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Increasing Income and Giving Back as an International Grad Student

September 22, 2025 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Snehanjana Chatterjee, a 3rd-year international graduate student at Texas Tech. Snehanjana recounts her financial journey over the past few years, from how she funded her start-up expenses upon moving to the US to how she’s gained scholarships and awards to increase her income. Snehanjana volunteers to help international students acclimate to the US, and she shares some of their concerns and questions. Finally, Snehanjana asks Emily about banking and investing as an international student not planning to stay in the US.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • PF for PhDs One-on-One Financial Coaching
  • PF for PhDs S4E17: Can and Should an International Student, Scholar, or Worker Invest in the US?
  • PF for PhDs S22E1: The Simple Way to Invest as an International Grad Student or Postdoc
  • Host a PF for PhDs Seminar at Your Institution
  • PF for PhDs S20E8: Business Class Flights and Hotel Elite Status on a Grad Student Stipend
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
Increasing Income and Giving Back as an International Grad Student

Teaser

Snehanjana (00:00): For one fiscal year after it was done, um, they paid me a thousand dollars as like a scholarship at the end of it.

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 (00:48): This is Season 22, Episode 3, and today my guest is Snehanjana Chatterjee, a 3rd-year international graduate student at Texas Tech. Snehanjana recounts her financial journey over the past few years, from how she funded her start-up expenses upon moving to the US to how she’s gained scholarships and awards to increase her income. Snehanjana volunteers to help international students acclimate to the US, and she shares some of their concerns and questions. Finally, Snehanjana and I discuss banking and investing for international students not planning to stay in the US.

Emily (01:22): Would you like to ask me a question like Snehanjana does in this interview or work through a tricky financial challenge? I have recently opened my calendar for one-on-one financial coaching sessions, priced on a sliding scale. I can help you with budgeting for an irregular income or irregular expenses, selecting and pursuing a financial goal using my 8-step framework, getting started with investing, evaluating a new stipend or job offer, and much more. Please find additional information and sign up for a free introductory call at PFforPhDs.com/coaching/. I can’t wait to speak with you! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s22e3/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Snehanjana Chatterjee.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:23): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Snehanjana Chatterjee, a third year graduate student at Texas Tech, and we’re here to talk about her financial journey as an international student. So, Snehanjana, I’m so glad to have you on the podcast. Will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the listeners?

Snehanjana (02:40): Thank you for having me on the podcast. Uh, I’m Snehanjana Chatterjee. I am from Kolkata India and this is my third year in my PhD journey at Texas Tech University. I am studying, uh, plant mycorrhizal interactions and how they’re helping in using, uh, uh, resources from the soil and the economics behind it. Um, I’m in the Department of Biological Sciences at Texas Tech.

Emily (03:09): Wonderful. Tell us about how you’re funded as a PhD student.

Snehanjana (03:12): So I am funded through a teaching assistantship mainly. Um, so I have to teach, uh, every spring and uh, fall semester. Um, and you can reach out to the PI that you want to do a TAship under beforehand and you have to indicate that you want a TAship for that. Uh, previous, um, uh, semester and for summer, my PI provides, uh, funding, which is, uh, kind of more than what I get during spring and, uh, fall semesters. And I’m funded for those three months. And in those three months I do my research mostly.

Start-Up Costs and Challenges of New Grad Students

Emily (03:56): Let’s take it back to when you first arrived in the US and started graduate school. How did you, there’s a bit of money that’s needed up front, right? For the move and just everything that has to happen before you get paid for the first time. So for you, where were you drawing that money from?

Snehanjana (04:13): So, uh, one thing that I had to keep in mind that I didn’t get paid until October 1st. My TAship started from September 1st, but we didn’t until the 1st of October. So I had to come, uh, with a bit of money from India, uh, to make sure that I can sustain myself. Uh, I also had to pay the tuition, um, during that semester. So, uh, we have something called emergency payment plan, which divides the semester, uh, tuition into, into three parts. Um, so you can pay it upfront on September, in September or you can pay it like in different, uh, three install installments. So that was kind of tough and I did not know how to handle that and I thought they’re not paying us enough, um, which is a struggle we are still going through actually.

Emily (05:13): Can you tell me a little bit more about that? So you had the TA position and you had a paycheck coming, starting on October 1st, but they weren’t paying for your tuition that semester at all, or just the payment was like later

Snehanjana (05:26): They weren’t paying for a, uh, semester tuition. The thing is, so for fall it’s like from 2000 to 2,300, uh, dollars, and for spring it’s much more because it includes our health insurance. Uh, so for that, if you divide it into three installments, you have to pay like, I don’t know, 800 or 600 per month by 24th of that month. Um, so I did not have enough money, uh, to sustain myself at the beginning. Um, so I had to use whatever I brought from India, and that’s a big chunk of, uh, money that, uh, I had to ask from my parents.

Emily (06:13): Yeah, I I’m sure other people who are going through a similar transition have these same kinds of like concerns. Do you mind sharing with us like how much money you asked to, I don’t know if it was a gift or a loan, but how much money you asked from them for those, you know, the initial tuition payments and the move and the setting for the apartment and all that stuff, like it kind of to help other people estimate their budget?

Snehanjana (06:35): Yeah, I, uh, brought at least like $3,000, um, with me. And, uh, I had to open a bank account here. I did not know how to do that. I had to take help from previous students who were already here and after opening the bank account, I transferred all my money from my card to the account. Uh, so I think 2000 to 2,500 is completely fine if you, uh, bring that kind of money.

Current Grad Student Take-Home Stipend

Emily (07:05): Okay. So you kind of mentioned just now that getting paid enough is a struggle. Can you tell us maybe either what your stipend currently is, let’s say what you’re actually able to take home after you pay all your education related expenses or maybe what it’s been over the past few years?

Snehanjana (07:24): Yeah, so when I started, it was 1800 per month after taxes, but the department increased it gradually, uh, each semester and now it’s 2,300 per month after taxes. Um, but after paying my tuition and my rent, I barely have, uh, 1300, maybe a thousand to 1300. And with the grocery prices going up, it’s, it’s getting a bit difficult to live with that wage.

Emily (07:59): I can definitely understand <laugh> that it’s not going very far. Yet, that is actually a pretty big increase over just a couple of years. What was the reasoning behind why they increased the stipend? Was it due to students asking for it? Was it due to other factors? Do you know?

Snehanjana (08:16): Yeah, so we have a graduate representative committee and the this committee, uh, works with the graduate student and with the faculty and they listened to our grievances. Uh, like maybe they send a Google form and ask us what kind of concerns do you have? And they talked to the department chair and other faculty members at faculty meetings. And from that they decide if, uh, they need to increase our, uh, wages and if they have the certain budget for it. And I think they talked to the graduate school about this as well.

Different Strategies for Increasing Your Stipend

Emily (08:57): Okay. And I understand that you have also, aside from what the department chooses to pay you, like you personally have increased your stipend through various actions over the years. Can you tell us what those have been? What’s been effective?

Snehanjana (09:09): I personally, uh, reached out to certain, um, organizations. So I was Secretary of Association of Biologists at TTU and uh, for, uh, one fiscal year after it was done, um, they paid me a thousand dollars as like a scholarship at the end of it. And I am currently secretary at, uh, American Society for Microbiologists at Tech. And for that, uh, you also get a scholarship at the end of the fiscal year for about $500. Um, apart from that, I was also associated with the international, uh, council, uh, center, and I was a global guide there, so I was helping new and upcoming students to settle down. And for that I was paid $500 per semester. These things were added to my tuition, so they were not giving checks away, they were just adding it to my tuition bill.

Emily (10:14): Those almost sound like, well, they kind of sound like volunteer positions. Um, right. And then you sort of get like a, um, a sum of money as like a thank you for it. Any other ways that you’ve like increased your income or decreased your expenses over the past few years?

Snehanjana (10:30): I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone, but, uh, there was a time, um, I used to have one meal a day, which is not good. Um, so, uh, that is, that was one concern for me. But now I have like improved that, uh, and I have like three meals a day now. Uh, but circumstances, uh, kind of pushed me to do that. Um, and I was, uh, not being able to ask for help from my family because my mom and dad both are retired and that would put a lot of pressure on them, so I just did not tell them anything. Um, but I did apply for a scholarship, it’s not kind of a scholarship, it’s called, um, I forgot the name, but it’s for Texas, uh, students, uh, people living, sorry, students living in Texas. Um, so you tell them how much funding you need to pay your tuition, um, and it can be like from 500 to 1500 and uh, they give you the amount of money, they add it to your tuition account. But yeah, it has to be, if you’re going through like a very bad situation, like you have, uh, war back at your country, um, or you are going through really bad, um, I don’t know, financial situation, something like that.

Financial Hardship Scholarship

Emily (12:04): Hmm. It definitely sounds like you were there if you were eating only one meal per day and at some point. Yeah. I’m really sorry to hear that. Um, where did you find out about that scholarship?

Snehanjana (12:15): So the international office advertised about that and uh, I reached out to them and, uh, it doesn’t require a lot. You just have to write a, like a financial statement. Um, what kind of hardships are you, are you going through and, um, upload your, uh, tuition statements like how much you have paid over the, uh, semesters and they look at it and if you can provide more proof that uh, you don’t have enough, um, money in our account, they will definitely help you.

Emily (12:52): Hmm. Yeah, I’m really glad that they were able to connect you with that resource. Do you have a sense of like, were a lot of your peers applying for that scholarship?

Snehanjana (13:03): I don’t think so because it kind of is like a discreet thing that they do. Uh, it, it opens from like first to 10th of, uh, like February, March and April and then again in, uh, fall, maybe in, um, September, October, November. And they announce the awardee by the 24th of that month. And, uh, I have gotten that award three times. And, uh, it’s sometimes they give you the amount you want, sometimes they give you how much they could have given. Like if I want $700, it’s not, uh, like guaranteed that they will give me $700, maybe they will give me $400. So it depends on how much funding they have.

Emily (13:57): I’m, I’m really glad you’re sharing this though, like even though it sounds like kind of a, obviously you had to be in a difficult spot to be applying for and qualifying for the scholarship, but I’m really glad that you’re pointing this out because people may be, they may have access to this kind of resource at their institution and they’re just not aware of it yet. So it’s definitely worth asking. So your financial situation has been getting better over the years from the departmental side, from, you know, you taking some actions on your own behalf as well. So are you able to reach towards any financial goals at the moment?

Current Financial Goals

Snehanjana (14:33): For now, I don’t have a savings account. I would like to open one. I just have a checking account and, uh, to be honest, I don’t know how to invest money. So that is one, uh, goal that I would like to achieve maybe in 2025. Um, and whomever I reach out to, like any, uh, international students that have been alumni of Texas Tech, uh, they don’t really, uh, make me understand the process and it’s kind of confusing. So if you have any pointers that I can, I can learn from, maybe I can follow some of them.

Emily (15:18): I have a tip that I learned from, there was a podcast interview I did back in I think 2019 with Hui-chin Chen, um, who is a certified financial planner who specializes in cross-border tax issues. And this actually didn’t occur during that, that recorded episode, but something I learned from her during our later conversations. Um, so I don’t know if this is necessarily one of the difficulties you’ve been running into, but what I understand is that, um, not all brokerage firms where you would open, you know, an account to invest in, not all of them work with non-residents. So you may, and you can tell me if you have sometimes international students approach brokerage firms to open an account and somewhere in the paperwork it’s like, oh, no, no, you’re a non-resident, we can’t work with you. Has that happened to you?

Snehanjana (16:02): Uh, no, I have not approached them.

Emily (16:05): Okay. Um, but I know this is like something that is intimidating, like to non-residents, um, because they, they don’t wanna get told no and, you know, have to go through that process. So what I learned from Hui-chin Chen, um, is that there’s a brokerage firm called Interactive Brokers, which specifically sort of caters an advertises to non-residents. So if you or someone else is getting told no by a couple of your like top choices, then you could go to them and you’re gonna get a yes because that’s like part of their express business model. So that’s kind of one thing is like where to open an account, um, can I even open an account? Like those kinds of questions. What, what else has you like sort of stumped about the process?

Investing in the US Stock Market as an International Student

Snehanjana (16:50): So, so, um, in my bank app they always tell me to invest in like stocks and stuff, but I don’t understand that as well. And I don’t know if investing in stocks in the US will lead me to earn any money or not.

Emily (17:08): Hmm, yeah, kind of depends on your financial goal, right? Because with stock investing, um, it can be very volatile in the short term. Like we’re recording this interview in, uh, early March and the stock market has had some down days, um, in the past like month or two, like big downs. So we, when you say, you know, is it going to earn me money, you really have to talk about the timeline because over the short term, weeks, months, even small number of years, you know, you could put money in and have less money, you know, the next time you check, that’s absolutely possible. Yet over the longer term, 10, 20, 30, 40 years, um, you know, historical trends show us that the US stock market does very well over those kinds of periods of time. Um, as long as you stay invested <laugh>, right? As long as you’re not, you know, pulling money out, uh, when it drops and buying in when it’s high and, and those sorts of actions.

Emily (18:06): So, um, one of the things I talk about in that interview with Hui-chin Chen, which I would absolutely recommend, um, to anyone who’s a non-resident in the US, um, is about whether it’s, you know, prudent to invest in the US as an international grad student or postdoc, et cetera, when you’re not sure, are you gonna stay in the US long term or maybe move to another country afterwards? And her attitude was like pretty pro investing in the US but I would say you still have to, um, have that long term timeline in mind. Like if you’re going to be invested over the first few years, like you have to have a plan to probably stay invested over the long term to sort of, not guarantee, but have a much, much higher likelihood of a positive return on investment in that time.

Snehanjana (18:55): One other question is, I maybe don’t want to stay for long term in the US uh, so I have like two years left for my PhD. So for short term, maybe for the next two years, what do you recommend for international students? How, how should they proceed?

Emily (19:12): I think in my conversation with Hui-chin, if I remember correctly, the question was more about like, well, I’m not sure if I’m gonna stay in the US long term. And so she was kind of like, well, just get started investing. Now you don’t necessarily know what’s gonna happen, but maybe you’ll end up staying long term, or even if you don’t, you can like move the money. But if you’re saying more to me like, no, no, I’m sure I’m leaving in a couple of years, um, then I don’t know, I think cash is king in that case, like just, you know, park it in a high yield savings account. I mean, you said you don’t have a savings account here yet, but like, yeah, just park it in a savings account, get what you can without taking risk with it and start investing, you know, at the next place you move to whether it’s back, back to India or somewhere else, um, as soon as you can when you arrive there, because yeah, it’s certainly possible you could invest now and in two years if you’re trying to pull the money out, have less money than you did when you started, that’s definitely possible.

Snehanjana (20:07): Yeah. Okay.

Commercial

Emily (20:11): Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, budgeting, investing, and goal-setting, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2025-2026 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutes enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

Common Concerns of New International Grad Students

Emily (21:30): So you mentioned earlier that you were volunteering, I think you said as a global guide. What, what, what, um, office was that through?

Snehanjana (21:38): It was International Cultural Center.

Emily (21:40): Okay. So volunteering with the International Cultural Center. And part of your role was to like help new graduate students adjust right to life in the US. Um, and what kinds of questions or what kinds of concerns have you heard from those like new graduate students coming in that you know, you’ve learned from or you like to share, you know, what you’ve learned like with them or like what were those kind of common questions?

Snehanjana (22:05): The most common question is, uh, getting an apartment and before signing a lease, uh, they need to have like a person who guarantees that, uh, they’ll pay their, uh, rent every time. And if they’re not being able to have a guarantor for the lease, they need to pay extra money for that. So that is one of the concern that I heard. So, um, sometimes, uh, so when I came in I asked one of my lab mates, uh, to be a guarantor and she agreed, but that is not the case with everyone. Uh, most of the people who come here as undergrads maybe do not have friends yet. So, uh, finding a guarantor can be a bit of a problematic situation. And then they have to pay like $500 more, uh, for the rent, um, for first month at least.

Emily (23:02): Hmm. Yeah, I hadn’t heard of that in like a housing market before. So that, that’s a yeah, that’s a huge issue. So people are like arriving to your city and they don’t yet have a place to live, right? So they’re staying at, you know, hotels, Airbnbs, that kind of thing and finding a place to live signing a lease. But if they don’t have a guarantor, then they have, is it, um, is it money that they won’t get back or is it like an extra deposit that they do get back?

Snehanjana (23:31): They do not get back that. Um,

Emily (23:33): Wow, okay.

Snehanjana (23:34): Yeah, so that is a big chunk of money that is just taken away from them. And some of these, uh, places, they do not let the people move in until 18th of the month. So if the students come in for orientation day, like an eighth or ninth August, they either have to stay with, uh, someone else or at a hotel. Uh, fortunately, um, what the International Cultural Center is trying to do is trying to put them, um, at hotels that they do not have to pay for sometimes. Um, sometimes they find, uh, Texan residents who are willing to help these, uh, kids out and maybe they can stay with those residents for like 10 days and then move in later on.

Emily (24:20): Wow, okay. So it’s like the whole market is kind of, they have these sort of wide policies around this extra money that they have to pay or the date they can move in, like, wow, I hadn’t heard of that before. I wonder, I wonder how widespread that, that, that is in other, other cities.

Snehanjana (24:36): Yeah, so I think, uh, that is quite widespread, uh, at least in Lubbock. Um, because uh, the community I used to live at first, um, the management was not that good and uh, I used to get a huge utility bill at the end of the month, like $80 per person, uh, when we are sharing three bedroom, uh, apartment. Um, but uh, that has decreased for me when I moved into a different, uh, uh, community. Um, they have a cap for the utility bill and that helps out a lot.

Emily (25:17): How much like were these international students prepped in advance of their arrival of like, this is how this works. You’re gonna come here, we’re gonna try to help you find a place to stay, you’re not gonna be able to move until after the 18th. You’re gonna like, are they told this stuff in advance or, or not?

Snehanjana (25:33): Yeah, so the Global Guide program, um, hosted several, uh, seminars, uh, webinars. Uh, so some of the kids joined both grad and undergrad and we had to like tell them repeatedly that these are the rules that you have to follow. You’ll have a culture shock when you come in and it’ll get frustrating, but you can reach out to us anytime you want. Um, and they have voiced their frustrations whenever they get to learn that they can’t move in before like 18th of the month, but they have to pay the entire rent for the month. Um, yeah. So they have to pay like $480 for staying 15 days or less than 15 days, uh, in that apartment. And that’s a lot of money for an international student.

Emily (26:26): Yes, I would be culture shocked by this as well, moving from another American city to, to Lubbock. Wow. Okay. Any, any other like common questions or concerns that you’ve noticed?

Snehanjana (26:37): So some of them, uh, don’t know how to do groceries. So most of them, uh, either take the buses and the buses here stop running at 7:00 PM so it’s from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM Um, you don’t have to pay for the buses, uh, but carrying the groceries from Walmart to like your house is a big task. So what they do is go and go with a bunch of people together, either to Costco or to Walmart, and uh, they have all the groceries together and they carry those groceries all the way from Walmart, uh, to their house. Um, that is one huge thing that they do. And, uh, there are not many people who have cars and uh, that’s one of the big struggles that they go through. So they have a designated date or a date that they go for groceries, but some of the global guides are helping them. If they have cars, they take uh, like three or four of them together to the grocery store and they buy whatever they need and they give a ride back as well.

Emily (27:49): Yeah, those infrastructure issues are such a big thing. I remember when I lived without a car, I also was like, how am I doing this grocery thing? How, how was this happening? Um, and it was always kind of like a catch as catch can kind of like situation. Wow. Well, do you have, as we’re like wrapping up here, any um, questions for me beyond what you were just asking about investing? I mean, I’m happy to talk more about investing if you want, but any kind of other financial wellness related things that I might be able to help you with right now?

