean on a mentor femtor, someone who’s been there, who has experienced that, who can push you or coach you or guide you so that way you can test it out and have that support. Maybe they come back, reply back, we can’t do this, but can we do that? And just that, just a lot of people do this even just professionally in their careers. They’ll hire someone to help them with the negotiation process. You know, a lot of folks, recruiters, you know, they work outside of academia, like this is the norm. But for a lot of first gen students, they don’t know this is the norm. And if they’re coming from different cultural backgrounds, then they’re made to feel like this is not okay. But it is. And, um, yeah, just if, if it’s really hard for you because it was for me at one point, get the help and support that you need from a trusted mentor Femtor,

Emily (32:44): I think something that might help with that, um, sort of realignment of mindset there is understanding that, again, as I said earlier, being sufficiently financially supported during your graduate degree is more likely to help you get to that desired end point, um, of graduating and moving on to a wonderful career, which is actually where your interests and the interests of the program are completely aligned. We, everybody wants that for the student. And if finances are going to, um, help that and help the person not be stressed and not be distracted and not have to side hustle and do all the other things that people have to do, um, to make ends meet, then that’s good for the program too. So I don’t think it’s, um, illegitimate at all to <laugh> to bring it up, but as you said it, it can take a little bit of an adjustment of, of the mindset and, um, dealing with the, the cultural backgrounds of everybody. So thank you so much for, um, for elaborating on those points.

Opportunity Costs of Pursuing a PhD

Emily (33:31): And then last question, or second to last question here, um, is let’s talk a little bit about what the opportunity costs are of pursuing a PhD because they are quite steep. And how should a prospective graduate student evaluate whether graduate school is going to be, um, a good investment for their career?

Yvette (33:50): I mean there, there are a lot of opportunity costs. Um, the first thing that comes to mind off the top of my head is the amount of time that a lot of people spend in graduate school. You might be spending anywhere from four to 10 years of your life in a PhD program. And while you, your income stays relatively the same, you’ve got colleagues whose income might be going up, who are advancing in their careers, who are getting promoted, and it can feel like that’s a big, um, that’s a big sacrifice that you’re making to pursue this PhD. So that’s one thing is the the income. The other thing I think about is, um, saving and oh, not saving, investing for retirement. A lot of times when folks are in graduate school, because your income is relatively low for a lot of people, unless you’re working on the side or working full time while you’re doing your PhD, you know, a lot of folks put their, uh, retirement investing and retirement accounts on hold. And what does that mean? That means, again, four to 10 years of your life that you could be investing, that you could be preparing for your future retirement that’s gone. Um, and even some folks put their life on hold, big major life decisions on hold. They’re like, oh, I don’t wanna have a baby or I don’t wanna get married or I don’t wanna, whatever the big milestone is in their life. So those are some things to keep in mind. That’s why we ask in the book, if graduate school is right for you and also when is the right time? Because people ask all the time like, when is the right time to go? Should I go after undergrad? Should I take a gap year or two? Should I get some work experience? And really it’s you and your circumstances and you get to decide when is the right time for you. There is no right or wrong time, even if you go back 10 years later. So it is important to calculate these costs to think about like how much is it gonna cost you? Not just if you think about taking on student debt or not just if you think about your income loss, but just thinking about the timing and other life factors and whether or not you’re willing to make that sacrifice for the end goal in sight, which might be a PhD and then whatever other career opportunities can come with a PhD.

Emily (36:03): I wanna underline everything you just said, especially about the investing time lost. Amazing. But let’s not forget about student loans either. If you have student loans from your undergraduate degree and they’re unsubsidized, they’re gonna continue accumulating interest. And as you said, if you put off, uh, if you are able to defer them, which is wonderful for six or 10 years or however long it is, it’s gonna be, you know, the interest will capitalize and the balance will be that much higher on the other side.

Miroslava (36:26): Those years I was thinking, I was thinking about that my twenties, right? ’cause I went straight through, uh, and I was thinking about how much it your life is sort of on hold. I guess for me personally, I kind of felt like I couldn’t make those decisions that Yvette was referring to in terms of a family this or that. ’cause I was so focused on my work and it was really hard for me coming from a family. Um, the questions came up, when are you gonna get a real job? When are you gonna get married? You know, or somebody to take care of you, quote unquote. And I thought like, oh my goodness. And you just have to tell them I’m one, at one point I just said, I’m gonna be in school for the rest of my life and get used to it, you know? And so that, I don’t know if that settled things or not, but um, yeah, I mean you don’t realize these things later I realized, oh, I didn’t invest. I could have been investing. I mean this is for myself, you know, coming from immigrant family and, and um, not having any of this information, uh, later on. But I will say like being on the other side now for all these years, it’s the best decision I could have made.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (37:15): This has been just, um, the most wonderful conversation. I thank you so much for agreeing to come on the podcast and telling us about the book and diving deeper into some of these financial aspects. It’s been so wonderful to talk with you. So I want to pose to each of you the question that I ask all of my guests at the end of interviews, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD that could be a prospective graduate student or a current graduate student, or however you wanna interpret that. And it could be something that we’ve already touched on in the interview or it could be something completely new.

