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Catching Up with Prior Guests: 2024 Edition

December 16, 2024 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

Emily published the first episode of this podcast in July 2018. This is the 223rd episode, and over the last six and a half years, the podcast has featured over 300 unique voices in addition to my own. For our last episode in 2024, we are catching up with the guests from Seasons 12 through 14, and a few from earlier seasons as well. The guests were invited to submit short audio clips to update us on how their lives and careers have evolved since the time of their interview, as well as to provide their best financial advice if that has changed since that initial interview.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Excel Spending Tracker
  • PF for PhD Website
  • Emily’s E-mail Address
  • Sam Hogan (from PhD Home Loans): Season 2, Episode 5; Season 5, Episode 17; Season 8, Episode 4; Season 13, Episode 1
  • Dr. Tina Del Carpio: Season 6, Episode 10
  • Dr. Gertrude Nonterah (from The Bold PhD): Season 8, Episode 6
  • Dr. Alana Rister (from Science Grad School Coach): Season 10, Episode 4
  • Dr. Jay Zigmont (from Child Free Wealth): Season 12, Episode 1
  • Dr. Inga Timmerman (from Attainable Wealth Financial Planning): Season 12, Episode 3
  • Dr. Haley Sanderson: Season 12, Episode 4
  • Brittany Trinh (from Beyond Your Science Podcast): Season 14, Episode 4
  • Host a PF for PhDs Tax Seminar at Your Institution
Catching Up with Prior Guests: 2024 Edition

Teaser

Jay Z (00:00): What do I do if the path I’ve bet on, the money disappears? It’s just one of those things you gotta think about in which probably nobody wants to think about and that’s a reality check.

Introduction

Emily (00:16): 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 19, Episode 9, and today I am featuring many guest voices! I published the first episode of this podcast in July 2018. This is the 223rd episode, and over the last six and a half years, the podcast has featured over 300 unique voices in addition to my own. For our last episode in 2024, we are catching up with the guests from Seasons 12 through 14, and a few from earlier seasons as well. I invited them to submit short audio clips to update us on how their lives and careers have evolved since the time of our interview, as well as to provide their best financial advice if that has changed since our initial interview. You are going to hear a common theme throughout many of today’s audio segments. The audio clips in this episode are ordered by when the original episode was published. If you’d like to circle back and listen to any of the previous interviews, you can do so in your podcatcher app or at my website, PFforPhDs.com/podcast. To keep up with future episodes, please hit subscribe on that podcatcher and/or join my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice. You’ll hear an update from me first, followed by the rest of the guests. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s19e9/. Happy listening, happy holidays, and happy new year! See you in 2025!

Dr. Emily Roberts

Emily (02:23): Hi! This is Emily Roberts from Personal Finance for PhDs. I am of course the host of this podcast and you hear from me in every episode! My update last year at this time was a bit of a downer, and I’m pleased to report we’ve had a much better year overall in 2024. Some personal highlights from this year included: living and working from my parents’ house for a month over the summer and meeting my new nephew, vacationing in Hawaii for the first time, attending Family Camp in Sequoia National Park for the third time, camping with my daughter’s Girl Scout troop several times, including a Roar & Snore at the San Diego Zoo, seeing Hamilton in Los Angeles, and becoming a regular at Orange Theory Fitness. My husband and I also purchased our very first new car, an electric vehicle, and are enjoying having two cars at our family’s disposal. My daughters are doing really well in school and having fun in their extracurriculars. We’ve continued our family traditions of reading together—I’ve read 61 books so far this year—and playing strategy board games like Dominion and Ticket to Ride. Despite some personal health challenges, it’s been a great year.

Emily (03:40): As for Personal Finance for PhDs the business, I’m really pleased with how the year evolved. Over the summer, I revamped all of my live seminars to be true workshops, and my clients and audiences have responded quite positively. I believe this teaching style is more effective than my previous one, and the template spreadsheets and worksheets that I provide have been appreciated. My clients are also getting back to hosting me in person more so than in previous years, which is my preference by far. In 2024, I delivered workshops in person at Yale University, the University of California at Los Angeles, The Scripps Research Institute, the University of California at San Diego, Michigan State University, and Boston University, and all the engagements were delightful. I also attended two conferences, the Graduate Career Consortium in Philadelphia and the Higher Education Financial Wellness Summit in Pittsburgh. The business revenue and my income are up over 2023’s numbers, though I’m still gunning to get back to where they were in 2022. In 2024, my family has made great use of the manual expense tracker that I mentioned in last year’s update, which incorporates some of the principles I teach in my workshops. If you’d like to download the tracker, please register for the Personal Finance for PhDs mailing list through PFforPhDs.com/tracker/. Thanks for listening to my update! If you want to get in touch, you can visit my website at PFforPhDs.com or email me at [email protected].

Sam Hogan

Sam H (05:18): Hello, this is Sam Hogan. I’m the mortgage originator who specialize in graduate students and PhDs and Emily’s brother. I’ve given interviews on the podcast about various aspects of mortgage and home ownership for graduate students and PhDs in multiple seasons. Season two, episode five, season five, episode 17, season eight, episode four, and season 13, episode one. In 2024, I switched employers and I’m now with truist Bank. This has been exciting because truist offers a non repayable grant for down payment or closing cost assistance to low income borrowers in certain states that graduate students are perfect for. I’m currently exploring with them the possibility of extending doctor mortgages to PhDs as well as MDs. You can find more information about this in my mailing list or on Emily’s YouTube channel. In 2024. I also attended the National Post-Doctoral Association annual conference, which was great fun, and I plan to go back in 2025. If you happen to be there, please stop by my booth and say hi. On a personal note, 2024 has been incredible because my fiance and I had our first child, a healthy little boy named Grant. If you’d like to learn more about mortgages that I offer or have a question about the lending process, you can call or text me at (540) 478-5803 or email me at [email protected]. If you’d like to download a free PhD friendly mortgage guide that I wrote, you can find it on my website, PhDhomeloans.com. Rates are expected to keep coming down through 2026, so this is a great time to get in touch.

Dr. Tina Del Carpio

Tina DC (06:57): Hi, my name is Tina Del Carpio. I was a guest on season six, episode 10 talking about figuring out my life after a broken engagement in Los Angeles. I’m happy to report that last December in 2023, I finished my PhD and I started a job as a data analyst for the state, and I’m really happy with my job and with where I’m at. Um, the pay is not as good as it could be an industry, but I work fully remotely and that’s such a huge benefit to me. Um, the more important life update is that this past November I got married to my partner Tess and I still live in Los Angeles, but now with Tess and our three cats, Tuka, Gem, and Goose. So all is well here.

Dr. Gertrude Nonterah

Gertrude N (08:00): Hello Emily and the personal finance for PhD’s podcast team. And thank you for giving me this opportunity. My name is Gertrude Nonterah and I run theboldphd.com. I was interviewed, um, on this podcast in February of 2021. It was episode six, season eight, I believe, season eight, episode six, and we talked about personal branding and how to use that to land a job and also build a business as a PhD or academic. And since then I have continued to talk about personal branding and have the opportunity to speak at over 20 universities in different countries on the topics of personal branding, career change, and also my own career within medical communications and the biotech space. My best financial advice for early career PhDs is to really begin to think about investments early on, right? I am in my early forties. I turned 41 this year and a part of me wishes I knew what I knew now about investing when I was in graduate school because it’s only recently in the past, let’s say five years, that it has occurred to me that in graduate school I could have been putting away $20 here and $10 there and I could have actually started building investments at that time. Instead, I started in my thirties, which was later than I hoped, but it’s still better to start than never to start, right? And so if you are starting out your career, use your career as a launchpad to start funding investments. Learn about the different investments that are out there and how you can get started with them. You know, do your due diligence and start building wealth because it’s going to compound over time and every year you don’t invest, you are losing money, but every year you do invest, you are compounding it and, and that’s what’s exciting about investing. So that would be my best piece of advice for early career PhDs. If you wanna find me, you can go to my website, it’s theboldphd.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Gertrude Nonterah PhD.

Dr. Alana Rister

Alana R (10:19): Hi, I’m Alana Rister and I was on personal finance for PhDs Season 10, episode four. I am the founder of science grad school coach and when I was on the podcast, I talked about how I had worked through grad school in order to pay off about $13,000 of student loan debt from my undergraduate loans. Since then, I have become a full-time data scientist in a Fortune 500 company and I have been able to actually pay off an additional $40,000 of my undergraduate student loan debt. At this point, with my current plan, I’m about one year from actually having all of my student loan debt paid off, and when I graduated, I graduated with about $70,000 of student loan debt. My best financial advice moving forward, especially from the experiences that I’ve had since um, graduating grad school, is while you’re in grad school, start thinking about retirement, especially if you’re in the US and think about the different accounts that you might want to work with. Then when you’re in grad school, you typically have a lower income. So if you have any bandwidth within your income to set aside for retirement, you’re going to have, um, certain tax advantaged accounts in the US that you might not be able to fully use whenever you are fully fledged into a job, um, your income might be too high. So I really wish I would’ve taken more advantage of retirement and wouldn’t have that stress on my income now. Um, looking forward to trying to retire within the US at least. If you’re interested to find me, you can look at my YouTube channel @scigradcoach. Thanks again for having me and letting me share my update.

Dr. Jay Zigmont

Jay Z (12:22): Hi, I am Jay Zigmont. I am the founder and CEO of Child Free Wealth, a financial planning firm dedicated to serving child free childless folks. My PhD is in adult learning from the University of Connecticut and I joined the podcast on, let’s see, season 12, episode one. It talked about the garden and the rose and how do dual career couples, figure out the balance between the trailing spouse in the other job and the balance between those two. In the time since then, uh, as any good PhD, I spent the time doing a lot of research and writing. Uh, really excited. At the end of this year, I have a new book coming out, the Child Free Guide to Life and Money. It’s been interesting working with publishers and working through the process and it’s gotten super interesting because of politics. Let’s be real this year, been a lot of discussion about the childless cat ladies and the good, bad and ugly goes there. Uh, it it’s, it’s one of those things when you’re writing about a topic and you’re like, Hey, I can help a lot of people, but you’re not always ready for the politics, the judgments, the social media. I dunno, I’m learning all that. I think my big advice because of the season we’re in right now for PhDs is you need to think about a backup plan if you’re funding goes away. And that sounds a, I mean that’s always been the case. What happens to grant money? But right now when we’re talking about federal funding or departments possibly not existing and the changes, it’s tough. You know, my wife and I have had to have this discussion ’cause her work is in food insecurity and, uh, all of it’s federally funded or most of it is, and it’s one of those things like, oh, what do I do if the path I’ve bet on the money disappears. Luckily for us as a couple, we’re at a good financial place. We don’t have any debt, you know, we’ve got a emergency savings, we can do different things, but it’s just one of those things you gotta think about in which probably nobody wants to think about, but it’s a reality check. You can find me online, childfreewealth.com. You can buy the book anywhere you like. Uh, always love go to independent bookstores and on all the socials at @ChildFreeWealth.

Dr. Inga Timmerman

Inga T (14:46): Hello professors and new PhDs. My name is Inga Timmerman and I was in season 12, episode three. I’m a financial planner who works exclusively with other academics and I’m also an academic. And the best advice I have for new PhDs and this advice has changed since the last time I talked to Emily is that instead of focusing on long-term financials, focus on the intermediate term. Plan your life in the two to five year increments rather than what’s going to happen 20 years down the um, road. What I’ve noticed more and more in the last few years is that professors no longer stay in the same academic job for for the entire career. They move a lot more, they quit academia a lot more. So focusing on the best financial decision for the next two to five years ends up being better long term than trying to guess where you’re going to be in 20 years. The newest thing I have is, um, a brand new podcast for academics is going to come in January, 2025, it’s going to be called Academics and Their Money. And I hope to have all of you as my listeners. If you need any more financial advice, please visit my website at attainablewealthfp.com.

Dr. Haley Sanderson

Haley S (16:01): Hi, I am Dr. Haley Sanderson from episode four, season 12. I’ve been pretty busy since my episode was taped. I finished my two year postdoc at the Vaccine Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan. At that point, I reached the five year limit for postdocs, but before my contract ended, I landed a permanent job as a bioinformatics programmer at agriculture in AgriFood Canada. So I finished my postdoc and then two weeks later I started a job with the federal government. Um, and that job pretty much doubled my salary. I also had my own BioMAT bioinformatics freelance business for about a year. Uh, my mental health has also improved steadily over the years and I haven’t had a major psychotic episode in years and I’m just a lot happier now. Um, right now I’m working on training for promotion at work, um, enjoying the stability that the job I have now provides and saving to buy a condo close to my family. My best financial advice for early career PhDs is to avoid staying in academia for too long and maybe even avoiding postdocs altogether unless you’re learning a new skill that’s transferable to other sectors. Um, try to avoid getting stuck in the academic job market because you can be successful in a lot of different places and always look for how your skills can be used and how they can be more valuable elsewhere. Uh, thanks. Bye.

Brittany Trinh

Brittany T (17:51): Hi everyone, my name is Brittany Trinh and I am the host of the Beyond Your Science podcast. I was previously on PF for PhDs, um, in season 14, episode four where I talked about deferring my graduate school acceptance to work on my finances. Since the last episode, I have now started my own podcast called The Beyond Your Science Podcast, where I talk about science, creativity, and entrepreneurship and what that looks like for people in stem. I also used to work with clients one-on-one and provided workshops on website design, but since then I have shifted away from that model and started working, um, more on the backend side of things where I am collaborating with Jennifer van Alstyne of the academic designer in team VIP days. And in a team VIP day, um, we work together to design a website in one day. In my episode, I shared some advice about using your skills to create extra income and I still stand by that. Um, so an a new piece of advice that I’d like to share is to make sure that, um, when you transfer your 401k from a previous employer, um, is number one, to not avoid it, uh, just call the company and they will help you transfer it into a Vanguard account. And number two is once it does hit your Vanguard account, um, make sure that it is sitting in an actual mutual fund or ETF and being invested and not just sitting in a money market fund. And I’m sharing this advice because this is something that happened to me recently. I was pretty avoidant about calling the, um, 401k company, but it was only like a 30 minute call. And then, um, when I finally did get it transferred over, I assumed it would just be transferred into a mutual fund. And I didn’t really know how the Vanguard website worked until recently and I have now learned that my funds were not being invested anywhere. Um, but you know what we learned from the experience and now I’m sharing that with you all. Um, so that hopefully you don’t make the same mistake. If you would like to connect with me, you can find me on LinkedIn at Brittany Trinh, that’s T-R-I-N-H or on my website brittanytrinh.com for more info about my podcast Beyond your Science and other website Design Tips.

Outtro

Emily (20:35): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Catching Up with Prior Guests: 2023 Edition

December 18, 2023 by Jill Hoffman 1 Comment

Emily published the first episode of this podcast in July 2018. This is the 200th episode, and over the last five and a half years, the podcast has featured 252 unique voices in addition to Emily’s. This last episode of 2023 catches up with the guests from Seasons 1 through 11. The guests were invited to submit short audio updates on how their lives and careers have evolved since the time of their interview. They also included their best financial advice for an early-career PhD if their answer has changed since the initial interview.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • The Personal Finance for PhDs Website
  • Emily’s E-mail Address
  • Dr. Jill Hoffman (from Toddler on the Tenure Track): Season 3, Episode 4
  • Dr. Samantha McDonald: Season 8, Episode 3
  • Lucy Bryan (from Polygence): Season 10, Episode 3
  • Dr. Sean Bittner (from The Life Science Coach): Season 6, Episode 12; Season 10, Episode 14
  • Dr. Nelson Zounlome (from Liberate the Block): Season 10, Episode 16
  • Maya Gosztyla: Season 2, Episode 4; Season; Season 11, Episode 1
  • Dr. Jeanelle Horcasitas: Season 11, Episode 3
  • Dr. Leslie Wang (from Your Words Unleashed): Season 11, Episode 10
Catching Up with Prior Guests: 2023 Edition

Teaser

00:00 Samantha: And I talked a lot about saving and budgeting the last time I was on the show, and I still think that’s a really important skill for everyone to have, but I’ve also learned since then that it’s equally important, if not more so, to advocate for yourself and make sure you’re actually getting the pay that you deserve and that you need to live in the city where you’re going to grad school.

Introduction

00:17 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.

00:52 Emily: This is Season 16, Episode 8, and today I am featuring many guest voices! I published the first episode of this podcast in July 2018. This is the 200th episode, and over the last five and a half years, the podcast has featured 252 unique voices in addition to my own. For our last episode in 2023, I thought it would be fun to catch up with the guests from Seasons 9 through 11, and a few from earlier seasons as well. I invited them to submit short audio clips to update us on how their lives and careers have evolved since the time of our interview, as well as to provide their best financial advice if that has changed since our initial interview. We have some very big and very exciting updates this year, and I’m confident you are going to appreciate the perspectives that these guests bring. The audio clips in this episode are ordered by when the original episode was published. If you’d like to circle back and listen to any of the previous interviews, you can do so in your podcatcher app or at my website, PFforPhDs.com/podcast. To keep up with future episodes, please hit subscribe on that podcatcher and/or join my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice. You’ll hear an update from me first, followed by the rest of the guests. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s16e8/. Happy listening, happy holidays, and happy new year! See you in 2024!

Dr. Emily Roberts

02:31 Emily: Hi! This is Emily Roberts from Personal Finance for PhDs. I am of course the host of this podcast and you hear from me in every episode! 2023 started off really rough with the hospitalization of both of my husband’s parents and ultimately the death of his father. For months we were barely holding things together logistically with our household and their household and really leaned on our extended family and local friends. Honestly, I couldn’t get everything done in a timely manner with Personal Finance for PhDs during that tax season, which is my busiest time of year. Thank goodness I had three wonderful people working with me who stepped forward to keep the lights on while I took time away to be with my loved ones.

03:18 Emily: It was a slow climb out of that period but this past summer and fall were really wonderful for me and my family. Now that my younger child is in kindergarten and more independent, we have a really good household rhythm. I read every day, and my family often plays games together. I’m leading two Girl Scouts troops, one for each daughter, which is kind of crazy but enjoyable. We have a wonderful local community. Life is very sweet. Oh, and I started using Asana for my household and personal life, like I do for my business, and it’s been amazing for staying on top of everything without feeling overwhelmed.

03:55 Emily: On the financial side, I stopped making any efforts to budget or actively track our expenses at the start of the year. Our savings rate took a big hit, partially because of inattention, partially because Personal Finance for PhDs made less money in 2023 than 2022, and partially because we paid for a roof replacement and solar panels installation. I finally got back to active expense tracking and planning with our finances a couple of months ago. It feels great to get back to our positive habits now that we have the capacity, and thankfully the wheels didn’t completely fall off because we had pretty good systems in place. If you want to download the manual expense tracker I created for my and your use, go to PFforPhDs.com/tracker/.

04:44 Emily: I am hoping for a better year for Personal Finance for PhDs in 2024 than I had in 2023. If you’re a fan of this podcast and the financial education I provide, I would very very much appreciate you recommending me to a professional development-type person at your university or alma mater. Thanks for listening to my update! If you want to get in touch, you can visit my website at PFforPhDs.com or email me at [email protected].

Dr. Jill Hoffman

05:13 Jill: Hi, I’m Jill Hoffman from Toddler on the Tenure Track. I was on Season 3, Episode 4 in 2019, and then I was also on a Catching Up with Prior Guests episode at the end of 2020, which was Season 7, Episode 16. In the last update, I shared that my family and I were contemplating a move back to the East Coast from Oregon. We were expecting a baby and I was an assistant professor. Since that time, we have moved back to the East Coast, back to my home state of Virginia. The baby we were expecting is now two and a half years old, and I quit my job as an assistant professor right before I was supposed to go up for tenure. So lots of big changes.