Savings Accounts and Credit Cards as an International Grad Student

Snehanjana (28:18): Not really. I just, I just really need to open a savings account as soon as possible, but it’s not, uh, you have to go to the bank to do that and with my schedule it’s kind of busy. Um, and you have to take an appointment with the bank, so I need to do that ASAP actually.

Emily (28:37): Hmm. Yeah. Um, who are you banking with?

Snehanjana (28:41): Uh, Bank of America.

Emily (28:42): Hmm. That’s your first problem. <laugh>, um, bank of America, I, I am a former Bank of America customer myself. Um, and the customer service is very difficult as you just said. Wait, why do you have to go into an account? Why into a branch? Why do you have to make an appointment? This is an easy process. Um, so I would actually say maybe don’t open a savings account with Bank of America. I doubt they’re gonna give you a very good interest rate anyway. Um, I would say look to the online only banks, um, that might be available. So for example, I bank with Ally. Um, another good one is Capital 1 360. Um, but even if you look at like a website like Bank Rate or NerdWallet, those kinds of sites, those aggregators, um, you can kind of search for like okay, what’s the best, you know, high yield savings account available, um, now and since you have an established bank account with Bank of America, like you’ve gone through the process of showing your ID and all that stuff that you have to do, um, once you have that it’s easier to get like a second account somewhere else ’cause the first bank has done like the work for it. Um, so yeah, I would say check out like an online only bank. Um, and I’m not sure if you would even have to open checking. You could probably just open the savings account if you’d like to and you know, start transferring money over there and getting a halfway decent interest rate on it.

Snehanjana (30:02): Actually I do have a question. So I have like four credit cards and I have friends that have like, I don’t know, 10 to 12 credit cards and they use these credit cards to book a flight and they get points for it and then they use those points back in India. And I was trying to understand the game, but it seems so complicated. 

Emily (30:28): Yeah. 

Snehanjana (30:29): Do you recommend having like 10 to 12 credit cards for like a each person to get these points? 

Emily (30:37): I don’t think you necessarily have to go that far, but, um, for international flights, I actually recently started learning from the brand 10x travel. There’s a bunch of brands like this, like where they sort of teach you these, um, travel hacking, you know, flight, getting free flights, like kind of strategies. But the general thing that you do, and I have, I’ve done this much more on the domestic side than for international flights. So I’m a little bit speaking about something I’ve like learning, but I haven’t actually practiced yet. Um, it’s more about you figure out like what airline or airlines you commonly use. Like do you already have a preferred airline for your trips?

Snehanjana (31:21): Yeah, it’s mostly either Emirates or Qatar.

Emily (31:24): Okay. So for Emirates and Qatar, then you would figure out what bank or banks like Chase, um, Amex that offer like credit cards. There’s a bunch of them. Um, what, which banks are offering points that transfer to either those airlines that you want to fly on or one of their partners? ’cause these airlines are all in like alliances together and you can kinda um, like book, you know, a flight that’s ultimately on Emirates but you’re booking it through one of their partners. So sometimes you can get deals that way, whatever. So you figure out where you can like basically accumulate points through your normal credit card, you know, everyday kind of spending and how those points can be transferred to ultimately get you on the airline that you want to fly on. So I don’t know offhand like who works with Qatar or Emirates, um, but you could look that up and figure it out.

Emily (32:17): So then like I’m really familiar with the Chase system for example. So let’s just say that like Chase did transfer to those, I don’t know if they do. Um, so you would basically accumulate points on one or more Chase cards and you would also probably sign up for some new, um, credit cards that have signup bonuses. You would do that slowly, like as your spending is able to support it. Um, ’cause maybe you only spend on a credit card, I don’t know, 500 or a thousand dollars a month. You would have to make sure that your spending can meet their like minimum spend. So maybe it’s $3,000 in three months or $6,000 in four months, like whatever it is, make sure you can do it based on your projections of your spending. But signing up for those new cards and getting signup bonuses and also putting ongoing spending on these cards is kind of how you accumulate those points. And then you turn the points into redeeming them as like free flights. So it can get complicated, um, if you want it to be, but I think there’s also probably a way to figure it out to do it since you already know like your preferred airlines to do it like fairly simply. Um, yeah, so that’s kind of what I’m learning slash starting to like redeem on my end.

Snehanjana (33:28): Yeah, yeah, because I was asking one of my friend and he was kind of directing me and then he got, uh, busy with his research. So <laugh> I couldn’t anymore, so Yeah.

Emily (33:41): Yeah. Well you might go back to him when it seems like he has more free time if he can teach you like the system or whatever. Um, or you can go through, you know, like I just, I just mentioned 10X travel. I think there’s like the points guy, like there’s other places you can learn from. Actually the points guy Brian Kelly, he just released a book on travel hacking that I just got from the library. I haven’t started it yet. Um, so you could read something like that and figure out like how to play this game. But to answer your direct question of like, do you need 10 to 12 credit cards? No, probably not that many. Um, but should you be signing up for a new credit card, you know, once a year, twice a year, however much your spending can support? Yeah, that would certainly help get you there faster if you do these signup bonuses. But you have to be careful about it because your spending as a graduate student is automatically kind of on the lower side and a lot of these cards have annual fees. You have to make sure that the, you know, the benefits you’re getting are justifying the fee and all that kind of stuff. Um, it was pretty intimidating to me when I was in graduate school to think about pursuing credit card rewards and stuff, so I kind of stayed away from it until afterwards. But I think if you’re very careful about it, um, it can be beneficial. And actually, I don’t know when this episode is going to air, but I have um, another one that I recorded with um, Brendan Henrique and I’m not sure again what the publication date relative is going to be, but I think they both, this episode and that episode are gonna come out sometime in spring 2025. So you could, you could listen to that or the listener can look for that episode, um, in the recent past or the near future, um, to kind of learn more about the system that, that he’s using.

Snehanjana (35:13): Okay. Yeah, sure.

Emily (35:15): Yeah. Any other questions I can try to help with?

Snehanjana (35:18): No, but, uh, one common, uh, I won’t say scam, but kind of scam ish thing that I faced when I came to Lubbock was everyone was telling me to, uh, sign up for the Discover card because they were like, oh, I’ll get a hundred dollars cash back and you’ll also get a hundred dollars cash back sign up for that. And that Discover card has never helped me. It keeps on telling me that you’ll get cash back, but then some problem or the other arises from that card and will get any kind of cash back. Uh, I am thinking about, uh, not using it anymore.

Emily (36:00): Yeah, I wouldn’t, I would not have expected that. So Discover is not the most popular type of credit card, but it’s definitely one that sort of caters to like students or you know, like people new to the US like you were. Um, so I wouldn’t necessarily have called it a scam, although I’m not sure about like the, you know, what the benefits are that they were sort of holding out and that like didn’t really happen like either I I, you would know more than I would, I would be surprised if they were like outright lying, but like maybe they just made it way more complicated than anybody reasonably like would expect it to be. Um, so yeah, but if a card’s not working for you, totally move on because a Discover card is a great first card, but like, you don’t have to once you get, once you’re onto card number two, don’t worry about card number one. Like you could, I don’t know, I don’t necessarily wanna say like close it because it is helpful to have your oldest card like remaining open, but you certainly don’t have to use it in any significant way. Right.

Snehanjana (36:56): Yeah.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (36:57): Yeah. But thank you for sharing that ’cause yeah, discover definitely does sort of advertise and cater to like people new to the credit world in the US Right. Um, okay. Well it’s been absolutely lovely to chat with you over the last few minutes and thank you so much for sharing like your own story and like what you’ve, you know, been able to help other international students with. That’s really insightful. Um, I want to end with what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be something that we have touched on in the interview already, or it could be something completely new.

Snehanjana (37:27): My best financial advice that I learned from my father mainly is to save as much as possible, but don’t just save for like, oh, I’ll use it in the future. Have fun with some of it. Uh, not too much fun though. I’m very, I I can, I can tell you that I’m stingy, but not too stingy. I do like, uh, things I do, I am materialistic, so I buy stuff for myself and my for my friends, but I make sure that I’m on my budget, I’m on my limit to use this. I have that kind of sense because I was told by my parents like, you need to save for this. And currently I’m saving up for a house. That’s my goal. Um, I don’t know when I can buy a house, but that’s one of the goals that I have. Um, yeah. I’ll, I’ll put that money towards like buying a house, definitely.

Emily (38:26): Awesome. Well I love that advice too. It definitely is about having like balance, um, in your life and I actually really like saving specifically for fun things. Like, yes, I’m saving for the long-term future or yes, I’m saving for like emergencies boring stuff like that. But like yeah, I’m also saving for travel and I’m saving for entertainment and like having some, yeah, it just makes the whole process a lot more enjoyable when you can tie it to like, yeah, this is something I’m really going to, um, have fun with in the near future. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast and it’s been great to have you.

Snehanjana (38:56): Thank you so much for having me.

Outro

Emily (39:09): 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.

Campus Resources to Improve Your Finances

July 28, 2025 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily shares the microinterviews she recorded at three conferences this year. The conference attendees, all of whom either work at universities or have PhDs themselves, responded to this prompt: “What resource on your campus could graduate students and postdocs access to benefit their finances?” You’ll hear the responses in order from the attendees of the National Postdoctoral Association Annual Conference, the Graduate Career Consortium Annual Meeting, and the Higher Education Financial Wellness Summit. You should be able to detect the transitions among the conferences as there are strong themes within each set. As a bonus, listen for a two-time contributor! While these are all real examples from individual universities, you can search for, inquire about, or request similar resources on your campus.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • National Postdoctoral Association Annual Conference
  • Graduate Career Consortium Annual Meeting
  • Higher Education Financial Wellness Summit
  • University of Texas at Arlington Graduate School Website
  • Host a PF for PhDs Seminar at Your Institution
  • Emily’s E-mail Address
  • UNC Charlotte Niner Finances
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
Campus Resources to Improve Your Finances

Teaser

Tharangi F (00:00): Our Gamecock Community Shop, which is our basic needs school supply closet. It does food meals, it does clothing, um, basic needs of any type, like hygiene, and I think that really does help our graduate student population and they’re actively using it.

Introduction

Emily (00:24): 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 (00:53): This is Season 21, Episode 5, and today I’m sharing the microinterviews I recorded at three conferences this year. The conference attendees, all of whom either work at universities or have PhDs themselves, responded to this prompt: “What resource on your campus could graduate students and postdocs access to benefit their finances?” You’ll hear the responses in order from the attendees of the National Postdoctoral Association Annual Conference, the Graduate Career Consortium Annual Meeting, and the Higher Education Financial Wellness Summit. I think you’ll be able to detect the transitions among the conferences as there are strong themes within each set. As a bonus, listen for a two-time contributor! While these are all real examples from individual universities, you can search for, inquire about, or request similar resources on your campus.

Emily (01:52): At the start of every academic year, fellowship recipients need to know that if they are not having income tax withheld from their paychecks, they should start self-withholding and possibly make a payment by September 15th. Otherwise, they are in for a nasty surprise when they file their tax returns next spring. If your university is not providing adequate messaging and resources regarding estimated tax, would you please recommend me as a workshop facilitator? I offer both live and asynchronous versions of a workshop that guides US citizens and residents in filling out the Estimated Tax Worksheet in IRS Form 1040-ES and managing their money to seamlessly meet their tax obligations. These workshops are typically considered professional development or personal wellness. I would very much appreciate you cc’ing me when you recommend me so I can follow up with additional information for the potential host. Thank you very much! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s21e5/. Without further ado, here’s my compilation episode on financially beneficial resources for graduate students and postdocs.

Harvard Medical School: Credit Union, Financial Advising, & EAP

Jim G (03:22): I am Jim Gould, director for Postdoc Affairs at Harvard Medical School, and a resource our postdocs could use to help with their finances are, are a couple that we have a, a credit union at Harvard that they could use for banking and, and credit cards and savings, as well as, uh, a retirement benefits like TIAA CREF offers financial advising. We also have an employee assistance program that our postdocs and many of our, um, employees could actually use for finances and many other things.

Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation: EAP

Joel S (03:48): My name is Joel Solís. I’m with the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation with our HR team as an HR associate. And I think one of the resources that is highly beneficial to everyone at our foundation is our employee assistance program. Where basically the employee has the ability to contact, um, uh, free, uh, assistance when it comes to health, uh, uh, mental health or even financial, um, awareness or legal assistance. Um, it’s basically six free counseling sessions that occur every year, and it’s not only open to them, but also to their families. Um, and like I said, it’s something that renews every year.

George Washington University: 401K/403B Retirement Match & TIAA CREF/Fidelity Partnerships

Ruchi G (04:26): My name is Ruchi Gupta and I work with George Washington University, and I think we have the benefit of having the 401k and 40- 403B, um, with my university and the university matches 1.5 times of that. So that’s a good benefit. Uh, and the university invests have the partnership with the fidelity and the TIAA, and you can either choose or they choose on your behalf. They help you with that. Uh, and not many people are aware of that, and they kind of lose on that benefit. So I think it’s a good idea to be aware and take advantage of the resources available to you.

Penn State: TIAA CREF Consultant

Jennifer N (05:03): Jennifer Nicholas, director of Postdoctoral Affairs at Penn State, and my answer is the TIAA CREF consultant because postdocs could benefit from more mindful planning of how they would save for retirement at this stage of life, and they can often use those services for free, um, because those services are available to those who work at Penn State.

University of Michigan: TIAA CREF/Fidelity Wealth Managers

Mark M (05:27): Hi, I’m Mark Moldwin, the director of the Office of Postdoc Affairs at University of Michigan. And the resource I would recommend is that they would contact, uh, either TIAA, CREF or Fidelity, the two financial service providers for their 403B. Uh, so they would have a, uh, wealth manager help set up, uh, their goals for investing in retirement and get them thinking about, um, how valuable it is to start early.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Communication Lab & Teaching + Learning Lab

Alex Y (06:01): My name is Alex Yen. My pronouns are she, her, hers. I am the program director for postdoc Career Advising and Professional Development at MIT, so Massachusetts Institute of Technology. So in terms of resources on my campus that I always encourage my postdocs to know more about and use are services outside of my own office that really emphasize written and verbal communication, which are skills that they can take with them even after they leave MIT. For us, that’s the communication lab. That’s their writing and communication center. That’s the Teaching + Learning Lab. And I encourage postdocs to go and see where can I learn how to improve that grant application I’m putting in? How do I refine the data and the graphs that I’m putting on slides? Is there some type of teaching certificate that postdocs can, um, can get? So that’s what I encourage. Go find those other resources beyond just your career resource center and also your office of Postdoc Services.

University of Michigan Medical School: Therapists

Michele S (07:05): Hi, Michele Swanson, director of Postdoc Office at University of Michigan Medical School. I’m very proud that our Office of Graduate Postdoctoral Studies now has two licensed therapists, counselors, um, who are available to meet with our pred docs and our postdocs for up to six sessions at no cost confidential to describe any kind of personal or work related challenge. And then they can introduce them to resources in the community if they, if longer term, uh, relationship is important.

University of Michigan: Centralized Shared Services

Kaylee S (07:35): My name is Kaylee Steen. I work at the University of Michigan. I’m the Associate Director of Professional Development and Trainee Support, and I would say one of our resources on campus is our centralized shared services. So if you have expenses and you need reimbursement, it’s all a one stop shop to submit a ticket to make sure you get all your money back.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Welcome Session

Bettina (07:54): I’m Bettina, I’m a postdoc at MIT, at the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, and, um, I happen to be a current president of the PDA and, um, resources on campus. I think looking back into three years of being in a postdoc at MIT I think the resources are there. It’s just that the point in time when you have the bandwidth to access them is way too late because we have the community at MIT is incredibly international, and when you change countries, con- continents, social spheres in starting a postdoc, it’s just too much to adjust to to spend. Any thoughts on your 401k and now looking back? I wish I had the bandwidth back then because I, I’m aware now at I lost money, but also I’m aware now that I’m out in a year, so it’s not even worth putting in the effort anymore, which is unfortunate. What I’m recommending everyone I meet now being a new postdoc is take the welcome session when you, when you arrive, and then take them again six months in because the info out there, it’s just a matter of how much you can digest at a time.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 401K and Reimbursement Resources

Expery O (09:04): My name is Expery Omollo. I’m a postdoc fellow at MIT. There are a few things that, uh, a few resources on campus that can benefit postdocs at MIT. One of them is the benefits, uh, and to be specific, the 401k, I feel like it’s very useful for postdocs to be educated on the power of compounding interest. Um, I feel like most people tend to wait until they get a real job before they start investing, and in that time, they’re wasting five years is enough to, let’s say, make a few thousand dollars that they didn’t know about. Um, so that’ll be one thing. Another thing is, um, there are other aspects of saving money when it comes to transit. For example, MIT has a free, uh, transit across Boston to use the public transit system. Uh, if you use your bike to go to campus every day, you can get reimbursed. Um, if you, the MIT health, if you go to the gym, you can apply to get reimbursement from the health provider as well. And most people don’t know this, but this is a free 150 to $300. Um, and another thing is they do have a pension. But it’s very hidden and there’s a lot of, uh, it’s so hard to find that information. But MIT offers it. I think there’s a, you have to be at MIT for limited for some time before you can apply for it. But it’s somewhere there. I saw it recently. And, um, maybe as Bettina was saying, having all of this information during orientation may be the solution and maybe reiterating it over time through email or, you know, in other postdoc meetings, just mentioning it so that people can know about all of it.

Medical University of South Carolina: Library Rental System

Lyndsay Y (11:04): Hi, I’m Lyndsay Young. I’m a postdoctoral fellow at the Medical University of South Carolina. And I think a resource that, um, our postdocs need to know about is actually our library rental system. So you can rent laptops, speakers, uh, projectors, screens, anything technology-wise from our library that for a certain amount of time it’s for free and you can utilize that for your own personal benefit, for your events, for anything really that is that you wanna do. So I think it’s a really underutilized resource that our people should be more knowledgeable about.

Argonne National Lab: HR Resources

Evelyna W (11:38): Hi, uh, my name is Evelyna Wang . I’m a postdoc at Argonne National Lab, and our HR department actually provides a lot of good resources about personal financing and benefits that are available to postdocs. However, I think postdocs need to access and attend some of these seminars and really gain the information that’s being shared with them.

Salk Institute for Biological Studies: Financial Advisors

B. Bea R (12:01): Morning, my name is B. Bea Rajsombath from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and I think our postdocs need to take advantage of the onsite financial advisors to schedule one-on-one appointments, so they have access to, to that in understanding how to invest their portfolio.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 401K App

Alex Y (12:19): Hello everyone. My name is Alex Yen pronouns, she, her and I am the Career Advising and Professional Development Program Director at MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology. So the resource that I really like, and I do think this is a resource many, many postdocs I work with postdocs have, is if you have a, if you have a 401k with your university, you should download whatever app that is associated with. So for MIT, that’s fidelity, and there you can actually plan out and do projections of what would it look like, say if you put aside the certain amount of money and they can project, what will that look like to get to your retirement goal? So look at that. It’s nice graphs, it’s nice numbers and data, and I really, really like this resource for helping you understand why it might be helpful for you to put money into a 401k

Fidelity Student Programs

Emily (13:19): Emily here. Adding on Fidelity actually has amazing financial education resources around investing. They have a special program for college students, but it’s rolled out at certain campuses, and I’m guessing it’s also available to graduate students. Not sure about the postdoc side of things, but please check that out if you have access to it.

Villanova: Lifelong Career Resources and Services

Casey H (13:37): Hi, my name’s Casey Hilferty. I’m Associate Director for Career Management at Villanova University. Um, one thing that we would love to remind our grad students of is that we offer lifelong career resources and services, um, including lifelong career appointments. So they don’t need to contract a career coach. If they ever need one, they can always return back to Villanova.