Miroslava (37:43): This is based on some of the the, my own experiences, but I think it’s important when you start thinking about graduate schools, I think it’s important to come with your finances in order to the most, to the best of your ability that it’s important not to come with tons of debt or financial obligations. I think I just think about the, this is sort of like, I don’t wanna say the the, so it is the femtor in me, right? To say not to um, to come and risk putting excessive stress on yourself, on your career in grad school. Just thinking about like you have all these mounting bills, these grad, these undergrad, right? Uh, not only loans, but maybe perhaps car loans or your, you are supporting your family that you decide to, you know, come to graduate school because you, you did get a package and then that will, you know, offset you for a while. Um, I think that it’s really hard to be able to focus on your work if you have all those financial burdens. You know, we can’t, many of us can’t sleep at night when we are just thinking about where’s our, our next paycheck or am I gonna be able to do these things? Um, so you need to think about, you know, because there’ll be so many other hidden costs in graduate school. And so I’ve seen some of my students come with lots of stress, you know, financial stress and I’m always with my mouth jaws my jaw open. Like, oh my goodness, how are you doing it? So that’s one thing I would say, if possible, try to get your finances in some kind of working order or get a system to help you, um, get to your goals.

Yvette (39:01): Yeah, I mean, I’ll echo what Miros just said. I do think it’s important that this starts before you even accept an offer. So create a budget before you accept an offer and make sure you can actually make ends meet with that offer. Um, if it’s possible. Again, I know everybody’s circumstances are different, but if it’s possible, minimize debt of any kind. Um, especially, I mean all all debt I’m not a fan of, but especially when it’s more than federal debt, when it’s personal loans, when it’s credit card debt, like to try to avoid that as much as possible. And more importantly like learn about financial literacy, learn about personal finance. I put that on hold throughout my graduate school journey. I didn’t start learning until after I got my PhD and it’s a shame. I wish I would’ve just done that homework on the side because it would’ve saved me, like literally saved me a lot of money. <laugh>, Um, explore other funding or income opportunities. Some of us already learned those skills because we have to. Um, but if you haven’t quite learned that skill, you know, explore what, whether that might be tutoring, mentoring, teaching, editing, you name it, you have a lot of skills that you can use to help you make ends meet. Um, and also maximize your institutional access and resources because at one point you’re not gonna have access to that really great healthcare or to that free or low cost therapy or to those LinkedIn learning courses. At one point you’re gonna have to be the one to pay for it. So ask around, find out what those benefits are and and maximize them. And then of course, I cannot say this because I wish that older me would’ve taught younger me how to do this, which is like getting, getting into the habit of investing earlier on. Um, even if it’s something as small as, I don’t know, $25 a month, if that’s all that you can do, just getting into the habit of investing will help you in the long run. Even if it doesn’t feel like it’s gonna make a big dent, that habit will make it a lot less burdensome, a lot less scary for you to then increase that amount in the future so that you can set yourself up for success. I wish I would’ve had that. Now I have to work even harder because I started out a little later.

Miroslava (41:15): I think most of us didn’t even know that was something in my family I grew up with, um, hoarders in terms of money, immigrant, you know, put it underneath the, the mattress and save every penny. And I’m sort of grateful I didn’t go the opposite way. We sometimes we go opposite what we learn and so I’m very much a penny pincher. Um, but you know, it doesn’t grow if you leave it underneath your mattress. So, um, anyways, so we just wanna play catch up, but we try to then share that information with others to help them sort of correct some mistakes that we made.

Emily (41:46): Well, we don’t have enough time for me to praise every single piece of advice that you two just gave because that was absolutely fantastic. So I’ll just say to the listener, if you need to, you know, rerun the rerun the last couple of minutes, listen to it over and over again because there was so much gold in just those quick responses. Um, and I certainly hope the listeners will take it to heart. So once again, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Um, it’s been absolutely great to have you. And the book again is, Is Grad School For Me? Demystifying the Application Process for First-Gen BIPOC students. Will you say the website again where they can get it?

Yvette (42:14): Yes, that’s isgradschoolforme.com.

Emily (42:17): Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Yvette (42:19): Thank you

Miroslava (42:20): This was really fun.

Outtro

Emily (42:30): 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.