05:56 Jill: In my original episode, I talked about the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program and student loan debt, as well as me working while my husband was a stay at home parent. And now my husband and I have switched. I’m staying at home and he’s working full time. And because I’m no longer working, I’m not actively working towards loan forgiveness. I actually have, I think about 13 months left, so not that much time at all in the grand scheme of things, but we chose to push pause on that path for now. In total, we have about 73, 000 in student loans left, which is about 10,000 less than where we were at at the time of my original podcast episode. We’re just paying the minimum right now, and that’s our plan with the new save plan. Financially, it doesn’t make sense to try and aggressively pay them down at this point. While being a stay at home parent is my main focus, I’ve also sought out some additional professional opportunities just to use my brain in a different way during the week.

06:54 Jill: I’m actually working in a virtual assistant role with Emily, supporting both her financial education workshops, as well as the podcast. And then I’ve been doing a little bit of coaching for early career academics. And I have a small Etsy shop with some digital products. So I’m dipping my toes in a number of different things and I’m really loving all of it. My plan is to slowly expand the virtual assistant and coaching work, especially once my youngest gets to kindergarten in a few years. As far as best financial advice for early career PhDs, what was helpful for me, and it is still really helpful for me, is knowing exactly what money is coming in and what money is going out. So tracking on a regular basis in a spreadsheet or with an app, I just use a spreadsheet. Just some way to show you where your money, money is going is so helpful. You can find me online at my website, ToddlerOnTheTenureTrack.com.

Dr. Samantha McDonald

07:47 Samantha: Hi, my name is Samantha McDonald. I have a PhD in informatics from the University of California, Irvine, and I joined Emily on the podcast in season eight, episode three, back in 2021. My episode was about knowing your worth and discussing what it was like to make the most money as a graduate student in my department when so many of my peers were struggling with less. I think my trajectory after grad school has been quite different than most. Immediately after graduating, I took a few months off to go backpacking, work on a farm in New Mexico, and travel with my family, just to do things that I just really wanted to do on my bucket list. Then I started my first real job in industry, working as a user experience researcher at Meta, formerly known as Facebook, and I worked there for almost two years aggressively saving, in a similar way to FIRE. The reason why I was aggressively saving during my first real job is really twofold. One, I wanted to keep my standard of living low to not become trapped having to work. I saw quite a few friends and colleagues start doing that right out of their PhDs. And second, my partner Michael and I were preparing ourselves for a multi year seabattical on our sailboat. Michael actually has his own episode that is in season 14, episode nine. Both of us were in graduate school almost until our thirties. As much as it sounded nice to go straight into a full job after school, we, we really wanted to use this time in our lives to take risks and do things we probably couldn’t do once we settled down, you know, like buy a house, have kids and, you know, you need to have full time jobs often to support those higher expenses.

09:23 Samantha: So now here we are eight months later. We’re still enjoying our time off. We sailed from California to Mexico and back, and now we’re gearing up to sail back to Mexico post hurricane season and potentially cross to spend some time sailing in French Polynesia. Um, based on my experience my best advice for early career PhDs is really to live below your means and don’t accumulate debt or high expenses too early. I know it can be easy to feel like you should treat yourself after so much time with low income, but I saw a lot of my friends now feel lost at a job they don’t want, but they can’t leave because they’ve already increased their expenses with cars and house and activities and hobbies and things that, that don’t necessarily make them happy and fulfilled in that same way. My partner and I have a little bit more extreme case of saving up and living way below our means on a little sailboat. Um, but I think everyone has their own passions and, you know, life is short and you need to explore those things. And luckily people with PhDs, uh, will, you’ll never have a hard time finding a job. So as scary as it is to sort of take time off, for me and Michael, it was the way that we wanted to go. And we’re definitely not regretting it. Eventually we’ll have to go back and get jobs, but we are treating money at this point like a commodity for happiness. And right now this is what makes us happy. Thank you so much for having me again. And, uh, if anyone has any questions or wants to contact me, they’re more than welcome to my email is [email protected]. It’s spelled like Sam, Mick five, seven, seven, three. Thanks.

Lucy Bryan from Polygence

10:58 Lucy: Hi, this is Lucy from Polygence. I’m Polygence’s mentor success manager, and I’m so excited to update you all on both Polygence and our mentoring model after my colleagues Jen and Steven spoke on these topics with you all in season 10 on episode 3. One update from us is that we’ve standardized mentor rates to be based on degree level rather than field as an effort to be really transparent with mentors about their pay rate and what they can expect upon degree completion. For instance, if they’re receiving their M. A. or PhD. We now have over 3, 000 mentors in our mentor pool, both graduate students and industry experts. Another exciting update is that we’ve already grown so much from that Season 10 episode, as we now have over 3, 000 mentors in our mentor pool, both graduate students and industry experts. We just looked at a breakdown of how many projects our mentors worked on in 2023 and it ranges from 1 to 15 per mentor. So it’s great to see the flexibility of this role, as each mentor can select projects and the number of concurrent students that work best for their workload. It’s also exciting for us to keep growing and to know that over 3,600 Polygence projects have been completed, which is really a testament to the work of the mentors and also speaks to how excited many high school students are about research and getting to decide what they learn and spend their time exploring.

12:21 Lucy: If you’d like to learn more about Polygence or the mentor role, you can contact me, Lucy, at [email protected], spelled P O L Y G E N C E. org. Definitely check out our website, polygence.org, where you can see many of our amazing current mentors too.

Commercial

12:44 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! I’m hard at work behind the scenes updating my suite of tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2023. These pre-recorded educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2023 tax season starting in January 2024, I’m offering four versions of this workshop, one each for US citizen/resident graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. While I do sell these workshops to individuals, I prefer to license them to universities so that the end users, graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs, can access them for free. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they sponsor one of my tax preparation workshops for you and your peers? I’d love to receive a warm introduction to a potential sponsor this fall so we can hit the ground running in January serving those early bird filers. You can find more information about licensing these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Now back to our interview.

Dr. Sean Bittner

14:29 Sean: Hello, this is Sean Bittner. And I was a guest on personal finance for PhDs for season six, episode 12 in 2020 and season 10, episode 14 in 2021, as well as the 2022 catch up episode. Apologies for the audio. I am taking full advantage of health insurance before the end of the year and had a much needed nasal surgery done recently. Since my last job update, quite a lot has happened personally and professionally, my wife and I both took new jobs. She’s now in consulting and accepted a board seat for the local nonprofit and I now work in technology transfer, joined a new coaching company and just completed my 5th semester as a leadership educator. This year, we traveled to Japan, Italy, and 3 national parks. And as I record this, we’re currently on baby watch as our daughter is expected early in the new year and could arrive any day. For an update on my advice, my only update this time around is there’s truly never a good time for making big life decisions.

15:30 Sean: Everyone that listens to this podcast is smart and intelligent and a planner in one way or the other, but the last few years have really shown me that there’s always risks and rewards and never a perfect way to time something, especially something big. Uh, so I want to just encourage people, uh, fear of the unknown is certainly natural, uh, but, but there will always be reasons to not do something. If you want to keep in touch with me, you can find me on the site formerly known as Twitter for as long as it exists @lifescicoach or on Instagram at Sean without an H. As well as on LinkedIn, I’m again, taking new coaching clients this year, which I’m really excited about as well. So if you’re interested in exploring leadership and career potential, please send me a note. I’d be happy to meet with you. Thanks for listening.

Dr. Nelson Zounlome

16:20 Nelson: This is Dr. Nelson Zounlome, founder and CEO of Liberate the Block. I appeared in season 10, episode 16, um, and since then I’ve had a few changes and updates. So, um, after, uh, that year I left my tenure track faculty position and started working on LTB full time. Um, we’ve been able to expand a little bit. So, um, just recently we actually, uh, published our second book I Thrive: An International Students Guide to Thriving in the US and then we have an upcoming book Lift As You Climb: The Black Book of Academic Encouragement. And then lastly, have been able to publish our asynchronous course, developing a graduate school thrive mindset. So since leaving academia, I’ve been able to, again, focus more on the business, completed some business accelerators to better, you know, just learn business skills, networking, different things like that. I’ve also been able to continue to do some research, particularly just among BIPOC students and other folks in, in higher ed. Also, as a psychologist, I’ve been able to do a little, uh, therapy as well, and so that’s been really cool to have kind of a balance of all my skill sets in my, uh, in my time after academia.

17:46 Nelson: My best advice for folks, again, is really just to start early, not waiting until after your PhD to think about finances, to think about your, um, the life that you want to live, you know, and so the best advice I really have is to take the time to think about your values, who you want to be, um, think about the type of life you want to live, right? The type of work life synergy you want to have, um, being able to cultivate that now. And so I referenced, um, different resources in my life. Episode such as the millionaire next door the automatic millionaire two additional resources that I wanted to highlight were Um, we should all be millionaires by Rachel Rogers a really good book on Just mindset, but also practical ways in which you can start to really Um excel right in in your life. Um, and then the other one is get good with money, uh, 10 simple steps to becoming financially whole by Tiffany Aliche. And so this is a really great, easy guide to just figuring out how to, again, start investing, um, talks about insurance and, and, and different things like that. Um, and so feel free to, to check out my episode, season 10, episode 16, for a bit more information, and I wish you all well on your PhD journey and, uh, getting financially whole.

Maya Gosztyla

19:10 Maya: My name is Maya Gosztyla, and I’m a fifth year PhD candidate in biomedical sciences at the University of California, San Diego. I previously appeared in Season 2, Episode 4 of the show, back when I was a post bacc fellow at the NIH, and I appeared again in Season 11, Episode 1, when I was in my third year of grad school. The biggest thing that’s changed since I last appeared on the show was that student researchers at my university formed a union, and we organized the largest labor strike in the history of U. S. higher education, with 48, 000 of us walking off the job for a total of six weeks. And as a result, we were able to negotiate our very first contract, which included By far the largest pay raises in the history of my program, in addition to other benefits like paid time off, protections from workplace abuse, appointment security guarantees, and a whole bunch more.

20:07 Maya: And so now I have a lot more financial security thanks to our increased pay, and it’s just been a major improvement for my quality of life overall. And I talked a lot about saving and budgeting the last time I was on the show, and I still think that’s a really important skill for everyone to have, but I’ve also learned since then that it’s equally important, if not more so, to advocate for yourself and make sure you’re actually getting the pay that you deserve and that you need to live in the city where you’re going to grad school. And I’ve noticed that grad students at a lot of other universities have been recently unionizing as well, so I’m really excited to see how this changes the financial landscape of graduate school across the country moving forward.

Dr. Jeanelle Horcasitas

20:43 Jeanelle: Hi everyone, this is Jeanelle Orcasitas. I had the pleasure of speaking with Emily in Season 11, Episode 3. where I talked about the multiple jobs I worked during graduate school to pay off debt. Since then, I’ve had a couple of life updates that I’d like to share with you all. The first update is that I sold and bought a new home with my husband, which was really great because we had built up a lot of equity at the time. However, we had to take on a higher interest rate because they had just increased it. We also learned there’s a lot of extra costs that are involved when you’re both Selling and buying a new home and always read the fine print, especially when it comes to liens. We actually had to pay several thousand dollars on a lien we weren’t aware of in order to sell our home. So there was a lot of lessons learned we, we gained in our second round of home buying. The second update I wanted to share is that earlier this year, I experienced a layoff. And at the time it was very shocking and it felt like the rug was pulled from underneath me. But I was really thankful that my husband and I had prepared and we had a six month emergency fund built up. And I was fortunate enough to receive a severance package. And so even though this was an extremely stressful and uncertain time for me, I was really grateful that we could stick to a budget, adjust it as needed for costs that we had a savings in place that could really extend me for a long time as I embarked on the job search.

22:31 Jeanelle: But connecting back to all of the multiple jobs in graduate schools that I had, I wanted to give a key piece of advice, which is always stay connected with folks in your network. You never know when you’re going to need to ask for help. And during this time, I reached out to many of those people I had worked with, and this really helped me land interviews and eventually jobs. This was also a time that made me think deeply about what I wanted from a career. And so I actually transitioned out of tech and went into the dental insurance industry. So I would say after a really odd year of some ups and downs with buying and selling a home and losing a job and then getting a job again. Um, ultimately I’ve learned that the power of saving and just having that emergency fund because you never know when you’re going to need it and when it’s going to come and it will just make you feel significantly lighter and taking on the stress of whatever you’re going through. Thank you.

Dr. Leslie Wang

23:40 Leslie: This is Leslie Wang, writing coach and the founder of my company, Your Words Unleashed, where I help scholars write and publish books that matter. I was featured on season 11, episode 10 of this podcast called This Prof is Taking Deliberate Steps Towards Self Employment. The episode dropped in May, 2022, and I’ve had a lot of exciting changes in my life and career since then. In our episode, Emily and I talked about how I was planning to leave the Academy in a couple of years, once the business became sustainable. But by the time the episode was published, I had actually already turned in my resignation. I had reached a point where I no longer wanted to pretend that I was still committed to academia. And I had also experienced a lot of success in my business, and I wanted to see what I could do with it full time. And I also realized that I was never going to feel 100 percent ready to give up a totally secure position. So I turned in my resignation in April of 2022. And if this gives you any indication of the kind of institution I was at, the Dean’s office never even responded to my resignation email, except to ask my department chair to ask me to return all of my electronics.

24:58 Leslie: I spent the summer of 2022 mentally adjusting to leaving academia, which was very sad for me, even though I had been planning for it for four years. But ultimately it was the best thing I could have done. I’ve been full time in my business since August, 2022, and my business has grown a lot. I started my own podcast called Your Words Unleashed, where I give writing tips and publishing advice, and I’ve done more than 40 episodes and gained a loyal listenership. But for more than the first year, I was really overworking. I was burning out and realized I had taken some bad habits from academia into my non academic work life. So this fall, I got really serious about limiting the number of clients I take on. And I also raised my rates so that I can actually live the kind of life that I want. And because I know people are always interested in the financials, I will share that in each of the first two years of my business, I have surpassed six figures. Which is much more than I made as a professor. At the same time, this does not come with any health or retirement benefits. I would not have been able to make this kind of transition without my husband, who put me and our child on his health insurance. But overall, I’m incredibly happy to be at this point in my life and career. I work only 25 to 30 hours per week and never at night or on weekends. In terms of advice that I have for early career PhDs, I know that a lot of folks are looking to leave higher ed, And you might be struggling and burnt out and you need to leave right away.

26:33 Leslie: But if you do have a steady income from a position, I would advise you to keep it while you’re looking for your next big step. The best thing I could have done was to build my business within the security of my academic job. It gave me the ability to experiment and make mistakes and take risks without risking at all. But if you’re really unhappy, like I was, make sure to set a final deadline so that security doesn’t impede you from taking a chance on yourself. So if you want to connect with me or find out more about what I do, you can find me on LinkedIn under my name, Leslie Wang, or go to my website at www.yourwordsunleashed.com. You can listen to my podcast from there or join my list serve. I send out weekly writing tips and strategies for living a more satisfying life. So thanks again, Emily, for having me on and happy holidays to you all.

Outtro

27:29 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 Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Behind the Scenes at the Graduate Career Consortium 2023 Annual Meeting

July 17, 2023 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily opens up the audio diary she recorded while attending the 2023 annual meeting of the Graduate Career Consortium (GCC) as a sponsor. GCC is attended by university staff members who provide career and professional development services and programming to master’s students, PhD students, and postdocs. Emily shares the insights she gleaned from the keynote and member-generated sessions and the casual conversations around the meal tables and in the hallways. If you’ve ever wondered about the business side of Personal Finance for PhDs, this episode will give you some insight!

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • Graduate Career Consortium
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Volunteer Form
  • Dr. Katy Peplin, Thrive PhD
  • Simone Stolzoff, The Good Enough Job, Reclaiming Life from Work
  • Dr. Sasha Goldman
  • Host a PF for PhDs Seminar at Your Institution
  • Emily’s E-mail Address
  • Dr. Katie Kearns
  • Archer Career
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
Behind the scenes at the Graduate Career Consortium 2023 Annual Meeting

Teaser

00:00 Emily: The basic like, sort of thesis of his book/talk is that white collar workers in America today are attempting to self-actualize through their careers and their jobs. And that’s not good for them personally, and it’s actually also not good for them in terms of their careers. He said a couple of times through the talk that putting all this, uh, pressure and expectation on our jobs is not something that they were designed to bear and they’re not bearing it. I actually found some pretty strong like personal finance themes, uh, peeking into this talk.

Introduction

00:45 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. 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.

01:14 Emily: This is Season 15, Episode 3, and today I’m opening up the audio diary I recorded while attending the 2023 annual meeting of the Graduate Career Consortium as a sponsor. GCC is attended by university staff members who provide career and professional development services and programming to master’s students, PhD students, and postdocs. I share the insights I gleaned from the keynotes and member-generated sessions and the casual conversations around the meal tables and in the hallways. If you’ve ever wondered about the business side of Personal Finance for PhDs, this episode will give you some insight!

01:52 Emily: I’m looking ahead to Season 16 of this podcast, in which we’ll return to our typical long-form interviews. This is your official invitation to please volunteer as a guest for one of the upcoming episodes! Please go to PFforPhDs.com/podcastvolunteer/ and fill out the quick form, and I’ll be in touch over email. I look forward to interviewing you soon! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s15e3/.

02:25 Emily: Without further ado, here’s my audio diary from the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Graduate Career Consortium. I want to give you a tiny bit of background information before jumping into the audio diary. The Graduate Career Consortium is a decades-old volunteer-run organization of about 450 members, and it’s for university staff members who work in career and professional development. It started with a narrow focus on PhD students and postdocs and has more recently opened up to people who serve master’s students as well. 2023 is my third year sponsoring the GCC Annual Meeting but only my second year attending the in-person annual meeting. I planned for about 200 people to be in attendance, but I think the actual numbers were somewhat lower, in part due to flight delays and cancellations in that particular week.

03:19 Emily: In my business, almost all of the revenue comes from my work with universities, and very little comes from the products I sell to individuals. I vastly prefer for graduate students and postdocs to access my content at no cost to them because the university is picking up the bill. Therefore, when you hear me refer to ‘clients’ in this audio diary, I’m referring to the staff members who contract with me to provide financial education programming.

03:44 Emily: One of my objectives in attending this meeting was actually to collect audio for two podcast episodes that I’m planning to publish in August 2023. I wrote two prompts and asked meeting attendees to respond to either or both in a short sound bit, approximately 30 seconds. In the audio diary, I call these microinterviews. Let’s jump in!

Travel Day: Monday, June 26, 2023

04:09 Emily: I am recording this about midday on Tuesday, July 27th, 2023. Yesterday, Monday was my long travel day from San Diego to Indianapolis. I decided to have a more relaxed morning in San Diego, so I booked a noon flight out of there. This is because it’s a Monday, which means that it’s the beginning of the week and my kids were both in summer camps for, uh, the first time this summer. We were on vacation prior to this point, so I wanted to help my husband get them out the door without also trying to get myself out the door simultaneously. So I left my house a little bit after 9:00 AM and got to the airport. In fact, got all the way through security and to my gate by 10:00 AM which was awesome. I set up at one of those little charging workstation kind of areas and I worked on a couple of final things for this conference.

05:03 Emily: Actually, I had one more final flyer that I wanted to print, uh, once I got to Indianapolis. So during that time I kind of tweaked and finished up the design of that flyer, and then I also started getting on the hova app and being active there and messaging people and welcoming people and posting things. I had two flights, one hop from San Diego to Denver, and then from Denver into Indianapolis. Sometimes I really am inspired and love to work on planes. Um, I never pay for wifi, so it’s kind of a good time to process my thoughts without getting distracted by anything on the internet, but Monday was not one of those days. I just took the time to like relax and rest and I did a lot of reading. The book I’m reading right now is Love Lettering by Kate Clayborne was a recommendation. I’m enjoying that.