University of Texas at Arlington: Fellowships, Grants, and I-Engage Mentoring Program

Leah C (14:01): My name’s Leah Collum. I’m the program manager for graduate student Academic and professional development at the University of Texas at Arlington. And on our campus, we have several resources that graduate students should be aware of. We have, uh, dissertation fellowships, we have travel grants, we have writing group grants. We have the I-Engage mentoring program, which offers a stipend and all kinds of other internal funding opportunities, um, that graduate students should be aware of, and they can find them all on our website, which is uta.edu/gradschool.

UNC Chapel Hill: Impact Internship Program

Patrick B (14:36): My name’s Patrick Brandt, and I’m the director of Career Development and Science Outreach at UNC Chapel Hill. So one of the programs that I run is called the Impact Internship Program, and it’s a short term internship, uh, local to the RTP or to the triangle area of North Carolina. And it gives the UNC grad students a chance to be able to do an internship and gain some, um, some hands-on skill, uh, development so that they can be more competitive as a candidate, uh, for whatever career they’re interested in.

Georgia Tech: Campus Closet

Megan E (15:09): My name’s Megan Elrath and I’m a online Career Services manager at Georgia Tech. And a resource on our campus that grad students or postdocs should know about that would help their finances is our campus closet, where students can access professional attire for interviewing, um, presentations, maybe even to defend their dissertations or proposals so that they can have that professional look and feel confident when they go into those high pressure settings.

Commercial

Emily (15:35): 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 2025-2026 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, medical school, postdoc office, or postdoc association? My workshops are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Orientations, postdoc appreciation week, or 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.

George Washington University: Alumni Network

Autumn A (17:12): My name is Autumn Anthony and I serve as the Assistant Director of Graduate Postdoc Affairs at George Washington University. And one way that we’ve been investing in financial success and career development for our students is within the presidential fellowship, um, which I have the privilege of directing, and it’s a small group, so hopefully in the future we can expand this out to more students. But we’ve been tapping into our alumni network and finding those individuals who have established careers, um, in managing your financial portfolio. And we’ve been able to set up some really great, um, mini seminars and workshops where these folks will come and, and present on how to make the most of your finances and set yourself up for success. And it’s been low cost so far. So that’s something that, um, I would recommend people tapping into their alumni network.

UT Southwestern: Internships

Leah B (18:06): My name is Leah Banks and I’m the director of Graduate career, uh, development at UT Southwestern in Dallas, Texas. Uh, and a resource that I feel would be really helpful for grad students and post-docs, um, is, um, having the opportunity to do internships. And so we recently were able to change the policy in which would allow for them to do research internships. Um, before that they were only able to do consulting venture capital type internships, but this allows for them to really build out their toolkit to tap into those resources outside of UT Southwestern to, um, be more exposed to, um, technical type internships that could really help them to be more, um, marketable when they, you know, leave grad school and their postdocs.

University of Michigan: Career Services and Clothes Closet

Maggie G (18:59): My name is Maggie Gardner. I’m the Senior program manager for STEM Professional Development in the Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan. Generally speaking, resources that I believe grad students and postdocs should take advantage of while they’re at Michigan that would help them financially are broadly our career services, but more specifically taking advantage of cv, resume, cover letter review, interview preparation, negotiation workshops. All of these are available to them free of charge while they’re at the University of Michigan. And these are services that they’ll have to pay for, um, if they choose to, to seek them out outside of the university. Um, so these are long-term very beneficial to their financial wellbeing. Um, we also have a clothes closet at the University Career Center that graduate students can take advantage of. Uh, they’re allowed to pick out, I think, two items per semester for interviews or networking events, whatever it is that need, they need professional attire for. Uh, we also have a, um, a food pantry that students are eligible or able to take advantage of. Um, they can stop by every day, every week, whatever it is they need, you know, when they need just a little bit of extra help to, to get by and to, to sustain themselves.

University of Buffalo: Internship Equity Fund

Gina B (20:25): Hi, this is Gina Bellavia, graduate career design consultant at the University of Buffalo. And one thing that would help graduate students improve their finances that we offer is our internship equity fund. So if you were to get an internship that was unpaid, uh, and with either a government agency or a nonprofit organization, you could apply to be paid through through this fund. And usually we have it available each semester and then in the summer as well.

Vanderbilt: Beyond the Lab Podcast

Aubrie S (20:53): Hi, my name is Aubrie Stricker. I am a part of the Vanderbilt Biomedical Career Development Office. And the resource that I think our campus provides for our students is the Beyond the Lab podcast, where it provides informational interviews to give our trainees insights as to how the, uh, alumni got to the positions that they’re in and along the way, they share their career advice, including the financial advice they may have to help the trainees get to where they want to be.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: Campus Web Store

Derek A (21:19): I’m Derek Attig, Assistant Dean for Career and Professional Development in the graduate college at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. And a resource on our campus that I, I think grad students and postdocs could take advantage of that could improve their finances is the campus web store, which has a wide variety of free or, uh, reduce costs software, uh, to, you know, support your work, help you develop new skills, right? And often people don’t know it’s there.

Boston University: PF for PhDs Podcast and Campus Workshops

Béné (21:50): Hi everyone. My name is Béné. I am the Director of Professional Development at Boston University in the Graduate School of Medical Sciences. And I think a resource that has been very inspiring for me is your podcast, Emily, because you’ve been able to actually meet with postdocs who having the same financial constraints as what I had as a postdoc were still able to really think their finances through, we’re able to decide, okay, this is how much I want to invest, this is how much I want to learn about investing. Um, and they’ve stuck with our goals and they were able to actually achieve things that they wouldn’t have without having done so. So I’m looking forward to having you on my campus to talk with our students and helping them really take a step back and make set important financial and budgeting goals.

University of Minnesota: Student Legal Services

Amelia C (22:34): Hi, my name’s Amelia Casas. I’m a one-stop counselor at the University of Minnesota. And one resource to look for on your campus is student Legal Services for help with any sort of renters disputes, immigration, things like that. It’s like having a personal lawyer on retainer for the cost of your tuition and fees.

UC Berkeley: Center for Financial Wellness

Anne X (22:59): Hi, my name is Anne Xiong. I manage the Center for Financial Wellness at UC Berkeley. Um, so the resources I want to introduce to our grad students are actually the Center for Financial Wellness. I encourage all grad students at uc, Berkeley to advantage of this free service. Go to our website, we have online resources, and then we have our peer coaching and workshops.

UNC Chapel Hill: Carolina Cupboard and Bus Passes

Sara L (23:23): My name is Sara Lorenzen. I’m the Assistant Director of Financial Wellbeing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Um, and a resource on our campus, um, that I think a lot of students don’t know about is we have a food pantry network, um, called the Carolina Cupboard, um, which is four food pantries on campus that are available, but also, um, UNC students get and employees get a free bus pass through our bus system. And the Chapel Hill Bus system is free to everyone in Chapel Hill. So I think people don’t utilize that nearly enough to save money.

University of South Carolina: Gamecock Community Shop

Tharangi F (23:59): Hi, my name is Tharangi Fernando. I’m the peer consultant manager for the Student Success Center at the University of South Carolina. Our Gamecock community shop, which is our basic needs, um, like school supply closet, it does food meals, it does clothing, um, basic needs of any type like hygiene, and I think that really does help our graduate student population and they’re actively using it.

University of Chicago: Webinars

Emmy (24:21): I’m Emmy, I’m the Communications Manager at the Office of Bursar at the University of Chicago. Our main resource that would definitely be a benefit to our grad students and postdocs would be our webinars. Um, we offer a webinar series for new students, including grad students, and over the course of the year, we offer a ton of webinars that educate on financial wellness in general, but also just the services that our office provides.

University of Utah: International Student and Scholar Services

Katie D (24:46): Hi, my name is Katie DeSau. I am the case manager for the International Student and Scholar Services on the University of Utah campus. Um, my job is to connect students to campus services and the resources that we have for grad students and postdocs, especially international students, would be the International Student and Scholar Services or the IS office. And you can come talk to me about any problem that you have, uh, financial or otherwise, and I can help coordinate contact with, uh, campus resources, especially Financial Wellness Center, where they have options for credit counseling, one-on-one counseling, budgeting, and also finding other financial resources for you. Um, you can also come to me to get connected to the basic needs, uh, collective. Um, they’re all about basic needs. We also have a Feed you pantry. Um, so there are resources that you’re already paying for in your student fees, so please come see us and get help.

New York University: Stern Graduate Financial Aid Office Website

Tina B (25:45): Tina Bird, I’m the Assistant Director of the Stern Graduate Financial Aid Office at NYU. Um, and, uh, some of the great resources that we have is our website. Um, we have a lot of information on our website about, uh, external scholarship sources, um, teaching our graduate fellowships, um, and, you know, veteran assistance. Uh, so yeah, our, our website is specifically designed to help out our students.

University of Missouri: VITA Program

Alex E (26:11): My name is Alex Embree and I’m the interim manager at the Office for Financial Success at the University of Missouri in many communities and on many campuses, uh, there will be a VITA IRS tax resource where students can receive free tax preparation in addition to some tax education, so they can learn about how their, uh, assistantships or how their other funding sources are taxed and can make more, um, knowledgeable decisions about how they’re preparing for their tax burden, um, or how they’re saving for that, how they’re, um, establishing their financial security around their funding sources. And I’ll just add these VITA clinics are for both citizens, residents, and non-residents, depending on the certifications of the people involved. So don’t think it’s not for you if you’re an international student.

UNC Charlotte: Niner Finances

Nicole B (26:57): Hi, I am Nicole Benford. I’m the director of Niner Finances at UNC Charlotte. And to answer the question, what resource on your campus could grad students or postdocs access to improve their finances? I would say that’s my office. Uh, we offer workshops, presentations, and one-on-one coaching, and we also have self-study material on our website at NinerFinances.charlotte.edu. Um, but we are happy to help.

Oregon State University: Student Legal Services

Rebekah H (27:23): Hi, uh, I’m Rebekah Hahn and I’m a graduate assistant at the Oregon State University Basic Needs Center. We have a student legal services team, um, and they’re able to provide free legal services on a variety of issues. Um, I actually completed my divorce, transferred a house, and, uh, made new advanced directives with them all at no cost. And legal services are extremely expensive, so I think that all schools should have something like this.

University of Tennessee Knoxville: Financial Wellness Coaches

Philippa S (27:53): Hi, I’m Philippa Satterwhite. I am the coordinator, uh, for the Center of Financial Wellness at the University of Tennessee. Knoxville. And my answer to be, to make an appointment with, uh, our financial wellness coaches, a one-on-one appointment. Every student can make one. It’s free where we can sit down and help you think of through like your cost, but balancing of budget, thinking about life after grad school, thinking about, uh, you know, the job search. So all those things that we do at a one-on-one counseling, you can make as many appointments as you want. As many if few or as many, um, you’re there to help.

Washington University in St. Louis: Emergency Assistance Fund, Grad School Prep Funds, and iGrad

Andrea S-D (28:24): Hi there, I’m Andrea Stewart-Douglas, director of Financial Wellbeing at Washington University in St. Louis. The resources on my campus to help graduate students, um, we actually have a fund that provides emergency assistance to graduate students. Um, we also have funding available to undergraduate students who are looking to go on to graduate school. So we support their studies for things like the mcat, the lsat, the GRE. We will provide funding to help them purchase their study materials, to cover their test exams, to even cover their fees, um, as they’re applying. We’re also supporting them by providing them with funding. If they do a visit, if they are interviewing at the school and need to travel to that college or university will provide the funding to purchase their plane ticket, cover their hotel fees. We also, um, have a online platform called iGrad, and that’s available to not only graduate undergraduate students, but our graduate students as well. And so we’re encouraging all graduate students to check that platform out. It has tons of great information, uh, for budgeting, uh, planning for retirement, if they’re interested in buying a home. Um, there’s great information on that. So it’s a really, really, uh, robust resource, uh, articles, um, courses, videos, um, pretty much every way of uh, or mode of, um, learning is available on that platform. So, um, we’re also available in our office to provide one-on-one support if students want to come in and just talk about their situation, maybe sit down with us to do a little goal setting. And we’re gonna do our best to provide whatever support we can. And if we can’t do this internally, we have places people that we can connect them to outside of the university as well.

UNC Chapel Hill: Carolina Financial Wellbeing Center

Gilbert R (30:23): My name is Gilbert Rogers. I’m the Director of Financial Wellbeing at UNC Chapel Hill. One resource that I’ll highlight is the Carolina Financial Wellbeing Center. We are a fairly new resource to campus where graduate and professional students, uh, can come and ask questions about personal finance. We can get them connected to outside of the community resources that can help them increase their overall financial knowledge or, uh, get help with, uh, specific situations that graduate students need support with.

University of Oregon: Financial Literacy Workshops

Tennille W (30:52): So my name’s Tennille Wait. I’m the assistant director at the Financial Wellness Center at the University of Oregon. Um, the resources that we have for grad students, uh, recently what we’ve had happen is one of our grad students reached out, uh, to find financial literacy information. So they got hooked up with me. Um, from that we have put together a whole series, or I should say a three part series of workshops for specifically for grad students, um, kind of based around financial literacy, budgeting, um, learning how to make, what their financial aid they’re receiving work for what they’re doing. Um, there’s gonna be a tax component on making sure that they understand any tax implications with the funding that they’re receiving. Um, and then we are also working with, um, you know, other, other campus partners to just make sure that, uh, if they have travel expenses and things like that, how to make sure that all of those things, um, how they impact their financial aid, but then also how to budget for those and make sure that it’s fitting into their financial plan.

Outro

Emily (32:09): 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.

How to Financially Manage Lump Sum Fellowship Income

July 14, 2025 by Jill Hoffman

In this mostly solo episode, Emily shares how to manage lump sum fellowship income with respect to your budget, cash flow, and bank account structure. Grad students and postdocs struggle to manage their money when they are paid less frequently than monthly, such as once per term or once per year. This lump sum income occurs for some fellowship recipients, though it’s not a common set-up. In the first half of this episode, Emily presents her suggested system for managing this type of income with respect to your bank account structure, budget, and cash flow. In the second half of this episode, Emily interviews Shalom Fadullon, a grad student at Northeastern who receives this type of income, on how she implemented Emily’s system in her financial life.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • Host a PF for PhDs Seminar at Your Institution
  • Emily’s E-mail Address
  • PF for PhDs System for Managing Lump Sum Fellowship Income
  • SmartAsset Income Tax Calculator
  • PFforPhDs Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients Workshop
  • PF for PhDs S7E15: How to Solve the Problem of Irregular Expenses
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
How to Financially Manage Lump Sum Fellowship Income

Teaser

Anonymous: Lump sum income is really challenging. I have found in thinking about this, that the issue of lump sum income is pretty inextricable for me from the issue of variable and unpredictable income. Dealing with all of that together can feel really hard, like super defeating, honestly, especially at a lower income bracket, which you know, PhD students are, it just feels like really a grind to be honest.

Introduction

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.

This is Season 21, Episode 4, and today is a mostly solo episode from me on how to manage lump sum fellowship income with respect to your budget, cash flow, and bank account structure. I’ve found that grad students and postdocs struggle to manage their money when they are paid less frequently than monthly, such as once per term or once per year. This lump sum income occurs for some fellowship recipients, though it’s not a common set-up. In the first half of this episode, I’ll present my suggested system for managing this type of income with respect to your bank account structure, budget, and cash flow. In the second half of this episode, I’ll share my conversation with Shalom Fadullon, a grad student at Northeastern who receives this type of income, on how she implemented my system in her financial life.

By the way, if your university distributes some fellowships in lump sums, I’d bet that you’re not the only one wondering how to handle this type of income. I am now offering a live workshop that teaches this material and helps grad students and postdocs implement it in their financial lives. You can read more about it at PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/. Please email me at [email protected] if you’re interested in bringing this workshop to your university. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s21e4/. Without further ado, here’s my episode on managing lump sum income.

Grad students and postdocs, by and large, do not like receiving lump sum income or once-per-term income. Research shows people prefer to be paid more frequently, like weekly over monthly, and so it follows that being paid once every three months or even once per year would be even less favorable. Grad students and postdocs are intimidated by the length of time this money is supposed to provide for, and it can become paralyzing! They are so afraid of running out of money before they receive their next paycheck that they underspend. It’s also natural to occupy the other end of the spectrum: they see a huge bank account balance and they’re tempted into a spending binge. And I’m sure there are cases when grad students do run out of money and have to survive on credit cards and personal favors until the next paycheck arrives. I definitely sympathize with feeling overwhelmed by the heavy responsibility of this frequency of income. I have to tell you, though, that I also see it as an opportunity.

The way paychecks work for employees is that you work and then you get paid after or near the end of the work period. In the case of a once-per-term fellowship, you’re being paid at or near the start of the period the money is associated with instead. Yes, you have to make the money last, but you get it up front, not at the end. That means you can pre-fund your financial goals and put big chunks of money aside for irregular expenses instead of saving up gradually from more frequent paychecks. In this episode, I’m sharing the system I recommend for managing once-per-term or lump sum fellowship income. This system was inspired by 1) this ability to fund financial goals up front, 2) how business owners, including myself, manage irregular income, and 3) how I managed my money when I was just starting out on my own and anxious about running out of money.

In the first half of this episode, I’ll explain the system. There are visuals and a template spreadsheet associated with this explanation. If you want to download these visuals and/or the template spreadsheet, go to PFforPhDs.com/lumpsum/. If you just want to see them, you can watch this episode on the show notes page at PFforPhDs.com/S21E4/ or on my YouTube channel. The second half of this episode contains excerpts from two interviews I conducted with Shalom Fadullon, a grad student at Northeastern who receives this type of income, on how she implemented my system in her financial life.

Part 1: My Recommended System

My proposed system for managing lump sum income has several components: your bank account structure, your cash flow, and your budget. I’ll explain each in turn.

1. Your bank account structure

Since one of the main paralyzing factors in receiving this income is that it comes in one big undifferentiated lump sum, our first step is going to be to divide it up into different bank accounts.

Separating the account that receives your lump sum of income from the account from which you do all your spending and making periodic transfers from the former to the latter is timeless advice from the self-employed. For example, my business bank account sees irregular income and irregular expenses, plus my business is seasonal, so the balance in that account can get quite high at certain times of year and be drawn down dramatically at others. I don’t want that irregularity and seasonality to affect my personal finances, so I pay myself a fixed salary once per month. The most fundamental way to improve your money management with lump sum income is to hold it in a separate account and regularly transfer smaller sums over to your normal account. This system goes beyond that, but that’s the principle from which it is derived.

An anonymous mailing list subscriber emphasized this principle in the following contribution to this episode: “My tip is to transfer most of the funds into a high yield savings account, then I will “pay” myself each month by dividing that lump sum by the number of months in a given semester. For example, in spring 2025, I received a lump sum of $12,000 in early January 2025. Since this money was to cover my living expenses from January to May (five months), I transferred $9,600 to my HYSA and left $2,400 of the total lump sum in my checking account. Finding a way to divide my lump sum into monthly income payments made my budget more manageable.”

Another anonymous mailing list subscriber used a slight variation on this strategy: “When I went on fellowship, I had everything deposited to a high yield savings account (Ally). I then figured out my monthly expenses and set up auto transfers to my checking account every two weeks, a little DIY payroll. I always earmarked a portion of the savings account for tax payment; the Ally accounts have “buckets” that you can designate within the account.”

Exactly! Even if you do nothing else as a result of listening to this episode, take that suggestion to keep the bulk of your lump sum in a high-yield savings account and simulate a salary with monthly transfers.

My system, however, uses a few more accounts.

I suggest housing all of the following accounts at the same bank for instantaneous transfers, as there will be a lot of transferring among the accounts. If you don’t want to open multiple accounts, you certainly don’t have to, but I do recommend it for transparency and to simplify your future decision-making.

Account #1 is a savings account nicknamed Overall Holding. This account should receive your lump sum of income. Money will be distributed from this account to the other accounts one time or on a recurring basis.

