Personal Finance for PhDs

Live a financially balanced life - no Real Job required

Side Hustle

This Postdoc Epitomizes Side Hustling to Get Out from Under $100,000 of Debt

by

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Shana Green, a postdoc at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Shana finished her PhD with $108,000 of debt, and she decided to side hustle to pay it off as fast as she could. After trying several academic and non-academic side hustles, she is currently chiefly working as a driver for GrubHub. She’s on track to be completely debt free in less than four years total. We discuss the strategies she’s used to optimize her side hustle, how she feels about side hustling as a driver, and her goals for her YouTube channel, The Wealth Vibe.

Links mentioned in episode

side hustling postdoc

0:00 Introduction

1:09 Please Introduce Yourself

Dr. Shana Green is a Gates Millennium Scholar. This program funded all of her undergraduate education, and provided some funds for graduate education. Shana went to Howard University for her bachelors of arts in Anthropology. She got a Masters of Public Health at Columbia University, where she had to take out student loans for rent, food and living expenses. She went to the University of South Florida for her PhD in Public Health, where most of her education was funded but she had to take out some loans for her fifth year. She graduated in 2017 and worked as a postdoc at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She recently got a new position as a contractor for the CDC.

4:54 What was the total of your debt when you finished your PhD?

Shana was aware of her debt before she finished her PhD. She had $108,000 in debt when she graduated with her PhD. She says about $56,000 is from student loans. She took out about $40,000 from student loans, but she has accrued over $10,000 in interest. She had car debt, IRS debt, medical bills, and credit cards. One of her credit cards had $14,000 of debt.

She didn’t have to go into repayment for her student loans during her postdoc because she qualified for graduate fellowship deferment. She wanted to tackle her other debt first. Now she has about $63,000 in debt remaining. She paid off the credit card, IRS debt, and medical bills. She is very close to paying off her car. She will only have her student loans remaining after two years of he repayment journey.

Shana says that when she moved to Atlanta, she started side hustling right away. She couldn’t afford to go out and meet people and get to know the city. She went straight to the grind and working hard to pay off her debt.

8:50 How does your postdoc salary affect your debt repayment journey?

Shana is grateful she has a higher stipend than many postdocs. She was making about $70,000 gross annual pay from her postdoc stipend at the CDC. This is in contrast to the National Institutes of Health minimum stipend that was just below $50,000 annual stipend. She was in an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) funded postdoc, which compensates based on education and work experience. She received about $5200, then she had to pay quarterly taxes. Her take home was somewhere around $4,000.

Shana says while this was a good stipend, it wasn’t enough to cover her debt payments. She calculated she needed to make another $1,500 to $2,000 more each month for her debt payments. Her goal was to be debt free by February 2021.

11:38 What are the different side hustles that you’ve tried since moving to Atlanta?

Shana says the first side hustle she tried was Instacart. In this job, she shopped for groceries and delivered them. She started that in October 2017. When Instacart changed their system so she made less money, she tried other jobs. She tried virtual assistance, Upwork, and local food delivery service. Since April 2018, she has worked for GrubHub and still does Instacart every now and then. She also does freelance research through Upwork. She says GrubHub is her “bread and butter” as a side hustle.

13:17 How does a GrubHub side hustle work?

Shana explains that when a customer places an order, she gets a ping on her phone. GrubHub provides the details up front to help her decide if she wants to accept it. She is free to reject orders. If she accepts, she goes to the restaurant to pick up the food and bring it to the customer. She contrasts this to Instacart, where she had to put together the order herself instead of just picking it up.

She makes about $20 per hour with GrubHub. The least amount she makes is $15 per hour, and the most is $25 per hour. She spends about four hours a night doing GrubHub. On the weekends nights she works 5 hours. She works at minimum three days during the week. There were several weeks that she worked every day of the week. After her work at the CDC for the day, she almost immediately started her GrubHub work.

17:34 How do you decide which GrubHub orders to take?