05:50 Emily: So I basically just took some me time to relax and get my energy ready for the mad dash that is gonna happen, you know, between Tuesday evening and midday on Friday, we landed in Indianapolis at around 9:00 PM and I noticed, you know, in my Uber from the airport to the conference center, even at 9:30 PM in the summer, it is late in Indianapolis because we are in the bleeding edge of eastern time zone. So that was pretty interesting. All the travel on Monday went really smoothly. I got to my hotel around 10 and I tried to drop off the swag I brought with me. I brought pens and a little tiny flyer to go into the swag bags, but, um, the people who were doing that had left for the day. So I just went back to my room, said goodnight to my kids over FaceTime and read more on my book. Went to sleep around midnight with my alarm set for 7:00 AM for Tuesday.

GCC Pre-Conference Day: Tuesday, June 27, 2023

06:50 Emily: Tuesday morning. I woke up before my alarm at about 6:30 AM I guess I’m just so excited to be at GCC. Um, so I didn’t have to rush of a morning, just got ready and then at about 7:45 went off to find, uh, the person that I needed to deliver that swag to, which thankfully I was able to do immediately. They took it off my hands, they got it into the swag bags right away. Even the registration, um, for the early bird attendees was opening at eight. So I’m really grateful that they were able to do that so quickly. I also took that time to get my booth set up, so I brought with me like a brightly colored tablecloth and a table runner and a little sign that goes on my table. And so I set all that stuff up and while I was setting up, two really good things happened. The very first conference attendee that I saw, uh, we both did a, Hey, you look familiar, where have we met before thing? And it turns out we actually worked together, um, a couple of years ago, but it was all virtual. So of course it’s different seeing someone in person. So it was really great to see that person and I am excited to maybe renew my work, um, without office. And the second person I saw was not someone I had met before, but she works for an office that I have worked for virtually in the past. And when she, you know, figured out who I was, she said, we love you . And it was so great to hear that I thanked her so much. She was so sweet. And yeah, I hope to be working with that office in the coming year as well. Now that I know I have a couple different, uh, champions over there.

08:21 Emily: By the time I got my table set up, it was about 8:15 and I went to check in at the registration desk. They didn’t have my name badge ready yet, but the conference organizer just said I should grab some breakfast and go on in and eat, even though technically I wasn’t like registered for that session. This is again, sort of the early bird, um, first day attendees, they were having a breakfast together, but I took advantage. I crashed the breakfast, grabbed a plate of food, sat down at a table, you know, introduced myself all around, met some interesting people. One person was a wealth manager before starting graduate school. You’re gonna hear from that person on the sister podcast. This one that I’m recording as we go through. In fact, I was really regretting not bringing my recorder with me to breakfast. I wasn’t expecting necessarily right away to be interacting with trainees, so I didn’t have it on me, but I was telling people about the micro interviews for the podcast and several people on the table really interested in it.

09:12 Emily: Um, so yeah, met a wealth manager, um, met a couple other people. I had some things in common with, had a really interesting, although brief conversation with someone about postdoctoral training. And of course the differences between being an employee and being not an employee. They’re especially amplified in your postdoc. So I love talking about that kind of stuff here at gcc and I’m hoping for more conversations like that. After I finished up breakfast at about 8 45, I went back to my room and did a couple of errands. So I went and picked up the flyers that I had ordered for printing to have at my table. So walked over to the u p s store to get those. And then I walked in the other direction to go to CVS to get some supplies for my table. So I got a couple of bowls and some candy just to make people, you know, entice them over and make them feel welcome and maybe talk to me or check out my stuff.

10:00 Emily: Um, so I got that all set up. So all in all, I probably walked about a mile and a half and the air quality today is no good. I think there’s like smoke from a fire or something. Um, so the air quality’s pretty rough. I probably should not have been outside for that long, but yeah, needed to do those errands on foot. So I’m glad that was over. By the time I go back to my hotel, I was really like sweaty and feeling kind of grimy, not so great. So I decided it was a good time for a workout today, Tuesday is definitely my day with the most free time. So I knew if I didn’t take advantage of workout today, I was never gonna work out the rest of the time here. So I did a little workout in my hotel room, took a shower, feel really good and refreshed. And that brings you up to the present. I am recording this right before heading out to have lunch with Katy Peplin from Thrive PhD.

10:52 Emily: It’s 1:30 PM on Tuesday. I just got back to my hotel room after a great lunch with Katy Peplin of Thrive PhD. We have known each other for many, many, many years online only, but this is the first time that we’re meeting in person. I consider her sort of my colleague as like a fellow solopreneur who serves graduate students and postdocs, albeit in a very different way and on a very different subject. But anyway, it was great to meet her and catch up with her. And we had some great conversations about kind of the state of graduate education from our perspectives as sort of like, you know, people used to be in it and now we are outside, but we talked to a lot of people inside of it. And by the time you hear this, you either have already heard a couple of contributions Katy made to existing podcast episodes or maybe they’re coming up. But yeah, we did a couple of recordings. She was my first test case in terms of recording a micro interview at this conference. So really glad to have that done with. I am taking a break in my room right now. I’m gonna do a little bit of light emailing and get back to my booth a little later this afternoon.

11:58 Emily: All right, it is now 8:15 PM on Tuesday, and I’m back in my hotel room for the night. Uh, let’s see. So I was down in the kind of main conference area all through the registration period, which is three to 6:00 PM Um, it was a little slow, but there were, you know, a handful of people who stopped by my booth and introduced themselves. And I recorded a couple of micro podcast interviews during that time. So that was all good. And then things really picked up between six and 8:00 PM which was during the reception. And, um, I did a lot of mingling and networking. Basically my, uh, stance when I come to conferences like this, my attitude is that everybody here wants to meet me and I just need to give them the opportunity by walking up and introducing myself. So as a naturally shy person, this is not at all, uh, comfortable for me, but I push myself outta that comfort zone for the sake of my business.

12:59 Emily: And it’s actually, it can be really fun when it works out. So yeah, I met, um, a couple dozen people maybe this evening, you know, caught up with some old clients or maybe, you know, colleagues of people that I’ve worked with in the past. Certainly met a lot of new people, some of whom are interested in working with me, some of whom are not. And yeah, just got to talk about financial stuff with them. Some of them had really good, um, financial insights from their either time in graduate school or, you know, their current life. Some of ’em had questions, some of ’em had ideas about policy changes, which is the subject of one of the micro interviews. So yeah, recorded a bunch more micro interviews at that time. I think I’m up to 13 for the day. Pretty good for the first day. So yeah, today was a lot of unstructured time, but tomorrow we’re really getting into the meat of the conference and I’m looking forward to learning a lot and getting some new insights and sharing them here in this audio diary. I know I need a lot of rest and a good night’s sleep to be on my game for tomorrow. So yeah, I’m gonna stay in the rest of the night, uh, get ready for bed, do some reading, call my family and go to sleep early, I hope.

GCC Conference Day 1: Wednesday, June 28, 2023

14:14 Emily: Okay, wow, here I am on Wednesday evening at almost 9:30 PM and yeah, I recently finished my first long, long day at the conference, so I will try to do a recap for you now. It’s been a really great day. I woke up at six, managed to get in about 20 minutes of yoga before I needed to shower and get ready for the day. And, uh, breakfast opened at seven 30. It was from seven 30 to eight 30. And as a sponsor, my objective is to be at breakfast the whole time and sit at least a couple different tables and just meet and talk with as many people as I can. So I did manage that. Um, was at breakfast for an hour, I believe I sat at two different tables. Um, I made some like pretty decent connections at one of them in particular, some people I’m gonna follow up with.

15:10 Emily: And that was really exciting immediately after breakfast was the welcome to the conference. Um, and also the Wednesday keynote, the keynote speaker was Simone Stolzoff, I hope I’m pronouncing that close to correctly. And he recently published his first book called The Good Enough Job, Reclaiming Life from Work. And that was kind of the subject of his talk. I thought the keynote was really great. It’s always exciting for me to see, uh, other professional speakers engaging in their craft and try to take some, you know, tips away from what they’re doing. And yeah, I thought he had a good, really good mix of, um, speaking about personal stories from his life, drawing in stories from his book, um, relating to the audience, like the specific, um, subject of this conference was definitely tied in with like all of his themes and giving us some exercises and time to talk and reflect with one another.

16:09 Emily: So from what I could understand, the basic like, sort of thesis of his book/talk is that white collar workers in America today are a attempting to self-actualize through their careers and their jobs. And that’s not good for them personally, and it’s actually also not good for them in terms of their careers. He said a couple of times through the talk that putting all this, uh, pressure and expectation on our jobs is not something that they were designed to bear, and they’re not bearing it. I actually found some pretty strong like personal finance themes, uh, peeking into this talk. Probably not that surprising. Apparently the author has an undergraduate degree, dual degrees in economics and poetry, and then he has a graduate degree, I believe in journalism, and he also worked in tech and has lived in San Francisco. So yeah, not that surprised to see that theme coming through, like pretty strongly.

17:12 Emily: But his talk definitely reminded me of the aspect of the fire movement, the financial independence and retire early movement that is, uh, emphasizing that when you want to retire early or retire at all, um, you really have to prepare during your working career and separate your identity as a person from your job, your identity as a worker, um, in preparation for that retirement date. Because if you go into your retirement still with your identity really wrapped up in your career and your job, you’re gonna be very lost and probably very unsatisfied, um, until you can get that sorted out in your retirement. And so it’s much better to do that ahead of time, maybe even find more satisfaction in your job when you’re not putting all that pressure on it, um, before you actually retire early. And then you’re not, they say a lot in the fire community.

18:01 Emily: You’re not supposed to be retiring from something like a job you really hate. You’re supposed to be retiring to something, something you’re really looking forward to doing, uh, once you’re no longer working your job. But what Simone was talking about today was more a a little bit more about people who see their profession as their calling and maybe some people who hate their jobs and wanna get outta that, you know, previously saw their careers, their calling. But yeah, more of the danger of identifying too closely with your career and even potentially being exploited by your, um, employer or by your industry more at large, because you’re in one of those professions where it’s assumed that you’re, you know, getting all this satisfaction out of your work. So of course you don’t have to be paid that well. So nonprofit work education, of course, government work, these kinds of areas.

18:50 Emily: So Simone ended the keynote with like five really good takeaways that are both for, you know, all of us in the audience personally as well as, you know, those vast majority of people in the audience unlike me, who are career advising professionals, you know, to help advise their students in postdocs. And one of them that I really liked was actually the last one, and it was to diversify your identity. So diversify, like add to the number of areas of your life from which you can draw meaning. And I’m definitely going to reflect further on, you know, the messages from this book and this talk and how they apply to me personally as a self-employed person who has, um, you know, chosen my business and chosen my profession. And I definitely feel like it’s a calling and just how all of this, all of these concepts get wrapped up for me and how they’re maybe a little bit different or a little bit similar with me being my own employer.

19:49 Emily: So that’s my homework following this keynote, and it was really enjoyable. And yeah, I’m really glad to have been introduced to this author and, uh, his take on this topic after the keynote and a break in which, you know, I’m, again, always trying to be networking during these free times. Uh, we went into the first two concurrent sessions, so they’re called the member generated sessions. So basically you have a choice among, you know, four or five different, um, sessions that you might attend at a given block of time. So we got two in the morning. So the first session I attended was titled Strengthening Networks and Career Readiness Post Documenting Committees. And the second one was charting Our Path at the Crossroads of Career Readiness Support. And I won’t go into all my takeaways from the sessions that I went to, but in general, the things that I’m listening for during this conference are, you know, to try to gain some insights into the, the format of programming that, you know, they seem to, you know, think is successful in their, um, career services kinds of jobs, because I would like to take those best practices into my business and of course suggest them to my clients. So the three formats for financial education that I’m currently offering my clients are live in person, live remote. Those are both for like seminars and workshops and stuff. And then I also have a variety of workshops that have been pre-recorded, so it’s more of a flipped classroom model. And so I’m trying to glean, uh, what other people are doing, whether are they going back in person, you know, are they seeing engagement? Are people really using pre-recorded resources? And this past year has been a really hard one, it seems for everyone in terms of levels of engagement for, you know, this type of programming and also for my programming. So yeah, we’re all trying to sort through it together, but it seems like the time and everybody is tired and everybody is burned out after the pandemic and everybody’s, you know, sick of whatever. And so, uh, it’s difficult for everyone, certainly.

21:41 Emily: Something I’m also looking for in taking note of are resources that I can use, like I wrote down, uh, like a report from the National Postdoctoral Association that I should read, and one from the National Academies of Science, engineering and Medicine. So resources like that that I can go to utilize on my own afterwards that are gonna give me more insights into the communities that I serve and today’s trends. Next on the schedule was lunch. And it was thankfully a very long lunch period. It was like almost two hours long, so we had box lunches, so I grabbed a box lunch, sat down at a table, uh, they were really heavy into their career conversation, so I did not actually get a word in and a little bit awkward. But yeah, I didn’t contribute to that conversation at all. Just really enjoyed listening to it. And after I was done eating my lunch, I just excused myself and said I had enjoy listening to everyone. And yeah, I was a bit awkward, but I headed back up to my hotel room to charge my devices. And then once they had charged a bit, I took a, you know, a small break, went back down to the lunch area, and then the second table I sat at, I was really able to engage with the couple of people there. In fact, when I sat down, they were talking about home ownership and the rising cost of rent and how the faculty and staff at universities just do not, uh, get how difficult it is living on a grad student or a postdoc type income with these rising cost of living and, you know, housing crisis kinds of costs. And so that was a really interesting conversation to step into. And I ended up talking with both of those people for, um, quite a while about various topics. And I recorded some more micro interviews. So I felt like that was a really nice way to spend the end of my lunch. Oh, and at the end of that lunch, I found out after that whole conversation that one of the people at the table had already knew who I was because she had seen me speak at MSU like 7, 6, 7, something like that years ago, um, when she was a postdoc there.

23:35 Emily: In the third member generated session in the afternoon, I listened to, uh, three Lightning talks, so like three eight minute talks in a row. And the fourth session I attended that afternoon was titled PhD Progression Micro-Credentialing for Navigating the PhD and Beyond. And this was actually presented by Dr. Sasha Goldman from Boston University. And I had the pleasure of working with Sasha a couple of times. Her office hosted webinars with me during the pandemic. And so we had a little bit of a relationship and I was so excited to see what she was presenting that she’s been developing over the past. She and her office had been developing over the past several years, which is this micro-credentialing program. And she really took us behind the scenes and how she made it. And again, this is all in like the career development area. Um, and it just was so inspirational. Well, first of all, it’s very impressive , and if you are a graduate student at bu, I really hope you are gonna take advantage of this because it seems like an amazing resource, um, to yeah, to help you get ready for your future career. And Sasha also said that, you know, this is free and she wants it to be open to lots of other universities. So I don’t know how fast that rollout is going to be, but, uh, if you have the opportunity to take this, um, I’m gonna go ahead and highly recommend it. And actually, Sasha told me later that they have a badge on personal finance inside the program from which they link to some of my like free resources, like podcast episodes and stuff I believe that I’ve produced in the past that was nice and flattering that they had done that. And they also have a badge for financial literacy with like, sort of a, a business twist on that business, financial literacy. So again, if you’re at BU and you’re a grad student or you’re at one of the institutions that this is gonna come to in the near future, wow, I really hope you take advantage of this. And it was really inspiring to me as well, and thinking about, oh, would like a micro-credentialing program potentially be a good fit for me when I’m doing this financial education stuff, um, versus like an online course. And so it really got my brain percolating about like a different way to help people, uh, master, you know, the skills within, within personal finance. So anyway, I was really excited to have attended that session, um, and really proud that my resources, a couple of them are, you know, being included in this awesome, awesome program.

25:55 Emily: One other note about, again, how I approach, uh, networking is like, I’m just always introduce myself to people. Like if we have a minute or two before a session starts, like I’m introducing myself to the person next to me, if I’ve met them before, I’m saying hi to them, um, you know, checking in. Of course, sometimes these things turn into pitches. It’s pretty naturally, um, for, you know, for working with me. And, and sometimes they don’t, and either way is fine. Um, but yeah, I’m just, it’s just such a great place to meet people because just about everybody here is like a past client or a potential client of mine, and I just have such good connections with them.

26:31 Emily: Late in the afternoon about 4:15 PM they went into what they called their regional meetings and gatherings. Now these are for GCC members, and I am not a member , but they’re, they have the country divided into like seven, um, regions. And so I just decided to go into the southwest region, including Southern California, which is where I live, and just, uh, you know, check with the organizer, was it okay if I attended? And they said yes. And it was really just a social hour. And for the Southwest region, um, pretty much most of the time was taken up playing this game. And the game was that, uh, the organizers had come up with some, uh, questions, questions about what is your preference and, you know, is your preference A or B? And we would, um, move to different parts of the room depending on if our preference was A or B. And then, uh, within that group we would decide what was our best argument for A or for B, and then tell that argument to the other group. And nothing got resolved after, it was not like a debate, it was just, uh, here’s our argument, here’s our argument. But it started off pretty light. So the first question was, is your preference to eat ice cream or is your preference to eat cake and moved through some other areas? One really kind of funny one was, would you rather camp in a beautiful location or would you rather stay in a luxury hotel? And the one that got a little contentious was, would you rather drive everywhere or would you rather walk or bike everywhere? And some of these questions were like, the answers were really obvious to me, but there was always a debate around it. And anyway, it was kind of a fun way to, you know, meet and interact with some other people who live, you know, in California and Arizona and, uh, nearby states So that was cool.

28:20 Emily: Next we had a block of free time. I used it for more networking, again, some more recording of micro interviews. And then I took like a five minute break in my hotel room to change out of my dress shoes into sneakers, um, to go to the evening reception, which started at 6:00 PM And the evening reception, which included dinner and drinks, was in this place called the Punchbowl, which was really fun, I guess was kind of like a bar atmosphere, but there were all kinds of games there. There was a bowling alley as well as a karaoke room, ping pong tables, and a bunch of smaller games as well. And they put out a lovely dinner for us. It was, um, like, make your own tacos. So I mostly just got food and sat and ate and, you know, talked with people. Um, and I talked with a few different groups over the course of my time there. Met some really, uh, interesting people, had some good conversations, recorded a couple more micro interviews, uh, made some good connections. People I’m gonna follow up with, not just about like work, but about like future collaborations. And I met another person who has recently gone full-time into self-employment like I am, uh, but you know, was a, a longtime member of GCC and it was really exciting to meet her. Oh, and I met a legend in the field who I’d never met or spoken with before and who is retiring. So I guess this was my last opportunity. So that was really cool. Oh, and I was also really surprised and flattered. Um, one of the people I met at the Punchbowl, um, I’ve only maybe exchanged an email or or two with her, but she is very aware of my work apparently, and, um, congratulated me on the success I’ve had with my business in, you know, the last few years and asked how it was going and everything. And even said that she points people to my website as an example of, um, you know, a self-employed person’s website, which, ugh, I’m so like, kind of embarrassed by my website. Sorry, y’all. Uh, I was considering a revamp of the website for this summer, but I kind of decided in the late spring that I had spent enough money already this year on professional development and didn’t really want to make an additional financial investment, at least not yet. So anyway, uh, kind of embarrassed by that, but also just really pleased again, and, and flattered that, um, you know, she has been following what I’ve been doing and, and, and thinks highly of it. So yeah, that was really great to hear. Um, stayed there for about two hours and then walked back to the hotel with a group, um, around 8:00 PM back in my room, like eight 15. And my evening since then has been a little more yoga, uh, downloading these micro interviews to my computer so I can save them recording this audio diary. And pretty soon I’m gonna be saying goodnight to my kids and reading and turning in because I have another early day tomorrow.

Commercial

31:14 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 2023-2024 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/speaking/ 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.