Account #2 is a savings account nicknamed Tax Self-Withholding. This account is where you will set aside from each lump sum payment the fraction that you expect to pay in income tax. The money will stay in this account until it’s needed for an estimated tax payment or to pay your annual tax bill.

Account #3 is not really an account but a placeholder for wherever you might transfer your money to fulfill your financial goals. It might be a savings account if you’re trying to build up cash savings, such as an emergency fund. It might be a certain debt you’re trying to pay down. It might be a Roth IRA or other investment account. It could be multiple of these accounts if you’re working on multiple goals simultaneously.

Account #4 is a single savings account nicknamed Targeted Savings or a set of savings accounts for the same purpose. This is where you will hold money to pay for the irregular expenses that will arise in about the next year.

Account #5 is a checking account nicknamed Fixed and Necessary Variable Expenses. This checking account will receive periodic cash infusions from your Overall Holding savings account and will be used to pay your fixed expenses and your necessary variable expenses. Fixed expenses are expenses that are the same every single month, like your rent or mortgage, your internet bill, and your Netflix subscription. This account is for both necessary and discretionary fixed expenses. It’s also for variable necessary expenses like groceries and utilities if they’re billed according to consumption.

Account #6 is a checking account nicknamed Discretionary Variable Expenses. This checking account will receive periodic cash infusions from your Overall Holding savings account and will be used to pay your discretionary variable expenses. Discretionary variable expenses are expenses that are different every month and that are completely optional, such as eating out, entertainment, and shopping beyond baseline needs.

One final note about bank accounts. This system does not work if you’re paying fees such as account fees or low balance fees. Furthermore, it’s best if the savings accounts are high-yield savings accounts. Basically, your banking should be completely free and give you a relatively high interest rate on your savings. I often suggest to PhDs and PhDs-to-be that they use an internet-only bank to gain these benefits, but I don’t normally insist on it. For your situation, I’m going to strenuously recommend that you house your money in an internet-only bank with the benefits I just mentioned. I personally use Ally and have for about fifteen years, and other banks that fit the bill are CapitalOne360, SoFi, and Discover.

Before we move on from this section, I want to briefly address the use of credit cards. A single credit card could take the place of the Discretionary Variable Expenses checking account. I would just recommend that you keep an eye on the balance so that it doesn’t exceed the amount you budgeted for that category of expenses. If you put charges of multiple types on multiple cards and want to use the two checking account system, you could pay each card down manually from each checking account according to how much you spent from each category of expenses. For example, if you charged $300 for groceries and $100 for eating out to the same credit card, you could pay it off with $300 from your Fixed and Necessary Variable Expenses checking account and $100 from your Discretionary Variable Expenses checking account.

2. Your cash flow

Now I’m going to explain how money should flow through the account structure I just laid out. Before actually moving money from your Overall Holding savings account to any of the other accounts, you need to plan your spending for the upcoming term, i.e., budget. We’re going to address that in the third section. But just know that before you actually enact the cash flow I’m about to describe, you’re going to have firm numbers in place for how much to transfer.

Step 1: Receive your lump sum paycheck into your Overall Holding savings account. It’s more common to receive paychecks in a checking account, but I suggest that you switch your direct deposit into your Overall Holding savings account instead. If your university won’t deposit your paycheck to a savings account or you couldn’t get it set up in time, you can manually transfer the full amount of the deposit from your checking account to the Overall Holding savings account as soon as possible after receiving it.

Step 2: Plan how to distribute your paycheck. I’m going to address this budgeting step more fully in the next section. Just know that it has to be done before actually moving your money around.

The most ideal time for this step and the subsequent one to occur is after you’ve received the lump sum but before you actually start spending it. This follows from the principle I expounded upon in Season 21 Episode 2 about living on time, which is that all of the income you receive in one month goes toward funding your next month’s budget.

How this principle plays out for lump sum income is like this. Let’s say you are scheduled to receive your lump sum paychecks on August 15, January 15, and June 15. Your August 15 paycheck should pay for your September through January expenses. Your January 15 paycheck should pay for your February through June expenses. Your June 15 paycheck should pay for your July and August expenses, presuming that you’ll receive another paycheck of some type in August. This way, you have some margin or breathing room in between when you receive the paycheck and when it needs to start going out the door to pay for expenses.

Now, that’s an ideal circumstance. I would imagine that it’s much more common to need to start spending the lump sum immediately on bills and groceries and paying off credit cards, because most Americans do not live on time. If that’s how you’re operating now, you just have to account for that in your budgeting step. I will emphasize, though, that you should use this lump sum to catch yourself up to living on time as best as possible over this term so that you can start your next lump sum budgeting period in the more ideal fashion. So if you have to start spending your August 15 paycheck on August 15, still plan for it to last you through January so you don’t have to repeat the process on January 15. This will help you out a ton, especially if that paycheck doesn’t arrive on the date you expect it, which has happened to fellowship recipients.

Step 3: Enact one-time distributions.

Make one-time transfers from your Overall Holding savings account to your Tax Self-Withholding savings account, Targeted Savings savings account, and Financial Goals account or accounts.

Step 4: Set up monthly distributions.

Set up a monthly autodraft from your Overall Holding savings account to your Fixed and Necessary Variable Expenses checking account. I suggest that this be scheduled for late in each month, perhaps on the 25th, as it will fund your spending starting on the 1st.

Step 5: Set up weekly distributions.

Set up a weekly autodraft from your Overall Holding savings account to your Discretionary Variable Expenses checking account. I don’t have a firm suggestion on which day of the week to make this transfer. Personally, I would choose either a Sunday to set up the subsequent Monday to Sunday week or a Thursday to set up the Friday to Thursday week.

Step 6: Manually transfer from targeted savings to your checking accounts as needed.

The function of the Targeted Savings savings account or accounts is to pay for irregular expenses. When one of those expenses occurs or is about to occur, make a manual transfer from the appropriate Targeted Savings savings account bucket to either your Fixed and Necessary Variable Expenses checking account or your Discretionary Variable Expenses checking account, whichever one will pay for the expense.

3. Your budget

The planning or budgeting step is crucial for people who receive lump sums of income. People who receive this type of income have a great fear of running out of money before the next paycheck comes, because that paycheck is so far away. Budgeting and sticking to your budget are therefore vital for giving you confidence to spend. In fact, if you budget and hold yourself strictly accountable to that budget, you can dispense with the other aspects of this system. The accounts and cash flow are really just to support you in sticking to your budget.

Another anonymous mailing list subscriber shared their perspective on the importance of budgeting when receiving lump sum income: “I highly recommend a Zero-Based Envelope Budget such as YNAB especially for people with lump sum income. The YNAB method of breaking large, infrequent and/or unpredictable expenses into small, consistent amounts is key; otherwise it is very easy to overspend early in the term then have a big unforeseen expense come up later in the term that you are not prepared for. Overall, breaking down big expenses, budgeting every dollar each month, and keeping account of over/under-spending (as the Envelope method does) gives clarity and confidence about what you can spend money on so you don’t run out before the next pay cycle. Plus, working towards getting “a month ahead” becomes harder with lump sum income but YNAB makes it easier to see your savings grow bit by bit.”

I created a template spreadsheet to assist you with this budgeting step, which you can download from PFforPhDs.com/lumpsum/. I’ll walk you briefly through the sections so you can see how they connect to your account structure and cash flow.

The first lines in this spreadsheet ask for the date of this term’s paycheck and next term’s paycheck. Remember that you should use this term’s paycheck to cover your expenses through the end of the month in which you receive your next paycheck. If there is some uncertainty about when your paychecks will arrive, use the last date in the feasible range.

The times at which you transition on and off of fellowship income are ones to pay particular attention to. There can sometimes be what feels like a lapse in pay, especially when going from fellowship income to employee income, again because employee income is typically paid after or at the end of your work period. For example, perhaps you receive a one-year fellowship that covers August through July, and after that you’ll receive employee income once per month. Perhaps those lump sums arrive near the beginning of August, the beginning of January, and beginning of June. Your first employee paycheck might not arrive until the end of August or beginning of September, meaning that your one-year fellowship actually has to pay for 13 months of expenses if you start using it in August. Or even if you’re paid bimonthly or biweekly as an employee, that first employee paycheck would arrive in mid-August and it will only be for half a month or two weeks of income. Keep these factors in mind when you decide how many months your lump sum income is supposed to pay for. You definitely don’t want to be caught paying for three months of expenses off of a two-month lump sum.

Up top, you enter your lump sum of income.

The orange section is for your estimated tax. If you are not having income tax withheld from your paychecks, you will need to set aside money to pay your future tax bills, whether they are quarterly estimated tax payments or an annual tax bill. If you are single and have a simple tax and income situation, I suggest using an income tax calculator such as from smartasset.com to estimate your annual tax bill. If you have a more complicated situation, you should fill out the Estimated Tax Worksheet on page 8 of IRS Form 1040-ES and the equivalent form from your state tax agency, if applicable. Once you’ve estimated your annual tax liability, you can fill into this section the appropriate fraction of that annual bill that needs to be paid from this particular paycheck. You can find lots more information about estimated tax inside my asynchronous workshop at PFforPhDs.com/qetax/.

The blue section is for your financial goals, and it refers to my eight-step financial framework. I won’t get into all the details of the framework, but basically, you should figure into this budget the amount of money you want to put toward your financial goals during this term. For example, if your goal is to invest 10% of your gross income into a Roth IRA, you would fill into the investing line 10% of your lump sum paycheck. This section has lines for investing, debt repayment above the minimum, and saving for an emergency fund. There is another line for creating account buffers. I do recommend placing a certain amount of money, perhaps $250 to 500, in each of your checking accounts to safeguard against overdrafting, just in case a bill comes in that is higher than what you budgeted. Try your best to maintain that buffer amount as your floor in your checking account, but know that it’s there for you if needed. You can consider it the first layer of your emergency fund.

The purple section is for your monthly expenses across several categories. You’ll enter a monthly spending number into each of the relevant line items. You’ll also enter the number of months that you want this budget to cover. The spreadsheet multiples these two numbers to generate the amount of money that you expect to spend on that expense during the term.

Some of these expenses are fixed monthly expenses, so they’re easy to look up and enter into the spreadsheet, such as your minimum debt payments, your rent or mortgage, certain utilities, and your subscriptions. Others are variable expenses, so they will change a bit month to month, such as groceries, gas, certain utilities, and eating out. If you have tracked data on these expenses, use those averages and round up a bit. If you haven’t tracked your expenses, do your best to estimate what you will or would like to spend. 

The green section is for your irregular expenses, which are expenses that occur less frequently than monthly. Irregular expenses are things like insurance premiums if paid less frequently than monthly, car maintenance and repairs, travel, and electronics purchases. There are two ways to capture the numbers associated with these expenses in the worksheet. The first is to convert the irregular expense to a monthly average. For example, if in the course of the last twelve months you spent $600 on clothes and you don’t expect your spending rate to change, you would enter $50 as a monthly estimate of that expense into the appropriate cell. Over the course of a five-month term, for example, you would expect to spend $250. So you would know to set aside $250 of your paycheck into a targeted savings bucket for clothes. This is great for a category that you spend in regularly but not monthly. The second type of irregular expense that the spreadsheet accounts for is a large one-time expense. Let’s say that you want to purchase flights to visit your family over winter break, and you expect to purchase the tickets in November. You can enter the estimated cost of the tickets into the appropriate cell in this section, and you would know to set aside that amount of money from your paycheck into a targeted savings bucket for this purpose. You can learn more about irregular expenses and targeted savings in Season 7 Episode 15.

That takes us to the bottom of the spreadsheet. You of course need to make sure that your budget balances before moving on from this step.

From this spreadsheet, you can glean the numbers you need to set up your manual and automated transfers.

The total of your estimated income tax payments will be transferred one time from your Overall Holding savings account to your Tax Self-Withholding savings account.

With respect to your financial goals, I suggest transferring over or otherwise establishing your account buffer amounts right away. Same goes for any savings you want to add to your emergency fund. For financial goals money that you won’t be able to easily get back, before contributing it to a tax-advantaged retirement account or paying the principal on a debt, evaluate how confident you are in your budget. If you’re super confident that you’re not going to exceed your budget, invest or pay down debt right away after receiving the paycheck. If you’re not so confident, keep it in a savings account until the end of the term and put it toward those specific goals at that time. Or if you’re in between, split the difference by investing or repaying debt gradually throughout the term. One note though is that if your financial goal is to pay down credit card debt, do your absolute best to pay it down earlier rather than later, because that high interest rate is super toxic to your finances.

The amount of money that you calculated that you will spend on irregular expenses during this term or that you need to save for future irregular expenses should be transferred to your targeted savings account or accounts. Be sure to keep track, either using buckets or a spreadsheet, of which balances are for which purposes. If you deplete a targeted savings bucket, either stop spending in that category or adjust your plan.

The money that you expect to spend on your monthly expenses stays in your Overall Holding savings account until it’s time to be spent.

The sum of what you expect to spend monthly on your minimum debt payments, your fixed monthly expenses, and your necessary variable expenses should be transferred in a monthly autodraft to your Fixed and Necessary Variable Expenses checking account. This is the account from which you should set up autopay for all your bills and recurring expenses, such as rent or mortgage, utilities, minimum debt payments, and subscriptions. You should use this account to pay for your groceries and other necessary variable expenses as well. By the end of each month, the balance in this account should be down to pretty close to or at your buffer amount, hopefully not below. Due to the nature of these expenses, they don’t vary much month-to-month, so you can expect to spend all or nearly all of what you transfer in each month.

The sum of what you expect to spend weekly on your discretionary variable expenses such as eating out, entertainment, coffee, personal care, etc. should be transferred in a weekly autodraft to your Discretionary Variable Expenses checking account. The spreadsheet doesn’t calculate this weekly number for you, so you should divide the total you expect to spend over the term by the number of weeks in the term. Whatever balance you see in this account above your buffer amount, you should feel free to spend, but it’s also fine to carry over some balance or let it build up week over week.

Part of the point of dividing up your money is to help you discern when it’s time to stop spending. If the balance in your Discretionary Variable Expenses checking account is down to your buffer amount, it’s time to stop spending. However, you know that within a week, the account will be refilled.

If this system seems overly complicated, I definitely understand, and you can modify it to better fit your lifestyle.

Modification A: You don’t have to make the special effort to budget and set up targeted savings accounts for irregular expenses. Instead, you can create your budget with a monthly line item for miscellaneous expenses, as long as the amount of that line item exceeds the sum of the irregular expenses that you anticipate incurring during any given month.

Modification B: You don’t need two checking accounts. You can use one with either only monthly or monthly plus weekly transfers from your Overall Holding savings account. This will closely simulate a person who receives a monthly paycheck.

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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 2025-2026 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, medical school, postdoc office, or postdoc association? My workshops are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Orientations, postdoc appreciation week, or 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.

Part 2: Testing out my system with Shalom Fadullon

Emily: This first interview section was recorded in December 2024. This was the first time we met to discuss how to manage lump sum fellowship income.

Shalom: My name’s Shalom. I’m a third year, uh, chemical engineering PhD student at Northeastern University. Um, and I was fortunate enough to win the NSF GRFP this most recent cycle. So, um, I just, this just kind of started in September of this year and I’m planning on being it for the next three years. So looking forward, kind of figuring out like, okay, what does that, what does that look like now? So the way that it works at Northeastern, if you’re on any type of external fellowship, um, at least my department, um, you’re paid in one lump sum at the beginning of that semester. So over the summer it’s the same uh, thing. Our semesters are broken up into kind of like five months, five months and then two months for the summer. Um, so it’s a different amount of money, but it’s the same thing where you’re paid at the beginning of that two month period.

Emily: You know, when you emailed me with this question, like what were you concerned about, what, what problems had arisen that you think, you know, different budgeting might help with?

Shalom: Right, so my main uh, like kind of disconnect is this like thing where like your expenses, my expenses are kind of on this like monthly cycle where I pay rent every month, I pay my utilities every month and so all of a sudden these like payments and these expenses don’t really line up. Um, so like in my mind it’s like this very jagged graph of things happening and then so kind of having a harder time keeping track of like actually how much money I’m spending per month has been hard because instead of having like that monthly timeline, it’s now four, five months. Um, and then also kind of that like payday temptation. So hadn’t been paid in a long time, got that big, big pay bump or whatever that looks like it, but in reality the actual sum of money hasn’t changed. Um, it’s just from when you’re receiving it. So the temptation to spend money towards like that paycheck time is actually a lot harder, I found.

Emily: Shalom explained her existing account structure, which already had a lot of the elements that I recommend.

Shalom: A direct deposit into a high yield savings account. So um, that kind of just like automatically happens. And then I do just most of my purchases on a credit card and I pay that off every month. So again, like the monthly expenses kind of lining up. And then I also take some money out for like a retirement kind of like Roth I like IRA situation. Um, and that’s, yeah, that’s pretty much how that’s set up.

Emily: So the, the paycheck goes into the savings account first. Have you been keeping it there or did you move it to checking or did you split it? Like where’s the money been residing?

Shalom: Yeah, I mostly put it in um, it mostly just kind of stays in that savings account and then when I need to pay my credit card bill, that’s pretty much what I use it to do.

Emily: Okay. And you also have presumably some bills that you don’t pay on a credit card like your rent and maybe some other utilities or something. Do you then, do you transfer from savings to checking like in advance of those payments hitting? Okay. Yeah, I think you’re, it sounds organized, you’re like definitely partway to like what I would recommend, I’m just going to recommend and we’ll talk through it about, ’cause you don’t have to take my recommendations, right. It could be too much or whatever <laugh>, but kind of layering on a little bit more structure to this. Um, and also there’s sort of two components. There’s like this account structure which can help keep you on track to know that you’re not overspending or underspending over this long period of time. Um, and then there’s the budgeting aspect which is like actually planning because again it is a very long period of time. Like am I able to spend on discretionary things without jeopardizing, you know, my February rent payment or whatever it is. Right, right. Um, do you do any kind of budgeting right now?

Shalom: Yeah, I have um, roughly I try to do the like 30, 20, 50 rule. I don’t have like um, I dunno limits setup or anything within the account. So it’s kind of just like um, an Excel spreadsheet that I do and I’ll update it at the end of the month. But um, I have stopped updating it because my like income stream has changed so much. So

Emily: Like for a larger purchase, like a flight or like a vacation, something discretionary, maybe even shopping spree. Right, how do you decide if you can afford it?

Shalom: Yeah, that’s a great question. Um, so I kind of look at, again, I look at my credit card statement and I kind of say how much have I spent on similar things this month? So something like restaurants or going out to eat. Um, and then based on that amount of money, um, I’ll say okay, do I have enough money left to also purchase this? But it’s kind of very like hand wavy if that makes sense.

Emily: I feel like that would work really well with that two week budgeting cycle.

Shalom: Right.

Emily: But I dunno how you do it with these like larger amounts of money <laugh>. Yeah. Okay. At this point in our conversation, I proposed to Shalom the structure I explained in the first part of this episode.

Shalom: I mean I really like the idea of kind of having that account for the discretionary variable expenses because um, I feel like with the big um, like some payment it’s really hard to keep track of things like oh I bought a coffee, I bought a whatever. Um, so that’s really nice to kind of be able to track that more closely and see like, okay, how much am I putting in weekly? Like am I going over that, am I going under that whatever. Um, and I also like the idea of having kind of the two separate accounts for the necessary and variable expenses. I think like you mentioned, um, it might just get a little more complicated with the credit card kind of um payments, but I think it’s definitely like again there’s totally ways around that to make it not super complicated

Emily: After that, Shalom and I went through the budgeting spreadsheet that you can download from PFforPhDs.com/lumpsum/, and I sent her on her way to implement this system! We next spoke in mid-March 2025 about how the system implementation went. We next spoke in mid-March 2025 about how the system implementation went. After our last conversation and like the resources that I sent you and all that stuff, in theory you were supposed to try out <laugh> the system I was recommending. So please let me know like what changes did you make and did they work for you, have you made any adaptations?