Shana keeps three things in mind: the payout, the distance, and whether the person tips. GrubHub pays a minimum of $3 base pay, a mileage contribution, and tips if the customer chooses. She says if the person has not tipped through the app, they won’t tip in person. She tries to take orders $8 or $10 or more. She also tries to do orders within a four mile radius. She maximizes the base pay and the tips, not the mileage. Shana mentions some restaurants are unreliable, which she learned through trial and error, and she factors that into her decision.

22:12 Has anything really bad or really good happened to you as you worked for Instacart and GrubHub?

Shana says she had unpleasant interactions with Instacart customers. She tells stories about customers that insult her and imply that she is “lesser” for working these side hustles. These customers have no idea that she has a PhD and works as an epidemiologist. Shana shares that she has felt down about having to work side hustles that are not using her expertise, but she gives herself pep talks and reminds herself this is temporary.

25:08 Why didn’t you limit your side hustles to PhD type of work?

Shana explains that she tried through Upwork to offer data analysis and research consultation services, but she didn’t get any clients. She realized that this wasn’t going to work, because she needs quick money. She wanted to be able to make money like an Uber or Lyft driver could.

She was a little ashamed of doing this at first, and she didn’t tell anyone except for her mother and her boyfriend. She felt like she had reached a level of success, like she was “Dr. Green” and she used to teach at a university. She worried that people would view her work at Instacart and GrubHub as a step back. Now she wants to inspire people to take on their debt and work hard for their financial goals. This is why she started her YouTube channel “The Wealth Vibe.”

Emily says that if anyone speaks negatively about this work, as if this work is “beneath them,” that speaks poorly of that person. She also says that Shana is on a great career trajectory, but the work for many PhDs is more limited and many have to be in adjunct position, which typically does not pay well. Emily says Shana is living like no one else like now because she is working hard, but in two years Shana will be debt free and living like no one else in the positive sense.

Shana shares that she also teaches an online course in Epidemiology. This pays $3,000 per semester. She says she makes way more money through GrubHub than she does as an adjunct. Shana says she found that PhD work does not pay well. Emily adds that there’s not enough volume, or demand, for side jobs for PhDs.

35:08 What is your YouTube Channel about?

Shana’s YouTube Channel is called The Wealth Vibe. She creates videos to help people increase their income, help them budget, so that people can build their wealth. She posts monthly videos about making her budget and paying off her debt. She also makes videos about her side hustles and how to maximize money you make. She has made videos about taxes, because her taxes are not withheld and she has to save for tax payments. She says she reaches a broad audience of people who are GrubHub drivers as well as who have PhDs.

39:40 Conclusion

How To Launch A Side Hustle in Grad School

by

Side hustles are all the rage these days. Everyone seems to have one, and some even translate into big money! However, in my experience, few grad students are aware of (or understand how) to get one going. Even fewer faculty seem to be aware of how they could have one themselves OR how they can support their students in this endeavor. In this post, I’m going to talk to you about why you want to launch a side hustle, and why it’s worth your time to do it in grad school. If your a faculty member these tips can also apply to you!

Today’s article on how to launch a side hustle is by Dr. Leigh A. Hall. To read an article today by Emily, please visit Leigh’s website, Teaching Academia.

launch side hustle

What Is A Side Hustle?

A side hustle is a way to earn extra cash. Ideally, it’s going to be something you are super passionate about because you will be spending extra time creating it. Side hustles happen outside your current full time job (or graduate studies/assistantship). You decide how much time you want to devote to it and when you want to put in the hours. You can work with someone else, but most side hustles tend to start out as solo ventures. As they become more successful, you may find you need to pay others to help you. Some people have such successful side hustles that they eventually leave their full time job and devote themselves solely to their project.

Why Should You Launch A Side Hustle?

You might be thinking you have enough to do right now. You don’t need to have extra demands on your time. And there’s no guarantee that a side hustle will pay off anyways, right? But think about it this way – if your side hustle is inline with things you already enjoy doing then you’re not wasting any time by devoting yourself to it. If you were going to do it anyways, then you lose nothing by seeing if you can generate some extra income by sharing your work with others.