GCC Conference Day 2: Thursday, June 29, 2023

32:32 Emily: All right, it is about 6:20 PM on Thursday. I’m back in my hotel room for a break after a pretty long day, but there’s still more day left as iI’ll tell you about in a few minutes. Today was another really successful day, and I’m so glad I decided to sponsor this conference again. So my alarm went off at 5 45 today, which is like no mean feat for someone who normally lives on Pacific time. Uh, and I actually went to the hotel gym for about a half an hour workout, saw some other people from the conference there and back to my room, got ready. And of course, like I told you yesterday, I was at breakfast by seven 30 when it opened and just, you know, talked to the people for the next hour. I sat at two different tables at breakfast today, and one of the tables in particular, we had such a great conversation. One person at the table asked me my origin story for how, you know, I I got into this area and started this business and everything, which I’m always happy to share. So then the conversation led into, well, what is the, you know, biggest issue or obstacle that graduate students have with their finances? And of course, I said, and other people around the table said, well, they’re just not paid enough. I mean, that’s the first thing, uh, which yes, agree. And, but then actually someone else brought up something that I very often talk about in my seminars for prospective graduate students, and she said this was her personal experience as an entering graduate student. Just the idea of being paid to get a PhD is so flattering that you don’t really consider to carefully whether it’s a living wage or enough money to be comfortable. Um, and this person’s PhD is in the humanities. And so, you know, we talked about that idea for a while as well, and that led into, you know, negotiating and advocating for your worth and all that good stuff.

34:40 Emily: After another, welcome to the conference. We had our Thursday morning keynote, which is by Dr. Katie Kearns, titled Not just Career Crossroads Social and Emotional Aspects of Grad and Postdoc Development. And Dr. Kearns was speaking from her, um, experiences more in like the teaching and learning area. I didn’t connect with this keynote as much to be honest, but she said one thing that kind of stuck with me, which she was saying this in relationship to, um, her experience teaching. It sounded like first year undergraduate students, uh, year after year after year. And, uh, having the experience of, you know, answering the same, uh, types of questions and, and having to do the same kinds of trainings over and over again. And, and personally having the realization that, oh, right, like, I’m getting older every year, but they’re always 18 years old. Uh, but anyway, what she said about that was maybe, you know, the, the problems that they’re having and the training that they need that they’re experiencing at that time in their lives, maybe that is developmentally appropriate. And so I, I’m gonna chew over that a little bit, like how I can apply that to like the financial realm and, um, not that I really like get frustrated or anything with like, repeat questions, but like, I want to think about what is developmentally appropriate for a graduate student to go through, especially one who’s entering right out of college and what kinds of, um, what kinds of skills they perhaps already have by then, and which of the skills that they should be working on.

35:56 Emily: After another slight break, we got into the next member generated session and the one I attended was called Pathways and Crossroads at the intersection of events, equity and engagement. And this group of presenters was out of Harvard Medical School, and they’re actually more former clients of mine, hopefully future clients as well. And they described, I might not be using the right words for this, but the way that they organize and advertise their programming and they put on a lot of events. Um, so the way they organize their events and also their resources so that it’s easily accessible by the people that they serve in the medical school. And it was really quite impressive to me to hear about the development of like the web-based tool that they’re using so that people can again, find these resources and events and then also how diligent they are in collecting evaluations and standardizing those across all the programs. Cuz that’s something I’m really thinking about right now is how do I, um, improve what I offer and understand whether people are getting out of it, what I hope that they’re getting out of it, um, and how I can kind of do better in that evaluation realm. And again, like I said yesterday, I’m listening for do people have best practices around attendance and engagement, um, in terms of the events that they’re putting on. And a again, still hearing, nobody has a magic formula to, um, get through to students and postdocs right now. And it’s difficult kind of, uh, across the board.

37:24 Emily: The next session I attended was, uh, revolutionizing career services in the digital age, engaging students for 21st century success, more on the same theme. And this, um, session was actually done by Archer Career, which is one of the other sponsors of this event. And, um, specifically their co-founder and CEO Pam Schilling was the one doing most of the presenting. And it was a nice session because it was a balance of, you know, hearing from Pam about her insights, especially in the ed tech space, and also doing some exercises, uh, personally and then also with, you know, my, my neighbor who I, I got to know through the exercises, which was really nice. Um, and so it, it allowed me to do some reflection even though I’m a little bit, you know, to the side of, of Pam’s intended audience. It allowed me to do some reflection on the formats that I’m offering. And I really meeting the needs of, um, you know, the people I’m working with and what, what could I do? This is called ideation. Like what could I do if there were no constraints? Like budget was no constraint, time cons was no constraint. Uh, what would I do? So I was specifically thinking about my, uh, tax education work when I was going through these exercises, and it’s definitely given me some food for thought that I’m going to continue to think about over the course of the next few months because I’m already reevaluating, uh, these programs actually. So really good timing for this session for me.

38:40 Emily: After that, we had a lovely buffet lunch, um, actually a very long lunch, and I took advantage of this because while people were waiting, um, in line to get their food at the buffet, I kind of went down the line and asked a few different people if they would go ahead and record their micro interview with me right then, which a few people took me up on and I had some good conversations. So that was actually a good strategy, although of course I ended up at the end of line and got my food last. But it was really delicious. And again, a long lunch. We had some time for conversation around the table, and then they did a recognition, um, session. So recognizing all the members of the graduate career consortium who have served in the past year, especially those who are, um, coming off of leadership roles and sometimes going on to other leadership roles, and also honoring two people who have contributed a lot to GCC over sounded like about the past 15 years. As a non-member of this organization, it was great for me to get some more insight into what exactly all is going on here. Like, what are all the things that GCC does because I’m not, uh, you know, I, I see a very narrow slice of it. So this was a really good time for me to just learn more about the organization.

39:47 Emily: And after lunch, I had a very lovely conversation with, um, someone about postdoc benefits and the lack thereof and how postdocs should be considered employees. This is a theme. Many people talk to me about this over the course of this conference. The last member generated session that I attended in the early afternoon was a really special one because it’s actually the one that I as a sponsor got to introduce. So the session was titled at the crossroads of parallel planning, integrating fellowship applications into graduate and postdoc career advising. And when I, as a sponsor, I was given a list of, uh, sessions that I could sponsor in advance, and this was my number one choice, and I’m so glad I got it because to me, the the connection is, is very clear. So what I basically said at the beginning of the session was, you know, we’re gonna learn, hopefully some best practices throughout the course of this session on how, um, you could help your graduate students and postdocs apply for fellowship funding. And hopefully as a result of you implementing this at your campuses, there will be much more fellowship money flowing to your institution, and specifically a lot more people being funded on fellowships for the first time. And, uh, when that happens, there are tax implications. And so then I got to kind of pitch my tax education stuff. I have a new seminar that I’ve developed and I also have, um, my ongoing, um, deep dive workshops that are in the flip classroom model. So I gotta say a little bit about that and then introduce the speakers. And the session was incredible. It was wonderful to learn what they’re doing over at Vanderbilt, um, to help, uh, prepare people for, for example, I think they’re doing, they’re doing a lot more than this, but for just one example, help prepare, uh, graduate students to apply for the NSF G R F P. And so they are doing boot camps and the whole process starts in like the May before, um, the application is due, you know, the following October-ish. And it’s a very long cycle of working with the applicants and also working with their letter writers, and they, they, they’re doing what they call bootcamps over the summer. So it’s like cohort groups where you have that like accountability, um, and peer mentoring and also expert mentoring to, uh, yeah, get these applications into tip chop shape. And, and based on the data they showed, these bootcamps seem to be very effective in getting the applications, you know, up higher percentage of them towards the funded stage. But another thing they emphasized, which I really liked was how really applying for fellowships is a professional development exercise. It’s not merely about winning the fellowship or not winning, winning the fellowship. It’s a huge accomplishment just to apply. Um, and you learn so much and it’s so applicable, transferable skills, et cetera. Um, just from doing the application process alone, and especially an intensive one, like the one that they’re describing and that they actually celebrate at an event at the end of the year, everybody who applied for fellowships, um, and they don’t frame it in terms of, you know, you got it, you didn’t, it’s just everybody who applied, you know, accomplished this amazing thing. And I, I actually participated in a little bit something like this when I first applied for the NSF G F P back when I was at the NIH for my Postback irta. Um, but I definitely did not utilize this kind of resource when I was a first year graduate student. And I certainly wish that I had, I don’t know if it was available to me, um, if it was, I, I didn’t access it, but it seems like an awesome idea that, uh, many universities should be following suit. I’m really glad that they presented this, um, information in the session and that I got to sponsor it.

43:17 Emily: The last event of the afternoon today was what they called a showcase session. So it was, um, posters from various people and also, um, posters from each GCC committee to show what they’ve been doing over the course of the year. And I basically use this as another kind of networking opportunity and also opportunity to record my micro interviews, kind of doing both. So it was really, um, it was a really good time for me and I got to talk with a lot more people during that period. And yeah, that was great. I even hung around for quite a while after that session, kind of officially ended to talk to the last like few stragglers and again, get a couple more interviews. I did have someone have a, not totally unexpected, but fairly strong and interesting, uh, reaction to one of my prompts. Um, it’s the one talking about what policy would you change? And so this person, and very kindly by the way that this person was warning, um, her colleague maybe don’t answer that question, like, go for the other prompts, like, maybe don’t answer this prompt because, you know, if anything is construed as like criticizing this colleague’s, uh, current employer, um, you know, that could be bad. She could ha face repercussions or even lose her job. I don’t know if that, that might be a little, little bit extreme. But, um, basically just, you know, you’re saying who you are and who you work for maybe don’t be critical of the university that you work for in terms of their policies. So they had a little kind of debate about that. Ultimately, the person, um, did not contribute to that particular question. Um, I definitely think it’s a legitimate concern, but it was just a little, you know, a little disappointing to me that people don’t think they can speak freely to criticize even legitimately, even, even gently, even nicely, um, criticize a policy of their employer, not even like a person, but a policy. And by the way, that the policy this person was, um, going to put on record but didn’t, was like very reasonable. totally, totally reasonable change that I’ve said this one many times myself. Of course, I’m my own employer and I’m not gonna fire myself for saying that sort of thing. But anyway, that was a pretty, um, interesting reaction and I certainly hope that no one participating in that episode gets any blow back. I don’t think they will. But anyway, I, I really hope it doesn’t happen and I’m really grateful to people who were willing to answer that question and kind of stand, uh, behind their opinion. Um, I’m glad that they either think their employer is reasonable or they, um, at least think their position is strong enough that they wouldn’t be kind of threatened by that. So that was an interesting interaction regarding these micro interviews. Okay, I’m gonna wrap up because I am heading out to dinner in a few minutes. I’m going to NADA here in Indianapolis, which was highly recommended. So I’m going with, um, nine other people from the conference and yeah, hope to do more of the same, of talking with people and maybe getting more of micro interviews and we’ll see just doing more of the same through this conference, which has been again, so, so enjoyable.

46:19 Emily: Oh man, it’s now 10:40 PM , uh, let’s see. I went out to dinner with a group of people from the conference. There were nine of us in total. I left at about 5 45, got back well to the hotel, maybe nine 15 or so. Stayed around chatting for a few minutes. Uh, probably got back to my hotel room about an hour ago. Uh, dinner was really, really lovely. Um, you know, talked with people walking over to the restaurant and walking back, uh, more networking and so forth. But, uh, we were at the restaurant for about two hours, so we really had a nice long dinner and I got to talk quite a bit with all the people, um, sitting around me. We talked about it, it was a little bit more, uh, relaxed and less sort of professionally oriented than the rest of the conference. So we definitely talked about some personal stuff like, uh, the vacations were going on this year and, uh, uh, parenting. And I talked with this one person about this, um, science fantasy trilogy I read recently by NK Jemison. Turns out he’s really into, uh, that other, and we chatted about it quite a bit and it was, that was pretty fun. And uh, I made him promise to bring his, uh, tabletop role playing game based on, uh, this certain trilogy series, which that’s, I asked him to bring it to GCC next year. Maybe we’ll play, it’s not my kind of game, but I’m willing to give it a shot cause I really did like this trilogy. Um, anyway, and, uh, some people sitting around me also definitely asked me about work and, and also just more about like my business, you know, not just what I could do sort of in partnership with them, but how I do what I do. And, um, yeah, that was really nice to have those kinds of conversations as well. Um, yeah, this is definitely a nice relaxed, um, atmosphere and element of, uh, this conference. And of course I recorded a few more, more micro interviews for my collection and, uh, yeah, it was a really, really good, although long and it’s certainly late now, good long, um, nice evening out and I’ve already said goodnight to my kids. So I am just going to read a bit, uh, actually finished Love Letters yesterday and today I’m starting the Southern Book Club Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix. Kind of another random recommendation I found online somewhere, but, uh, we’ll see how it goes. I’m definitely into the, uh, lighter reads at the moment after reading that NK Jemison Trilogy. Um, yeah, so I’m gonna just read a tiny bit and go to sleep cuz I have to be up relatively early again tomorrow morning to pack and check out before the final half day of the conference.

GCC Conference Day 3/Travel Day: Friday June 30, 2023

49:09 Emily: Okay, , this is my final, um, live entry of the audio diary of my conference. It is about 11:00 PM Pacific on Friday, June 30th. So this was the last day of the conference and I was surprised that it has ended up being the longest day, I think. Um, so I’ll go through it pretty briefly cuz I’m awfully tired at this point. Uh, my day started at 7:00 AM Eastern and I let myself not work out and sleep in a little bit this last morning because I knew it was a travel day. And so got up at seven, got ready and got down to breakfast at eight. And similar to other days between eight and nine, it was basically a networking breakfast. I believe I only sat at one table this time. Um, but I had some really nice conversations with the people there, some people who I hadn’t yet met at the conference, which is great. I was of course trying to meet everyone, but, um, didn’t quite get there, but I certainly got to, I would say at least over 50% if not 75% of the people. Um, yeah, so I got some final conversations in over breakfast and then there was between nine and about 1130. Um, a few different activities went on, but I would say the one that was of most note, um, was the panel on. Um, I don’t have the title in front of me, but it was basically a keynote panel, uh, with four panelists on how to, uh, better support the international graduate students and postdocs, um, you know, in this career services area that the conference was themed around. Um, and so of course I didn’t get, you know, the, the some of the specifics and technicalities that were discussed and that are not totally relevant to what I do, but certainly it was a great reminder to me on the importance of inclusion of those international graduate students and postdocs and the importance of, um, calling out, um, specifically when there’s content that’s, um, just for them that’s been placed in there that is specific to their experience. So I thought of a few examples with my content, um, of when I talk about, um, how international students with postdocs can get started with investing, um, while they’re living in the US of course, regarding my tax programming, um, what is specific to non-residents is solely for non-residents. But I’m sure if I thought about a bit more, I could come up with a few other examples and I wanna incorporate those into my, um, into my talks to just make sure that international students and postdocs know that they are yeah, being taken into consideration that I am, uh, speaking to them as best as I can. So that to me was like the biggest kind of takeaway of the morning. Oh, and by the way, not just for international students and postdocs, but all kinds of different, um, you know, let’s say underrepresented groups or first generation, um, grad students and so forth.

52:00 Emily: Um, okay. And then the other kind of fun announcement from this last little segment of the conference was that next year’s conference is going to take place in Philadelphia. So you can’t probably hear it in my voice right now cause I’m awfully tired, but I’m very excited about going, uh, back again and sponsoring again next year in 2024. Okay, so the conference kind of officially wrapped up, um, around 1130 and between about 11:30 AM and 1:00 PM I was, um, just sort of having my last like, conversations with people. There were a few people who I wanted to catch, um, before we all went our separate raise. Some people that I’ve known from previous work and some, um, who I just met this time around. So, for instance, I had an old mentor at Duke, I wanted to say hi to, um, it turned, I, I learned during that, um, international student postdoc panel that one person at the conference was on the board of the National Postdoctoral Association. So I grabbed him and wanted to talk with him about some maybe ways that I could work with the npa, which had been brought up to me by multiple times throughout the conference by other people of that possibility. Um, and of course I wanted to thank Annie Maxfield once again for kind of orchestrating the sponsorship, uh, my sponsorship of this conference and telling her that once again, just like last year I was so happy with how things went and that I definitely wanna sponsor again next year. So, you know, keep me on list, keep me informed, um, and all of that.

53:23 Emily: And then between about one and 3:00 PM I got really lucky. I thought I was gonna be spending that time pretty much on my own, just, you know, packing up my booth and going to the airport and I did pack up my booth, but I went and sat down with someone who I saw sitting on her own, um, who I hadn’t met yet. And it turned out that she was another sponsor of the conference. Um, and that we had some things in common. So we were just having lovely time chatting and getting to show one another. She’s also a solopreneur like I am, although she’s been in business a lot longer than I have been. Um, and in a different area. Um, and then, uh, we were also joined by Katy Peplin Thrive PhD. So my conference kind of book ended by, uh, spending time with Katy, both at the beginning and the end. So it was lovely. We spent a couple hours together. We had lunch, we chatted about business. And yeah, that was a really, really nice, um, session as well. And it turns out that, um, myself and this one other person who I’d recently met, we were on the same flight from Indianapolis to Las Vegas. So we actually headed to the airport together, got to continue talking. That was all lovely, um, and just spent time together and actually ended up sitting next to each other, uh, on the flight. And so we had a wonderful conversation, but during the flight I was telling her that I was quite tired already and needed a rest, but I couldn’t quite fall asleep on the plane. So I ended up reading, um, the book that I picked up. Uh, I think I have the title to write the Southern Book Club’s Guide to Vampire Slang. Um, so I was really into that book, so I wanted to continue reading it, um, while on the plane. And then when we got off the plane in Las Vegas, it turns out that my next flight from Vegas to San Diego also had two other people from the conference on it. Um, both of whom were from U C S D. And so we, and our flight was delayed also, uh, by about an hour and a half or two hours. And so we had dinner together, got to talk so much, um, about what they do and what I do and just getting to know each other and continue that conversation at the gate. And again, lovely, lovely time and really nice to decompress in a more like social and informal way at the end of the conference. Um, and then during my last little hop from Vegas to San Diego, I continue to read my book. I think I’m like 75% of the way through it, and it’s only been two days. This is a very fast read, um, very enjoyable and uh, that brings me just about up to now. So yeah, except for that slight delay in my second flight, um, the travel has been pretty smooth, although again, it has been a long day. And this is definitely a note to myself. Um, I do often try to justify based on flight times, um, staying after conferences and events like these until the next day. Like, I don’t like to have my travel day be the same as the last day of the conference because I like to take time to decompress and rest and maybe even get started on the massive to-do list I have, uh, based on the events of the conference. But I just couldn’t justify it to myself for this particular one, given that it ended by noon on a Friday and it was on Eastern time and I was going back to Pacific, blah, blah, blah. So I decided to travel home this day, but really, really note to myself. Give myself that extra time, uh, just spend the extra money and stay the extra night in the hotel and, um, really be able to come back like kind of better rested and stronger, um, from the conference in this date I’m in currently. So thank you all for listening to this audio diary. I hope it gave you some insight into this really special time in my life and my business, which is when I get to attend these conferences. And, um, yeah, my experiences as a sponsor and what I learned and what I’m taking away from the conference and uh, yeah. Yeah. Thanks for listen. Bye.

Outtro

57:01 Emily: That is the end of my conference audio diary. I would say this conference was very successful for me. In the end, I noted about three dozen potential clients to follow up with. I recorded 54 microinterviews, well exceeding my goal of 40, and invited one person on the podcast for a full interview. I also gleaned many ideas for organizations to partner with, resources to access, and formats for my financial education. And I had a great time! So I will definitely be back again as a sponsor next year in Philadelphia. On the date that this podcast episode will publish, I’ll actually be at another conference as a sponsor, the Higher Education Financial Wellness Summit. That conference is more about my own professional development and keeping up with my field and less about networking in comparison with the GCC Annual Meeting, though I’m still planning to record microinterviews and follow up with potential clients. If you are interested in hearing more about what I learn from the conferences I attend, please let me know! I may share in a future podcast episode or email if it’s of interest.