Shalom: Yeah, sure. So um, we talked the last time we talked you recommended having these like separate pots essentially for things like essentials where it was like rent and food and utilities, kind of these like known quantities every single month. Um, there’s a pot for like discretionary spending, so like coffee and trips or whatever. Um, and then I think you also had a separate one for time like investments like Roth IRA, like things like that. And then um, a separate bin for taxes, like where you would set aside money for taxes. Um, in my specific bank. So I use Capital One, um, they make you open a new account for every bin you want. Um, so I just wanted to kind of keep it as simple as I could while following um, your advice. So I ended up opening one for like needs, one for wants and then one for, I had one for emergency fund and then one for um, investments. So I have five, that’s five total. Um, and it was actually really eyeopening because I used to just take um, all of my expenses out of like the account that I deposited money in and obviously when you’re getting these different amounts that don’t match up with like your monthly credit card cycle or your monthly rent cycle, um, I genuinely did not have a good grasp on how much I was spending and so it actually ended up being that I was spending more money um, than I thought and I just couldn’t see it because again, like the monthly balance wasn’t lining up with when I was getting deposits.

Emily: Yeah, that’s already like a really good insight. So kind of like dividing your money up <laugh> allowed you to see Yeah, the actual cash flow. So I think um, one of the other aspects of the system that you didn’t mention so far was I believe having your paycheck deposited into a savings account, right? Is that what we talked about? And then distributed to one or more checking accounts. So did you make any shifts in that or like where is your paycheck going and then literally like where is it flowing? Yeah, like from that first spot.

Shalom: So I did change that as well. So now I have my paycheck being deposited into a high-yield savings account. Um, and then from that high yield savings account, once I get that deposit I’ll put money towards um, my budget for like food rent, which I have like a rough number that I do the same amount every month and then um, things that I want or like extra funds. Um, and I think for me the most eye-opening thing was being able to track those like you know, eating out and clothes and whatever. Um, a little bit more closely because I had just been reconciling them with my credit card statement but I hadn’t actually seen what that was doing like overall big picture with kind of like long-term savings goals And so this was really helpful to be able to see that.

Emily: Let’s talk about the um, non monthly aspects of the system. So you mentioned for example there’s um, a way of you either holding for or transferring out money towards like investing or other sort of long-term goals. Um, if you have an emergency fund that theoretically should be like separate from the rest of this money. Um, and then the targeted savings was another thing we talked about. So saving up for those either necessary or discretionary expenses but that are sort of larger and that occur less frequently than monthly. So how have you been doing with like those aspects of the system and has that helped you think about your goals or your spending differently?

Shalom: Yeah, yeah that’s a good question. I actually hadn’t set up the targeted savings bin um, just because I wasn’t really sure how much I would wanna contribute per month or like what that might look like. Um, I think like a good idea would probably be to transfer, like saving up for a trip into that pot because right now I just have it in my like discretionary fund. Um, and I think like if I’m not taking a trip every month, then that is kind of inflating that bin maybe more than it needs to be. Um, so that’s something that I definitely like to do.

Emily: So it sounds like you’ve implemented the system like pretty close, like pretty faithfully to what I suggested, but now that you’ve tried it out, would you make any modifications to it going forward? So are we done with our discussion?

Shalom: I think so. Like I said, this has been really, really helpful. Um, like I said, I thought I was doing an okay job and I really saw, saw like a big difference um, in how I was doing this next pay period. So

Emily: Yeah, well I hope it continues to work for you for the next few years. However long this frequency is. I was really glad to hear that my suggestions, at least some of them, worked well for Shalom. And if you receive lump sum income, please let me know if you try out any or all of these elements and how it goes for you. I want to conclude here with a contribution from an anonymous podcast listener. I’ve actually worked with the most simple case of lump sum income in this episode, which is a predictable lump sum over the long term. This listener shared their perspective on the difficulty of receiving irregular lump sums of income in the following audio clip: 

Anonymous: Lump sum income is really challenging. I have found in thinking about this that the issue of lump sum income is pretty inextricable for me from the issue of variable and unpredictable income. I’m a social sciences PhD, others in my program and other social sciences programs, humanities programs that I know have funding structures that are volatile, like quite unpredictable. We have maybe a baseline guaranteed income either from a fellowship for a given year or guaranteed teaching spots or something like that. I’m in a PhD in a very high cost of living area, one of the highest in the US. So that kind of baseline income is pretty difficult to live on, would pose a really significant financial strain. Folks like me are in the position of kind of constantly applying for supplemental income, whether that’s additional teaching positions over the summer or maybe you have a fellowship that allows you to teach one term out of the year to supplement the fellowship and so you’re in a situation throughout the year where you have a lot of uncertainty around what your actual income in a given year is going to be. I think that this informs how I experience an issue that’s maybe more in inherent in lump sum income, which is you wind up having to basically pay yourself monthly out of that income, which requires having a medium to long range sense of what your overall income actually is beyond a particular grant payment or lump fellowship payment or whatever it is. For folks that I know this is, these two things are super interlinked. The variability trying to project through that variability plan to the best of your ability accordingly and then a lot monthly payments for yourself based on that projection. The tip that I would give to people in this situation is I think that dealing with this tricky intersection of lump sum payments that are not taxed at dispersal and are uncertain and variable within throughout the year and across different years, um, dealing with all of that together can feel really hard, like super defeating honestly, especially at a lower income bracket which you know PhD students are, it just feels like really a grind to be honest. I think that it’s easy to kind of drop into a mode of why even try to plan around this. This is so difficult to plan around. This is set up to be almost impossible to project accurately around and like set up systems around. Like why even try and I’m not even making that much money anyway so I’ll just like do the best I can without thinking about it. I think it’s really easy to get into that mode and I see a lot of my friends in that kind of like survival mode. The tip would be support yourself around that and to try not to fall into that.

Emily: Lump sum income plus irregularity is definitely a next level challenge for your budgeting and financial planning, so my next challenge will be trying to speak to this situation. I echo what this contributor said to do your best to not feel defeated by this scenario, which honestly would stump the most experienced budgeters. Give yourself a lot of credit for managing as well as you are with a highly unpredictable income. That’s all for this episode! Thank you to Shalom for being my guinea pig for this system and thank you to those who shared their experiences and advice regarding lump sum fellowship income!

Outro

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.

Which Postdocs Get Health Insurance and Retirement Accounts?

June 29, 2025 by Emily 1 Comment

In this episode, I share what I’ve learned recently about the landscape of postdoc benefits in the US, specifically with respect to health insurance and workplace-based retirement accounts. This discussion of employees and non-employees or fellows may be familiar territory to some of you, but I also know I’m reaching people who have never heard it before. I hope that this episode helps more postdocs access more benefits, but I will not present a single universal solution that can be immediately adopted. Please take what you learn today back to your peers at your institution to converse about what they’re doing for their benefits and what may be possible for all of you.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • PF for PhDs S2E3: Using Data to Improve the Postdoc Experience (Including Salary and Benefits)
  • PF for PhDs S14E3: The Tax and Retirement Effects of Receiving Fellowship Funding
  • PF for PhDs S8E10: How This Grad Student’s Finances Changed During the Pandemic
  • Host a PF for PhDs Seminar at Your Institution
  • Emily’s E-mail Address
  • NIH Policies for NRSA Stipends, Compensation and Other Income: Notice number NOT-OD-23-111
  • Code of Federal Regulations: Part 66 National Research Service Awards
  • NIH Grants Policy Statement 11.2.9.2
  • NIH Grants Policy Statement 11.3.8.2
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
Which Postdocs Get Health Insurance and Retirement Accounts?

Teaser

Anonymous: “As a postdoc, I mean, yes, your benefits are important, but you’re so, uh, worried about all of the work that you have to get done scientifically. So I think doing all this extra administrative stuff falls by the wayside more often than not.”

Introduction

Emily: 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: This is Season 21, Episode 3, and today is a mostly solo episode from me plus some short interview segments on what I’ve learned recently about the landscape of postdoc benefits in the US, specifically with respect to health insurance and workplace-based retirement accounts. This discussion of employees vs. non-employees or fellows or trainees may be familiar territory to some of you, but I also know I’m reaching people who have never heard it before with some bright spots. I hope that this episode helps more postdocs access more benefits, but I will not present a single universal solution that can be immediately adopted. Please take what you learn today back to your peers at your institution to converse about what they’re doing for their benefits and what may be possible for all of you together.

Emily: If you’ve been enjoying this podcast, would you please take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts? I just caught up on the reviews on Apple Podcasts after a few years, and they really put a smile on my face. Leaving a review also helps other PhDs and PhDs-to-be find this podcast. Thank you very much! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s21e3/. Without further ado, here’s my episode on postdoc benefits.

First Encounters with Postdoc Employee/Non-Employee Differential Benefits

Emily: I’ll start today’s episode with how I first personally encountered this postdoc employee/non-employee differential benefits weirdness. After my husband defended his PhD, he wanted to get a couple more papers published before applying for jobs or other postdocs, so he arranged to stay in his PhD advisor’s lab as a postdoc until he could finish those up. As his graduate appointment was ending, his advisor gave him three choices as to how he could be hired as a postdoc. All three paid the same gross income.

Emily: First, he could be hired as a fellow aka non-employee. That meant he would have to pay for his health insurance premium out of his income and he would not have access to the university 403(b). Second, he could be hired as an employee. That meant his health insurance premium would be paid on his behalf and he had access to the university 403(b). Third, he could be hired as a contractor. That meant he would have to pay for his health insurance premium out of his income and he would not have access to the university 403(b). The tax implications are also different across these three appointments with respect to the employee and employer sides of FICA aka Social Security and Medicare tax, each 7.65% of his income. As a fellow, neither he nor the university would pay FICA tax. As an employee, his employer would pay their half and he would pay his half. As a contractor, he would pay both halves.

Emily: We thought this was such a strange offer! Since the gross income was held steady across all three, it was clear that the employee position was superior due to the cost of the health insurance, and we definitely wanted the 403(b) benefit, even though there was no match. If he had been offered more money for the fellow or contractor positions as compared to the employee position, maybe we really would have had to weigh the choice, but not as it was presented. It was such a stark difference that we wondered if we were missing something—why wouldn’t he choose the employee position, why was this even under discussion?

Emily: Now, when I look back on this offer, what I find remarkable is not the lack of benefits for the non-employee positions or that the same amount of money was offered, it’s that my husband’s advisor gave him a choice at all. Up until recently, I perceived the postdoc position as falling into one of two broad categories. This was based on my examinations of the benefits offered to postdocs at universities that hired me to speak, if the subject matter included a discussion of retirement accounts. Postdocs could be employees with all the attendant benefits such as employer-provided health insurance, access to the workplace-based retirement account, perhaps an employer-provided retirement account contribution, formal vacation and leave policies, etc. These might be the same suite of benefits offered other staff or faculty members or a modified one. Or postdocs could be non-employees who did not have access to the workplace-based retirement account, had to pay for their health insurance premium out of their own pockets—which was not a tax-deductible expense—and probably did not have the protections that a regular employee would. The only monetary upside to being a fellow over an employee is that your income is not subject to FICA tax, meaning that you don’t have to pay 7.65% of your income in that particular payroll tax. However, the flip side is that you don’t get Social Security credit for those quarters either, so that’s really a double-edged sword.

Postdoc Benefits Examples From the Academic Community

Emily: Way back in Season 2 Episode 3, Dr. McDowell, who at that time was the executive director of Future of Research, shared his observation that

Gary M: “Benefits is just a whole minefield with postdocs, even within the same institution. There can be all sorts of different benefits categories for all sorts of different titles of postdocs.”

Emily: I also thought that your funding source completely determined your status—that postdocs who won individual fellowships or were on institutional training grants had to be classified as non-employees. This view was supported as I heard from postdocs who were shifted from one classification to the other within the same institution; for example, postdocs who started out as employees and then were switched to non-employees when they won a fellowship or were put on a training grant.

Emily: Dr. Jamie Lahvic gave us an example of this occurrence during our interview in Season 14 Episode 3:

Jamie L: “And then as a postdoc, I did have a retirement account offered. However, I started out by like not really contributing very much to it at all because I was living in this really high cost-of-living area with not a lot of income. And then I actually found out as I was going through the fellowship application process that I was going to be losing that retirement contribution once I got a fellowship coming in. So then I sort of, at the last minute just before my fellowship came in, I like maxed out all my contributions as best as I could for like the last few months and tried to top it off. But then the fellowship came in and those accounts kind of sat stagnant for the rest of my postdoc. So that was a frustrating thing to see.”

Emily: For this episode, I spoke with an employee of an organization that issues fellowships who prefers to remain anonymous. She confirmed that sometimes

Anonymous: “We do see that once they’re awarded the fellowship. There is this shift from university employee to like a trainee classification, which is seen on a training grant or if you are awarded an f, you know, you, you suddenly lose your employee status. And unfortunately with that. A lot of times things such as contributing to retirement is no longer on the table. Medical and dental can be compromised in some way, shape or form. And even being able to park on university campus. So we’ve really seen a wide array of employee benefits get stripped away.”

Emily: This happens to some awardees, though not all or even most in her observation. However, in recent years, I’ve realized that the postdoc benefits landscape is much more varied than my initial impression. Postdocs care a lot about receiving benefits, and in some cases they and their institutions have found ways to mitigate the issues caused by being classified as a non-employee or even changed the classification altogether. I do want to point out before we start that term employee is a bit tricky and used differently in different contexts, such as tax vs. labor. For myself, I’m tax-focused, so I go by IRS-related classifications. If you are a US citizen, permanent resident, or resident for tax purposes, and your income is reported on a Form W-2 and you have access to a workplace-based retirement account, perhaps after a waiting period, I would call you an employee. For nonresidents, your tax reporting might be on a Form W-2 or a Form 1042-S with income code 19 or 20. If your income as a US citizen or resident is reported in some other way and you don’t have access to the workplace-based retirement account, I would call you a non-employee, at least with respect to that income. For nonresidents, if your tax reporting is on a Form 1042-S with income code 16, I would call you a non-employee. Income tax withholding for US citizens and residents falls similarly: if you’re an employee, your income tax will be withheld on your behalf, and if you’re a non-employee, it might not be withheld on your behalf. If you’re a nonresident, it’s going to be withheld either way.

Emily: I need to define another term here: workplace-based retirement account. I’m using this as a catch-all term for 403(b)s, 457s, and state-sponsored retirement plans, whichever applies at a given institution. An IRA, individual retirement arrangement, is not tied to your workplace. The postdoc benefits situation is considerably different than the grad student benefits situation, even though either might be classified as employees or non-employees. Grad student benefits are more similar across the board, whereas for postdocs there can be a vast difference between being classified as an employee vs. non-employee. I’m painting with a broad brush, but it seems to me that grad students are always offered student health insurance. If they opt in, the health insurance premium is typically paid in full or in large part on their behalf, and it is not included in their taxable income, and that applies whether they are employees or non-employees. For postdoc employees, their employee health insurance premiums are paid at least in part by the employer, and the premiums are not included in their taxable income. For postdoc non-employees, the premium might be paid for from a separate stipend or they might pay for it out of their regular income, but either way the money that pays the premium is supposed to be included in their taxable income. I’ve even come across postdocs who are not offered a reasonably priced health insurance plan by their universities, so they go through the marketplace to purchase insurance.

Emily: Grad students are not typically given access to their university’s retirement account, whether they are employees or non-employees. In certain circumstances, grad student employees are granted access, like Eun Bin Go, whom I interviewed in Season 8 Episode 10, but it’s quite rare that any grad students actually contribute to the plan. I have never come across a full-time grad student who receives a retirement contribution match. Postdoc employees are typically given access to their university’s retirement account, sometimes after a waiting period, and they sometimes receive an automatic or a matching contribution from their employers. Postdoc non-employees are not given access to their university’s retirement account. When it comes to FICA tax, grad students virtually never pay FICA tax, regardless of their classification, whereas postdoc employees pay their half of the tax and postdoc non-employees don’t pay the tax. Grad students may have little awareness of whether they are considered employees or non-employees, because the benefits difference is negligible to non-existent. In fact, if anything, it’s preferable to be a non-employee on fellowship, because that typically translates into a larger stipend. Speaking for myself, I barely registered when my status changed back and forth during grad school because it didn’t impact my pay, benefits, or day-to-day work. However, postdocs absolutely notice these differences in benefits when they are hired or when they switch, and all too often, the pay is held constant between the two classifications.

Commercial

Emily: 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 2025-2026 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, medical school, postdoc office, or postdoc association? My workshops are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Orientations, postdoc appreciation week, or 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.

How Can Postdocs Who Are Classified as Non-employees Gain Some Employee Benefits?

Emily: First, I’m going to address how postdocs gain benefits at institutions where they are by default classified as non-employees based on their funding source. Second, I’m going to point out that some institutions classify all postdocs as full employees regardless of their funding source. Part 1: How can postdocs who are classified as non-employees gain some employee benefits?

Emily: My curiosity into this question was piqued within the last year when I independently conversed in detail about benefits with two different postdocs at Emory. Both were funded by fellowship/training grant-type funding, so both were primarily classified as non-employees. However, they both accessed a workaround available at Emory, namely being given a very part-time employee appointment so that they could maintain their health insurance benefit and access to Emory’s 403(b). The second postdoc I spoke with, Dr. Celina Jones, asked me if I knew of postdocs on NIH fellowships and training grants who received a retirement contribution match from their institutions, and I offered to ask my mailing list about it. This is the text of the email I sent on January 16, 2025:

“Do you receive a retirement match and if so HOW?

I had a request for information come in from Dr. Celina Jones, who is a postdoc at Emory on an F32.

Celina started off as a postdoc employee at Emory with all the attendant benefits. When she switched onto her F32, she and her PI created a workaround so that she can still access employee health insurance and the 403(b)… but her efforts to retain her retirement match have been stymied.

Celina and I want to know: Do any other postdocs on NIH training grants receive a retirement match from their institutions? She would love to bring some examples back to Emory to advocate for this benefit.

It’s a no-brainer to me that postdocs should not LOSE benefits (read: money) when switching from employee to non-employee status—if anything, they should receive a pay increase or bonus—so I really want to know if solutions are out there!

Please email me back if you have a relevant example!

Emily”

Emily: The responses I received from postdocs underlined that the workaround these Emory postdocs used was not known to everyone. Several respondents confirmed that they had lost their benefits when switching from employee to non-employee status, with no workarounds offered. A couple of grad students replied with outrage and concern that this was an issue their peers were facing and that they might face in the future. Dr. Richard Remigio, a postdoc at NIH, replied “If matching is considerably important, I often hear awardees declining their award so they can remain on their university’s payroll and list the offered award in their CV.” What a sad situation when an award offers prestige but not only no material benefit but actually a material detriment.

Emily: But something else I’ve realized is that not all postdocs are left to workarounds vs. staying as complete non-employees.

Where Are All Postdocs Classified as Employees?

Emily: As I said earlier, I originally thought that the source of a postdoc’s funding determined their employee or non-employee classification, and that receiving funding from an NIH fellowship or institutional training grant meant that you had to be a non-employee. However, two years ago, the NIH made a splash with this innocuously phrased notice. Notice number NOT-OD-23-111 is titled “NIH Policies for NRSA Stipends, Compensation and Other Income” and reads:

“The purpose of this Notice is to remind the extramural community of the policies surrounding stipends, compensation and other income for trainees and fellows supported under Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) grants. 

In accordance with 42 CFR Part 66, NIH provides stipends to NRSA fellows and trainees as a subsistence allowance to help defray living expenses during the research training experience. NIH does not provide stipends as a condition of employment with either the Federal government or the sponsoring institution (See NIH Grants Policy Statement 11.2.9.2 and 11.3.8.2). 