However, the side hustle is not just about you. While it can be a great way to generate extra income, ultimately you are providing a service that benefits others. If people are willing to pay you for your work – whatever it may be – that means they find value in it which means you are enhancing the lives of others in some way.

Finally, a side hustle can allow you to establish yourself beyond your academic career. It will allow you to connect with more people, and different people, than you likely would through academia alone. This can bring you a whole host of opportunities and open doors that otherwise would have stayed close. Your work as an academic will likely reach a narrow subset of people. Add a side hustle to that and you can expand your reach.

How To Identify The Right Side Hustle For You

Ok – you’re interested but unsure about where to start. The first thing is to figure out what you want your side hustle to be about. It can be connected to your day job, but it doesn’t have to. If you have a hobby that you are exceptionally good at then you could turn that hobby into your side hustle. It doesn’t have to extend from your job.

For example, several years ago I ran a successful yoga blog. I’m not a yoga teacher. I just wrote about going to yoga classes and what I learned in the process about myself. Eventually the blog ran its course, but I was able to get some great sponsorships and support along the way.

Because my blog added value to the yoga community, companies would send me yoga mats, clothes, shoes, all kinds of goodies for review. I even got to review a meal kit service so I had groceries mostly paid for now and then. My yoga practice was a serious hobby, and it was able to generate some income for me – even if just through free products – that I enjoyed and benefited from.

Currently, my side hustle extends from my job. I have a number of courses I sell. Do I generate massive amounts of income? No, but I do enjoy a nice supplement that I can do with as I please (I often just save it).

The key here is to pick a niche that you enjoy and that you want to share with others. And it’s perfectly fine to have both a hobby and a professional side hustle! You get to set the hours and how much you will be involved so do what’s best for you.

Launching Your Side Hustle

There are a number of ways to launch your side hustle, and any combination of them can work. After you identify your niche, you’ll need to consider how you want to connect with others. Some common ways to do this are:

  1. A website. You can get one for free (wordpress.com) and later move to a paid version. A free version lets you test the waters and play around without the stress of having to pay for it.
  2. A YouTube channel: I highly recommend this. Everything is going in the direction of video. A channel will allow you to build an audience. And while you are giving people content for free, once they see that you have something of value they will start to buy your more in-depth products.
  3. Patreon: Admittedly, I need to get this one going. Patreon allows you to sell memberships at varying tiers. For example, you might have people who give you 5.00 every month in exchange for specific things you create or offer. A second tier of people might give you 10.00 a month and receive something different/more. You get to decide how to price the tiers and what people get in return.
  4. Selling Courses: You may want to create one or more courses that people can access asynchronously. A number of platforms allow for this with varying advantages and disadvantages. Udemy allows you to post your courses free of charge, but they will take a hefty fee in return (they also help with marketing your courses). Platforms like Teachable and Thinkific require you to pay an ongoing fee or yearly subscription for your courses to be hosted, and they do no marketing. However, you stand to keep more of your money each time you sell a course here than on Udemy.

Launching your side hustle thus requires:

  • A clear vision of what you are going to be offering
  • Who would be interested in your product/creations?
  • Understanding where to house yourself and your work

A side hustle is going to require a mix of free and paid content. You are going to want to have a website or YouTube Channel (likely both) and a plan in place for content development. What do you want to sell? When will you find time to create this content and build out your offerings (both free and paid).

If you’re wondering if there is a right/wrong/best time to launch your side hustle my answer to you is this:

There is no best time to launch. You need to know what it is you want to do and what platforms you want to start out on. Then you go. You don’t need to do everything at once, and you can build out along the way as you get comfortable. The trick is to not get caught up on something not being good enough or that you only need to do X and then everything will be perfect. We’re not looking for perfect here. We’re looking for a few key things to be in place and then it’s time to go.

Having a side hustle can bring in extra income while allowing you to grow and develop professionally or with a hobby. The sooner you get started the sooner you will start to reap the rewards.

Dr. Leigh A. Hall is a professor at the University of Wyoming where she holds the Wyoming Excellence Chair in Literacy Education. She’s had a side hustle for four years now selling courses that can benefit graduate students and early career academics. See her work at TeachingAcademia.com.