58:13 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! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Catching Up with Prior Guests: 2021 Edition

December 20, 2021 by Lourdes Bobbio

Emily published the first episode of this podcast in July 2018. This is the one hundred and fiftieth episode, and over the last three and a half years, the podcast has featured 134 unique voices in addition to Emily’s. The last episode in 2021 catches up with the guests from Seasons 4 through 6. The guests were invited to submit short audio updates on how their lives and careers have evolved since the time of their interview. They also included their best financial advice for an early-career PhD if their answer has changed since the initial interview.

Link Mentioned in this Episode

  • Episode Guests and where to find them online:
    • Dr. Emily Roberts (Season 1, Episode 1; Episode 2; and Season 3, Episode 1; Season 5, Bonus Episode 1; and Season 8, Episode 18) — website, Twitter
    • John Vsetecka (Season 2, Episode 2) – Twitter, email
    • Dr. Lourdes Bobbio Smith (Season 3, Episode 11; Season 5, Bonus Episode 1; and Season 6, Episode 18) — Twitter, Instagram
    • Jane CoomberSewell (Season 4, Episode 8) — email
    • Abigail Dove (Season 4, Episode 9)
    • Patrice French (Season 4, Episode 15) — Twitter
    • Dr. Zach Taylor (Season 5, Episode 10 and Episode 11) — email
    • Dr. Rachel Blackburn (Season 5, Episode 12)
    • Courtney Danyel (Season 6, Episode 17) — email, website
    • Meryem Ok (Season 6, Episode 18) — Twitter
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Book Club
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Podcast Hub
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Subscribe to the mailing list
Episode image of Dr. Emily Roberts with the title "Catching Up with Prior Guests: 2021 Edition" and the subtitle "Money Stories with Various Contributors"

Teaser

00:00 John: You know, life doesn’t wait and you can still be financially sound while in graduate school.

Introduction

00:10 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts.

00:19 Emily: This is Season 10, Episode 20, and today I am featuring many guest voices! I published the first episode of this podcast in July 2018. This is the one hundred and fiftieth episode, and over the last three and a half years, the podcast has featured 134 unique voices in addition to my own.

00:41 Emily: For our last episode in 2021, I thought it would be fun to catch up with the guests from Seasons 4 through 6, and a couple from earlier seasons as well. I invited them to submit short audio clips to update us on how their lives and careers have evolved since the time of our interview, as well as to provide their best financial advice if that has changed since our initial interview.

01:03 Emily: The audio clips in this episode are ordered by when the original episode was published. If you’d like to circle back and listen to any of the previous interviews, you can do so in your podcatcher app or at my website, PFforPhDs.com/podcast. To keep up with future episodes, please hit subscribe on that podcatcher and/or join my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe.

01:28 Emily: You’ll hear an update from me first, followed by the rest of the guests. Happy listening, and I am wishing all good things for you in 2022!

Dr. Emily Roberts

01:43 Emily: Hi! This is Emily Roberts from Personal Finance for PhDs. I am of course the host of this podcast and you hear from me every week!

01:52 Emily: It seems strange to say, but 2021 was a banner year for me and my family.

01:59 Emily: On the personal side, my husband and I bought our first home, which I discussed in great detail in Season 8 Episode 18. We now live in the San Diego area, which has been our dream for over a decade. Our children are in kindergarten and preschool, and after being out of school for over a year due to the pandemic, it’s really wonderful for our family to be in a routine and for them to be around their peers. We are loving playing tourist in San Diego and enjoying the incredible weather and wealth of outdoor activities.

02:32 Emily: As for my business, Personal Finance for PhDs, I am so grateful that it has grown quite a lot in the last year. I’ve simplified my paid offerings so that I can focus on what seems to be in highest demand: 1) my personal finance seminars, both live and pre-recorded, which are hosted by universities; 2) my tax workshops, which can be purchased by individuals or in bulk by universities; and 3) the Personal Finance for PhDs Community, which individuals can join. To each of you who have joined the Community or one of my workshops in 2021 or recommended me within your university, you have my sincere thanks. The reason I can continue to create this podcast and all of my free resources is the revenue that I generate in these other areas.

03:20 Emily: I’m really looking forward to starting 2022 off strong with tax season and admissions season. If you know any PhDs-to-be who need help in either of those areas, please send them my way!

03:32 Emily: Thanks for listening to my update! If you want to get in touch, you can visit my website at PFforPhDs.com or find me on Twitter @PFforPhDs.

John Vsetecka

03:49 John: Hi everyone. It’s John Vsetecka from Season 2, Episode 2 on the personal finance for PhDs podcast. Several years ago, I got to talk with Dr. Emily Roberts about negotiating PhD offers and I wanted to just offer a quick update on how I think that has benefited me up until this day. So since that time, many things have happened. I got married during this time. I’ve moved and now I’m actually living outside of the US. I am currently in Kiev, Ukraine working on the last stages of my research for my dissertation, so I am now at the tail end of my graduate career.

04:29 John: When I last spoke to Dr. Roberts, we discussed how to go about negotiating PhD offers and I want to offer an update now about why I still think you should this. When I was applying to programs prior to 2017, I was able to successfully negotiate offers at several universities. This has really, I think benefited me to this day because I was able to choose the school, not only with a great funding package, but also great benefits that I’ll talk about in just to second. I know things have changed since the pandemic and many programs last year halted admissions, and this has made many programs and departments more competitive, and so you might be a little hesitant to negotiate an offer if you receive one, but I still think you should. If you receive a funded offer and you should absolutely make sure that any offer you receive is funded, this is really important, I think you should still ask if there’s anything else that that department or program can do for you.

05:29 John: Now, this can mean more money. This can mean insurance benefits. This can mean grant money, travel money, or any other resources that they have. See if there’s anything else that they can tack onto your package to help you be more successful in your program. And if you’re fortunate enough to have multiple offers, you should still negotiate these and see which one is the best one for you. And this might not be the one with the most money, but I think the ones that tend to offer the most money and the most incentives tend to be the best bet for your graduate career because life doesn’t wait and you can still be financially sound while in graduate school, if you can start by looking at what your department can offer you so you can plan ahead and make the best of your earning while you’re in graduate school.

06:18 John: So my advice remains the same. Again, if you receive multiple offers, don’t be afraid to ask. In some ways this is just like a job offer. It’s okay to negotiate. It’s okay to ask what else they can do for you. You’re going to do a lot for them. Don’t be afraid to reach out to the director of graduate studies or whoever’s in charge in your department and see what else they can do for you, if your package sort of insinuates that maybe there’s more that is available. I’ll leave you with that and of course, if you have any other questions about graduate school or negotiating offers, you can always get in touch with me on Twitter. My handle is @JohnVsetecka, or you can feel free to email me, it’s [email protected]. Best of luck to those of you who are applying and I hope you have successful negotiations.

Dr. Lourdes Bobbio Smith

07:22 Lourdes: Hi listeners. My name is Dr. Lourdes Bobbio Smith and I’ve been on a few episodes of the podcast. I was first on Season 3, Episode 11, where I gave a budget breakdown as an NDSEG fellowship recipient at Penn State University. I was also on Season 5, Bonus Episode 1, where I discussed my life as we entered social distancing in early 2020, and on Season 6, Episode 18, where I discussed some best practices as a side-hustling graduate school. Since those episodes, I have defended my PhD, started a business and gotten married.

07:55 Lourdes: In my first episode I spoke about how I use targeted savings accounts to save for various mid- and long-term financial savings goals, which hasn’t changed. My husband and I were able to fund our wedding with a combination of the wedding targeted savings fund I discussed in the episode, as well as savings my now husband had, and some generous gifts from our parents.

08:15 Lourdes: Since getting married and joining finances with my husband, we still use the target savings accounts, but we’ve modified what those different savings buckets are. Buying a house, which was previously a long term goal, has now become a more short to mid-term goal as we are looking to settle down in a house of our own. We also recently adopted a cat and my husband’s car is on the older side, so we are making sure to keep a pet fund and a car fund well funded as part of our monthly targeted savings. Investing is also a big priority in our household, and we’ve been able to max out our Roth IRA for 2021 and invest outside of the Roth in taxable brokerage accounts.

08:52 Lourdes: Post-PhD I’m working on a few different things. I have a job as a research associate at Penn State, I continue to work with Emily on this podcast, and I’ve also started a wedding stationery business this year. It’s been a fun adventure to learn both the management and financial sides of owning a business. I initially invested some of my own money, but it’s been self-sustaining for the last few months and I will even be turning a profit in my first year in business. 

09:17 Lourdes: I was asked to give my best financial advice for early-career PhDs and I would say, invest as early as you can, even if it doesn’t seem like you can contribute a lot. When I was first on the podcast, I was early in my own investing journey, only able to contribute a little each month, and it seemed like the progress was slow growing. But even in the two years since then, I’ve been able to see how powerful compound interest can be when it comes to growing your money.

09:44 Lourdes: If you’d like to connect online, you can find me on Twitter @lourdesb1012, that’s l o u r d e s b 1 0 1 2. You can also find my business on Instagram @cardsmithdesignstudio. Thanks for listening and have a good new year!

Jane CoomberSewell

10:08 Jane: Hi Emily! It’s Jane CoomberSewell of CoomberSewell Enterprises here, and we last chatted back in Season 2 (editors note: this should be Season 4), Episode 8, and we talked a lot about working on a budget, and self-sufficiency when you have a family and you’re doing a PhD and you’re also running a business. We talked a lot about menus, budgeting, gardening, both for practical reasons and for your mental health. And in terms of early career financial advice, none of that’s really changed except remember to have some fun. So occasionally after you’ve obviously dealt with all the bills, go and have a drink with friends, or have a meal out, or go and do what we did at the weekend, which was go and have a game of bowling, but only with adults, no children in tow. It was lovely.

11:03 Jane: Thanks so much for the timing of this as well. I finally got to my graduation yesterday. Within the business, Joyce, my other half has very much rebranded herself as an autism advocate and that’s going really well. And for me, I’m concentrating on research, but not in the academic sense. So at the moment I have two family biographies that I’m writing that people are paying me, have commissioned me to write, as well as attempting to turn my thesis into something slightly less theoretical for the commercial market. That’s my update. Everybody take good care and if you want to get in touch, it’s [email protected].

Abigail Dove

11:53 Abigail: My name Is Abigail Dove, and I was on Season 4, Episode 9, where Emily and I discussed the graduate Student Savings Act of 2019. I spearheaded the endorsement of this bill by the Federation of American Societies for the Advancement of Science, also known as FASAS, as part of a science policy fellowship. The graduate student savings act is a bi-partisan bill that allows graduate students and postdocs to be able to contribute income from a fellowship stipend to an individual retirement account or IRA. Previous IRS wording prevented contributions from fellowships as they were considered unearned income.

12:27 Abigail: Since we recorded that episode, I have a few big updates on the personal side. I have a daughter who is 18 months old, and I will be defending my PhD in a couple weeks and looking forward to the post-graduate student life.

12:40 Abigail: The big update in relation to the episode where I appeared on is that trainees can now contribute to IRAs while receiving fellowship stipends. The language from the Graduate Student Savings Act was added to an omnibus spending bill HR 1865, and was passed into law at the end of 2019. Emily did touch on this update after our interview to share the good news with everyone in a bonus episode in season four, for more information, be sure to check out that episode. But this is really fantastic news for anyone on fellowship stipends and wants a say for retirement.

13:11 Abigail: My updated financial advice has thus changed a result of the new laws. Since everyone is now allowed to contribute to an IRA, I highly recommend that if you have the financial ability to do so, do it. There’s a maximum contribution cap for IRA accounts and right now that cap is set at $6,000 for anyone under the age of 50. Additionally, there are income caps, but graduate student stipends are unfortunately well below those income caps so not something that we often have to worry about. That $6,000 cap may sound intimidating, so contribute what you can or put aside a fraction of your paycheck towards an IRA contribution. It’s never too early to start contributing to a retirement account, and it’s a good spending habit to start. And no amount is too little.

Commercial

13:57 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! Are you a graduate student, postdoc, or early-career PhD considering buying your first home in the foreseeable future? If so, I invite you to join the Personal Finance for PhDs Community for a Book Club discussion of First-Time Home Buyer: The Complete Playbook to Avoiding Rookie Mistakes by Scott Trench and Mindy Jensen of BiggerPockets. I and all the Book Club participants will read the book and come together for a one-time live discussion in January 2022. This is perfect timing for anyone with an eye on the spring or summer 2022 peak buying season. Since it might be hard to find this book in a public library, I will give you a copy of the book after you join the Community. If you want to join the Book Club for First-Time Home Buyer, please fill out the survey, including your availability for the discussion, at PFforPhDs.com/BookClub/. That’s P F f o r P h D s dot com slash B o o k C l u b. Now back to our interview.

Patrice French

15:03 Patrice: Hi my name is Patrice French, I was interviewed on Personal Finance for PhDs on November 25th, 2019 Season 4, Episode 15. I am still a full-time employee and am near the end of my doctoral program. I will defend and graduate in spring 2022. Since then I have made some major financial changes. I’ve sold my house, given the strong seller’s market. I have paid off all of my debt except for my student loans and will be eligible for a student loan forgiveness in March of 2022. I plan to transition to a career outside of higher education, in industry, and will likely relocate. As far as the best financial advice I can give for early career PhD is really create some clear goals in mind and create a plan from which to meet those goals. But don’t put a lot of pressure on yourself if things come up. Save, save, save! I have multiple savings accounts for things so that it doesn’t really dip into my income. So if I have car repairs, I have a car repair savings account and things of that nature. And definitely don’t pay for an educational program if you don’t have to. I can be reach on Twitter at @FrenchieMSW. And that’s it.

Dr. Zach Taylor

16:44 Zach: Hey everyone. This is Zach Taylor. I was on Season 5, Episodes 10 and 11. I’d like to give a little bit of an update. I’ve taken a new position. I’m now the assistant director of admissions for communication at Texas State University. It’s the first institutional position that I’ve had after having my PhD because I graduated into the pandemic and that was a very tough job field. But I wanted to give a few updates about how I think a little bit of my advice has changed since COVID 19 has happened and has really changed the landscape, especially of graduate education in the social sciences.

17:27 Zach: I know a lot of the harder sciences like your chemistry or engineering requires graduate students to be in a lab, working with physical materials, but a lot of social sciences PhDs, things like higher education where I came from, sociology, psychology at times, does not require you to be physically in a classroom. And I think people aspiring to earn a PhD, people in graduate school right now need to think how important is the on campus, in the classroom environment? How important is that physicality? And can you save money by taking online classes or taking hybrid classes. Think to yourselves about how much time and money is spent on commuting, especially in urban areas, coming from an Austin perspective. If I was still going to school living where I live now, I would have at least an hour long commute, including a car ride, a bus ride, and a walk. And that hour could be used to make money, could be used to do academic work.

18:29 Zach: So I think that might really change my perspective on the advice that I would give for an early career PhD is really considering online options, in addition to everything else I spoke about — the cost of living in your area, what you’re willing to go without and how you can side hustle to make a little bit extra cash. If anyone has anything that they want to reach out to me, please do so. My email is [email protected], just my initial ZT at U Texas dot edu. Thanks everyone.

Dr. Rachel Blackburn

19:08 Rachel: Hi, this is Rachel Blackburn and here is my update. So since I last recorded the episode of personal finance for PhDs (Season 5, Episode 12), I actually got thinking about finance quite a bit. I was in a tenure track position, teaching as a professor, but I decided that the thought of not getting tenure, and that forthcoming potential instability was a little bit much for me. And I also considered what if I do get tenure and then I’m committing to this place for the long term and is that what I really want? And the thought hit me, when’s the last time I got to choose where I lived? I also took a look at the finances because I was teaching at a public university, I was able to take a look at salaries and I could see that even by the time I might get full professor, if that was what was in the cards for me, that my salary would not go up by a whole lot. It occurred to me that I really wouldn’t reach my financial goals. So I decided to leave academia.

20:18 Rachel: I’m still researching and publishing and writing, but I have left teaching and I’m now a learning consultant for a public company. In leaving my position as a professor and moving on to this company, I gave myself a 70% raise. I’m now making more than I would be if I were a full professor at my previous university. Now I’m learning all kinds of things about employee stock purchase plans and things like that. So that’s actually where I’m at now. I’m saving more money than I ever thought I would. And I feel like I’m meeting my goals a lot faster, so it’s great. And I’m still teaching, I just do it now on behalf of developing training material for a company. That’s where I’m at and thank you again. Good luck everyone! Bye!

Courtney Danyel

21:19 Courtney: Hi! This is Courtney Danyel. I was on (Season 6) Episode 17 of Personal Finance for PhDs, and my topic was how freelancing can take your career from academia to affluence. And that’s my brand AcademiaToAffluence.com, where I teach other people with an academic background how they can learn to freelance and grow their online income like I did. We talked about how I actually only work maybe 15 or 20 hours a week, but I earn full-time income as a freelance writer. And the reason I’m able to do that is because I find writing gigs that are highly specialized in my niche and so I’m able to earn higher income for work that takes me less time to do.

22:04 Courtney: We also talked about how freelancing gave me the freedom to travel around the world and live wherever I want and so I’ve been spending the past seven years actually living in Africa, in Ethiopia. Since that episode, which was back in August, 2020, I’ve actually immigrated back to the United States, where I continue to freelance and I continue to work maybe 15 or 20 hours a week on that, but now actually have another part-time job here in the United States also. Another great thing about freelancing is that it gives you the flexibility if you wanna have multiple careers you can have them, and you can earn full-time wage as a part-time influencer and pursue a career in academia or elsewhere, which is really nice. That’s something that’s changed in life since I was first on the podcast.

22:53 Courtney: My best financial advice for any early career PhD is to diversify your income. Give yourself options. Be a freelancer, be an academic, have your own business, do something on the side, but never put all your eggs in one basket and always have options for yourself so that when life changes or you want to make a change, like I have recently, you can do that. If anyone has questions about applying your skills from academia to a freelance career like I have done, please do shoot me an email. You can contact me at [email protected]. Thank you!

Meryem Ok

23:36 Meryem: Hi everyone, this is Meryem Ok recording on Friday, November 26, 2021. While I typically work behind the scenes as an editor for the podcast, I was featured in Season 6, Episode 18, along with fellow Virtual Assistant Lourdes Bobbio, for an episode about Best Practices in Side Hustling During Graduate School. As I mentioned in that episode, one of the reasons that I’m grateful for my side hustle is that the extra income provides me with a cushion for those occasional purchases that might happen outside of my usual spending habits. This really comes in handy especially around this time of year when there are a lot of birthdays in my family, in addition to the holiday season, so my spending on gifts and eating out tends to spike up a bit.

24:24 Meryem: This past semester, one of the financial adjustments that I made was when my university moved from paying fellowship recipients on a monthly basis to a once-per-term model. At first, I was pretty uneasy about the change, but after talking to Emily and sitting in on some town halls, I felt more prepared and ready to strategize. When that first lump sum arrived in August, I immediately contributed part of it to my Roth IRA and moved most of the remainder into a high-yield savings account. If you want to learn more strategies, check out Emily’s blog post, “How to Financially Manage a Once-Per-Term Fellowship Paycheck.”

25:06 Meryem: As a personal and professional update, I recently changed my Twitter username, so it’s now @Meryem_T_Ok, if anyone is curious to learn more about my MD-PhD journey and intestinal stem cell research. Shoutout to all my fellow grad students on the research grind – I’m rooting for you and hope you have some time to recharge in the coming weeks. 

Outtro

25:37 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! pfforphds.com/podcast/ is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. On that page are links to all the episodes’ show notes, which include full transcripts and videos of the interviews. There is also a form to volunteer to be interviewed on the podcast. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved!

Emily: If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are 4 ways you can help it grow: (1) Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. (2) Share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email list-serv, or as a link from your website. (3) Recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and effective budgeting. I also license pre-recorded workshops on taxes. (4) Subscribe to my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe/. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps!