While stipends are not provided as a condition of employment, this policy is not intended to discourage or otherwise prevent recipient institutions from hiring NRSA trainees and fellows as employees or providing them with benefits consistent with what the institution provides others at similar career stages.”

Basically, the NIH was saying, “Hey universities, we never said that you couldn’t hire NRSA fellows and trainees as employees—you totally can if you want to.” Even the end of the notice seems like a nudge to universities to provide benefits to NRSA recipients that are commensurate with those provided to other postdocs. After seeing that notice, I wondered whether any institutions had already been hiring NRSA postdocs as employees or started after the reminder. So at this year’s National Postdoctoral Association Annual Conference and Graduate Career Consortium Annual Meeting, I asked people I met who work in postdoc offices about postdoc benefits and whether all of their postdocs were hired as employees. I actually did meet a few people who confirmed that all of the postdocs at their institutions were hired as employees. For one example, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX. At the Graduate Career Consortium Annual Meeting, Briana Mohan, the Program Manager of Recruitment & Special Programs in the Office for Postdocs, spoke with me at length about all the postdocs being employees. Dr. Ryan Udan, the Program Director for Academic Operations in the Office for Postdocs described all their benefits. The following audio clip will also appear in a forthcoming podcast episode about on-campus resources.

Ryan U: “In terms of resources that my postdocs can access that would improve their finances, I would simply say it is the benefits at our institution. Our employees and trainees have equal access to these benefits. These benefits include things like free mental health counseling through our MDLive, also counseling through our employee assistance fund. We also have an employee assistance fund that our postdocs can apply to receive extra funds for any kind of specific situations. Other benefits are health related benefits, we have a very amazing fitness facility that they can join for free. They can also join programs through our UT Blue Cross insurance. So they can have a hinge health for free for people that have joint issues. There’s several weight loss programs. We also have child care coverage, that’s through a program called Bright Horizons. It’s actually a backup dependent care system, it’s not supposed to be used on a regular basis but you get at least 100 hours per year for backup dependent care. And I know that there’s a couple extra resources but I can’t think of them right now.”

Emily: Amazing! It’s great to hear that some institutions are looking out for all of their postdocs and trying to give them a really positive workplace experience.

Conclusion

Emily: So now I’ve learned, and perhaps you have as well, that being awarded an NIH NRSA or similar fellowship or grant as a postdoc does not mean that your position will lack the benefits that your postdoc employee peers have. At some institutions, the funding source makes no difference as all postdocs are employees. At others, you can be hired as a part-time employee to get some of the benefits. However, there are apparently still a lot of postdocs who are dealing with being classified as a non-employee and not receiving benefits. If you’re in this situation currently or you’re anticipating taking a postdoc position in the future, what can you do to give yourself a better chance of getting the same or almost the same benefits as the postdoc employees?

Emily: First, if you’re searching or interviewing for postdoc positions, consider targeting institutions where all postdocs are hired as employees or where there is an established workaround. Second, again during the interviewing process or after being hired, try to find the right administrator at the institution who can help you with your classification or a workaround.

Emily: Our anonymous contributor shared that she helps her fellows do this:

Anonymous: “ I think if you can identify the right people to talk to, which is easier said than done, I believe that people want to help the postdocs, I don’t think that they’re out to make their lives harder. It’s just following protocol.”

Emily: However, she observed that this is a bit easier for an outside funder acting as a liaison to do because they have more experience and ongoing relationships, plus

Anonymous: “As a postdoc, yes, your benefits are important, but you’re so worried about all of the work that you have to get done scientifically. So I think doing all this extra administrative stuff falls by the wayside more often than not.”

Emily: Third, if you’re already in a postdoc position as a non-employee, talk with your peers about their funding sources and benefits, such as through the postdoc association or union. You may find that a workaround can be put in place for you and your peers in a similar situation. This becomes more and more likely the more people speak up about this issue and point to solutions at other institutions. Jamie Lahvic from Season 14 Episode 3 also spoke to this approach during our interview:

Jamie L: “Great groups to kind of connect to for that are unions. Within the UC system, we have a strong postdoc union. And I think they had done a lot of pushing, both on how much you get paid, but also a lot of these minute policies about how you get paid. Even outside of a formal union, I’ve seen a lot of success from graduate students and postdocs just banding together and working together on these things. Whether that is kind of peer-to-peer advice and providing resources, or working together as a group to request something from your department, from your university.”

Emily: Fourth, if you can’t be hired as an employee and no workaround is available, you can attempt to negotiate for more money. Calculate the amount of money that you are losing compared to your employee peers with respect to your health insurance premium and its tax payment and the retirement account match. Ask for that much or more to be added to your salary. Honestly, if you’ve won an individual award and are bringing outside money to your institution, you should be paid even more than employees after normalizing for all benefits, and this does happen sometimes, although it may not be typical. Gary McDowell from S2 E3 observed that:

Gary M: “A lot postdocs are negotiating salaries a lot more than I think people know. I think there’s disparity in who’s asking who’s not asking.”

Emily: If all postdocs at your institution are on a set pay schedule and individual negotiations are not permitted, that’s all the more reason to get together with your peers to argue that all postdoc non-employees should receive a pay increase and/or additional benefits. Please let me know your reaction to this episode! Tell me about your workarounds or which institutions hire all postdocs as employees. You can reach me at [email protected].

Outro

Emily: 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.

Are PhDs in a Financial Emergency?

April 7, 2025 by Jill Hoffman

In this episode, Emily shares her thoughts on whether PhDs are in a financial emergency. It’s possible that you are facing a financial emergency because you’ve been laid off or your grants have been terminated or interrupted or there’s some risk of that happening in the future. In this episode, Emily explores 1) what she learned from attending the National Postdoctoral Association’s Annual Conference in March, 2) what steps she recommends that you take in your personal finances and your career if you are in a financial emergency, and 3) what she’s giving away this spring to help you in this turbulent time.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • PF for PhDs Tax Workshops
  • Op-Ed by Tom Kimbis: Federal research instability risks postdoc careers, American leadership
  • National Postdoctoral Association Survey Results: Impact on Postdocs from Executive Branch Actions 
  • PF for PhDs Tax Center for PhDs-in-Training
  • PF for PhDs Spring 2025 Giveaway
  • Emily’s E-mail Address
  • PF for PhDs AMA with Sam Hogan on the PhD Home-Buying Process
  • PF for PhDs Book Giveaway for The Entrepreneurial Scholar by Ilana Horwitz
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
Are PhDs in a Financial Emergency?

Introduction

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.

This is Season 20, Episode 7, and today you’re getting my thoughts on whether PhDs are in a financial emergency. It’s possible that you are facing a financial emergency because you’ve been laid off or your grants have been terminated or interrupted or there’s some risk of that happening in the future. In this episode, I’m going to share with you 1) what I learned from attending the National Postdoctoral Association’s Annual Conference in March, 2) what steps I recommend that you take in your personal finances and your career if you are in a financial emergency, and 3) what I’m giving away this spring to help you as best I can.

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. I do license these workshops to universities, but in the case that yours declines your request for sponsorship, you can purchase the appropriate version as an individual. Go to PFforPhDs.com/taxreturnworkshop/ to read more details and purchase the workshop. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s20e7/. Without further ado, here’s my episode on whether PhDs are in a financial emergency.

I attended the National Postdoctoral Association Annual Conference in March, and it was quite valuable for me to get to speak with postdocs and postdoc office personnel about what’s happening on their university campuses and with their jobs. Everything has been so chaotic this spring in terms of the actions of the new administration and the responses from the judicial and legislative branches, it’s really hard to keep up with. Thankfully, some of the presenters pivoted their planned sessions to address what’s been happening and academia’s response, and the conference helped me to clarify a few of my thoughts, which I’ll share with you in this episode. Part 1 is what I took away from the NPA conference. Part 2 is what you can do in your personal finances to best weather the present storm, and I’m going to include specific advice for different stages of PhD training and employment. Part 3 is what I’m giving to you over the next couple of months and why and how you can access everything.

Part 1: My Take-Aways from the National Postdoctoral Association Annual Conference

This was my first time attending NPA, and I attended as a sponsor, and I thought it was a wonderful conference. I attend conferences both for networking with potential clients and my own professional development, and in this case the timing was really good for me to get a sense of how universities are responding to the funding cuts and so forth. Because this conference was focused on postdocs, I didn’t hear much specifically about graduate education, but I’m sure I will learn more when I attend other similar conferences later this year. At this conference, I especially appreciated the talks from Tom Kibis from the NPA and Nicholas Dirks from the New York Academy of Sciences, the session co-led by Meagan Heirwegh from Caltech, Sofie Kleppner from Stanford, Julia Parrish from the University of Washington, and Zoe Fonseca-Kelly from Harvard, and my conversation with Alberto Roca of Diverse Scholar, as they most directly addressed the current situation.

My overall take-away from the conference is that everyone is bracing for a tough time economically. The tough time has already started but will get worse in the next fiscal year, which typically starts in July, if we continue on the track we’re on. Some universities have instituted hiring freezes, which may or may not extend to postdocs and graduate students. I’m sure we’ve all seen reports of graduate programs rescinding offers and just generally admitting fewer graduate students than has been typical in recent years. Positions that are funded by soft money, which means external grants and contracts, are most at risk of being eliminated.

Tom Kimbis, the CEO of the NPA, referred to the results of a survey of NPA members conducted in February; the survey results and an op-ed by Tom are linked in the show notes. The headline numbers from that survey are that 43% of postdocs say their job or position is threatened and 35% say that their research is delayed or otherwise in jeopardy.

The overall climate of the conference was of great concern for the postdoc workforce, particularly international postdocs. If we don’t see major pushback from Congress or via the judiciary, there will be a lot fewer postdoc positions available next year. Again, we’ve already seen the reduction in PhD program offers, and this is honestly the responsible step for PIs to take as they face uncertainty regarding their grants. So the postdoc itself as a training step is in jeopardy. And, broadening beyond this specific conference, the research enterprise as a whole in the US is under threat.

A lot of current postdocs will need to find new positions in the near future. Again, the highest level of concern is for international postdocs if temporary visas are harder to come by and fewer jobs are available overall. Will those positions be in academia or the federal government? We all know how few people were being hired as tenure-track faculty members before this attack on research, and that market is only going to get tighter, and I think hiring for non-tenure track academic and governmental jobs is also going to be quite limited. Understandably, institutions feel most responsible for their current employees and probably won’t want to extend themselves too much in hiring.

I don’t mean to give the impression that the conference attendees were throwing up their hands in defeat. There was plenty of talk about what people generally and postdocs offices specifically can do to meet the moment, and I heard some creative ideas about how to keep people on payroll to at least give them more time to find another job.

However, from what I heard, most of the discussion was around helping PhDs prepare for and land jobs in “industry.” What I didn’t hear enough discussion about was the likely upcoming recession and how that is already affecting hiring in the private sector. While the pain might be less acute in the private sector in comparison with government and academia, again, if we continue on this route, there will be an overall contraction in the labor market. PhDs typically have a very low unemployment rate, but I am definitely skeptical of industry’s ability to provide jobs to a glut of PhDs exiting the federal government and academia in the coming months. Some private companies are already conducting layoffs, even when not directly or substantially funded by the federal government. Of course, this will be worse in some sectors and not so bad in others, and I expect the most pain will be felt by PhDs in areas of research that are more dependent on funding from the federal government.

So the conclusion is: A lot of PhDs are going to lose their jobs, whether that’s called a layoff or a firing or a contract not being renewed. I suspect the unemployment rate or at least underemployment rate among PhDs is going to go higher than we’ve seen in recent recessions because academia is being targeted, and that PhDs are going to land in jobs that are different from their previous career aspirations. Many PhDs on temporary visas will have to exit the country, even if they would like to stay, because they can’t find an appropriate position fast enough when their current one ends. I’m not much one for prognostication and it really pains me to report such a grim outlook, but that is how I see it.

Part 2: Financial Steps You Should Take Right Now

I want everyone who works in academia or research to consider that they may now or soon be in a financial emergency and to take appropriate steps. Since the main threat at the moment is loss of income, rather than being underpaid or experiencing rapidly rising expenses, the steps are to serve both your finances and your career.

First, I’ll share some steps I think everyone should take, and then I’ll share some stage-specific suggestions. To begin with, please assess your finances holistically. What are your assets: bank account balances, investments, property, etc.? What are your liabilities: credit card debt, buy now pay later debt, student loans, a car loan, a mortgage, medical debt, IRS debt, etc.? What is your current income? What are your current expenses? Specifically, I want you to focus on one type of asset and one type of debt. What I’m sharing next is an abbreviated form of the financial framework that I teach in my live workshops.

The asset is your emergency fund. The best practice is to have a separate, named high-yield savings account for your emergency fund so that you can be super clear about the money available to you in the case of an emergency vs. the money available to spend on a monthly basis on regular expenses or annual basis on irregular expenses. Based on your current expenses, for how many months could your emergency fund support you if you were to lose your primary income? If your answer is that you don’t have an emergency fund or it’s smaller than three months of expenses, please make it your top financial priority to build the fund to that level. This is a slightly larger recommendation than I have made in the past specifically because of the unique threat we are under. You should consider yourself to be in a financial emergency until you reach this goal—more on this in a bit.

The debt is credit card debt. The best practice is to carry no balances on your credit cards, and in fact to use your credit cards as if they are debit cards, only making a purchase if you could pay for it right then with the money already in your bank account. If you could not immediately pay off all your credit cards and switch to using only debit cards, you are in credit card debt—even if you never pay interest. Following the creation of your 3-month emergency fund, your next financial goal should be to clear this credit card debt. However, I recommend that you keep the credit cards open as long as they don’t have an annual fee; you may need these lines of credit in the future if you do lose your income or incur a large, unexpected expense such as a move. Holding debt of this kind also puts you in a financial emergency.

If you’re a little further along in your financial journey, I want you to increase your emergency fund size to six months of expenses. That would be if you have no credit card or other high-interest debt, have other savings for near-term expenses, and have started investing. If all those elements are in place, you’re not in a financial emergency, but you should put some extra financial effort into building your emergency fund to six months of expenses. Once you’ve achieved that goal, you’re in a very strong financial position and don’t have to be quite so intense about keeping a high savings rate.

The next step is to assess your job security and career security. If you haven’t yet, this is the time to talk with your advisor or boss about the source or sources of your paycheck and the group, office, or company’s overall funding. You may learn that the source of your income is entirely or largely independent of federal funding, such as from a private foundation or tuition. You may learn that the source of your income is federal, but there are currently no concerns about its continuity. Or you may learn that the source of your funding is federal and is tenuous. We’ve already seen many grants cancelled or temporarily paused, and so you would probably know if you were in that group because you’ve either already lost your job or you’ve been switched to some kind of emergency or temporary funding. Or perhaps your advisor is currently funded but not optimistic about securing more grants due to the shifted funding priorities of the new administration. In those latter cases, assuming your emergency fund meets the levels I just outlined, throw your efforts into preparing for a job or career transition.

Now let’s get to some practical steps. We’ll do the financial first and then the career. If you’ve self-diagnosed that you’re in a financial emergency or have a financial goal that you should strenuously work toward, how should you do so? Let’s look first at expenses. Normally, when I teach about reducing expenses, I do so with a focus on long-term sustainability, so I talk a lot about right-sizing housing and transportation and other large, fixed expenses. Right now, I’m not so concerned about sustainability, because you have a short-term, highly urgent goal of increasing your emergency fund or paying off high-priority debt. That means slashing your discretionary expenses, essentially engaging in a limited-term fast from anything you can possibly spare.

The question you should ask yourself is: If I had no income right now, would I spend money on this? If the answer is no, don’t spend on it and put all the money you can free up toward your financial goal. I suggest that you stop spending entirely or as close as you can get on discretionary expenses such as restaurants, takeout, and delivery; entertainment; going out; travel; and shopping aside from the bare minimum. The exceptions are for expenses for your job search or career pivot, such as expenses related to interviewing or professional development. Delay every expense that you can delay, even what you might consider necessary expenses. Take a hard look at your subscriptions and cancel everything that you would cancel if you didn’t have an income. You can always restart them when you’ve reached your goal.

For me personally, it would be really hard, but if I didn’t have a fully funded emergency fund right now, I would cancel my gym membership, take my kids out of their pay-by-the-month extracurricular activities, cancel all our streaming services including Amazon Prime, skip my next haircut, and put off some much-desired-but-not-strictly-urgent home repairs.

You can also try to increase your income to reach your urgent financial goals. Normally, when teaching on increasing income, I say to focus on income-generating activities that also advance your career goals. That’s still great work if you can get it, but with our top-of-mind objective of adding to your emergency fund or paying off debt, you can pursue other types of work as well. Whatever gives you the best pay rate-to-time or pay rate-to-energy ratio is worthwhile. In fact, diversifying your income sources so that you are less directly or indirectly dependent on the federal government is a great idea in the short term.

Finally, I suggest planning where you would turn should you lose your income and deplete your emergency fund. If you would turn to debt, think through what is the least toxic type of debt available to you. Credit cards are an easy option, which is why I want you to pay them down but not close them, but as they come at such a high interest rate, they might not be your best option. If you have good credit, you might be able to get another type of loan like a personal loan or a home equity line of credit, but it’s going to be more difficult if you wait until after you’ve lost your income. If things got really dire, would it be possible for you to move in with a family member or friend until you get back on your feet?

Turning our focus back to your job or career, I suggest devoting serious time to professional development, and that goes whether you perceive your job to be at risk or not. Of course, the more unstable your job or career is, the more important it is to engage with this. If you don’t know already, you need to figure out, as I heard one person at NPA put it, your career plans B, C, and D and start setting yourself up to pursue them. If you are affiliated with a university, this means patronizing professional development events and the career center. Check if there are recordings of past events that you can catch up on as a full suite of topics is probably covered over the course of 12 to 24 months.

Networking is vital right now, and again that goes whether you anticipate a near-term job search or not. Yes, use LinkedIn and attend local meet-ups, but also make an effort to connect individually with people you know from past degrees or past jobs. It’s always great to catch up with an old friend or colleague, and it doesn’t have to be like “Can you offer me a job?” Just ask what they’re up to and if their industry has been impacted by the new policies. Then if you do need to come around again with a serious request, it won’t be so out of the blue.

By the way, when you’re networking, keep two things in mind: 1) What can you offer the person you’re speaking with? It could be continued friendship or information or access to your own network. 2) By keeping up with your network, you might very well be able to help a friend or colleague. So do this not just for yourself, but to help the people you know find great-fit jobs and careers. We should all increase our networking activities right now, not just if we have an urgent need.

So far I’ve only mentioned networking with peers and colleagues, but don’t forget that people outside of your profession can be part of your network and prove very helpful, especially if you are considering changing industries. To that end, speak openly about your career aspirations and industry concerns with people you know socially. In fact, it will be a great boon to your mental health if you lean into in person social groups and gatherings in this difficult time. Remember that you are much more than just a researcher; you are a well-rounded human being with unique hobbies, interests, beliefs, etc.

Commercial

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.

Financial Advice for Each Stage of Your Academic Career

We’ve spoken in general terms to this point about assessing your finances and your career stability and some steps you can take to prepare for a loss of income. Nothing I’ve said so far is extreme, and you will improve your finances and career by following the advice, even if you never lose your income. Now let’s delve into some stage-specific advice for those who have lost their income or whose income is at higher risk. We’ll start with people earlier in the PhD career track and move to later.

A) Prospective graduate students: If you’re still interested in graduate school after all this, more power to you. Go ahead and apply next fall or whenever is appropriate for you. But please apply for jobs as well in case admission or funding doesn’t work out. Seriously consider whether a master’s or PhD is more appropriate for your career goals and whether it might be worth paying for a master’s, even if your original plan was to pursue a funded PhD. I can’t yet tell how the landscape will shift between those two types of graduate programs. It might be worth taking a couple of years to work before you head back to graduate school; you will have more clarity about your career goals and what academia can offer you and will also be in a stronger financial position to start graduate school if you use your income intentionally. When you apply to graduate school, please apply widely for fellowships. Consider programs abroad as well as in the US. Also, listen to my advice for rising and current graduate students.