Emily: The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

Is Podcasting a Lucrative Side Hustle? with Elana Gloger of Dear Grad Student

November 29, 2021 by Meryem Ok

In this episode, Emily interviews Elana Gloger, a 5th-year PhD student at the University of Kentucky and the host of the Dear Grad Student podcast. Elana and Emily discuss Elana’s motivation to start Dear Grad Student, how the podcast makes money and how much, and the podcast’s expenses. They both give advice on how to earn money from a podcast for someone just starting out and list examples of other types of side hustles grad students pursue and how generate a high pay rate over a short period of time. At the end, Emily shares a key strategy with Elana for managing her business finances going forward.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

  • Emily’s E-mail
  • PF for PhDs Financial Education
  • PF for PhDs S8E9: Be a Fly on the Wall During a Financial Coaching Session (Money Story with Elana Gloger of Dear Grad Student) 
  • Dear Grad Student Episode 27 (feat. Emily Roberts)
  • Dear Grad Student Patreon
  • Better Help Affiliate Link
  • Magoosh Affiliate Link (GRE Prep)
  • Otter.ai (Transcript Service)
  • Dear Grad Student Merch (Redbubble)
  • Podcorn
  • PF for PhDs Community
  • PF for PhDs S10E7: The Financial Upside to Leaving Academia (Expert Interview with Dr. Christopher Caterine)
  • PF for PhDs: Best Financial Practices for Your Self-Employment Side Hustle
  • Her First $100K Podcast
  • Her First $100K Instagram (@herfirst100k)
  • Dear Grad Student Podcast Website
  • Dear Grad Student Twitter (@DearGradStudent)
  • Elana’s Twitter (@Elana_Gloger)
  • Dear Grad Student Instagram (@DearGradStudentPod)
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
Is Podcasting a Lucrative Side Hustle? with Elana Gloger of Dear Grad Student

Teaser

00:00 Elana: If you want to start a podcast, overwhelmingly, my advice is going to be, do it. It is awesome. It is fun. If you want to make money off of a podcast, it’s hard. That’s my biggest piece of advice. If you figure it out, let me know!

Introduction

00:20 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is Season 10, Episode 17, and today my guest is Elana Gloger, a 5th-year PhD student at the University of Kentucky and the host of the Dear Grad Student podcast. We discuss Elana’s motivation to start Dear Grad Student, how the podcast makes money and how much, and the podcast’s expenses. We both give advice on how to earn money from a podcast for someone just starting out and list examples of other types of side hustles grad students pursue and how to generate a high pay rate over a short period of time. At the end, I share a key strategy with Elana for managing her business finances going forward. In my business, I’m well into scheduling events for the spring term. If you have a position in a Graduate School or Graduate Student Association or similar—or have the ear of someone who does—please consider bringing my material to the graduate students and postdocs at your university or institute. I offer live and pre-recorded seminars and workshops on a variety of personal finance topics, all tailored for the PhD audience. I’ve noticed that my investing content, whether as a deep-dive workshop or as part of a comprehensive seminar, garners a lot of interest and questions. Most popular of all is my tax workshop for graduate students who are US citizens, permanent residents, and residents for tax purposes, which teaches them how to calculate and report their taxable income and determine which higher education tax benefits to use. If any of that piqued your interest, please start a conversation with me over email, [email protected], or visit PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Elana Gloger of Dear Grad Student.

Will You Please Briefly Introduce Yourself?

02:21 Emily: I have a very special episode for you today, Elana Gloger is back with us. You know her as the host of the Dear Grad Student Podcast. She’s also a PhD student at the University of Kentucky, and we are talking today about her podcast, but specifically the financial side of her podcast and how it’s working out as a side hustle. And maybe some ideas about how you can best manage side hustle income or pursue side hustle income as a graduate student or PhD. So very, very exciting. Elana was last on the podcast in season eight, episode nine. So if you want to learn more about her personal finances, not just the podcast side, you can listen to that one, sort of a mini coaching session. But Elana, welcome back to the podcast and for anybody who is not a listener of your podcast, or didn’t hear the last episode, would you please briefly introduce yourself?

03:07 Elana: Absolutely. So, so, so happy to be back! I have recommended this podcast to so many people since I was last on it. But yes, hello. I am Elana. I’m a fifth year PhD student and I study health psychology at the University of Kentucky. I focus on how our immune system interacts with how we manage stress and regulate ourselves and how that determines how well or poorly we age. And I host Dear Grad Student, which is a podcast. And I’ll just give you my slogan, “for all grad students to celebrate, commiserate, and support one another through grad school.” And yeah, I started it in summer 2020, 6 months into COVID, feeling lonely. Wanted to complain with fellow grad students, and I missed doing that in the hallways between classes and I made a virtual space for that to be, you know, more than just Twitter. So yeah, I love to podcast. It’s a great creative outlet. And as we will discuss today, not a great side hustle for cash, but super, super fun.

What Inspired You to Start Dear Grad Student?

04:07 Emily: Yes. I feel the same way about my podcast. What inspired you to start Dear Grad Student, aside from just lonely during the pandemic?

04:14 Elana: Yes. Well, right. So that was sort of the first one, right? I was lonely. I missed complaining. The other thing is that I really needed something creative to occupy my time that I wasn’t just going to drop off. You know, I crocheted for a really long time and I loved that, but it was like, after you make a few blankets, it’s like, you’ve done it. You know? So it was like, what’s going to be the next thing? And what’s something I can do long-term, that’s going to be fun and relevant for me? And then the other thing, I mean, I did want something that was going to be a side hustle. I don’t make a lot of money as a grad student. We talked about this on your episode, we talked about it on the episode you are on for my podcast, it’s episode 27. We don’t make a lot, but I’ve made a little bit of money from the podcast, and it’s sort of incremental. So, maybe one day this will be, you know, a big dent, but mostly it was, I wanted something fun and creative. I wanted to feel fully me in whatever that was. And I wanted to do something that was impactful to other people, which luckily the podcast has been.

Return on Investment (ROI)

05:12 Emily: I think that ordering of your motivation is really crucial. That you wanted to create something that you’re passionate about. And also, if money comes from it, that’s cool. And that would be a nice supplement. Let’s talk more about how that’s actually working out. So I know from our kind of offline conversations, how much of yourself you put into this podcast. So let’s kind of talk about the ROI here. Like what are you putting in and what are you getting out aside from the feeling of creating community and helping people?

05:43 Elana: Yes. I mean, as a hobby, it’s incredibly fulfilling. Like you said, I mean, I could not be happier. I’m probably at one of the happiest points of grad school, not just with my own personal stuff going on, but because of this podcast, so absolutely fantastic and satisfying for that. Regarding time I spend, which is of course what you were alluding to, I’ve done a little bit better this year. I have shortened the length of my episodes. I’ve gotten some folks on my team to help me out. Last year, I was spending a solid 10 to 15 hours a week, basically unpaid, to do the podcast. This year, it’s a little bit closer to six to 10, depending on length of episode, depending on the hype I’m making for each episode, you know, communications and things. And regarding what that looks like financially, I mean, I’ve actually been making profit every month, profit quote unquote, every month since March.

06:34 Elana: So like individual months, I’m in the green, I would say. But over my whole chunk of this experience, I think I still am in debt, like 134, like that’s, my net is negative $134. And that comes from a lot of different things. And I’ve spent, I will say probably the minimal amount of money that I would spend on a podcast of this size. So it’s been a lot of time to be unpaid. I mean, you really have to love something to put this much time in and get no money and be in the negatives despite the popularity of the podcast over the last year.

07:10 Emily: Yeah. You know, I think that information might be surprising to some people who know how well your podcast has taken off and how well it’s doing and the fact that it is monetized. Just to know that, okay, it is great news the last six months or so, like you’ve made more money than has gone out. But one, that doesn’t account for your time spent at all, you’re not paying yourself directly.

07:33 Elana: Literally not at all.

Emily’s Podcast’s Business Role

07:33 Emily: But then two, like it does cost money to get a podcast off the ground. And so those initial expenses, you’re still paying yourself back for those initial expenses that you incurred near the beginning. Podcasting is definitely a labor of love, I would say for the great, great, great, great, great majority of podcasters, but yeah, it might be surprising to know that behind podcasts and behind bloggers and YouTube channels and all these things like, yes, there are ways to make money from this, but the percentage of people, the percentage of creators who are making any kind of substantial money is so, so, so small.

08:05 Emily: Since you’re disclosing, I may as well disclose that for me, the podcast is not a money-making endeavor. It actually costs me a lot of money directly to make the podcast. And secondly, I pay virtual assistants to work on creating the episodes with me. And so each episode probably costs me 150 to $175 in direct costs of paying assistants and other things like hosting and doing transcripts and so forth. And I’ve decided to incur that cost because this does supplement and support the rest of my business. So for me, the podcast is technically content marketing. So it’s me talking about things that are related to my business. Hopefully, you know, people listen to this, they get something out of it. And eventually they get around to somehow sending money my way through the various means that that could happen like speaking engagements. So that’s kind of my business model. The podcast is in itself as isolated, a money loser and a time loser, but it bolsters the rest of my business. I think to me, in a way, that’s worth it. So that’s kind of my perspective on the podcast financials. Is there anything else that you wanted to add about how you’re like managing the finances of the podcast?

Dear Grad Student Main Revenue and Costs

09:17 Elana: Yeah. I mean, I’m happy to be super transparent about like what my main revenue is, the costs that I’m incurring, things like that. So I have it broken down here in front of me and I just think it would be helpful to let people know like, what is the minimal cost as I mentioned? Like, you know, so people know that the podcast has a Patreon group. I currently have 17 active patrons and I allow people to contribute 1, 3, 5, or $10 a month to the podcast. And it’s listed on the Patreon page, all the things that you can do and the reasons that I’m, you know, trying to earn money. So I have 17 patrons that all have those choices. And last month I made $60 after taxes, which maybe sounds like a lot. It’s actually not. And that’s the most I’ve ever made in one month.

10:00 Elana: And I do have other ways of making money. Like I am an affiliate for you and some of your tax workshops, I promote BetterHelp and their therapy services, Magoosh which is a GRE prep service. I’ve worked with Instacart, things like that, but it is really hard to make money with an affiliate link. I think that you and BetterHelp are probably the ones that I make the most money off of. But it’s a lot. Because with, they say that it’s like 1% of the people that click will buy something. So a hundred people click on something, you might get one purchase. My rate is a little bit better than that because I’ve never had a hundred clicks and I’ve sold things, but it’s really hard.

What is an Affiliate?

10:37 Emily: I want to make sure we were clear about this. So like, when you say affiliate, people might not know like what that means. So an affiliate is like, you’ve decided you as the content creator have decided that you’re going to have an advertising relationship with another entity. But you only get paid if someone actually makes a purchase to, you know, BetterHelp or one of my tax workshops or whatever the different partnerships are. And so it’s like, by the way, for the listener, it’s really helpful if you are going to make a purchase anyway, if you actually do it through the link where you heard about it, right? Like give that person the credit, let them get the few, you know, the dollars or whatever it is that they’re going to get from that sale. That’s really, really helpful. So thank you for those of you who are doing that. This is different from maybe like flat rate advertising where like maybe an advertiser would pay you to run a commercial based on your listenership, like based on the exposure they think they’re going to get, but they’re not going to directly track sales. Two different models. But that’s how affiliate marketing works.

11:36 Elana: Yeah. I’m so glad that you explained that. That’s one of those things that like, it’s now normal knowledge for me, but like, this was all new for me a year ago when I was diving into it. It’s usually bigger podcasts or YouTube channels that if they have millions of followers and people just are like, yeah, the exposure is fine. And then whatever. And so those are my main sources of revenue. And like I said, the costs I’ve put in, despite making, you know, 50, $60 a month off Patreon and other things, I still haven’t broken even. So some of the costs that I’m accruing regularly are things like hosting the podcast on Buzzsprout and that’s $18 a month. I do use a social media schedule to make sure that I can have boundaries with the podcast and have things automatically post.

12:16 Elana: And that is, I think about $14 a month. Because I had to up that a little bit. And then there’s the stuff I pay for yearly. And this is where the big chunks come from. Hosting the website on Squarespace: $200 a year. Otter.ai is what I use for transcripts, which is a big must for me, that is $80 a year. And I pay my transcript editors, Kayden Stockwell, and Vishal Thakkar. And you know, there’s also things like patron benefits, which people are starting to sign up for the tiers where there’s a free mug, a free sticker or whatever it is. And that comes out of my pocket because I’m really thankful for anyone who is putting enough money towards the podcast, that it warrants a free item. And then the last way that I get revenue is merch sales. And so I have made probably $25 in profit from Dear Grad Student merch that’s on red bubble.

Redbubble Merchandise

13:10 Elana: The way that red bubble works is you upload artwork and then you can put it on any item. They handle the payment, the shipping, making the product, all of it. But you get a very, very little bit of the actual sale made. So that is a small place that I get some profit, but I don’t make a ton. And the podcast was never meant for that. So that’s okay. And you know, even if I did make more, probably wouldn’t pocket it, it would probably go to growing the podcast more until I was at like a really steady rate. So, it’s a balance and I’m doing the best that I can, but maybe don’t go into podcasting for money unless you already have a big following.

13:47 Emily: If there’s anyone listening who wants to support either one of our podcasts monetarily and wants to know what is the biggest impact action they can take, they are willing to part with some money. What can they do to make sure these podcasts continue? So for you, what’s your answer to that? I’m assuming it’s Patreon, is that right?

Patreon and Networking

14:05 Elana: Is, yeah, Patreon’s the biggest one. I do have a couple of affiliate links that pay me quite a big chunk of money. The most being from BetterHelp, but I’m not going to say like, if you want to support the podcast, I would ask you to please go to therapy. What I would rather is to have a relationship with you, and Patreon really allows for that. So you can contribute, like I said, 1, 3, 5 or $10 a month, which hopefully is in a range grad students or postdocs can afford. And it allows you to have a private message with me on there. There’s benefits like you can ask questions I put in the episode, you can know episode themes early. One of these days, I’m going to have special Patreon-only merch. So you really get some extra fun content. And it means a lot to me. I shout the patrons out every month on the podcast, I take special requests from them. So it’s also a benefit for people who really like the content that they know that I’m making. So Patreon is the biggest, and I think the most fun for me as well. So I really see it to be mutually beneficial.

15:05 Emily: Yeah. I think if someone wanted to send a message to you through their money that says, I support Dear Grad Student, the Patreon is the clearest way to send that message, and possibly the least expensive for the person sending the message. Because as you said, for some of the other things, you only get like a small payout compared to what the customer would be paying via the other entity. Of course, that’s how that works. To answer the question for myself, really monetarily, the best thing that comes out of me for the podcast, similar to what you were just saying, is networking. So it’s getting it’s when listeners refer me well, either when listeners themselves have the power to host me for an event with your university or your grad student group or whatever, or can refer me to someone at their university who can. Like those sort of bigger jobs and bigger payouts literally sustain the business. So that is amazing. And thank you so much for those of you who have made those recommendations.

Starting a Podcast and Knowing Your Audience

15:58 Emily: Let’s turn the advice to a different segment of the audience. Let’s say that someone else really wants to start a podcast and they want to make money from it. What is your advice for that person?

16:09 Elana: Great question. If you want to start a podcast, overwhelmingly, my advice is going to be, do it. It is awesome. It is fun. If you want to make money off of a podcast, you have to be really, really good at shameless self-promotion. You need to know your audience. So there’s a reason that I have Magoosh and BetterHelp and things like that, that grad students or people applying to grad school would benefit from. It’s a reason why the merch that I sell is on mugs and stickers because grad students have coffee and laptops. So you want to know what your audience would actually buy from you. And then there are websites like Podcorn. That’s P O D C O R N. I know there’s others, but this is the one I’ve used before, where other people that want to advertise on podcasts, even small ones will say, Hey, we have this thing we’re trying to promote.

17:01 Elana: And then us podcasters can submit a proposal to say, Hey, we want to promote it. Would you pay me X amount of dollars to read an ad? I have never gotten one of these, but I know other small podcasters who have, that spend and dedicate more time to it. So there are ways to do it. You can also get on YouTube with your episodes. And then if you have, you know, X amount of followers and you become a YouTube partner, that’s the way to get a little bit. You can have ads on your website, which I do not do, because I don’t know how, but technically that can also happen where Google analytics can track how much money each page makes. But it takes a lot of time to build money from that. So I think the biggest thing, if you want to make money from a podcast, maybe have a big audience first, know your brand, know your audience, and do things that would make sense for them buy. Like I’m not going to try to sell wellness things because grad students don’t have the extra money to try some tea. Like, that’s not going to work. So it’s hard. That’s my biggest piece of advice. If you figure it out, let me know.

18:04 Emily: I think that is great advice.

18:06 Elana: I guess my conclusion there would just be, there are so many other ways to make money as a grad student that aren’t related to this, like tutoring or transcribing things for businesses or podcasts or a research lab. Making things for an Etsy shop where you probably get a similar, you know, the content is something physical that you can send people. So it’s not like making money. Isn’t possible. Like, I don’t want the total takeaway message from this episode to be grad students cannot successfully have a side hustle. Because that’s not it, but we already have a full-time and a half job probably. So the time it takes to get something that is lucrative, we don’t have as much. That’s where it gets tough.

18:47 Emily: Yeah. I agree. Podcasting is an ultimately very indirect way to make money, if that is your goal at all. And until you get very, very big, you’re not really directly making money.

Commercial

19:00 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. If you are a fan of this podcast, I invite you to check out the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community. The community is for PhDs and people pursuing PhDs who want to take charge of their personal finances by opening and funding an IRA, starting to budget, aggressively paying off debt, financially navigating a life or career transition, maximizing the income from a side hustle, preparing an accurate tax return, and much more. Inside the community, you’ll have access to a library of financial education products, including my recent set of Wealthy PhD Workshops. There is also a discussion forum, monthly live calls with me, and progress journaling for financial goals. Our next live discussion and Q&A call is on Wednesday, December 15th, 2021. Basically, the community exists to help you reach your financial goals, whatever they are. Go to pfforphds.community to find out more. I can’t wait to help propel you to financial success! Now back to the interview.

Finding Your Unique Space as a Grad Student

20:12 Emily: So you just mentioned a couple of great examples of ways that graduate students can have a lucrative side hustle that is not podcasting. I would say like generally speaking, the fastest way to make money is to sell services. So like you can immediately start making money if you are putting yourself out there for tutoring, like you just said. Or writing or editing services or coaching services, if that’s within your wheelhouse. Selling sort of directly your time or how you apply your time to like a project is the fastest way to make money. It’s not necessarily the most lucrative. Unless I would say as a subset of that, you look at what your really special skills are. Like, what makes you unique in the marketplace? And so for graduate students, like maybe that is some skill you’ve been developing during graduate school, like maybe it’s like super ninja data analysis, something or other, and you can sell that as like a consulting service. So that’s something else to think about. Like, if you want money now, go for a service. If you want a lot of money, what makes you unique? A lot of people can tutor. A lot of people can teach, what is it that you do that’s special?

21:22 Elana: And I would say as well, I mean with how big Academic Twitter is and how much advice there is out there, there are a lot of people doing coaching in that space. So now it’s even not just, you know, what’s unique about you, but what can you provide above and beyond what people are accessing for free? And I think that that would be the really tough thing. It’s why I am not offering that kind of thing because I don’t think anything I have to say is that unique. The podcast just gives me a place to say things that I hope everyone knows accessibly. And so it’s really hard to be unique. I think that that’s really something that people don’t quite understand. I don’t know if it’s that we all just think we’re special or what. But I’m having a very hard time on a regular basis figuring out what is unique for the podcast. And that’s something that I’ve spent a lot of time doing to make the podcast something. But when we think about like you said, services, it is hard to sell yourself. That’s why I’m not doing it. I’m selling, you know, the podcast, I’m selling merch, blah, blah, blah, because that’s something that is so hard. And I don’t know if I have the self-esteem for it. I mean, it’s tough, it’s tough.

22:24 Emily: That’s such a good point. I’ve had like, if this will help people who are feeling that way, I’ve had several episodes on the podcast, and I’ll try to link everything I can think of later in the show notes of people who have done things, like consulting, something very relatively high ticket for a graduate student, finding their unique space. And I think a lot of times that just starts with like, you talking about your work with people who aren’t necessarily your peers. So like pivoting, like out of academia and looking in the wider world where they have more money for higher pay rates and like asking yourself, how can my services help these people in this other area who don’t typically interact with PhDs and academics? And maybe what I do seem special. I don’t think it’s special inside academia, but maybe it is special in this other setting. And how can I connect with those people? And this often results in like amazing like work experience and growth experiences. I have an episode with Dr. Chris Caterine that I published recently, we’ll link in the show notes on yeah. Taking those skills that you developed in academia, outside of academia. And having them be really valued because they’re rare. They’re not rare at university, but they’re rare elsewhere.

23:32 Elana: Yeah, for sure.

Impact of Podcast on Personal Finances

23:33 Emily: You mentioned that in recent months, you’ve made something like $60 a month on average from Dear Grad Student. Is that impacting your personal finances at all at this point? Like, are you actually taking that money home? Are you reinvesting it somehow? What are you doing with it?

23:48 Elana: Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, I’ll say sort of broadly, you know, I track everything for the podcast on this, like Google spreadsheet, because I don’t have a lot of money going out or coming in. So it’s very easy. There’s, you know, three or four lines filled out every month. It’s not high-tech. And because I’m tracking, oh, you know, what is my net gain or loss of the podcast since I started it in August, 2020, I know that I’m still like in the negative one thirties, like I mentioned. So right now, when I get paid from the podcast, it goes into my checking account and it just becomes part of whatever I’m paying off of my credit card or throwing into savings. I’m just replenishing at this point, even though it’s been long-term, like I bought the podcast website in February of 2021. Technically, you know, the $200 I spent I’ve made back, but in all with everything I’ve spent, I haven’t.

24:33 Elana: So right now, it’s just going into my bank account, like normal income, almost like I’m not even seeing it. When I get to the point of hitting zero, which, you know, cross fingers because we’re coming up on a one year of Otter and one year of the website and I’m going to start all over again. But when I get to $0 and I can start actually making profit and, you know, and getting somewhere, I think that will be a question of how much of this do I want to invest in the podcast for what? Right? What’s going to have the biggest gain and growth for the podcast? Like the website was a big one, huge. Transcripts, huge. So the question really will be what is going to be the thing that makes this income even higher? And from there, I can start thinking about investing or fun things or other things like that. But for right now, just replenishing, just trying to hit zero because, you know, I don’t want to be in debt for this. I don’t want to like regret, and I don’t, but I don’t want to be in debt from it. Even $130, like that’s a lot for a grad student.

25:34 Emily: May I make a recommendation?

25:35 Elana: Yes! Help!

Keeping Business and Personal Finances Separate

25:38 Emily: If listeners, as I was talking about earlier, want to learn more about this recommendation, I’m just about to make, I have a course inside my Personal Finance for PhDs Community called Best Financial Practices for Your Self-Employment Side Hustle. And you can find that course directly at pfforphds.com/S E S H for self-employment side hustle. So go there. But the basic basic basic tip is to have some separation between your business finances, and you do have a business, now, even if your business is in the red, you still have a business, and your personal finances. And so I totally understand what you’ve been doing because you’re still in the red net over time and it makes sense that you’re paying yourself back with whatever, you know, monthly profit you have. But once you get to that zero point, once you get to being in the black overall, my recommendation is to have a separate checking account where you’re running everything for your business through that.

26:28 Emily: So all the expenses are paid from there. All the income goes to there. At first, you may not pay yourself, right? Once you’re back to black, you’re not relying on this income, let it build up a little bit in that account. And then you can make decisions about, do I want to reinvest in something? You know, you can save up for maybe a bigger expenditure using that account. Or maybe the answer is no, I want to pay myself a tiny bit for the massive amount of time that I’m putting into this. I’m going to set a salary for myself. And it almost sounds like silly to say that because you know, when we’re talking like $60 a month level, like maybe you would have the ability in a few months to pay yourself a hundred dollars a month. Maybe you’d have that ability.

27:07 Elana: I mean that’d be incredible, because a hundred dollars goes a long way as a grad student.

27:11 Emily: It does. And especially a hundred dollars you can rely on. So this is not like, oh, maybe I’m going to get 60 or maybe 150, or maybe this other amount. When you have the separation between your business finances and your personal finances, once again, you build up some kind of buffer to, you know, ride out the ups and downs. You can make these regular salary transfers. And then maybe it starts out at a hundred dollars, but then maybe in six months, it’s 200 and then maybe it’s 500 and then maybe $1000.

27:37 Elana: It’s the dream, right? It’s the dream.

27:38 Emily: Exactly. And this is how I’ve handled my business as well. Like my salary, I didn’t pay myself a salary for a while, and for a while was a thousand dollars, and then it was 2000, and then et cetera, et cetera, we’ve gone up from there. But I think it’s so, so helpful just mentally to have that separation. Because you don’t feel like you’re being, like you mentioned earlier about like not wanting to put yourself out there and sell and stuff like that. Like, how well you’re doing with selling doesn’t have to immediately impact her personal finances. You can have this degree of separation. So, that’s the first tip.

Facilitating Taxes for Business

28:11 Elana: Yeah, that’s good for the boundary of it. I mean, I hear that and my first thought is like, Ooh, when do I have to start paying taxes on this kind of thing? But I know that that’s the next step. My mom can help me with that. It’s going to be okay. But I know that that is sort of the next step. And maybe that’s what I should have said. Like, I’ve thought about it. It kind of feels dramatic, but I think that I just need to let go of that mindset. Like it isn’t dramatic. Like you said, this is a business, you know, as much as it’s fun, and it really is a hobby. I mean, this is really a passion project for me. There’s income going in and out, and maybe I should start treating it that way.

28:41 Emily: It’s going to be a lot easier come tax time to have this easy record in this one bank account of all of your expenses. You’re not going to have to go hunting through your personal expenses to find all the charges from XYZ different services that you use. So like, that’s one of the main reasons to do it. One is the personal finance reason of the separation. One is the tax simplicity of like the tracking of it. I am very, like we said, this is September, 2021. I think you’re going to sound like you’re going to be in the black in 2021, right? Like overall?

29:10 Elana: Oh wow, I hope so. From your mouth to God’s ears. I mean, truly let’s hope so.

29:15 Emily: So, 2021, you get to file your schedule C and pay tax on this whatever amount of income it ends up being above your expenses. It’s going to be helpful to have that separate account. But yeah, separate account and eventually a salary that you can build into your budget.

29:32 Elana: I’m excited to tell you when I get there. I’ll definitely let you know, I’ll tweet at you. I’ll say Emily, it’s happened. It’s time. I made it.

It Takes Time to Build Something

29:40 Emily: Anything else we want to talk about in this episode about, you know, starting a side hustle, managing finances from a side hustle? Any other comments you want to make?

29:48 Elana: Yeah, I think my biggest thing is that it takes time. Don’t get discouraged if you are trying to build something. I mean, you know, when I started the podcast, I had 372 followers on my personal Twitter account. I ended up having my tweet go viral, which is really what started and launched the podcast. But it takes time, you know, over a year I’ve had like 26,000 downloads. I have almost 5,000 followers on Twitter, over a thousand on Instagram. But all of that has taken all of those hours I mentioned with basically zero income and being in the negatives. So don’t give up, if you have a passion project and you want to go for it and it might make you money, go for it. But you never know if it will or not. And I think that it has been so satisfying and fulfilling in my personal life that, you know, here we are over a year into me doing it. And I don’t even care that I’m in the negatives, but I’ll be super happy when I’m not anymore. So let the passion fuel it rather than the money. Because I feel like that spark will leave really quick if you become impatient with that part.

30:49 Emily: I totally, totally like could not agree more that when you start this kind of thing, creating content that maybe will eventually result in money, you have to be passionate about it to get it off the ground. You know, you mentioned earlier when you had the idea to start the podcast that you wanted something that you were going to stick with long-term. Frankly, a lot of people don’t stick with podcasting, long-term, right? Like most people produce a few episodes and then it’s a lot of work.

31:11 Elana: Yeah, the average is about seven. I saw that online. It was like a threat. It was like, the average is like, they’ll make seven and they’ll stop forever. And I remember when I published my seventh episode, I was like, yeah, watch me. You know, like it became like a dare to myself, and then when I got the followers, it was like, well, now people are expecting a weekly episode. And of course, if I was like burnt out, people are like, oh my God, like, we don’t care to take a week off. But generally I’m like, I have a schedule. I have a structure. People are expecting an episode and I want this to keep growing. So it fuels me.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

31:41 Emily: Okay. So final question that I ask all of my guests and I asked this to you last time, maybe you’ll come up with something new.

31:46 Elana: I have something new. I’m ready to go.

31:48 Emily: Okay, good. What is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? It could be something that we touched on in this episode or it could be something completely different.

31:56 Elana: Yes. So this is going to be sort of a bridge between the last episode and this one. You said that was season eight, episode nine. Okay. Everyone should go listen to it. It was a great conversation. So I think my best financial advice bridging these two together is follow a budget early, and listen to financial tips about how to grow wealth at any income. Ever since I was on this last podcast, I’ve been looking for other places where I can also learn about this. One place that I’ve gone, there’s a podcast and Instagram account called Her First $100K, which is kind of like a feminist approach to women building income, which is like, I’m living for it. Your podcast. I’ve listened to many, many, many additional episodes. Like, before I think I’d listened to like what I thought were quote unquote relevant. And now I’m like, just listen to more because you’re going to find bits and pieces, especially when you have like the Q&A section at the end, which may be, or may not be related.

32:47 Elana: I’m like, that’s where I’ve learned the most. I’ve now invested, I know you told me to stop putting money in my Roth IRA. And I did to keep that in my bank, but, I invested that in a mutual fund and I learned a lot about, you know, what to pick. So I think similar to my last advice, it’s about the little steps, but realizing that even at a small income, you can start making those steps. Even at a small income, you can build things and don’t be afraid to go for something. Don’t be afraid to try to make money on the side. There’s nothing wrong with that. And you know, at the end of the day, we’re all just trying to build the best lives for ourselves.

33:21 Emily: I love that. I love finding some people to follow who are having these conversations that feel relevant to you. So like I’m sitting in this like grad student, PhD, academic like perspective on this, but obviously you can learn a ton. And I learned a ton from people outside of that specific niche. And so finding someone else, I mean, there’s so many in the financial space content creators now, like you’re going to find someone that you can identify with, whether it’s Her First $100K, excellent, excellent brand. Whether it’s, they’re all these, like people, you know, people of color and like first gen, you know, college graduates, you know, if that’s the group you are in, like, you can find someone who’s speaking to that audience and will address your, you know, the particular issues that I might not be talking about. Because I’m focused on people in academia. So like assembling like a team of experts that you’re like listening to.

34:09 Elana: Yes, it’s my like mentorship team and they don’t even know about it.

34:11 Emily: Exactly. Excellent, excellent strategy. Well, Elana, it’s been such a delight to have you on again. I’m so glad we were able to do this. I don’t know when this is going to be released, but I will be on your podcast in tax season. So check Dear Grad Student in tax season for that one. And yeah, it’s just great to have you, and thank you so much for coming.

34:30 Elana: Thank you so much for having me again. I have loved this partnership that you and I have built and the collaborations back and forth. Your episode will be coming out on Dear Grad Student at the end of January. So really like, beginning of tax season for me, but maybe that’s actually middle of tax season for normal people who are on top of their finances. But yes, end of January. And then for anyone listening who has not heard of me or Dear Grad Student before, you can find everything for the podcast at deargradstudent.com, you can find me on Twitter @DearGradStudent or @Elana_Gloger. You can find the podcast on Instagram, @DearGradStudentPod. You can find me on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or anywhere. I’m really easy to Google. So I hope you’ll join me if this was interesting, and definitely listen to Emily’s episode on my podcast we’ve already done. You can find that at deargradstudent.com/episodes/27.

35:17 Emily: Perfect. Thank you so much!

35:18 Elana: Thank you!

Outtro

35:26 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! pfforphds.com/podcast/ is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. On that page are links to all the episodes’ show notes, which include full transcripts and videos of the interviews. There is also a form to volunteer to be interviewed on the podcast. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved! If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are 4 ways you can help it grow: 1. Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. 2. Share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email list-serv, or as a link from your website. 3. Recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and effective budgeting. I also license pre-recorded workshops on taxes. 4. Subscribe to my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe/. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance…but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

This PhD Entrepreneur Advocates for Universal Basic Income (Part 2)

May 11, 2020 by Meryem Ok

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Jim Pugh, the founder of ShareProgress and co-host of the Basic Income Podcast. Jim defines universal basic income and outlines how it would alleviate poverty and other social ills, including results from research and real-life experiments with basic income. He describes the possible avenues by which universal basic income could be funded and whether it would replace our existing social safety nets. Jim and Emily speculate about how universal basic income might affect higher education funding, including PhD stipends and postdoc salaries, and PhD trainees themselves.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

  • Your Money Or Your Life (Book)
  • The Basic Income Podcast
  • Universal Income Project
  • PF for PhDs: Speaking
  • PF for PhDs: Scarcity Mindset Part 1 (Dr. Lucie Bland)
  • PF for PhDs: Scarcity Mindset Part 2 (Dr. Lucie Bland)
  • PF for PhDs: Shifting Labs (Dr. Katie Wedemeyer-Strombel)
  • PF for PhDs: Podcast Hub
  • PF for PhDs: Subscribe
PhD universal basic income

Teaser

00:00 Jim: You could basically think of this as universal basic fellowships for PhD students because I think that the dynamics that come with it very, very closely would match what it would be if you were getting a fellowship of the same size.

Introduction

00:18 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season six, episode two, and today my guest is Dr. Jim Pugh, the founder of ShareProgress and cohost of The Basic Income Podcast. In this second half of our interview, Jim articulates what basic income is and how it would alleviate poverty in the United States, including results from recent research and experimentation. He describes the possible avenues by which it could be funded and whether it would replace our existing social safety nets. We speculate about how basic income might affect higher education, including PhD stipends and postdoc salaries. Without further ado, here’s the second part of my interview with Dr. Jim Pugh.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:06 Emily: We’re back now with part two of my interview with Dr. Jim Pugh. In part one, he told us all about how he started a business a few years after graduate school, which ultimately allowed him a great deal of time freedom. So, his business pays for his lifestyle, but he only works at this point about five hours a week on the business. And that has allowed him to pivot to his advocacy work around universal basic income, which is what we’re going to be hearing a lot more about today. So, Jim, thank you so much for continuing this interview with me. And we want to start off with a basic question about universal basic income because frankly, I probably would not have really heard about this except that you and I are Facebook friends. And also, we’re recording this in September, 2019 and Andrew Yang is a candidate for the democratic nomination for president. So, between those two things, I’ve kind of heard a little bit about basic income, but I would love to hear a lot more about what it actually is from you.

01:59 Jim: Sure. Well, so, just to start with the definition. A universal basic income is a policy that would provide every single person in the country with unconditional cash payments regularly–most people talk about once a month–that’s actually enough to cover basic needs. And the idea of it is that, if you were to enact this, you eradicate absolute poverty. You’re ensuring that everyone does have enough money to cover the fundamentals. And so, in some ways it’s very, very simple because it’s just giving people some cash. But in other ways, we’re potentially talking about something very radical because we would for the first time be saying, we are fully abolishing absolute poverty. We’re saying that absolutely no one in the country should be poor and that we’re going to structure our systems with that in mind. And so the ramifications of that are pretty profound as far as what does it mean for work? What does it mean for health? What does it mean for people’s general lifestyle if you’re actually establishing that fundamental financial security floor?

Benefits of Universal Basic Income (UBI)

03:12 Emily: Okay, so let’s first take the benefits–the upsides of this–and let’s leave aside, for the moment, the practicalities of it, but just to talk about the vision for what this society might be like. So, what are the benefits that people might experience maybe who are currently in poverty but would be lifted out of that through UBI? You started to talk about this a little bit at the end of the last episode. So, there’s actually been research done in this area and there’s been some experimentation. So, can you talk a little about what we know already about how this might change things for people?

03:43 Jim: Yeah, so I think there are the obvious things that we know when people are poor, they can’t afford food or at least healthy food. They may be having trouble finding somewhere to live. They may not be able to take care of themselves. So, if you’re actually ensuring that everyone is up above the poverty line through just regular cash transfers, those are all things that are addressed, first order of facts. But I think beyond that, that’s where things start to get quite interesting because we have seen more and more evidence around how poverty and financial insecurity, if not causing, are at least are greatly contributing to a lot of other issues that we’re dealing with today. And so, people when they are approaching any aspect of their life, they can either be in an abundance mentality where they think, “Okay, I have enough. I can think bigger picture.” Or a scarcity mentality where they feel constrained, which basically gives people tunnel vision that they’re only thinking about what’s right in front of them.

Abundance Mindset, Higher IQ

04:51 Jim: And that difference has huge impacts on what happens to people. So, first off, there have been studies just looking at general intelligence, and there is a substantial shift in people’s IQ level between those two different headspaces. I think it’s around one standard deviation, so about 10 IQ points, smarter when you’re in an abundance mindset as opposed to a scarcity mindset. So, you’re making better decisions. Second, as I said, when you get that tunnel vision and so it means you’re just thinking about what’s right in front of you, it basically prevents you from longterm planning. You can’t be thinking about, “What is my life going to be even a year, much less, five, 10 years down the road?” if you’re worried about, Oh, how am I going to put food on the table tonight or tomorrow? And so, it allows people and encourages people to plan better, to make better longterm decisions which has big impacts around choices on education, choices around what sort of work they pursue, and ultimately, where they do end up in five, 10 years down the road.

Scarcity Mindset Damages Mental and Physical Health

05:58 Jim: And so, beyond just being able to afford health treatments, there’s also a lot of evidence that when you’re in a scarcity mindset, when you’re in poverty, it’s extremely damaging for mental health. And also for physical health, the stress has an impact on that as well. Crime–strong, strong correlation based on people’s financial security as to whether they’re more or less likely to commit crimes. And so there’s all of these second and third order implications around how things would look in our society if we weren’t to have this absolute poverty. That’s seems incredibly promising. And so, that’s why, again, our typical approach as a society is to, when something’s going wrong, to treat the symptoms of it. And this, instead, is really saying, “Let’s actually try to take a step back, deal with some of the underlying causes, and see how much easier that makes dealing with all the rest of this stuff.”

UBI and Job Flexibility

07:00 Emily: Okay. Sounds amazing. It sounds very, very compelling. I’m wondering a little bit more about what the vision for what this society may look like, should we bring it about. You talked earlier about jobs. And so, is the idea that not as many people would need to work? There wouldn’t necessarily be as many people in jobs? Or is the idea that you would have just more freedom and flexibility around when you want to work and when you went to have further training? How does this relate to the jobs, I guess is what I’m asking?

07:28 Jim: I think much more the latter. So, the idea is not that this is something that’s going to replace jobs wholesale. I think it does allow you to pursue a more general definition of work, I would say. And so, in the sense that “job” right now means a fairly specific thing in those conversations about more like a nine to five, like ongoing, consistent workplace. This does give you additional flexibility to think a bit differently about what is the right form of work for you to be doing. So, whether that’s part-time, whether that’s taking some time to get more of an education in the area that ultimately is going to allow you to do something that you feel better about and maybe much more productive for society. Whether it’s going to give you the flexibility if you want to do some sort of family care or staying home with children or elderly folks.