B) Rising graduate students: Some of you have gotten a really raw deal, and I’m sorry. The fact that this attack went down literally during admissions season was the worst possible timing for you. If you’re still headed to graduate school, take a really critical eye to the stability of your funding, and do your best to build financial and career security if you do perceive your funding to be tenuous. More on that next in the section for current graduate students. Also, as you start graduate school, do your best to keep your large, fixed expenses like housing and transportation as low as is comfortable for you so that you can maintain a savings rate. Your emergency fund, etc. could become a lifeline if things go south.

C) Current graduate students: If your funding does not seem to be secure, layer in financial and career stability in other ways. 1) Apply widely for funding opportunities, focusing outside the federal government. 2) Establish at least one side stream of income, if that’s legally and morally permissible for you. Ideally, this would be from a career-advancing activity. 3) Treat every year of graduate school like it might be your last, because it very well might be if your funding evaporates. What I mean by this is that you should have at least one big accomplishment to point to within the last 12 months that will translate well to your resume. That could be completing practical classes, mastering skills, finishing your master’s degree, publishing or patenting, etc. You should also be ready on very short notice to conduct a job search, so stay up-to-date on your professional development, career exploration, and networking. This especially goes for international graduate students, who have a very small window of time available to find another position before they would have to leave the country. 4) Submit the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. I certainly hope it doesn’t come to this, but if a small student loan will bridge you to the end of your degree which itself would vastly improve your job prospects, it may be worthwhile. 5) Do your research now on the social supports that would be available to you if you did lose your funding or have to leave grad school abruptly. For example, does your department, school, or university offer any kind of bridge employment or funding? Do graduate students qualify for unemployment in your state, and if so under what circumstances? Does your university offer emergency loans or grants to graduate students? Are there programs through your city that would help you pay for rent or groceries if you lost your income?

D) Current postdocs: Much of the same advice for graduate students applies for you as well, although thankfully you have the security of your finished PhD. Take those steps to shore up your financial and career resources, especially if you are an international postdoc. You should also check into whether you would qualify for unemployment in your state should your position end; don’t assume you will, especially if you are a non-employee.

E) PhDs in government, academia, and nonprofits: You know your situation best, but stay frosty. Like everyone else, you should understand how your position is funded to ascertain its potential instability and be ready to transition out at any time. If you haven’t already, I suggest starting the process of separating your personal identity from that of your job. These can become especially intertwined for tenured or tenure-track faculty. If you do have to separate, it will probably be super painful. I suggest listening to the new podcast Academics and Their Money by former podcast guest, Dr. Inga Timmerman.

F) PhDs in the private sector: Your job is probably the most secure of any that we’ve discussed so far, which is not at all the case in normal times. You will be everyone’s best friend right now if you devote some of your time to networking, doubly so if your company is hiring. It may benefit you in the future, but it will almost certainly benefit your friends and peers.

I have a couple of concluding thoughts, and for these I need to thank the most recent episode of the new podcast Optimist Economy, titled Is This a Recession or Not?, and the financial independence movement.

First thought: During a recession, if you manage to keep your job and assuming you didn’t expect to retire super soon, you are going to be financially fine. You might have some anxiety, and perhaps I’ve fed into that today, but you will come through it in good shape. The pain of recessions is felt mostly by people who lose their jobs, and typically, it’s not so much the losing of the job that’s the worst, it’s the time it takes to get another job, which is lengthened during recessions. That’s why I’ve focused so much time today speaking about how you can prepare yourself for the loss of your income. It’s a low-probability but high-risk event.

However, we have the added wrinkle in the PhD community of being super specialized in our research or skills and perhaps even the sector in which we expect to perform that research or use those skills. For PhDs in academia and government and nonprofit research settings especially, losing your job is so much more than a temporary disruption in income. It’s a rupture of your identity because of how much of yourself you had to put into breaking into that career path. In another time, you might have been able to get a similar job, but that just might not be the case right now if your whole field is contracting. Losing your job might feel like the end of your career. It’s not, it doesn’t have to be, but if you feel that way, it’s going to take some serious inner work to decouple your career from your identity and move on. In this, we can take some inspiration from the financial independence movement. Many early retirees have modeled this process of finding yourself outside of your career. It will look different for someone who is still working, but it is a good example.

Second thought: One of the scariest aspects of losing your job in the good old U S of A is that you likely lose your health insurance as well. That part of it is almost as horrible as losing your income, especially if you are chronically ill or have dependents. There are solutions, however, and again these have been well explored by the financial independence community. It may help you alleviate some anxiety to think through what you would do specifically about health insurance if you were to lose your position.

You might be able to hop onto your spouse or partner’s insurance or your parent’s insurance, depending on your specific eligibility and the cost of doing so. Some insurance plans offer a program known as COBRA, in which you can continue with your same coverage for up to 18 months after you lose your job. Your workplace likely offers COBRA, but your student health insurance plan probably doesn’t qualify. If you are eligible for COBRA, you have up to 60 days to enroll in the program and it covers you retroactively, so you could wait up to 60 days to see if you actually need insurance before starting to pay any premiums. The premiums are going to feel high because you have to pay the portion that your employer was paying previously in addition to the portion you paid before. Another good option is to purchase a health insurance plan through the ACA marketplace in your state. This is the fallback plan for most early retirees who stay in the US, and it is a good one, especially since you likely will just be on the plan in the short term. Finally, another type of plan that’s popular with early retirees is a health care sharing ministry, which is not proper health insurance but serves some of the same functions as health insurance. People like it because it’s less expensive than proper health insurance. I will leave it to you to look into further and decide whether this is a viable or preferable option for you should you lose your job.

Part 3: What I’m Offering You for Free

A few weeks ago, I was feeling really despondent and powerless in the face of all these terrible changes, so I decided to embark on what I’m calling Giveaway Spring. I finished all my scheduled speaking engagements by the end of February, so I have an unusual amount of free time between now and the end of the academic year, and I’ve decided to give away a lot of it.

If you aren’t already on my mailing list and you want to sign up for any of these giveaways, please register through PFforPhDs.com/Giveaway/. You’ll receive an email with all the current giveaways being offered, and I’ll update my mailing list periodically as I add items. I’m planning on expanding the content I’ve shared in this episode into a full webinar, for example, and I’ll give a pilot of that webinar away to a limited number of people on my mailing list after I put it together.

Here are some of the items on offer as part of Giveaway Spring:

1) I’m offering free 60-minute Q&A calls to cross-institutional groups. This would be perfect for a professional society or interest group that has a lot of PhDs and PhDs-to-be. You don’t even have to be on my list to schedule one of those, just email me at [email protected].

2) I’m offering free 30-minute coaching sessions, four per week between now and early June. These are going fast so once you get the link, keep checking back as availability opens up on a rolling basis.

3) I’ve collected all my best free templates and downloadables into one easy folder.

4) I’m hosting a free AMA with Sam Hogan, a mortgage originator specializing in graduate students and PhDs, on April 8, 2025. You can register via PFforPhDs.com/mortgage/.

5) I’m giving away other people’s books! The first giveaway is for The Entrepreneurial Scholar: A New Mindset for Success in Academia and Beyond by Ilana Horwitz. I will keep cycling through my favorite personal finance and academia books throughout the spring. You can sign up for the book giveaway directly at PFforPhDs.com/BookGiveaway/.

6) I’m sharing free opportunities hosted by other groups or people as I find out about them. For example, Princeton’s GradFUTURES conference from a couple of weeks ago went out to my list, and right now via PFforPhDs.com/Giveaway/ you can sign up for an upcoming free webinar from AccessLex titled “Navigating Recent Updates to Student Loan Repayment and Forgiveness.” If you are hosting or know of free events or resources that are related to PhD personal finance or careers that you think I should pass along, please notify me—I would be happy to do so!

Again, the link to find out about all the current giveaways is PFforPhDs.com/Giveaway/. I would really appreciate you sharing that link with your peers. I’m trying to get two things out of these efforts: 1) goodwill within our community and 2) new mailing list subscribers. So you can really help me out with both of those goals by sharing PFforPhDs.com/Giveaway/ or any of the other links I’ve mentioned in this section.

I would be very happy to hear your reactions to the content of this episode if you would like to share them with me. Perhaps you’re hearing different messaging from your university or employer or you think I missed a good piece of advice. Please share any comments with me at [email protected]. Good luck this spring, this year, and this four years. I’m rooting for you.

Outro

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.

Stipend Data and Strikes on the Path to a Grad Student Union

March 24, 2025 by Jill Hoffman

In this episode, Emily interviews Garrett Dunne, a 5th-year PhD candidate in the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Realizing that they were being dramatically underpaid, Garrett and his peers used the data from PhD Stipends to advocate for a significant stipend increase in their department. Subsequently, they joined up with grad students in other schools within the University of Alaska system to unionize and bargain for better pay and health insurance. Garrett’s account of their relatively quick process includes several concrete tips for graduate students at other universities who are advocating to increase their stipends and improve their benefits, including who is in the best position to lead the charge.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • PF for PhDs Tax Workshops
  • PhD Stipends Database
  • PF for PhDs Tax Center for PhDs-in-Training 
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
Stipend Data and Strikes on the Path to a Grad Student Union

Teaser

Garrett (00:00): Disturbing and depressing is probably the best way I can put it. And so it, it does take students that are in that position of safety and strength to then advocate for the people who are a lot more vulnerable.

Introduction

Emily (00:19): 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 (00:47): This is Season 20, Episode 6, and today my guest is Garrett Dunne, a 5th-year PhD candidate in the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Realizing that they were being dramatically underpaid, Garrett and his peers used the data from PhD Stipends to advocate for a significant stipend increase in their department. Subsequently, they joined up with grad students in other schools within the University of Alaska system to unionize and bargain for better pay and health insurance. Garrett’s account of their relatively quick process includes several concrete tips for graduate students at other universities who are advocating to increase their stipends and improve their benefits, including who is in the best position to lead the charge.

Emily (01:32): 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. I do license these workshops to universities, but in the case that yours declines your request for sponsorship, you can purchase the appropriate version as an individual. Go to PFforPhDs.com/taxreturnworkshop/ to read more details and purchase the workshop. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s20e6/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Garrett Dunne.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:44): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Garrett Dunne, who is a fifth year PhD candidate at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. And we are going to discuss increasing grad student stipends through a couple of different mechanisms. And I, I won’t say more than that now, but hopefully you’ll take away a couple of actionables that may be applicable at your own university as well. So, Garrett, would you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

Garrett (03:08): Hi, everybody. Uh, I am Garrett Dunne. Uh, I’m a fifth year, as you said, PhD candidate, university of Alaska Fairbanks. I study, uh, two species of a shark in Alaska. Um, I’m trying to improve the federal stock assessment for those two species. Uh, I did my undergraduate work at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, and then I did my master’s degree at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. But did my field work in, uh, based outta Biloxi, Mississippi in the, uh, Gulf of Mexico. The naming has changed, but I’m gonna go with Mul- Gulf of Mexico. Um, and then I have been working on and off in Alaska for about the last decade, uh, primarily on fishes. I started with Salmonids and then transitioned into sharks, which is my true passion. But, uh, salmons where the money is made.

Emily (03:53): Wow, okay. You’ve lived all over the place. I was gonna ask if you’re an Alaska native or anything, but it sounds like you’ve been living there on and off for 10 years.

Garrett (04:00): Yeah, originally I’m from New England. I split my time between New Hampshire and Massachusetts, but I really have kind of lived all over the country. Um, and I settled in Alaska full-time about four years ago now,

The Impacts of Low Pay and Poor Healthcare in Grad School

Emily (04:12): Speaking of four years ago, that is when we first started our email correspondence. <laugh>, uh, the listeners, sometimes it takes this long to our podcast episode to get into production. So, so four years ago you emailed me about the project that I have going on PhD stipends, PhDstipends.com, which is a database of self-reported stipend information all across the US and actually outside the US as well. So let us know, like what was going on with you back in 2021ish, like what was the pay you were receiving the benefits and like what led you to reaching out about this dataset?

Garrett (04:47): Unsurprisingly, it was because the pay and, uh, university healthcare was underwhelming. So, uh, in 2021, uh, there was a bunch of different levels within my college. University of Alaska Fairbanks breaks up the way that they, uh, pay students one by college and then usually within the college. It’s multiple different levels, but for sake of ease here, if you averaged out what master’s students were making at different levels and PhD students were making at different levels, uh, in 2021, the average salary was, uh, about 21,500 annually for a graduate student at UAF. Um, and the, to further complicate things that really depended on, uh, what type of funding you were through, um, the UAF and kind of UA system is funded through a very large patchwork of different ways to be funded. I, myself have been funded as a TA, RA and fellow, uh, throughout my five years. Um, and at different times and in different orders. I started as an RA, moved to fellowship, moved to TA, and now I’m an RA again. Um, so it’s a bit complicated and the numbers change a little bit depending on what style of funding you have. Um, sadly, uh, after my first year of being an RA, I moved to a fellowship, um, and in some ways that was easier, uh, but it did not leave enough room for summer funding, so I was unpaid in the summers. So while my take home should have been 21,500, my effective take home, because of the lack of pay in the summers was about 17,000, um, which is quite low. And the cost of living in Alaska is very high. Um, the federal government adjusts, I think their numbers from I think 1.25 or 1.5 times the poverty line, uh, for Alaska and to, in 2021, the poverty line was $16,000 a year, um, in Alaska. So, uh, as a graduate student in the sciences, I was being paid a thousand dollars above the poverty line, and I was forced to take, uh, additional work on in the summers. Um, I didn’t mind taking on that work. It was something that I got to, uh, I I’ve always enjoyed and actually did before going back to graduate school. Uh, but it has significantly delayed my progress on my dissertation. Um, and so yeah, we kind of came to, uh, the realization as a college that we just were not being paid enough. Um, and too many people were living at near poverty levels, and we wanted to, uh, push the graduate school to do better. And most of this work was led by the student organization within my college, so the, the, uh, fisheries student organization where people realized that the healthcare was poor and that, uh, we were being underpaid. And because of this patchwork nature, people were going from making $21,000 a year to me then making 17 a year, and then I wasn’t even sure if I was gonna get paid the following, uh, year. So, uh, quite complex as far as things go.

Emily (07:44): Also, shocking shockingly low numbers for 2021, as you said, in a, a relatively high cost of living area. Um, wow. I mean, I know you just sort of offered part of the effect on your own personal finances, which is that you had to take outside work in the summer, which has then, you know, therefore you’re not working towards your dissertation and that’s gonna push things out. Um, would you be willing to share with us anything else that you experienced on that low stipend at that time or maybe that you observed your peers experiencing?

Garrett (08:16): Yeah, for me personally, it was just I had no ability to save. Um, and so I was living very much paycheck to paycheck. I was in the privileged position of coming into, uh, my PhD with no major debt. Um, so I didn’t have major debt from undergrad or large car loans or a, a home loan, anything like that. And, um, I was living paycheck to paycheck. Uh, and so for others that I had spoke to people coming in with undergraduate debt or master’s debt or medical debt, which is a huge problem in the United States, um, they were actively losing money. Um, and so they were dipping into their own savings to be able to have the privilege of going to the graduate school. And it was becoming a real problem. And once we started digging into it, one of the reasons that we were paid so low was that we realized that the college had not given a pay raise to graduate students since 2008. So we were in 2021, and we had not gotten a pay raise since 2008. And so in 2008, the pay was actually fairly competitive and did keep up at least somewhat with the cost of living in the area. But I used the data set that you provided to then look at how we were being paid nationally and even in compared to low cost of living areas. Um, at 21 5, we were being underpaid. And then you had students like me who were making just above the poverty line, uh, and we were obviously being deeply, deeply underpaid. And so we took this data set. I did most of the data analysis and just kind of made box plots and just looked at the fact that we were being paid underpaid nationally. Um, and within specifically art disciplines, I used your dataset, got rid of everything that didn’t have to do with kind of biological science, and we were still being underpaid, um, nationally. And again, we, we <laugh> we live in a relatively high cost of living area. Yeah, it is not one of the major coastal cities, but Alaska’s expensive and especially the stuff that graduate students need, food is very expensive. Housing used to be inexpensive. Um, that has changed actually just really in the last five years, especially in, uh, the major campus areas, which would be Anchorage Fairbanks in Juneau. Um, I don’t live in any of those partially because of the high cost of living. Um, but with food and shelter being expensive, uh, it really, really dips into our ability to, uh, survive up here, um, and not have to dip into savings or take out loans, which, uh, many other students did.

Emily (10:40): Yeah, so the, the data from PhD stipends, okay, first of all, I was in graduate school in 2008 <laugh>, and those numbers are still not that rosy. Um, especially I was even in a moderate cost of living area and I was being paid more than that. Um, yes. Okay, so <laugh>, your lived experience is were barely above the poverty line. People are having to, you know, do outside work and these kinds of things to, to get along here. That’s your lived experience. Then also, you look at this data set and you’re like, wow, wow, wow. Okay, everybody else across the board is getting paid more than us. What, what was the, and you did this data analysis and then what was the next step that you took, like with approaching the administration, for example?

Using Data to Negotiate a Long Overdue Pay Increase

Garrett (11:20): The last part of that analysis was looking and saying, okay, so we are being underpaid. And then, uh, actually adjusting, using the federal numbers to adjust what we were being paid to the current marketplace. So taking in co- uh, inflation and the fact that the federal government says that our poverty le- poverty level is higher. And so our average was 21500, adjusting for all of that. It was about 30,000 is what we should have been paid in 2021 compared to what it was in 2008, which I think is definitely more competitive. Still not that competitive, but more competitive. Um, and so our next steps after having those numbers, having this write up in all of this data analysis was mostly getting, uh, at first graduate students riled up. I mean, all of this came outta the fact that we kept having these student meetings and all these graduate students were saying, I can’t pay for the healthcare. I’m having to ch- choose. I’m having to ration meals I’m having to live in. Um, uh, one of the unique experiences, the University of Alaska Fairbanks is dry cabin living. And it is not something that a lot of people think about. Fairbanks gets incredibly cold. Uh, last winter we hit negative 50 Fahrenheit, so aggressively cold. So heating buildings is not always feasible. And so a lot of the cabins do not have running water. And so a lot of graduate students have had to resort to living in dry cabins that are heated in a variety of ways with no running water.

Emily (12:44): That’s a new one for me. Wow. Yes.

Garrett (12:46): Yeah. And so that had used to be the way that you could save money and attend the university is an experience. Um, and not everyone dislikes it, but it is a difficult one. Um, and those dry cabins have actually gotten quite expensive. And so, you know, even when I joined the university in 2020, uh, those were usually 400, $500 a month and you could get a small cabin for yourself. Uh, those prices have skyrocketed close to a thousand dollars a month for the privilege to live without running water. Um, and so during covid, the university shut down shower access, we have lots of students living in dry cabins, so that got everyone quite angry. And then we all got together, decided that the pay was too low, the healthcare sucked, got us all angry, and then we approached our faculty. Um, and not all faculty were supportive, but my advisor was quite supportive. And a couple of new faculty especially were supportive of this because, similar to your experience, which was they looked around, they went, oh wow, we’re not paying these students enough. And they had seen other university systems and seen the conditions for other graduate students and were very supportive of bringing that forward. And so we got a large portion of the graduate students, a number of the faculty, and then we approached the dean. Um, and that is how we pushed forward with it and said, you are criminally underpaying us. Some people are living at or below the poverty line. Something needs to be done. Um, and we did effectively, uh, petition for a, a pay pay increase. Um, it wasn’t everything we wanted, but it was at least a, a sizable increase.