UBI Facilitates Entrepreneurship

08:25 Jim: Another one is entrepreneurship. If you’re considering starting a company or doing something that, in its early stages, may not be giving you a steady paycheck–having more flexibility around that as well. So, it opens up all these doors that most folks, I would say, don’t really have access to at this point in time. As far as overall impact on how much people are working, there have actually been a number of studies on this. And what it suggests is the results vary. That there are certain situations where, when you give people regular, unconditional cash, they work more. It seems like, either through stimulating the local economy and creating jobs or by giving people that flexibility, they end up doing more work. So, Alaska for the last 40 years has actually had a universal income provided by oil in the state. And recent studies have found that the overall work rate hasn’t changed, but you see a lot more people engaging in part-time work than you have in the past. Or, certain groups, studies have found there is a decrease in work, quite consistently actually across studies. The ones where that’s only really stood out is parents with young children and teenagers, basically. And interviewing folks involved in that, it seems like the former is spending more time staying home with kids, the latter spending more time at school. So, again, it’s not captured as work in how we measure it today, but it actually is work and potentially much more pro-social work than they might otherwise be engaged in.

10:06 Emily: So, this is really reminding me of–so I have not read this book. The book is Your Money or Your Life by Vicky Robin, I want to say. And she has a coauthor. Anyway, I heard a podcast interview with her within the last few weeks and she was talking about how in our current society, like you’re saying, there’s a lot of work that is not inside a job, right? There’s a lot of work that people do in our society to further it. A lot of women do this kind of work and it’s not valued in terms of a paycheck from a job, right? That doesn’t mean it’s not contributing to society. And so, I don’t remember if they specifically talked about basic income on that podcast, but this is a way to sort of reframe what counts as work and what counts as doing something valuable with your time.

UBI and Social Safety Nets

10:51 Emily: Yeah. Okay. So, I think I’m getting you here. I have another question: would this replace the social safety nets that we have currently and expand them, I guess you could say?

11:03 Jim: So, there are mixed opinions on this amongst people who advocate for basic income. I’m actually in the camp saying that this should not initially be treated as a replacement for any social programs. And I think the reasons are: one, is that I think there is widespread recognition across the political spectrum that our social safety net is not working as well as we would like it to. You get very different opinions as to what would allow it to work as well as we would like it to. But no one is satisfied with where it’s at. I think a lot of people have talked about, “Let’s provide basic income and then just cut much, if not all, of other social programs because this will eradicate absolute poverty. Why do we need to worry about anything else?” And there are actually, I would say, a lot of edge cases here where it’s people who are dealing with some specific challenge for which cash on its own is not going to quickly solve it. It will help a lot in many situations. But I think there is the risk that if you say, “All right, we’ll get rid of this other stuff and just give you cash,” you’ve basically taken a problem that requires multiple parts to solve and just replaced one part with another. And, in some cases, maybe they keep people worse off because of that.

Targeted Interventions Beyond UBI 

12:25 Emily: Can you be more specific about what is being provided to people now that’s not money?

12:29 Jim: Yeah. So, I think disability being a good one where disabilities can look very different for different sorts of people. And in some cases, the support you would need to actually be able to live with disabilities requires much more than what a basic income would provide. And so, that’s a case where, if someone were to say, “We’re going to wipe everything off the books and just give you that,” a lot of people in that situation are going to be left far worse off. I think there are specific issues around addiction, in some situations, housing assistance where there is obviously there are areas where housing is far, far more expensive. And so, to think that a national UBI would actually be enough for people in the Bay Area to be able to get by, it’s not realistic. And so, that’s a situation where a targeted intervention beyond the UBI is going to be important.

13:22 Jim: And then I think there are other ones where it may be some general challenge where someone’s falling out of the workforce or coming back from deployment abroad where, again, making sure that they have enough cash is important, but there are additional services that come beyond that that also much better set them up to succeed than the cash on its own. And so, I think that that’s a key thing here is to recognize both how transformative and valuable UBI could be, but also that it’s not a panacea. It’s not a silver bullet. It’s something that will need an ecosystem of additional supports if we actually want to have an effective safety net. And so, I don’t think the safety net that we have right now is doing that well enough, and we need to be rethinking that. But I think that there’s a danger when people say, “UBI instead of that,” that we throw the baby out with the bathwater and end up in a situation where people may be much worse off than they are today.

Regional Cost of Living Considerations

14:25 Emily: Yeah. I think because this is, I don’t necessarily want to say it’s a new idea. I mean, you said Alaska has been doing something like this for 40 years, but it’s gained maybe national attention only in recent years. So, this is still an idea that’s being worked out. And at the policy level, if viable, we don’t know exactly what the ultimate solution would look like. And presumably, it would change over decades and generations anyway. So, I’m glad you brought up the cost of living question. Because the U.S. is very diverse in terms of cost of living. Is the ultimate idea still that people would get the same amount of money no matter where they live? Maybe with some additional help, like you were just saying, for certain people in certain areas?

Psychological Implications

15:05 Jim: So yeah, a key part of it is–and I don’t think I said in my original definition, but the idea is–this would be the same amount to everyone. And there are a couple reasons for that. One is logistical that it becomes much easier to manage if it’s the same for everyone. But the other is more psychological. One of the reasons for taking a universal approach is to try to eliminate stigma associated with receiving support, which in our modern age, we all see how much stigma is associated with receiving various forms of welfare. And that, if it’s something that everyone in society is getting, you’re able to get around that. Because why is it wrong for the homeless person on the street to get the check every month if I’m also getting my check every month?

Regional Supplements

15:52 Jim: And so, that’s another reason to have the equal, universal amount. But as you say, what that means is that in particularly different regions across the country, you’re going to see big differences as far as the implications of that. So, there certainly are parts of the country where if you were giving everyone a thousand dollars a month, you can survive without too much difficulty. If you’re in the Bay Area or other places, that does not get you very far. And so, that’s an area where you do need to have something beyond that. There’s been some discussion around regional supplements where you might be able to top up a equal federal amount with something that goes up more for more expensive areas. But I think beyond that, yeah, there may be other targeted interventions that are important.

UBI Increases Mobility

16:46 Jim: I think one question that comes up that we don’t really have a good answer to but people wonder about is, if you’re providing the basic income to everyone, it is going to increase people’s mobility. And so, if you currently feel tied to a certain geography for economic reasons, which may be very expensive, whether that gives you the option to relocate to somewhere that is less expensive. And then that gets very complicated because it goes into community ties and family and things like that where there may be other factors beyond just the economics of it. But it’s something that would be different if we did this and so, potentially, that at least partially would help to mitigate some of those challenges.

Commercial

17:35 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. I bet you and your peers are hungry for financial information right now, especially if it’s tailored for your unique PhD experience. I offer seminars, webinars, and workshops on personal finance for early career PhDs that can be billed as professional development or personal wellness programming. My events cover a wide range of personal finance topics or take a deep dive into the financial topics that matter most to PhDs like taxes, investing, career transitions, and frugality. If you’re interested in having me speak to your group or recommending me to a potential host, you can find more information and ways to contact me at pfforphds.com/speaking. We can absolutely find a way to get this great content to you and your peers even while social distancing. Now, back to our interview.

The Basic Income Podcast

18:34 Emily: I feel like I could continue asking you questions about this for quite a long time. It’s a good thing you have a podcast where other people can learn more about this. What is the name of your podcast?

18:45 Jim: Our name is a bit on the nose. We are The Basic Income Podcast. We’ve been introducing weekly episodes for about three years now and exploring both UBI specifically, but also, how it relates and connects to all sorts of other areas.

How to Fund UBI in the U.S.

19:00 Emily: Okay. So, I’m going to hold off on the questions that are still swirling in my head and just say, listeners, if you’re excited about this idea, or skeptical of it, or whatever, go ahead and check out the podcast and I’m sure there are other resources that you refer to from there where people can continue to learn even more. So, one more question around the vision of this, which is should we all, or enough of us in the United States, decide this is a good idea, what actually does it look like to fund this? Maybe post-transition, if there is a transition.

Enact Changes to the Tax Code

19:32 Jim: Yeah, so that’s another area where people have very different opinions around. Because, I mean, if we’re looking at it on its face saying, “All right, everyone in the country gets a thousand dollars a month,” that’s about $4 trillion, which is the size of our current governmental spending, which seems insane. But there are various caveats, I would say, that make it much more achievable than it may seem at a glance. My preferred approach to financing is first to recognize that, if you’re going to enact universal basic income, it means you need to make some significant differences in the tax code. And specifically, as a starting point, I think income tax. At its core, the goal of UBI is to provide people with financial security. And so, what that means is that, knowing you’re always going to get your check every month is important because who knows what may happen to you. And having it always there gives you that security.

20:31 Jim: But, if you’re earning a good paycheck, there’s no reason why you should be coming out net ahead, necessarily. And so, to basically update our income tax brackets such that, once people make above a certain point, their UBI is effectively being taxed away. So, maybe that’s four times the poverty level. So, if you as an individual are earning more than 50 or $60,000 a year, basically, you’d be getting your check every month and then you’d be paying a bit more in taxes to cover that expense. If you do it that way and look at what’s eventually the net cost, it drops to somewhere between 500 billion and a trillion dollars a year, which is still a lot, but a lot less than the four trillion we started with.

Shift Tax Programs and Brackets

21:18 Jim: And so, then there are different ideas as to how do you pay for that. That’s much more in line with other somewhat ambitious governmental programs. You can couple together some combination of a carbon tax, the financial transaction tax, a wealth tax. And sort of talking more about that, Elizabeth Warren wrote it up in her campaign where you’re able to raise that amount of money to cover that difference. And also, I think potentially looking at adding a few tax brackets at the top of the income level. If we were to go back to the taxation we had pre-Reagan, that would be bringing in a substantial amount there. So, with those things combined, you can relatively easily actually be able to cover the cost.

UBI and Graduate Training

22:02 Emily: Okay. Very, very interesting. So, I wanted to pivot a little bit to tie this really into more of our PhD audience because we haven’t brought that up so far really. I mean, you mentioned earlier that you know, having a basic income could afford people the flexibility to do more training. Of course, PhDs have a lot of that. Have you given any thought, or has there been any discussion around this, how basic income–I’m sure it’s been discussed at the undergraduate level, how that would affect people pursuing college degrees? You can speak about that a little bit if you like, but I am curious about what you think about how it might affect PhD training in the United States. And specifically, you know, you brought up earlier the scarcity mindset and how that prevented people from thinking longterm and it caused an effective IQ drop.

22:45 Emily: And in season four of this podcast, I published a two-part interview with Dr. Lucie Bland and she talked about her scarcity mindset that she developed during her PhD because she was living in poverty during her PhD. She was funded at a very low level. She lives in a very expensive city, and it’s something that a lot of people can relate to during their graduate training. Although you wouldn’t necessarily think about graduate students, a relatively privileged bunch, I would expect, necessarily being beneficiaries of basic income. But maybe during that training period, they are. So, can you just speak a little bit about that?

UBI and Financial Security

23:18 Jim: Well, I would actually just add on to that. What we’re seeing in the Bay Area right now is not only at the graduate student level, but actually the assistant professor level, in some places, that people are homeless. They can’t afford to live here. So, they’re living out of their cars. Yeah, I mean I think that it’s giving you that layer of financial security, which should help with that. I think, not just because it’s some extra money, but because it would be extra money not tied your employment education situation. And obviously this is not everyone, hopefully a small minority, but if you’re having some bad power dynamics with your professor and feeling like you don’t want to be working with him or her but are not able to step away because of finances you’re receiving from there, it gives you kind of that out knowing that, regardless of what you decide there, you have that income coming in otherwise.

Parallel: UBI and Fellowship Income

24:15 Emily: So, there’s actually a slight parallel there, actually with fellowship income, right? And you did your PhD outside of the state, so, maybe it’s a little bit different there. But here with fellowship income, you know, it’s an award that you receive as an individual. It’s based on your own merits. And so, it’s not necessarily tied to you staying in one person’s lab. And so, I again, I publish an interview in season four where someone was able to switch labs, did not have a good relationship with their first advisor, was able to switch labs partially because she received an NSF graduate research fellowship. And so, similar situation, right? If, you know you can go a few months and transition without a paycheck coming from your advisor, it gives you more freedom there to really seek out the situation that is going to support you best as a developing researcher. So, yeah. Excellent point there. Please continue.

24:59 Jim: Yeah. Well, I was going to say, I think you just nailed it. You could basically think of this as universal basic fellowships for PhD students because I think that, yeah, I think the dynamics that come with it very, very closely with match what it would be if you were getting a fellowship of the same size. I mean obviously with the added flexibility that you could leave a PhD program and still have it. But as far as the context within graduate school, I think that that’s basically what it would be.

25:27 Emily: Just to explore that a little bit further. Because I do think it’s a good analogy. So, one of the great things about fellowship income is that it gives you more freedom in your research, right? So, if you’re not beholden to working on a specific grant for your advisor, like you often are in STEM fields if you have a research assistantship. The fellowship allows you more intellectual flexibility and pursuing projects that are more in line with your own goals. It allows you to pursue collaborations. It’s just a greater degree of freedom. Now, some advisors exact more or less control when they do have people on a grant for research assistantships. That’s sort of up to their discretion. But yeah, the flexibility there in terms of your intellectual pursuits would then translate in terms of UBI into your general career pursuits, life pursuits. It would just be a much broader funding of that.

26:14 Jim: Yeah, I think that’s right. I think I could imagine there would also be kind of a trade-off on that versus greater financial security. Because one of the questions would be, if everyone were getting a basic income, would you still have PhD student stipends and outside fellowships at a similar level? If you would, okay, everyone’s going to be much more economically stable.

Final Thoughts on UBI and Academia

26:40 Emily: You said earlier as like a touch point that, in your vision of this, around 50 or $60,000 of income, that’s when the UBI would kind of phase out. And for the graduate student level, graduate students don’t reach that point. A lot of postdocs don’t reach that point. So, in some sense, if nothing changed on the grant side of things, then it would boost your income. But yes, the question is whether people would still be funded to the same degree given that they have that baseline. So, if the idea right now in academia is we give people just enough money to live on so they don’t have to have other jobs that distract from their PhD research, well then maybe they would just decrease that funding. So, yeah. Any other thoughts around that? I’m sure this has not been very fully explored because it’s a very niche interest.

27:24 Jim: Well, no, I think that this is a specific example of something that is much broader, which is basically, if we were to have UBI, what does that do to wages? And the theory is that it depends a lot on what type of work you’re talking about and how much there is the internal versus external motivation around doing that work. Because if someone’s only doing the work because they’re getting paid to do it, UBI actually has the potential to then increase wages because it basically gives them more leverage to say, “Oh, well I don’t actually like this work. I’m going to go pursue other options.” And a company might then have to say, “Oh, well instead of $8 an hour, we’re going to pay you $15 an hour.” On the flip side, if it’s something that people just want to be doing for other reasons, like perhaps going to graduate school since not too many people go to graduate school to get rich, then there’s the opposite potential where, if someone is basically willing to do it, assuming that they won’t be starving, then universities may say, “Okay, well you’re UBI now instead of giving you $18,000 a year, we’re going to give you six.

28:43 Jim: So, I mean, it’s a whole other topic, but I would say that that’s where unions might come in handy. But yeah, I think it’s one of those areas that it’s very, very difficult to answer and know exactly what will happen until we actually do it. So, we can hypothesize around it. But yeah, that’s an open question.

Value of Teaching and Shifting Landscape in Education

29:07 Emily: Yeah, I guess I’m also thinking about sort of we’re having larger debates and angst in academia around the value of teaching, right? Because there’s this huge adjunct workforce that is, you know, severely underpaid. They don’t have job security and yet such a huge percentage of the classes that undergraduates and graduate students take are being taught by people who are not full-time employees of the institution that they work for or institutions. And it’s just such a difficult area right now. I can definitely see how UBI would help people in that situation, right? Because they are also experiencing poverty or near poverty-like situations, many of them. But, yeah. I mean, we’re in a transition point for education broadly. Like, if we’re moving to massive online courses and so forth, maybe if your teachers are needed. I don’t know. There are just a lot of transition here. I guess when we’re talking about maybe some kinds of jobs disappearing or transitioning, teaching at the higher education level, is one of those jobs that is sort of in transition in the workforces. And so, yeah. UBI is just kind of another element to kind of throw into the mix here that we don’t really know how it’s going to play out entirely.

30:13 Jim: Yeah, I think that’s right. And this applies less, I would say. I would expect it to still apply to some degree, but on the flip side, as far as what is the responsibility of the teacher versus the student? I think, certainly at the elementary and high school level, there’s ample evidence that financial stability of the family that the students are coming from makes a big difference as far as how well they’re able to learn. And so, that’s, I would say, another wrinkle that gets thrown in here as well, where if you are ensuring that everyone who is in the class is in more of an abundance mindset, what implications does that have to what is the most effective way of educating?

Tell Us More About Your Podcast

30:55 Emily: Such an interesting topic, Jim. I think that people will definitely want to follow up with you and learn more about this. Maybe have more discussions with you around what does the potential of UBI look like in affecting higher education and graduate students and postdocs and trainees. Again, tell us a little bit more about what you do. We have the name of it, but what do you do on your podcast?

31:14 Jim: Yeah, so we cover a lot of different areas. Most of the episodes, I think like yours, feature or are centered around a guest interview on some topic. And so, we’ve covered everything from, yeah what does UBI do with the disability community, to what’s happening in Canada with UBI to digging in on some of the modern control pilots that are being done in the U.S. and abroad to what is the connection between UBI and housing? And so, it really covers a lot of different areas, but generally we bring on an expert, we chat with them, and then we talk through what are the ramifications of what they said. And so, really try to dig in a little bit on many different areas.

UBI and Healthcare, Education

32:03 Emily: So, actually one follow-up question that goes maybe more back to our earlier conversation with what does this vision look like? Does the implementation of UBI come with it or depend on a revolution within healthcare and also in higher education? You know, paying for higher education.

32:21 Jim: Yeah. So, I would say healthcare comes up a lot. And in my view, UBI can only truly be successful if we actually have truly universal healthcare because it basically counts on the assumption that you can somewhat reasonably project what is the cost of living for people across the country. In our current system. If you don’t actually have universal coverage, that is impossible. I mean we see all the time, all these cases of people having insane bills for services. And as long as that continues to happen, there’s no way to actually guarantee universal financial security. And so, I see those two things as very, very complementary and part of a whole package that we should be fighting for. And education, perhaps not quite as closely coupled, but I think if we’re talking about what is beyond just financial security, what is really setting people up for longterm success, it seems obvious that we want to make that as accessible as possible. And so, a model where everyone in society has access to higher education is certainly the way to go.

Best Financial Advice for Another PhD

33:29 Emily: Gotcha. Okay. Standard question as we wrap up here that I ask all of my guests which is what is your best financial advice for another PhD? And that could be related to something that we’ve talked about in these two episodes, or it could be something entirely new.

33:44 Jim: I mean, I think it’s just like figuring out your sustainability. So, I mean, thinking about where you’ll be going with your PhD and what is your cost of living then, but just trying to set yourself up so that you’re not heading towards a cliff somewhere, which yeah, I feel like it would look very, very different depending on your specifics.

34:06 Emily: Yeah, definitely. It’s something I talk about a lot for people who are sort of in transition, right, out of graduate school, out of the postdoc into other positions, especially when they’re moving. Make sure you understand the cost of living. As you brought up earlier, you know, in San Francisco, make sure you understand the cost of living that you’re getting into and that the salary that you’ve been offered is is appropriate for that area and negotiate if that is not your initial offer. So, thank you so much for that advice. Jim, this has been a fascinating conversation, really just the tip of the iceberg on this topic, and so thank you so much for joining me.

34:38 Jim: Yeah, I really enjoyed the conversation as well.

Outtro

34:40 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. Pfforphds.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, please consider joining my mailing list for my behind the scenes commentary about each episode. Register at pfforphds.com/subscribe. See you in the next episode! And remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it helps. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the free music archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

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