Emily (14:17): How long did that take from, from the point of, um, I guess first approaching the dean to the pay increase? What was that timeline?

Garrett (14:27): The timeline for approval was surprisingly short. I think that was about a month, two months of negotiation. Um, we did have to wait to the next fiscal year for it to be implemented, however, so that took a a bit longer. Um, I think the problem was we had told the dean a problem for him was that we had told him that we were gonna start going to the papers. Um, the fact that we had students living in poverty and squalor, um, was a real problem and it was gonna look really bad for the dean and the university. Um, we were also significantly underpaid compared to the other science disciplines within the university program. Um, the other colleges, uh, in, in other sciences especially, uh, geoscience, aerospace, those kind of programs are quite well funded. And as I said, we hadn’t gotten a pay raise since 2008, so it was, uh, a bit of an issue.

Emily (15:19): So you used PhD stipends, but you also were gathering data from your peers at your university?

Garrett (15:24): Yeah, absolutely. And just saying that we were even being underpaid within the university system, so PhD stipends was absolutely one of the best ways we could say, look, not only are you underpaying us compared to these other colleges, but like you are underpaying us nationally and it’s expensive to be here. Um, so yeah, it was, it was kind of a double whammy.

Emily (15:43): One of the, I guess, points of criticism about PhD stipends that I’ve heard from other advocates is at least that what they heard when they presented the data was, this is self-reported. This has not been verified by anybody. Did you get any pushback like that or was it just so obvious in your case that we overlook that?

Garrett (16:04): Uh, I had to do a lot of cleaning of the dataset to make sure that we were getting out outlier values. ’cause there are definitely some things that have been mistyped and, you know, we had to take out some of the small values and some of the extreme values where you’ve got somebody who’s counting their stipend as like they’re being paid by a tech company to go back to school and they’re reporting that they’re getting 80,000 or $90,000 a year to go back to graduate school. We had to pull all of that out, but we really didn’t get much pushback on it because it was just so obvious that we were being underpaid. Even if some people were misreporting and there were some outlier values still contained within it, um, yeah, we didn’t get much pushback and the fact that they hadn’t given us pay raise since 2008, pretty much just it was self-explanatory, uh, that we, we something needed to be done.

Emily (16:47): Absolutely.

Commercial

Emily (16:50): 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.

The Unionization Movement at University of Alaska

Emily (17:41): And so the next step was you achieved this big win for your department, um, but then you rolled this into a larger movement. Can you tell us about that larger unionization movement?

Garrett (17:53): Yeah, yeah. And, um, I don’t want to undersell this. So we were kind of having this conversation within our own college and push for the pay raise, and we actually got them to, uh, agree to a biennial, uh, pay increase as well, pegged to inflation, which was really nice for us, so we didn’t have to fight for it as often. And as a part of this, we started kind of hearing murmurs in the background that actually the, uh, some of the liberal arts colleges had already started talking about unionization. So I don’t wanna say that we were the, we were the start of this, but we did join in with a lot of gusto. And so we heard that there were other organization groups. And so, um, one of the main reasons that that started in the liberal arts college is to my understanding, they were being paid at or below poverty line at their maximum amount amount of pay. So most of these students were making between like 14 and $17,000 a year, and that was maximum if their summers weren’t paid for. Um, they were making $12,000 a year, um, well below the poverty line for Alaska. And so they had a lot more reason to be even angrier. So they kind of got things started and then we joined in in that process. Um, and so that the murmurings of that happened, I think around the time I got started, uh, in 2020. And then by 2020, late 2021, early 2022 is when things kind of got moving. Um, and I’m, I’m happy to talk more about kind of that process if that’s something you wanna dive into.

Emily (19:29): Yeah. Maybe give us like, ’cause it’s, I mean, we don’t need to motivate this. We obviously see the problem with the pay for the graduate students. Um, I’m more curious about, you know, at the time of either, um, you know, voting to form a union or starting to approach the administration about the contract. Like just go over how that process went for you all. We’ve heard it a couple of times on the podcast before, but every story is a bit unique, so I’d love to hear yours.

Garrett (19:55): Yeah, yeah, the healthcare seems to be one of the biggest drivers for us. The, the pay was always bad, um, for, for most of the graduate students, and that was always an easy one. But we are under United Healthcare Student Resources, um, and United has a reputation, um, deservedly so for being quite poor and frequent to deny pretty much any type of coverage. It’s actually, how I got involved in all of this was I spent about two years fighting with them. And so we kind of took these people who were upset about pay and very much upset about healthcare, and we were getting a lot of pushback from United and the, um, student, uh, healthcare manager at the university. And so we decided to say that we were not getting anywhere as a group. And so we started talking internally and seeing what it would take to form a union. And so it was starting to take like, you know, the, the student organization out of the, the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, which is the college I’m in, and finally meeting with the, um, you know, a lot of the liberal arts colleges, many colleges have this problem or universities have this problem where the different colleges are quite separate. Alaska is specifically difficult, um, because we are so spread out. It is a giant state. The UA system, since it is integrated, we actually had to, uh, unionize across all of the colleges. We could not just unionize UAF or UAA. And so it was trying to get all the graduate students from all the different colleges to gather in enough of a critical mass to then move forward. So that was step one was just trying to get these meetings and get enough, uh, frankly upset students <laugh> together to say, okay, so this is something that we actually do want to do.

Garrett (21:35): The next step from there was then saying, okay, we need to start picking people who have time and ability to then, um, become officers and really lead the charge. Uh, I was one of the officers during that push, um, but I was definitely not one of the leaders. I I was just kind of there to help do paperwork, reach out to people, move forward and, and get in contact with people. And the, once we kind of had officers, the, the me- major next step was getting the word out and finding union representation. And that was, honestly, that’s one of the biggest key steps that in retrospect I see is just you can’t do it alone. You need lawyers and you need someone who’s actually been through the unionization process before because all of us officers were very engaged, very motivated, but we needed somebody to actually guide us through. Um, and so we approached two unions, one of which we never had much interest from, and then UAW so United Auto Workers, which I did not think would be heavily involved with graduate students in the United States, which they are, um, was really excited about working with us. And, um, kind of we got in touch with them, found somebody who was gonna be, you know, our, our union rep for this process and their set of lawyers, and that’s really where we got the ball rolling.

Emily (22:48): Wow. Okay. So the ball’s rolling on the unionization process. Um, I think the next step is like a, a card drive, like a signature drive kind of thing, and then, and then it’s starting to talk with the admin, right?

Garrett (23:01): Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And so card drive was next, and that was again, trying to make sure we had that critical mass of pissed off students before we kind of even got that ball rolling. Um, and that was really difficult, especially up here because I’m more in the Anchorage area and so I had cards shipped down to me UAF primarily. They have the bulk of the graduate students for the UA system. And so we were the primary university for driving this. We were shipping most of the cards everywhere, but it was really trying to make sure that we had representation of these officers in all these different places so we could go to offices, hand out cards, talk to people, um, because graduate students are bombed with emails, the best thing you can do is call people in this day and age, text people, um, emails sometimes work, but we didn’t always have the best response there. And it was really the officers in the background making sure we went through every graduate student collecting everyone we could and just reaching out over and over again to get those cards signed. Um, it was an incredibly successful drive. Um, the graduate students in the UA system are quite upset with kind of the general state of things, um, and that’s not always the university’s fault. There’s more information there we can always chat about. Um, there were some very large cuts in 2019 to the university system that have made it very hard to make things better for everyone, including faculty and staff. Um, but we got the cards together and then, uh, yeah, I mean we had representation and then we could approach the university, and then we went directly into bargaining, um, and we bargained for a contract if I’m not misremembering, within five months, which is unheard of. Um, getting from card drive to a, um, a, a formal union in, in a contract within a year is impressive. So we went quickly into bargaining and then had a contract within a year. Um, and we have signed and it is formed.

Factors that Accelerated the Unionization Process

Emily (24:48): Yeah, I’m also surprised by that, um, speed, especially given what you just said about there being university-wide, like funding cuts just prior. So like, what, what do you think, what were the factors that made that happen? And especially fast for you all?

Garrett (25:04): I mean, we were protesting a ton. Um, we were protesting on the University of Alaska, Anchorage campus, UAS and UAF, uh, UAF especially because we have the largest population of graduate students. We were regularly picketing the deans of the colleges and the deans of the college and ju- and the university. I mean, we were just being very loud and obnoxious. Um, and we were talking to several papers up here, um, really just getting the word out that we were very, very unhappy and that was the best thing that we could’ve done. Um, partially because the university is so resource strapped as well. Um, we got more than what we initially asked for as far as inclusion within the graduate school. Um, so we, it’s, uh, it’s a difficult thing to deal with, but you know, the TAs and RAs are very easy to say yeah, they’re employees of the graduate school, the fellows, as I talked about, it’s a much more washy area, but we actually managed to get all the fellows included as well, um, as well as some staff.

Garrett (26:03): There were a lot of weird kind of one-off students that are partially employed by the university also in graduate school, and we got a lot of those included as well. Um, the, the university did not play their hand particularly well, and the state was, uh, very sympathetic to a lot of our arguments. So, so it went quite well, uh, for us there. Um, yeah, and, and the speed was just because the university was tired of dealing with us. Um, we really wore them out. Uh, we did not get everything that we wanted within the contract. Uh, one of the big things that we had to jettison for the year was the, uh, healthcare. And so that’s what I care about most. But we had already signed a contract with United for that year, and so if we wanted a contract that at least locked in a floor for all graduate students for pay and a lot of other, you know, representation, grievance policies, things that really are, uh, a huge part of what a union provides and streamlining all of that, we had to wait for this year, which we are now going into bargaining for.

Emily (27:02): Hmm. So everybody, all parties knew that that was still gonna be renegotiated as soon as possible.

Garrett (27:07): Yeah, we wanted to, and absolutely it’s why I got involved and I was disappointed to see that that was the case. But the, uh, university just didn’t have time. They had already signed the contract with the United, so yeah, all parties knew that we were gonna be coming back to the bargaining table within the next year or two to, uh, work on that. Um, one of the fun things that we discovered through this whole process of discovery and requesting information from the university was for years we had been told that, you know, actually no, we, we look at this every year. We find the best healthcare for you guys and we’re really on it. And through discovery, we found out that literally they just check the mark. They, they ask for requests from three possible institutions, they pick the cheapest one and go with it. And turns out they’re pretty much just rubber stamping united every year because they United shifts most of the cost to the graduate students so they can provide the lowest cost to the university, uh, on the healthcare. For the record, we are also required to buy this healthcare. There is no way to opt out. Um, and it’s, uh, become quite expensive. It’s about $1,500 a semester now, and it was about a thousand dollars a semester, um, previously, and that’s before copays and, and all of that. Um, yeah, it’s, it’s poor coverage.

Post-Unionization Stipend Amounts

Emily (28:17): Okay. So forthcoming progress on the healthcare front, but in terms of the stipend, can you tell us like what’s the new minimum or like maybe what you’re making now versus what you were making before?

Garrett (28:29): Yeah, yeah. My, my experience is probably not the best one to go for, um, because I’ve now switched back to an RA ship and so I’ve gone back up to being paid, um, uh, quite a bit better and through the summers. So I’m no longer living at that kind of 17,000 and having to take on summer work. Uh, my new pay rate is closer to, uh, 25,000 a year, um, which is more reasonable. It’s not amazing, but it’s definitely more reasonable, um, if you average out all of the different pay steps that they still have within our college because while we put a floor through the union for the whole university system, um, our pay actually wasn’t affected all of that much. We just now get a regular annual increase peg to inflation, um, rather than, um, we, we didn’t see a pay raise ’cause we were already above that floor. Um, uh, the average now is about 27,000 a year. Um, and some graduate students are now making over 30,000, which, if you remember from when we were chatting earlier is in 2021, arguably kind of where we should have been, um, if we had actually, uh, kept giving pay raises with inflation that said inflation’s been rampant over the last four years or so, uh, post covid or, you know, whatever we wanna call this era of time. Uh, and so I would argue that we’re now should probably be paid in kind of the mid 30 thousands, um, if we were really trying to be, uh, competitive. But it is significantly better than it was, uh, although the healthcare is not where we would like it to be.

Emily (30:05): Okay. So on your personal side, the work that you did to, with your peers to, you know, advocate for increasing the stipends within your department, um, that was sufficient to bring everybody above the minimum that then was set by the union. So really it’s like both efforts were important, like that unionization part of it is not gonna allow you guys to drop below any floors. It’s going to make sure that everything is reevaluated on an annual or biannual basis. Um, but you had already done a, a great amount of legwork for your closer group of peers, but now we get to extend this to a much wider group within the university.

Garrett (30:42): Yeah, absolutely. And that was the case is the College of Fisheries and a lot of the science colleges didn’t see much of a pay raise. Um, we did get those locked in, you know, annual or biannual increases, uh, but it was really trying to keep especially our, our liberal arts colleagues from living in poverty. And so that was one of the privileges of being able to be a part of this was I was able to work before I went back to graduate school, I had savings and I was less concerned with, uh, retaliation from the university. And it was something that I felt good that I was able to provide was help, uh, help push through to help our lower paid colleagues who really just didn’t have a lot of, uh, leeway and, and ability to then argue, uh, without worrying about retaliation from the university. Um, and there were several times where retaliation seemed to be very much on the table. Um, the power dynamics of going through, uh, a unionization push was not what I expected it to be. Um, and it was, uh, difficult for sure.

Power Dynamics During the Unionization Process

Emily (31:41): Can you share any more about that observation?

Garrett (31:43): The power dynamics of, of some of these people who are leading colleges and paying paid hundreds of thousands of dollars against students who are living at or below the poverty line, taking out loans to survive and are deeply concerned that if they get sick or are living with chronic illness, they’re gonna fall into deep medical debt. Um, is, uh, it’s disturbing and depressing is probably the, the, the worst, yeah. The best way I can put it. Um, and so it takes often students that are in positions that are a little bit more stable and have support. Like I said, my uh, advisor was very supportive of both our push for, uh, a pay raise within the college and the unionization push, um, that I felt safe. And so it, it does take students that are in that position of safety and strength to then advocate for the people who are a lot more vulnerable, um, because they, they simply, the power dynamics don’t allow for them to be as loud.

Emily (32:42): Yeah. Thank you for pointing that out. I hope that for any listeners who are interested in this, who there’s not yet union representation for their campuses, that they’ll take a, you know, an eye to themselves and see am I in this more privileged position? Am I in a safer position to be able to advocate on behalf of my peers or am I, am I not? And I need to, uh, advocate within my peer group for somebody else to take on these, uh, bigger roles. But I’m really glad to hear that you felt like you were able to do that and, and carry through it with all this, um, wonderful progress. Um, would you say, so earlier, you know, you mentioned that like the main thing for you having the lower stipend was that you weren’t able to save anything. Are you able to save now?

Garrett (33:26): I am, yeah. Which is quite nice. Um, and primarily I’m saving up for unexpected car repairs and it is not a significant amount of savings, but it is, uh, much more stable and I don’t have to worry about going to the grocery store anymore, which is very nice. Um, and not having to shop all of the worst possible least expensive brands, <laugh> is also, uh, a bit of a relief. Um, and so I mean, one of the ways I was able to survive at that very low pay rate was, and I think this ties into uh, a question we’ll probably talk about more, is by creating a very, very detailed budget. I mean, I have a monthly spreadsheet that has all incomes, all outflows and then an annual up or down. And that’s how I kept track of the fact that I was actually generally losing money at that lower stipend level was that you could see, you know, month to month I was losing a couple hundred dollars. Um, I was in the lucky place to have some savings, so I was able to dip into that rather than taking out loans or asking money from friends and family. Um, but that is not the position for many graduate students that I spoke to pre uh, unionization push. So

Emily (34:32): Yeah. And do we really wanna select for graduate students who have worked prior to graduate school who have family support, et cetera, et cetera, or do we want graduate school to be a place that anybody can financially survive?

Garrett (34:45): Absolutely. Yeah.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (34:46): Great. Well, Garrett, this has been such a wonderful story. I’m so glad that you came on to share it with us. Um, I would love to hear, uh, from you the answer to the question I ask of all my guests at the end of interviews, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And it can be something that we’ve touched on already or it could be something completely new.

Garrett (35:04): Yeah, I, I think I’m gonna echo a lot of the themes we’ve had during this interview. Um, is first is to pay attention to the entire compensation package. It’s not just to the stipend, but also especially for us, in my experience, the, uh, healthcare that’s provided, how expensive that’s gonna be, what your expected out of pocket is gonna be. Um, does university provide it? Do you get, pay it through your grants? Um, and then you need to really understand the cost of living in the area that you’ll be, uh, doing your work from. If you’re lucky enough like me to be able to do things remotely, you can reduce some of your costs, but a lot of universities I know don’t allow for that. Um, and so you need to see what your pay is gonna be, what your healthcare is gonna be, and any other kind of sneaky costs and, uh, costs of living are gonna be. Um, for me, uh, it was a benefit to wait to return to grad school, um, make sure that I had some savings and was able to, uh, have resources available in case of an unexpected car repair or a surprise cost, a surprise injury. Uh, and so I would encourage some graduate students to consider whether going directly to graduate school is the best option for them, depending on financial situation. Um, my fi- my, uh, budget spreadsheet or using an application for keeping track of your finances, I think is huge. Um, it, it really, really helped me when I was living at kind of the most, uh, spare ends of when I was being paid. And um, and then one of the biggest issues for me, and we haven’t really touched on this, but also looking at how long that funding that you have, uh, for your graduate program lasts. Um, I came into graduate school with only one year of funding and so every year I’ve had to reapply and it’s been a huge stressor for me and, and a big financial strain not knowing whether I’m gonna be in graduate school next year. I do not know if I’m gonna get paid. I don’t know if I’m gonna have my classes taken care of. I’ve been really lucky. I’ve managed to get all the way through and every year I’ve managed to find some form of funding, but it’s been really tight and very close in a couple ways. And so I think that is one of the things that’s most important is making sure that there’s enough money for at least your first many years and that it’s stable. Um, we live in a climate now where funding stability is much more in question and it’s definitely worth asking that, um, before you decide to go to any program.

Emily (37:22): Absolutely. Um, for like prospective graduate students, you know, looking at the offer letters and starting to do, uh, visits or interviews or what have you, um, what’s the best way do you think for them to find out some tricky things like that? You know, what is this insurance policy actually gonna cost me out of pocket? Um, that kind of information within this compressed time period of like the admission season.

Garrett (37:45): Yeah, absolutely. And that is the real hard part is you’re juggling multiple universities, multiple offers and trying to figure out how to navigate it all. Uh, graduate student groups are probably one of the best ways I’ve found. ’cause often that’s where a lot of the grievances are held and that’s where I got together with my colleagues and kind of figured out how to start pushing forward towards action. So any of the graduate student groups in the colleges that you might be going to great people to reach out to, um, other graduate students within your lab, um, often I would argue the ones that are farther along tend to understand the systems a little bit more and be a little bit more honest about the difficulties that they’ve had within the system. Um, and that those are probably my two biggest resources. They tend to be the most honest about both the benefits and drawbacks of those institutions. 

Emily (38:32): Yeah. They’ve had time to see maybe some edge cases play out, like, uh, oh yeah, this is normally how things go, but like 10% of the time it goes this other way, you know. Um, well, Garrett, again, thank you so much for agreeing to come on, um, to the podcast and talk about this whole process. It’s been a long, you know, time in, in making this story, but I’m really, really glad to hear this, uh, not a final outcome, but this point in the process and how, how things have been for you and your peers. So thank you so much for your work and for sharing it with my audience.

Garrett (39:03): Yeah, it was a pleasure and thank you so much for having me. Um, I’m just hoping we can make, uh, the graduate student experience better for everyone.

Outtro

Emily (39:21): 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.

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